Retas!Pro 5.1
Reviewed by David Nerlich

Retas!Pro is a suite of tools for 2D cel animation, basically supplanting the paint and camera departments of a traditional studio. First developed in 1993 by Celcys in Tokyo in cahoots with manga animators, it now claims over 90 percent of the Japanese market.

What Retas!Pro doesn't do is your drawing or in-betweening. You still have to come to it with a stack of paper and load each frame into a computer via a video camera or scanner, hopefully with some kind of bulk loading device! It's here that Retas then takes over with the first of its self contained modules covering different stages of the production process.

TraceMan facilitates the digitising of drawings and backgrounds. It can interpret registration marks and distinguish and separate different coloured lines. You can clean, retouch and preview your animation after the scanning stage easily. Photoshop plug-ins are usable through all the modules in Retas for special effects as well as cleanup jobs.

PaintMan will modify and paint scanned drawings. As well as putting familiar digital paint tools at your disposal, it will automatically stroke or fill drawings in sequence with a range of brushes and blends while repairing or closing broken lines. Colour replacement through an entire sequence is also painless. You can do original line drawing with a mouse or tablet inside Paintman if you wish but it won't in-between your line art. You still gotta animate the old fangled way!

CoreRETAS is the compositing/finishing module - taking over work once done in the camera department with 100 layers of cels and a range of special effects.Photoshop layers can be imported as can 3D models. The graphical score lends itself to cycling of any portion of a sequence of frames you wish. You have control of placement and movement for cels, backgrounds and the virtual camera with X, Y and Z-depth co-ordinates. You can do pull-focus and depth of field effects. You can apply onboard or photoshop plug-in effects including blurs and glows with access to alpha channels. Live-action footage or 3D animation can be rendered to oil paint or watercolour styles to match your 2D art.

Retas!Pro is available for Macintosh and Windows platforms. All modules are available separately. For more info: www.retas.com or call Eureka Digital on 02 9283 3535