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Welcome to D/Animator 2.0b ----------------------------------------------- Freeware Animation Program For Use With POV-Ray ----------------------------------------------- Check out GeoSync - The first animated SCI-FI adventure on the Net. It was created in part by D/Animator 1.0 & 2.0b http://vision.sas.upenn.edu/geosync.html ------------------------------------------------------------ This documentation may need to be formatted before printing. TABLE OF CONTENTS ----------------- 1. Features......................................... 2 2 What's new for 2.0 beta...........................2 3. About D/Animator 2.0 beta........................ 2 4. The Problem...................................... 2 5. The Solution..................................... 2 6. Requirements..................................... 2 7. What's A Motion Control File?.................... 3 8. Using D/Animator................................. 3 9. A Sample MCF File................................ 4 10. Keyword Reference................................ 5 11. Syntax notes......................................5 12. Pull-Down Menu Functions......................... 7 13. Getting The PIP Function To Work................. 7 14. How To Reach The Author.......................... 8 15. Legal Stuff...................................... 8 16. Disclaimer / More Legal Stuff.................... 8 1. D/ANIMATOR FEATURES ---------------------- - Windows interface - Constant velocity movement Commands - Allows nesting of animation commands - Single variable interpolation - Picture-in-Picture animations - Single file output for entire animation - Easy to use motion control language - Easy to modify output .POV file 2 WHAT'S NEW FOR 2.0 BETA ------------------------- - Pathfinder (allows your objects to follow a path) - New command "blink" - You can install D/Animator anywhere on you PC - Works with DTA to make FLI from within D/Animator - Preview image in Windows insted of DOS - Better error handling 3. ABOUT D/ANIMATOR 2.0 beta ---------------------------- D/Animator 2.0b(D/A) is an animation program for use with the Persistence of Vision Raytracer(POV-Ray) developed by POV-Team. With D/A and a little work, you can create impressive animation sequences that until now have been reserved for high-priced commercial applications. And you can do it quickly and easily. 4. THE PROBLEM --------------- You've been making great images with POV-Ray, and you think it's time to take it a little further. You give some thought to making some neat animations, but the software to do the job is very expen$ive and may not even run on your computer. What can you do? You can either save up all your money or get a second mortgage on your house to buy a commercial animator or you can enter the FREE world of D/Animator. You have obviously made the second choice, so we will only talk about D/Animator. 5. THE SOLUTION ----------------- D/Animator is an animation interface for POV-Ray. It runs in MS- Windows and has a good set of features that make it easy to generate animations. Since you simply define a Motion Control File (MCF), you no longer have to make any complex calculations. 6. REQUIREMENTS ---------------- 1. Microsoft Windows 3.1 or later 2. POV-Ray 3. DTA (David Targa Animator) 7. WHAT'S A MOTION CONTROL FILE? -------------------------------- The Motion Control File (MCF) contains the description of your animation. D/A uses the MCF along with your POV file to create a sequence of ray-traceable frames to make your animation. 8. USING D/ANIMATOR -------------------- When you start D/A, there will be two windows. The main window and the MCF window. In the main window, you write your POV-Ray code like you normally would, or you can load a saved POV file to work with. Where the difference comes in is the variables. If you want to control the movement of an object you replace the number(s) that control the object with MCF compatible variables. Ex: Let's say you have a box that is currently defined as: "box{<0,0,0>,<10,10,10>}". To control the box using D/A, you would substitute the numeric values for variables. This would yield something like: "box{<BoxTX,BoxTY,BoxTZ>,<BoxTX+10,BoxTY+10,BoxTZ+10>}" In this manner, D/A can set the values for the BoxTX, BoxTY and BoxTZ variables automatically as your animation progresses. You can also see that if all three variables were set to zero (0), the box would be exactly where it would have been with the original statement. By altering the values, the box can move, spin...anything you like! By animating numerous objects you can make complex forms appear to move as well. And another idea is to animate your light sources and camera positions to create dazzling effects. Any object that has variables can be animated. By nesting and/or stacking motion sequences you can also make different objects appear to move at different rates and at different times! Do you see how much fun this can be? This not only involves absolutely no math, and makes it easy to adapt a standard POV file to one that can be animated. 