#HELP with ASL
10 messages in this thread
Help!
I am having so many problems with 3rd party libraries in the windows
environment it is driving me nuts… We just recieved the Animation Support
Library which we ordered. Though the documentation is nice, I have some real
problems with it.
1) There are no functions for extracting an individual frame to a DIB.
2) There are no functions to write a DIB to a FLC file.
3) I cannot get the library to even link with my Borland C++ 3.1 environment.
The files contain '32-bit records' in them which cause my compiler to die
horribly
Is there anything out there which will allow me to easily read/write FLC files?
I have tried ITOOLS and like it a lot. Unfortunately I cannot get in touch with
the author. I have Emailed him and have not recieved a reply.
>> Mike Uman
Oren,
Sorry you are having trouble with the ASL. I will be sure to include these
points as wishlist items for the next release. Unfortunately, there is nothing
I can do to give you capabilities that are not in the SDK at this time. Can you
use a different format besides DIB?
I don't have Borland loaded on my machine, but I will find it and see if it
works for me.
-brian
Brian,
Can I get access to a Rasters bitmap information and just store it in a DIB
structure I have created? If so, could you tell me how you would go about doing
this… I have done this with some other formats (RLX, AVI, etc.}. I am using
the VFW library which easily supplies me with an uncompressed DIB handle.
Any help will be much appreciated!
Mike Uman
Oren,
There are no provisions in the ASL that I am aware of for taking your raw
bitmap information and putting it into a DIB format. You would need to find
another library or write a function to do that part yourself. But once it is in
DIB format, you should be able to manipulate that information just like a BMP
file or an animation. You would have complete control over it.
-Brian
Brian,
So where can I find the information concerning the format of a ASL raster? I
could write the functions myself if I had this information.
>> Mike
<<So where can I find the information concerning the format of a ASL raster? >>
I assume you mean "Where can I find information on the DIB file format?" ASL
stands for "Animation Support Libraries." It is not a file format.
DIB is not an Autodesk format. I believe it was developed by Microsoft. You
might try the Graphics Developers forum, (GO GRAPHDEV) or Microsofts forums.
-Brian
Brian,
You seem to be confusing what I am asking. I know what a DIB is and I have used
them quite well. We have purchased the Animation Support Library (ASL) from
Autodesk. The ASL reads frames from a FLI into a structure called a RASTER.
What I need is a routine to convert the ASL's raster format into a DIB which I
can use in my application.
In the documentation which comes with ASL it is explained that there are three
different kinds of rasters. 1) A video raster 2) A virtual raster 3) A custom
raster. What I think I need is a virtual raster which I can somehow convert
into DIB data. I need to know if a ram raster is compressed, whether it is
bottom to top like a DIB, etc.
>> Mike
Oren,
Indeed, I was misunderstanding you.
The only information I have on the FlicRaster format is what is on page 26 and
27 of the FlicLib reference manual. I will forward your e-mail to the program
development team for the specific information you are looking for.
-Brian
I passed this question along to one of the programmers, here was the response:
A raster can be many things. For hardware rasters you're best
off just going through the predefined access routines. Memory
Rasters (made by pj_raster_make_ram()) have a pointer to the
image memory in raster->hw.bytemap_data[0]. This is ordered
from left to right, top to bottom and is uncompressed. I don't
believe there is any row padding on these either. So in all
it's not a DIB. You may be best off creating a custom raster
that is a DIB with some of your own access functions via
pj_raster_make_custom(). You *don't* want a virtual raster.
A virtual raster is just a fancy way to treat a part of a
larger raster as an independent raster.
-Brian
Thanks!
Mike Uman
Azeena