Inkscape Wiki - User contributions [en]

File types

2007-11-19T09:40:52Z

S m: /* Existing Conversion Tools */ +UniConvertor

We need EPS, Adobe SVG, and PDF in/out support. We really need to import/export the following formats:

* EPS
* PDF
* Adobe SVG (must be interoperable!)
* Postscript
* Adobe Illustrator File Formats (Newer ones are PDF 1.4 documents)

To really be considered a successful application, we must take these file formats in and be able to save them out.

Other useful formats might be:

* Enhanced Windows Metafile (emf)
* Windows Metafile (wmf) (there are a lot of clipart packages in this format)
* Computer Graphics Metafile (cgm)
* [http://lprng.sourceforge.net/DISTRIB/RESOURCES/HPGL_short_summary.html HP-GL2 ](plt)
* Embroidery file formats (Ksm, Melco, PCS, PES, Tajima,...) to export drawings on textiles. Lot of clips arts are already available in embroidery file formats. Some specifications are available on file formats dedicated web sites.
* CorelDRAW files (cdr). Their UI is quite similar to Inkscape's (owing to inspiration of both by Xara's ancient Artworks for the Acorn Archimedes); it suggests a path of least resistance for those seeking to convert.
* The newer Macromedia Freehand formats: .fh9, .fh10, and .fh11 (by file extension in Windows). At least the ability to read basic vectors, fill color, and stroke width (while possibly ignoring page layout for compatibility). Versions older than Freehand 8 might also be useful to revive those ancient drawings one made using the original Apple Macintoshes (prior to His Steveness' firing and subsequent rehiring).

== Existing Conversion Tools ==

Scripts and other applications that provide conversions, and might be useful to investigate as solutions to this dilemma.

* [http://www.solidcode.net/pdf2svg/ pdf2svg] (broken link)
* [http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/PSto.html PS to other formats page] (link broken)
* [http://www.cenon.info/frame_gb.html Cenon has importers/exporters and source to match]
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/epd2svg/ EPD to SVG]
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/svg2swf/ SVG to SWF] - for Flash
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/font2svg/ font to SVG]
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/libsvgtoswf/ libsvgtoswf] - Another Flash converter
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/fti2svg.pl/ SGI Irix FTI vector icons to SVG]
* [http://www.graphviz.org/ Graphviz] - popular text format for describing graphs. Can export SVG.
* [http://www.pstoedit.net/pstoedit pstoedit] - converts Postscript into SVG (and other editablke formats
* [http://www.wizards.de/~frank/pstill.html PStill] converts Postscript into PDF
* [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/r.inglis/PH/Rshi/svg/ ps2svg.ps] converts Postscript into SVG (free) (broken link)
* [http://www.gnu.org/software/hp2xx/ hp2xx] converts HPGL files into various formats, including SVG
* [http://sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconvertor UniConvertor] convert CDR-family, AI,PS, EPS, WMF, CGM, SVG to AI, WMF, CGM, SVG

== OpenOffice OODraw-to-SVG ==

OpenOffice can export '''to''' SVG, and import SVG using the following plug-in

http://www.ipd.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hauma/svg-import/

Possibly a filter could be created for Inkscape from their code,
to enable at least being able to load OODraw's SXD file format into
Inkscape.

Workaround to use SVG-files created with Inkscape in Openoffice.org.
Download Skencil from www.skencil.org (formely sketch). It's a
vector drawing application written in Python. It can import SVG
and save as Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM). You can use the skconvert
commandline utility to batchconvert a number of files. Openoffice is
able to import CGM. Not all object types are supported and you might
get wrong colors, but the path look ok. I wrote a small article about
this: http://www.tokonoma.de/software/svg_to_ooo/svg_to_ooo.html

Browsing through OO's sourcecode, this appears to be the parts
that do the SVG writing:

OpenOffice/filter/source/svg

SOTranscoder.java svgfilter.cxx svgimport.cxx svgwriter.hxx
exports.map svgfilter.hxx svgscript.hxx
makefile.mk svgfontexport.cxx svguno.cxx
svgexport.cxx svgfontexport.hxx svgwriter.cxx

You can download the OpenOffice sourcecode from one of the OpenOffice
mirrors. E.g.:

http://www.mirror.ac.uk/downloads/sunsite.dk/openoffice/contrib/rc/1.1.4rc/OOo_1.1.4rc_source.tar.gz

There is a webpage with some info about a new SVG exporter, here:

http://graphics.openoffice.org/svg/svg.htm

This includes a java sample test, that could perhaps be used as a starting point
for a filter...

http://graphics.openoffice.org/svg/SVGExportTest.java

Perhaps that could be recast into C++ so that a compiled filter could be
made of it.

