Animation: A Moment of Panic

[richmond62]

In its day SuperCard was quite a few jumps ahead of HyperCard. Something happened subsequently, so now it has ground to a halt and resembles something stuck at 2000.

This might serve as a reminder to us all of the dangers of complacency.

That animation can happen the way I have illustrated, with LiveCode, means that I can generally get children to put together a half-respectable side scroller after about 12-15 hours of LC instruction.

This is a great strength of LiveCode that should be shouted about from the rooftops.

[richmond62]

As long as one doesn't allow oneself to get "ticked off" by the comments about 'pretty girls'
this film is well worth a close examination. I saw it first in about 1969 and the salient points
have stuck with me ever since:

https://youtu.be/OebUzEhSLBI

this one, which I have just watched:

https://youtu.be/3YIR39KeJMk

makes me think of shoebox peepshows my teacher at Primary school had us make when I was 9 or 10:

http://www.brownsea-theatre.co.uk/stir- ... w-theatre/
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[richmond62]

This shows that the problems understood by modern animators was understood in 1760 at the latest,
and, as a historical artefact it absolutely rocks:

https://youtu.be/Y1XmO8TqvJ0
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[richmond62]

"The multiplane camera would be the means of animating Disney features all the way through The Little Mermaid in 1989, at which time it became obsolete. A “digital multiplane camera” was then invented, the first step in transitioning animated films from hand-drawn art to the computer-aided creations we almost always see today."

https://the-take.com/read/how-did-the-m ... -animation

So, for anything more sophisticated than a side-scroller we need to create a digital multiplane camera effect inwith LiveCode.

[richmond62]

Multiplane animation:
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Take note that the runner does NOT move.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pic5gw7bges0u ... e.zip?dl=0

[richmond62]

One of the aspects of Disney's multiplane camer was the ability to
apparently change the size of different planes independently by
changing the relative distances between them.

https://www.wdwradio.com/2016/02/awesom ... ne-camera/

[richmond62]

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/el3indb4tzjg3 ... e.zip?dl=0

I will always be grateful to my Mother for taking me to the cinema in Reading in about 1970 to watch 'Bambi':

https://youtu.be/n0kgBnH9vsI

From about 1.20 to 1.50 is mind-blowing in terms of multi-plane camera usage.

Bambi was made in 1942.
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SShot 2022-05-24 at 22.09.21.png (212.59 KiB) Viewed 3802 times

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Emphasis mine.

[richmond62]

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[richmond62]

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The only snag is the degradation of images on scaling.

Stack here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n2h52wjyy1137 ... e.zip?dl=0

[richmond62]

One of the ways to get round the image degradation would be to have 3 sets of images
at different sizes; which is alright for some sort of computer game, but would get very
clunky and resource-hungry on a mobile platform.

Another way round this might be to use a series of SVG vector images, toggling their visibility,
rather than using PNG images as background patterns for a graphic as I do in my example.

[richmond62]

Oh, My Golly, Richmond's got too much time on his hands again . . .

Well, possibly: anyway, to cut a short story long, I was reading this:

https://www.koolmoves.com/spritesheet-to-html5.html

Not really because I am interested in Koolmoves, but because I am interested in animation in LiveCode.

This got me going:

"Notice the curved motion path of the bird. It was achieved using a quadratic motion path with the auto orient feature turned on which causes the bird to orient along the path of its motion."

[emphases mine]

This also made me think:

https://www.koolmoves.com/html5-scripti ... tters.html

I have a long-running fantasy which goes something like this:

"Whatever can be done elsewhere on a computer can also be done with LiveCode and LiveCode alone."

Obviously, like most things, a pinch of salt is needed there, but still . . .

[richmond62]

For "a quadratic motion path" I would just generate some sort of vaguely sinusoidal
graphic as a path (and drop the pompous name: quadratic motion).

The 'problem' is angling the backGroundPattern of a graphic on the basis of the 'tilt' of
the sinusoidal curve.

[richmond62]

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ALL very fine and dandy, but, can anyone suggest how I might tilt (set the angle) the parrot images?

[richmond62]

This one gives me the jitters:

https://www.koolmoves.com/html5-scripti ... tters.html

mainly because every time the end result is different:
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I am really excited about how the shadows of the letters work . . .

[richmond62]

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Well, it is something, but the shadow is nothing like that Koolmoves dishes out.