#2D Animation Package?
34 messages in this thread
Ani Pro IS a great side tool for 3DS. It's the sort of thing you
don't really appreciate until you have it and learn to use it. I use
it to make custom transition maps, bump maps and other grayscale
maps. It's also handy for texture maps that don't require more than
256 colours.
Thanks Michele.
I had thought of Ani Pro but was told by some one that 3DS did basically
everything Ani did and there wasn't much point to getting it. But I'd like to
take a look at it sometime soon.
James
What??! Who told you 3DS does everything Ani Pro does? Whoever told you that
is GROSSLY misinformed.
Tell me, how would you make a gritty tiled cement bump map in 3D Studio? You'd
have to make all the gritty bumps in a mesh, which defeats the purpose of
making a bump map.
AniPro also has an easy-to-use tween function which will morph between two
shapes regardless of the number of vertices.
You can also use it to make small "movies" that can be used as texture maps…
I once took a clipart animation of a horse running, modified it in AniPro to
suit myself (it needed work) and mapped it onto some planetary flying spheres
in 3DS against a starfield I generated in AniPro. It sounds weird but it looked
great even at 320x200x256.
Michele
I don't know who told me 3DS did everything Ani Pro does… Actually
it was the same guys who said 3DS has as powerful CAD as AutoCAD!
They used to sell these thing – _used to_ – now out of business.
Small wonder…
What I've been doing (kinda embarrassing) is going into
Photostyler/Freehand to create my maps. Some are good, some aren't.
Would you say Ani Pro is also the equivalent of a good painting
program?
Yeah, I already have a million ideas of what 2D Animations I'd like to
fly into my 3DS set. Maybe, maybe…
Ani Pro is in NO WAY as good an image proc app as Photostyler, though
some things are easier to create in Ani Pro. I don't use Freehand,
so I can't comment on it. I find Ani Pro dismal (read: outdated) as
a paint package, but the animation capabilities are very powerful,
and it is fun and easy to use once you get through the boring Global
Hardware tutorial.
Actually borrowed a copy to see if it's worth buying, but I can't figure out
how to configure it to my Viper VLB graphics board…
Just load your Viper VESA, "vprmode vesa". Then load up AniPro and you
will under screen size the different modes available. It works great
with the original Viper VESA drivers and the newer ones.
<<Just load your Viper VESA, "vprmode vesa". Then load up AniPro and you will
under screen size the different modes available. >>
Now will this screw up my configuration for windows or 3DS? I guess not 3DS
since it has it's own Vibrant drivers…
I'm not sure of the procedure here. Run 'vprmode vesa', and then it will create
a VESA driver to read from AniPro? My computer has crashed so I can't explore
right now…
Your Viper card came with the vprmode utility. "vesa" is the command
line option for vprmode to load the vesa driver. Subsequently
Animator Pro will detect the VESA driver and offer several VESA modes
in the screen size options.
Okay, thanks much Jin for the Viper info!
James
James,
Go into the directory with the utility VPRMODE.EXE. (you've gotta install from
the disks that came with the board.)
Type VPRMODE VESA (this enables the ViperVLB's vesa driver)
Run AAPro anyway your little heart desires!<g> The VESA compliancy is second to
none, even in the Hi-Color (F16, etc) modes.
-Alan
Hey Alan,
Yep, did it last night (vprmode vesa) – looks fabulous!
James
If you want to use anything other than 320x VGA you'll have to run your VESA
tsr, and I heard Viper's were only marginally VESA compliant. Alan Inglesias
uses a Viper, and I'm sure he's using Ani Pro, so he could probably help you
better than me.
Good luck,
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Thanks John…. I actually got the Viper to run Ani Pro – looks great!
James
Ani Pro while outdated as it is, is still a powerful paint package.
It's one of the easiest programs to do intersting gradients with and
the Sep tool is very powerful for fills and such and much easier than
trying to use a magic wand in Photostyler to get the same effect. I
do think Ani Pro needs to do 24 bit – that is a must – it should have
long ago… It also _needs_ to have sound support – Autodesk has no
real multimedia products even though they have a MM division. They
should be mono-media. Come on Carol – are you listening?
Dave Mennenoh
David,
>> mono-midea
…. <g>
Ang
I agree with you. 24/32 bit support with high-quality anti-aliasing, and sound
support would be on the top of my features wish list. And a nicer user
interface, too. Something about those fonts I just don't like.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Animator Pro really does need a technology and feature boost to keep up. Re:
3DS its okay for animated maps but if your maps are static many of the other
packages do a much better job.
