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Animation Techniques

           

Animation and Hardware requirements 

Hardware requirements for animation are a Pentium, 128 Meg ram, mouse, keyboard, soundcard, speakers, monitor, computer (grin).  Numerous software is available such as adobe and Ulead animation and video software most will also convert from one file format to another.  For animation to flow smoothly, a frame rate of 25 fps is used (Pal Systems). Or 30 fps USA.

For the web a frame rate of 15 fps is usually used, this is a bit jerky but enables a 56kbps download speed to be maintained.  The animation consists of each frame being slightly different, the more frames the better the flow with smoother animation.

 Macromedia:

 In director All cast members used for an animated colour cursor must:

  • Be bitmap cast members

  • Have a colour depth of 8 bits (256 colours)

  • Use only the first eight or the last eight colours that are in the standard System - Win palette. These provide the most predictable results when playing back across platforms. Other colours may not appear correctly.

 In Windows 95, you can create cursors of either 16 by 16 pixels or 32 by 32 pixels (almost always 32 by 32 pixels, but some video cards may support only 16 by 16 pixels).

            In Windows NT, you can create cursors of 16 by 16 pixels or 32 by 32 pixels.

            On the Macintosh, you can create cursors of 16 by 16 pixels.

 Animation Shop:

 Supports several animation and video file formats. Your animations can be saved in popular formats such as GIF, FLC, FLI, AVI, ANI or MNG.

 Human Vision and animation

 The human eye is "fooled" when it comes to animation. A frame rate of 23fps and higher gives the impression to the human eye of a smooth even flow of movement (that is if the frames are done in sequence and correctly). A video actually consists of a series of still images, played back at 23fps or higher gives a nice smooth even flow of movement. If however the movie was replayed at 15fps and slower, the movie would appear jerky, jumpy and actually irritates the eye, the slower the fps the worse it appears.

 Two Dimensional Images

 Create a sense of depth by the way the lines appear they give a 2 dimensional image in text or boxes. It is all done with lines. You can create Ripple or Whirlpool FX using 2D filters on an image or make it to look like 3d by adding colour , depth and shading.

 Vector and Raster or bitmapped images compared

 Vector drawings are created in an application such as Macromedia freehand a vector layer is object oriented and is a graphic consisting of mathematically described objects which usually appear as outlines with control points, in other words a vector shape is a mathematical description of a geometric form that includes the thickness of the line, the fill colour, and so on.

  Raster or bitmap images are created in an application such as Adobe PhotoShop. A raster layer is pixel-oriented, When you move an object in a raster image (or layer), you move the pixels, which affects the entire image.

 A bitmap defines an image as a grid of colour pixels. It stores the colour for each pixel in the image. A vector shape is best for a simple, smooth, clean-looking image. It typically includes less detail, but it can be resized without distortion. Like a bitmap, Director anti-aliases a vector shapes against its background. A vector shape can also be dynamically controlled with Lingo. Because a vector shape is stored as a mathematical description, it requires less RAM and disk space than an equivalent bitmap image and downloads faster from the Internet.

 Fireworks imports vector graphics from Macromedia freehand 7, Adobe Illustrator 7, and uncompressed CorelDraw 7 and 8.

 Bitmaps are best for complex and irregular images with a lot of detail at the pixel level. You can easily make minute changes to a bitmap by editing single pixels, but resizing the image can cause distortion as pixels are redistributed. Director anti-aliases a bitmap against its background, meaning that Director blends the bitmaps colours with background colours around the edges to make the edge appear smooth instead of jagged. A bitmap typically requires more RAM and disk space than a comparable vector shapes—and it can take longer to download from the Internet. formats, including GIF and JPEG

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