Linux for Designers

Synfig 0.62, a vector-based 2D animation software package, is released.
This version brings new features, improvements and bugfixes:
* SVG import module supporting supports SVG 1.0
* Keyframe widget: This allows drag and drop of individual keyframes and altering keyframe length
* New toggle buttons in the canvas window
* Onion skin past and future are selectable individually up to four in total
* New Curve Warp Layer
* Updated options for Polygon, Circle and Star Tools
* New Value Nodes: Greyed, Power, And, Not, Compare
* Reverse manipulation for Scale Value Nodes
* Input Device configuration can be saved/loaded now
* New icons and updated new translation
* lots of bugs fixed
Besides that a new website is now online and the code of Synfig is now hosted at Sourceforge.

One of most feature requests of Linux users about Flash was a 64bit Flash Player, Adobe make it now happend. This is the first 64bit Flash Player at all, a version for Mac OS X and Windows will follow later. But it isn't final yet, some functionality is still missing: camera, microphone, fullscreen via OpenGL.
The 64bit Flash Player isn't faster then the 32bit. For more performance Tinic Uro, a Adobe Flash developer, recommended to disable the nspluginwrapper. Bugs of the 64bit Flash Player can be reported at Adobe Bugs.

Adobe published now the final Flash Player 10. This version brings a lot of improvements to the Linux platform. Now the Linux Flash Player has the same features as on any other platform. For more details check out the feature page.
Best of all Adobe provides now a Deb archive for Ubuntu 8.04 but they use their own file structure and it seems there is no 64bit build again

To enjoy Flash Player 10 without smashing your Ubuntu:
- extract the Deb archive (do not install it)
- extract the data.tar.gz
- copy as root the file "install_flash_player_10_linux/usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so" to "/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree"

Adobe published the release candidare of the Flash Player 10. This version brings a lot of improvements to the Linux platform:
* optimized sound sound API and sound buffer
* windowless overlay mode now working (Firefox 3 required)
* new embedding modes (explained by the developer Tinic Uro)
* support for the Video4Linux 2
All details about Flash Player 10 can be found at the release notes. And of course the beta 2 is available for Linux too.
Download it and copy the binaries as root to "/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree". Shutdown your browswer and restart it, open the url "about:plugins" to make sure it's available.

Adobe released a second beta of the Flash Player 10. This version brings a lot of improvements to the Linux platform:
* optimized sound sound API and sound buffer
* windowless overlay mode now working (Firefox 3 required)
* new embedding modes (explained by the developer Tinic Uro)
* support for the Video4Linux 2
Older details about Flash Player 10 can be found in my older post or at the release notes. And of course the beta 2 is available for Linux too.
Download it and copy the binaries as root to "/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree". Shutdown your browswer and restart it, open the url "about:plugins" to make sure it's available.

Synfig 0.61.08 hit the streets, the list of changes is long and includes a lot of improvements and bugfixes. Synfig is a vector-based 2D animation software package.
If you like to talk to developers of Synfig you can meet them this year at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Poland.

The website of Synfig, a vector-based 2D animation software package, has moved now to a wiki at synfig.org.
If you like to talk to developers of Synfig you can meet them at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Poland this year.

Adobe releases the third update of the Flash plugin. This Update includes a lot of new features like support for H.264 video and the High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codec. This pushes Flash to HD quality and allowing you to play back existing MP4, M4A, MOV, MP4V, 3GP, and 3G2 content. Many performance improvements were made too.
Installing the new version from the Tar binary archive is easy, just copy the "libflashplayer.so" as root to "/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree" (check the correct permissons).

Today i finished the Webcuts.07 award animation. It's a modification of colors and fonts of last year. I did the rendering and compositing complete in Blender but struggeled in the output of an Quicktime movie with sound (seems a FFMpeg problem).
Hey, just 3 days up to Webcuts.07 - don't miss it!

The KToon project needs your help! KToon is a 2D animation programm that needs some financial support to get 1.0 done. Donate for it!