CreateAnim - Version 1 8/24/91
by Dale Blaszczak
This is Public Domain software.
Description : CreateAnim is basically a point & click interface for
MakeAnim. It takes a series of IFF images and compresses them into
an ANIM 5 animation file. This program was written in The Director
Version 2 (Right Answers Inc.) language and requires Proj2 to run.
General : The program requires you to have the following files in the
same directory :
CreateAnim.film
CreateAnim.film.info
BlueCP.pic
Filereq_Mod
makeanim
You should also have Proj2 and the AmigaDOS LIST & SORT commands in
your c directory.
To start the program, click on the CreateAnim icon. You will soon
see the control screen. You may load the list names of the image files
by clicking on LOADPICS or LOAD TEXT (further description below). To
select an image file to edit, click on it with the left mouse button.
It will become highlighted. Clicking on the image name again will de-
selected it. To exit the program, press the ESCAPE KEY.
Buttons:
LOAD PICS - Clicking on this button will bring up a file requester so
you can load all of the images contained in the directory you
specify. Select the device & file path, then click on one of the
image file names and then click on GETPICS. CreateAnim will load
all of the file names in the directory chosen except .info and
directory names, unless you have choosen to load IFF files only.
LOAD TEXT - This is for loading in a text file which contains image
file & path names that you would like to create an animation file
out of. Clicking on this button also brings up a file requester so
you can select the text file and load it in.
SHOWPIC - Selecting an image then clicking on this button will display
the image file. CreateAnim will display most standard IFF images.
Click on the top half of the image displayed to return to the
CreateAnim control screen.
COPY - To copy an image file name from one part of the image list to
another, first select the image name you wish to copy, then click
on COPY, then click on the location in the list you wish to copy
the file to. The selected file will be inserted at the new
location.
DELETE - To delete an image file name from the image list, select the
image you wish to delete, then click on DELETE. The file select
will be removed from the list. DELETE only deletes the file name
from the list that CreateAnim displays, it does not delete the
file from your disk.
UP BUTTON - CreateAnim can only display 72 file names on the screen at
one time. If your image file list contains more than 72 file names
you may click on this button to scroll the list.
DOWN BUTTON - like the UP BUTTON, but scrolls the list in the opposite
direction.
SAVE TEXT - You may save the current list of file names at any time
by clicking on this button. It will bring up a file requester. The
text file saved will contain the complete device/pathname/filename
for each file in the list. You may load this text file in at some
later time by using LOAD TEXT.
CLEAR ALL - erases all the file names from the current list and clears
the screen.
CREATE ANIM - will create an animation file called ANIMtest.anim on
ram disk from the current file list. First it will create a file
called PicList in ram:, then it calls MakeAnim to create the
animation from the filenames in PicList. The workbench screen will
be displayed for a few seconds, if you see "Processed # frames"
the animation was probably created successfully, if you see
"file not found" or some other message, then there probably was
some sort of error. In either case, control will return to the
CreateAnim screen. All of the files in the list must be
IFF image files or MakeAnim will not produce the animation file.
Read the MakeAnim docs for other conditions that MakeAnim requires.
<ESC> - press the ESCAPE KEY to exit the program.
NOTES:
- you may load in image files from different devices and directories
CreateAnim will remember where they're at. If your image files are
on different diskettes, type in the volume name for each in the
LOAD PICS requester.
- the current image file list is not erased if you choose LOAD PICS
or LOAD TEXT, so you can combine lists together.
- the total number of entries in the file list is displayed in the
little box to the right of the UP & DOWN buttons
- CreateAnim only displays the file names, however it stores the
complete device/pathname/filename for each file. I think it can
handle up to 254 files.
- remember that there are certain requirements that MakeAnim expects,
when you choose CREATE ANIM each of your image files should be
displayed as the animation is being created, if not an error has
probably occured. Read the MakeAnim docs. All of the files in the
list must be IFF image files.
- CreateAnim creates an animation file called ANIMtest.anim and a
text file called PicList on ram disk. Hopefully, you'll have enough
ram to store these files.
- selecting CANCEL from any requester will return you to the
CreateAnim control screen and terminate the current operation
selected. You can use this to view the files in your directories.
Thanks to:
Keith Doyle - Right Answers,Inc. for makeanim
Justin V. McCormick for the PathMaster file requester
Right Answers,Inc. for The Director Version 2
