POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.windows : Animation !!!HELP!!! Server Time
28 Jul 2024 18:18:36 EDT (-0400)
  Animation !!!HELP!!! (Message 1 to 6 of 6)  
From: Pug
Subject: Animation !!!HELP!!!
Date: 2 Jan 1998 20:06:26
Message: <34AD8F12.2E2D@ronan.net>
Hello,

I hope someone here could help me out with some problems i've been
having.
I've been rendering on povray for about six months now and i've decided
to take the next step to animation.
My problem is with a program i down loaded called CAMPATH it looks real
cool but when i set it up to run acording to the instructions and go to
compile i "get bad command or file name" ive been using pov win95 3.01.
I'm very much a novice so any suggestions in that are would be great.

thanks

Pug

PS. This may sound stupid, but i've only been animating for about 3 days 
now.    When i render an animation say a ball rolling across the screen,
I get about 20 tga files that i must compile using "Daves .T.A". now how
do i compile them so i get one .flc instead of 20 .flcs that i must then
put into a script and view with AAPLAY? Is POV supposed to render on tga
which you convert (in that case i'm doing somthing wrong in my file code
and .inc files. OR do i somehow just hilight and drop all the tga files
into DTA???

thanks again Pug.


PSS. Any information on how to correctly use campath would be
appreciated.


:)


Post a reply to this message

From: Patrick Bass
Subject: Re: Animation !!!HELP!!!
Date: 5 Jan 1998 09:21:05
Message: <34B0EC50.314F@pdq.not>
Pug wrote:
> 

> When i render an animation say a ball rolling across the screen,
> I get about 20 tga files that i must compile using "Daves .T.A". now how
> do i compile them so i get one .flc instead of 20 .flcs that i must then
> put into a script and view with AAPLAY?

... I scratched my head  on this one until I finally figured out what
you must be doing.  If I follow correctly, you animate your rolling
ball, and the result is twenty .TGA files, named something like
BALL01.TGA through BALL20.TGA, right?  And this is where I got
confused.  Your statement about "so i get one .flc instead of 20 .flcs"
threw me, until I guessed you must be dragging each .TGA file, one at a
time, to DTA and dropping it, each time creating another .FLx file. 
Which you then created some gosh-awful script for AA to drag each flick
off your hard disk and show them in sequence.  I can hear your drive
thrash from here.

> Is POV supposed to render on tga
> which you convert (in that case i'm doing somthing wrong in my file code
> and .inc files. OR do i somehow just hilight and drop all the tga files
> into DTA???

...I don't think you can select and drag all the TGA's and give them to
DTA.  You'll get some "bad parameter" bellyache.  Keep in mind the
environment DTA was designed for.  The easiest way I can think of right
offhand for you is something like this.  From your description of
needing DTA and dragging files I am assuming you are using either
Win3.1/95/98 or NT4/5 and are working from the "C:" drive.

1.) Make a new directory, one level down from the root.  Call it
something real easy to type, like "T".  So now you'll have a directory
named "C:\T"
2.) Copy the TGA files you want to animate to it.  Let's say BALL01.TGA
thru BALL20.TGA are in there now.
3.) Copy DTA.EXE into that directory also.
4.) Open a DOS box.
5.) At the "C:" prompt, type "CD \T", without the quote marks, and tap
[Enter]
6.) Your prompt should now look something like "C:\T _".
7.) Type "DTA BALL*.TGA" and tap [Enter]

...a there should be some messages to the screen about where DTA is
while it glues your TGA files into a single Flic file.

8.) Read the DTA document file to discover the different switches you
can use with DTA to make it do different things.

-- 
Questions?  Comments?
--Patrick Bass

Not a Spammer?  Change "not" to "net" and reply.


