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-=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-.
-= MandAnim v 1.1 =-.
Manual.
Table of Contents:
***********************************.
- Permission.
- Thanks.
0. General.
1. Quick Start.
2. KEYS.
3. MENU.
4. NO-ACTION.
5. MAKE BASE-PICTURE.
6. COLOR.
7. NEW ANIM.
8. POSITIONS.
- Bugs.
- Mail.
- P.S. (commercial).
***********************************.
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Permission.
MandAnim has especially been written to be added to the Public
Domain series by Fred Fish. Everyone has explicit permission
of the author to:
- copy (together with this manual),
- use,
- and recommend this program to others (give them a copy too!).
It is -evidentially- not permitted to sell this program
(except as Fish-Disk) and also the developing and/or selling
of programs that make use of the "MAND" (IFF-) chunk or the
"AnimFile" is forbidden without written permission of the
author.
Ekke Veheul.
09-08-'90.
Rotterdam.
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Thanks.
I want to thank the writers of "ARP"; MandAnim makes grateful
use of the FileRequester of version 1.3 , so that version
should be in 'LIBS' (use `ARPtoDF0' if convenient).
I want to thank Arnout Grootveld for his work on the assem-
bler routine that calculates the iteration-value of a pixel;
MandAnim wouldn't have been written without him.
I want to thank Erwin Fasel for his suggestions to improve
the control of version 1.0; version 1.1 has it all...
I want to thank Ruud de Greef for suggesting the basic idea
of MandAnim, it took me only :-) three months sparetime to re-
alise this fantasy of his...
I want to thank Minouche Dukers and Arnout Grootveld for
checking this README-file, trying to improve my language.
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0. General.
MandAnim was meant to be a program to create a moving fractal-
background for handmade lowres animations. The fact that is
hasn't been used for that purpose yet , can be explained by
the beauty of the backgrounds themselves and the shortage of
memory in my Amiga. Or maybe it's just more fun to use
MandAnim than it is to paint ...
Most of my energy was used creating a simple interface ; you
don't need knowledge of fractals to use it. You do need
DPaintIII to make an animation out of the IFF-pictures made
by MandAnim though, and make sure you know how to use that.
All IFF-pictures made by MandAnim contain a special chunk with
the positions of its borders in the x-y-world of Mandelbrot.
This was done to make each picture a potential basis for new
animations ; you can load a picture and thereby set the
defaults automatically. An animation does need a base-picture
so there is a way to make one, and only save it when you're
satisfied; the animation-pictures are all saved by MandAnim,
and this can only be stopped by the right-mouse-button.
The program was written in 'C' -except for one routine- on an
Amiga-500 (1.2) with one Mb. (without even a hard-disk ,it
can be done) . It was checked on:
Amige 500 (1.3, 512 K)
Amiga 2000 (1.3, 3 Meg, 1 Mb CHIP (sticky pointers!))
Amiga 2000 (1.3, 40 Mhz TurboCard and 32-bits RAM )
Amiga 3000 (1.3 and 2.0)
I thought it worked propperly on those, but I'm not sure about
NTSC (how could I).
DO send bug-reports !
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1. Quick start.
1. HOW TO MAKE A BASE-PICTURE OUT OF NOTHING:
- Install ARP.library (v1.3 ) on your boot-disk and start the
program by selecting its icon.
- If there is no picture called 'MA-BASE' in the same direc-
tory as MandAnim then the program will say so. Just hit the
window with the left-mouse-button.
- Select the 'MAKE' gadget of 'BASE-PICTURE' and don't touch
the new ones. Only select 'RENDER'.
- When the picture is ready, return to 'MENU' and select
'SAVE'.
- Search for MandAnim's directory and save the picture as
'MA-BASE'. Every time you start the program, from now, it
will come up with this picture.
2. HOW TO MAKE AN ANIMATION:
- Select 'NEW ANIM'.
- Let's make a small animation, let's say 30 frames; so type
'30' in the string-gadget called 'FRAMES:'.
- Where do we come from and where do we go to. That is the
question. Select the gadget with the mouse-image and paint
two quadrangles (in the dpaint-way) on the base-picture.
- Hit the RETURN-key (or the right-mouse-button).
- Check the frames by selecting 'PREVIEW'. If you don't like
it, go back to the mouse-gadget ,type 'c' (= clear) and try
again.
- Or select the 'RENDER'-gadget and set the path to an empty
formatted disk (or hard-disk) and choose a name for this
anim.
- MandAnim will create a 'MandAnim-File' containing the in-
formation for all pictures in the animation ,called
'name.maf'.
- After this , hit the window somewhere and all pictures will
be rendered and saved automatically, as 'name.000' to
'name.029'.
- Then 'EXIT' from MandAnim and load the pictures into
DPaintIII as 16 (or 32, if you want to add something) color
-lowres- pictures by selecting the first (name.000) and
setting the '# of frames:' to 30 (you'll need at least 1.5
Mb. of memory).
- Then push the '6'-key and smile.
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2. KEYS.
