Fractal .avi & .gif Sampler

[starfish]

Hi,

I have uploaded a new slideshow to

Beechbrook

which demonstrates how .avi and animated .gifs can be used in PTE.

Here's what the readme says about it:

"Fractal AVI & GIF Sampler" is a deliberately brief show of five of my .avi and animated .gif animations which have been converted to run in Pictures To EXE. I kept it short in order to decrease download time. Animations require dozens, and sometimes hundreds of slides each. Brief as it is, this one runs nearly 7 MB.

The animations used are as follows:

Pyramid---raytraced 3D .avi

Fractal Drum---3D animated .gif

Kaleidoscope---2D animated .gift

Balcony---3D fractal .avi

No Place To Hide---3D fractal/Poser .avi

The sampler is an attempt to demonstrate that it is entirely possible to create slide shows using multiple .avi and animated .gif files in PTE, even though the prg. does not yet claim to support those functions.

In order to add .avi and .gif files to PTE at present, it is necessary to break down the animations into frame stacks---in other words, to break them down into a series of individual pictures. I use Corel Painter 8 to do this, but there are freeware and shareware programs out there which can do this, too. [i can't remember any names or links to give you, but I know they have been mentioned on this Forum.]

Once the animations are in frame stack form, they can be loaded as slides into PTE. It is necessary to set the slides NOT to use effects and to change quickly. The timing must also be changed to display in only milleseconds. The timing will vary according to the effect you are trying to achieve.

Since there is, as yet, no looping function in PTE, if you want an animation to loop, the slides constituting the animations must be loaded several times into your show. It will also be necessary to time any music by hand instead of relying on synchronized music, as the timing of individual segments will vary.

The advantage to doing animations within PTE in this way is that it gives you much more control over what your viewers see on screen. You will not have the distraction of viewing windows and controls, nor will you have the limitation of a single viewing of a given .avi, nor the endless looping of an animated .gif. Instead, by reloading the animation's slides, you can exactly control the number of times a given animation loops, and you can start and stop it anywhere. Within limits, you can also alter the size of a given animation by resizing the individual slides. Another advantage is that the animation can be placed anywhere on screen that you choose.

Sharon

[JRR]

Sharon:

Great demo

Thanks !!!

[starfish]

Jim,

Thanks. I'm glad it was helpful.

Sharon

[Guest guru]

Very interesting work, Sharon, and really very well done. Congratulations for your huge patience, too!

Actually, animations are already possible in PTE, as this valuable example shows, and were possible in the past (I wish to recall our old friend Bart "quietstorm" was the first who made some presentations of this sort two or three years ago, with excellent results).

[Ken Cox]

there is a show here

http://www.gv.net/~whitetool/swirler_files...s/slide0009.htm

that was presented to the forum Dec 2001 -- i think [that's a new one:))] thait was one our first exposures to what p2e could relly do in the animation field

the link is still live and the download is still available

ken

[starfish]

Guido and Ken,

Thanks for the input. I remember seeing a short animation piece about the time I joined this forum. I did the sampler because there have been quite a few posts lately asking for .avi and .gif capabilities in PTE, I would like to see more, too, but I wanted to show that there is a lot that can be done with it as it stands.

I do feel that the ability to loop a range of files would make everything a lot easier. :-)

Sharon

[LumenLux]

Thank you Sharon. Your artistry shows no matter what you produce. I especially like the No Place to Hide.

It is wonderful to see what others do even though so different from my own use of PTE.

[starfish]

LumenLux,

Thank you.

Sharon