searching a program for creating multiframe-animations (timeline)

[Probo]

as Helm mentioned, Game maker could be used. ive used it for scrolling mockups like this one a while back - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcVg32DGM_E

the scrolling couldnt be easier, you set backgrounds, their relative depth and what speed they go at, in the GUI. no coding. although you can code for more control ( i coded stop/start times for the scrolling and also if memory serves me right you can make them move at strange speeds in code). you can also set them to horizontally and/or vertically tile in the GUI, so they wrap around seamlessly and repeat themselves. There is a limit (5? i think) on how many backgrounds you can have in the free version. you could get around that by coding sprites to move and act as backgrounds though.

timing-wise making stuff disappear and reappear at certain times etc, is all easily done with alarms, which counts progress in frames. and a lot of the programming could be done using the drag and drop interface instead, which is easy to use. easy to code too though when you get a hang of it, and you get lots more control.

[tim]

As a VFX / motion designer guy, I would say the best solution is After Effects obviously.
It's by far the most powerful tool for any video maker, it's the photoshop of video basically, and the interface is extremely easy to understand once you get the basic (importing & rendering). I might do a video tutorial just for you guys if you're really asking for it, because right now I'm making the trailer of my game, Behind Nowhere, in After Effects to simulate the final result (the engine is not ready yet).

[Helm]

tim, if you can whip up a tutorial for making endless scrolling showcases of stuff, I'd be really interested, yes.

[Cyangmou]

As a VFX / motion designer guy, I would say the best solution is After Effects obviously.
It's by far the most powerful tool for any video maker, it's the photoshop of video basically, and the interface is extremely easy to understand once you get the basic (importing & rendering). I might do a video tutorial just for you guys if you're really asking for it, because right now I'm making the trailer of my game, Behind Nowhere, in After Effects to simulate the final result (the engine is not ready yet).

Oh wow, that would be f****** great 

[32]

I've been looking into doing something like this lately. Definitely recommend After Effects, considerably less frustrating than Flash once you've got the basics down. Looping and switching out animations is a bit trickier but everything else makes up for it.

If Tim doesn't get around to doing a tutorial I could probably put something together, I'm pretty much winging it though so I'd wait up for his  . It's all pretty straight forward though, I wouldn't hesitate to do some basic googling and dive into it. Only slightly tricky thing was getting the pixels to line up with the grid properly, which just requires you to split up the position values and add a rounding expression ( Math.round(Value) ) to each.

[tim]

Ok I'll buy a micro Monday & record something.
Looping animations & scrolling are a bit tricky but with a tutorial you'll be setup in no time.

Helm, why do you mean by "endless scrolling showcases of stuff" ?
Endless scrolling is fairly easy to achieve, but I don't understand the "showcases of stuff" part ?

[Helm]

I just like making parallax backgrounds and would like to show them to people in a video, that's all it is.

[tim]

Oh yeah =) There are so many options to do it (just like Photoshop), I'll have to think about the easiest way to show you instead of the best for now (which may require some 3D knowledge + plugins).

[surt]

I just like making parallax backgrounds and would like to show them to people in a video, that's all it is.

This kind of thing can be done quite easily on a HTML5 canvas (take a simple multi-layer tilemap from user editable JSON file, plus tiles in a image or few) and quite shareable as you can just chuck it in a webpage.
Just need to find someone not so motivationally challenged as myself  (I've been meaning to do this forever).

[PixelPiledriver]

Alright I took an image I did a few weeks ago and made a little animation of it.





Flash CS3
399 frames
5 delays
Tiles are 1 color + Black and do not touch edges of each tile
All character animations are nested into the town.
Backdrop scrolls and carries all of them.
This is cool because you can work each characters animation and see all of them animate together when you go up a timeline.
The loop is created by having another instance of the town to the right of the main town, that way it replaces the orginal position at the end.
1 frame is dropped so that the first and last frame are not the same, thus its a 400 frame animation -1 = 399.
Main dude doesn't actually move, except up and down, he just runs and place as the nested object scrolls behind him.
Measured out all the tweens so that there is no jittering.
Used 8x8 grid for almost all movements except some of the y-axis stuff and birds.
Didnt do parallaxing but gonna add that in.
I think that flash works well for this sort of thing.
Looping and choosing animations is easy, nesting is usually straight forward to implement and navigate.
All in all went fairly smooth and was fun to make.
I'm gonna try to do some more of these with different ideas.


Apparently my basic math skills are terrible. 
There was in jitter in the scrolling as he walks down the first hill just before the lamp post.
I fixed it by setting the town to finish scrolling at frame 401 and the main timeline at 400.
Then checked each frame in graphics gale to make sure each frame scrolls 2 pixels.
Here's the fixed version.