#Animation Standard?
11 messages in this thread
I didn't take your messages the wrong way at all Greg, even if they were a
little long winded 🙂 After capturing, printing, and reading your messages,
I think I went a little too far on my frustration. I will agree that a
standard for scripts is not too practical, but we could sure use a standard
for animations playback.
Even though the Director can only playback compressed animations created
with Videoscape 3D, there is no reason why it shouldn't be able to play
back animations created with Animate 3D, Silver, or other animation
software out on the market. Now I don't blame the Director for this. I'm
sure when Keith Doyle was writing his program, there were not too many 3D
animation programs out on the market, so he had to choose one.
So for the present time, I will have to make my animations using the BLIT
command, and in fact I have already recreated the animations you probably
have seen in those NewTek demo disks that have been floating around. So
maybe I shouldn't have said that I couldn't use animation in my Director
scripts.
But you will have to admit that it would be a lot easier to take a 3D
animation program of my choice, say Animate 3D, create the anim sequence,
and use the playanim routine within the Director, than it would be to
create the individual frames, and blit them to the screen. Some software is
confusing enough as it is, and worrying about which animation compression
scheme will work doesn't help any either. So even though I might have went
a little too far in my first message, I still feel that some of it is
valid.
John, yes….your points about a standard anim format *is* valid.
Hopefully we will see one. But I think it's unlikely…there's alreay been
enough time for one to be developed. We can always hope though! 🙂
There are reasons why no standard exists for animation files. The history
goes like this: Aegis started talking about VideoScape's ANIM long before
it came out, on BIX. A few snippets of code were posted, and they shipped
VS 1.0 with one form of ANIM, and registered that with CBM. Weeks later,
they determined that compression in 1.0 was no good, and improved it for
in-house use. Most Aegis demos use the new compression, VideoTitler also
uses it, and Director can read the new compression, so the fact that you
have lousy compression in VideoScape is no problem – you can always use
VideoSEG in VideoTitler to compress the individual IFF files, if you want
to take the time to get the better compression.
Now, no other animation program used Aegis' format, for several reasons:
One, they never handed out example source code, and didn't register the new
IFF hunks. Two, Aegis ANIM didn't address things other developers saw as
significant, like making animations larger than a single floppy, or putting
unique color maps in each frame. (If you split the animation into separate
files, it could span floppies and you'd also be able to edit individual
frames easier.) Three, other people came up what they thought were better
compression schemes, like Sculpt Animate, and they didn't register theirs,
either. Don't forget, Silver, Forms In Flight and Animator: Apprentice all
use unique animation formats, too. Only Animator: Apprentice handed out
full source code for a animation player.
Careful how you use that verb! "InterChange" is now an official verb for
Amiga animators. Darnell Williams used "InterChange" as a verb several
times during his talk at LA AmiExpo, as in "I created an object in Sculpt,
and InterChange'd it to VideoScape". I *liked* the sound of that. 🙂
You mean he Fousted a word upon the audience? 🙂
-larry
Oh guhROAN!!!
Rick
Syndesis got a request for an InterChange module to go to and from the "ROT"
format, the alternate object editor that comes with VideoScape. Are there
any VideoScape users who use this tool to create objects?
Hmmm….I usually say I converted an object from here to there. 🙂
GreG
Fortunately, a consensus may emerge at the developer conference. The
latest suggestion is this: Animation programs should be able to optionally
save the latest, revised Aegis/IFF ANIM format. Presumably, developers
will be able to revise the ANIM format to a minimum acceptable to all
parties. Animation programs would be free to save in their own non-ANIM
formats, if they want. This solves most of the problems of exchanging
animations. So far, all parties seem amenable to this solution, and some
have started implementing it.