MickeyMouseDoc.tioga
Michael Plass, July 2, 1986 3:24:50 pm PDT
Last edited by: Mik Lamming - April 25, 1986 5:34:02 pm PST
MickeyMouse
CEDAR 6.1 — FOR INTERNAL XEROX USE ONLY
MickeyMouse
Simple 2D animation
Michael Plass
© Copyright 1986 Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved.
Abstract: A package for doing rudimentary 2D non-real-time animation by in-betweening of key frames.
Created by: Michael Plass
Maintained by: Michael Plass <Plass.pa>
Keywords: Animation, Illustrators, Interpress
XEROX  Xerox Corporation
   Palo Alto Research Center
   3333 Coyote Hill Road
   Palo Alto, California 94304

For Internal Xerox Use Only
Setting up an animation
Use your favorite interpress-producing 2D synthentic-graphics illustrator; Griffin for example. Break the animation up into simple cell sequences; there will be one Interpress master for each key frame in a cell sequence. All the key frames in the same cell sequence must have the same structure; you can move things around and even change their shape, but you cannot add, delete, or re-order objects in a cell sequence.
The assembly of cell sequences into an animation is specified with another Interpress master called a Chart. This consists of a bunch of downward-oriented zigzag lines, with labels at the joints and ends. These labels name the interpress masters for the key frames, and each zig-zag line corresponds to a cell sequence. The left-to-right order of the zig-zag lines is the bottom-to-top order in which the cell sequences are assembled. The vertical direction is time, increasing downward. There is one vertical line segment with a number on each end to establish the time scale.
To view an animation, use the MickeyMouse command with the name of the chart interpress file. The "Reset Run Stop Step" menu items control the animation (the Reset button is flakey right now; you may have to re-create the viewer).
Running animations from JaM
If you want to drive an animation from JaM (perhaps to generate a film on the Dunn/Bolex using JaMIDunn) then create the time line file and test it using the procedure described above. The do the following:
% JaMImager
% JaMMickeyMouse
The following are some JaM scraps that run a 41 frame animation sequence described by the timeline file ball-timeline.ip. Note that at present sequence can only be restarted from the beginning by issuing another .mickeymousemakehandle

(JaMMickeyMouseImpl) .callinit
(rehearse1) {
handle .mickeymousedrawframe
handle .mickeymousenextframe
} .cvx .def
(rehearse) {
(handle) (ball-timeline.ip) .mickeymousemakehandle .def
41 { rehearse1 } .cvx .rept
} .cvx .def
To film this same sequnce you need to start up the Dunn camera stuff.

% JaMIDunn

To film the result you need to issue the additional commands to JaM
(JaMIDunnImpl) .callinit
(film1) {
{ handle .mickeymousedrawframe } .cvx .dunnsnap
handle .mickeymousenextframe
} .cvx .def
(film) {
Ektachrome64AtF/5.6L* .preparecolormaps
(handle) (ball-timeline.ip) .mickeymousemakehandle .def
41 { film1 } .cvx .rept
} .cvx .def