sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu (Scott Sutherland) (05/06/90)
First of all let me get a few things clarified. I am
using a stock A2000 with a harddrive and a 2 meg expansion board.
This is NOT my system. It belongs to the local Amiga dealer.
I am trying to help someone do animated Scipt titles for his
senior thesis project in a cinema BA program here at the
University of Florida. I purchased the KARA Font disk, AnimFonts
I with the intention of using it with Deluxe Video III, when
I can afford to purchase it. I was using Deluxe Paint III from
the HD of the store's computer. I have never used DPaint III
(or I or II for that matter), AnimFonts, or had much experience
with other paint programs (used Photon Paint a little). So,
with that said, here is the project and my problem.
Even with my lack of experience using these 2 packages,
I felt confident that I could generate a simple AnimFont animated
title for my friend since there is an essentially step-by-step
explanation of how to do this in the AnimFont package. Well,
almost step-by-step. It took me 2 hours of playing around to
finally get it to do what I wanted (this includes figuring
out what DPaint was trying to do (swapping pages, etc...) and
what AnimBrushes were and how to use them. Now, let me state
that, when you use the AnimBrush-Load feature in the Anim
menu to get the AnimFont letter (you have to initially run
the ColorFonts program and the AssignFonts program (setting
the font dir to that of the AnimFont disk) before running
DPaint III) the letter is loaded and a number appears below
it. This is the number of frames it takes to animate that
letter (e.g. Capital R takes 27 frames). For those of you
familiar with DPaint III and AnimBrushes, I will outline
the exact steps used so that you might be able to help me.
*** This is after running ColorFonts and AssignFonts. ***
1) Click on the Text Tool and Choose Font to be ChromeSCRIPT
and hit OK.
2) Position and type in text desired.
3) Hit 'j' to convert to a "Spare" screen. The AnimFonts
animation is done on this screen.
4) Use Anim Brush-Load, get into the ChromeSCRIPT.AF dir,
and load the first letter of the first word.
5) Note the number under the letter. This is the length in
frames of this particular character...Jot down this
number PLUS 1.
6) Highligth ANIM-Frames-Set# and set COUNT: to the number
of frames in the character PLUS 1. This will allow you to
have a beginning frame as a blank screen... Press the "2"
key to advance to frame #2...
7) Go to the spare frame ("j" key). Turn on Coords, position
the loaded character (which is a brush on the cursor now,
over the one on the screen.
8) Press the "j" key to go back to the Anim screen. Press
the "8" key to advance the AnimFont character to the
beginning frame. Click on the left mouse button to
establish the first frame of the current character's
animation.
9) Press "Shift-M" to get the MOVE requester. Set the
Count # to the number of frames in the character...
Click on DRAW. The character is rendered.
10) You will end up on Frame #1. Press the "1" key
to get back to the last frame.
11) Load the next character. Note the # of frames for
this character and add it to the total # of frames
so far.
12) Go to Set # of frames and enter the total # of frames
you came up with... You will now be on the last frame
of the new total... Press the #3 key to Go To Frame
and enter the number of the previous total # of frames
PLUS 1 to get to the beginning frame of the next letter
in the word.
13) Repeat steps 7-12 for each character in the word or phrase.
Now my problem. I was able to do ALL of this. It looked wonderful.
I had 3 letters (Rez, 27+1 frames for R, 15+1 frames for e, and
13+1 frames for z, for 58 total). I then figured out that I needed
to save the anim by using Anim-Save with compressed turned on. This
worked. Then I used ShowAnim5.40 to look at my anim. Again it was
wonderful, playing at blinding speed (which I could adjust). BUT
there was ONE little problem with the final ANIM. The R was drawn
and then the 27 appeared under it. This stayed there as the e was
drawn. Then the 13 appeared under the e. Both the 27 and 15 remained
there as the z was drawn. Then the 13 appeared. So, the final
frame was the word Rez with each letter having its number of frames
under it. This is unacceptable. I was able to step through each
frame, erase the unwanted number (or numbers) and then re-save
the anim to get the desired result. However, I should NOT HAVE TO
DO THIS. The program should NOT put these numbers down.
Any suggestions as to what might be happening and, more importantly,
HOW TO CORRECT IT, would be appreciated. I am in somewhat of a
rush, as I only have limited access to the Amiga (I'd use mine,
but it has only 1 meg (need 1.5 to run DPaint III and AnimFonts) and
I am in the process of selling it to get an A3000 later this summer.
I hope that this is a simple oversight on my part from not having
experience with DPaint III and AnimBrushes.
Please email all responses to me.
Thanks,
Scott Sutherland
sutherla@qtp.ufl.edupadre@dsoft.UUCP (Brian McNett) (05/08/90)
There's no need to step through all of the frames of your animation and manually cut out the numbers that appear below your animfont letters. simply cut a nice large brush from the background, press F3 to make it opaque, and place it over the area where all of the numbers show up so that it covers them all. Then hold down the left mouse button and also hold down the left-Amiga key. Dpaint III will cycle through the frames of your animation for you at a nice quick clip, and the numbers will be gone in no time. Since these letters are animbrushes, there would be no easier way to make the frame-count numbers go away- not that this method isn't ridiculously easy to begin with.