Aegis Art Pak 1 Introduction Aegis Art Pak is a series of utilities designed to make your artistic efforts easier and more enjoyable. Art Pak contains a series of paintings that can be used as backgrounds and components in your artistic efforts. There are many different positions and perspectives as well. When combined with Aegis Animator, you can create fabulous Desktop Videos. There are entire paintings to be used as backdrops as well as a variety of individual objects. The objects include such items as perfectly detailed buildings, national monuments, cars, trucks, planes, tanks, animals, dinosaurs, trees, and a lot more. Many of the items are captured in different positions so you may easily create cel animations. The best part of all is every drawing is made with the same color palette. This means you can cut and paste everything on the disk without once having to worry about changing the colors of an object. All of the images in Art Pak were designed in the 320x200 resolution for maximum color resolution. Also on the disk is the Aegis Player program. With it you can create animations in Aegis Animator, place them on a disk with Player, and give away the disk without worrying about copyright laws. About the Artists When this manual was started we asked the creators of Art Pak, Sachs Enterprises for a brief history regarding their expertise: "Sachs Enterprises was formed in 1983 to explore and extend the graphics capabilities of the Commodore 64. State-of-the-art computers, such as the Amiga, are now occupying the full-time efforts of Sachs Enterprises. Superior graphics and animations come from this progressive and innovative group of artists under the direction of Jim Sachs. Contributing artists for this project include Jim Sachs, Dick La Barre, Doug Smith, and Steve Quinn." As you will see while using this product, this is quite an understatement. So without further ado... Getting Started The Art Pak disk has an AmigaDos system on it. After using Kickstart, you may boot it directly or use it in conjunction with another program. If you boot Art Pak directly it will automatically load and execute the Player program. Player looks for any animations on the disk and plays them in sequence. There is a sample animation created with pieces of the Art Pak which loads and runs when you boot the disk. The title of the animation is Cars.script. To start the disk and see a sample animation: Boot your Amiga with Kickstart 1.1 or 1.2 Remove the Kickstart disk and insert the Art Pak disk. To exit the animation: Press the Menu (right) mouse button. You will be returned to the CLI. Making a Backup Copy Before you start using your Art Pak disk you will want to make a backup copy. This is very important. It protects you in case disaster should befall and your disk becomes damaged. Be sure to back up your disk! NOTE: The backup copy is for your use alone. Illegal distribution of the disk is a violation of copyright laws and Aegis will prosecute when necessary. To make a backup copy of the Art Pak disk: You will need a blank disk and the Art Pak disk. Boot your Amiga with Kickstart 1.1 or 1.2. Remove the Kickstart disk and insert the Art Pak disk. Exit the Player program (press the Menu button). At the CLI prompt enter: Diskcopy DF0: to DF0: -Single-drive users will need to swap disks as prompted. -Multi-drive users should insert the blank disk in the external drive (df1:) and substitute DF1: for second DF0:. Using Art Pak with Aegis Images and other paint programs Art Pak may be used with paint packages to enhance your own artwork. Individual items can be pasted into a drawing or customized, with backgrounds providing a starting point for your own ideas. All of the Art Pak drawings are saved in IFF (Interchange File Format) and may be used in any program which supports IFF. They are assigned file extensions for ease of use with Images and Animator. Full-size paintings have an extension of .pic. When a picture file is loaded into memory, its color palette will load automatically. Many of the drawings are saved as .win files. These are windows and appear as frames when loaded into Images. When you load a window, Images does not load the color palette. If you have already loaded one of the background pictures the window will load properly since the palette is already present. The color palette is saved in a .col file on disk. It appears as: AP_colors.col. To load a background into Images: Load Images in the internal drive (df0:). Choose Change Directory from the Project menu. Type ARTPAK: You will be prompted to insert your Art Pak disk in any drive. Choose Open and then Painting from the Project menu. A list of available paintings will appear in the scroll window. Select the painting you want. To load the first window into Images: Load Images in the internal drive (df0:). Choose Change Directory from the Project menu. Type ARTPAK: You will be prompted to insert your Art Pak disk in any drive. Choose Open and then Color from the Project menu. Select the file named AP_colors Choose Open and then Window from the Project menu. A list of available windows will appear in the scroll window. Select the window you want. Art Pak may be used with other programs which support IFF such as Deluxe Paint. Deluxe Paint uses brushes in the same way Images uses frames (windows). If you load a window as a brush you should select the brush palette to get the colors correct. Using Art Pak with Aegis Animator One of the best uses for the Art Pak pictures is in the creation of Desktop Videos. With Aegis Animator and Art Pak you can piece together animations in a snap. Some of the full-screen paintings have objects in different positions for use in cel animations. You can even create backgrounds in Animator by loading the pieces you want as windows (Animator will call them Cels) and arranging them until you are satisfied. Once