Welcome to Digits Widgets Animation Version 3.0. It is starting to come together very nicely, in fact I have been so busy fiddling with it I haven’t really had a chance to actually play with it too much 
In our last installment I had added, Movement, Color and Material. The following are new features in Version 3.0
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Added a Curve Point to the Interpolation. Each of the 5 allowable objects base thier movement from the Start Position to the End Position. By Selecting the “Curve” Switch you can define another Point in space to Spline that Straight Line path into a curve. Also the Size and Rotation of the Curve Point has an effect of the object as it moves from Point A to Point B
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Added Frame by Frame Playback - By entering the desired frame in the slider or using the “F+” and “F-” buttons you can now press “PlayFrame” to redraw the selected frame on the Canvas.
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Added Frame Export - When you are using the Frame Playback you can now export that single frame as a PSD or BMP file to disk
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Added Object Put in Frame Buttons - When you are using the Frame Playback you can recall each individual object into the scene by pressing one of the “Put” buttons. This, along with Export Frame, can allow you the user to create more complex animations by working on a frame to frame basis. Use the Movement and Size interpolation from the Start to End to move your object and work on the individual frames placing or manipulating the objects in various ways. TIP: if need be erase the object in the frame before you “Put” a new copy, then you can transform the new copy etc…
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Best Render - This was in the last version but I don’t think I explained it. Set this switch to on when you wish the render to use the “Best Render” mode. This will enable shadows, transparency, Material properties etc… in the exported images. Moving Shadows are Great!
Notes and Tips:
If you are working in a multilayer scene I advise that you put your animation objects in a separate layer, AND most IMPORTANT remember to SELECT that layer before you do any render. Failure to do so will cause the layer that you have selected to be cleared and drawn over with your animation objects. Just a warning as it has happened to me a couple of times. I am trying to figure out a way to set and recall a specific layer before render so that this doesn’t happen by accident.
I gave you guys Lesson One before.
Lesson Two - Using Curves
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Select and place an object on the canvas. Position, size and rotate to your satisfaction. Select a material.
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Press one of the “GetStart” buttons, you should see the “Sel_” switch get enabled. (to disable this object from the scend just unselect the “Sel_” switch)
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Move, size and rotate the object to the end point of your scene and press “GetEnd” button to save this spot
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To set a Spline Curve Point to this object select the “Curve” switch. You will notice that the “LoadPoint” and “Move” button for that object becomes enabled.
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Move the object in space, to where you want this Spline Curve Point to be. You may change its size, rotation as well. You can move it in Z depth as well as X and Y to create different kinds of curves. A good rule of thumb is that the Curve will extend about half way between the straight line between your starting point and your ending point out to the Spline point. So a very huge curve can be made by moving the spline point far away and a smaller curve by moving closer in perpendicular to the line.
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Do the same for up to four more objects by repeating steps 1 to 5.
Tips:
Use the Recall_Start and Recall_End buttons to help you place your other objects if you need to. For example. I want Object 2 to start at the same spot as Object 1. I draw object 2 on the canvas, then I make sure I have the object in Move, Scale, or Rotate and I press “RecallStart_1” the object moves to that position and I press “GetStart_2” to save that position as Obj 2’s Start. waalaa!
Say I want to use the same Curve Point on object 2 as object 1 has. Press the “Move_1” button and the object moves to that position and I then press “LoadPoint_2” to save that for Object 2.
NOTE: If I am not currently holding a object in Move, Scale or Rotation pressing the Recall buttons will draw that object, otherwise it will move, scale and rotate the object that you are holding. Hence the reason you can use the tip above. Neat eh?
Lesson Three - Using Frame by Frame
My job is to make the tool, your job is to get creative with it and come up with different ways of using it and do cool things. This feature, in my mind really starts to make this widget powerful. Here is one idea of how to use it but hopefully not the only one.
I am thinking of a guy watching a blob drop from overhead, his eyes are following the ball to the floor. When the blob hits the floor it kinda smushes.
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I set up a head, 2 eyes and a ball. (Head obj 1) (left Eye obj 2) (Right eye obj 3) (blob obj 4)
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Start Frame - The head is looking up with two eyes fixed to the blob over head.
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End Frame - The Head is looking down at the ball on the floor, his two eyes are still in position of the head looking down at the ball. (if we ran the animation using this setup, course I haven’t tried it yet, I think that the eye movement would be out of whack with the symmetry of the head as it Rotates down, so this is where frame editing comes to play. We will let the script do the dirty work of moving the objects smoothly and we will adjust them on each frame to be cool. Then we will export the frame to disk.
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Make sure that SelectFrame is 1 and press “PlayFrame”. This will draw Frame 1 on the canvas. Everything should be lined up pretty good so we press “Export Frame” and select “Blob1.bmp” for a file name
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Press the “F+” button to advance to Frame 2. At this point we could just press “PlayFrame” and it would draw all objects to the scene. but we can also place them individually with the “Put” buttons. so…
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Press “Put_1” to place the head in the scene at frame 2, since he isn’t moving in XY or Z he will appear in the same spot, however he should start to look down in Rotation a little bit.
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Press “Put_4” to place the blob so that we know where it is in space at this point
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Press “Put_2” to place the left eye, is it still in the socket if not press “W”, “S” or “R” to put the eye in transform mode and adjust it in space to please and rotate it to look at the blob.
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Do the same for the Right eye.
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Now everything is cool for frame two so we press “Export Frame” again and choose “Blob2.bmp” as a filename. (BTW probably pretty cool if you have best render on)
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Lets do the same procedure for (assuming
10 frames) for the rest of the frames, we will be adjusting the eyes to the head to look at the blob (future versions will automatically do this). As the blob starts to hit the floor we can start modifying it to start to squish. Do a little modeling to make this happen.
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After you have done this take your Blob1 to Blob11 files into your animation program to make the gif or whatever.
Hopefully I will get a chance to try lesson 3 to see if it really works the way I envision but I ask of you to try it and post your results and report any problems you may encounter.
Like I say, I have plenty of more ideas to explore with Zscript animation, like movement of the sun, Brush stroke movement and pointers, maybe even object deformations! I will sneak in another un-official wish to Pixolator to one day have the ability to read/write a file to disk from a zscript. This way I could automatically write animation object data and recall it back as well as other amazing things.
On a side note, if you guys get good with this script using the Digits_Widgets_Interpolation should be a snap, it has alot of the same kind of stuff, so if you were having problems figuring it out in the past you might try it again.
Thanks for your support peoples, please animate! And hey look! I can put my post into Z-Place’s Thread Hall of Fame since I hit the 2 page barrier
Here is the script
Digits_Widgets_Animate.txt
PS Thanks Upham! A statue would be great! And Godlike status wow! I have come a long way, shoot I was nine years old before I finally figured out my name wasn’t Goddamnit, and now I have people erecting statues of me!
Or do we have to wait?
Forgot to include it! Thanks Juandel for tracking it down on my site!
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