ANIMAGIC USER'S GUIDE TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 CHAPTER 1 - GETTING STARTED 7 What You Need To Run ANIMagic 7 What You Should Already Know 8 Making a Backup 8 Loading ANIMagic 8 ANIMagic Terminology 9 The ANIMagic File Requestor 12 Loading and Saving with ANIMagic 13 ANIMagic Buttons and Gadgets 13 ANIMagic's Gray Screen 14 Dealing with Low Memory Situations 14 ANIMagic and Speed 15 CHAPTER 2 - CREATING YOUR FIRST SPECIAL EFFECT 17 CHAPTER 3 - INSIDE THE ANIMAGIC STUDIO 23 Section One - The Edit Bay Main Control Panel 23 The Edit Bay Main Control Panel 23 The Sources and the Destination 27 The Application Buttons 28 Section Two - The DVE Effects Control window 30 CHAPTER 4 - MORE WINDOWS AND MENUS 35 The Grid Control window 35 The 3D High Level Control window 40 The Backdrop Control window 42 The Palette window 45 The Color Cycling window 47 1 The Transparency window 48 The Alternate Palette menu 49 The Project menu 50 The Project Information window 51 CHAPTER 5 - FOUR TUTORIALS 53 Getting a Fresh Start 53 "The Sliding Dino" 54 "The Doors to the Castle" 61 "The Box with Many Faces" 63 "The Ball of Fire" 68 CHAPTER 6 - EXPERIMENTING WITH ANIMAGIC 71 "The Box and Ring are Joined" 71 "The Expanding Logo" 72 Stacking Effects 73 Using Color Controls 75 Turning an ANIM Frame Into an IFF Picture File 75 Appendix A - Using ShowANIM 77 Apendix B - The DVE Maps 79 Appendix C - Technical Support 81 Appendix D - Hard Disk Installation 83 Appendix E - The ANIMagic Development Team 85 Index 87 INTRODUCTION WHAT IS ANIMAGIC? Think of ANIMagic and your Amiga as a destop video editing console. The same effects possible with video equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars,and many others,can now be done at the push of a button! ANIMagic allows you to perform basic editing functions on ANIM or IFF files(for more info on ANIM,see Chapter 1). Perform simple edits such as adding or deleting frames,altering the color palette or timing of individual or groups of frames,cutting and pasting sections of one ANIM to another,and much,much more. But that's not all. Thanks to a powerful "raster mapping" feature allowing complex picture manipulation,ANIMagic permits the creation of an endless variety of Digital Video Effects(DVEs). These DVEs allow you to make an animation or picture do anything from a simple-fly-in to complex page turns and shatters. And since you can design your own DVE effects,virtually anything you can imagine is possible. Add special effects to your graphics that the top TV producers haven't even imagined! There are a minimum of 9025 variations on each DVE effect supplied with ANIMagic. Actually,far more than that if you include all the more subtle variations possible. One thing's for sure: ANIMagic is limited only by your imagination! HOW SHOULD I USE THIS MANUAL? The ANIMagic manual is written to let you get the most out of this powerful program. Chapter 1 will explain important things such as making backups,setting ANIMagic up,and how to get in and out of the program. Chapter 2 is a tutorial which will show you how to create an effect with a still picture while teaching you how to use some of the controls. Chapter 3 will go over all of the main controls so you can see how they operate. Chapter 4 takes you through the rest of the screens and windows you'll use to control ANIMagic. Chapter 5 is an important set of four more tutorials which will introduce you to additional concepts and uses for the program. Chapter 6 contains a series of mini- tutorials and experiments you might want to try. Finally,the Appendices include descriptions all of the DVE maps included with ANIMagic,give you instructions for hard disk installation and show you how to use the ShowANIM player utility. 5 CHAPTER 1 - GETTING STARTED This chapter will explain some of the concepts you'll find throughout the manual,the file requesters ANIMagic uses and how to deal with large ANIMs and low memory situations. Even if you are already experienced in these matters please take at least a quick look at this chapter and DON'T FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR DISKS! You should also take time right now to fill out and send in the registration card included with your ANIMagic package,and keep the number handy. You will be asked for this number if you call us for technical support. WHAT YOU NEED TO RUN ANIMAGIC ANIMagic will run on any of the Amiga family of computers with minimum requirements of: 1 Megabyte of memory 2 Megs or more highly suggested One disk drive Workbench Versions 1.2 or greater(an Amiga 1000 also requires Kickstart version 1.2 or greater) Additional RAM,a second disk drive,a 68020/math co-processor board or a hard drive will enchance the speed and operation of this and all graphic programs. 7 WHAT YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW Before beginning to use ANIMagic,there are a few terms and actions you should be familiar with. If you are unsure about any of these,please refer to your Amiga Owner's Manual for a complete description. click close gadget or close box device directory double-click dragging front-back window gadget gadget menu Menu mouse button(RIGHT) mount Selection mouse button(LEFT) scroll bar MAKING A BACKUP ANIMagic is not copy-protected and you should make a backup of your ANIMagic disks. Do so at this time. Please refer to your Amiga owner's manual for instructions on making copies of disks. This simple step is likely to save you many headaches in the future,particularly with the recent outbreak of computer viruses. LOADING ANIMAGIC Insert the Program disk in the internal drive and the Data One disk in the external drive when you are asked for a Workbench disk. ANIMagic's Workbench screen will appear. Double-click with the left mouse button on the ANIMagic disk icon. A window will appear containing more icons. 8 Double-click with the left button on the ANIMagic icon. In a few moments,the ANIMagic title screen will appear. TO START ANIMAGIC FROM THE CLI: Insert the ANIMagic program disk in the internal drive and the data disk in the external drive when asked for the Workbench disk. At the Workbench screen,double-click on the CLI icon. At the CLI prompt,type ANIMagic. In a few moments,the ANIMagic title screen will appear. (If your system is equipped with a 68020 chip and 68881 math co-processor use the version located on the Data One disk. You will need to boot from the main program disk and then load the program from the Data One disk as it is not a bootable disk. When using this version,your rendering time will be faster than those listed in this manual.) ANIMAGIC TERMINOLOGY What is an ANIM? ANIM,developed by Aegis and SPARTA,Inc.,is a file format for the storing of animated sequences on the Amiga. It allows storage and fast playback of sequence of frames using a minimum of space. The technique works as follows: The first image in an animation is saved as a standard IFF picture. The next frame saves only the changes from the last frame to this one. That cuts down the size of a file tremendously,with a multi-megabyte animation being compressed to under 880K,for example. The more changes that happen from one screen to the next in your animation,the larger the resulting ANIM will be. Of course,the resolution used(described below)also affects the size of the ANIM. The higher the resolution,the larger the ANIM. The ANIM format is used by a number of Amiga developers and is endorsed by Commodore-Amiga,Inc. 3D animation packages such as Aegis VideoScape 3D,Hash: Animation Series and others also allow you to save ANIM format 3-D. 9 animations. Programs such as Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint III allow you to create ANIM format animations using simple painting tools. These ANIMs may be used with ANIMagic and player programs such as Aegis Lights! Camera! Action! WHAT ARE NTSC,PAL AND INTERLACE? NTSC,which stands for National Television Standards Committee,is a format used by television mainly in the United States and Canada. PAL is the standard used by most of the remainder of the world,including Europe. This system uses more horizontal scanlines than the NTSC system,for better resolution. Intelace is the process used by both of these systems for displaying a high resolution picture. It splits the picture into two sets of images. First scanline one(the first line on your screen)is drawn,line two is skipped,and line three is drawn,and so on. When all of the odd numbered lines are drawn,it draws line numbers two,four,and so on. Each set of lines is called a "field" and one pair of fields makes a single frame. Thirty frames are drawn each second in this way. Single lines in your picture laying horizontally with a lot of contrast will appear to flicker when using interlace. This is because your eye is seeing one "field" fading out while the other is being drawn. Flickering is reduced when you use your Amiga with a high-persistence phosphor monitor,or a multi-sync monitor used with a "Flicker Fixer." WHAT IS SCREEN RESOLUTION? Screen resolution determines the quality of the picture displayed and is measure in the number of dots,or pixels,used to create an image. The Amiga supports a number of resolutions as listed below: LoRes(Low Resolution)-LoRes is 320 pixels wide by 200 pixels tall(unless overscan is used). LoRes supports three color limits. These are a standard screen in 32 colors,a "Halfbrite" screen in 64 colors(the second set of 32 being darker versions of the first 32),and "Hold and Modify"(HAM)with 4,096 colors. Why would you want to use the 32 or 64 color screen when you could have 4,096 colors? First of all,HAM requires a lot of memory and storage space. It is also a much slower resolution to work with. VidRes(Video Resolution)-VidRes is a 320 pixel by 400 pixel screen which allows 32 colors. HAM and Halfbrite are also available in this resolution. This screen uses interlace,so some flickering is visible. VidRes is known as Interlace resolution in Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint program. It is also the resolution most frequently used for video applications. 10 MedRes(Medium Resolution)-MedRes is a 640 pixel by 200 pixel screen with 16 colors. It does not allow HAM or Halfbrite mode,and the image is not interlaced. HiRes(High Resolution)-This resolution is 640 pixels by 400 pixels. Only 16 colors are allowed in this mode and Halfbrite and HAM are not available. This is an interlaced screen,so flicker may be visible. WHAT IS OVERSCAN? Overscan is another format used with video. The computer's normal display does not extend all the way to the edge of the monitor's screen. Overscan allows the display to be stretched to fill the entire monitor screen. If you were to have something fly off the edge of the display on a non-overscan setting,for example,it would disappear a short way from the edge of your monitor. In overscan,the same image would stay on the screen until it vanished behind the edge of your screen. Medium Overscan-Medium overscan will take the resolution limits to the following numbers. Number of colors remains the same: LoRes -- 352x220 VidRes -- 352x440 MedRes -- 704x220 HiRes -- 704x440 Severe Overscan-Severe overscan is best for use with any type of broadcast video. Again,the number of colors stays the same while the screen parameters change to the following: LoRes -- 384x240 VidRes -- 384x480 MedRes -- 768x240 HiRes -- 768x480 ANIMagic also allows you to set a custom screen size. This may be up to 1008x1008 in size and may include up to 32 colors(64 with Halfbrite). These non-standard resolutions are usually recommended for machines with lots of memory. 11 Before you can use ANIMagic,you must load a file to work with. This file may be either an IFF picture or an ANIM format animation. Files are retrieved(or saved)by using the storage requester. In the large,upper section of the requester is a list of devices,directories or files. Since your files may be on any device you wish(such as a floppy drive, hard drive,etc.),ANIMagic defaults to a list of the devices you have available. Notice that these are in red,which designates a directory path. All files appear in blue within this requester. To load a file,simply double click on it. To the right of the file list is a scroll bar. This device,a red bar with arrows at each end,allows you to look at parts of the list which are not currently visible. Either click the arrows to travel up or down in the list,or grab the colored bar and drag it in the direction you wish to go. You can just click on it at anytime to "refresh" the list of files to its left,even while they ae still loading in from disk. At the bottom of the storage requester is a type box labeled Path:. Clicking on a directory from the above list will place the name of that directory in this box. As you progress through various sub-directories,this path will add the 12 latest directory to the end of the name. You may also type the path name into the box simply by clicking in it,typing,and pressing RETURN. If you wish to retun to the last directory you were in,or move up toward the root directory,just click the button labeled Parent at the bottom of the screen. Each time you use this button,you will be stepped back one directory until you reach the original device list. Next is the File:text box. When you select a file by clicking on it from the list above,the name will appear in this box. This is an alternative to double clicking on the file's name in the list. You may also type the file name into box by clicking within it and entering the name. The final text box is labeled Extension:. If you are looking for a particular type of file(such as any file with the PIC extension),simply type the extension here(PIC in this case)and ANIMagic will only list those files. Once you have selected the file you want,you can use the buttons at the bottom of the file requester to load or save files. Or,double clicking on the filename from the list will automatically perform the operation of the left button. If you decide not to do anything,just click CANCEL. LOADING AND SAVING WITH ANIMAGIC When you are using ANIMagic,the opening and saving requesters may be accessed via the Project menus. These menus are found only on the Edit Bay Main Control panel and the DVE Effects Control panel. From the Edit Bay Main Control panel,you have the choice of opening either an IFF image/ANIM file or a DVE map. The maps will be explained later,but they are accessed in the same way as other files. SAVE gives you options for saving IFF images,ANIM files,DVE maps or a Project icon. From the DVE Effects Control window,the only options in the Project menu are Open,Save,or Destroy DVE. Open and Save operate in the usual manner. See Chapter 3,Section Two:"The DVE Effects Control Window" for more information on DVE operations. ANIMAGIC BUTTONS AND GADGETS All of the gadgets within ANIMagic follow certain visual standards. Buttons which may be pressed are raised slightly from the panels. These need only be clicked once to activate them. Some buttons are toggles which will stay 13 depressed when clicked. To deactivate the button,just click on it again. Type boxes are slightly recessed into the panels. They allow you to enter information by clicking in them and then typing. You may need to backspace or delete to get rid of old information in this box. Pop-up menus featue large black drop shadows to distinguish them from standard buttons. To select from a pop-up menu,click and hold the left mouse button on it. A menu will appear beneath your pointer with options you may choose. If there are no other options available,only the current item will appear. Simply move the mouse up or down within the list until the item you want is highlighted. Let the button go and the selection will appear at the top of the menu. ANIMAGIC'S GRAY SCREEN ANIMagic's screen will sometimes change to a solid gray color while the program is performing an operation. This is a normal part of the program,so don't be alarmed. The system is fine unless you see your Amiga's power light flashing. You'll notice the gray screen mainly when loading or saving a file,deleting or appending frames,and during some other operations. Again after a few moments, the process will be finished and you'll be returned to the correct window in ANIMagic. If ANIMagic tries to load a module while the program disk is not in a drive,the sceen may go blank until you insert the disk. This happens mainly when moving from screen to screen and not during the actual animation process. DEALING WITH LOW MEMORY SITUATIONS Keep in mind that ANIMagic can be a very memory-intensive program. Try to keep the number of extra ANIMs or images loaded to a minimum since they occupy memory space which ANIMagic might need to ceate an effect. Make sure that you always save files to disk as you work on them and conserve space wherever possible. If you create an ANIM that is larger than 880K(the storage capacity of a standard floppy disk),and you don't have a hard drive,you will need to break that ANIM down into smaller "pieces" in order to save it. Simpy save "ranges(explained in Chapter 3)of reasonable size onto separate disks then reassemble them when you wish to show them together. In order to conserve the amount of memory it consumes,ANIMagic loads pieces of 14 of itself into memory only as they are needed.