Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
You might as well wait, a lot of the essential tools missing (see roadmap link in post above) which make it borderline boring to work with. I really hope they'll add a camera like ToonSquid has.
does anyone know if third party pencils work with dreams? thanks!
Here's my learning project, layered up in Procreate first, in the end I could not bother to do the face. Oscar worthy huh?
Ah word. Thanks for the heads up. Is ToonSquid worth getting or comparable at all?
You’ll need both Procreate and Procreate Dreams for gif production. GIF export is still not implemented in Dreams.
Thanks, but because the BeepStreet logo was manually tracked, it didn’t end quite well.
Don’t be afraid of the learning curve, for people like us with knowledge of hundreds of audio and music apps, Dreams are really a breeze to learn. In 30 minutes, you will know everything. 😅
With my ADHD I’m gonna at least triple the time but I do get what you mean 😂 honestly though my comment is more about quality/proper time. I don’t want to get half way started (learning or on an project) and then slack off and lose interest by time I return. That’s just how my dodo brain works lmao so probably gets for me to wait til after the busy holidays to properly get into it.
Haha, earring is stellar! I’m looking forward to seeing more of your creations.
Haha the sailor tattoo. It’s like a sailor retired and became a French artist 😂 I dig it
I ended up going with Toonsquid instead after reading/watching comparisons of the two. This video swung it for me, worth a watch 👍
Great comparison video. I do not agree that Dreams is released too early because it needs more than beta testing at this point in the app's development.
Dreams, compared to all other animation software, is refreshing and new, forcing you to be more manual than automatic and generic. I truly hope that they stick with this mindset.
Ooo thanks! Just what I needed to see. About to watch it now.
After finally getting a chance to properly play around with Procreate Dreams, i think it’s going to be brilliant, but it’s not there yet. My recurring thought when using it was how amazing things like ToonSquid and Rough Animator are in comparison given that they are the creations of lone developers. As Procreate is always at the top of the charts in its category, Savage must have considerably more funds for research and development than those developers and as such, i was expecting it to be a bit more surprising and innovative than it is.
There are things missing - go through that roadmap thread i linked to and you’ll see them listed by other users - but, then again, there are things missing from regular Procreate too (given the reputation of Procreate, it’s staggering to find that there’s no simple Gradient tool for example - yes, there’s a workaround but…really?).
There are also awkward interface choices - for myself, the layers/timeline is not particularly easy to use and i find myself constantly resizing it without intending to. Plus, i feel they haven’t really made the UI workflow friendly as the determination to keep the interface uncluttered means a reliance on gestures which means an interrupted experience when using with the Pencil. Sometimes having a few more buttons which can simply be tapped on with the stylus isn’t a terrible thing. There’s a slight feel of ‘form over function’ and a feeling that so often occurs to me: that developers haven’t really used their apps on a regular basis as others will in the real world (testing whether things ‘work’ isn’t the same as living with features and design choices in ongoing everyday usage). Then again, there are strange design choices in regular Procreate too - why on Earth is the layers panel so big when opened that it obscures most of your work; very odd.
No doubt i will get used to the interface though and as such my opinion may well change.
With reference to my comment earlier in this thread, they definitely haven’t reinvented the wheel when it comes to animation - be prepared to put lots and lots of time into it as you’re not going to create a Miyazaki film with a couple of clicks; it’s still a long, very involved process to make that sort of animation. If you want to do some simple motion graphics, yeah, the combination of keyframing and the Performance mode make this pretty straightforward and you can, of course, come up with creative ideas and ways of working which work to these strengths within the app to give you quicker results.
I’ve no doubt it will eventually be brilliant though and perhaps already is and i just need to get used to it a bit more. Maybe myself and others who are slightly disappointed are just guilty of hoping for too much? Ultimately it’s the same as any creative app, it gives you tools and if you’ve got the talent you can create something amazing with it.
Huge credit to Savage for the non subscription price point though, it really makes a difference.
@Robin2 thanks for the comments. It definitely, from my untrained eyes, seems like a fantastic app. Then again, ToonSquid does as well. I’m not aiming for Studio Ghibli type results. I mostly wanna make weird surrealistic animations to put to my weird music lol and - I think - it seems great for that.
Yeah, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot it can do and give very satisfying, polished results doing so. You can, for example, make the equivalent of what in the past would have been cut-out animations - think Terry Gilliam’s brilliant Monty Python animations or early South Park (were later episodes made that way too, I’m not sure?) - pretty easily and this sort of animation can be amazing, no doubt about that. As i said, it’s a tool - the quality of what’s produced with it is purely down to the user.
To create beautiful, hand drawn ‘traditional’ animation though, even with Dreams, you still have the nightmare of actually, painstakingly drawing it frame by frame. But maybe that’s a good thing?
Side note: I’m not sure whether it’s been name-checked in this thread but Looom is always an interesting, fun app with regard to music because it has timing options based on bpm available. Shame it doesn’t have a proper export and relies on screen recording but that aside it’s worth a look.
