toon boom tutorial beginner part 7 [importing different media]
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00:00 Toneboom Studio is a very, very flexible application when it comes to the file types that it can
00:08 import and understand.
00:10 It's kind of important to know this, especially if you're going to collaborate with other
00:14 people because it's a good idea to know what files they're saving their artwork as so you
00:19 know whether you can bring it in to your application.
00:22 And this happens more often than you might imagine.
00:24 I actually have clients that ask me to send them artwork in specific file formats so that
00:31 they can open it with the applications they're using.
00:34 More often than not, people just send file formats to other people in something that
00:38 they think is a format that the client might want.
00:42 So it's important to know the different types of files that you can use and also bring into
00:46 Toneboom Studio.
00:48 So what I'm going to do is go to the File menu and I'm going to go to Import File.
00:54 And I'm going to click on my desktop real fast just to clear that out.
00:57 We're going to focus on this area here.
01:01 And you're going to be surprised when you see how many different file formats it supports.
01:06 A billion.
01:09 Which is good news.
01:10 So I'm only going to cover the more commonly used ones and the ones that you might be bringing
01:15 in to Toneboom Studio.
01:17 Let's go ahead and start with the Flash Swift file.
01:20 This is how you pronounce that.
01:21 Swift.
01:22 Now people like to create artwork in Flash to bring into Toneboom Studio so that they
01:27 can continue animating.
01:29 Some people are more comfortable drawing in Flash and some people are more comfortable
01:33 drawing in this application and going to Flash.
01:35 The applications work very well with one another.
01:39 So if you're working with someone, make sure they save it as a Swift file.
01:43 The FLA file is the actual Flash document the person might be working on and when you
01:49 export it, you export as a Swift.
01:52 You can also bring in GIFs.
01:55 Now I typically don't bring these into Toneboom Studio but like the JPEGs, you will find these
01:59 mostly used on the web.
02:01 Although I use JPEGs pretty much for everything if I'm not using a TIFF.
02:05 I'll talk about that in a minute.
02:07 So GIF files are different from JPEGs in pretty much one major aspect.
02:13 A GIF file will show you very good representations of flat colors.
02:19 So let's say you were doing a picture of an orange, like the kind of orange you eat.
02:24 It would get a really nice orange color if it's flat.
02:27 But if you want to use gradations and you want to show dark orange to light orange to
02:33 those kinds of different shades, JPEGs really excel in that regard.
02:39 You can also bring in PDFs although I typically don't do that either.
02:42 PDF is simply one of those document files that I use to read magazines online and that
02:47 kind of stuff.
02:48 So it's a portable document format.
02:50 It was supposed to help us to create a paperless society.
02:54 But unfortunately more people print PDFs than read them online.
02:59 You also have the ability to bring in PICT images, PNGs which stand for portable network
03:04 graphics and these will preserve transparency 9 times out of 10.
03:09 So let's say you have a character and the background is transparent and you create it
03:13 in Photoshop.
03:14 Save it as a PNG and Toon Boom should respect that transparency.
03:19 Speaking of Photoshop, we have the PSD file format which stands for Photoshop Document.
03:25 So you can bring in Photoshop files as well.
03:28 We also have the ability to bring in QuickTime movies or QuickTime images as you see here.
03:33 TIFFs are also very popular, Tagged Image File Format and this was used back in the
03:38 day to easily send images back and forth between Macs and PCs.
03:45 You can also use the TGA also known as a Targa.
03:49 I typically like to use the Targa file format when I'm doing 3D textures.
03:54 So for example in Modo or Maya or Lightwave I use the Targa file format to texture my
03:58 models.
04:00 If you want to learn more about 3D applications though, definitely check out some of the courses
04:03 at the Virtual Training Company website.
04:06 Good stuff there.
04:07 You can also bring in bitmaps and of course you can bring in music and sound effects.
04:14 The AIF file format which is the Audio Interchange File Format is the most commonly used file
04:20 format on the Macintosh platform.
