K. Tyler wrote:

> Greetings !
>
>     Yesterday I replied to another POV-Ray user on how to
> use the animation feature in POV-Ray 3.0x. I went into
> enough detail for this person that I thought it might make
> a good mini-tutorial on the subject for new users or users
> that haven't gotten their feet wet, yet, with animations.
>
> So here with a couple of modifications is the body of text
> I sent the other user.
>
> Lets create an object to animate:
>
> camera{location<0,0,-4>look_at 0}
> light_source{<0,0,-50>rgb 1}
>
> sphere{<0,0,0>,1 pigment{gradient x
> color_map{[0 rgb<1,0,0>][1 rgb 1]}}
> finish{ambient .4 diffuse .1 reflection .1 specular 1 roughness .001}
> rotate 360*y*clock}
>
>     The above won't do anything during a single frame render.
>
>     First let me explain a couple things. To produce an animation
> you will need to produce several images, just like cartoon
> animators do. Secondly you will need a program, external to
> POV-Ray to compile the multiple images produced into an
> animation. A great little command line animation program called
> DTA or Dave's targa animator does a great job. If you don't have
> it and can't find it post a message to the povray animation news
> group and somebody will tell you where to get a copy. It produces
> .fli .flc and a couple other animation types. There are other programs
> you can use but I think DTA is a good one to start with.
>
>     Now for the specifics of making the frames you need.
> The following describes how to rotate your sphere once
> in a 360 degree circle. You could change rotate 360*y*clock
> to 720*y*clock to make it rotate twice or any other multiple
> of 360 you choose to use.
>
>     On your menu bar find the tools section and click on
> edit master povray.ini. Add the following lines anywhere
> in the ini file, save and exit.
>
> ;Initial_Frame = 1
> ;Final_Frame   = 100
> ;Subset_Start_Frame = 50
> ;Subset_End_Frame = 100
> ;Cyclic_Animation = on
>
> To use these settings you need to un-comment the functions you
> want to use by removing the ";".
>
> To produce a simple continuous animation start with these settings:
>
>   Initial_Frame      = 1
>   Final_Frame       = 10
>  Cyclic_Animation = on
>
>     This will produce a 10 frame animation.
>
>     The initial frame tells Pov you want to start with frame #1
>
>     The final frame tells Pov how many frames (images) you want
> to produce. The more you specify the smoother the animation
> but the larger the animation file size. You will later learn how
> to balance the # vs. file size as you gain experiance.
>
>     The use cyclic animation tells Pov you want it to produce
> an animation that will loop continuously. If your animation
> had an object moving in a straight line this would be of no use
> to you. Since we are looking at an object that is going to turn
> 360 degrees on it's axis this is a perfect example of when to use
> it.
>
>     The other two settings can be used to render only a
> portion of the frames that make up an animation. Say
> you wanted only to look at the end of your scene,
> before rendering 1000 frames, to make sure everything
> ends up where it is supposed to. This will allow you to
> to so. It's not normally needed however.
>
>     There are many other examples in the docs and I
> strongly recommend you read the section on using
> the clock values in your scenes and the section 4
> tutorial on animation.
>
>     Don't forget to re-comment the animation lines in the
> master povray.ini when you are not doing animation
> or else the next non animation scene you try to run
> will run the exact same image for however many frames
> you have specified in the final frames section.
>
>     Need more help ?
>
>     Let me know.
>
>     K.Tyler
>
> I can be reached at: tyl### [at] pacbellnet

  thank you for  the animation tutorial Ken !
                I was wondering if you or someone else could go one step
further and do a mini-tutorial on Dave's Targa Animator. It seems this
programs runs in DOS(Dark Ominous Space ) and does not make sense to me
after reading the Read Me file.
               Maybe a step-by-step of the above scene would be cool.
               Is there a WIN95 program that inputs/outputs the same files
as DTA or if not, maybe some skilled programmer could design one. If Taps
could do it for a Height-field generator why can't they make something for
Animation??


                                    thanks for listening
                                          GAR

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