Movie Toolbox: SpriteToolbox

This chapter describes the functions of the Movie Toolbox that your application can use to create and manipulate sprites. Sprites are a unique type of animation entity. Most animations are based on bitmaps or vectors. Sprites are initially defined, and then animated by reference. This can result in very low-bandwidth animations of high quality. In addition, the sprite toolbox functions automatically handle many animation chores: sprites which are "in front of" other visual elements occlude them, and they are in turn occluded by images that they pass "behind."

QuickTime sprites are especially flexible. While a sprite is typically defined originally as a bitmap, a QuickTime sprite's source data can be almost anything: MPEG video, a QTVR object, a URL, or a live video feed on the Internet.

Sprites can exist in the sprite tracks of QuickTime movies, or in Sprite Worlds of their own (Sprite Worlds are used for animations that exist within applications but are not part of a QuickTime movie). Sprites within movies are handled by the sprite media handler. Sprites outside of movies are handled by calls to the sprite toolbox.

This chapter is of interest mainly to developers who will be using sprites outside of QuickTime movies.

If you plan to work with sprites, you should also be familiar with the chapter "Media Handlers: Sprites," and with the sprites section of the chapter " Movie Toolbox: New Features ."

Sprite Characteristics

QuickTime 3 Reference provides an overview of sprites and their characteristics. Included are discussions of animation, sprite properties, key frame samples, sprite layers, and graphics modes.

Sprite World Characteristics

QuickTime 3 Reference describes sprite worlds, which are a type of graphics world that can contain sprites. Sprite worlds are used to create sprite animations within an application, instead of within a QuickTime movie.

Working with Sprites

QuickTime 3 Reference describes the process of adding sprites to a QuickTime presentation. Topics covered include creating a sprite world, creating sprites, animating sprites, disposing of sprite data structures after use, and sprite hit testing. This section is of interest to any developer working with sprites or animation.

Sprite World Functions

QuickTime 3 Reference describes the functions used to create and manipulate sprite worlds and sprites, including hit testing.