Igor - Possible Timing Bug....

[Lin Evans]

I have the Sun with Venus orbiting in an elliptical orbit. The sun consists of several PNG's designed to create a swirling gas/flame effect by moving in opposite rotational directions and by "horizontal flip" of one of the PNG's.

Venus consists of a Venus and "dark Venus" PNG. The dark Venus PNG is in a child relationship to the regular Venus and exists to create the "silhouette" effect when Venus crosses the image of the Sun on the side facing the viewer. For the first orbit, everything worked exactly as expected. I adjusted the dark Venus to zero opacity at the start and put a place holder zero opacity just before Venus crossed the Sun on the first orbit and a 100% (some interim steps omitted for clarity) when it was over the sun. As Venus leaves the sun the Opacity was changed back to Zero (in increments) and everything works perfectly!

The problem became apparent on the second orbit. When I essentially duplicated the procedure for the first orbit, Venus turned dark way too soon. After tinkering with it for about a half hour I finally did an iterative solution by making dark Venus zero until well into the Sun and didn't change the opacity back to zero until it was well out of the influence of the Sun.

If you move the blue arrow manually through the second orbit you will see what I mean. However, the actual preview doesn't match the manual simulation. The actual Preview looks correct now, but to make it look correct I had to "fudge" quite a bit.

Perhaps this has to do with insertion of a keypoint and then subsequently changing the time and may be solved by something I suggested earlier about the possibility of "linearity" of effects in terns of pan,zoom, etc., being optional or fixed via a "switch" check box - I don't know for certain, but if anyone wants to run the pte simulation, just click and hold on the blue arrow and run through the second orbit with the view set to about 150% so you can see what the manual movement reveals versus what happens with the Preview.

So the issue is that it appears that the timing shifts so that the effect lags behind it's actual programmed time as the show progresses. What you see with moving the arrow along the time line is not what you get with the Preview.

Tis a mystery - LOL

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/venus.zip

Best regards,

Lin

[Igor]

Lin,

Yes, I confirm this visual problem.

But we found, values of "venus" object are not equal on second lap as were on first lap at same places.

Probably you did a mistake in copying values?

I a little modified your porject: removed second lap and duplicated slide:

http://www.wnsoft.com/test/venus_Aug28-2006_17-31-37.zip

and animation may continue so long as you wish.

p.s. we plan to add auto cycling in next versions of PicturesToExe to make continuous animation so long as you wish.

[Lin Evans]

Lin,

Yes, I confirm this visual problem.

But we found, values of "venus" object are not equal on second lap as were on first lap at same places.

Probably you did a mistake in copying values?

I a little modified your project: removed second lap and duplicated slide:

http://www.wnsoft.com/test/venus_Aug28-2006_17-31-37.zip

and animation may continue so long as you wish.

p.s. we plan to add auto cycling in next versions of PicturesToExe to make continuous animation so long as you wish.

Hi Igor,

Yes, I had to make the values different on the second lap to prevent the problem of the planet turning dark too late when it entered the influence of the sun and turning light too late when it left the sun.

The reason I didn't duplicate the slide, but rather continued with the original slide in the animation window window with the second orbit (lap) was that the random effects of the sun's swirling hot gas suddenly "jump" back to the original start position with the start of the "repeat slide" which is a sudden unnatural look. Certainly duplicating the slide would be a much simpler approach to continuing animation, but probably will not work well with this type animation. Of course this type animation is getting far away from the true purpose of the program (slideshow presentation) and more into animation programming which it was really never intended. Thanks very much for checking this.

Best regards,

Lin

[Igor]

I think it is visual problem because of parameters. It's a really hard work to create such complex animation!

By the way, I found that if add other slide(s) after this one, or set "Repeat slideshow" mode, your animation also will work as you wish. Because in this case slide time becomes longer on duration of transition effect a you see on the timeline in the editor. And it seems that it was necessary correction for values of last lap.

[Lin Evans]

I think it is visual problem because of parameters. It's a really hard work to create such complex animation!

By the way, I found that if add other slide(s) after this one, or set "Repeat slideshow" mode, your animation also will work as you wish. Because in this case slide time becomes longer on duration of transition effect a you see on the timeline in the editor. And it seems that it was necessary correction for values of last lap.

LOL - yes, I can imagine what the animators must go through to produce the beautiful movie effect on major motion picture animations.....

Thanks very much that does work well!

best regards,

Lin

[sanewcomb]

Igor,

This question is still unanswered, "Why is the preview/create output different than the editing window (blue arrow) output?" It's not a visual problem. The output really is different. Since the preceision of the slideshow depends on the engine creating what is shown in the editing window, it seems like a pretty important issue.

Your solution would also restrict all cyclical effects (motions reoccurring over and over) to have the same periodicity, so that at the end of their cycle they all are in the same position and orientation as the start.

I'm not sure how important the second issue is overall to P2E, but the first one will likely cause other problems, and problems difficult to figure out, in slideshows involving multiple effects.

Steve

Tucson, AZ USA

[Igor]

Steve,

We fixed one problem with time on last slide (this slideshow contains one slide only).

Please try with this beta: http://www.wnsoft.com/test/pte500_b6_pre1.zip

[sanewcomb]

This version of your beta does eliminate the difference between the editing window view (by moving blue arrow) and preview/created slideshow in Lin's original slideshow post.

Thank you for your reply.

Steve

Tucson, AZ USA

[Igor]

Steve,

Thanks for good news!

p.s. I remember that I have to answer on your letters you've sent me. Sorry for the delay!