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************************** TAKE-2 READ_ME *************************** This document discribes some alterations on the Take-2 package that were made since the manual was printed. It also contains some general information to clarify certain functions and explains some new ones that were added, mainly on suggestions and remarks from users. This does not mean the manual is wrong or useless, it only shows that Take-2 is developed and improved every day. This file contains the vital information you need to take full use of the latest developments and should be printed out and be kept with the manual. --------------------------- NEW FEATURES ---------------------------- The vidi library ---------------- The hassle with the old and new vidi.librarys and if it is in the LIBS:-directory or not is a thing of the past, since it has been incorporated in the program itself. For this reason it is no longer necessary to use any install utility. You will still need some workbench files, however, but a requester will inform you if they are not found. New vidi hardware ----------------- The new VidiAmiga-12 hardware, manufactured by Rombo, has no controls on the device itself as did the earlier versions. For this reason contrast and saturation sliders have been added next to the existing hardware control sliders on the digitizer controlpanel. These 4 controls are identified by a single character on the knob, which are, respectively, (B)righness, (C)ontrast, (S)aturation and (O)ffset. The new sliders have no effect when used with old hardware. You can alter these gadgets via the keyboard by using the up and down arrows on the keypad in combination with a qualifier key: Brightness: Up/Down Arrow + Left-Shift Contrast: Up/Down Arrow + Left-Alt Saturation: Up/Down Arrow + Right-Alt Offset: Up/Down Arrow + Right-Shift Using an NTSC Amiga ------------------- The program recognizes on which machine it is running and switches to NTSC mode if required.The Digitizer/Display option is set accordingly, thus the default vertical resolution is switched to 200 lines. Only 18 cells/sounds are displayed in NTSC mode and the "25"-gadget on the flipper controlpanel is replaced by a "30"-gadget to account for the different videospeed on NTSC video equipment. All Requesters and panels are still centered on the screen. Setting the Digitizer/Display menu-option to PAL will only work while using PAL Vidi-Amiga hardware. The NTSC version of the digitizer has a smaller internal buffer. Trying to read a PAL sized image from it will probably crash your machine or give some strange effects, at least. If you are using a PAL digitizer and grab a PAL picture, the bottom 56/128 lines will not be displayed on an NTSC machine, although the FrameBoard will display a scaleddown version of the complete picture. The audiofilter --------------- The General menu on the xsheet contains a new item for switching the hardware audiofilter of the Amiga on or off. This filter prevents aliasing distortion but cuts all frequencies above 7000 Hz. By disabling it the higher tones will come trough, giving a clearer sound. Distortions will be more apparent, however. The powerled of the Amiga is switched off or dimmed when the audio- filter is disabled. The Flipper/startFrame option ----------------------------- A new option, called "StartFrame" has been added to the Flipper menu. This was done on a request from users. Some want to start the Flipper on the first frame every time, others want the flipper to start from the frame it was on when they returned to the main screen. Choosing the StartFrame/First option will restart from frame 1 every time the flipper is invoked. The StartFrame/Current option will start the flipper with the current frame, which is set to the frame the flipper was on when you returned to the main screen. The current frame can be set manually by clicking on the framenumber, in which case this frame will be the first frame when the Flipper is invoked. Show a specified frame ----------------------- You can now go to whichever frame you like in the flipper, either from the exposure sheet or from within the flipper itself. Doubleclicking on a framenumber on the exposure sheet invokes the flipper and brings it to the specified frame. It stops immediately at that position. You can then use the flipper controlpanel as usual. If you click on the framenumber indication on this controlpanel, a cursor will appear in it, allowing to enter a new framenumber. Hitting return (CR) while the cursor is active brings you to the specified frame, anything else restores the original framenumber. Dragging items on the exposuresheet ----------------------------------- Some operations involving cells and sounds can't be achieved using the existing tools in an easy and intuitive way. A new concept of altering the exposuresheet has been added to make editing even more flexible. Each element on the xsheet can now be dragged over the screen, thus accomplishing a certain editing operation.This is in fact an extension of the select function for each of these elements. Clicking once over a cell or sound and releasing the mousebutton will still (de)select that item. If the left mousebutton is held down, however, moving the mouse will deselect the item and perform the new dragging function. How does it work in practice ? When used on a cell, dragging the mouse will alter the timing