(When you click on color cycling, for example,ANIMagic will load the module it needs to control color cycling.) ANIMagic releases the modules from memory when it's finished with them. It is therefore important to always have the main ANIMagic disk inserted in a drive when using the program. If you are using ANIMagic with a hard drive you will have no problem,but if ANIMagic tries to find a program module on a disk that isn't there,the screen will go blank. If this happens,simply insert your program disk and it will come right back. If you do have sufficient memory,you can avoid having to keep the ANIMagic program disk "mounted" by telling it to keep the modules in memory at all times. You may choose to make them "resident" by pressing the F1 key along the top of your keyboard. A requester will appear asking if you wish modules to be unloaded or not. TO CONSERVE MEMORY WITH ANIMAGIC ON MACHINES WITH 1 MB: Booting from a standard 1.3 Workbench loads certain commands into memory. To conserve memory,the ANIMagic program disk has been altered so that it loads only what it needs. Booting from this disk will help conserve memory. If you have a two-drive Amiga 500 or 1000,removing the second drive before turning on the computer can save up to 20K of chip RAM. ANIMagic requires that an ANIM or picture file be loaded before the program will operate. Also,ANIMagic will not let you delete the last picture or ANIM in memory you must always have at least one open. Consequently,you should try to use a picture file of small size as your non-deletable one(like Logo.PIC from the Data One disk)to save memory. The number of "bitplanes" used by an image or ANIM determines how many colors it can have. Use only the number of bitplanes required to achieve the number of colors you must have to complete your effect.(You can choose the number of bitplanes your final ANIM will have when you Create the Destination buffer that will contain it.) ANIMAGIC AND SPEED ANIMagic can create simple animations in just a few minutes. However,if you are working in high resolution or HAM mode,using lots of colors,or creating special strobe effects it might take ANIMagic awhile to create an effect. We recommend that you test out your creations in wireframe mode and render a frame or two in "manual" mode before generating effects which might take a lot of time to fully render. 15 There are a number of ways of ways to increase the speed of ANIMagic. Fist,use low resolution whenever possible. This will increase ANIMagic's speed and conserve memory. Remember that when images are moving around on the screen you don't notice the resolution much. Using HAM or overscan also slows the program dramatically. Fewer frames,colors or bitplanes means faster calculations. Try rendeing an ANIM in 320x200 16-color mode(4 bitplanes)instead of in 32-color mode(5 bitplanes)and see how much faster things happen!(Just specify the number of bitplanes you want when you "create" a new buffer.) HiRes,3-bitplane overscan is much faster than 4-bitplanes. There is a big difference in both rendering and playback times. If you use your Amiga for graphics most of the time,you might want to consider getting a 68020 and math co-processor(68881)board. If you have an '020 and math chip you can use the special math-comprocessor version of ANIMagic included on the Data One disk. You will notice a increase in speed using this version. For more information about adding a 68020 board,see your local Amiga dealer. TECHNICAL SUPPORT As with any program,there are times when you may need some help. Appendix C contains steps you should take when this happens. Be sure to send in your registration card,and have your number handy if you need to call us. 16 CHAPTER 2 - CREATING YOUR FIRST SPECIAL EFFECT The best way to familiarize yourself with new software is to take a quick tour. In the following tutorial you will be shown just a small portion of the power than ANIMagic puts in your hands. This is,however,a simple walkthrough,so while your steps will be explained to a degree,complete descriptions of each gadget and operation will be contained in the following chapters. You'll need approximately 30 minutes for this tutorial and should have a blank,formatted disk ready. For information on formatting disks consult your Amiga Owner's Manual. Note:If the ANIMagic program disk is not in a drive when the program tries to load a new module the screen will go blank. Insert the program disk to continue. ALWAYS WAIT UNTIL THE RED DRIVE LIGHT IS OFF BEFORE EJECTING A DSIK!! Insert your backup copy of ANIMagic in DF0:and turn on or re-boot your Amiga. (If you have an Amiga 1000,you'll need to insert Kickstart first.)If you have a hard drive and wish to save files on it,go ahead and boot your system using your normal hard drive bootup disk,placing the ANIMagic Program disk in any drive. If you have more than one disk drive,insert the ANIMagic Data One disk in another drive. If you are only using one drive,don't worry you'll just have to do some disk swapping from time to time. Double click on the ANIMagic disk icon to open it. When the program icons appear,double click on the ANIMagic program icon to start the program. 17 After a moment or so,ANIMagic's title screen will appear. It displays information on the version number,author,publisher and copyright information. 1)Place your pointer on the title screen and click once,or press any key,to continue. Another screen will appear which says No Project File Found. ANIMagic needs either an ANIM or IFF picture open before it will bring up the Edit Bay Main Control panel. 2)Click on OK. You'll be presented with the ANIMagic file requester. This requester is explained in Chapter one. 3)If you are using one drive,switch disks and insert your backup of Data One. 4)Select the ANIMagic Data One disk from the requester list by clicking on it. The contents of that disk will appear in the requester. 5)Enter the directory named PICS and select the picture titled Logo.pic. The name of the file will appear in the File:type box at the bottom of the requester. This is the image you'll use in this tutorial. 6)Click Open to load it into memory. The screen will blank to gray for a moment as ANIMagic reads the file,then it will appear with the ANIMagic Edit Bay Main Control panel. The image consists of the Aegis and ANIMagic logos. 7)Click on the diamond button in the lower right corner of the panel to extend the Edit Bay Main Control panel. The diamond button,known as the Edit Bay Button,opens up the panel. This is allows you to do source swapping operations by specifying an image or ANIM each for Source One(S1:)and one Source Two(S2:),and combining them into the Destination(D:). As the red arrows indicate,the two sources are passed first through the Map Setting button,then through the Map Palette button,and finally into the Apply,or recording,buttons. All of these are described in more detail later,but for now let's have some fun. 8)Click on the Map setting button,currently marked No Map and move to the Dve Mapping option. 18 The DVE Effects Control panel will appear. This is where all sorts of variations of DVE are made possible. A DVE is simply a map telling ANIMagic how to manipulate the images it is using. A large number of these are included on the ANIMagic program disk in the DVEMaps directory. 9)Choose Open DVE from the DVE Progject menu. The file requester will appear. 10)Double click on the DVEMaps directory from the ANIMagic program disk. Use the red scroll bar on the right to move around in the list of files and select Basic_Spin1.map. Click on Load. You will be returned to the DVE Effects Control window where the name Basic_Spin1 is now on the top of the menu. As the desciption below it explains,this map will expand the picture from the center of the screen, rotating it once. 11)Under Global Settings set the number of frames(No.Frames)to 15 clicking in its type box and changing the information there. You may need to use BACKSPACE or DELETE to get rid of any old information. Then press the RETURN key. 12)Click on the Preview button at the bottom of this panel to see a wire frame respresentation of the effect. 13)When the preview is finished close the DVE Effects Control panel by clicking on the close gadget. You will be returned to the Edit Bay Main Control panel. Note:The following steps show you how to record your ANIM directly to disk. If your machine has more than 1 Megabyte of RAM you have the option of recording the ANIM directly into the Destination buffer in RAM. To learn how to do this read the first tutorial(The Sliding Dino)in Chapter 5. 14)Choose Create ANIM File from Record in the Project menu. A verifier will appear making sure you want it in the resolution of the buffer in the Destination. Click DO IT! 15)Make sure that your blank,formatted disk is in a drive. Select it in the file requester and type in the filename Spin.ANIM. Click Open to open that file for recording. You will be returned to the Main Control panel. 19 16)Click on the red stylized R above the Destination to begin recording your effect into the disk file. A verifier will appear to which you should click on DO IT!. The animation process will begin taking place. You will see the screen flash a number of times throughout this period as ANIMagic switches back and forth between the source image and the buffer. Don't be surprised if you see your Workbench or CLI briefly in these flashes. After each frame the drive light will come on and ANIMagic will record that frame to disk. When the process is finished(about 5 minutes)the main control panel will reappear. 17)Choose Close ANIM File from Record in the Project menu.(If the ANIM file on disk is not closed ANIMagic will not let you exit and our Spin.ANIM file won't work.) 18)Load the finished ANIM(Spin.ANIM)from disk into memory using the Open Still/ ANIM iten from the Project menu. 19)Make sure this ANIM is in Source One. 20)Click the Play button(the red triangle pointing to the right at the top of the panel)to see your animation. Notice that the effect plays through correctly the first time but acts strangely the second time through. It also runs too fast. We'll clean it up and make it into a "looping" ANIM. 21)Click on the left mouse button to stop the playing of the ANIM and return to the Main Control panel. 22)Click on the Infinite Loop button(a 8 on its side)below the Frame Number. A verfication requestor will appear,asking if you want to Append first two frames to end of source buffer. Click Do it! After a few moments you will be returned to the control panel. Now play your ANIM. It looks nice but it's still too fast. Let's change this by slowing the playback time of the ANIM and putting a pause at the end. 23)Press the left mouse button to stop the ANIM and return to the Main Control panel. 24)In the Time(T)type box change the number 0 to 3 and press RETURN. We have just set the timing of the current frame to 3 jiffies between each frame. (A jiffy is 1/60th of a second.)Now to tell it that all the other frames are also set to 3. 24)Click on the Range Forward button(second row,last on the right)to set a range from 1(in the type fox on the far left)to 17(the last frame of the animation-frames plus the two frames which were added to make it a looping ANIM). 26)Click on the Range Time button(arrow pointing down directly below Time(T)to apply this time to all frames in the specified range(1->17). A verifier will appear. 27)Click Do It! After a pause of a second or two the Main Control panel will return. All frames are now set to 3 jiffies. The last frame,however,needs a longer pause. 28)Now,type 15 in the Frame(F)type box and hit RETURN. 29)Change the Time(T)type box to read 60 and hit RETURN. 30)Click on the Play button. Now the image comes spinning up from the center of the screen and holds on the last frame. That's all there is to it except for saving this looping version with the special timing. 31)Click the left mouse button to stop the playing of the ANIM. 32)Choose Save ANIM from the Project menu and put this final version of the Spin.ANIM on your blank disk. Just save it over the file already there by selecting it. You've just created a very impressive animation with a minimum amount of effort. This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as ANIMagic's capabilities. Using various other buttons and gadgets within the program you could have this spin originate from any point of the screen and end up anywhere else you choose. You could have colors change as it spins. Or,even have a fully animated ANIM in place of the single image. Let's move on to the other commands in the next chapter,Inside the ANIMagic Studio. 21 (PAGE 22 IN BLANK) CHAPTER 3 - INSIDE THE ANIMAGIC STUDIO The first section of this chapter lists each of the controls on the Edit Bay Main Control panel. The second section will discuss the DVE Effects Control window. SECTION ONE THE EDIT BAY MAIN CONTROL PANEL All of the buttons on the Edit Bay Main Control panel and most other gadgets within ANIMagic have built-in help screens. If you need help remembering which button to use or just want a quick reminder,press the HELP key on your keyboard. 23 or just want a quick reminder,press the HELP key on your keyboard. Your pointer will change into a question mark. Place the dot on the bottom of the question mark on the gadget you want more information about and click the left mouse button once. The help screen will stay up until you either click again or press a key. The buttons and text boxes in the top two rows of the screen affect only the Source One image or ANIM unless otherwise stated. Top Row,Left to Right 1)Rewind-Displays the first frame of the animation. If Source One contains a single image,only that image will be displayed. 2)Display Start-Displays the frame specified in the Range Start box below it. 3)Step Back-A single click will step the ANIM backwards,one frame at a time, until the mouse is clicked again. Double clicking will display the frame previous to the current one. 4)Full-Removes the control panel and displays the full screen image of the frame specified in the Fame specified next to it with the proper color palette (if cycling is turned on the image will cycle when displayed). 5)Frame-States which frame of the Source One ANIM is currently displayed. If Source One contains a single image,the Frame number will always be 1. 