Animation question

[tomg]

I have quite a good grasp of animation techniques but I wanted to learn more. So I started reading the Evans Bros PDF tutorial. It is very good but early on in the animation section I foundered. The Evans Bros say a few things about "Frames" but how do you actually use "Frames" ? I need a practical demonstration. Can anyone help ?

Best Regards,

Tom

[xahu34]

... The Evans Bros say a few things about "Frames" but how do you actually use "Frames" ? I need a practical demonstration. Can anyone help ...

The Evans are not brothers (one is English, the other one is American)

If you open a slide's objects and animation window you will find in the menu bar a button for adding frames (these are transparent rectangles). They are typically used together with visible child objects, and they may serve for animation control.

Regards,

Xaver

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

A frame is really just a convenience rectangle device which saves you the step of setting the opacity to zero if you want to use it to control a child or children.

I just posted a simple example here:

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/frameuse.zip

Download and open the PTE file and run a preview. Notice that the two images are children of the rectangle. When the rectangle is rotated or zoomed, the child images rotate and zoom (change size) however, each child can also have its own animation independent of the parent rectangle as you will see by looking at the keyframes for the two child images.

Best regards,

Lin

[tomg]

Thanks Lin. I've downloaded your example.

Best Regards,

Tom

[tomg]

Lin,

Your Frames demo was just waht I needed . Many thanks for that. I have been looking at your demo AV - "road to cimmaron" . How did you create the movement along the road ?

Regards,

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

Essentially the map was overlayed onto a transparency then the eraser tool in an image editor (Pixbuilder or Photoshop, etc.) was used to erase the route. The "cutout" version of the map was placed on layer one with the original version of the map on layer two.

This gives the "appearance" of just the map with the road because the portion which was "cut out" is revealed through the transparency of the cut-out on layer one.

A red/blue PNG object was moved between the layers along the route and dynamically sized, shaped and positioned according to the requirements of the twists and turns of the road along the route.

Think of it like having two identical paper maps. With an Xacto knife cut out the road route precisely on one of the maps. Place the cut-out on top of the original map and align it perfectly and look at it as it lies on a table. To the eye it's just as the original map. Now place a piece of red paper between the two maps and slide the red paper along and it visually creates the route in red. Now assume this was done electronically and you have the method used on that sample.

That was done with an early beta version of 5.0 so today there are additional tools which can make it much easier especially if there are reversals in direction on the map. By using masking techniques it can be much easier to accomplish than it would be without, but in essence, the method is quite similar.

If you would like to see a sample of how it was done, go here and download the AVI I created in the Tutorials and Articles section. I believe it was number 7 among the various tutorials I posted:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901

Best regards,

Lin

[tomg]

Lin,

Your road map tutorial was excellent ! Thank you.

Tom