9. A SAMPLE MCF FILE --------------------- frame 1 to 25 object Car move <2,4,7> to <78,3,-80> endframe endfile Let's walk through the file line-by-line and see what it does... Line 1: frame 1 to 25 The "frame" keyword sets the range of frames in which the following statements should be valid. In our example it means that between frames 1 and 25(inclusive) all the lines before the "endframe" should be processed. Line 2: object Car Next is "object". This defines an object that will receive all of the following motion commands. In our example the object is called Car. You can call yours anything you like. Line 3: move <2,4,7> to <78,3,-80> "move" is an actual motion command. It does a linear interpolation between the coordinates 2 & 78 ,4 & 3 and 7 & -80. The variables that these values map to are CarTX, CarTY and CarTZ. Notice that the variable is made of both the object name (in this case "Car") and the three POV vector values of TX, TY and TZ. Make sure that you use these variables in your POV file where they will be needed. And you can use them in more than one place, too. Line 4: endframe The "endframe" keyword is used to end the frame command block. Line 5: endfile Obvious. This lets D/A know you are finished. See "Keyword Reference" for details on these and other keywords that you can use in your MCF files. 10. KEYWORD REFERENCE --------------------- blink This is the blinker function. It will toggle a varieble between 2 values over a certain amount of frames for each value. Syntax: blink var ON [# of frames on] [ON value] OFF [# of frames off] [OFF value] Example: blink car ON 2 30 OFF 5 100 varieble car will be 30 for 2 frames then 100 for the next 5 frames. This sequence will loop. move "move" will perform a linear interpolation on the values it is given and assign them to variables suffixed with TX, TY and TZ. For example: Using "move <0,0,0> to <10,10,10>" will `tween' the object from the starting set of values to the ending set of values the number of times specified by the "frame" block that it resides within. The "rotate" and "scale" keywords work exactly like "move". This is done to make the MCF easier to read. rotate "rotate" works exactly like "move" except that it uses the RX,RY,RZ suffix on it's variables. See Keyword "move" scale "scale" works exactly like "move" except that it uses the SX,SY,SZ suffix on it's variables. See Keyword "move" vector "vector" also works like "move", but only adds an X, Y or Z at the end of the current variable. For our example if we use vector instead of "move" the variables would become CarX, CarY and CarZ. Use "vector" when you want to animate something that is not used in translate, rotate and scale. Examples are color of light and objects, and look_at for the camera. var "var" is used to interpolate a single variable. It does do add any suffix to the current object name, because the variable itself will take on the interpolated value. An example would be "var Boat 67 to 5". In this case the variable Boat would change from 67 to 5 in as many increments as are defined by the "frame" block in which it resides. pip "pip" (picture in picture) is used to play back an animation within your animation. This is to say you can have a simulated TV picture (or whatever) moving in your animation while other objects continue to move. The format is: "pip pip-file output-file #-of-frames" "pip-file" is a file that has a list of GIF files that you want to play inside your animation. It should end with the PIP extension. "output-file" is the name you're going to use in POV-Ray to refer to the sequence. The way this CONTINUES.. function works is to copy the proper picture to be played at the time to another file with the name of the GIF file that POV-Ray is expecting to find to render the frame. This way nothing is changed in the POV file. NOTE: If you don't want to create the pip by hand, you use the built in PIP generator. Click on "Tools" and then "Make PIP File" from the pull-down menu. `Prefix' is the prefix name of your sequence. If your files are home001.gif, home002.gif, home003.gif, etc. then your prefix would be home. `Name of PIP' is the file that has the list of files in your sequence. Transport file is the name you use to refer to your sequence in your POV file. First and last sequence form the range of files that D/Animator should supply to POV-Ray. endframe Marks the end of the current frame range. endfile Must be the last statment in the MCF file, it marks the end of your MCF file. 11. SYNTAX NOTES ---------------- If you do not use any MCF commands you must at least have and "endframe" and an "endfile" in the otherwise empty MCF. If not, you will get an error message. If there are any bugs in D/Animator it will usally cause the program to exit immediately. D/Animator does not tolerate errors very well so check your syntax carefully. 2.0b should a little better at handling errors. 12. PULL-DOWN MENU FUNCTIONS ----------------------------- Settings Menu: Programs & Libraries: Names of programs that D/Animator needs to call. The only one for now is POV-Ray and DTA. For the POV Library path, fill out as many as you need Raytracer: You can now specify the prefix and the directory for the ouput files (.tga files). The anti-aliasing stuff works just like in POVRAY. Check enable to activate Save Settings: Save all settings except for the ones in the pip generator. Tools Menu: Render: Start rendering. D/Animator will always save the current POV file in danimate.ini before it starts to render. Note: To stop the rendering sequence hold down the escape key until all rendering stops. Make pip: Make a pip file (See `pip' in Keywords section) Debug: It is used to see error messages generated by POV. Normally when you render and there is an error the DOS screen will switch quickly back to windows before you have time to read the error. This will freeze the screen before switching back to windows. Note that you must render the normal way first in order to use the debug feature because it does not read the POV and the MCF files. Instead it reads the last compiled output which is POVTAF.POV View POVTAF: The POVTAF.POV is the output file of