For your review, here’s a summary of the important concepts discussed in this chapter.
(3)Define animation and describe how it can be used in multimedia
By definition, animation is the act of making something come alive.
Depending on the size of the project, you can animate the whole thing or you can just animate parts of it.
Visual effects such as wipes, fades, zooms, and dissolves, available in most authoring packages, are a simple form of animation.
Animation is an object actually moving across or into or out of the screen.
Animation is possible because of a biological phenomenon known as persistenceof vision and a psychological phenomenon called phi.
With animation, a series of images are changed very slightly and very rapidly, one after the other, seemingly blending together into a visual illusion of movement.
Television video builds 30 entire frames or pictures every second. Movies on film are typically shot at a shutter rate of 24 frames per second.
Tweeningan action involves creating the frames to depict the action that happens between keyframes.
Computer animation programs typically employ the same logic and procedural concepts as cel animation.
(3)Define the capabilities of computer animation and the mathematical techniques that differ from traditional cel animation
You can usually set your own frame rates on the computer, but the rate at which changes are computed and screens are actually refreshed will depend on the speed and power of your display platform and hardware.
Kinematics is the study of the movement and motion of structures that have joints.
Inverse kinematics is the process in which you link objects such as hands to arms and define their relationships and limits, then drag these parts around and let the computer calculate the result.
Morphing is an effect in which one image transforms into another.
(3)Discuss some of the general principles and factors that apply to creating computer animations for multimedia presentations
Some file formats are designed specifically to contain animations, and they can be ported among applications and platforms with the proper translators.
Multimedia authoring systems typically provide tools to simplify creating animations within that authoring system.
The most widely used tool for creating multimedia animations for Macintosh and Windows environments is Macromedia’s Director.
With the simplest tools, you can make a bouncing ball to animate your web site using GIF89a.
Making animations appear natural requires a basic understanding of the principles of physics. You should compose your animations using these principles, tempering them always with commonsense physics to give them the ring of truth.