of this cell. This means you can stretch or shrink the repetition of each cell without using any CellPanel tool or change the multiply number. This is especially useful if you want to tailor the timing of a cell to a certain framenumber or when you only want to alter one cell. When used on a sound, dragging the mouse will change the startposition of the sound to a new frame,if possible. Although you can drag a sound beyond another one, it can't replace an existing sound. This replaces the need to remove a sound and insert it again at a new position, simply to move the sound to another frame. It is also possible to drag the current (white) frame, but this is only useful in combination with the FrameBoard at the moment. Thus you can search more rapidly through the images to see a certain image, without the need to see all frames or to switch between back and forward scroll. Merging levels ************** A new option has been added to the XSheet-menu which allows to merge multiple levels into 1 new level, retaining the overall resolution of the original pictures, merging them as opaque colors on transparent celluloid sheets. About the Merge Levels method. ------------------------------ It was opted to have immediate results while linetesting with multiple levels, even on entry level Amigas (A500/600). This imposed some restrictions to the resolution while flipping, as it isn't possible to merge 4 multicolored pictures in 1/25th of a second. The presented solution, as described in the readme-file for version 1.5, proved satisfactory for linetesting purposes. Some users, however, want to use the program to present early results to their clients. As the number of colors per level is restricted to only 2 for each picture on the same frame, this resolution was not satisfactory for presentation purposes. It is now possible to merge all levels into 1 new level, which can thus be played at its full resolution. The normal procedure would be to edit the animation until you are satisfied with it, using the normal "restricted" method for speed, and then use the Merge option to create a presentation animation. Look at the working method as the wireframe mode in 3D software and the Merge option as the rendering. Thus you will have speed and efficiency while creating as well as good image quality on the end result. Some notes about the merging process. ------------------------------------- The levels are merged right to left for each frame. Thus level 1 contains the bottom picture (background) and level 4 contains the top picture. The transparent pixels in first picture (right level) are replaced by corresponding pixels of the picture on the left of it. The transparent color of the leftmost level will be displayed unchanged. When a new frame is merged into a new picture, the earlier composed pictures are searched for corresponding picture data. If a match is found this picture will be used instead, avoiding duplicate data in memory. It is therefore possible that the merging slows down to the end of a lengthy x-sheet, especially with many similar pictures. At the moment, the palette of the leftmost picture is used for the new picture. You should take care that all pictures on a frame use the same palette, otherwise you'll get some strange looking results. You can use BLANKS to pad levels. They will be rendered as completely white pictures on that level. If you want another color instead, a monochrome picture should be loaded or digitized and inserted at the appropriate positions. For normal merging of linetests, the standard BLANKS will work fine. If all levels on a frame contain a BLANK, a normal BLANK will appear in the merged scene at that frame. Note that after the merging has finished, only 1 level is occupied, leaving 3 empty levels for some more merging. The Merge Levels requester. --------------------------- When you choose Merge from the XSheet menu on the main screen, you will be presented with the Merge Level requester. Of course, you must at least have 2 levels in use, for this option to work. Enter merged name: Since new pictures will be created, they must have a proper name, so that they can be identified and stored to disk. You should type in an initial name for these new pictures in the stringgadget before the merging process is started. If you don't, the default name "mergepic-001" will be be used. Since this doesn't say much about the animation it should be avoided. Only use a unique name, which isn't used for any pictures in the PicturePanel. The MERGE will fail if a duplicate name is used, but it will skip found name-numbers while merging and use the next free number, instead. Transparent color: When preparing your animation in another package, care should be taken that either the first or the last color are used wherever you want the picture to be transparent. Normally this would be color 0 (first) because it is used for genlocking and is best to be left black to keep the gadgets and requesters of the software clear. When digitizing drawings on white paper, you will probably want the paper to be transparent, which is the last color since the palette is sorted dark to bright. Use the PREVIEW function (explained later) to make sure that the correct color is used for the merging process. Take care that the overlaying picture is to the right of the underlaying picture on the exposure sheet. FIRST: The first color in the palette (usually the