the background is complete it can be saved as a pic file. The "animation" you have created by moving the windows around can then be deleted and the finished background loaded to start your real animation. This technique is better for objects which will not be animated since it saves memory. Each window requires memory while the background remains the same regardless of the number of objects pasted onto it. The three kinds of files (win, pic, col) are all accessed through the storage menu option. The list of files which appear in the storage window are alphabetized by Animator. For this reason letters have been added to the front of some files so they appear grouped by category. There are three such categories: animals (a), buildings (b), vehicles (v), scenery (s), and other (o). The next section of this book details how you can create a simple animation. The sample animation which comes on the disk is used as an example. This type of animation does simple movements of cels around the screen. By flipping cels and speeding up the tween time, more sophisticated cel animations are possible. A Sample Animation The first item needed for this animation is the background. This can be found as a picture file on the Art Pak disk. To load the background: Load Animator in the internal drive (df0:) Choose storage from the Project menu, or select the disk icon from the Fast Menu. Choose CD from the third column. Type ARTPAK: You will be prompted to insert your Art Pak disk in any drive. Choose color from the Project menu, or select the color icon from the Fast Menu. The color requester will appear. Select glow on to turn glow off. Select pic from the middle column. Select sample.city2 from the first column. Select load from the third column. The background will load onto the screen. The next item needed is the first car which appears in the animation. This is a window file. To load the first car: Select win from the middle column. Scroll the list of files to the bottom until you see the file v_Accord and select this file. Select load from the third column. The car will appear on the screen in the top-left corner. Move the cursor to the front bumper of the car and hold down the Selection button. A reference frame will appear attached to the cursor. Hold down the Selection button and drag the reference frame to the far right of the screen. Push the frame off the screen until you can see only its left border. Be sure to position the bottom of the frame so it is above the yellow lines of the road. Release the Selection button. Close storage (click in top-left box). Select path from the Fast Menu or from the Move menu. Place the cursor at the far right of the screen. Press the Selection button and move the cursor to the left about an inch. Make sure the path line is straight. Press the Selection button again. Choose Next Tween from the Time menu, or the camera icon from the Fast Menu. Now repeat the path and Next Tween commands until the car is off the left side of the screen. By adjusting the length of the path traveled in each tween you can create an effect of the car slowing or speeding up. To add a second car: Select the time option from the Project menu, and choose the Begin button on the requestor. Press the Menu button. Advance the animation a few tweens. Now repeat the steps above with a different car. Be sure to place it below the first on the road to create the illusion it is in front. To view your animation, execute Play Loop or Play All. About Aegis Player Player allows you the convenience of giving away your finished animations without giving away the Animator program. Player will only run animations made with Aegis Animator. You are free to distribute the Player program (provided, of course, you don't leave Art Pak on the same disk!). Using Aegis Player To copy Player to another disk: You will need a blank disk and the Art Pak disk. Boot your Amiga with Kickstart 1.1 or 1.2. Remove the Kickstart disk and insert the Art Pak disk. Exit the Player program (press the Menu button). At the CLI prompt enter MAKE PLAYERDISK. You will be prompted as to your next steps. Copying the animation to Player: You must have all the components of an animation (win, pic, script) on Player for it to run properly. Loading a script name only will not load the windows and background with comprise the animation. Running Player: Boot the Player disk with Kickstart and exit to CLI by pressing the menu button. At the CLI prompt, type PLAYER followed by [RETURN], or choose from the options: "+ONCE" plays an animation once. "+HIDE" hides the titlebar information while the animation is loading. "+ALL" searches out and plays all the animations in the current directory. filename 1 filename 2... plays consecutive scripts. No extension is necessary. Syntax: PLAYER [filename (filename 2...) (+ONCE) (+ALL) (+HIDE)] Example: 1> player knight luna +hide +once or 1> player +all +hide If only a filename(s) is entered, Player will run a script(s) in a continuous loop until the Menu button is pressed. If no filename or options are given, a menu will be displayed showing you every script in the current directory. Click on the script file you want to watch followed by clicking on the Play button. If the script you want is not here (remember, you can scroll the listing!) point and click the Drawer box. Type in a directory or device name and press return. Then repeat this step. To stop the animation, press the right mouse button. This will bring you back to the menu or to the CLI. Click Exit to exit. Watch for further advancements in Aegis Desktop Video! And send in your registration cards for announcements of forthcoming Art Pak's. ============================================================================ DOCS PROVIDED BY -+*+-THE SOUTHERN STAR-+*+- for M.A.A.D. ============================================================================