Village Gamer

Two-time Emmy award recipient, Toon Boom Animation Inc. announced yesterday the pre-launch of Toon Boom® Animate™ 3 and Toon Boom® Animate Pro™ 3, ideal for frame-by-frame and cut-out rigging animation respectively. With these new versions, Toon Boom has reorganized its product line to give each of these products a clear set of capabilities required for the animation style of your choice.

Animate 3 is the ideal software for paperless, frame-by-frame animation. Whether it’s your first time using animation technology, or if you’re a professional looking for a new solution, you can learn Animate in no time. As for Animate Pro 3, this is the best software for doing cut-out style animation. You can build character rigs, animate, and do special effects—all in one software.

Toon Boom Animate 3 highlights:

• True Pencil
  Animate 3 gives you the ability to draw with True Pencil, a pencil line with variable thickness that supports pressure sensitivity. Draw clean lines with the pencil and have the ability to modify the lines easily. You can apply the style across hundreds of drawings. Incorporate texture on your lines for cool effects.
• Texture Brushes
  Animate allows you to draw with texture brushes using the Brush tool. Take advantage of this to do rough drawings just like you would on paper, simulating that pencil-on-paper feeling.
• Tool Presets Toolbar
  When creating paperless animation, you often want to save frequently used brushes or pencils so you can quickly go back to those preferences. Using the new Tool Presets toolbar, you can save presets for any tool, remembering the properties of that tool.

Toon Boom Animate Pro 3 highlights:

• Bone Deform
  Animate Pro 3 now comes with Bone-style Deform! Bring your cut-out characters to the next level by adding deformers to bend drawings around bones and articulations. Apply deform to vector drawings, textures, or imported bitmaps.
• True Pencil
  Animate Pro 3 gives you the ability to draw with True Pencil, a pencil line with variable thickness that supports pressure sensitivity. Draw clean lines with the pencil and have the ability to modify the lines easily. Incorporate texture on your lines for cool effects.
• Tool Presets Toolbar
  When working in cut-out animation, you often want to save standard brush or pencil settings for different areas of your character rig. Using the new Tool Presets toolbar, you can save presets for any tool, remembering the properties of that tool.

Both products are now supercharged on a 64-bit core. This gives you the freedom to use more of the computer’s resources, and output high-resolution files for a professional-quality production. In addition, they both support standard two-finger Touch Gestures for zooming, rotating, and scaling of the canvas, when using a tablet.  Finally, they both benefit from interface enhancements designed to simplify workflow and streamline the animation process.

During this time-limited pre-launch period, you can buy Toon Boom Animate 3 for $599 US and Toon Boom Animate Pro 3 for $999 US – a saving of $100 US. Customers will receive a version 2 license which will be replaced by version 3 upon release. Customers owning previous versions of Animate and Animate Pro may upgrade on release day only.