darkest) will be replaced with the underlaying picture. LAST: The last color in the palette (usually the brightest) will be replaced with the underlaying picture. Original pictures: If you no longer need the original pictures after the operation, they can be removed while merging, thus freeing valuable memory. In many cases, when memory is low, this will be the only way to successfully merge the levels, as the new pictures need the memory. Naturally, you can save the originals to disk before merging. KEEP: All pictures stay in memory. Use the PicturePanel "Find Unused" menuoption and the "Delete pics" function if you should wish to remove the obsolete pictures after the merge has been completed. REMOVE: Obsolete pictures are removed while merging. A warning requester will appear before the merging starts, allowing to cancel the destructive operation. Main merge gadgets MERGE: Starts the actual merging operation. The Merge Levels requester disappears and the current frame indicator advances from the first to the last frame, showing which frame is being processed. If the REMOVE original pictures option is chosen, the merged frames no longer show the original cells, as the corres- pending pictures are removed from memory. PREVIEW: Merges the current frame and displays it without altering the pictures or the exposure sheet. No new picture is created, either. This allows you to check if the correct pictures are in the correct levels and test which of the transparent options works best. The preview screen is displayed until the leftmouse button is clicked. CANCEL: Removes the Merge Levels requester without altering or crea- ting any pictures or cells. The current settings are preserved. An example. ----------- After all this information you may think it's quite a complex matter, but in practice it is a very simple operation (on the part of the user, that is. Its a complex matter to program, though.) I will presume you are familiar with the basic Take-2 functions, such as loading scenes and using the flipper. On the distribution disk you will find a directory called "arrowhit" Load it as a Scene and flip the animation. The 2 levels are displayed in multilevel mode, so only 2 greys per level are used. Now return to the main screen and choose "Merge" from X-Sheet menu. Click on PREVIEW when the Merge Levels requester appears. The preview screen will show the current frame as a merged picture. It seems only the arrow on level 2 is shown, but you can see a small part of the tree through the arrowhead, which is in fact black on the original. Obviously the transparent color is set wrongly. Click the left mouse- button to remove the previewscreen, set the transparent color to LAST and click on PREVIEW again. Now the frame is merge correctly. Because the originals are safely on disk, you can set the original pictures option to REMOVE and click on MERGE to start the process. After choosing PROCEED on the verify requester the actual merging commences and the xsheet shows the progress of the merge. When the process has finished (when the pointer becomes arrow-shaped again), you can flip the finished animation in its full glory. ------------------------- ALTERED FEATURES -------------------------- Loading and saving Scenes ------------------------- This is quite a dynamic area of the program. Because about 70 students have to share the same harddisks at my school, the saving procedure has to be both foolproof and automatically organizing the data. Eventually, the system using a namerequester and automatic extension naming proved satisfactory for this situation. Some users, however, liked the old system using the bottom filenamegadget on the filere- quester better. You can now use whichever of these systems you like most. If no name is entered in the filenamegadget on the filerequester when the SAVE gadget is selected, a requester will appear and query to enter a name, otherwise the saving will take place immediately, using the provided name. Entering a carriage return in these stringgadgets has the same effect as selecting the SAVE gadget (or PROCEED on the namerequester). When loading Scenes you must only select the directory containing the needed files and select LOAD on the filerequester. This enables you to load several Scenes at once, providing they are all in the same directory. It is now possible to load scenes with a different number of levels correctly. Empty levels of the first loaded scenes are padded with blanks when a new scene, using more levels, is appended. Also, the sound will now appear at the correct frame in the appended scene Whenever a name is defined for a scene by either loading or saving it to disk, this name is shown in the titlebar on the exposesheet. This makes it easier to identify the animation at all times, especially when it is part of a large production. I would still advise you to give each picture a logical name to avoid identical named pictures on disk and while appending scenes. You can now save a Scene with the same name as a previously saved Scene. If PROCEED is choosen on the "File already exists."-requester the directory and its contents will be deleted and the Save will continue as before. Also, directorys containing files can be deleted with the "DEL!"