Maximum number of Objects on one image

[fh1805]

I've just started out on a project to create an A-V sequence telling the story of the discovery and exploitation of ironstone in the East Cleveland area of Yorkshire.

As part of the sequence I would like to produce an animated map showing the location of each of the mines in the area (30 of them in an area roughly 10km by 7km - all either drift workings or deep pit workings: not open-cast strip mines). My vision for this map is that it would have a small red square showing each mine's location and a text object giving its name.

I intend to bring each object onto the background (a Google Earth aerial photo) in the chronological order in which the mines opened. I will use a real-time to history time mapping of one second equates to one year for this. I will then change the colour of the square to yellow at the point in time when the mine ceased working (and fade the name down a little). In total I need to span a period of 120 years.

So, for each mine I will have three objects: red square, yellow square and text. I will also have eight keyframes (excluding all the "origin" keyframes at offset 0): two to fade up the red square, two to fade up the text, two to fade up the yellow square and two to fade down the text. By my count that's 240 keyframes in total (excluding the "origin" ones): 30 mines x 8 keyframes.

I would also like to show a "digital clock" counting the years as the seconds tick by. That will be another 120 objects each having four keyframes: two to fade up the time display and two to fade it out. That will be another 480 keyframes making 720 active ones and a total of 210 "origin" keyframes.

Can PTE handle this?

It goes without saying that I will be keeping the file sizes of the various elements as small as possible: e.g. the squares are only 15px by 15px

A supplementary question: which uses less graphics memory and processing - a text object or that same text object rasterized to a png file?

[Lin Evans]

There is no practical limit for the number of objects for PTE but there are practical limits for hardware resources.

JPD has run puzzle demos with over 600 objects in simultaneous motion. In one of my samples I have over 400 PNG objects and over 1200 keyframes for one sequence and it runs on even a 32 meg video card so I doubt that you will find practical limits for your expressed project as long as you use good judgment concerning file dimensions, etc.

Text objects use less memory than PNG text, but this isn't really a practical consideration - you should have no problems with what you want to do using rasterized PNG.

Download this sample and run it (turn down your sound because the music is "loud!"). In the sequence where the Moon circles the rotating Earth there are over 400 png objects and over 1200 keyframes used. (about 53 meg)

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demos/3d.zip

Lin

[fh1805]

Lin,

Thanks for the reassurance that PTE can handle what I'm about to try. Next step now is to knock up a spreadsheet to take the open and close dates for the mines and turn them into millisecond offsets to use on the keyframes. And after that a quick test at the digital calendar counting the years.

[JPD]

a text object or that same text object rasterized to a png file?

It's better to rasterized in png object, so, even if people haven't the good font, their will be no problem.