ANIM MENU LOAD Displays the Load Anim requester. This requester works the same as the Load Picture requester described earlier in this chapter. When you Load an animation,the loaded animation replaces the one currently in memory. When you Append an animation,the appended animation is added to the end of your current animation. It is also possible to load individual pictures into the frames of your animation using the Load Picture requeste. See Load in the Picture menu for information about loading pictures into your animation. If you click the left mouse button as DeluxePaint begins to load your animation,the palette temporarily changes to all greys so that you don't see the animation frames loading. This is useful if you are showing animations on your Amiga and don't want your audience to see the frames before you load them. SAVE Displays the Save Anim requester which is similar to the Save Picture requester described above. This requester works the same as the Save Picture requester described earlier in this chapter. MOVE... Displays the Move requester. Use this requester to define a path along which your brush is painted in 3D,either on a single frame,or while stepping through an animation sequence. To use the Move Requester: Stamp your brush on the screen at the starting position you want. Choose Move from the Anim menu. Enter the Move and Angle settings you want. Set the Count edit field to the number of frames over which you want to animate the brush. Select the Direction of your Move and Record. Select any other settings that apply to your animation. Click Draw to paint the animation with the settings you specified. MOVE X Y Z DIST: 0 0 0 BRUSH ANGLE: 0 0 0 BRUSH CLEAR GO BACK CYCLIC EASE-OUT: O DIRECTION: EASE-IN: O MOVE RECORD COUNT: 10 PREVIEW TRAILS FILL DRAW CANCEL EXIT FIGURE 9.23 The Move requester The Move requester presents the following settings: MOVE:The Move edit fields let you specify the total distance that the brush will move along the X,Y,and Z axes in your animation. You can set the brush to move along the Brush axes or the Screen axes by using the button to the right of the Move edit fields. ANGLE:The Angle edit fields let you specify the total angle,in degrees,that the brush will be rotated about the X,Y,and Z axes. You can set the brush to rotate around the Brush axes or the Screen axes by using the button to the right of the Angle edit fields. The default setting is Brush,in which case the rotation is always based on the brush coordinate system. Note that the brush coordinate system will change during the course of a Move if you are rotating on more than one axis. If you set this option to Screen(non-Brush),any angle rotation takes place along the current axes of the screen coordinate system. The "Screen" rotation system is an Euler(pronounced oiler)system and the order of rotation is always X,Y,and Z. When you rotate on more than one angle,or when the brush has been rotated previously,the rotations produced by the Screen angle system are not always around the azes that are used for the Distance moves along the Screen azes. Generally it is best to think of the Screen angle rotations as "non-Brush" rather than Screen. NOTE All rotations occur around the brush handle. If you want your brush to appear as though it is orbiting around a point away from the brush,you would want to offset the handle from the brush. BRUSH:Use these buttons to select whether the Dist and Angle movements are relative to the brush's coordinate system(on)or to the screen coordinate system (off). EASE-OUT:Use this edit field to set the number of frames over which you want the brush motion to gradually accelerate. EASE-IN:Use this edit field to set the number of frames over which you want the brush motion to gradually decelerate. COUNT:Use this edit field to set the number of times the brush is painted to complete the total movement and rotation as specified by the move and angle edit fields. CLEAR:Click this button to zero out all of the Move and Angle numbers. GO BACK:Click this button to restore the starting position of the brush for the next movement to the last place you manually clicked it down. CYCLIC:Turn this button on if you are creating an animation that is cyclic(that is,one that starts and ends at the same position.) For example,if you have 10 frames,and you want a brush to rotate 360 degrees over the 10 frames to make it look as though it is spinning when you play the animation,you would turn Cyclic on. DeluxePaint III would calculate the rotation to end on the 1th frame(which in this case would be the 1st frame). The result is that the brush is not rotated to a full 360 degrees on Frame 10. Instead,the brush reaches 360 degrees on Frame 1. DeluxePaint doesn't paint the brush on the last frame,since it's position would normally be the same as your original frame,but it does move forward to that frame and positions the brush in the event that you want to click it down. DIRECTION:The