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Problem with SWF file generated in Toon Boom
Hello!
Does anyone use swf files generated from Toon Boom in AE?
Here is a problem i’m having:
It seems that AE doesn’t read well some of the frames in my swf. It suddenly freezes the swf after a certain number of frames, in the end of the animation although it preserves the original duration of the swf clip.
The animation is simple, hand drawn and only thing i imagine could be problematic is the fact that i used the “paste reverse” option at the end of the animation to copy frames in reverse and close the looped cycle.
Toon boom has a system of storing frames/drawings and reusing them on the timeline which is evident if you try drawing on an existing frame and the change appears on all of the instances of the drawing that are on the timeline.
This swf file is played correctly in flash player and the problem only occurs in after effects.
I could fix this in Toon Boom, or export an image sequence instead of swf file but if anyone knows of a better method, please explain.
I’m using Toon Boom Harmony and AE cs6.
Sorry if my description is too long or confusing or if this question belongs more to forums dedicated to Toon Boom.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
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6 Replies
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Thanks Dave, I think you are right and i will try your suggestion.
I have already found somebody who posted a similar question on the toon boom forum but nobody answered the thread. That’s why I was hoping somebody here would maybe have a quick fix answer.
The only thing i found so far, on another forum, is somebody recommending to export image sequences from toon boom as default procedure but that, for me at least, beats the purpose of using vector software since i prefer drawing and animating in a nice bitmap program called TVPaint. I’m using toon boom only because of flexibility in terms of scaling which comes with vector files which are crucial for my current project.
Thanks for the reply!
Cheers,
Spiridon
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See this note in After Effects Help about importing SWF files:
“Interactive content and scripted animation are not retained. Animation defined by keyframes in the main, top-level movie is retained.”———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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Thank you for replying Todd!
I’m familiar with this already but my animation is not scripted at all and everything is on top level timeline.
Might be something related to toon boom.
In addition to what i wrote in the first post, now I noticed some really strange behavior: the swf files are playing properly in flash player/debugger but the moment i import them in AE they stop at one point and then the playback in flash player starts playing them with the same bug, meaning they freeze at the same moment but the clips duration is unchanged.
Strange indeed, I’m testing some new files generated from other toon boom projects to see if this is general occurrence or just a glitch related to this file.
Never had this problem before.
Thanks!
Spiridon
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Ok, for anyone who encounters a similar problem, I found that the solution was actually posted earlier here on Creative Cow:
“I think I’ve found a solution to this rather annoying issue (in CS6 at least, haven’t tried with 5.5 or lower): You just need to disable “Write XMP IDs to Files on Import” in Media & Disk Cache preferences. I’m not sure how important this setting is, but it seems to stop swfs from being wiped when you reload/update them.”
It worked for me!
Here is the original thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1021661#1027458
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Thanks for sharing what worked for you.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Glad to do it! This forum is a wonderful resource!
Cheers Michael!
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