6)Time-States the amount of time in jiffies(60th of a second NTSC,50ths of a second PAL)to display the current frame of the ANIM. 7)Palette-Brings up the color palette for the currently displayed frame of Source One. 8)Cycle-Brings up the color cycling information for the buffer in Source One. 24 9)Plays-Plays the current buffer in Source One as a repeating ANIM. 10)Step Forward-A single click will step the ANIM forwards,one frame at a time, until the mouse is clicked again. Double clicking will display the frame after the current one. 11)Display-Displays the frame specified in the Range End button below it. 12)Fast Forward-Displays the last frame of the ANIMation in Source One. If this buffer contains a single image,only it will be displayed. Second Row,Left to Right 13)Range Rewind-Sets start of range to the first frame of the current ANIMation in Source One. If Source One is a single image,it will be displayed. 14)Range Start-Shows the frame of an ANIMation specified as the start of a range. 15)Range Apply-Sets the current frame displayed as the start of a range. 16)Range Frame-Sets frame specified in Range End to Range Start also. 17)Infinite Loop-Copies first two frames of Source One to the end of Source One making it a looping animation. This button does not affect the Destination buffer in any way. 18)Range Delete-Deletes all frames specified in the range. If no range is specified,only the current frame will be deleted. 19)Range Time-Sets all frame times in the specified range to the time of the current frame. This button will only operate when a range is specified. 20)Range Smooth-Sets the timing of all frames in the range(except the first and last)to be a smooth spread from the timing of the first frame to the timing of 25 the last frame. For example,if frame one is displayed for 1 jiffy and the last frame is displayed for 10 jiffies,the ANIM will gradually slow down after using this button. Range Smooth will only operate when a range is specified. 21)Range Color-Sets the color palettes for all frames in the range to match current frame. this button will only operate when a range is specified. 23)Transparency-Opens a window for specifying colors that are to be transparent. This window is explained in more detail in Chapter 4. 25)Range Frame-Sets frame specified in Range Start to Range End also. 26)Range Apply-Marks the current frame displayed as the end of a range for Source One. 27)Range End-States the frame number of the animation specified as the end of a range. 28)Range Forward-Sets end of range to the last frame of the current animation in Source One. If this is a single image,the Range End number will be 1. On the lowermost right corner of the amin control panel is a button marked by a diamond. This is used to expand the Edit Bay Main Control panel. It may also be used to reduce the size back to the standard edit bay. Simply click on it to activate it. The extended main control panel is where you will find the following items unless otherwise stated. 26 THE SOURCES AND THE DESTINATION Source One(S1:)-This is a pop-up menu listing the image or ANIM which is currently active. It may be a still picture or an ANIM which is currently active. It may be a still picture of an ANIM,and you can tell by checking the numbers listed at the end of the Source One bar. These numbers provide you with the following information: Horizontal Pixels x Vertical Pixels x Number of Bitplanes x Number of Frames Source One is the only buffer on which the main controls of ANIMagic operate at any given time. For example,if you want to set a range for Source Two,you must first change the contents of the Source One buffer to match the content of Source Two. You can do this in two ways: 1)By selecting the same ANIM or image listed in Source Two from the Source One pop-up menu. The source may be changed by pressing and holding the left moust button on the name and selecting your choice from the pop-up list. If there are no other buffers open in ANIMagic,only a single name will be displayed. You may load additional stills or ANIMs from the Project menu and they will appear in the pop-up menus. 2)by using the Source Swap button. Between S1: and S2:is a button with arrows facing up and down. This will swap the Source One and Source Two buffers. It makes switching between the buffers very easy. 27 Source Two(S2:)-This is a pop-up menu listing the picture or ANIM which may be used as a second source. A second source might be used if you are doing a page turn to display another picture underneath,for example. Source Two also displays its buffer size directly beneath it in the same format as Source One. Right below that,howver,is the range set for that buffer. This comes into play when you want only a certain section of that ANIM used in your effect. Ranges for both this and destination may be set by moving the buffer you wish to set into Source One and adjusting it there using the Range Start and Range End gadgets,then returning it to its respective position. Destination(D:)-This is another pop-up menu listing the currently available buffers. It is where the resulting ANIM of your effect will be placed. If you are planning to record a totally new animation,rather than editing into an old one,you must first create a new buffer for that purpose. This is done using the Create menu item from the Project menu of the main control panel. Like source Two,Destination's size and range is listed directly below it. The Destination buffer should have the same format as the images being used to contruct it or ANIMagic will compress or enlarge the images to fit the destination buffer's format. Next is the Map setting pop-up menu. Here you can choose No Mapping(for copying your source into the Destination with no special effect added)or DVE Mapping (for running the source through a special effect before putting it into the Dstination buffer). If you click on the DVE Mapping option,you will be taken to the DVE Effects Control window(see Section Two). Next in the path is the Map Color Setting. You have the option to use either the Source One color palette(the default),the Source Two palette,the Destination palette,or an Alternate palette. For more information on using an Alternate palette,see Chapter 4. THE APPLICATION BUTTONS To the right of Map Color are the Application buttons. The first,Apply Before will insert the image(produced after taking both Source ranges(if applicable) through the mapping features)before the beginning of the Destination range. This can be used to edit frames into the beginning of the Destination buffer. 28 Second is Apply Over. This will overlay the Source range over the Destination range using the current effects such as transparency. It will,in effect "merge" two ANIMS(or pictures)together. See Chapter 4 for more details. Third is Apply After. This will place the results at the end of the Destination range. The source range will be placed right after the last frame specified in the Destination range. Fourth is Apply Append. This will ignore any range set in the destination and attach the results to the end of the destination buffer. This is the button used when recording into an empty buffer. The R next to Apply Append is Record to Disk. This will save the effect to an ANIM file open on the disk. You must first use Record...Create ANIM file from the Project menu to create the open ANIM file on disk. Finally,another set of up and down arows swaps the current contents of the Destination and Source One buffers. After you have recorded an ANIM into the Destination,you must move it into Source One before you can play it back, specify a range,or alter it in other ways. 29 SECTION TWO THE DVE EFFECTS CONTROL WINDOW The DVE Effects Control window allows you to customize the current DVE map in a large number of ways. To get to this screen,click on the button on the main control panel and switch to DVE Mapping. The pop-up menu button labeled Core DVE contains a list of currently available Digital Video Effects. If you have just loaded the program,Plain will be the only selection in this menu. To add more to the list choose Open DVE from the Project menu. All DVE maps are signified by the extension .Map on the end of the file name and are found in the DVEMaps directory of the ANIMagic program disk. The dark gray box right below the Core DVE is a four line description of the DVE map. If a map that comes with ANIMagic uses 3-D,it will say so here in the last line. 30 Next to the Core DVE are two buttons labeled Grid and 3D Stuff. If the current DVE map is not a 3-D effect,the 3D Stuff button is ghosted and not available. These open into separate control windows,and will be described in Chapter 4. Below the dark gray box is an area labeled Global Settings. The first gadget is the number of frames(No.Frames:)box. This tells ANIMagic how many frames it will take to accomplish your effect. At default,this is set to 0,so rendering an effect like this will result in nothing. When you PREVIEW or MANUAL PREVIEW an effect,it will be shown using the number of frames specified here. If it is 0,the PREVIEW will be shown in 10 frames. Next to No.Frames:is the Direction gadget. This defaults to Forward(Fwd). By changing this to Backward(shown as Rev),you can reverse the direction of the effect. For example,a shatter with pieces flying off the screen when reversed will become a tumble-in. Directly below these are the Source One and Source Two(S1 and S2)Rate boxes. A 0 in either of these boxes specifies that the ANIM in that source will be compressed or stretched to play once in the number of frames specified above it. The number 1 in either of these boxes means that the ANIM in that source is updated 1 source frame to 1 destination frame. When the end of the ANIM is reached,it is repeated. A 2 would mean that the source ANIM will advance one frame after placing two copies of the last frame in the destination. You may set this to any number you wish and it will operate using this pattern. In the embossed box below these are the Strobe options. Entering a number in this box creates a strobe trail of the length you've specified. For instance,if you were to put a five in this box,each frame would display the current frame plus a strobe trail of 5 frames behind it. Turning the TRANSLUCENT button on will cause each strove section to be lighter and lighter until the last strobe is almost completely transparent. These strobes come out of the total number of frames. If you were to have a 30-frame animation with a strobe of 3,the actual effect will take place in 27 frames with three frames being used to allow the strobe to catch up to the last frame. Also,note that TRANSLUCENT doesn't always work as well in HiRes or MedRes as it does in Halfbrite or HAM because fewer colors are available for shading use. If you are designing an effect which is going to make use of a translucent strobe,create your picture with a palette which has darker shades of the prominent picture colors available so that ANIMagic can use those darker shades to create the effect. Over to the right is a button with a blue square around it,called Outline. Clicking it will cause all of the sections or "pieces" of your image to have a border around their edge. The color of this edge is set with the Outline Color pop-up menu below it. 31 The Outline Color pop-up menu appears gray when you have control panel colors active,but clicking on the button will bring up a color box so that you may select the color to use as an outline. The edge color defaults to black. Be sure not to choose the same color as your backdrop if you want edges to appear. Next are the Flip buttons. These are used to change the direction in which the effect happens. The Flip Horizontal button,marked with arrows pointing left and right,will cause a page turn,for instance,which normally peels to the left,to peel off to the right. The Flip Diagonal button next to it will cause the page to peel up. Finally,Flip Vertical will start the peel from the bottom of the page to the appropriate direction rather than starting from the top as it normally does. These buttons can be used in any combination,but some symmetrical effects won't exhibit any difference after a flip. A simple zoom-in for instance,would not be changed if flipped. Examine a few effects and the way they operate with various settings of these buttons using PREVIEW. The Backdrop button brings up a screen of it's own,and will be discussed in Chapter 4. The Rename DVE Window Along the buttom of the panel are the Rename and Clone buttons. Clone will make a duplicate in memory of the current DVE effect. Cloning is used to make a duplicate of a map which you can use as the basis for a new map. The steps are:Clone it. Modify it. Rename it. Save it. A "cloned" map will create exactly the same effect unless you change it,and the name will also be the same. 32 Choosing Rename will allow you to change the name and four line description for your new DVE. For the sake of clarity,always explain your DVE carefully in the description. When they say what you want them to say,click USE. If you then want to save the new DVE to disk so you can use it later,choose Save DVE in the normal way. On the bottom right corner of the screen are two buttons labeled PREVIEW and MANUAL. These both work in a similar way,allowing you to see a wire frame preview of the effect you've chosen in the number of frames you've specified. If you haven't set any frames(the default of 0 is there),ANIMagic will show the effect in ten frames. The difference between these two buttons is that PREVIEW will display one wire frame after another until it reaches the end of the effec while MANUAL will bring up the wire frame along with a control bar. The MANUAL control bar has a few buttons which function in a similar way as those found on the main control panel. The leftmost pair of blue arrows is Rewind,and will take you to the first frame of the effect. Next to that is the Step Back button. Pressing this once will show you the frame previous to the one currently displayed. Next,you'll find the Render button. This will cause the currently displayed wire frame image to be filled in with the image specified in the Frame type box. In this way,you can make sure that the final result will look the way you want it. (When you have an ANIM in Source One and are using the MANUAL Render button to see a finished frame,keep in mind that it will render any frame you choose using the currently specified frame of the ANIM,not with each frame in its range. To understand this better,let's say that you have a 30 frame ANIM which you are running through a DVE map,creating a new ANIM which is also 30 frames in length(a one-to-one frame relationship). If you chose to render frame 15 of the new ANIM,you would see it rendered using whatever frame of the Source One ANIM is specified in the frame type box on the top line of the main control panel. If you wanted to see the 15th frame of the original ANIM rendered in the 15th frame of the DVE effect(which is how it would be rendered if you were actually doing an Append),you would have to specify frame 15 in the frame type box before rendering.) In the center of the control bar is the Frame Number currently being displayed. 33 As you use the various buttons on this panel you will change the number here, but you can also just click in this type box and type in the frame number you wish to view. To the right of this is the Record button. Clicking this will give you the choice of saving the current image to disk onto an already open ANIM file or as a single IFF image. To save it to an open ANIM file,you must first open such a file using the Record option from the Project menu of the Main control bar. Choosing IFF will give you the standard file requester and let you save the single frame as a standard IFF picture file. Last is the Step Forward button which advances one frame. Last on this bar is Fast Forward. This will take you to the final frame of the effect. You may exit this MANUAL mode by clicking on the close box in the upper left corner. While in the MANUAL mode during a render or preview,you may half the effect by clicking the left mouse button. 