In NO-ACTION, MENU, MAKE, ANIM and COLOR, the next keys have
a meaning:
*****************************************
L -> Load BasePicture.
M -> Make BasePicture.
S -> Save BasePicture.
A / N -> New Anim.
E -> (Anim/PingPong) Ease
O / R -> (Render) Old.
Esc -> Sleep.
Arrow Down -> NoAction.
C / P -> Color.
HELP -> Menu.
*****************************************
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3. MENU.
The MENU-field contains seven gadgets ; most of them have
obvious meanings, but I will deal with them all.
Base Picture:
- Load : Pops up the FileRequester to let you choose a new
background (base-) picture.
- Make : see MAKE BASE-PICTURE.
- Save : Again the FileRequester , to save the base-picture
to (hard-) disk.
Anim Series :
- New Anim : see NEW ANIM.
- Old : Once again the FileRequester , this time select a
'MandAnim-File' ("name.maf"),to finish an interrupted
animation OR to re-render (parts of) an animation if
you lost (some of) the pictures.
Use the 'HELP'-key after you've loaded that file if
you want to change the first-to-render frame-number.
System :
- Sleep: A temporary way out of the program , without losing
the settings . All chip-memory will be freed, the
base-picture will be kept in fast, compressed.
Sometimes a simple `Amiga-N' can be enough, though.
- Exit : Careful! There will be no request about your real
intentions.
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4. NO-ACTION.
A complete fractal-animation is fun , but some people even
like single pictures of this kind. For those, it is possible
to enjoy the whole picture -t.i. whithout gadgets- by clicking
on it (the picture) with the right-mouse-button.
Okay, some pictures really deserve a close look. I even imple-
mented a 'cycle-mode' for a real festive mood : use the 'TAB'
-key (as in DPaint) to (de-)activate and the '<-' and '->'
to change directions. You can't change the speed, sorry.
All 'KEYS' are active , but also the 'E' is; and that means
EXIT, without a warning... be careful.
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5. MAKE BASE-PICTURE.
This field has 18 gadgets; in a left-to-right sort of order:
StringGadgets (4):
- You could type some particular positions here, for some
reason, but you can't pass the +/-3.0 border.
MouseGadget:
- You'll want to use this to set the positions, if they stay
within the borders of your base-picture. Read 'POSITIONS'
for special features.
Render:
- When you've done all the adjusting, sit back, render, and
wait...
Menu/Color (2):
- Return to 'MENU' or set the 'COLORS'; you can also use
the keys here.
Speed:
- Three possibilities: Normal (100 %), PASS-X (+/- 56 %) and
PASS-XY (+/- 38 %). The last two are 'cheat' options that
leave the result almost intact. If you want to see the
difference; make three pictures with the same settings,
except for the speed, and load them together into DPaint.
Iterations:
- The number of calculations per pixel. It effects the result
and the time it takes to render. You can experiment on one
and the same picture by interrupting RENDER somewhere half-
way and continue rendering after you've changed the iter-
ations.
The only time the program will re-render a not-finished
picture is when you've changed the positions, or pretended
to have changed them by selecting a string-gadget and
giving a RETURN after that.
IT->C (8):
- I've picked 8 variations to convert an iteration to a color-
number. I could have picked others, but I didn't. The first
five are straightforward, using one to five iterations for
one color; the last three go up and down from color 0 to
color 15 and back, using one to three iterations per color.
They all start and end with color 0.
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6. COLOR.
All colors can be changed and I implemented all DPaint's
features to help you. You will easily find your way. Some
remarks:
- With 'UNDO' (or 'U'-key) you can switch to the previous pa-
lette, and back.
- 'Load Palette' lets you copy the palette from any IFF-pic-
ture with at least 16 colors.
- Selecting 'READY' leads you back to where you came from; if
you don't want to go there, use the keys.
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7. NEW ANIM.
Most Gadgets here are already familiar to you - see 'MAKE
BASE-PICTURE' - so we can concentrate on:
Path:
- Three possibilities: PingPong Chain, Straight Chain and
Single Pictures. They provide the way the frames are
calculated between the given positions . 'Single Pictures'
allows no extra frames at all, 'Straight Chain' only divides
the space between two given positions in equal steps but
'PingPong Chain' divides that space in a sinus-like way so
the DPaint-option 'PingPong' (key 6) works out fine.
I want to implement some more pathways later, so if you can
spare some ideas, you're welcome ( mathematical approach,or,
even better, a 'C'-function would be lovely ).
Frames:
- Just the number of frames you want to get rendered. Type the
number into the (string-)gadget and RETURN (!).
If you're using more than two borders to set the path it's
possible MandAnim is gonna change that number. It has to be
( X * number-of-borders + 1).
The maximum number of frames is 8191 ; I doubt you'll ever
try that, it would fill about 250 disks (200 Mb)...
Preview:
- You can check the path with this, but don't expect the
speed to be the same as in the animation, it isn't.
MouseGadget:
- Like in 'MAKE BASE-PICTURE' but it doesn't turn back
automatically, here. The program doesn't know how many
borders you want to make. Click the right-mouse-button
when you're done. DO read 'POSITIONS'.
