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- Version 0.9.1 -


Content:


O  Creating an animation:

Use Animadia to create or edit an animation. If you don't open an animation file, a new one is created for you. You should have a window like this:

The first thing to do is to set a background image for your animation. To do this, you can either drop an image from RRaster on the right part of the Animadia's window, or import the image from a file with the "Import background" command in the "File" menu. You are then asked for the depth of the new background. Select a depth of 8 bits per pixel if you don't have any special reason to do otherwise.
You must have a background to have an animation !

Then you can add some objects to your animation.
Use the "Add object" command in the "Edit" menu. An new window appears to set an image and a name to the new object. The name is optional, but not the image !
To set an image, drop an image from RRaster on the white area.

Options are

You can set more than one image per object. To do so, select the item "new image" in the pop up menu (in the middle of the window).

You problably then want to put the objects on the background. For that, drag them from the list on the background image !
Read the next section to learn more about editing Animadia animations.


O  Editing an animation:

How animation work

In Animadia, an animation consist of The objects move from one spacetime event to another, by moving on an line or jumping.

When editing an animation, the spacetime events are drawn in blend on the background image and an arrow shows the movement.


In the animation window, the first list (on the top) lists all objects in the animation and the second (on the bottom) lists all spacetime events for the selected object.

Selecting an object

You can select only one object at the time. To deselect an object, select an another one or click on the object's list where it's empty.

Selecting a spacetime event

When an object is selected, you can select one of their spacetime event too, by clicking on the list or on the image. If no object is selected, no spacetime event are selected too.

Changing the current time

One important element in this window is the time slider which is on the top. With it you can change the current time with the mouse and this is immediatly reflected by changing the dispay.
An another method to change the current time is to write a value (in millisecond) in the top-left edit field (t=...).

Creating a new spacetime event

When an object is selected, you can create a new spacetime event for it. Simply drag the object from the list and drop it on the background where you want it to be. The time's of the new event will be the current time.

Changing the time of a spacetime event

When a spacetime event is selected, the current time (and the time slider) is changed to the time associated with this spacetime event. You can then change this time with the slider or the edit field as if you are changing the current time.
To reflect this state, the spacetime event on the image is outlined in red and the slider displays (in red) the valid domain of variation of it's associated time.
If you want to change again the current time only, don't forget to deselect any spacetime event !

Changing the position of a spacetime event

To change the position of a spacetime event, simply select it on the image and drag it (by holding the mouse button down).
Caution ! You can put a spacetime event outside the background, but after you can't drag it back inside ! (however, if you did not release the mouse button, it's OK)
To move an object, you can also use the arrows key of the keyboard.

Changing the path and the image between two spacetimes event

Between the time of two spacetime events, the object either To set the desired behavior, select the spacetime event corresponding to the start of the movement and select the behavior in the pop up menu that is on the left-bottom of the window. With the second pop up menu, you can set which image to use.

Changing the duration of the animation

The duration of the animation is specified in the right edit field (d=...) and you can change it.
An another command "Limit duration" in the "File| menu set the duration of the animation to the current time.

Deleting objects or spacetime event

Select the corresponding menu item in the "Edit" menu. If you delete an object, you loose all information about it.

O  Changing the language:

You can change the language used by the application Animadia to English or French. For that, create a file named "AnimPref" into boot/config/settings/ and type inside
language=1

French is '1' and english is '0'.

You can select the language with the "Options" menu too ! But you have to close and open again the animation document to see strings in the new language.


O  The splash and about animation:

When the Animadia application is launched without opening a file, it play a "splash" animation. This animation come from the file "Splash_anim" which is in the same folder as the application itself.
If you don't like this feature, simply remove, rename or move this file away.

The same thing happend in the "About" window of Animadia. This window play the "About_anim" animation wich is in the same folder. Just remove it if you are disturbed with this animation when reading my very interesting manual.


O  Using the Projecteur Application:

The propose of this application is to show slides, one after one.
Slide can be a still image or an Animadia animation. A sound can associated with every slide.

Using Projecteur

When Projecteur launch, you are asked to open an presentation file. After that, click the "Go" button to start the presentation.
If you want to creat a new presentation, click the "Cancel" button in the file panel.

Building a presentation

To build a presentation, drag a file after one from the Tracker on the slide list. You can choose the position of the file by dropping the file at the right position on the list.
You can drop 3 kinds of files: If you have make a mistake, delete the slide entry and re-drag it.

Controlling a presentation

When a presentation is started, the first slide is showed.
To go to the next slide, use COMMAND-n
To start an animation in a slide (if any), use COMMAND-g
To quit the presentation, use COMMAND-w

All recognized commands are listed here:

Copying presentation to an another computer

Relative path to slides files are stored in the presentation file.
If you want your presentation to work on an another BeOS computer, dont break this relative path. Guidelines are

O  To Remember:


O  Known Bugs:


O  Developer Info:

Dropping images on the Object's Information Window.

Image area in the object info window recognize two types of dropped message.

The Animadia's animation file format

The whole description of Animadia's file format is not public but the following information should be sufficient for anybody:
The Animadia file format consist of an flattened BMessage !
With a tool like
BeConstruct (from the same author ...), you can open and edit it as a standard BMessage. You even can put the animation into a resource.

Using an animation into a foreign application

All developers can display Animadia's animations within their application. The animation can come from a file (a standard Animadia's animation file) or from elsewhere, as long as the program provide a BMessage archive of the animation.
A visualising class named 'FAnimView' is provided in the "develop" directory of this package. Add the 'FAnimView.a" static library in your project and #include the header "FAnimView.h" where you need it.

The constructor of the FAnimView object is like any BView constructor except for the last argument auto_resize_wind:

FAnimView(BRect rect, const char* title, int32 resiz, bool auto_resize_wind);
To play an animation, use one of the following call:
status_t GoAnim(entry_ref *animFile, BMessenger* finTgt, BMessage* finMsg);
status_t GoAnim(BMessage* animArch, BMessenger* finTgt, BMessage* finMsg);
The first version accept an entry_ref to the animation file. The second version is for playing an archived animation, coming from a resource for example.
When the animation is finish, the object send the finMsg to the target of the finTgt messenger.
The FAnimView make a copy of all arguments.
If auto_resize_wind was TRUE in the constructor, the view resize the window such a way the FAnimView size fit the size of the background image of the animation. This work only if the resizing mode of the FAnimView is B_FOLLOW_ALL.

Here are facilities to control the execution of an animation:

status_t StopAnim();
status_t ResumeAnim();
bool	IsAnimating();
Those function are self-expanating but the ResumeAnim have a little trick:
If you resume a stopped animation it continue where it was stopped, but if you resume a terminated animation, the animation restart from the beginning.


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