Features

Main workflow

  • When you create a new file, you can immediately start drawing storyboard frames.
  • Enter text below each frame.
  • Add new frames with a keystroke.
  • Organize and reorder frames in an outline view with drag-and-drop.
  • Use color-coded overlay layers for different kinds of information, like camera motion and character motion.
  • Set timing for each frame either numerically or by recording durations interactively.
  • Move, resize, rotate, and fade layers to create simple animation within frames.
  • Record animation and frame timing interactively, for rapidly adding movement to your animatics.
  • Record or import sounds - dialogue, narration, sound effects, music, etc. Tweak and edit them simultaneously in any sound editor.
  • Play back your storyboard as an animatic in real time, including sounds, fade transitions and smooth camera moves.
  • Print your storyboard and text in a wide variety of customizable formats.
  • Supports large projects - feature films and longer.
  • Export to a Web page, sequenced images, a Windows WAVE audio file, or a standalone movie file.

Drawing

  • Set up by default to draw on a Base layer in black and on a Camera layer in blue.
  • Natural-feeling, smooth, antialiased bitmap drawing tools:
    • Pencil
    • Eraser
    • Quill pen (size varies with pressure)
    • One-pixel pen (for fine lines)
    • All bitmap tools are pressure-sensitive with standard pen devices, and eraser buttons are supported.
    • Per-stroke undo and redo.
  • Dynamically-editable vector tools:
    • Lines
    • Text, in any font and alignment, with easy rotation and sizing:
    • Filled and outlined rectangles and ellipses:
    • Many styles of arcing arrows:


    • Zoom Frame, for drawing camera moves:




Animation and Animatics

  • Frame Properties paletteSet frame durations numerically.
  • Overlap two frames to fade between them.
  • Record frame timing interactively and simply, in real time. Just press a key to indicate a frame transition, and optionally hold it down to indicate a fade.
  • Make simple animations by changing layer opacity and by moving, resizing, and rotating layers along a keyed timeline.
  • Record layer animation interactively in real time. Just move or fade the layer, and the motion is recorded into animation keys.
  • Play back your animation in real time.



Outlining

  • View a hierarchical outline of your story.
  • Include Acts, Chapters, Sequences, Scenes and Shots (as well as storyboard Frames). Or, easily customize the default section types, including powerful numbering controls. Import structure settings for convenient reuse.
  • Create new sections with one key.
  • Reorder story elements with drag-and-drop.


Files

  • Saves to a compact internally-compressed file format.
  • Import individual images or sequences from BMP, EPS, GIF, JPEG, Photoshop, PNG, Targa, TIFF, WMF, and EMF files. Full support for alpha channel transparency where supplied.
  • Export to AVI and to sequenced BMP, GIF, JPEG, or Targa files.
  • Preset sizes for working with DV (both NTSC and PAL) and for exporting non-square pixels.
  • Export to HTML, including both frame images and text. Supports single- and multi-page formats; format templates can be edited and customized by the user.
  • Save numbered backups for easy archiving.
  • Split out sections into separate files for fast saving and easy collaboration.

Printing

  • Full preview.
  • Streamlined printing interface - no diving through nested dialogs.
  • Print subsets of your story.
  • Print in single or multiple columns, horizontally or vertically, left-to-right or right-to-left.
  • Position text on any side of each frame image.
  • Optionally truncate long frame text to emphasize images.
  • Flexible frame numbering.
  • Flexible titles, headers, and footers.
  • Customize fonts.
  • Set styles for section headings, and control which types of content get printed.
  • Save and load print settings for quick use in new files.

You can also read the full documentation for more detailed feature descriptions. Or, download and try it now.