Render:
- This is the very last action to be taken. You'll be
prompted to set the path and name of this shot, a
MandAnim-File will be created (allowing you to finish
this anim later) and all pictures will be rendered - until
you select the right-mouse-button.
IMPORTANT:
A Disk-Full message will only stop MandAnim from rendering
until you have:
- selected 'Cancel' ,
- clicked the WorkBench to the back ( the message brings
that to the front; our palette would make the requester
unreadable),
- replaced the full disk with an empty formatted (!) one,
- and clicked somewhere in the picture-window (left-mouse-
button) to signal you're ready.
The program will have deleted the (half) picture on the
first disk, copied the MandAnim-File to the new disk
and will continue rendering after saving the last picture
again.
P.S. The only (?) way to make an animation out of pictures
that are saved on several disks is to make a small
animation of each disk, binding them together later, using
the load- & append- Anim options of DPaintIII.
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8. POSITIONS.
Selecting the mouse-gadget in NEW-ANIM or MAKE-BASE-PICTURE
leads you to new surroundings with new key-options. When
making a picture you might want to use:
HELP:
- Pops up a window with the result of ( Width / Height ) which
are the real (x,y) sizes of your border. If you want to
hold on to a realistic proportion, this result should be
(about) 1.
Arrows:
- While drawing a border it often happens (to me) that it's
hard to get the object you picked centered if you also
want to hold on to a certain proportion. Using the arrow-
keys while holding down the left-mouse-button allows you to
change the position of the left-top corner... DO try this
one, I like it and hope to find this in DPaint once...
While selecting multiple borders in NEW-ANIM, you also
might want to use:
BACKSPACE '<-' or 'Del' : - To delete the last added border.
'C' (clear): - To delete ALL borders (no undo possible !).
To return to the 'ANIM'-gadgets you can use the 'return-key'
or the right-mouse-button, or you can go on drawing borders
until you reach the maximum... 999. I kill me.
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- Bugs.
No known bugs. Honest. Do let me know if you find something
that shouldn't be found. I'll fix it. That is, if I can...
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- Mail.
Information about the assembler-routine, or any other Amiga
specific stuff, get it from :
Arnout Grootveld
Hoekblok 36
2291 XW Wateringen.
phone: 01742-4421 or (??)-3117424421
Electronic mail (prefered):
FidoNet: 2:281/600.2
UseNet : ...!hp4nl!neabbs!amg
Any questions , suggestions , bug-reports ,but CERTAINLY your
prettiest ANIMATION, please send them to me.
Digital Pro Motions
p/a Ekke Verheul.
Stroveer 120.
3032 GA Rotterdam.
the Netherlands
You can call me too, see: 010-4660503 or ( ?? )-31104660503
Finally:
Thanks for reading 'till here and lots of fun using MandAnim.
Ekke.
-=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-
P.S.
VIDEO and (local) BROADCAST companies and home-artists,
you might want some information about (DTV-) programs like:
** Scroll Module. v 2.11 .
- Horizontal (overscan) scrolling of 'BlitFonts';
All resolutions with maximum 1600 pixels scrolling per
second (!), adjustable in 32 steps, REAL TIME control.
No limit to the number of words/characters, NO stutter.
Especially made to work FAST, and save time.
Lots of (color-) ScrollFonts available already.
© Digital Pro Motions (Ekke Verheul)
** Subtitle Module. v 4.03 .
- Professional subtitling in seconds... Works with all Amiga
fonts. Shadow and edge made by the program,set by the user.
Colors, spacing, height ,two fonts and justification are
adjustable. Text is edited within the program and can be
saved along with the settings for later use. REAL TIME
mouse-control.
© Digital Pro Motions (Ruud de Greef)
** Start. v1.01 .
- Counting down in seconds or (video-) frames. From 1 to
10 seconds to zero-> and Black, in beautiful animation.
You might even want to broadcast this. Names and information,
dates and times (Auto-date), can be edited internally on
three lines of colored text.
© Digital Pro Motions (Ekke Verheul)
** Color Master. v1.02 .
- 256 colors HIRES/LACE for all your IFF-pictures. Cuts your
painting in pieces and gives every piece its own colormap.
No visible boundaries. Nice interface. A Video MUST.
© Digital Pro Motions (Ruud de Greef)
** ShowTime. v2.02 .
- Loads an IFF-picture and lets you put a digital clock in
(8 different) colored digits over it . On any place, in any
resolution. All settings from within the program.
© Digital Pro Motions (Ekke Verheul)
** Lynx. v1.4 .
- Animate from one picture to another. Slowly transform from
your own (digitised) head into your heros...:-)
64 different scan-methods, up to 1000 frames, nice interface.
© Digital Pro Motions (Ekke Verheul)
For a complete summary with description and price-list send
your (firm-) name and address to me on a postcard and add :
"Amiga DTV-Tools Summary". You will receive the list as soon
as possible.
Ekke.
-=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-