Synfig Changelog

What's new in Synfig 1.0.1

Jul 22, 2015

Switching bone parent now works correctly.
Fix reading alpha for images with indexed palette (bug #110).
Handles now highlighted interactively during bouding box selection.
Updated icons for "New", "Open", "Save/As/All" and "Undo/Redo".
Keyframes widget: Double click opens keyframe properties dialog box.
Keyframe properties dialog: Show keyframe description and active status.
Fix crash if no fonts installed in the system.
Some compilation-related issues fixed.

New in Synfig 0.64.1 (Dec 3, 2013)

Usability improvements:
This version brings several additions to improve user experience in daily routine tasks.
First of all, the Group Layer now allows to change the scale value using the control point on the workarea. This feature is hard to pass by unnoticed - just put anything into group and test it out!
Next improvement is about creation of regions and outlines. One of the very frequent tasks during construction of vector artwork is creating a fill inside of existing outline or creating outline for existing region. The correct way to acomplish this with previous versions is explained in the Synfig Studio's documentation and this process is non-trivial and quite routine. In this version it is possible to easily create a outline for existing region just right-clicking on the layer and choosing "Make Outline" or "Make Advanced Outline". Smilarly, the fill region can be created for any outline layer.
Finally, the Linux users now can use drag'n'drop to import images or Synfig files into composition. Dragging multiple elements at once is also supported.
Parameter-defined interpolation:
There are five types of interpolation for waypoints in Synfig Studio. The default type of interpolation for new waypoints is defined by the special dropdown list at the Toolbox.
But sometimes it might be useful to force a specific type of interpolation for some parameter of some layer. So, new waypoints for this parameter would have particular interpolation type, independently of globally defined one. That's where the new feature come.
Now it is possible to right-click any parameter and choose its default interpolation from a submenu. The defined interpolation is indicated with corresponding icon near the parameter value.
Exclude layers from rendering:
In this version it is possible to disable rendering for a layer. The disabled layer will remain visible on the workarea during an artwork construction, but will be excluded from the final render.
To exclude layer from rendering just right-click on it and choose "Disable Layer Rendering". The disabled layer have their name displayed with italic font. To revert layer status back to normal choose "Enable Layer Rendering" from the layer's context menu.
This feature allows to add production comments right into the composition or create a custom control widgets for manipulating complex artwork.
Cairo render engine:
In previous version of Synfig Studio we have introduced the new workarea rendering engine implemented with Cairo libraries. This is part of ongoing work targeted at increasing workarea visualization speed and improving the user experience.
In this version the Cairo render engine now capable to visualize all layer types, existing in Synfig Studio. Also, many critical visualisation bugs were fixed in this mode.
Still, the optimization of render engine is a work-in-progress, so at the current state the perfomance gain is delivered for bitmap cutout animation only.
Bones (experimental):
The bones feature is one of the most demanded for many 2D animation software. It allow to quickly manipulate characters by deforming them using a special high-level structure - the skeleton.
This version includes the first results of an effort to provide a full-featured bones system in Synfig Studio, which allows to construct skeletons of any topology and apply influence-based deformation to vector shapes. The current implementation have most internal (core) functionality done and the very basic user interface is provided. Although the user interface is very limited at the moment, it's already possible to produce results like the one demonstrated below.
Other changes:
Add distinction for disabled keyframes on time track panel and keyframe widget
Magick++ and ffmpeg targets fixed in Windows and OSX versions
64bit Windows builds available

New in Synfig 0.64.0 (May 11, 2013)

