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MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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REVIEWS
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fantareview
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1988-05-28
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FANTAVISION REVIEWED
BY
GRAEME WHITTLE
It's not often these days that I get really excited about a new soft-
ware package. There have of course been lots of programs to get excited
about, Deluxe Paint, Sculpt 3d and Pixmate Come to mind, but until now
there has not been a really good 2d animation package available. Fanta-
vision from Broderbund fills the gap with a vengeance.
Basically Fantavision uses tweening to interpolate images between user
defined keyframes, in other words if the user defines a square in the
first frame and a triangle in the next, then the program causes the
square to smoothly change into a triangle. Aegis Animator uses the same
principles but there is a world of difference in the quality of the
software design. Where Fantavision really shines is in its ease of use
and its well designed user interface.
Fantavision is nicely packaged and comes with a slim but easy to follow
manual and the local release is a PAL version. After booting the program
you are confronted with a black screen with four small windows. Each of
these windows contain the necessary gadgets for your animations. The
window marked tools enables you to first create an object and then per-
form a number of operations upon the object. These operations include
spinning, squashing, flipping, resizing and skewing. There is a palette
window for selecting the colour of your objects, no ordinary palette
this though, it also contains thirty six patterns (Macintosh Style), and
these patterns are one of the things that make this program a cut
above the ordinary. The film window enables you to create new animation
frames, clone one frame onto the next, add sound to your film and get
info about the current frame. Lastly the modes window enables the user
to change the look of the animation display, make global changes and
load bitmaps (DPaint brushes for example) into the animation.
The usual Amiga style pull down menus allow you to, among other things
load IFF pictures as backgrounds, edit your animations with cut and
paste etc and set fonts, yes that's right you can animate text. There
is a palette modification option and you can change the screen format
to any one of eight choices, overscan is supported in all screen res-
olutions. It is also possible to use Fantavision in ham mode. This
is the kind of flexibility that makes this program different.
In Fantavision, an animation is normally created from objects drawn
with the draw tool. Drawing is point to point style with each point
becoming a vertex which is individually movable. In this way an object
can be cloned over to subsequent screens and animated or morphed into
different kinds of objects. If the colour of the object is changed then
the palette is cycled through until the new colour is arrived at, the
same is true for patterns. You can also assign the outline of the
object to a different colour if you wish. The animation of text and
bitmaps is somewhat more restricted. Since each bitmap represents only
one point it is not possible to distort or or morph them. It is
possible however to load a bitmap onto each point of an object - what
this means is that if you have a circle with twelve points and a bitmap
is loaded then twelve copies of the bitmap appear on the screen, one
on each point. This circle can then manipulated just like any other
object. The results of doing this can be amazing.
Sound can be added at any stage of the animation via a sound setup
requester. The disk comes with a selection of sound samples and you
can use any IFF sound samples you happen to have or have made. The
requester enables you to alter the pitch, balance, echo and duration
of the sound. This feature is excellent because it means that from
only one sample many variations are possible thus conserving valuable
memory. If the sound samples are quite long then Fantavision plays
them through until they are finished, it does not cut them off when
a new frame appears.
Fantavision's various modes enable the user to view the work as a
normal animation or as a "trace" animation. A trace animation is one
where the objects leave images of themselves on the screen as they
move. This can lead to some quite incredible effects. There is also
a lightining mode where the objects flash as they go and a draw
background mode where a permanent image is drawn on the screen as the
animation takes place. From the modes menu you can also change the
appearance of your objects from solid to outline or to just having
points at each vertex.
Almost all Fantavision's settings are user-definable. You can change
the speed of your animation, the number of points for circles and
objects and most important, for smooth animation you can change the
number of tweens that occur between frames.
In summation Fantavision is an excellent package, I like its user
interface, you can even move the toolboxes around the screen. It has
easy to use keyboard shortcuts as well. I like its speed, stunning
displays can literally be created in seconds and I like its flex-
ibility. The program also comes with a number of pre created anim-
ations and a player utility so that you can distribute your creations.
There is one annoying bug that I must mention however. When loading
in a bitmap the program asks wether you want to use the bitmap's
palette, this is fine unless you already have that palette on screen
because if you do and accidently click "yes" then the machine will
guru every time. So be warned. The program is otherwise stable and
economical with memory.
I got my copy of Fantavision from Sydney United Computers in Clarence
Street and I believe it is around $90.00. Get a copy and have fun.
**************************** END OF FANTAREVIEW **********************************