buttons in the Direction area of the requester control the direction of your move and the order in which the frames of the animation are painted. MOVE lets you choose to have a move drawn in one of two ways: GO FROM starts the movement of the bush from the point where you stamped your brush(indicated by the large dot)and paints forward. COME TO starts the animation at an earlier frame and moves the brush forward to the point where you stamped your brush. RECORD lets you choose the order in which the frames of the brush move are painted. These buttons are available only if you have more than one animation frame. FORWARD paints the move by stepping forward from the point where you stamped your brush. This is the default setting and the one you will use most often. IN PLACE paints all of the move on the current frame. BACKWARD paints the move in reverse order by advancing to the last frame and painting backwards. This option is useful when you are using the Trails button. PREVIEW:Click this button to view the move you have set up in "wire-frame" mode. When the preview is complete,or when you hit the space bar to stop it, you are returned to the Move requester. TRAILS:This button is available only if you have more than one animation frame allocated. Clicking this button is like clicking on the Draw button except on each frame you get the sum total of all of the draws up to this point. The net effect is that of leaving "trails" of the brush of as ut moves. FILL:This button works like draw,except that when you click it,the move you specified is used to draw a filled perspective plane based on the rotation of the current brush. DRAW:Click this button to execute the move that you have specified,causing the brush to be drawn into animation sequence. CANCEL:Click on this button to restore any settings that have been changed and exit this requester. EXIT:Click on this button to exit the requester and keep all of the settings that you have entered. FRAMES This option presents a submenu of options for manipulating the frames in your animation. The following options are available under the Frames submenu: ADD FRAME Adds an animation frame after the current frame,copies the contents of the current frame to it,and makes this new frame the current one. SET #.. Displays the Set Frame Count requester. DeluxePaint will try to allocate as many frames as are requested. If there is not enough memory to allocate the requested number of frames,DeluxePaint will allocate as many as memory will allow. This requester works as though you chose Add Frame or Delete Frame several times. This means that you can add several frames to the middle of your animation by stepping to the frame you want to add frames after and changing the number of frames you want to add. You can delete several frames from any point in your animation by stepping to the first frame you want to delete and changing the number of frames to the current count minus the number of frames you want to delete. For example,if you have 100 frames and you want to delete frames 41 to 50,step to frame 41 and set the number of frames to 90. SET FRAME COUNT COUNT: 0 CANCEL OK FIGURE 9.24 Set Frame Count requester COPY TO ALL Copies the picture in the current frame to all of the animation frames. DELETE FRAME Deletes the current frame and makes the following frame the current frame unless you are already at the last frame. To delete frames at the end of the animation sequence,position to the last frame and then execute Delete frame as many times as the number of frames you want to discard. DELETE ALL Deletes all of the animation frames. CONTROL The Control option displays a submenu of options for moving around in your animation frames and for playing the animation. The following options are available under the Control submenu: SET RATE.. This option displays the Set frames per second requester. You can set the initial frames-per-second rate by entering a number in the edit field and clicking OK. If you use the left and right arrow(cursor)keys to slow down or speed up the play of your animation,the number in this requester also changes. SET RANGE.. Displays the Set Play Range requester. You can set the play range to play any range of frames in your animation or to play all frames in your animation. Note that the From number in your range must be smaller than the to number for the range to play correctly. The range setting is used by the Play Once and Ping Pong options in the Control submenu,but Play is not affected. This option is especially useful if you are editing a small section of a large animation. You can edit the frames and play only the frames you are editing to see your changes. PREVIOUS Steps the current frame to the previous frame in the animation sequence. If the current frame is the first frame,the position is set to the last frame. NEXT FRAME Steps the current frame to the next frame in the animation sequence. If the current frame is the last frame,the position is set to the first frame. GO TO.. Displays the Go to Frame requester. This requester lets you position the current frame to any of the available animation frames. GO TO FRAME NUMBER: 1 CANCEL OK FIGURE 9.25 The Go to Frame requester PLAY Plays the animation. The animation sequence will continue cycling until the space bar is pressed.