04:23 We also have the MP3 which is very popular.
04:27 We also have the WAV file format which is the standard for the Windows PC platform.
04:33 We also have the AVI which is the standard movie file format on the Windows PC platform.
04:40 We have MPEG which is also another movie file format.
04:44 We also have the QuickTime movie which you'll find mostly on the Macintosh but QuickTime
04:48 is readable on both Windows and on PCs.
04:52 So is AVI but I also find I have to get plug-ins to make it work properly on the Mac.
04:57 And last but not least we also have the M4V which is for the iPod file format.
05:03 So as you can see, you can pretty much bring in a vast category of different file formats
05:09 in your Toon Boom animations.
05:11 So I just wanted to cover quickly some of the more commonly used ones so that you can
05:16 collaborate with people and make sure that they're saving you files that you can use.
05:25 As we already know, Toon Boom Studio can import a wide variety of file types.
05:32 So I'm going to just show you how to bring those files in very quickly.
05:35 I'll bring in an Adobe Illustrator file and a Swift file which is from Flash but I actually
05:41 created the Swift file in Illustrator.
05:44 So before we bring them in, let's hop over to Illustrator just in case you do have Illustrator
05:48 but if not you can also do the same thing from your Flash documents if you have Flash.
05:54 From Flash what you're going to do is you're going to publish your file.
05:57 Don't forget, one thing about Flash is that the Flash document itself is actually an FLA
06:03 file.
06:04 You want to bring in the Swift file.
06:06 So make sure you publish from Flash to get that Swift file.
06:11 You can even get a Swift file when you test a movie.
06:14 Just make sure you check the folder where you saved your files and look for the SWF
06:18 that is generated when you test your movies.
06:21 Alright so I'm in Illustrator.
06:22 I'm going to go to File, I'm going to choose Save As and when I do that I can choose a
06:30 location and I'm going to just keep it as it is and I'm going to keep this as it is
06:36 because after I click Save, another dialog box will appear and this is where I can tell
06:42 Illustrator how to save this version of this file.
06:47 So as you can see this is Illustrator CS4 but from my experience, Toon Boom Studio doesn't
06:52 quite like Illustrator CS4 too much.
06:54 So I'm going to choose good old CS.
06:58 When you do this, it's called working with a legacy version.
07:02 So I'm going backwards a little bit.
07:04 Now even though the legacy versions are down here, anything that's not the current version
07:08 is considered legacy.
07:10 So with this selected, you have to make sure that you have this checkmarked.
07:15 Keep this on.
07:16 Create PDF compatible file.
07:19 But take this off.
07:21 Take off the compression.
07:23 I find that this works pretty well.
07:25 So I would save that as that version and just go ahead and say yes.
07:29 If you want to save a SWF file, you would go to File, Export from Illustrator and then
07:35 from this list you would choose the SWF version.
07:39 Flash SWF.
07:41 It changes here and then you can export a SWF file.
07:44 Then you have to go through all these options as well.
07:47 So once again you have to know a little bit about Flash so if you don't know Flash, just
07:52 take your time and understand it and then you can choose the right file format.
07:56 But from my experience, the defaults are fine.
07:59 I'm going to head back to Toon Boom Studio.
08:02 I'm going to go to File and I'm going to Import a File.
08:06 And I'm actually going to choose Clock and Wall which is the CS, regular old CS.
08:13 I'm going to choose Preserve Original Layers.
08:16 This will bring in my layers from my document and here we go.
08:21 Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to undo that.
08:24 And don't worry if you get those error messages guys.
08:27 Sometimes Illustrator and Toon Boom Studio have little issues.
08:30 Let me just show you what I'm talking about.
08:33 Sometimes the strokes that surround your artwork may have caps on them from the strokes that
08:38 you create.
08:40 So you may have a stroke that you draw.
08:42 Let me go ahead and just draw something with the Pen Tool.
08:45 And then when you select that stroke, you'll be able to change the style.
08:49 So you can change the style of it.