34 CHAPTER 4 - MORE WINDOWS AND MENUS The Grid Control Window 35 The Grid Control window is reached by clicking GRID from the DVE Effects Control window. It may be used to select the starting and ending point of an effect and to alter patterns and speeds. The first item here is the Grid Pattern pop-up menu. Clicking on it reveals the following list of patterns: Horizontal Grid(H Grid)-Fills the screen from bottom let to bottom right,then the next row up left to right until reaches the top of the screen. Vertical Grid(V Grid)-Fills the screen from bottom right to top right, then the next row to the left from bottom to top until it reaches the top left corner of the screen. Z Grid-Fills the screen from bottom right to bottom left,then the next row up from left to right,then the next row from right to left until it reaches the top left of the screen. Random Grid-Fills the screen in a pseudo-random order. By pseudo we mean that an effect you PREVIEW will still be the same when you render it and that the random pattern will be the same every time the DVE is used. These grid patterns may be used with maps such as horizontal or vetical blinds with Progressive Delay and/or Symmetry(described below). By applying these various patterns to the blinds with Symmetry,you can change the entire effect. Experiment with the various grids in the PREVIEW window of the DVE Effects Control panel. Next to these is the Tile button. It normally appears with a blue T convered by a black grid on it and each "piece" of your effect is an appropriate piece of the full image. If you click on it,however,little red Ts will appear in each square of the black grid. This setting will cause a miniature version of the full image to be on each piece of the effect. To the right are the Symmetry buttons. The one with the arrows pointing left and right will cause both sides of the effect to be the same. In the blinds example mentioned above,this button set with a Progressive Delay(see below)and with the Progressive Direction set to Outside To Center,(also detailed below), will cause one side of the blinds to rotate from the right to the center while the other side turns from the left to the center. The other button,pointing up and down,will give symmetry to the top and bottom of the effect in the same way. Below and to the left are the Grid Width:and Height:boxes. These tell ANIMagic how many duplicates of an effect are to be used. If you are using the 36 Pageturn.map effect,a 1x1 grid would show one page turning. A 1x2 grid would tear off two half-screen pages,and a 2x2 grid would tear off fou quarter-screen pages. If you were to use a 1x2 grid with Left/Right Symmetry(above)on,the left page would tear to the left while the right page would tear to the right. Interesting effects can be achieved by utilizing the Progressive Delay area below these. ANIMagic sees every animation as an interval of time from 1 to 1000. Setting a delay of 100,for example,would cause the first piece of the image to appear,then 1/10th of the effect later then next would appear,and then another 10th of the way through the third would appear,and so on. The 1/10th comes from the fact that 100 is one tenth of 1000. A Doors2.map DVE set at a delay of 500 would turn first one side of the doors,and then halfway through it would turn the other door since 500 is half of the effect's total length of 1000. There are a variety of different ways to alter these delays. Directly below the Progressive Delay is the Progressive Direction pop-up menu. It offers the following possibilities: First To Last-Will place the pieces in order from the first piece to the last according to the type of grid chosen. Last To First-Will place the pieces in order from the last piece to the first according to the type of grid chosen. Outside To Center-Will place the pieces in order from the outside of the screen to the center according to the type of grid chosen. Center To Outside-Will place the pieces in order from the center of the screen to the outside edges according to the type of grid chosen. To the right are the Grid Origin controls. Here you can control from which part of the screen the effect will emanate. The Effect Tile button on the top left (the default)causes the effect to happen in the center of the screen. The effect will not "fly in" from anywhere,but just stay in the center of the screen. The Custom button to the right of this(with the C on it)will be discussed below. The 16 buttons below these can be used to choose the starting and ending positions for an effect. For example,if you were to choose the upper left button with a Confetti.map effect,all the pieces would fly in from the upper left corner. Choosing the second button in the top row would bring the pieces from the center top of the screen. Using the third button would have the pieces raining down from the entire top of the screen. The rest follow the same logic with their icons representing their direction. The only unusual one is the 37 third one in the third row,which will bring the effect in from every border of the screen. If this effect is used with a Reverse direction(on the Edit Bay Main Control panel),the illusion will be of the image exploding and leaving the screen. You can use the HELP key to bring up description of each of these buttons. The button with the C on it is the Custom Grid Path button. It will allow you to define your own custom origin and destination points. Clicking this will bring up a picture of your backdrop image(if there is one. Otherwise,only the background color will appear.) The Custon Grid Path is set by dragging a box around the area where you wish the effect to begin. Click and hold the left mouse button on the upper left corner of your start spot and drag it to the lower right corner,much like picking up a brush in popular paint programs. The size and position on the screen of the rectangle you create determines the dot,the effect will start out that small. After creating the "origin" box,repeat the process to determine the effects final position. If you wish the image to grow to full screen size,draw the second box around the entire screen. Specifying anything smaller will cause the entie screen image to be reduced to fit inside it. If you simply wish to have the whole effect(and screen)performed at a small size,just make both boxes the same by drawing the first,then clicking the right mouse button. When you first reach the custom path definition screen,clicking the right mouse button without drawing the first box will leave any previously defined custom path in effect. To the right of the Grid Origin buttons are three more modifications you can make. The top button,Grid Path Size:Normally,a moving effect remains the original, full size throughout. By clicking this button,you will make the effect start small,far off in the distance,and get closer and bigger. The next button,Horizontal Curve,will curve the path of many DVEs outward in a horizontal direction. Directly below it,Vertical Curve will do the same in a vertical direction. This does not affect all DVEs,so try them out using the PREVIEW on the DVE Effects Control panel to check. Next is the Ease panel. This area allows you to adjust how far the pieces of the screen will move between each frame of an effect. This might be desirable in a Strobed effect(See the DVE Effects Control panel),for example,when you want to tell ANIMagic how far away each strobe will be from the main image. The line represents the 1 to 1000 timing of an ANIM as described above in Progressive Delay. There are four marker boxes hanging from this line which allow you to control where frames will be compressed or expanded. 38 You may move these markers by clicking on them and holding with the left mouse button and then moving the mouse. If you set the markers close together,the frames will be eased closer together. Setting them farther apart will cause the frames to be spread further apart. If you were to set the markers as shown above,the first and last quarter of the animation will have their frames closer together and the middle half will be at a normal distance. The best way to understand this through a little experimentation:Make a Plain map with an upper-left corner origin. Try setting the Ease control in various ways and then use the Preview button(explained in Chapter 3 Section 3 Section Two)to see how different settings control the effect. Before you click the Forward button,press and hold down the Shift key on your keyboard. The effect will be rendered leaving all the frames on the screen so you can visually see the effect taking place. If you drag any marker past any other one,it will carry both or all of them to the final position you chose. Along the botton of this window are the Primitive Orientation controls. These button will orient the motion of an effect in the specified direction. Using the HBlind6.map,which is six horizontal blinds,it is easy to see the use of these buttons. Normally,this effect flips the blinds over progressively from top to bottom. By choosing the first button here,Core DVE Diagonal,rather than flipping the blinds as is normally done,they will rotate around a vertical axis(the long way). The second button,Core DVE Horizontal,will reverse any sideways rotation. In this blinds example,it has no effect. The final button, Core DVE Vertical,will cause the blinds to rotate in a clockwise direction rather than the normal counter clockwise. To exit the Grid Control window,click the close gadget in the upper left corner. You will be returned to the DVE Effects Control window. 39 THE 3D HIGH LEVEL CONTROL WINDOW The 3D High Level Control window is reached by choosing the 3D Stuff button in the upper right hand corner of the DVE Effects Control window. The button will be unavailable unless the DVE in use is a full 3-D effect. A full 3-D effect is one which has pieces which,when rotated,reveal a backside. The Box4.map is an example of a 3-D effect. The first control is for Viewer Distance. Here you may enter numbers which tell ANIMagic how far wway the viewer is from the 3-D effect taking place. Most DVEs use a default of 2000. This value conforms to the concept that ANIMagic sees both time and space as a continuum from 1 to 1000 as described in Progressive Delay on page 37. Lower numbers will move the viewer closer to the effect, resulting in a larger image and an exaggeration of the 3-D effect. Higher numbers move the viewer further away from the 3-D effect.(Each piece of an image,a single blind in a set for example,is considered to be 1000x1000.) Very large numbers,numbers below 500 or negative values may destroy certain effects, so be careful in their use. It's probably a good idea to PREVIEW your Viewer Distance settings. 40 Next is Front Orientation. The arrows facing left and right will turn the picture around on the front of the effect so that things on the left of the screen would now be on the right. It can also be used to give the illusion of seeing the image from the back. The up and down arrows will flip the image upside down. Try these variations using a sample image and the PREVIEW mode on the DVE Effects Control window. The Back Source pop-up menu contains 5 options: Backside-Will show the back of the image when it is turned around. Source One-Will put the Source One image on the back when it is turned around. Source Two-Will put the Source Two image on the back when it is turned around. Filled-Will put the background color on the backside of the image when it is turned around. Hidden-Will put nothing on the backside of the image when it is turned around. Back Orientation is identical to Front Orientation except for the obvious. If you are rotating an image around the horizontal axis,don't forget that the image on the back will be upside down. This is solved by flipping that image upside down with the up and down arrows. To see whether the image is correctly oriented for your effect,use PREVIEW from the DVE Effects Control window and render a frame which would show the backside. 41 THE BACKDROP CONTROL WINDOW The Backdrop Control window is reached by clicking the Backdrop button on the DVE Effects Control panel. It is used to choose what will fill the screen behind any effect you have chosen. First is the Backdrop image itself. This is a pop-up menu with the following options: Blank-Puts the background color behind your effect. Source One-Puts Source One behind your effect. Source Two-Puts Source Two behind your effect. Destination-Puts the Destination image behind your effect. If the image you put in the Backdrop is of a diffeent resolution or color palette than the sources in fromt of it,ANIMagic will have to re-draw the Backdrop with each frame. This could be a very time-consuming way to do it,so try to keep resolutions and palettes the same. Or,you can optimize the palettes using the Alternate Palette menu on the Edit Bay Main Control panel. This is explained in more detail in Chapter 5. The Shadows option in this panel lets you place a drop shadow beneath the pieces of an image as it moves. The Color button is a pop-up menu which allows you to choose the basic color of the shadow beneath your effect. The color you choose will be modified according to the Translucent setting beneath it. Here you can use percentages(0 to 100%)to tell ANIMagic how much you want to be able to see through the shadow .50% is the default and is the most common setting to use. A higher number makes the shadow more translucent while lower percentages 42 will make ti more visible. For any shadow to appear,you must have the DepthX (Dx:)and/or DepthY(Dy:)specified. If the shadow is the same color as the background,ANIMagic will render it even though you can't see it. Avoid doing this since it will take more time to render and will be invisible. The offset(the number of pixels to move from the original image)of the shadow is set with the DepthX and DepthY boxes right below it. Dx will offset the shadow in the left direction with a negative number,and the right direction using a positive number. It is measured in pixels. A DepthX setting of 5 would create a shadow which is 5 pixels wide and placed to the right of the image. Dy will offset the shadow up with a negative number and down with a positive number. If these are both set to 0,no shadow will be rendered. The right half of the Backdrop Control window controls various cropping choices. At the top is the Destination Placement pop-up menu. It has 5 options: FullSize-Will use the image within the specified overscan limit. No Overscan/Medium Overscan-Will take an image from no overscan,allow it to use medium overscan for the effect,and then return it to no overscan. No Overscan/Severe Overscan-Will take an image from no overscan,allow it to use severe overscan for the effect,and then return it to no overscan. Medium Overscan/Severe Overscan-Will take an image from medium overscan,allow it to use severe overscan for the effect,and then return it to medium overscan. Custom-Will take any size image and reduce or enlarge it to the size you specify. The custom cropping option can be used to create impressive effects like scrolling. The best way to understand how mixing different levels of overscan is to try it using the HBlind6.map with the PREVIEW BUTTON OF THE DVE Effects Control window. Notice that using any of the first four options will change the amount of the edge of the blinds that are cut off as they rotate. By letting effects "spill over" into overscan,you can create surprising full screen effects. A Custom Destination will place you on the destination background and allow you to draw a box in which the effect will take place. This is done in the usual way,clicking and