-function. Directorys within directorys will not be deleted, however, since this would provoke potential disasters, especially in schools and companies... The LowMem Alert ---------------- The Lowmem Alert has been finetuned and should work alright now. It is invoked when the amount of memory needed for safely saving your work is no longer available. You should therefore try to free as much memory as possible before commencing the Save operation. Quit the FRAMEBOARD, DIGITIZER and FLIPPER screen if they are opened, and close all unneeded Panels on the XSheet. If you should still have lack of memory, then the Workbench can be closed as well via the Gene- ral Workbench menuoption provided the Workbench is open at the moment. The alert will only be displayed once and will only report again when a New/Scene is invoked. This is to prevent numerous alerts being dis- played while saving the files to disk. Normal 'Not enough memory'- errors will still be displayed when a function failes, naturally. Duplicate naming ---------------- It is now no longer possible to have pictures or samples with the same name in memory. This caused some strange effects, especially when se- veral scenes where loaded using a-001 and so on. Also, it wasn't pos- sible to regrab a certain picture without confusion. Whenever a picture is being grabbed or loaded with an existing name, you will be asked whether to PROCEED (replace picture/sample) or to CANCEL the procedure (leave original picture untouched). The INFO panel -------------- The panel, which pops up when the INFO gadget on the Filerequester is selected, will now display how many pictures will (at least) fit on the current (hard)disk in addition to percentage of free diskspace. This number shows how many pictures with the current resolution would fit on the disk with no compression. This means you can probably save more pictures on it, depending on the nature of the images. ColorMerge in the Digitizer --------------------------- The colormerging routines, which merge the red, green and blue buffers into a full color picture, have been revisited. They are invoked when you choose MIX or GRAB IT while in colormode. The conversion from the 12 available bitplanes (R+G+B) to a number of colors less than 4096 (HAM) are much improved and will give a more accurate picture, using dithering to compensate for the missing colors in the palette. It is now possible to obtain an acceptable result even when using as few as 4 colors, depending on the quality and nature of the original picture. A new digitizer optionmenu called "MixMethod" has been added. Choosing "Approx" will use the closest color in the the palette for each pixel, choosing "Dither" will compensate for the lack of enough colors in the palette by placing different colored pixels together to give the illu- sion of more colors on screen, a technique pioneered by the French Pointilist Painters from the previous century. Which method works best depends on the kind of picture digitized. If it contains sharp edges around shapes, the "Approx" method will give the best results while graduate colorfades will be mixed best with the "Dither" on, thus avoiding colorbanding. Resolutions lower than 16 co- lors will give a more pixelized result, since the colors used are to far apart to give a suble dithered shade. When using "Dither" in with an Interlaced resolution, the image will appear to flicker more than with the "Approx" method,unless some kind of anti-flicker device is used. Since the "Dither"-method only gives better results in 2 of the avail- able mixing resolutions, the "Approx" method is used by default. Aborting while a colormerge is running will now give the choice to PROCEED or CANCEL, since it was al to easy to abort the merge acci- dentaly by pressing a mousebutton or key. Continuous digitizing (VCR) --------------------------- Choosing GRAB IT while the VCR-gadget is highlighted will bring up a requester showing the memory usage while grabbing. Before, this memo- rybar was displayed at the righthand side of the ControlPanel. Since this position was also employed for the selection of a DUB picture, it wasn't possible to use the VCR in combination with the DUB option. Printer check ------------- Because many users will own the vidi digitizer, a sound sampler and a printer, all using the parallel port, a switchbox is a solution. It has to be said that it is not advisable to switch while your com- puter is on, as it can crash the system or even damage your hardware. To have an extra safety and avoid printing to anything else than the printer, a check for the availability of the printer is made before the actual printing starts. An error requester will inform you when no printer is found, allowing to correct the situation. KS2.0 on a standard A500/A600/A1500/A2000 ----------------------------------------- It seems that a few system routines have slowed down when the new operating system is used on a model with a M68000 CPU. One of the most noticeable effects being the jerky movement when a screen slides up or down. Because the annoying effect this has, the program will skip the screen scrolling when it detects a KS2.0 used with a M68000 CPU. Some other side effects of this combination are looked into. ------------------------ GENERAL INFORMATION ----------------------- SUBJECT: About Multiple Levels ------------------------------ by Geert Vergauwe This text contains no new information, but is more of a discussion on how to use the Multiple Level functions effectively. To avoid having to draw the same background and immobile figures onto every new drawing