Article Preview
Buy Now
| Print: | |
| PDF: |
The Topographic Apprentice
Shape Animation
File-Driven Animation
Issue: 2.4 (March/April 2004)
Author: Joe Nastasi
Author Bio: Joe Nastasi is the president of Pyramid Design, a software development firm and the developers of A-OK! The Wings of Mercury and FTP Suite.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 8,596
Starting Page Number: 38
RBD Number: 2419
Resource File(s): None
Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
In this issue's column we'll expand the functionality of the animation system by adding the ability to load animations from a file. One look at last issue's example will demonstrate how difficult it is to change or add an animation. By defining animations in a file, we make the whole process flexible and easy to experiment with.
Animation Description File Format
First, let's define a file format. Since this file will be set up by either a programmer (who should understand restrictive syntax) or a future editing tool, we're going to require things to be in a strict format and order.
General Rules
Since we're using the EndOfLine method to parse lines, the text file must have line breaks that match the OS on which the program is running on
An extension of ".ani", must be appended to the file name
The colon character (":") is used as a field delimiter
Sequence Definition
A sequence definition must always appear before any of the poses that it uses
Field One always contains the label "Sequence" to mark it as a sequence definition
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
|