holding the left mouse button at the upper left corner and dragging it to the bottom right of the area you wish to use. 43 If you want the destination placement to move rather than staying still,just hold down the SHIFT Key and click on Custom again after you return to the Backdrop Control panel. The last destination box you created will be displayed over the background image. By setting another destination box,you can tell ANIMagic that the image or ANIM moves from Box A to Box B smoothly throughout the final animation. Used in conjunction with the Crop Source One/Two options listed next,this function allows you to create smooth scrolling effects. Crop Source One allows you to specify a section of the Source One image to be used as the entire image. In this way,you could choose an area of text from a graphics screen,for example,and just that section will be blown up to full screen size(or to whatever size you have chosen in Destination Placement),and used in the effect. The remainder of the image will not. The Full Image option will use the entire screen from Source One. Custon allows you to draw a box around the area in Source One(which it will display)to use just as in Destination Placement above. Lets say,for instance,that you have a picture in Source One that you wish to pan across as its effects happens. This is quite simple to do. Set the starting position in the way described above by creating a box around a piece of the screen about 1 1/2 inches square. When you've set the first position and returned to the Backdrop Control window,hold SHIFT down and click again on Crop Source 1...Custom. The previous box you drew will still be displayed over the image. Draw another box,same size is best,over another part of the image that you want to be seen at the end of the scroll. Now,when the effect is rendered, you could have a square appearing to scroll as it sits still. If you want the square to move as the image scrolls inside it,use the Destination Placement... Custon setting as described above. The Crop Source Two pop-up menu operates in exactly the same way as Crop Source One above. When Full Image is used,all of the Source Two image will be used. Clicking on Custom will display whateve is in Source Two so you can drag a box around the area to enlarge. Both Source One and Source Two cropping tools might cause the new image to appear a bit blocky since ANIMagic is merely enlarging the pixels within the box. You can compensate for this by controlling the size of the effect using CUSTOM GRID sizing from the Grid Control window or by cropping the size of the Destination placement as described above. The Custom setting also allows you to do Source Two scrolling. This technique is done in exactly the same way as in Crop Source One above. Some remarkable scrolling and panning effects can be achieved with ANIMagic just by using the cropping tools on your Sources and Destination. 44 THE PALETTE WINDOW The Palette window is reached by clicking the Palette button on the Edit Bay Main Control panel. This palette represents the colors used by the current frame of Source One. Each frame of an animation may have its own color palette or this palette may be applied to any number of frames using the range settings on the main control panel. At the top of the Palette window are the standard Amiga color adjustment sliders. These allow you to create any one of the Amiga's 4,096 colors for use in your image. As you alter the Red,Green,and Blue sliders,the resulting color is displayed in a bar directly beneath. The color you wish to change is specified by clicking on a color box in the middle of the window. A box will appear around the color you choose. The number of colors displayed here is limited by the number of colors within your Source One buffer. In Lo and VidRes,32 colors are available. Med and HiRes offers 16 colors. Even if you are using HAM or Halfbrite,no more than 32 colors will be displayed here. Beneath the color boxes are a number of buttons for various operations. The first,Spread,is used by selecting a color,clicking the Spread button,and then selecting the color at which to end the spread. The colors between these two will change to a smooth spread of hues from the first color to the last. Next is Copy. Click on the color you wish to copy,click this button,and select 45 the position in the color palette to place the copy. Switch will trade color positions within the palette. Select one color you wish to move,click this button,and select the color to switch it with. The two colors will swap places and any parts of the image painted in these colors will be changed accordingly. Undo is the button at the bottom left,and as its name implies,it takes back the last thing you did. If you switched the wrong colors,for example,clicking this before clicking on anything else will switch the colors back to their original position. Reset will retun the palette to the colors it used when you opened it. If you change colors,exit the Palette window and then return to it,the colors will not revert to the old fomat when you click Reset. On the bottom right corner of the Palette window is a button with 5 asterisks. This is the Ham Spread. Clicking on it will bring up a bar along the bottom of the screen displaying all 4,096 colors. Clicking on any tint of this bar will show the color you are altering. It will also appear in a box to the right of the Ham Spread. Next to this is the original color of the box you are altering. If at anytime you wish to return that color to the box,just click on it. If you wish to employ the new color,click on its box. To exit the Palette window,just click on its close box in the upper left corner. This new palette will be applied to the frame currently displayed. To attach this palette to a range or the entire animation specify the range in the standard way and choose the Range Color button from the Main Control panel. You may also choose to have this palette smeared smoothly from a color palette in one frame to a color palette in another frame by specifying the range and clicking the Range Smear button,also on the main control panel. 46 THE COLOR CYCLING WINDOW The Color Cycling window is accessed by clicking the Cycle button on the Edit Bay Main Control panel. This allows you to specify ranges of colors that will cycle or shift positions within the palette during the animation. Along the top of this window is a spread of the colors used in the current frame of the buffer in Source One. Below this are 8 boxes with arrows in them. These are separate ranges. Each one is numbered on the left side and can be activated by clicking on these numbers. To set the range,click and drag the arrows to display the colors you wish to cycle. If you carry the left arrow past the right arrow,both will be moved. The colors displayed in the bar are the ones to be cycled. To the right of the ranges are timing boxes. Simply click on the diamond and slide it to the right to speed up the cycling for that range,or to the left to slow it down. Dragging this diamond will have no effect unless that range is turned on(the range number to the left is highlighted). You will see the colors travel within the color bar as well as in the portion of the picture that is visible. If you need to see the complete image when adjusting the cycle rates, click the Cycle Full Screen button on the bottom of this window. As long as this button is held down,any active ranges will cycle on the full screen image. To disable a cycle range,simply click on its number and turn it off. You may abort this screen without using any changes just by clicking the Cancel button on the bottom right corner of the window. OK will accept the changes you've specified and return you to the main control panel. A cycle range applies throughout the entire animation. 47 This window allows you to specify the transparency level of the colors within your Source One buffer and is reached by clicking on the Transparency button on the Main Control panel(the one with the "T" on it). Don't confuse it with the Strobe Translucency setting or the Shadow Translucency controls we've already discussed. Those controls have an effect only on Strobes and drop Shadows. As an example,if you have an image which sits in the middle of a black background, you can tell ANIMagic that you want to be able to see through the black by setting its transparency level to 100%. The colors you want to become transparent may be marked by clicking beneath the appropriate color in the black bars. A marker will appear beneath it to show it is selected. Along the left side of the screen are type boxes where transparency percentages may be specified. Entering a number from 1 to 100 in any of these will cause the colors you've selected on the scale to the right to have that level of transparency. A setting of 50% would cause the selected colors to be 50% transparent. A value of 100% would make those colors invisible. A colors transparency level may only be set once,so you could not set a red to 50% in one box,and then set the same red to 100% in another. To make sure the colors you've specified are the ones you mean to use,click and hold the left mouse button on the color bar directly above the marker(s). The full screen image will appear with the color(s) you've specified flashing black and white. Keep in mind that ANIMagic only has the current palette to work with to achieve transparency effects. When you select a color and specify a transparency value, ANIMagic will try to pick the best color available in the palette to achieve the effect. For example,if you specify a transparency level for black the effect will be rendered better if there are some grays available in the palette. 48 THE ALTENATE PALETTE MENU The Alternate Palette menu is located at the top of the main control panel screen. You can reach it by using the right(menu)mouse button. A new palette selected from these options may be substituted for any other palette,such as setting special colors for certain DVE mapping effects,etc. This Alternate palette may be designated in a number of ways. The Set To submenu allows you to set the Alternate palette to be the palette within either Source One,Source Two,or the Destination. You may apply the alternate palette directly to Source One,getting rid of the original one by using the Store to S1 menu option. The Optimize sub-menu will take the alternate palette and the palette(s) you specify and come up with a palette which most closely resembles both or all of them. This allows you to use pictures that have different palettes,letting ANIMagic automatically create a new palette for the Destination which will best display both pictures. These options are: Source One -Optimizes current alternate palette & Source One. Source Two -Optimizes current alternate palette & Source Two. Dest -Optimizes current alternate palette & Destination. S1+S2 -Optimizes Source One and Source Two. S1+D -Optimizes Source One and Destination. S2+D -Optimizes Source Two and Destination. S1+S2+D -Optimizes Source One,Source Two,and Destination. Choosing Edit will bring up a Palette window where you may modify the colors of the Alternate palette in the same way as the Palette window described earlier in this chapter. (Make sure that the palette in the buffers you are optimizing are the correct ones. If your ANIM starts with a black screen and brings an image on screen,the palette you should use is the first one after the image appears. Othewise,the entire palette might be black.) 49 THE PROJECT MENU The Project menu of the main control panel allows you to save and load files, eliminate them from memory,and do other useful things. About-This option will display the ANIMagic title screen. It contains information on the program's version number and author. Open Still/ANIM-This option will take you to the standard file requester for the purpose of loading in a new IFF image or ANIM animation. Once loaded,an image or ANIM will appear as the active one in Source One and will be available in the pop-up menus in both Source Two and the Destination. Don't worry about accidentally selecting a file that isn't a picture or an ANIM because ANIMagic will simply tell you that it can't load that file. Open DVE File-This option allows you to load in a new DVE Effect. All of these maps are on your ANIMagic Data One disk in the DVEMaps directory. Create-This option allows you to create an empty buffer in memory. This is an important step when recording any new animation. Simply choose the screen size and type then click OK to use it. The first buffer you make in this way will be name NEWBUFFERA and each one after it will be named NEWBUFFERB and so on. Destroy-This will eliminate the picture or ANIM in Source One provided there will still be another buffer with frames available in memory. Remember that a brand new buffer added with the Create function above has no frames unless you add them,therefore it will not count as the one required. It's a good idea to destroy any buffers which contain images or ANIMs you've decided not to use, since each one consumes memory. Save Still-This will save whatever frame is currently displayed in the Source One buffer(even a frame of an animation)as an IFF image with an icon. A standard file requester will appear asking for a directory and name to use. Save ANIM-This will save whatever is in Source One as an ANIM format animation. A standard file requester will appear asking for a directory and name to use. Save DVE File-This will save the current DVE,allowing you to direct its path for saving with a standard file requester. It allows you to customize a DVE effect and then reload it anytime you'd like. 50 Save Project-This brings up the Project Information window which allows you to set directory paths for your files and save it as an icon which you can use to boot a custom version of ANIMagic. Here you may also designate the default tool for your projects,ANIMs and still pictures. Setting an ANIM's tool to ShowANIM will cause it to load ShowANIM from the icon and run the ANIM. You may also choose whether or not ANIMs and pictures will even have icons when saved by clicking on the icon boxes to the right of the Default tool type boxes. If "icon" is highlighted,icon creation is turned on. Choosing not to have an icon will save a small amount of memory on a disk. (See your Amiga Owners manual for more information on icons and default tools.) The Project Information window also lets you choose the type of ANIM compression to use on the ANIMs you Record to disk. A number of them are available in the ANIM COMP pop-up menu,with Byte Vertical being the newest and most efficient. The others are supplied to match older ANIM formats so editing 51 them will not result in mixed compression formats. You may choose to either Save these settings,or simply Use them in the current session. Cancel will negate all changes. When you do a Save,a new Project icon for ANIMagic will be created. When you reload ANIMagic using the new icon,it will use all of the directory paths you specified. Record-Record allows you to save an ANIM to disk,placing frames onto a disk rather than into the Destination buffe. Record will use the compression method designated in the Project Information window. Choosing Create a ANIM file will begin an ANIM in the resolution currently set in the Destination buffer(eg. 320x200x6 HAM)and allow you to name your file. When a disk ANIM is opened,a white checkmark will appear next to this option. Append Frame will add the current image from Source One to the end of the disk ANIM. It may also be accomplished by pressing RETURN on your keyboard. Append Range will do the same thing but using the range specified in Source One rather than the current frame. Finally,Close ANIM File will end the ANIM recording process. If you do not close the file,it will be incomplete and won't be able to play it. You will also not be allowed to exit ANIMagic,while a disk ANIM is open. Sleep-Choosing the Sleep menu option will cause ANIMagic to release nearly all of the chip RAM is use by the program and return you to the Workbench or CLI with a short title bar named ANIMagic. This may also be accomplished by pressing the ESC key of your keyboard. To reawaken ANIMagic,click on the close gadget of the title bar. This will let you run other programs which need a lot of chip RAM while ANIMagic is asleep. Any files open at the time you put ANIMagic to sleep will still be there when you wake it up. If ANIMagic is asleep and you wish to quit the program,just hold the SHIFT key while clicking on the close gadget and you will be taken directly to the quit verification requester. 