koolmoves and swish 2 - suggestion for KM

[mmreed]

First off, I love koolmoves... it has the drawing tools I need... I would like to see koolmoves move more towards a single movie, multiple scene ability such as is found in Swish. Swish offers a more straight forward timeline and easy action integration....

But KM takes the cake for animation!

Can we clone the two as one!?!?!??!

that would be ideal!

[johnie]

Could you be more specific....


What exactly about Swish do you like?

How do you think the timeline is more straight forward than KoolMoves.

If KoolMoves lists the Score (Timeline) would this be a?;

A. Marginal Improvement
B. Just an Improvement or
C. Large Improvement

Without Moving to a all timeline based tool (A downside of Flash) what improvements would you suggest?

What are the specific tools in Swish that you think would be benificial in KoolMoves?

I've seen Swish 2 and the only things I think that are really desirable in it is Sprites and SWF Import. I wasn't overly thrilled about how it has become a Flash Clone though.

[mmreed]

Originally posted by johnie
Could you be more specific....


What exactly about Swish do you like?

How do you think the timeline is more straight forward than KoolMoves.

If KoolMoves lists the Score (Timeline) would this be a?;

A. Marginal Improvement
B. Just an Improvement or
C. Large Improvement

Without Moving to a all timeline based tool (A downside of Flash) what improvements would you suggest?

What are the specific tools in Swish that you think would be benificial in KoolMoves?

I've seen Swish 2 and the only things I think that are really desirable in it is Sprites and SWF Import. I wasn't overly thrilled about how it has become a Flash Clone though.

I think a Score listing that is shown while editing where you can navigate simply by clicking the section is great in Swish. I like how I can create a scene, have objects under that scene, and reference that scene from other scenes, and bring them all together in one movie. I think the canned effects in Swish are also pretty good, and offer a more crisp look than the ones in koolmoves. Swish effects are cleancut and not as "busy" as some of the koolmoves ones.

With the scnes and timelins, I can copy, pastes, and drag effects, objects, etc. from scene to scene and from different points in the timeline.

What I love about koolmoves is the ability to draw, manipulate shapes, and the bones features. The drawing tools are great!

One tool I would like to see is a freehand pencil that does not make closed shapes, only the line. I dont like having to go into properties and change the CLOSED setting every time I want just a freeform line.

I do think Koolmoves is far better in design, however it is a little cumbersome in management of frames (In my opinion as a novice user).

I think if koolmoves had a box on the side that allowed scene grouping and jumping from one scene to another, allowing you to reference actions to scenes, etc, this would be great!

Keep up the great work !

[Bob Hartzell]

I am open to all ideas and I am taking a fresh look at the gui.

[johnie]

So what you are saying is that you want:

1. A Free Form Line Tool

2. The Ability to Drag Shapes to different parts of the Movie. IE you have a Ball that move from The Left to the right hand side of the Screen. You want to be able to select that Ball and have Play inside of Frames 10-20 instead of 1-10. Or possibly even copy it. AM I right about this? Basically what you are asking is for a Scorwe (Or Timeline) to present the Objects over time and then allow you to move them over a whole. I don't think that you would be able to do everthing that swish does with a timeline in KM like this becuase the Swish effects are preset, which means you have no control over them, where as the Kool Moves effects are not.

Have you tried the Paste To File and Insert Movie (Fun) file feature yet? This is Feature actually gives you more control than you are looking for but the documentation on it needs to be improved.

3. A better Frame Management tool.

4. Documentation on the Frame Management- What you are wanting to do with Jumping from Scene to Scene is already possible. It just needs better Documentation. In V 2.20 to the left of the Frame Slide, there is a button that looks like a tree with 3 or 4 leaves. Press that button and you will see a box Pop-Up. Now Click on a Key Frame and you are taken there. Double Click any of the Frames and you can Label them. I agree with you that the Frame Management needs some work. At present there are two interfaces for the Frame Mangement. If a Score interface is added then it would make 3.

5. Better Text Effects- I heard Richard is working on some brand new Cleaner Text Effects. You, also realize that you can make your own text effects with KoolMoves? In fact I have an Explode effect that I did that I actually perfer over the Swish version of the same effect. In Fact I have done 3 or 4 Effects packages myself and they can be found on the web at various places.
[Edited by johnie on 06-26-2001 at 07:12 PM]

[Maggee]

Personally, I don't see why everyone is ga-ga over Swish. I don't particularly like it, but that's just one person's opinion.

The timeline thing is just like Shockwave and Flash. If you do that to KoolMoves, I won't be able to afford it anymore, lol.

[Bob Hartzell]

Johnie has taken a look at the new version I am working on and given some thoughtful feedback. I am knee deep in rethinking how to present our functionality.

1. A Free Form Line Tool

-> Easy. Will add to the next version.

2. The Ability to Drag Shapes to different parts of the Movie. IE you have a Ball that move from The Left to the right hand side of the Screen. You want to be able to select that Ball and have Play inside of Frames 10-20 instead of 1-10. Or possibly even copy it.

-> I thought of something like this before - the ability to shift shapes along the time-line. This would be very useful. I will add to the list to implement soon.

4. I agree with you that the Frame Management needs some work. At present there are two interfaces for the Frame Mangement. If a Score interface is added then it would make 3.

-> I will try to combine List of Frames with Sounds and Actions. Score (we took the name from Pixar's Typestry(?)) is as much a shape view as a frame view so I am not convinced yet about pulling that into a single frame view. It is the mapping between shapes and frames.

5. Better Text Effects- I heard Richard is working on some brand new Cleaner Text Effects. You, also realize that you can make your own text effects with KoolMoves?

-> Richard whipped out those 102 text effects in record time. They are very easy to create. Richard at the moment is working on a more "sophisticated" and "professional" looking web site for KoolMoves.


[Edited by Bob Hartzell on 06-27-2001 at 09:18 AM]

[evolbeagle]

Just popping by and noticed this thread and wanted to say that, for me at least, the absolute best thing about KoolMoves is its ease of use. The GUI is amazingly intuitive and simple, particularly given the number things the program can do. That power/simplicity ratio is, at least in my experience with other flash tools, unmatched.

I believe I've read in previous posts where Bob has mentioned ease of use as one of his priorities as the program continues to develop. I also can imagine that as you continue to pile on the functionality, there may be some necessary trade-offs with simplicity. But I just wanted to say that I'm hoping KoolMoves continues on its path of adding features while minimizing complexity. I really think that, in the long run, it's that approach that will put KoolMoves on a very short list of the best Flash authoring tools. (It's already on that list in my book.)