Synfig Studio 1.3.5 released

The new development release of Synfig Studio is available for download! This version delivers some new features for rendering engine, as well as set of critical fixes.

The main highlight of this update is an improved compact UI layout and possibility to use several rendering modes for faster workarea updates (Draft Mode and LowRes Mode). Please check the detailed description for those features and full list of changes below.

Draft Rendering Mode

When this mode is enabled Synfig disables rendering of all time-consuming filters and applies a set of approximations to get faster updates workarea. In a nutshell you get only vector and bitmap artwork with some very simple effects only. This is useful if you wish to concentrate on animation process and need fast workarea updates while making changes to your characters and scrubbing your time cursor. To see a full list of filters that get disabled please consult this page.

To enable Draft Rendering choose “Edit” -> “Preferences”, then select “Render” section on the left and choose “Cobra Draft” from “WorkArea renderer” dropdown.

Of course this is not very convenient and in the future version we will surely add possibility to enable this option right from workarea.

UPDATE 2018-07-21: Starting from version 1.3.10 there is a toolbar button to enable/disable Draft rendering mode. Please check this post for details.

LowRes Rendering Mode

The Low Res option (which is short for “Low Resolution”) was available n Synfig for ages. But at some point of development it got broken and wasn’t really usable for a while. Now this mode is fixed and you can use it again as an option to get faster updates of workarea.

You can enable this option by clicking “LowRes” button on toolbar. Two buttons on the left and on the right allow you to increase and decrease resolution.

This option is proven to work well for layers like Noise Gradient, Blur and others. But some effects are not much depend on resolution, so enabling LowRes option doesn’t gives much positive effect. In the latter cases it is advised to use Draft Mode.

Better Compact UI

Less space for buttons and scrollbars – more for your artwork! In this version we did some work on UI to make it more compact.

Other changes:

• Fixed autorecovery function (issue #363). Thanks to Ivan Mahonin.
• Fix: Color wheel stuck to red when saturation is zero (issue #452). Thanks to Caryoscelus.
• Allow to zoom canvas using Ctrl + middle mouse button (issue #425). Can be used with tablets as well. Thanks to Alyssa Rosenzweig.
• Fixed issue causing some PNG files to import with incorrect colors (issue #366). Thanks to Ivan Mahonin.
• Fix for Linux Appimage: Mouse wheel not scrolls Timetrack Panel vertically (issue #446). Thanks to Ivan Mahonin.
• Fix: Amount set to zero for image layers if path is missing (issue #373). Thanks to Ivan Mahonin.
• Fix: Preview range not remembered (issue #371). Thanks to Ivan Mahonin.
• Fix localization – was broken since version 1.3.3 (issue #408). Thanks to Ivan Mahonin.
• Fix: Cannot disconnect transformations parameters, which is linked for two group layers (issue #438). Thanks to Caryoscelus.
• Fix wrong selection area for Circle Layers (issue #442).

For your reference: versions marked as 1.3.x represent current development version with all latest features and fixes; stable version marked as 1.2.x.