52 CHAPTER - FOUR TUTORIALS This chapter will guide you through four different lessons to help you better understand some of the features of ANIMagic. These tutorials assume you are already familiar with some of the basics,like the location of buttons and etc. They use images created with Aegis Images paint program,as well as ANIMs created with Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint III. Any images or ANIMs needed are stored on the ANIMagic Data One disk in the PICS or ANIMS drawers unless otherwise mentioned. Have a blank,formatted disk ready to save your work on. GETTING A FRESH START In order to reset any ANIMagic parameters you may have changed in the program, and to correct any memory fragmentation which might have occurred if you've been using the computer for awhile,we suggest that you reboot and begin each of these tutorials with a "clean memory slate." This is especially important if you are using a 1 megabyte Amiga. Put your copy of the ANIMagic Program disk in DF0:and your copy of the ANIMagic Data One disk in DF1:and reboot your computer.(If you have a second drive. If you only have one drive,don't worry,you'll just need to swap disks a couple of times later.) Double click on the disk icon labeled ANIMagic and then double click again on the icon named ANIMagic. 53 After a moment,ANIMagic's title screen will appear. Click once with the left mouse button on the title screen or press any key to proceed. A file requester will appear asking you to load the first file. The operation of this requester is explained in Chapter 1. It is impossible for ANIMagic to operate unless you specify an active file. "THE SLIDING DINO" (Approx. 40 minutes) Saving an effect into a RAM buffer. Using Grid,Progressive Delay,Border,and Timing Controls. Single frame splicing. Saving a new DVE. 1)Select the picture named Stegosaurus.PIC from the Data One disk and click on OPEN to load it into memory.(If you have only one drive,you will have to switch disks to complete this step.) After the picture has been loaded ANIMagic's Edit Bay Main Control panel will appear. You'll also notice that the colors of the picture don't seem right. This is because ANIMagic supports two active color palettes,one for the control panel and one for the currently displayed picture or ANIM. Put your pointer on the picture anc click the left mouse button once to switch palettes,then switch back by clicking on the control panel. 2)Click once with the left mouse button on the diamond button located on the lower right corner of the panel to extend the main control panel. 3)Click on the button labeled No Map and drag it to DVE Mapping. This will take us to the Digital Video Effects(DVE)Control window. A DVE map is used whenever you wish to perform some sort of special effect on an image or ANIM. The map simply tells ANIMagic how to manipulate the image using effects such as page turns,rotating cubes,etc. Notice that under Core DVE:is a button labeled Plain. This plain DVE,as its description right below it explains,is used to copy an exact duplicate from the Source to the Destination. This file can be altered in a number of ways,but let's try the other effects with a more interesting map. 54 4)Choose Open DVE from the Project menu. The file requester will appear. Open the DVEMaps directory on your ANIMagic program disk. 5)Select the file named SlideIn.map and click on LOAD. 6)Click on the PREVIEW button on the lower right corner of the screen to see what this basic effect looks like. The screen will go black and a wire frame representation of the picture will fly in and then settle. The preview may seem a little jerky,so let's add a few more frames. 7)Click in the box next to No.Frames:in the middle of the screen. Backspace over the 0 there,type 15 and hit Return. This tells ANIMagic to use 15 frames to complete the effect. So if we had zero before,how did we see any frames? Because ANIMagic always uses 10 frames to preview any effect if you haven't entered an amount in the No.Frames box,so 0 played 10 frames. If you had tried to render,or make an animation out of the effect,it would have simply displayed the image and returned to the panel. 8)Now click PREVIEW again to see the same effect in 15 frames. The slide-in is now quite a bit smoother. 9)Click on the Grid button to bring up the Grid Control window. 10)In the Width and Height type boxes,change the 1s to 2s. This will tell ANIMagic that instead of one panel(a 1x1 screen)coming in,four panels(a 2x2 screen)will. Let's go back and take a look at this. 11)Close the Grid Control window. 12)Click on the PREVIEW button. Notice that all four of the panels move at the same speed. Fo some effects this may be fine,but let's try modifying it. 13)Go back to the Grid Control window by clicking again on Grid. 55 14)In the Progressive Delay type box,change the 0 to 100. This will tell ANIMagic that 1/10th of the way through the effect the second piece of the picture will appear,and then 1/10 after that the third will appear, and so on. In ANIMagic,all animations are considered to be a length of time equal to "1000." This has nothing to do with the number of frames you specify,but is the way the program looks at the effect. That's where the 100 comes in -1/10th of 1000. This whole concept is discussed in the Chapter 4 description of Progressive Delay,but perhaps the best way to understand this for now is to see it,so let's go back and take a look. 15)Close the Grid Control window by clicking the close gadget on the upper-left corner. 16)Select PREVIEW and watch the difference we've made in the effect Let's save this DVE effect so that we can use it anytime without having to rebuild it. We don't want to save this effect over the old SlideIn.map,so we'll make a copy of it and change the name and description of the effect. 17)Click on Clone from the lower-left corner of the DVE window. The DVE description window will appear. 18)Give the new DVE its new name:Slidein4 19)Place your cursor in the Name:edit box after "SlideIn"and type "4." 20)Now,click in the bottom type box and change the description to say "to the viewer in 4 pieces." 21)When you've finished,click Use. 22)Select Save DVE from the Project menu. Change the name to "SlideIn4" in the file name area and click Save. Let's add a colored outline to each piece of our effect. 23)click on the Outline button to turn it on. 24)Click on the Outline Color pop-up menu and choose a color for your border. Yellow might be nice. 25)Click on MANUAL. 56 The screen will blank and a DVE PREVIEW panel will appear. 26)Clicking on the red arrow facing right(the Preview Step Forward button) advances the effect by one frame. The frame number appears in the center of the panel. In this way,advance to frame 13. You'll see the wire-frame version of the effect progress as you do this.(If you hold down the SHIFT key while stepping though the frames,each wire-frame will remain on the screen even after you advance to the next frame.) 27)Click on the blue box to the left of the frame number(the Preview Render button)and during the next few moments you will see that frame rendered. 28)Close the DVE Manual Preview panel by using its close box. 29)Close the DVE Effects Control window using the close box. Now,before we can render our effect,we must create a buffer(an area in memory) to store the animation. 30)Choose Create from the Project menu on the main control panel. This will bring up the Screen Settings window. Here you can specify the size of buffer into which you want to record. Since the picture we are using is a low resolution screen(320x200),you'll use the same size.(If you are using a PAL Amiga system click PAL instead of the default NTSC. These different television standards are explained further in Chapter 1.) 31)Click the OK button to accept the default settings. 32)In the Destination pop-up menu,click and move to NEWBUFFERA. This tells ANIMagic to put all of the finished frames in the empty buffer you just created. 33)Click on the Apply Append button above the Destination(laveled with a blue arrow and a blue block to the left of the R). A verifier will appear with the following statement: APPEND SOURCE RANGE TO END OF DESTINATION FILE This means that you are going to paste the frames created by the effect onto the end of the Destination buffer(which is now completely empty). 57 34)Click DO IT! to begin rendering. The screen will go blank and shortly thereafter ANIMagic will display the first frame. After a frame is rendered,the screen will flash. This is to let you know that the frame is done and the program is taking a snapshot of it for the animation. The screen will then flash again and display the original picture and switch quickly back to another screen to render the next frame. All of this flashing is the progam switching from one buffer to another doing its work. Don't be surprised to see your Workbench or CLI screen briefly during these switches. If you click the left mouse button during rendering the process will abort,not save the current frame,and return you to the main control panel. Pressing the HELP key during rendering will tell you wish frame is currently being worked on as well as which images from sources 1 and 2 are being used. This effect will take a few minutes to render. When the effect is finished,the main control panel will reappear. 35)OK,it's done! Let's take a look at it now. Change Source One(S1:)to NEWBUFFERA by using the Source One pop-up menu. 36)Now play the animation by pressing the single red arrow on the top row of the panel. 37)Click the left mouse button to stop the animation. 38)Specify the entire range (1->15)of the new ANIM by using the Range Forward and Range Rewind buttons. 39)Click the Source Destination Swap button. Notice that NEWBUFFERA(back in the Destination now)has its entire range selected(1->15). 40)Choose STEGOSAURUS.PIC in the Source One pop-up menu. 41)Choose No Mapping from the Map pop-up menu. Now we've got things just the way we want them. The dinosaur picture is being used as Source One,our sliding ANIM(NEWBUFFERA)is in the Destination with its 58 entire range selected and we've chosen no map. 42)Click on the Apply Append button. Now click DO IT! We've appended the original picture to the end of our ANIM as an additional frame. Notice that the range under the Destination still shows only frames 1 ->15 selected. We're about to make this a looping ANIM so we need NEWBUFFERA back in Source One to select its entire range,then make it loop. Move the Destination buffer (NEWBUFFERA)back into Source One with the Source/Destination Swap button. Now use the Range Forward button and you'll see the range change from 1 ->16. The bits and pieces that appeared when you played the ANIM are caused by remnants. Because the ANIM compression technique only saves the differences that occur between each frame,the last frame does not have the right information to tell the first frame how to erase it and leaves unwanted pieces of the image on the screen. Now let's fix it by using the AutoLoop button. Make sure that you have NEWBUFFERA in Source One with its entire range selected. 43)Click on the Infinite Loop button(an eight on its side)beneath the Frame number. A verifier appears with the following statement: APPEND FIRST TWO FRAMES TO END OF SOURCE BUFFER The first two frames of the ANIM will be added to its end. It will then loop properly. It will not reduce the number of fames,but instead increase their number by 2. 44)Choose DO IT! and ANIMagic will display the first frame of the animation and flash. It will shift a bit and flash again.(The first two frames of your animation are blank,so don't worry about not seeing anything.)This is letting you know it has taken snapshots of the first two frames and copied them to the end of the animation. The animation will now leep without displaying any remnants. 45)Click Play again(single red arrow on the top row). The animation now finishes and clears the screen before looping,making a clean effect. It's still pretty fast,so let's slow it down a little bit. 46)Press the left mouse button to stop the animation and return to the control panel. 59 47)The last button on the right side of the second row of buttons is marked with two arrows facing right(The Fast Forward button). Click the left mouse button on this and the number next to it will change to 18(over 15 frame ANIM, the frame we added plus the two frames added by using Autoloop). We have changed the last frame of the range to the end of the animation,or frame 18. The first frame is marked in the same place on the left side of the control panel. At the moment it should read 1,meaning the first frame. 48)Click in the Time type box(next to the Frame window)and change the 0 to 5. This tells ANIMagic that the current frame will be displayed for 5 jiffies(5/60ths of a second NTSC or 5/50ths of a second PAL). 49)Directly beneath the Time window is a button marked with a blue arrow pointing down at a red line,called the Apply Append button. Clicking this places the Time value above it onto each frame in the range. Click it to change the speed in every frame to match the current one. A verifier will appear with the following statement: SET TIMING OF ALL FRAMES IN SOURCE RANGE TO CURRENT FRAME TIMING 50)Click DO IT! 51)When the control panel reappears after about a second,click the Play button again. The animation now plays at a slower speed,with 5 jiffies between each frame. While this will change the length of time the ANIM plays,it will not change the file size in any way. Our animation is complete. You may save it on disk if you'd like to keep it: 52)Insert the disk you've been saving to in any drive. 53)Choose Save as ANIM from the Project menu,direct the file requester to that disk,name the ANIM and click Save. Congratulations! You've just created another ANIMagic effect! Before we go on,let's get some memory back by getting rid of NEWBUFFERA. 54)Make sure NEWBUFFERA is in Source One. 60 55)Choose Destroy from the Project menu. Click DO IT! Now only STEGOSAURUS.PIC is still in memory. "THE DOORS TO THE CASTLE" (Approx. 30 minutes) Using different images in Source One and Source Two The previous tutorial showed you how to create an effect using one image as it slid in over a black screen. While this is file,there are times when you may want the effect to occur on top of another image. This effect will give the illusion of two doors with the image of the City Hall on them opening to reveal a castle beneath it. 1)Choose Open Still/ANIM from the Project menu of the main control panel. 2)Select the file CASTLE.PIC from the ANIMagic Data One PICS directory and click Open. 3)In the same way,load the picture file named CityHall.PIC. 4)If the Edit Bay is not already expanded(showing Source Two and Destination), do so now by clicking on the diamond in the lower right corner of the panel. 