Synfig Studio (also known as Synfig) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

vector-based 2D

animation Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

software. It is created by Robert Quattlebaum with additional contributions by Adrian Bentley. Synfig began as the custom animation platform for Voria Studios (now defunct), and in 2005 was released as free/

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

software, under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later.

Features

As a true front-end and back-end application, it is possible to design the animation in the front-end, ''Synfig Studio'', and to render it at a later time with the backend, ''Synfig Tool'', on another (potentially faster) computer without a graphical display connected. Incremental and parallel rendering with Synfig Tool is supported by some open source

render farm A render farm is a high-performance computer system, e.g. a computer cluster, built to render computer-generated imagery (CGI), typically for film and television visual effects. Origin of the term The term ''render farm'' was born during the ...

management software, such as RenderChan. The goal of the developers is to create a program that is capable of producing "feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources." The program offers an alternative to manual tweening so that the animator does not have to draw each and every frame. The software is capable of simulating soft-shading using curved

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...

s within an area so that the animator doesn't have to draw shading into every single frame. There is also a wide variety of other real-time effects that can be applied to layers or groups of layers like radial blurs, color tweaks that all are resolution-independent. Other features include the ability to control and animate the width of lines at their individual control points, and the ability to link any related data from one object to another. Synfig also works with High Dynamic Range Imaging.

File formats

Synfig stores its animations in its own

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

file format, often compressed with gzip. These files use the

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically ...

(uncompressed), (compressed) or (zip container format). The files store vector graphics data, embed or reference external

bitmap In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a particular bitmapping application: t ...

images, and also a revision history of the project. Synfig can render to video formats such as

AVI Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail. People with the given name include: * Avi (born 1937), Newbery award-winning Americ ...

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container ...

and

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...

, as well as animated graphics formats such as MNG and GIF. It can also render to a sequence of numbered image files, using formats such as PNG, BMP, PPM and OpenEXR. From version 0.62.00, Synfig has basic support for

SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium s ...

import. From version 0.91

Inkscape Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Other formats can be imported and exported. Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. rec ...

can save as file format.

Morevna era

200px, Morevna Project. Much of the development of the tool since May 2008 has been in association with the Morevna Project, a Russian organisation centred around an animation project using Synfig and other

libre software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

and based on the folkloric characters of Ivan Tsarevich and Marya Morevna, specifically in the context of ''

The Death of Koschei the Deathless The Death of Koschei the Deathless or Marya Morevna (russian: Марья Моревна) is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in ''Narodnye russkie skazki'' and included by Andrew Lang in ''The Red Fairy Book''. The character ...

'' re-invented as a

science fiction anime This is a list of science fiction anime television series, films, OVAs and ONAs. References {{Science fiction Science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically dea ...

. They have been making regular updates since then on the Morevna project site, including a demo video released on November 10, 2012 and several episodes of the Morevna story and of animatics based on the ''

Pepper&Carrot ''Pepper&Carrot'' is a free and open source webcomic series by French artist David Revoy. It is also published by Glénat Editions. The series consists of small episodes about teenage witch Pepper and her cat Carrot, and with stories without ...

'' webcomic. '' Free Software Magazine'' contained an article on the project.

Name

It was originally called SINFG, a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hofs ...

for "SINFG Is Not a Fractal Generator", referring to the software's capability of generating fractal imagery in addition to animation.

References

External links