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Author ANN: PerlAnim 0.1 utility - generate 2D animations from images
Nick Humphries

2004-06-13, 3:57 pm

Hi there,

I've just uploaded the following onto PAUSE, so expect it on CPAN soon at the
following location:

file: $CPAN/authors/id/E/EG/EGYPTUS/PerlAnim/perlanim0.1.tar.gz
size: 14519 bytes
md5: 4329cd11b4f0e02352f54a4cc82a5c75

If you have an animation in mind that can be designed using just a set
of images, PerlAnim can come in useful.

For example, the following config file is all that's needed to move a sequence
of images (say a 40x40 pixel sized animation) fading in from the left, turning
a curved corner then fading out:

ALIAS seq seq_images*.png
Line 0 3 (0,0|al0) (50,0|al1) seq
Curve 3 6 (50,0) (100,0) (100,50) seq
Line 6 9 (100,50|al1) (100,100|al0) seq

You can define as many layers of animation as you like, all you do is define a
config file for each layer and then merge all the layers into one image
sequence. You can set alpha-blending values as above and the perl scripts will
take care of it all. You can also set layers to loop, or stick on the final
frame, or run once and then disappear. The docs have details of the basic
functionality.

The functionality is all there - I've been using it to generate a
documentary MPEG (see http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/tvprog/ for what I'm
using it for) - but it could use a bit of tidying up, made robuster,
perhaps expand the functionality a little and also some decent
documentation. A few people have asked for it already, which is why
I'm doing such an early release.

It's geared towards *nix (although this is quite a nominal choice),
and requires the NetPBM, ImageMagick and animmaker commandline toolkits to be
in your PATH, together with animmaker to join the resulting series of TGA
images into an uncompressed AVI.

It's flakey, I know that :) But it is indeed sort of like rewriting
all the static image handling of Macromedia Flash in Perl! I just
don't have enough time to make it an all-singing all-dancing program.

Any Q's should be addressed to nick at egyptus dot co dot uk.

--
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| Nick Humphries -- nick@egyptus.co.uk -- http://www.egyptus.co.uk |
| ZX Spectrum stuff * Your Sinclair archive * Time-lapse weather MPEGs |
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