To me the biggest glaring omission of "form over function" is the lack of undo/redo buttons, thereby forcing people to use the two-finger undo gestures that always get triggered whenever I rest my palm on the screen.
It took me years of badgering the lot at Savage Inc to implement a way to turn off two-finger undo gestures in ProCreate main. And what tipped the scales was another artist with a medical condition that caused their hand to shake speaking up. (They could draw okay enough, but the two-finger undo was killing their workflow as they had to rest their palm a lot.)
Seriously, didn't Savage Inc understand from the past to put this accessibility feature in ProCreate Dreams?! Instead of considering the needs of all users, they released an app without such accessibility features (which in reality should be basic features to any art app.)
So unlike with ProCreate main where I fought until they added the option to turn off the undo gestures, I simply said "f--k it" and got a refund for Dreams from Apple instead. I'm not going through that process again. 🙄
Yeah, very good point - it’s one thing to design your preferred interface look as a developer and have that as the default, nothing wrong with that, but to not have options in the preferences to allow alternatives for some functions like your example is either a bit silly or arrogant. I’d no idea that used to be the case in regular Procreate.
They seem to be going all out for gesture based control which seems a bit weird when their apps really need the use of a stylus to reach their full potential. If they allowed you to perform gestures with the stylus itself it might make more sense but, no, it’s fingers only - the fingers with which you’re holding the stylus. They seem to have optimised for (finger) touch when i think they should have optimised for stylus use. As i said, i wonder whether they actually use (as opposed to test) the app themselves on a regular basis to make their own work? If they don’t, it’s easy to see how these things happen.
Still, early days, it will I’m sure get extremely good in time as they get real world feedback from users. It’s quite funny how many people on that roadmap thread mock them for prioritising achieving their million by million pixels canvas size possibility over including some of the more basic missing tools!
Hahah...nice. I was listening to the track, "Babou the Dog" off the new Amon Tobin album: Nomark Selects, Vol.1 and it fit the music perfectly
Everyone should listen to that track with this animation. It will make you happy.
Thanks for the Looom mention. Gonna check that out as well. Didn’t realize there were so many animation apps on iOS now but it makes sense. Lots of chew on.
Refunded Dreams. Just too fiddly for my liking, especially the layer and timeline management. Giving TS a try instead.
Don’t plan on refunding it but 99.99% sure I’ll never use it for anything
What are you using it for? I’m trying decide what to get so I’d love to hear your thoughts after trying TS.
Not the person you’re asking but I have some thoughts.
I love Toonsquid. The developer is super kind and seems dedicated to constant updates without IAPs. For $9.99 it’s 100% worth it. The learning curve is … a lot In my opinion. He has like a 343 pg pdf for the manual! It’s a ton. But his videos helped and there’s some good YouTube tutorials. There’s a ton you can do with it.
I’m sure Dreams will get there but, just like when procreate came out, it took a while to get there in use-ability/stability. Procreate has already priced the app low so it’s not like waiting it’ll go up a ton. Maybe a dollar or two in a year I imagine. They’re an odd company. I have Pocket on the iPhone as well and it’s a mess lol. Like kinda works sometimes but then doesn’t half the other time? It’s so strange.
Thanks for weighing in! I’ve known of ToonSquid for a while now but didn’t realize it was as powerful or well liked as it is. I thought it was just some random app trying to be professional lol but the more I hear about it the more it looks like the one I should go for. I’m not in a huge rush. I’m gonna upgrade iPads around the holiday (maxed out storage and want bigger screen) and after that I’ll buy. So some time still to decide. But I’m leaning much more towards TS right now to be honest.
Does ToonSquid have an undo and redo button on the GUI? Also, does TS have the ability to customise gestures?
GUI undo/redo - On the right side of the app the standard undo/redo buttons are now essentially alone in the middle. When the timeline is opened the eject looking button moves up to be near the undo/redo buttons.
Toonsquid also has the two finger undo Procreate popularized (I think they even open sourced the code on GitHub) and the three finger redo as well. I legit had to check the app to remind myself if it was on the GUI! So thanks for asking so now I’ll always know that.
The double tap is what I use always. I’ve found myself in other designer apps trying to double tap on iPad and realizing “oh wait wrong app, I’m an idiot” - I wish this was a standard!
Gestures - TS has quite a few different options that are customizable! Which is helpful but I’m sure more could be and if mentioned could be asked for. The dev is super cool. Amendable would be a fair description of their app development ethos.
https://toonsquid.com/handbook/settings/gestures/
No problem at all! I just started feeling comfortable posting on here and the amount of help I’ve lurked through here has been invaluable. So if I see something I know a bit about I might as well throw in my 2 cents. Thanks to you and for this forum such a welcoming discussion community.
Oh cool, welcome to the community! Cheers 🍻
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Welcome to the ABF mate. Also thank you so much for the useful info. Looks like I can turn off two-finger undo/three-finger redo under gestures, so that's good enough gestures customization for me, lol. I also read in its appstore description regarding how it handles audio. And next thing you know, I purchased it, lol.