The easiest way I've come up with (to use DTA) is to place it into your
/Windows/Command directory. That way you can call it from anywhere on your
system (given that your path still contains it).

After the animation sequence has been fully rendered move all of the
appropriate targa files into a working folder. I usually have
sub-directories off of the images directory ( named within your povray.ini
I believe ). Now, follow the sequence "Start," "Programs," "DOS Prompt" and
move to the directory containing the animation images. Given that you have
named your images ball????.tga (where the ???? are the numerical sequence
in frames) you would build the animation with the command:

DTA ball*.tga /b15 /s005 /oBall.flh [ENTER]  // (this will build a hi-color
animation)

- or -

for a 256 color animation:

DTA ball*.tga /s005 /oBall.flc  //DTA will build an .fli, or .flc as it
sees fit.

To look at a hi-color animation will require either Dave's Flic Viewer
(DFV), or you will have to use Video for Windows to construct an AVI file.

There is another alternative, too. Somewhere on the web I found a file
BMP2AVI. By modifying your povray.ini file you can output system files
(bitmaps) in the BMP format. Then the command would be:

BMP2AVI -i Ball -o Ball -f 15 -k 7 // As I suggest this will allow for
15fps and keyframes every 7th frame.

Most systems today come with a viewer for avi files, but avi files tend to
be rather large.

There's also a file out there to build animated GIF files from an FLC
animation. It will not build a hi-color animation, but animated gifs are a
little more portable.

I am working on putting up a web site with all of this information, but it
is probably redundant in that a few hundred artists have already done the
same thing.

Paul Hinds
gri### [at] swbellnet

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