Ella:About
Ella is an acronym for Elegant Light Linux Animator.
Our aim is to provide to the Linux community a free 2d animator in order to produce Flash, SVG and JavaScript animations. Ella works in wysiwyg mode and can already export to Flash format and SVG. We've planed the JavaScript(HTML5) exportation for the next months (there is already some export code in Ella).
For this moment, there isn't ActionScript features in Ella, because we want at this time, to debug this young program. But, as an user, don't miss to post an enquiry on the community section !
Like the industry reference, Ella has those features :
- multilayer animations.
- built-in vector editor.
- built-in player
- libraries archives management for complex projects (managing images and sounds as ressources)
- sound management for animations
- ActionScript(tm) and buttons (only for Ella-Renaissance >=0.4)
Ella isn't a clone of Adobe Flash (r) : it's a true open source project, that relies, of course, on Flash technology, but, also, and we are proud of that, on SVG animation technology.
At this time, the animation features of Ella are limited, but fully functionnal, for Flash export AND SVG export :
movement interpolation, alpha channel, zooming, rotating, jumping.
For the future releases the morphing should be partially implemented, but only for 'svg' format animations, and for we can hope soon for the along path animations.
The main goal is to implement buttons and ActionScript management at the 0.4 release : it's done since the release of first 0.4 version (1st March 2012) ; but various work remains, like scripts at a keyframe, global scripts ...
Ella uses several open source ressources : 'Gtk' (for lightness and elegance), 'GooCanvas' (for vector editor), 'swfdec' (player) and, of course, the 'swftools' for the SWF (Flash) exportation.
Ella uses is own file format : like OpenOffice, its files are zipped, and contains a text file and sometimes ressources like bitmaps. So, it's easy to read, understand and correct an Ella file. All the objects (drawings ...) and the animation itself are described by a very simple language ; of course, the final user don't have to know the file format !
Ella's file format
Each File has an embedded text file named 'descriptor.lst' and, if neccessary, one or more ressource files : PNG files for bitmaps, MP3/WAV files for sounds.