Post a reply to this message

From: Timothy A  Grubb
Subject: Re: Animation !!!HELP!!!
Date: 5 Jan 1998 09:36:31
Message: <34B0EFEF.17DAF7C3@neta.com>
If you don't mind avi and have Win95 try this. I've been working on it.
Timothy A. Grubb

Patrick Bass wrote:

> Pug wrote:
> >
>
> > When i render an animation say a ball rolling across the screen,
> > I get about 20 tga files that i must compile using "Daves .T.A". now how
> > do i compile them so i get one .flc instead of 20 .flcs that i must then
> > put into a script and view with AAPLAY?
>
> ... I scratched my head  on this one until I finally figured out what
> you must be doing.  If I follow correctly, you animate your rolling
> ball, and the result is twenty .TGA files, named something like
> BALL01.TGA through BALL20.TGA, right?  And this is where I got
> confused.  Your statement about "so i get one .flc instead of 20 .flcs"
> threw me, until I guessed you must be dragging each .TGA file, one at a
> time, to DTA and dropping it, each time creating another .FLx file.
> Which you then created some gosh-awful script for AA to drag each flick
> off your hard disk and show them in sequence.  I can hear your drive
> thrash from here.
>
> > Is POV supposed to render on tga
> > which you convert (in that case i'm doing somthing wrong in my file code
> > and .inc files. OR do i somehow just hilight and drop all the tga files
> > into DTA???
>
> ...I don't think you can select and drag all the TGA's and give them to
> DTA.  You'll get some "bad parameter" bellyache.  Keep in mind the
> environment DTA was designed for.  The easiest way I can think of right
> offhand for you is something like this.  From your description of
> needing DTA and dragging files I am assuming you are using either
> Win3.1/95/98 or NT4/5 and are working from the "C:" drive.
>
> 1.) Make a new directory, one level down from the root.  Call it
> something real easy to type, like "T".  So now you'll have a directory
> named "C:\T"
> 2.) Copy the TGA files you want to animate to it.  Let's say BALL01.TGA
> thru BALL20.TGA are in there now.
> 3.) Copy DTA.EXE into that directory also.
> 4.) Open a DOS box.
> 5.) At the "C:" prompt, type "CD \T", without the quote marks, and tap
> [Enter]
> 6.) Your prompt should now look something like "C:\T _".
> 7.) Type "DTA BALL*.TGA" and tap [Enter]
>
> ...a there should be some messages to the screen about where DTA is
> while it glues your TGA files into a single Flic file.
>
> 8.) Read the DTA document file to discover the different switches you
> can use with DTA to make it do different things.
>
> --
> Questions?  Comments?
> --Patrick Bass
>
> Not a Spammer?  Change "not" to "net" and reply.


Post a reply to this message


Attachments:
Download 'digitalseries.zip' (8 KB)

From: Ronald L  Parker
Subject: Re: Animation !!!HELP!!!
Date: 5 Jan 1998 09:54:39
Message: <34b1f3af.5886954@10.0.2.33>
On Fri, 02 Jan 1998 18:06:26 -0700, Pug <blk### [at] ronannet> wrote:

>PS. This may sound stupid, but i've only been animating for about 3 days 
>now.    When i render an animation say a ball rolling across the screen,
>I get about 20 tga files that i must compile using "Daves .T.A". now how
>do i compile them so i get one .flc instead of 20 .flcs that i must then
>put into a script and view with AAPLAY? Is POV supposed to render on tga
>which you convert (in that case i'm doing somthing wrong in my file code
>and .inc files. OR do i somehow just hilight and drop all the tga files
>into DTA???

It's been a while since I used DTA, but I know it needs to be run from
a DOS prompt.  If your scene files are named test00.tga .. test19.tga
you type a command like "DTA test*.tga" along with whatever options
are appropriate (I forget which, if any, options you need - just type
DTA by itself to get a list.)


Post a reply to this message

From: GrimDude
Subject: Re: Animation !!!HELP!!!
Date: 6 Jan 1970 19:10:22
Message: <01bd1af6$d1ab8dc0$c6681cce@arkansasusa.com.arkansasusa.com>
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


Post a reply to this message

From: aardvarko
Subject: Re: Animation !!!HELP!!!
Date: 5 Jun 1998 13:41:21
Message: <6lbv1n$a8q$1@oz.aussie.org>
>If you don't mind avi and have Win95 try this. I've been working on it.

Hey, that's nice. Couldn't be simpler to use. :)

Mebbe you could incorporate a shell for AVI2MPG1 and have one-step
TGA-to-MPEG... (gosh, do I ever use AVI2MPG1? ;)

--

-aardvarko
aardvarko at geocities dot com


Timothy A. Grubb wrote in message <34B0EFEF.17DAF7C3@neta.com>...


Post a reply to this message

Copyright 2003-2023 Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.