Basic Usage

After learning how the User Interface works, it is time to create a project, create or add some assets and start animating them.

It is important to understand that Friction is not a vector or raster drawing software but an animation one.

Sure it can create some basic vector based shapes such as rectangles, squares, ellipses, circles, shapes based on nodes and Bezier curves, hand drawn curves or even it’s possible to import bitmap images (raster) but there are lot of drawing tools that a regular designer would miss inside Friction if he insists on looking for them. Being that said, it is highly suggested to design the assets out of Friction and then import or link them into the software.

Some suggested tools for designing assets could be the following:

Project and first scene creation

After opening Friction, the Canvas panel will prompt the user to:

Startup window

Assuming it is the first time the user opens Friction, click on New to create a new project. A window will popup showing the Scene Properties:

Scene Properties window

An unique Friction project is capable to have any number of scenes but the first time a project is created it prompts the user to create the first one.

It is possible to set the parameters that define a scene (them all could be modified later):

Pressing the ... buttons will list some default and commonly used values or custom ones used in previous projects.

When happy with the settings, the user can press on OK to create the very first scene.

Blank scene

At this point other panels and all tools are enabled to let the user start creating or adding (importing or linking) assets to the scene canvas.

Canvas zooming and panning

As in other 2D graphical software the canvas can be navigated with two types of movements:

Note: Gestures are only supported on macOS at the moment.

In View > Zoom there are additional ways of navigating the canvas such as Fit to canvas or Reset Zoom and them all can also be triggered using Keyboard Shortcuts.

Creating assets

It’s possible to create basic shapes using Friction Tools panel. If it’s the first time try creating a rectangle (shift + drag to create a square) or an ellipse (shift + drag to create a circle) by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer while in the canvas. Release to finish the creation of the shape.

These shapes are vector graphics so they can be edited afterwards so change to the Object selection tool and then select the shape. Now:

For instance, go to the Properties panel expand the shape to Shape > transform > translation > x and change the values so that the shape moves near the right side of the canvas.

Change parameter value

Now, go to the Fill and Stroke panel and under Fill change the type from none to fill and move the color channel sliders to select a nice color.

Change color value

Importing and linking

As commented previously, Friction is not a vector graphics design software but an animation one so is highly suggested that assets are created externally.

There are two ways of importing assets:

Both options can be found in the Main toolbar or under File menu.

Bitmap graphics will always be linked, even if they are added with the Import option as there are no tools for editing pixel base images within Friction.

Assets can be added by “drag & drop” from any file explorer to Friction canvas and they will be imported if possible (SVG) and linked if not (JPEG, PNG,…)

Basic animation

Keyframes

Any object, shape or in general, any parameter of them could be animated using the keyframes technique. There is no need to animate each frame but the important positions or values they will take over time, frames in the middle will be interpolated automatically.

For instance, select a shape, object, image, etc. already in the canvas, expand it properties to see Object > Transform > Translate > x. If the value is changed the position of all the frames of the scene will be updated unless the “animate value” button is activated:

Animate value button

Once pressed the “dot icon” will turn from white to red color which means that value is animated. An alternative way of activating it is by selecting the parameter, opening the contextual menu with the secondary mouse button and selection the Add Key(s) option. At the same moment the animation is activated, a keyframe icon (circle) will appear at the timeline right at the frame the time line is placed.

Following the example, if a keyframe for Object > Transform > Translate > x parameter is created at, for instance “frame 0”, then move the time line to another frame, for instance “frame 30”, and there change the value of the parameter, it can be done in different ways:

Individual keyframes can be removed by pressing Delete or using the contextual menu.

If the user wants to completely delete all the keyframes of the parameter, just press the red icon again and it will turn back to white meaning the parameter is no longer animated and it will take a single value along time. Note that the value it will “choose” to have will be the one taking and the frame where the time line is placed at the time the red button is pressed.

Timeline

The Timeline panel will be so helpful to see where the keyframes are placed along time and easy to remap their position in time as it is possible to click and drag them and move them to another time.

In this panel, it is possible to copy, paste and even duplicate keyframes to new frames just by placing the time line in the desired frame and running the command.

Graph view

The interpolation between keyframes is linear by default, but this can be changed with the Graph view as it adds the possibility to edit the “speed” and evolution of the value animation from one keyframe to the other in a graphical way.

In order to activate it, it is needed to select at least one parameter (if more than one just add more to the selection using the Shift modifier, a color between the “activate animation” button and the parameter label will show the color of the graph curves) in the Timeline panel (it doesn’t work in the Properties panel as there is no timeline in that panel) and press the Graph view icon:

Graph view button

Once the Graph view is activated this is what it would look like:

Graph view button

It possible to select the keyframes (or nodes now as the curves are Bezier curves), turn on their tangent handles and some more by using the following buttons placed on the right-bottom of the graph view:

Graph view button

From left to right:

Example of keyframes with smooth handles:

Graph view button

Preview

Play button

There are some ways to preview the scene animation within Friction:

Saving the project

At any time, Friction lets users save the project into a file with .friction extension. Everything but linked assets will be saved inside the document. The file is binary so it can not be read with text editors but this may change in the future as there are plans to move into a text based project file.

Export

The Export feature let users publish the project animations (bundled into scenes) to media files. There are 2 main ways of exporting:

Animated SVG

This option will create an animated SVG file using the non yet deprecated SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) format. This format is mainly useful for web design as it creates lightweight files that are compatible with most Internet browsers and devices.

In order to export into SVG users will find 2 options:

Export SVG dialog

Both options are available in the Main Toolbar

Important note: not all Friction features are compatible with animated SVG (and probably some are not implemented into the exporter yet). There is more information in the Export chapter.

Rendered animation

The second way of exporting is the conventional rendering of the scene animation into a video and/or audio format.

In order to config the export, users should open the Queue panel and set:

Export Queue panel

For more information about all exporting options there is a whole section about Export options.

Advanced

Effects and shaders

Using the previously commented features will let animators create pretty rich and complex animations but with the following features the animation process can be simplified in some cases and/or it will be possible to create new animations that could not be done with “traditional” animation. As considered as medium to advanced features, they are hidden by default, the way to show them all or one by one is by opening the contextual menu with the secondary mouse button and activating the needed ones. Once activated, new sections will appear in the object hierarchy, and listed in the natural place:

Effects hierarchy

Following the previous picture, from top to bottom:

Custom Properties

More on this subject in separate sections Effects and Shaders.

Tools

Alignment

In the Properties panel there is a group of dropdown and buttons that allow users to align one or several objects to the chosen reference.

Alignment tools

The options allow aligning Geometry, Geometry by its pivot and just the Pivot and keeping the geometry in place.

The destination of the alignment is called “reference” and can be Scene, Bounding box, Last selected object or Last selected pivot which references to the last selected object pivot.

The buttons let users apply the alignment to just a side Left, Horizontal center, Right, Top, Vertical center and Bottom.

Layouts

Layouts

This feature lets users create and save different Canvas and/or Timelinedivisions under a name and switch from one to another. It doesn’t save panels position or visibility state (shown or hidden) but the size, number and scene applied to the Canvas and Timeline divisions:

Division splitter

Learning resources

This is an always growing chapter and over time new resources could be included.

It is interesting know that Friction is a fork of Enve so if you don’t find a tutorial or video explaining a feature, you might find it if you do an Internet search with the Enve keyword on it.

Tutorials

Video tutorials

Other

< User Interface Export >