Artoonix Forum

[KayNine]

In a recent query, Ravencall asked about exporting files. That query centred upon icp files, but the following tip may also be handy for someone .....

I know this isn't what Ravencall or Andrei were referring to, but for anyone who wants to export single image files in something other than it's own native format, Artoonix is very generous in this respect. I have used the following ideas a great deal in several of my movies, so if the following scenarios apply to you, this may be useful: ---

(1) You might have an image in your animation that you want to export AS an image so that you can alter it with something like Photoshop or any other image manipulator.
(2) You might want to import an image into Artoonix to work on it there and then re-export it as an altered image. (In other words - using Artoonix itself as an image manipulator rather than an animation program). It's inbuilt tools, especially the eraser, can be very handy here. Again, I do this a lot and have commented on it in posts elsewhere in the forum.
(3) In much the same way, you might create an image in Artoonix that you then want to paste into other frames. I have done this in over half of the movies I've made, especially the more complex ones.

So how do you export Artoonix elements as images?
It's simple.

1 > Choose your frame and access it with the editor.
2 > Choose the image in the 'Objects' column.
3 > Right click and choose 'Copy to file'.
4 > At this point, you can save an image in the ipa format so that it can then be re-imported into a whole sequence of frames using 'multi-frame operations'. This technique can save hours if, during an animation, you decide that you want to add, say, a vase to a tabletop. Do it in one frame and then copy the vase as an icp file, then import it into all the other frames.
5 > BUT - you can also copy the image to file in a wide range of other formats. Click on the arrow in the 'Save as type' window and you will see that you can choose between ipa, bmp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, tga, tif, tiff. This way, you can extract an image that has been created or altered in Artoonix and it will be in a format that can be used by other programs.

One last idea - for anyone who finds adding text to images a bit tricky, especially if you want quite fancy effects -
A > Import the image into Artoonix.
B > add whatever text you need.
C > Merge the files into a single image and
D > 'Copy to file' in whatever format you prefer.

(NOTE: I use the registered version of Artoonix, so I can't guarantee that all these export options are available in the free version. But you can easily check using 1, 2, 3, 5 as described above).