Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!vsi1!daver!ditka!qiclab!baer From: baer@qiclab.UUCP (Ken Baer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: ANIM converter? Message-ID: <4528@qiclab.UUCP> Date: 28 Mar 90 19:11:51 GMT References: <1371@mindlink.UUCP> Reply-To: baer@qiclab.UUCP (Ken Baer) Organization: Animators Anonymous, Portland, OR. Lines: 59 In article <1371@mindlink.UUCP> a1406@mindlink.UUCP (Elise Tarrant) writes: >Sculpt-Animate, Turbo-Silver and (I'm sorry to say, Ken) even Animation Editor >(at least the version I have) do not completely adhere to the IFF Anim-5 >standard. For instance, try one of these combinations: > > Generate an Anim file with AniMagic and load it into Animation Editor. >The program will crash. That was a bug in an old version of Editor. It has since been fixed. In fact all of the IFF and ANIM code has been rewritten. It is now much cleaner, faster, and most importantly, more robust. > Anim-5, as outlined in the IFF docs, is not being adhered to by anyone. A pretty pretentious statement. The problem is that the ANIM spec is pretty loose, and many people are interpretting it differently. For example, you can have a colormap for each frame in the ANIM file, but many ANIM programs don't support this (though I wish they did, DPaintIII in particular). As it turns out, most programs that generate ANIM files are within the ANIM spec. The problem is programs that read ANIM files have to be VERY robust. If the ANIM reader can't handle ANIM files with multiple colormaps (the Director had this problem) it won't be able to load files from certain programs. If you have a program that has a problem loading certain ANIM files, contact the developer. It is more often a case of the reader needing to be cleaned up rather than someone violating the ANIM standard when they write out a file. BTW, several ANIM programs put in custom chunks in the ANIM file (in the first frame), a practice I don't particularly care for, but it is still legal according to the docs. Some readers can't handle chunks they don't understand. Not only does Editor follow the ANIM we distribute ANIM code. Martin Hash (prez. of Hash Enterprises) was head of the IFF ANIM committee (not Gary Bonham). I was also involved on hammering out the op5 variant of ANIM, so to suggest that we don't follow a spec we helped write is rather insulting. >That's why we're writing Animation Bridge, to clear up those last few details >that will make Anim-5 animation files _truly_ interchangeable. That was the original idea behind Animation:Editor two years ago. And, many people use it for that purpose. But, I'm afraid you're not first on the market. Editor's been out for 1.5 years already, and gone through several revisions (bug fixes and new features). I'm not trying to bash your product. I hope that you can get it to market and that it will be successful. We can always use more good ANIM tools. But, to bash my program and many others just to hype your product that isn't even available is something I find objectionable. >Elise Tarrant >Mythra-mations Animation and Software >Vancouver, BC. Canada -- // -Ken Baer. Programmer/Animator, Hash Enterprises. \X/ Usenet: baer@qiclab.UUCP or PLink: KEN BAER "I want to be an ..... ARCH VILLIAN!!!" -- Petey Pate.