Mirage vs Retas Question..

Hi Takai,

First I wish you and all the AWN Community an happy new year 2007.

Mirage is a 2D bitmap bitmap animation software developped by TVPaint Developpement. The software was specialized into traditional animation. Now Mirage (TVPaint 7.5) has been replaced by TVPaint 8.1 (TVP Animation and TVP Animation Pro).

On the contrary, Retas pro are vectorial software. You can not have a natural render with this kind of software as you have in Bitmap ones. This software seems to be like Toonboom.

LMAO. That is a huge indicator that maybe all is not so well at Bauhaus Software. The university I attend uses it and I wonder if I should tell them the situation at Bauhaus and that TVP Animation Pro knocks the pants off Mirage.

It's a good idea :cool:

On the contrary, Retas pro are vectorial software. You can not have a natural render with this kind of software as you have in Bitmap ones. This software seems to be like Toonboom.

Actually, that's not accurate. Retas is a suite of several programs, one of which called Stylos is a vector based program. The other programs have been around for years and have been used to created several feature-length films as well TV programs, traditional animated 2D and very natural.

TVPaint and Retas don't even do the same thing so you can't even compare them. In fact a really good studio setup would be to use the two in conjunction.

TVP Animation, for one, is an excellent program for creating animation in styles of traditional media, say like watercolors or oils. The pro version has a X-Sheet which is just essential for traditional animation. Mirage doesn't have that feature which cripples it really for traditionally trained animators.

The way Retas works is you can either draw your frames on paper, or use a program like TVP Animation to digitally draw your frames. Then you take TraceMan and scan the frames which preps them for the next step. PaintMan is the next module that painting is done in. TraceMan creates quick fill areas that allows PaintMan to paint bucket fill defined areas, giving you your painted digital cel. Then the compositing program CoreRetas is a digital replacement for the traditional animation camera. It has an X-sheet where you time your animation and composite your characters with backgrounds, apply effects, pans, etc.

Retas is more accurately compared with Toonz or Animo. All of these programs are expensive and are targeted for studios. And though they are expensive, they are cheaper than having traditional animation cameras, purchasing acetate cels, vinyl paints, and then the labor for hand painting each cel.

Happy New Year :D

Thanks TVPaint.. That was very useful indeed..
Also I always thought that Mirage software official site was www.bauhaussoftware.com and didnt know that Bauhaus and TVPaint terminated their license agreement together. But I found Bauhaus is more useful with all these tutorials available.

And thanks a lot for the comparsion between Mirage and Retas.

I say download the TVP Animation Pro Demo and see for yourself. It beats the pants on anything Mirage has as far as animation tools go(even more so than the Animator's Toolbar plugin).

Plus there's a lot of drama with Mirage. :eek: BEWARE OF THE DRAMA.

I posted a question in the Mirage forum about the copyright litigation going on between Bauhaus and TVPaint because I was concerned about purchasing Mirage under those circumstances - first they forbid me to use the name TVPaint in my post and then they DELETED my question from the forum!!

That pretty much told me all I needed to know. :p

Plus there's a lot of drama with Mirage. :eek: BEWARE OF THE DRAMA.

I posted a question in the Mirage forum about the copyright litigation going on between Bauhaus and TVPaint because I was concerned about purchasing Mirage under those circumstances - first they forbid me to use the name TVPaint in my post and then they DELETED my question from the forum!!

That pretty much told me all I needed to know. :p

LMAO. That is a huge indicator that maybe all is not so well at Bauhaus Software. The university I attend uses it and I wonder if I should tell them the situation at Bauhaus and that TVP Animation Pro knocks the pants off Mirage.

Hi Takai,
If you download the trial version of TVP Animation (Pro), you will have a complete documentation (200 pages for TVP Animation, 400 pages for TVP Animation Pro) written in lessons. Each lesson is a mini turorial.

We prefer to improve our software than to speak about tutorials. We want to have concret improvement. Tutorials are here too ;)

Actually RETAS! Pro allows you to choose either vector based or raster base format. I've played around with the demo and I say its pretty good and would easily compliment TVPaint or even Flipbook.