What's new in EDAP Tools v.5.0

Electric Dog Flanimate Power Tools v.5.0.0 is a major stable release

To the constantly growing number of our users it brings powerful new tools, revolutionary enhancements to the Smart Magnet Rig workflow, polish and refinement of the existing tool set and also sets the stage for exciting future developments that will follow up in v.6.

More powerful and flexible than ever before, EDAP Tools 5 come with FreeStyle and Automatic SM rigging, freedom to change the Master Parent and Color Palette Control, improved KineFlex experience and much more! 

See the highlights here.

Change log

1. Structural changes:

• Unified installer package for all supported versions of Flash and Animate.
• Full implementation of Adobe's new strict layer naming model across all installations of EDAP Tools:
  Center Marker and Magnet Target(s) layers are now called CenterMarker and MagnetTargets
  //no punch suffix is now __nopunch and //no key is __nokey
• EDAPT Service Layers Renamer is now included with all installations. It's hidden by default.
• Full legacy support of Smart Magnet Rigs using the old relaxed service layer names Magnet Target(s) and Center Marker
• EDAPT Commands are now protected against accidental deletion via Commands > Manage Saved Commands… They will regenerate after a restart.
• Many UX improvements

2. New tools:

• FreeStyle rigging – KineFlex is now also a SM Rigging tool, which allows quick FreeStyle rigging of any number of Symbol instances without any preparation. Magnet Targets and Center Markers are automatically added when needed.
• Auto-rig – SMR Panel now has Auto-rig function to automatically create the hierarchy and tag an edaptable build with SMR info.
• Change Master Parent – new function in the drop-down menu of SMR Panel. Redefines the existing SMR hierarchy, based on user selection.
• New panel: Symbol Palette Control
• New command: Duplicate Symbol Recursive
• New command: Prev Or Next Symbol In Library
• New mode in Set Reg Point To Transform Point – Zero Transform mode. This is effectively a new command.

3. Added features:

• SMR Panel now remembers the state of “Listen for Stage Updates”
• SMR Panel: Ctrl-clicking on the move tool centers view
• SMR Panel: Auto-rig – new button at the bottom – Create Smart Magnet Rig Automatically
• SMR Panel: Small changes to icons and buttons
• SGC Panel: Users are now free to roll over metadata and control multiple symbol instances with SGC and also remove this metadata from any frame selection more easily
• SGC Panel: Synchronized item's metadata can now also be transferred to selected frames via Roll Over button
• SGC Panel: In CC versions it refreshes the view of masked layers more successfully after frame change
• KineFlex now has the added option to 'jump' to the current Keyframe when an element of a Smart Magnet Rig is clicked on a non-key frame
• Swap Multiple Symbols is hidden by default in CC versions of Animate
• Smart Transform has a new setting – users can optionally choose whether to switch to Q‑tool after a Smart Transform operation or not
• Set Reg Point To Transform Point is now dual function. See above.
• EDAPT Control Panel: Added option to restore the EDAPT Shortcuts to their default state
• Various UI/UX enhancements
• Performance optimizations

4. Many bug fixes

It is highly recommended that all users upgrade to take advantage of the latest changes.

Free downloadable SM Rigs and other files

New:

Update:

Important note about shortcuts

As EDAP Tools have evolved, EDAPT Shortcuts became very tightly integrated and, unfortunately, much less optional than in the previous versions. Since we keep pushing the boundaries of what Flash/Animate can do, we need to rely on heavily modified shortcut set and approaches to developing that set which are not available via the native shortcuts dialog.

We strongly encourage our users to switch to EDAPT Shortcuts to get the full EADP Tools experience!

We understand that as our set diverges more and more radically from Macromedia/Adobe defaults, transition can be frustrating at first and requires a few days.
But the benefits to the user would be huge as all EDAPT shortcuts have been assigned with animation/design workflow usability in mind. As you get used to them you will realize how much time and hand movement they will save you.

If you need to modify the EDAPT set to better suit your needs, in Animate CC just use the Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts… dialog. Flash 8 and CS users, please, refer to this article.

General recommendations

To our users in 2019 we continue to recommend working with Flash Professional CS6 for character animation whenever possible. It is the most rigid, stable, bug-free and best performing version to date.

It is extremely inconvenient that Adobe pulled the plug on CS6 and the CC license now only allows the use of Animate CC 2018 and newer. Even though it is obvious that there are attempts to make Animate a better program for animators, AnCC 18 and AnCC 19 have been the worst performing versions of Flash to date. All users who have CS licenses might still prefer to use CS for serious work while hoping for performance improvement in the future.

Avoid using CS4 and CC2018!
Out of all the versions of Flash and Animate we constantly test with these two are the worst performers so far. CS4 has difficulty working with multiple levels of nested symbols as well as many oddities in various areas, which were introduced there and immediately removed or fixed in CS5. It probably is the worst version of Flash that has ever existed. Animate CC 2018 is the slowest version of Animate so far. It is so sluggish that even rotating a simple rectangle on the main timeline with the Q‑tool comes with noticeable lag.

Known Issues

Layer Parenting: Animate CC 2019 and newer only

• It is very important to note that currently Layer Parenting and Smart Magnet Rigs are incompatible.
  Our plans for the future are to provide avenues for animators to utilize Parented Layers in their Smart Magnet Rig workflows. Read more…
• Currently Layer Parenting data is lost during Timeline Block To Symbol (TBS) nesting operations.

Mac OS Mojave only: If [ Command+` ] is not working on your mac, please change this shortcut to any combination involving Command, for example [ Command+2 ]