of an animation,traditional animators use seetrough cellophane sheets. This allows several layers of animation to be seen at once, with an optional background as the bottom level. By only altering the layers (cellophanes) that have movement, only these dra- wings have to be made, thus saving a lot of redrawing work. As Take-2 is essentially a linetester, these separate animated levels must not only be tested individually, but their interactions have to be checked as well. There are two ways of accomplishing this, each with its own advantages and limitations, which will be described later. These Multiple Levels simulation methods resemble the union-skin technique, which is used to see the previous drawing on a lighttable to dethermen the relative position of the new drawing. The Multiple Levels in Take-2 are desig- ned to allow a flexible and quick way to simulate how the existing drawings will be filmed on the animation table. Multiple Level method 1: using the exposuresheet. This method simulates overlayed cellophane drawings. You can see one drawing trough the unused space of the one on top. As with actual cellophanes, you can make any combination on any frame, adding and removing pictures on different levels as much as you like. This is the most straightforward and flexible method, with only one mayor drawback: only 2 colors (1 white/1 grey) are shown from each level, even if the original pictures use more colors/greys. This is a limitation of the current Amiga hardware. As you may have noticed, there are four columns on the xsheet titled 'level 1' to 'level 4'. These are four independent levels that can be edited separately or simultaneously. When you append cells to a level from the PicturePanel, you can set the current level by selecting one of the four levelgadgets at the top of the PicturePanel. The cells will be appended to that level. You can select cells in any of the levels or even all levels at once in the usual way (clicking on the cell). You can make blocks in any level or more than one level by doubleclicking on a cell to assign the start of the block and then select a cell in another level to assign the end of the block. The block will contain all cells whitin the rectangle formed by the start and end cells of the block. Try it out, it is really much more straightforward than it sounds. All CellPanel editing functions work on all levels. If you have se- lected cells in level 1 and 2, for example, and use the insertcells function, all selected cells will be inserted at the choosen point. You can delete cells in more than one level at once in the same way. When the Flipper or FrameBoard is invoked, the program detects if more than one level is used and switches to Multiple Level display mode (two colors per level) automatically. Each levelheader has an ON/OFF switch. If a level is OFF, it is consi- dered empty and will not be displayed. If only one level containing cells is ON, this level will be displayed with the full color palette, even if the other levels contain cells as well. The level switch has no effect on editing functions, though. The most practial way to use this multilevel method is to test each level of animation levels separately on a different level with only the current level ON and have a final check by enabling all used le- vels to check interactions.. If you are are using more than two colors while digitizing the origi- nal pictures, you should try to have a good contrast and make the most important lines as dark as possible. This will result in a clear com- posite display of the levels. When you are satisfied with the timing and combination of all levels, you can choose Merge from the X-Sheet menu to merge all levels into one new level and see the complete animation in all its glory ! Multiple Level method 2: using the DUB-function. This method can be compared with photographic double-exposing, since two images are actually being merged together. The resulting picture can't be altered and has a unique picturename. These pictures can have up to 16 greylevels (DUB isn't available in colormode), allowing for detail, but some animations can get rather complicated to digitize in this way, with little space for errors. In this case you should have a prepared exposuresheet, made manually or using the other multilevel method to avoid errors while digitizing or use Method 1. Let's assume you have animated two walking cycles of 12 drawings on separate levels, which should be checked together. You should then digitize all drawings of one cycle with the DUB-gadget off, making sure you digitize the paper as white and clean as possible. Set the Digitizer/DubOriginal optionmenu to Overwrite and the Digi- tizer/DubMode optionm to AND and highlight the DUB-gadget. Now digitize the drawings of the second level, scrolling the name of the corresponding picture in the red textdisplay for each new image. You can either use the left and rightarrow key or click on the names above and below the red textdisplay to set the correct DUB picture. This way you will have only 12 pictures which contain both levels, as if you had digitized them on a lighttable under the camera. If you only want to superimpose a linear background or layout on every grabbed drawing then this method is recommended,since you can preserve memory and have the pictures displayed at any resolution. You should first digitize the background (use a dot after the autoname