Cairo-optimized workarea rendering:
The major highlight of this version is a new workarea rendering engine optimized with Cairo libraries. This implementation is part of ongoing work targeted at increasing workarea visualization speed and improving the user experience when using Synfig Studio.
Please note, that engine have an experimental status and still a work in progress. Some layers are not implemented yet and it is planned to complete that task for the next 0.64.1 version. Please refer to the 0.64.1 roadmap for the list of unsupported layers.
Also, in current implementation the speed is heavily depend on the set of the layer types used in composition. While giving a high benefit to the vector layers and some types of images, Cairo libraries are not suitable to provide optimization for raster filter layers (like Blur, Sphere Distortion and others). Since the emulation of such operations requires the additional overhead, those layers may render slower than the old software rendering engine. Those gaps are planned to be filled in the future versions by using external libraries, specially adapted for such operations (possibly GEGL).
Due to its experimental status, the Cairo rendering engine is not enabled by default. Users can turn it on by selecting "File -> Setup" from the main Synfig menu and enabling "Use Cairo render on Navigator" and "Use Cairo render on WorkArea" checkboxes on the "Render" tab.
There are also some collateral consequences of the Cairo integration to mention:
Cairo render engine development helped to reveal many bugs not noticed before in the software render engine. They are fixed in Cairo implementation.
Text Layer effectively uses styles form the parameters and its render is more robust thanks to the use of Pango within Cairo. UTF-8 characters are also displayed correctly with Cairo renderer now.
Imported png images are rendered faster now.
Terminology rework:
For a long time the Synfig Studio was famous as an application with a weird and exotic terminology. Words like "Duck" or "BLine" are used to distract all the newcoming users, raising the barrier for learning new software.
Finally, after some discussion it was decided to standartize terminology in the following way:
Ducks -> Handle
Curves Panel -> Graphs Panel
Encapsulate -> Group (icon reworked)
Paste Canvas / Inline Canvas layer -> Group Layer (icon reworked)
Group -> Set (icon reworked)
Add/remove from Group -> Add/remove from Set (icon reworked)
BLine -> Spline
BLine Point -> Spline Point
BLine Tool -> Spline Tool
Params Panel -> Parameters Panel
Children Panel -> Library Panel
CPoint -> Color Stop
This is a small change to the code, but with huge influence to documentation. Consequence of this renaming is a total wiki revolution. The English pages are updated, but the translations to other languages are still have to be reviewed. We're asking community members to take a look at the English version of each page and complete the renaming of your favourite language.
Plugins menu
Plugins menu
Simple Skeleton
Simple Skeleton
Simple Plug-Ins engine:
Some of our advanced users are used to write scripts to automate some complex or tedious operations on Synfig's (*.sif) files. Those scripts are usually written in python. But execution of such automatiztion tasks requires the use of terminal and for most users this is not comfortable. The new Plug-Ins menu provides a quick way to run external python scripts for currently opened file. Now users can install scripts as easy as they copy files and transparently run them in the same way as they use standard Synfig Studio commands. Runing script from menu is much faster than using the terminal and it greatly improves the workflow for advanced users as well.
With this version of Synfig Studio we deliver two sample plugins and one of them deserves a special mention - it is the skeleton template, which is a bones-like system for animating human-like characters. This script is an evolution of "Stickman Template", developed by Morevna Project. With the current system it is possible to easily add one or many skeletons to any document now.
Our beta-testers already started to play with the Plug-Ins feature weeks ago and requested for a place to share their scripts, so we have opened a new forum section for that. Check it out!
Keyframes panel showing activate / deactivate column
Improvements for keyframes:
Keyframes are used to "lock" image composition for specific moment of time and sometimes when editing a complex animation with a lot of keyframes some of them could stand on your way. Although the "Lock keyframes" button allows to deactivate past or further keyframes (relatively to time cursor), in a lot of cases a more flexible approach is desired. Deleting keyframes is not solves the problem, since that implies removing all associated waypoints and thus the image configuration for this point of time is lost.
In this version there is a new option to disable keyframes. Disabled keyframes doesn't have any influence to the composition, acting merely like a time marker. This also provides a way to delete keyframes when it's required to preserve existing waypoints.
Other changes:
A full rewrite of the command line interface using Boost libraries.
New convert types: Convert to Real, Convert to Integer.
Enable reverse manipulations for convert types: Angle -> Real; Real -> Scale; Real -> Integer; Angle -> Integer.
Translations updated. New languages: Czech, Hungarian, Japanese.

Synfig Changelog

What's new in Synfig 1.0.1

New in Synfig 0.64.1 (Dec 3, 2013)

New in Synfig 0.64.0 (May 11, 2013)

New in Synfig 0.63.04 (Feb 9, 2012)

New in Synfig 0.62.02 (Nov 17, 2010)

New in Synfig 0.62.01 (Jun 1, 2010)

New in Synfig 0.61.09 (Oct 23, 2008)