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From: olsen@hpfcdq.HP.COM (John Olsen)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Real time animation
Message-ID: <390056@hpfcdq.HP.COM>
Date: 15 Apr 91 23:05:33 GMT
References: <1991Apr10.022005.9615@oakhill.sps.mot.com>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard - Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 31

matt@ace4.sps.mot.com (matthew noell) writes:
>I am looking for a way to animate large bitmaps and record this to video tape.
>What I would like to know is what are the possible solutions?
>Any information that anyone can provide would be great.

Take a look at the Amiga.  You can pick up an A500 with a big hard disk and
lots of RAM for considerably less than a NeXT box.  You'll want to consider
a few things first to see if it meets your needs.

How many colors do you want on the screen?  This, along with the size of
the frame-to-frame deltas will determine how fast it can play back.  I've
done simple monochrome rendering stuff at 60 FPS, but doing Hold and Modify 
(HAM) animations of full-screen bitmaps may drag you down to 10 frames or so.
The amiga has about 20 or so screen formats and/or resolutions to choose from,
anywhere from 320x200 monochrome to 640x400 16 color to 320x400 4096 color,
and lots of other odd combinations.  It can also do overscan so you don't have
a background-colored border around everything, and the images go to the 
phisical edge of the screen.

Are you going to be rendering these pictures, or hand drawing them?  There
are good packages available for both.  There are also a few packages 
available for doing the animation.  Dpaint III and Disney Animation Studio
come to mind.

If you want 24 bits/pixel there are a few add-on cards with varying degrees
of animation-friendliness.  I don't own a 24 bit board, so I can't really 
comment on how well they work.

John M. Olsen, Graphics Technology Division  (303)229-6746
olsen@hpfcjo.HP.COM, olsen@hpfcdq.HP.COM
Hewlett-Packard, Mail Stop 74, 3404 E. Harmony Road, Ft Collins, CO 80525