(You can reverse the direction of playback by pressing r on the keyboard while the animation is playing.) PLAY ONCE Plays the animation sequence once through from Frame 1 to the last frame. PING-PONG Plays the animation sequence continuously as in Play above,but plays the sequence forward then backward then forward and so on. 208 ANIMBRUSH An animbrush is a special type of brush that has more than one frame associated with it. The following options are available under the Animbrush submenu: LOAD.. Displays the Load Animbrush requester. This requester is identical in function to the Load Picture or Load Brush requester described earlier in this chapter, except that you are loading an animbrush. See,Load in the Picture and Brush menus. When you load an animbrush that has a palette different from that of the current picture,the picture palette remains in place. Nonetheless,the brush palette information is loaded along with the brush;you can change to the brush's palette at any time by choosing Change Color>Use Brush Palette from the Picture menu. SAVE.. Displays the Save Animbrush requester. This requester is identical in function to the Save Brush requester described earlier in this chapter. PICK UP Selecting this menu option is the same as selecting the rectangular brush capture tool except the animbrush you capture will have as many "frames" as the current number of frames in the animation sequence. When you paint with an animbrush,the brush cycles through its frames automatically as you paint. The brush will continuously cycle on the current animation frame unless you hold down the left Amiga key(the Commodore key on Amiga 500 and 2000)when you press the mouse button down,in which case the brush will paint each of its frames separately into each of the animation sequence frames. You can use an animbrush with any painting tool,just as you would use any custom brush. SETTINGS.. This menu option displays the Animbrush Settings requester. You use this requester to control the animbrush. NUMBER OF CELS shows you how many cels of animation are in your animbrush. DURATION lets you set the number of frames it takes the animbrush to move completely through its cels. You can also think of this as the rate at which the animbrush transforms. For example,if your brush has 10 cels and you set duration to 20,your brush will stamp each of its cels twice before flipping to the next cel. CURRENT lets you type in the value for the brush cel you want to start with. This is very useful if you want to continue painting from a particular cel of your brush. You can also step backward and forward though the cels of your animbrush by using the 7 and 8 keys along the top of the keyboard. Shift-7 steps to the first cel,and Shift-8 steps you to the last cel. DIRECTION gives you options of flipping forward,flipping backward,or ping- ponging through the cels of your animbrush as you paint. USE Make the last Animbrush "picked up" the current brush. This allows you to pick up an animbrush,then pick up a regular brush,and then return to your animbrush. You can also restore your animbrush by clicking the Brush Selector with the right mouse button;this toggles between your standard custom brush and your animbrush. FREE Releases the memory used by the current Animbrush. Note that you cannot get the brush back once you free it!(If at any time you think you are low on memory, before you throw away brushes or frames,press Ctrl-a;this displays a requester with information about available memory.) METHOD The following two submenu options of the Method menu are used to specify the "memory model" of the animation sequence frames. COMPRESSED The Compressed Method,while a little more complex than the Expanded Method, offers the advantage of permitting many more animation frames in memory at one time. The compressed memory model only needs enough memory to store the differences between frames. While this model allows for more frames,it has a couple of disadvantages:it is slower than the expanded methode while animpinting,loading and saving are slower,and memory tends to fragment,makeing it easy to run out of memory. EXPANDED The Expanded Method represents the simplest of the two memory models where all of the memory for each animation frame is allocated. If you are in low resolution mode,320x200,and you have 10 animation frames,then you would need enough memory to hold 10 complete 320x200 images. Two advantages of this method are that the frame flipping for animpainting is very smooth,and you will not run out of memory to add an element to your animation within the allocated frames.