Computer Animation

There are a couple of animation programs that I have tried out (as least briefly). One is Blender (free on the internet) which seems quite powerful but clumsy to use. The other is MorphInk which is easy to use but quite limited.

An interesting JAVA applet was obtained on the Web from Boutell.com which outputs JPEG files to the browser display. The original version required the input of individual file names and delays between frames. I modified this to input the series of files generated by a digital camera that I have (a Sony). Files are of the form "Mvcxxxs.jpg", where the xxx cover a range of numbers. The range is input as the parameters "first" and "last" by the HTML file when it calls the applet (which I have renamed JpegAnimJPS.java. The class file is JpegAnimJPS.class

A test of time-lapse animation using this applet is in creature01. It needs to transfer about 1megabyte of jpg images in order to run. There are 41 images, 640x480 each. It will cycle through the animation 5 times and then stop (this is also determined by the HTML file that calls the applet). The frame rate was chosen to be 10 frames/second (another parameter).

Hey Ed, I found some of your WMV files on a CD

• CmonCocoWays
• CocoXMas
• EdHeyTito

• Dancing Eggs
• Wizard of Oz
• Clouds: Includes a preloader. The file is large (~200k); most of this size is due to the music. The gradient shading on the clouds and background changes slowly; I used two versions of the shading on separate layers, and changed the alpha to change from one to the other.