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:

• Optimized for compact frame images (320 x 240); supports any size frame.
• View multiple frames at a time.
• Move, resize, rotate, and shear layers with a simple manipulator.
• Hide overlay layers for an entire file with one click.
• Zoom to any level of magnification.
• Clipboard support, both within the program and to external programs.
• Easily edit layers using any external image editor.

   

• Customize the layer set by adding and deleting spot-color and full-color layers, reordering them, nesting them, and changing their colors and names.
• Mirror individual layers or an entire frame left-to-right, to see alternate composition options.
• Many layer operations are supported, to ease the multi-layer workflow:
  • Duplicate Layer
  • Reset Layer Position
  • Bake Layer Position
  • Scale Layer to Fit Frame
  • Convert between spot color and full color
  • Merge Layer Down
  • Merge Contained Layers
  • Deflate to Fit Content
  • Make Fill Layer
  • Inflate to Fit Frame
  • Reset Transparency
  • Matte-In Transparency
  • Matte-Out Color
  • Clear Layer

Animation and Animatics

• Set 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.

• Camera is automatically animated to follow 2-D camera symbols (Automatic Zoom).
• Control the timing and interpolation style of camera movements.
• Export animation to AVI files, using any installed codec. Intelligent codec defaults are provided.

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.