5)Make sure that CITYHALL.PIC is in Source One and CASTLE.PIC in Source Two. 6)Go to the DVE Effects Control panel by choosing DVE Mapping from the NoMap pop-up menu. 7)Choose Open DVE from the Project menu. Click on the DVEMaps directory on the main program disk and load the Doors2.Map. 8)Set the No. Frames to 12. This will cause the effect to take 12 frames to complete. You could make this a larger number if you want the effect to appear smoother,but since we are trying to conserve both memory and time we'll keep the number of frames low. 9)Close the DVE Effects Control window by clicking on the close box gadget. 10)You should record this ANIM to disk by choosing the Create ANIM File option 61 from the Record item in the Project menu. Call the file CITYDOORS.ANIM and put it on a blank,formatted disk. Click DO IT! Next,click on the stylized red R above Destination to begin recording the file to disk and click DO IT! from the verifier. 11)When the animation is finished,choose Close ANIM File from the Project Record sub-menu to end it properly. 12)Make sure CASTLE.PIC is on top of the Source One pop-up menu and choose Destroy from the Project menu. This will get rid of that image and clear out some memory. 13)Reload CITYDOORS.ANIM from your disk using the Open Still/ANIM option from the Project menu. 14)Make sure CITYDOORS.ANIM is in Source One and click on the Infinite Loop button to make it a looping animation. Click DO IT! from the verifier. The Main Control panel will reappear. 15)Click on the Play button to watch the effect. Notice that as soon as the doors are all the way open at the end of the animation,they just reappear in the next frame with no pause. Let's set the last frame of the ANIM to hold still for a while. 16)Change the current frame number to 12 by typing 12 in the Frame type box. Press RETURN. Frame 12 will now be displayed.(There are actually 14 frames in the animation now,but the last two frames are copies of the first two frames we created when we selected Infinite Loop.) 17)Set the Time to 60 for Frame 12. This will cause the last frame of the effect to hold for about a second. 18)Click Play again and watch the final effect. 19)Go ahead and save this ANIM to disk with the same name,with its new settings for timing and looping. Further ideas for this effect include using ANIMs in place of one or both of the still images. Or,you could have the doors shut again while displaying a different picture. (You can make them shut by choosing Backwards from the DVE Effects Control window.) The doors could keep opening and closing displaying a different picture or ANIM each time. That would make quite a slideshow,but it would also be very large. 62 Using Progressive Delay you could make one door open late than the other. Various Flip and Reverse commands will cause the direction of opening to change. Many things are possible,and these are just a few simple ideas. Come up with your own by experimenting with the various controls. "THE BOX WITH MANY FACES" (Approx. 35 minutes) Using the Box2.map Appending ANIMs It would be a good idea to reboot your Amiga and reload ANIMagic at this time. This will clear up any memory fragmentation which might have occurred and will set the buffer lettering back to NEWBUFFERA. This is very important since we will have as many as three buffers active in this tutorial and things might otherwise get a little confusing. 1)First open the RING.ANIM and then the BOX.ANIM from the ANIM directory of ANIMagic Data One. Play each one to see what they do. 2)Open up the Edit Bay Main Control panel by clicking on the diamond Edit Bay button. 3)Make sure that BOX.ANIM is in Source One and set its range to be the entire length of the animation,1 ->22,using the ranging buttons. 4)Now put RING.ANIM in Source One and set its range to be the entire length of the animation,1 ->22,using the ranging buttons. This tells ANIMagic that the effect we will be using will use all the frames of the animations. 5)Insure that RING.ANIM is in Source One and that BOX.ANIM is in Source Two. Use the Source One and Source Two pop-up menus to select them if necessary. When we run these ANIMs through the Box2.map in a moment,this will put the RING.ANIM on the front of the box and will rotate the box to reveal the BOX.ANIM on the side. 6)Using the Create option from the Project menu of the Main Control panel, 63 creat a LoRess 320x200 buffer with 3 bitplanes. You can specify only 3 bitplanes by clicking in the Depth type box and changing the 5 to a 3. Click on OK. 7)Specify NEWBUFFERA in the Destination pop-up menu. This lets ANIMagic know that we plan to record into NEWBUFFERA. 8)Choose DVE Mapping from the Map pop-up menu between the sources. You'll be taken to the DVE Effects Control window. 9)Use Open EVE from the Project menu and load Box2.map from the DVEMaps directory of the program disk. This map takes Source One and places it on the front of a box and then rotates it to show Source Two on the next face. 10)Set the number of frames to 22 under Global Settings. This number will let each of our two ANIMs run exactly its full length. 11)Return to the main control panel by closing the DVE Effects Control window. 12)Click on the Apply Append button above the Destination buffer to begin recording. Click on DO IT! from the verifier that appears. The images will start being mapped on the box. You'll notice that this effect is rendered in the center of the screen and does not take up the entire screen. Since the images are being crunched to fit into this small portion of the screen,they won't be quite as sharp as the originals. This effect will take about 5 minutes to complete. When it is finished,you'll be returned to the main control panel. 13)Move NEWBUFFERA to Source One using the Source/Destination Swap button to the right of Destination. The two buffers,Source One and Destination,will trade positions. 14)Press Play to view the animation you just made. Remnants will appear after it plays through once. Don't worry about this for 64 now. It would be nice if this cube turned back to the original picture,putting it on the top of the cube. That way,when the animation loops,it will seem as though the cube is displaying the alternating images on all sides of the cube. We'll attach that in a minute,but for now we should save this one. Let's go ahead and save the ANIM to a blank,formatted disk. Even if you have plenty of memory,you should do this step as we'll be working later with connecting ANIMs and will need this one. 15)Choose Save ANIM from the Project menu. 16)Name the file BoxPartOne.ANIM and save it onto your blank disk or hard drive. If you have 2 Megabytes or more of memory,you might get into the habit of placing temporary ANIMs in RAM:,but if you have less than that,you shouldn't waste the memory on it. Just save ANIMs your working on to disk. 17)When ANIMagic is done saving and you've been returned to the main control panel,choose Destroy from the Project menu. Click on DO IT! to confirm. This wil give us back the memory that had been taken up by the animation in NEWBUFFERA so we can record the next part. 18)Next,click the Source Swap button to move BOX.ANIM into Source One and RING.ANIM into Source Two. Since BOX.ANIM was onside two of the cube and is now at side one,we've put it on side one for the next part of the rotation. This will mean that instead of rolling from RING.ANIM to BOX.ANIM,ANIMagic will roll BOX.ANIM to RING.ANIM. 19)Create another 320x200x3 bitplane buffer with no overscan using the Create item in the Project menu. NEWBUFFERB will be created. We had to create a new one because we just deleted our old one. 20)Select NEWBUFFERB for the Destination. 21)Go to the DVE Effects Control window. 22)Click on the Diagonal Flip button(the diagonal arrows)and choose PREVIEW below it. 65 The wire frame effect will be shown. Notice that while it does rotate around a horizontal axis now,it is showing us the bottom. It really makes no difference, but we'd like it to rotate to the top. 23)Click on the Vertical Flip button(the up/down arrows)and choose PREVIEW again. Notice that the box now rotates to display the top. We want the entire animation to appear fairly smooth,so we'll leave the number of frames at 22. 24)Return to the main control panel by closing the DVE Effects Control panel. 25)Choose Apply Append from above the Destination again to start recording. Click DO IT! to verify your choice. The new effect will now be rendered. It will take about 5 minutes to complete. 26)Use the Source/Destination Swap button to put NEWBUFFERB in Source One. 27)Click the Play button and watch the animation. While ignoring the remnants,you'll notice that the effect rotates to the top as we specified. Now all that's left to do is connect the two pieces together. But first,let's save this part. 28)Choose Save ANIM from the Project menu. 29)Save this animation as BoxPartTwo.ANIM on the same disk as the last one. When you're back at the main control panel,set a range for this ANIM(it will still be called NEWBUFFERB)from 1 to 22(the full length of the ANIM)so all of the animation is used. Since we want to paste our two ANIMs together,don't Destroy this buffer. 30)Open the BoxPartOne.ANIM you saved earlier from the Project menu. 31)Select BoxPartOne.ANIM from the Destination buffer pop-up menu. 32)In the same way,select NEWBUFFERB ANIM for Source One. We ae going to append the Source One animation(which is NEWBUFFERB)to the end of BoxPartOne.ANIM. We don't want to use anything but straight mapping,so let's 66 turn off the DVE maps. 33)Change the Map pop-up menu to No Map. 34)Finally,click the Apply Append button above Destination to do the recording and click DO IT! to confirm. This process will take much less time than the original rendering since the frames are already generated. All it is doing is copying the images to the Destination. This step will take about 2 minutes. When it is finished you'll be returned to the Main Control panel. 35)Use the Source/Destination Swap button to put the modified BoxPartOne.ANIM back into Source One. 36)Press the Play button to watch the animation. 37)Click the left mouse button in the center of the screen to return to the main control panel. There are still some remnants at the end of the ANIM. 38)Fix these by clicking on the Infinite Loop button below the frame number and click DO IT! to confirm. This will copy the first two frames to the end of the animation so that it will loop properly. It will take a moment or two and then the main control panel will reappear. Our animation is finished. 39)Choose Save ANIM from the Project menu of the main control panel and save the file with any new name you choose. Congratulations! You've just made an wonderful effect. Try experimenting with this tutorial. Try different ANIMs or single images. Use other directions. Or, for a very strange effect,record this ANIM onto a face of the cube. The results are surprising and fascinating! 67 "THE BALL OF FIRE" (Aprox. 15 minutes) Splicing an ANIM between frames of another ANIM. Using the APPEND BEFORE button During this tutorial,we'll take one animation and paste it into the middle of another ANIM. This might require a lot of careful re-rendering using other products,but with ANIMagic we can do it with just a few mouse clicks. 1)Boot up ANIMagic and load both the BALLFLY.ANIM and the BALLCHANGE.ANIM from the Data One disk. 2)Go ahead and play each animation. You'll notice that these ANIMs have color cycling turned on to add to the effect. BALLFLY brings a red ball to the center of the screen and then the ball flies off. BALLCHANGE,on the other hand,appears in the center of the screen,explodes like the Sun for a moment and then returns to being a ball. We'll now put the exploding ball into the center of the fly-in animation. 3)Make sure that BALLFLY is in Source One and BALLCHANGE in Source Two. 4)Specify a range within BALLFLY from frame 9 through frame 9. This is done by entering 9 in the Range Start box on the left side of the main control panel and a 9 in the Range End on the right. 5)Move BALLFLY into the Destination buffer. Now the range indicator below the Destination buffer size displays the range: 9 ->9. 6)Put BALLCHANGE into the Source One buffer. 7)If you started this tutorial after exploring ANIMagic a bit,you may have a DVE map set up. For this straight edit,we're not going to use a map,so choose No Map from the Map button on the main control panel. 8)Specify the entire range of BALLCHANGE(frames 1 ->15). Just click on the Range Rewind button to the left of the Range Start box to set Start to the first frame. Do the same using the Range Fast Forward to the right of the Range End box to set the End to the end of the animation. We're getting things set up so that the entire animation in Source One will be placed before frame 9 of the Destination animation,BALLFLY. 68 9)Finally,we need to do the actual construction. Click the Apply Before button (blue arrow pointing down to left side of a red bar. This will place all of BALLCHANGE just before(Apply Before)frame 9 of the Destination ANIM. This will take about 5 minutes to finish. If the screen goes blank,don't worry! When the pasting is finished,the control panel will reappear. If you need to abort the operation for any reason,just click the right mouse button to return to the control panel. 10)When ANIMagic is finished,put the new BALLFLY back in the Source One buffer and play it. Notice that the ball now flies in to the center of the screen,makes its changes,and then flies off the screen. As you can see,the ability to edit and splice ANIMs can be very useful! 11)To save this ANIM,choose Save ANIM from the Project menu of the main control panel and name and save your ANIM. 69 THIS PAGE IS BLANK. 70 CHAPTER 6 - EXPERIMENTING WITH ANIMAGIC The following experiments will give you an idea of some of the uses for the powerful commands ANIMagic offers. They assume that you now know your way around the program pretty well and simply list the steps needed to complete an effect. Any images or ANIMs needed are stored in the ANIMagic Data One PICS or ANIMS drawers. "THE BOX AND RING ARE JOINED" (Approx. 35 minutes) Overlaying Two ANIMs 1)Open RING.ANIM. 2)Open BOX.ANIM. 3)Set ranges for both ANIMs to include the entire ANIM. Select each one in the Source One pop-up menu,then set the range using the range controls. 4)Put RING.ANIM in Source One. 5)Put BOX.ANIM in Destination. 6)Choose a Plain DVE Map and make sure DVE Mapping is on. 7)Set the Transparency for Black(color one)to 100%. 71 8)Use Apply Over button which lays the Source One range over the Destination range. Your new ANIM is now being created. This will take about 20 minutes or so. 9)When main control panel returns move the Destination buffer(BOX.ANIM)to Source One by using the Source/Destination Swap button. 10)Make it a looping ANIM using the Infinite Loop button. 11)Save to disk with a new name. "THE EXPANDING LOGO" (Approx. 20 minutes) Applying a DVE to a picture file Chaining ANIMs Together First we'll create an ANIM with a picture file using the Basic_Expand.map. This will create an ANIM which starts with a small picture which gets bigger. 1)Open the picture file called AEGISLOGO.PIC. 2)Expand the Edit Bay Main Control panel. 3)Set the color black(color 0)to 100% Transparency. 4)Choose DVEMap from Map pop-up menu. The DVE Effects Control panel will appear. 5)Choose Open DVE from the Project menu. 6)Load the DVE Basic_Expand.map using the file requestor. 7)Under Global Settings set the number of frames to 10. 8)Close the DVE Effects Control panel. 9)From the Main Control Panel Project menu choose Record...Create ANIM file and name it Expand.ANIM on a blank,formatted disk. 72 10)Click on the Record to Disk button(stylized red R)to save the ANIM on Disk. When the animation is finished,return to the DVE Effects Control panel,but leave the disk file open. Now we'll add new frames to the open disk ANIM we just made(we haven't closed it yet). This time we'll start with the picture full size,and run the same effect backwards so that it shrinks down in size instead of getting bigger. 11)Choose Backward instead Forward from the DVE Effects Control panel. Leve the No.Frames at 10. 