Animation Hell

TL;DR: Adobe Animate is taking what should have been a single afternoon if animation work and turned it into weeks of hell.

Let's go in chronological order...
After I finished drawing the character:

1. Rigged full character with warp points, only to find that newer version has better tools for animating it.
(So I had to find and reinstall it)

2. Re-rig character with new tool, but I needed to do so in a different type of starting file to get parenting layers to work.

3. Re-rig (3rd) and fully animate the loop, and the animation breaks, sending body parts all over the screen. A bug that can happen, but not under these circumstances.

4. Start re-rigging (4th time) only to realize just how bad the potential is for fill colors to completely disappear with no way to undo, due to the janky way this software works.

5. Convert the vector layers to bitmaps to prevent previous issue (as the software suggests) only to find that the outcome looks like pixel-blurred mud.

6. Make a larger start file canvas (8k x 8k) and convert the bitmaps there at larger res for sharper images, but "This is too big, auto-dumbing this layer down to the max size of 1500 pixels" pops up. Which, somehow, looks like even blurrier mud!!

7. Puts it into a 1500 x 1500 space to rig, and I'll convert it all there. Converted bitmaps are not great, but acceptable. Now I just have to rig them... Rigging them FURTHER dumbs them down so that what was a perfectly smooth vectored curve, turned slightly-pixel blurred bitmap, now has uneven jagged flat edges at random spots (as if a 6-year old hand cut out a character from a magazine with safety scissors).

8. Okaaaay, it's probably a polygon/mesh limit issue for the warping tool, so I'll break that image into a couple layers and try again... *Does so*

9. On attempting to rig the layer, the rigging tool can't decide between teleporting the bitmap up and to the left a few hundred pixels and still not adding the rig point, OR somehow taking the mesh from an unrelated layer and using that on this layer intead, causing a 'cookie cutter' of that other layer to chop off chunks of this layer and leave behind a broken mangled mess.

This program is fucked down to the core. I only use it for the sake of know how to use it's predecessor.

I am trying every creative work around and using every tutorial and public forum trouble shooting solution I can find. The base of this software has been around for almost 30 years, and CC has been doing their 'subscription based' updates for this software for 10 of that, and something as simple making an image stretch and wobble (something Adobe After Affects has been able to do properly for over a decade) should not be:
- This difficult
- This buggy
- This low in quality
- Outright BREAK in this many ways

Now, (a known bug they've had in this program for literally years according to their own forums) is causing the pivot points of random objects to teleport to wherever. Resulting in that whole "parts floating to wherever" problem again.

But while that used to be something caused by human error, easily fixed by a couple simple steps. Now that doesn't work either. My GOD this software, I swear they're sabotaging it on purpose. It wasn't enough they killed Flash as a format after almost 30 years, or that they moved to subscription based software because they're out of ideas for improvements (and yet they're not remotely trying to keep up with the competition), I think they're actively trying to make demand for it die to discontinue it.

Currently I'm looking into a 3rd party package to make sure it won't ruin game exports if I try to make them again. If that goes well, it might solve at least some of this crap.

I am sorry I have had nothing to show in the way of art for so long. I assure you, I am busting my ass to hopefully improve what I can provide for you to enjoy.

Love you all,
- Fox