D/Animator that is passed to the POV raytracer. All error messages from POV will be based on this file and not your POV file in the editor. Make FLI Movie: This will make a FLI or FLC movie of your output current files.The prefix of the animation file will be the same as the output prefix and will be in the save directory as the current POV file that you're working on. Note: D/Animator will NOT erase the individual files after makeing the movie.If your current animation has less frames then your previous animation make sure you delete the extra frame files from the output directory. If don't it will be added to the new animation. The cause of this is that DTA get "<prefix>*.tga" from D/Animator. If you need more help look at the fli.bat file in the D/A home directory. Pathfinder: Pathfider lets you draw a path with the mouse an then save the points to a text file. The point can then be mapped to and 2 variebles you want. Syntax:path [filename] [varieble1] [varieble2] Ex: path motion.dap Xmove Ymove The above example will map the points from the file motion.dap to the variebles Xmove and Ymove.The word "path" is the keyword D/A will always scale the number of points to match that of the number of frames in the current block. That is if you file has 30 points and your current block has only 15 the D/A will take use every other point. For the reverse D/A will use each point twice. The X scale and Y scale are used to set scale of the pathfinder screen. Set it before you start plotting. Loacation 0,0 is in the middle. Once you are done ploting press done and give your plot a name.D/A will create the file in the directory of the current POV file you're working on. Try to keep the .dap extention. As you can see this function can be used to create more then just animation paths. It can be use for anything that needs to have 2 variebles changed over time like the brightness and length of a metal in a thermo-expansion animation sequence. Just graph the length over brightness of the metal in the Pathfinder Editor then assign the variebles in the MCF and you're done! You can set the scale for the X and Y of the Pathfinder with the input at the bottom. Make sure you set it to something BEFORE you draw your path. Location 0,0 is somewhat in the middle of the Pathfinder.The output file of the pathfinder is a simple text file. The first number is the total # of X/Y pairs of data. The rest of the file is the X/Y varieble pairs. If want you can get the file with the point from some other place like a graphing programm. Options Menu: Render to Screen: When it's checked everthing will work just like in 1.0 (The display will switch to a full DOS Screen). When it's not checked D/Animator will shell to POV through a WINDOWED dos session and will not render the image to the display.(Although you can't tell what's going on, I kindda like this option because my monitor does not have to switch from hi-res to low and make that nasty relay clicking sound). Preview image: This will let you view your image in windows after it's done rendering. If you turn off the "Render to Screen" then you should turn on the "Preview image" or else you'll see jack. Note: You must have DTA to use the preview function. 13. GETTING THE PIP FUNCTION TO WORK ------------------------------------ To get the PIP function to work you have to visit our WWW site at http://vision.sas.upenn.edu/dextech.html Once you are there, go to "Zambani Research" to get the code. If you don't have WWW access, send me mail and I'll send you the code. Try to visit the website when you can, it has free stuff and lots of cool animations! 14. HOW TO REACH THE AUTHOR --------------------------- D/Animator 2.0b program and original documentation by Dexter Kofa. EMAIL: dex@pender.ee.upenn.edu WWW: http://vision.sas.upenn.edu/dextech.html Documentation rewritten by Daryl Dean EMAIL: deand@achilles.net WWW: http://www.achilles.net/~deand/home.html 15. LEGAL STUFF --------------- In the tradition of POV-Ray, D/Animator has been released as Freeware. What this means is that you may use D/A without charge. You may also distribute D/A, with the allowances that; 1. You make no charge for the software, and 2. D/A may only be distributed in its original archived form. The exceptions to the fee rule are normal download charges on pay-access BBS systems and shareware/freeware disk distribution houses. In no case is the diskette fee to convey D/A to exceed the equivalent of ten US dollars. (US$10.00) In the case of shareware archive CDs and other mass distribution methods, you may place your own installation front-end with the software, but you may not alter the software or it's essence in any way. 16. DISCLAIMER / MORE LEGAL STUFF ---------------------------------- D/Animator ("the software") is provided as is without any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose including, but not limited to: any damages to or losses of hardware/software or data resulting from the use or inability to use the software or from any negligence on the part of DexTechnologies or its assigns, agents, representatives or authors either intentional or unintentional. It is your sole responsibility to determine if the software fits your needs. Although the authors have attempted to find and correct any discrepancies in the software, it is recognized that it is impossible to anticipate and/or mitigate all possible situations. The authors are under no obligation to provide service, corrections, or upgrades to this package. The software is copyright by DexTechnologies and may not be commercially distributed without the prior written consent of DexTechnologies.