12)Close the DVE window and return to the main control panel. 13)Use the Record to Disk button(stylized R)to append the new effect to the open ANIM on disk. The new effect will be rendered and saved to disk one frame at a time. 14)Close the disk ANIM using Record...Close ANIM file from the Project menu. 15)Destroy all the buffers other than AEGISLOGO.PIC. 16)Load EXPAND.ANIM(the one we just created). 17)Make it repeat using the Infinite Loop button. 18)Save it again with same filename. 19)Run it! STACKING EFFECTS (Approx. 30 minutes) Running an ANIM effect through another effect 1)Destroy all buffers othe than AEGISLOGO.PIC. 2)Load EXPANDLOGO.ANIM. 3)Set range to encompass the complete ANIM. 4)Play the ANIM so you can see what it does. 73 5)Set the Transparency for black(color 0)to 100%. 6)Choose DVE Mapping from the Map pop-up menu. 7)From the DVE Effects Control panel,choose Open DVE from the Project menu. 8)Using the File Requester,load BOX4.MAP. 9)Set the No.Frames to 20. 10)Close the DVE Effects Control panel. 11)Choose Record...Create ANIM file from the Project menu and name it EXPANDBOX4.ANIM. 12)Record the new ANIM to disk using Record to Disk option. 13)The effect will take a while to rende. When finished,the Main Control panel will reappear. 14)Choose Record...Close ANIM file from the Project menu. 15)Destroy the EXPANDLOGO.ANIM in Source One in order to free up memory to load the new ANIM you've created. 16)Load EXPANDBOX4.ANIM into Source One. 17)Set the range to encompass the complete ANIM. 18)Make it a repeating ANIM using the Infinite Loop button. 19)Save it again with the same filename. 20)Run it. It runs too fast. We can slow it down by inserting jiffies between each frame. 21)Click in the Time Edit Box and change the 0 to 8(we're inserting a delay of 8/60ths of a second between each frame). 22)Click on the Range Time button which sets the timing for all frames to the timing of the current frame. 23)Run it again. 74 24)Resave to disk with same filename. Using Color Controls (Approx. 5 minutes) 1)Delete all buffers except AEGISLOGO.PIC. 2)Load BOX4EXPAND.ANIM from disk if it isn't already loaded. 3)Set the current frame to frame 1 in the Frame type box. 4)Set the range of frames from 1 to 20. 5)Bring up the palette control and change the white Aegis to a solid blue(Blue 15,Red 0,Green 0)and the red slash to solid yellow(Blue 0,Red 15,Green 15). 6)Set the color as a spread from the first frame to last using the Range Smear button on the right below the Palette control. 7)Run the ANIM with the new color effect. 8)If you'd like to,save the ANIM with the color effect with a new filename. TURNING AN ANIM FRAME INTO AN IFF PICTURE FILE (Approx. 5 minutes) 1)Make sure you have an ANIM loaded in Source One. 2)Select the frame of the ANIM you wish by setting the current frame number in the Frame type box. 3)Set the range to encompass only that frame of the ANIM(eg. 1 ->1 or 8 ->8). 4)Create a new buffer with the same resolution specifications as your ANIM frame. 5)Put the new buffer in the Destination. 6)Go to DVE Mapping and choose No Mapping. 75 7)Set the Palette to the S1 Palette. 8)Use the Apply Append button to copy the single frame into the new buffer. 9)Move the new buffer to Source One using the Source/Destination Swap button. It is now a single-frame IFF picture in Source One which you can treat like any other. You can run it through a DVE effect or save it to disk. APPENDIX A - USING SHOWANIM ShowANIM,located on the Data One disk,is a freely-distributable utility program for playing ANIMs from the CLI. It will play any file which uses the ANIM file format. To use ShowANIM,open up a CLI and type ShowANIM for a list of instructions. Usage:ShowANIM{-L} {-C} {+#} FILENAME{filename} -L# Specifies non-continuous loop play # number of times. If no number is specified,the default is 32000 loops. Use this option for continuous play of non-looping ANIMS. It will play the ANIM,stop,construct the needed two-frame overlap and then play the ANIM from the beginning again. Then the process will repeat the number (#)of times specified. -C# Specifies continuous loop play # number of times. Use this option for continuous play of looping ANIMS. The -C option assumes that the two frame overlap necessary for looping is already part of the ANIM. -B# Ping Pong play. Plays the ANIM in the forward direction,then in reverse for the number of times specified. Will only work with XOR ANIMs. (The XOR ANIM format may be selected in ANIMagic from the Project Menu.) +C Turns on any color cycling which may be part of the ANIM. If you set color cycling in ANIMagic and save your ANIM,you can use the +C option with ShowANIM to turn on the cycling effect. 77 +# Sets the timing of the ANIM to # number of jiffies. Each jiffy is 1/60th of a second. So,a setting of 2 would be 30 fames per second(2/60). This assumes that the ANIM can be played that fast. If it is complex,there might already be a delay between some frames,in which case this setting might not have any effect. The timing you set here will only add a delay between frames if the delay you specified is longe than the naturally occurring delay. +F# Adds extra timing(in number of jiffies)to the First frame of an ANIM. +L# Adds extra timing(in number of jiffies)to the Last frame of an ANIM. As an example,typing ShowANIM -C50 +C +F6BOX.ANIM will loop-play BOX.ANIM 50 times with color cycling turned on with a minimum of 6 jiffies between each frame. The second filename shown above in Usage:is for appending ANIMs together which have been stored in pieces. By specifying additional filenames,you can have ShowANIM load all the pieces in before it begins to play. These pieces must include two-frame overlaps. 78 APPENDIX B - THE DVE MAPS Basic_Expand-Expands the source from a point. Basic_HBlind-A rotation around the horizontal axis. This is useful for building various horizontal blind sets using the GRID HEIGHT and WIDTH. This is a full 3-D transform. Basic_Spin1-Expands the picture out from the center with a one revolution rotation until the screen is filled. Basic_Spin3-Expands the picture out from the center with a three revolution rotation until the screen is filled. Basic_Split-Brings the picture from the top-left and bottom-right corners in two halves. The right half of the screen starts on the left and the left half starts on the right. Basic_Squeeze-This will squeeze the present picture to the right as it stretches the new one from the left. Basic_VBlind-Rotation around a vertical axis. Useful for building various vertical blind sets using the GRID HEIGHT and WIDTH. This is a full 3-D transform. Basic_Wrap-Displays a picture in four pieces with an iris or wrapping effect, much like a camera shutter closing. Box2-Places Source One on the front side of a 6-sided box and rotates the box 90 degrees to expose Source Two on the next face. 79 Box4-Places Source One on four sides of a rotating box. The box normally rotates around the vertical,or Y,axis. Confetti-225 pieces of your image come from the upper left in a random swarm to build the picture. CornerExpand-Expands the picture in from the upper left corner to fill the entire screen. Doors10-Ten vertical blinds open and move to the sides to reveal Source Two behind. Much like a stage curtain. Doors2-Source One swings open as two doors,revealing Source Two behind them. Dribble-Picture dribbles down from the top in 160 vertical random stripes. This gives a nice paint dripping effect. FallAway5x5-This brings the picture up in 25 fragments spinning into position to form the full image. This is an excellent shatter when used with the REVERSE direction button. HBlind6-Six horizontal blinds with progressive rotation from top to bottom. This effect is built using the BasicBlind map. Page_Turn-A television-style page turn. Plain-This is the default map. It copies the full, unmodified image from the source to the destination. SlideIn-Slides a picture in beneath the view and tilts and enlarges it to fill the screen. Tumble-Rotates Source One around the horizontal axis upside down,then back with Source Two replacing image at end. Unfold9-A nine part fold-out where each of nine pieces of picture fold out of a stack in the center of the screen to make the full picture. VBlind6-Uses 6 vertical blinds with Progressive and Symmetrical rotation. Built from the Basic_Vblind map. 80 APPENIDX C - TECHNICAL SUPPORT If you have any problems when using ANIMagic,don't worry. Here is the best process for solving your problem: 1) Decide exactly what the problem is. Once you know this,check the most obvious possibilities. For example,if you specified Source One as your backdrop and only a blank screen is showing up back there,check to make sure Source One is the image you meant it to be. Or,check to make sure you specified Source One and not blank instead in the Backdrop window. It is also possible that settings you specified in an earlier effect are still in place. Check them to make sure they are what you want. 2)Everything seems to be set right,but it's still not doing what it's supposed to do. Get your registration number which is on the part of the registration card you are supposed to keep. IF YOU DON'T HAVE THIS NUMBER,YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE FOR TECHNICAL SUPPORT! 3)Call us here at Aegis for some help. Our technical support hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time,or,use our 24-hour BBS system if you have a modem. The numbers are: Inside California: (213)392-9972 Outside California: (800)458-5078 24-hour Aegis BBS (213)399-7316 Ask for ANIMagic technical support. If an answering machine answes,leave a message stating clearly your name,phone number,and that you need ANIMagic 81 assistance. A technician will return your call promptly. 4)When the technician answers or returns your call,give him your registration number and a brief description of your problem. 5)Listen carefully to what you are told. If you don't understand,say so and the concept will be explained in more detail. If the problem is extremely unusual, you may be asked to send a copy of the files you are working with along with a written step-by-step list recreating the steps you took to get the problem. 6)When you send any kind of correspondence regarding ANIMagic to Aegis, please address it as follows: Aegis Development,Inc. Technical Support 2115 Pico Boulevard Santa Monica, California 90405 USA 7)When an update or upgrade is available,you will be notified by mail provided you send in your registration card. 82 APPENDIX D - HARD DISK INSTALLATION There are only two elements which ANIMagic needs to have in order to run from a hard disk:The ANIMagic program itself and the DVEMaps. Create a new drawer on your hard drive where you wish to keep ANIMagic(make a copy of your Empty Drawer and give it any name you'd like). Drag both the ANIMagic program and the DVEMaps drawer from the flopy drive into the new drawer on the hard disk. You can also drag the PICS and ANIMs drawers onto your hard drive,if you'd like. Next create a new Project icon for ANIMagic which tells it where all of your files and DVE's are located: Run ANIMagic and load a picture or ANIM to bring up the Main Control panel. Choose Save Project from the Project menu. You will be presented with the Project Information screen. Here,set the directory paths that ANIMagic will henceforth use to load and save files and DVEMaps on your hard drive. Also set the Project Disk Path which tells the program where to save the new project icon. For example,if you put the ANIMagic program file and the DVEMaps drawer inside a drawer on your hard drive called "Magic,"you would set the Project Disk Path to DH0:Magic,the DVE files Disk Path to DH0:Magic/DVEMaps and the Project Default tool to DH0:Magic/ANIMagic. After you have the paths set up the way you want them,make sure that the icon box next to the Project default tool is highlighted. Select Save to save the new Project icon in the drawer you created on your hard drive. 83 THIS PAGE BLANK 84 APPENDIX E - THE ANIMAGIC DEVELOPMENT TEAM Created by Gary Bonham of SPARTA,Inc. for Aegis Development Produced by John Sievers,Aegis Development Programming,concept: Gary Bonham,SPARTA,Inc. Documentation: David Hopkins and John Sievers, Aegis Development Art Direction and Graphic Design: Jennifer Capp,Aegis Development Production Coordinator: Joseph M. Gutwirth,Aegis Development Illustrations: Scott Oransky,Aegis Development ANIMagic program icon: Mark Richey Special thanks to Steve Dock and Tom Bucklin at Amiga Sentry,David Barrett and Michelle Mehterian at Aegis. If you are a programmer or artist with a product you'd like us to consider for release,please contact us. The best way to do so is simply to send an outline or sample of your product to:Aegis Development, 2115 Pico Blvd.,Santa Monica,CA 90405,ATTN:New Talent. 85 THIS PAGE IS BLANK 86 INDEX Aegis BBS 81 Dx 43 Alternate Palette Menu 49 Dy 43 ANIM 9 Ease Panel 38 ANIM Compression 51 Edit Bay Button 26 ANIMagic,loading 8 Edit Bay Main Control 23 ANIMagic,speed 15 Extension 13 Application Buttons 28 Fast Forward Button 25 Apply After Button 28,29 File 13 Apply Append Button 28,29 File Requester 12 Apply Before Button 28,29 Flip Buttons 32 Apply Over Button 28,29 Flip Diagonal Button 32 Back Orientation 40 Flip Horizontal Button 32 Back Source Pop-Up Menu 41 Flip Vertical Button 32 Backdrop Control Window 42 Frame Button 24 Bitplanes 15 Front Orientation 41 Buttons 13 Full Button 24 Clone 32 Gadgets 13 Close ANIM File 52 Gray Screen 14 Color Cycling Window 47 Grid Control Window 35,36 Core DVE 30 Grid Height Box 36 Create 50 Grid Origin 37,38 Crop Source One 44 Grid Path Size 38 Crop Source Two 44 Grid Pattern Pop-Up Menu 36 Custom Button 24 Grid Width Box 36 Custom Destination 43 HAM Spread 46 Custom Grid 44 Hard Disk Installation 83 Custom Grid Path 38 Help 24 Cycle Button 24 Help Key 38 Cycle Full Screen 47 HiRes 11 Default Tool Types 51 Horizontal Curve 38 Destination 28 Horizontal Grid 36 Destination Placement Pop-Up Menu 43 Infinite Loop Button 25 Destroy 50 Interlace 10 Direction Button 31 LoRes 10 Display Button 25 Manual Preview 33 Display Start Button 24 Manual Record Button 33,34 DVE Effects Control Window 30 Manual Render Button 33 DVE Map 54,79 Map Color Pop-Up Menu 28 DVE Mapping 30 Map Pop-up Menu 28 87 MedRes 11 Rename 32,33 Memory,Low 14 Rename DVE Window 32 No.Frames 31 Requirements,Hardware 7 NTSC 10 Requirements,Software 7 Open DVE 30,50 Rewind Button 24 Open Still/ANIM 50 Save ANIM 50 Optimize Palette 49 Save DVE File 50 Outline Button 31 Save Project 51 Outline Color Pop-Up Menu 32 Save Still 50 Overscan 11 Screen Resolution 10 PAL 10 Screen Settings 10 Palette Copy Button 45 Shadow Color 42 Palette Reset Button 46 Shadow Translucence 42 Palette Spread Button 45 Shadows 42 Palette Switch Button 46 ShowANIM 77 Palette Undo Button 46 68020 16 Palette Window 45 68881 16 Palette Button 24 Sleep 52 Parent Button 13 Source One 27 Path 12 Source One/Dest.Swap Button 29 Play Button 25 Source Two 28 Preview 33 Step Back Button 24 Primitive Orientation Buttons 39 Step Forward Button 25 Progressive Delay 37,56 Symmety Buttons 36 Progressive Direction 37 Technical Support 81 Project Information Window 51 3D High Level Control Window 40,41 Project Menu 50 3D Stuff Button 40 Random Grid 36 Tile Button 36 Range Apply Button 25,26 Time Button 24 Range Color Button 26 Translucent Button 31 Range Delete Button 25 Transparency Button 26,48 Range End Button 26 Vertical Curve 38 Range Forward Button 26 Vertical Grid 36 Range Frame Button 25,26 VidRes 10 Range Rewind Button 25 Viewer Distance 40 Range Smear Button 26 Z Grid 36 Range Smooth Button 25 Range Start Button 25 Range Time Button 25 Rate Boxes 31 Record 52 Record To Disk Button 28,29 ANIMAGIC DOCS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SOUTHERN STAR WITH ASSISTANCE BY RAP.....