08:51 You can also go here and change the style of the line.
08:53 You can go here and change the size of the stroke.
08:55 You can change the color of the stroke.
08:57 You also have the ability to add end caps and all kinds of things that can mess up the
09:02 compatibility.
09:03 So don't worry about that.
09:05 If your lines are just straight and basic, you shouldn't have any problems at all.
09:09 So I would avoid adding any styles.
09:12 I would avoid adding any of the special effects like in the basic category.
09:17 Just go with the most basic thing and you should have no problems with compatibility.
09:21 Alright, so that is how you can export those files and then bring them into the application.
09:27 Now I'm going to go ahead and bring in the Swift file.
09:29 I go into File, Import File, and I'll choose the Swift.
09:35 And once again, every once in a while you do get an error message and it just tells
09:38 you that certain things are not supported.
09:41 Once again, you get a little too fancy and it doesn't understand it.
09:45 So if you're going from Illustrator or Flash, just use the very most basic things that you
09:50 can get away with and then do your special effects and fancy stuff inside of Toon Boom
09:54 Studio.
10:00 You can import movies into Toon Boom Studio.
10:04 Now it might seem a little strange to do that but think about it this way.
10:09 It's almost like compositing.
10:11 So let's say you have a character who is flying a ship or airplane or you even have a superhero
10:17 who's flying around and you want to show clouds or something like that flying by in the background.
10:24 Cities or mountain range or anything like that.
10:26 Well, of course, you could draw that yourself but you can also bring in an actual movie.
10:32 So what I'm going to do is first of all, I'm going to talk about something that's pretty
10:36 important as far as the scale of this movie that you should bring in.
10:40 You want to make sure that the file size is as small as possible just to make sure that
10:47 it doesn't slow down your workflow and it could also potentially add to the file size
10:52 quite obviously.
10:53 So I have this movie called clouds.mov and this is what it looks like.
10:58 I'm going to bring it in by simply importing it as a movie file and it's only seven seconds
11:03 long.
11:04 What you want to do is to edit files like this in an external editing application so
11:09 that you only bring in what you need.
11:11 This is one of those topics when you're really going to want efficiency.
11:16 Movie files can be quite large and they're not vectors like the artwork that we create
11:22 inside of Toon Boom Studio.
11:23 So this is really pixel artwork.
11:26 This is movies and like sound, movies are large as far as capacity, as far as storage.
11:33 So just try to think ahead before you bring those in and really slow down your workflow.
11:38 So I'm going to go to the File menu and I'm going to go to Import File and then on my
11:45 desktop we see we have this clouds.mov which I just showed you.
11:49 We can see that it's only 1.5 megabytes and I would actually try to make that smaller
11:53 if I could by using an application to export that as a smaller file size.
11:58 I'll go ahead and open it and we also have the ability with the import options to set
12:04 an opacity value for the imported movie so we can bring it in at a different opacity
12:09 as opposed to bringing it in at full strength.
12:11 Once again, if this is going to be a background element, some fog or something like that,
12:16 you can make it so that it's not so apparent as a movie source instead of something that
12:21 you animated yourself.
12:22 So what I'm going to do is click OK and there we have it.
12:26 I can grab my scrubber and I can actually see that movie playing back.
12:33 And it looks a little bit vectorized actually.
12:34 It looks like it's actually changed a little bit so that it would fit the scale of our
12:38 movie more accurately.
12:39 So I'm going to undo that and I'm going to bring it in one more time.
12:44 So I'm going to import that file and I'm going to bring it in clouds and this time we'll
12:49 click Set Opacity Value and as you can see we can choose from 1 to 100 and I'll put 35
12:56 here.
12:57 I hit OK and now the opacity has been knocked back quite a bit and it won't be so apparent
13:04 and you can partially see through it which is really cool and really can add a lot of
13:08 atmosphere to the movies you're working on.
13:10 Thanks for watching.
13:11 I'm Gary with Avid Media.
13:12 Have a great day.
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