AnimHelp is a shareware utility designed to help you draw sprite-based animations. The utility came about because I am a Mac and Super Nintendo game developer, and the artists I work with find it almost impossible to draw animating objects with applications like Painter, Studio/32, Photoshop, etc., because none of them have any kind of animation features.
Most game artists are used to working with Deluxe Animate on the PC, so I have designed AnimHelp to be a substitute. The ‘1’ and ‘2’ keys switch frames, and the arrow keys are used to align each frame.
All you’ve got to do is copy each frame from your drawing program into the clipboard (via Copy or Cut) and then select either Add, Replace, or Insert in AnimHelp to include the frame in the current animation sequence. For example, say you have a 5 frame walking animation for a dog:
• drag the lasso around frame 1
• Cut it into the clipboard
• click on the Animation Window
• select Add
• repeat this for all 5 frames
• align each frame using the arrow keys
• set the animation speed from the Animation menu
• select Run Animation from the Animation menu
• click to stop the animation
Holding down the “2” key to advance a frame is a quick way to check your anim.
Selecting New from the File menu will erase all frames so you can start over.
Note that the only item in the Edit menu that does anything is Preferences. The Preferences allow you to set the bit depth of each frame. For best performance, it should be set to the depth of the screen, however, lower bit depths are better for memory. A 16 bit depth will use twice as much RAM as an 8 bit depth.
The SET WINDOW SIZE menu item will change the size of the Animation window. This also changes the size of each frame’s buffer. The larger you make the window, the more memory each frame will use. The smaller the window, the less memory each frame will use. You can use ResEdit to permanently change the size of the default Animation Window. The size of the window is used when printing Anims to the printer.
PRINT ANIM from the File menu is a new feature which will group all of the frames of your anim and print them - as many will fit on a page. You can use this to make a flip-book type animation. Because this feature is new, I don’t know how well it will work on everyone’s printer, so please let me know if you have problems. It works fine on my HP LaserJet IIp.
Just remember that this is a shareware utility, and all I’m asking is a measly $5. So please donate so that I can continue to do more shareware utilities and games.
If you have any questions or problems, I can be reached at the following addresses:
v1.1: Fixes a bug with the Replace feature. The old version did not erase the existing frame correctly, so if the new frame did not overlap the old, then both appeared. This version fixes the erase bug, and Replace works fine.
v1.2: After many people “begging” me but none paying me any shareware money, I finally put in a Save feature so that anims can be saved and reloaded later. NOTE: If I ever get a single shareware donation for this, I’d be tempted to put a scripting feature in so that you can lay out complex animations. Heck, I might even put in QuickTime support eventually.
v1.3 Adds the ability to change the window size from within the application instead of having to use ResEdit. Adds printing capabilities.
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KNOWN BUGS
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1. A known bug with Print Anim is that sometimes printing does not begin until you quit AnimHelp. I don’t know why, but it just does. If it doesnt seem to do anything, then try quitting the program and your printer should suddenly come to life.
2. The program works poorly with Brushstrokes from Claris. Brushstrokes does not correctly Cut or Copy selections to the clipboard. Rather than copying a PICT the size of the selection, it creates a PICT the size of the entire source PICT. Therefore, when you paste the selection into AnimHelp or the Scrapbook, it pastes a gigantic image rather than the tiny frame you selected. Hopefully they’ll fix this in their next release because Brushstrokes is actually the best utility I’ve found for creating art for video games on the Mac. It is an excellent program at an excellent price.
