Vectorian Giotto for Windows

User Reviews

• VERY USELESS.

  Nichromo221March 29, 2015

  Pros

  Can create buttons At least 15-20 minutes of animation Awesome tools to use Mega similar interface to flash

  Cons

  Only saves in .SWF files (AKA useless to upload anywhere except on your own website) It's mainly used just to create buttons for some reason...

  Summary

  While this program is similar to Adobe Flash, you might as well get AF because this program is nothing but misleading trash. Takes up way to much space, you can only make 1500+ frames (which animation wise isn't enough) and you can't export it to a proper file that you can watch back like on Windows Media Player or something. This program is complete udder useless trash.

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• Not very useful

  jfegglest83December 5, 2013

  Pros

  Easy to use

  Cons

  Runs out of memory far too quickly Can't handle much more than buttons or bouncing balls Crashes constantly

  Summary

  Essentially, if all you need this for is creating buttons on a web page, then it will work for you. Anything more than that however, and this can't handle more than a couple dozen frames. If you want to make actual flash animations I would suggest finding a different program because this one DOES NOT cut it. I'm very unimpressed and find that the websites claim that it's just like using Flash is extremely misleading. The interface is similar, but the quality of the program isn't even remotely close to the Adobe software. Not even remotely.

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• Alright SWF Software

  44thdanielAugust 5, 2012

  Pros

  Export movie quickly. Free.

  Cons

  Not very simple to use.

  Summary

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• Great free product but some serious hassles.

  TMNC61July 8, 2012

  Pros

  Able to create complex animations in a freeware package. Easy and intuitive to use

  Cons

  Hogs memory Slow and prone to crashes Colors not always rendered correctly in Flash exports Can be fiddly to use

  Summary

  I've been using this program to create fairly complex animations, mostly using art I've created and imported from other programs as PNG files; kind of akin to traditional animation. Giotto handles this reasonably well but soon runs out of memory and hangs. Therefore you need to save your work frequently. If you're making anything more than 1000 frames long, it's best to divide your work into separate projects and join them together upon completion, after having rendered them to Flash videos and possibly then converting them to another format. If you wish to resize or move objects within the work area or "stage", you can do this using the usual type handles, but beware: you can't always position objects exactly as desired. There is a snapping function which you can turn off, but this seems to have no effect in certain circumstances. For example, when rotating an object, you get it almost to where you want it and then... snap! it jumps ahead and snaps to wherever Giotto wants it to be - not where you want it. Turning off snapping seems to have no effect. Another annoying issue is that when using a graphics pad and pen, getting the cursor onto the rotation handles is incredibly tricky. You seem to have an area of about four pixels to hit in order to successfully grab a handle. It's easy to think you've got a handle, look at the screen, do the rotation and find the cursor's dropped off the handle and is now rescaling your object. Then you find the pivot point moves between keyframes. You put it in point A in both keyframes 1 and 2. Then you look at KF #1 again and find it's moved. You fix it and check KF #2. You find the pivot is now at Point B. You move it back to point A and go back to check KF#1. There's your pivot, now at point B. I had to give up! Be very careful when working with layers. Unless you remember to lock those you're not actually working with, you can easily find you've unwittingly moved to another layer and have begun to screw up your work. You can render your work to Flash files but you can find odd outlines appearing where layers are meant to seamlessly blend into each other, eg. with a bending knee formed of two halves. Some colors such as gray, particularly if they're of reduced opacity get rendered as a pinkish hue, nothing like what was intended. Having said all that, I can tell you that the program is, nevertheless worth using. You just have to bear all the above, in mind. If you do, you can still create some great animations for free.

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• Except for the bugs, this is really amazing!!

  Matheus_CarvalhoMay 15, 2012

  Pros

  You have the chance to learn how to make animations, for free! You can do vectorial drawings, morph the shapes, the only limit is your creativity. I plan to use it to prepare educational material. I think animations are an excellent way to teach and learn.

  Cons

  Buggy. It will crash after some actions, so it is good to save your work constantly.

  Summary

  If you want to make animations, you must give this a try. It is much better than GIF animations, and free.

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• Nothing but crashes!

  JA54August 2, 2011

  Pros

  Easy to download the program, thats about it

  Cons

  Poor description of functions, constant crashes, fails to create flash files most of the time

  Summary

  I spent a couple of weeks with this program trying to make a fairly basic animation using 2 bitmaps. I could not get rid of the white background on the overlaying bitmap without extreme difficulty "nibbling" away with the eraser. This caused the program to get slower & slower until it would crash. After long hours of playing I managed to get through it, but when I tried to export the file as a flash the program would close and the file would have 0 bytes. The crashing is intolerable and happens more and more frequently as you work with a file. It has taught me one thing, you get what you pay for, this program is useless!

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• Easy to Use

  Sam_the_ClownJune 23, 2011

  Pros

  Free, attractive interface, good selection of tools

  Cons

  A few more tutorials would be nice

  Summary

  There are very few Flash design programs offered for free (Power Bullet Presenter is another one), so I'm thankful for this program. It comes with a selection of action scripts, templates and graphic tools for easily designing your own applications. The preview tools are easily assessable for viewing your work as you go. I haven't experienced any bugs nor crashes while using the program. Since graphic programs use a considerable amount of system resources, I would recommend a fresh reboot prior to using Vectorian Grotto, plus closing any other programs while using it. Hopefully, this will safeguard aganist any program crashes. Again, I've never experienced this situation. It's my desire that the program's developer continues to improve and offer further enhancements to the program. I like this one.<br /><br /><span class='notifyMsg'> Updated </span>on Jun 25, 2011<p/>While I still like this program, I've discovered that many of the tutorials that accompany Vectorian Grotto were apparently not updated along with the program's updating. As a result, I'm left confused as what to do at some points because what I'm asked to click on is simply not there.

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• It is buggy! Icon won't scale to medium on Win 7!

  jdbparsonsMay 29, 2011

  Pros

  awesome interface!! Creates SWF!!

  Cons

  I experienced crashes as well!!

  Summary

  Also on my Win 7 desktop my icons are enlarged to a larger size. This program's icon does not scale properly with the others when using either medium icons view (right-click desktop, then mouse-over view, then select medium icons) or large Icons view; Instead it gets grossly deformed when even at medium. I can understand some programs don't support "Large" format but this program does not even support "Medium" format. I might try to use IcoFx here on download.com to try to edit it but I wish the developers would just do it themselves because this is annoying!! Other wise, besides the bugs, the program is great!

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• Looks like a cool program but it's buggy!!

  JamesAndersonJrMay 29, 2011

  Pros

  Lots of cool features for free!

  Cons

  I'm using Windows 7 64-Bit, and when I choose to start a new file from template (File -&gt;&gt;Start New From Template... ), after I pick the template the program suddenly crashes and terminates!! Ugh!

  Summary

  This is a buggy program or either not written well for Windows 7 (64-Bit). The the feature set and interface is decent enough, but If you're like me you won't get a lot done with this program before they fix it. Looking forward to next version!

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• Awesome flash creation software, complete suprise!

  melaniewtsnNovember 5, 2010

  Pros

  Simple but rich user interface, good quality of exported Flash animations, nice set of built in effects, cool color picker.

  Cons

  Looks like an old software at first glance, some graphical elements could be better. Avi export could be handy.

  Summary

  As I said, useful flash animation software, too bad it's not advertised properly, it gave me opportunity to finally play with Flash with no hassle. I made few animations for business use, and later continued working just for fun.

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