Jimbo
[PGC]
I agree. I use Fractal Paint for almost all maps, with a little Photostyler
mixed in. I use anipro for opacity maps and other animated maps only. I think
it's a very outdated paint package.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Recall the conversation we had on the phone regarding animated maps on human
meshes? After creating my human mesh map in Fractal Paint, (2 images, ie 2 keys
), I created the animation map with Digital Morph with super results. I love
playing around with this stuff <g>.
Jim
[PolyGone Cafe']
What's Digital Morph?
Glad you're having fun. I would be, too, but my machines are cooking @ 300
frames of animation at @ 40 minute per frame (uuurrrgggghhhh!!!!). Sure wish I
had about twenty more machines.
Oh well, guess I can go out and get a "life" for a couple of days.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
>> Oh well, guess I can go out and get a "life" for a couple of days.
The virtues of computer graphics… <g>
If it wasn't for large refmaps and raytraced shadows I'd have no life
whatsoever <g>.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Ah yes, a life… I used to have one somewhere.
Digital Morph is one of those still image morphing packages. Ya know, morph a
woman's face into a tiger face etc… You have a source TGA and a destination
TGA and you align morphing areas with a grid by moving vertices around. Then
you animate the morph to a FLC over x number of frames. Its all 2d, but using
it as an animated texture map in 3ds gives intersting results. Of course your
not limted to faces. You can morph marble into wood for example. The morph is
liquid sorta speak as the marble convulutes and distorts into another material.
Just another tool in the toolbox.
Jim
[PolyGone Cafe']
I was using Dmorf (shareware, excellent) to do this, but since upgrading
hardware I've been unable to get it to work. I have no idea why. Morphing
software can come in very handy at times.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Yes, AniPro is a paint package and animation package.
There's nothing embarassing about using Photostyler/Freehand to make maps! For
color maps, you'd probably even get better results than AniPro, because AniPro
only does 256 colors while I believe Photostyler and Freehand do 24-bit color.
Sounds like you're all set. The only thing you miss out on is animation. If
you often need to do them, AniPro's the one.
You might want to pick up the Multimedia Explorer, which includes the
old version of Animator at 320×200. I think it goes for about $100
at all those big software stores. This might give you an opportunity
to try it out and see how useful it is for you. Also the menu
structure in Animator and AniPro are virtually identical, so learning
one means you automatically know the other one.
Michele
Thanks for the info, Michele. I am pretty happy with Photostyler/Freehand (got
an amazing deal on them and Pagemaker – $500 Canadian, bout 35 bucks 'Merican)
But I will need some animation so we'll see what AniPro can do…
James
Ani Pro is VERY different from 3DS. 3DS is not really set up to do
many 2D things as easily as Ani Pro (and vice versa, of course). The
biggest drawback (and it's HUUUUUGGGGGEEEEE) is that it's limited to
8bits! But as Michele said, it's great as a companion to 3DS.
Animated opacity maps are particularly useful.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Oh besides 8 bit (Huuuuuuggggeeee drawback) it needs antialiased fonts – and
sound.
Big difference between AniPro and 3ds! At the core, 3ds is an
object-oriented geometry package resulting in raster bitmaps. AniPro
is totally raster. Also 3ds is 3D while AniPro is 2D. The best way to
think of AniPro is as an 8-bit paint package with the added element
of time — or animation. You can use it to create single, 8-bit
images for texture maps, or to create flics for animated maps, Video
Post transitions, etc. If you're using 3ds for still-image renderings
only, I can see getting along without AniPro. But if you're createing
animations in 3ds, AniPro is an essential app.
Yeah, I now see I've been sorely misled. I've got a friend who has it so I
think I may pop over there for a private demonstration…
James,
3DS does not do nearly anything Ani Pro can do. AP is more of a paint
package with great 2D animation capabilities. With it you can create
many of your maps for use within 3DS. It is a great package by itself
and complements 3D Studio greatly. Now that I have it I would not
want to be without it. The only thing it needs is 24 bit capability
built in.
Dave Mennenoh
Yeah, I've been looking at AniPro – it looks good. I just have to figure out
how to get it to run 640×480 off my Viper board…
Use a VESA driver. One should come with your card and then Ani PRO should see
all the various resolutions.
Dave Mennenoh