CelAction2D is a suite of integrated programs that allows animators to design 2D character models on computer as resolution-independent vector graphics or scanned bitmaps, and animate them according to exposure sheets that are fully user-adjustable.
Audio samples can be played simultaneously in the exposure sheet for timing and lip-syncing purposes. The animation can be previewed in low resolution in real time, and then rendered out at any resolution to film or video, automatically composited with the background and with full camera control.
CelAction2D is designed to be easy to use yet able to produce high-quality animation at a fast rate. Developed with the help of top animators and used on a variety of acclaimed productions, it produced the award-winning series The Big Knights, and is the technology behind the ground-breaking 2DTV.
CelAction2D gives you the freedom to create commercials, films and television series to the professional broadcast-quality standard you want without the cost of traditional methods and without the difficulty of other animation software.
See the CelAction2D Workflow page for more information on how you can create exceptional productions.
User Interface
- Customisable window and toolbar arrangement.
- Redefinable shortcut keys.
- Context-sensitive help file.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Panels containing common functions that can be placed anywhere on the screen.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Skeleton view fully configurable with options to easily locate body parts.
Modelling
- Uses character models and backgrounds constructed in industry-standard products such as Adobe Illustrator® or Photoshop®, preserving the layer names and display order.
- Uses resolution-independent vector graphics, bitmap images or video sequences as elements (AI, PSD, TIF, PCX, BMP, TGA, JPG and AVI).
- Create ready-to-animate shapes out of any installed fonts simply by typing in text.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Vector gradients now supported.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Transparent paths now supported.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - SVG format (from Illustrator 10) now supported.
Animating
- Simple, user-friendly interface allows traditional animators to work intuitively and quickly.
- No limit to the number of levels on screen simultaneously.
- Move, Rotate and Scale each element of your character model by simply dragging the mouse.
- Automatically lip-sync based on the volume of WAV files defined by the animator, or load in data from industry-standard applications, then adjust it using hot-keys to give speech perfect timing.
- Unique plug-in algorithm feature allows you to set parameters for start and end frames and let the program work out the in-between frames for complex animation moves.
- Adjustable translucency of element colours to create special effects such as glass and shadows.
- Full onion-skinning functionality - over 20 different options to see a character pose as a transparent wireframe under or over the current frame.
- Real-time playback of animation in colour - see your animation come to life without pre-rendering.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Skeletal hierarchies can be reversed on demand to make posing much easier.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Reparenting of elements on a frame-by-frame basis is now possible.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Selective frame scrubbing is now possible.
Exposure Sheet
- Fully editable exposure sheet, allowing normal cutting and pasting of frames, plus extra functions such as reverse, stretch, squash and renumber.
- See the sound waveform running beside the exposure sheet for maximum accuracy.
- Animate automatically on singles, doubles, or even higher - and you can adjust the animation to different timings later.
- Ability to temporarily make elements and levels invisible so that the animator can concentrate on the elements being worked on.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Improved, faster Dope Sheet, allowing Key Poses to be tagged with different colours.
Re-use
- Create an Actor once - then re-use in as many scenes as required.
- Intelligent asset logging allows efficient use of resources.
- Ability to copy just the animation data from one character to another - makes walk cycles and crowd scenes easy to animate - as long as the skeletons are the same, the movement can be copied, even between different scenes.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Copying effects data and family animation data is faster and easier than ever before.
Cameras
- Fully featured multiple camera windows allowing zooms, pans and rotation - just visually drag the camera viewpoint to where you want it.
- Widescreen cameras fully supported for all screen aspect ratios, including anamorphic.
- Automatic spline-based interpolation of camera movement with user-defined acceleration and deceleration for perfect results.
- All resolutions up to and including film resolution handled.
- Features Multiplane Camera option for complex layered shots.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - History of spline and multiplane movement stored so that many different versions can be tried and adjusted.
Rendering
- Incredibly fast rendering time, even to broadcast-quality video resolution.
- Supports batch rendering, so you can leave several scenes to render overnight.
- Saves out frames as sequentially numbered TIF, PCX, JPG, BMP, TGA or AVI files for easy importation into editing packages.
- Generate Alpha channels automatically for perfect compositing.
- Numerous special effects, including blur, tint and emboss, are available for every level in the scene.
- NEW FOR VERSION 2 - Outline and Colour Replace effects.
Minimum: Recommended: Pentium® 200MHz
Windows 95/98®
64MB RAM (256MB for film resolution)
Graphics card supporting 800x600 True colour (32-bit)
CD-ROM drive
Sound card and speakers/headphones
Compatible pointing device (mouse or pen)Pentium® 4 2.2GHz
Windows 2000 Professional®
512MB RAM
Graphics card supporting 1280x1024 True colour (32-bit)
CD-ROM drive
Sound card and speakers/headphones
Compatible pointing device (mouse or pen)CelAction2D runs on Windows 95®, Windows 98®, Windows ME®, Windows NT 4.0®, Windows XP® and Windows 2000®. For production work we recommend Windows XP® Professional or Windows 2000®
CelAction2D
and the CelAction2D logo are trademarks of CelAction Ltd.