to prevent the program from appending a number). It is important to use a good contrast in order to have a clean mixture of pictures. Highlight the DUB-gadget and scroll the name of the background in the red textdisplay on the righthand side of the ControlPanel. Whenever you grab a new picture,the background will be stored as well. More detail of both methods can be found in the Take-2 manual. SUBJECT: Take-2 and Anim files ------------------------------ by Geert Vergauwe The Anim (opt-5) format, as defined by Sparta/Aegis, has many advan- tages but it also has some strange peculiarities in order to optimize playback speed, which do not fit-in with the Take-2 concept. I have tried to solve all discrepancies to allow Animfiles to be fine- tuned using this program, though. Here are some comments I would like to make, so that you know how Anim files are handled by Take-2. This will allow you to make a better preparation when creating Anim-files in other programs, DPaint in particular, which will make live easier. timing information. The timing information for each picture, which defines how long it should be displayed, is stored in the header of the next picture. This is probably to set a vertical blank delay after the picture is dis- played. I find this is an inaccurate method, since the delay starts after the picture is constructed, which takes time by itself. The timer should start before all data is handled. The player can then wait for the timer to finish. This also means that the last picture has no timing information. Because Take-2 tries to construct an exposuresheet with the timinginfo from each picture, the timing of the last picture can't be determined. When trying to store this in the first frame, a number of Anim Players crashed... A programmers life isn't easy, you know. What all this means is that you will have to create the timing for the last picture manually, which isn't a total disaster, after all. The extra pictures. Sometimes, when you load an Anim file created with another package, two extra pictures will be created, which are identical to the first two. These are cycle-pictures, which are added to the Anim to allow AnimPlayers to cycle the animation. Not all programs write these, however. It is therefore not possible to skip these two frames. I found that DeluxePaint knows the exact length of an animation it has saved by adding an extra DPAN (DPaint ANimation ?) chunck to the Anim file. When such a chunck is found by Take-2, no extra pictures will be created. I have taken the liberty to save such a chunck when saving an Anim,so that Take-2 animations are loaded correctly by DeluxePaint. DeluxePaint timing. Because of the way DeluxePaint handles animation, you can't use real timing (waiting), but have to repeat identical pictures over several frames to simulate holds. All these frames are saved in the Anim file, with a timing of 1. This takes up more diskspace/memory than neces- sary, especially for each first duplication, because it saves the differences with the picture two frames back. Furthermore, when loa- ding Anim files, DeluxePaint does not automatically duplicate each picture according to it's timing. All this would make it rather dif- ficult to interchange Anim's between DPaint and Take-2. To take care of this problem, Take-2 checks for duplicate frames after loading an Anim file, removes them and adjusts the xsheet to reflect the correct timing, without the overhead of holding identical pictures in memory. When saving an Anim file, you will be asked to select the ANIM savemethod. Choosing EXPANDED will create a (larger) file which loads into DeluxePaint with the correct timing. Choosing ECONOMICAL will create a (shorter) file which will be played back with the cor- rect timing by a Player program. Anim to Pictures. When an Anim file is loaded into Take-2,seperate pictures are created, to allow flexible editing. This means that you will need more memory than was needed to create the original Anim file. Also, the names for each individual picture are derived from the filename with a unique number added to identify each seperate picture. Anim's created with Take-2 contain the original name for each picture, so that a complete reconstruction can take place. When the Anim is resaved using another package, this information will probably be lost. Anims and sound You should also take note that no sounds are imbedded in an Anim file. If you want to save your animation with sound, you should save it as a Scene and use the ScenePlayer or Take-2 itself to play it back. I could manage to save the samples and sounds along with the pictures in the Anim file, but this would be useless, since no player programs would play them. I could write a special Anim Player, though .... As you can see, much effort has been made to make Take-2 the perfect tool to allow timing adjustments of Anim files using all the flexible functions of the program, while retaining optimal compatibility with other software. It can also be used to create an Anim from separate ILBM pictures,split Anims into their components to be used in software that doesn't handle Anim files or to merge several Anims into a single file. All palette information is preserved in the program and saved along with the ANIM or ILBM file. I found that no other software exists that allows this kind of manipu- lation with Anims, exept for some separate,rather limited PD programs. Have fun.