The page also includes a binary svgexport.so package. Perhaps if this is fairly
stand-alone, a filter program could be written in C++ based on the above java
testcode that links against svgexport.so and provides its functionality on the
commandline as a sxd2svg tool.

nm reports that it provides the following functions:

00005f9c T component_getFactory
00005d28 T component_getImplementationEnvironment
00005d44 T component_writeInfo

ldd reports that this .so has the following dependency requirements:

linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libsvx645li.so => not found
libxo645li.so => not found
libgo645li.so => not found
libj645li_g.so => not found
libvcl645li.so => not found
libutl645li.so => not found
libtl645li.so => not found
libcomphelp3gcc3.so => not found
libcppuhelpergcc3.so.3 => not found
libcppu.so.3 => not found
libsal.so.3 => not found
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4003d000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x40040000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40091000)
libstlport_gcc.so => not found
libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.3.4/libstdc++.so.5 (0x400b4000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4017d000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.3.4/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x40291000)

== Other Conversion Tools ==

When doing prepress work, its better to convert from ps to pdf on the commandline. there are several options available that make the result better fit the job, this is an example ps2pdf command:

ps2pdf12 -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceCMYK -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress
-dUseFlateCompression=true
-dColorConversionStrategy=/UseDeviceDependentColor
-dDownsampleColorImages=false
-dDownsampleGrayImages=false
-dDownsampleMonoImages=false
-dAutoFilterColorImages=false
-dAutoFilterGrayImages=false
-dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode
-dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode
-dMonoImageFilter=/FlateEncode
input.ps output.pdf

PSStill example: convert a grayscale 25x70 cm inkscape exported postscript file to pdf:
pstill -i -2 -c -c -c -c -t -B -w 708,66 -h 1984,25 -o output.pdf input.ps

[[Category:Developer Discussion]]

Animation-(Timeline)

2007-09-17T10:23:56Z

S m: /* Existing animation programs (Free & non-Free) */ Moho + unique bone rigging

[[Animation|Back to main page for animation]]

=== User interface for timeline-based animation ===

==== Existing animation programs (Free & non-Free) ====

* [[MacromediaFlash]] is a good non-Free example.
* [[Ajax Animator]] is a FUNCTIONAL web-based (ajax) free-software clone of the flash interface, and uses a SVG based format for saving and compiling animations (http://osflash.org/ajaxanimator)
* Ikivo Animator is a good non-Free example producing SVG Tiny animations (http://www.ikivo.com/animator/index.html)
* Macromedia Director prior to version MX had a different interface (http://www.rice.edu/fondren/erc/howto/director.html) which I prefer(ed) over Flash
* QFlash is a FUNCTIONAL free-software mock-up of the Flash 4 interface, which can import SVG files but not edit them. (http://qflash.sourceforge.net)
* F4l is a non-functional free-software mock-up of the Flash 4 interface.(http://f4l.sf.net/)
* Anime Studio, formerly known as [[Moho]] (http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/1913/1/793?sbss=793) a non-free example. (Written in Java.) Features skeletal animation ([http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/1918/1/800?sbss=80х, unique bone rigging for 2D]) and automatic tweening of vector operations, [http://img.osnews.com/img/2547/moho4-rh.png view screenshot].
* [[LimSee2]] (http://wam.inrialpes.fr/software/limsee2/) is an excellent almost-free basis. (visible-source limited-use license)
* Spalah Flash (http://spalah.sourceforge.net/?p=10) (not to be confused with Spalah CMS) "is a GTK2[[/GNOME2]] based application for generating Macromedia SWF and [[W3C]] SVG animations." The GUI is today minimalist but the author is trying to integrate it with inkscape. See http://spalah.sourceforge.net/?p=19
* SMIL 2.1 player: http://www.cwi.nl/projects/Ambulant/distPlayer.html (GPL)
* Bob Sabiston's proprietary animation software http://www.flatblackfilms.com
* [[Synfig]] ([http://www.synfig.com/ link]) is a film-quality 2D vector animation editor and renderer. It features image morphing between drawings and output animation that is resolution independent both visually and temporally. (GPL)
* Ktoon (http://ktoon.toonka.com/) is a 2D Animation Toolkit designed by animators for animators, focused to the Cartoon Industry. (GPL)
* Jahshaka (http://www.jahshaka.org/) multiplatform QT animation program powered mostly by OpenGL (GPL)
* Powerpoint (http://office.microsoft.com) has an easy but basic interface. No flash killer, but some nice ideas.
* The Tab (http://www.the-tab.com/) Another non-free example that features elegant systems for parent-child animation and a very interesting feature that is designed for pseudo-3D camera moves.
* Pencil (http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=Home) vector and bitmap free animation package using Qt toolkit run on Win32 (XP and works fine on wine), and MacOSX. Simple but already powerful basic animation. It uses blender like timeline with multiple layers and Author plan to export SVG.
* SVGDeveloper (http://www.perfectsvg.com/) is a non-free SVG authoring tool with animation support.
* Blender3D (http://blender.org/) is a 3d (eq. vector) animation program featuring [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation_Basics key frame, motion curve, path animation] using [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Ipo_Curves_and_Keyframes interpolation (IPO) curve editing] combining with [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Shape_Keys shape keys] and [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation/Lattice_Animation deforming by a lattice] (GPL)
* [http://gimp.org Gimp] the bitmpa editor and it's included animation script for gif is really minimalistic and frame based
* [http://gimp.org Gimp-GAP] (wich stand for Gimp Animation Plugin) is a gimp plugin has some good interfaces for managing movments of objects (menu video=>movepath), layer management and apply effects along animation. A powerfull onionskin management, and notions of clip/storyboard, but could be slow in complexe case and slow computers.

==== Fantavision example ====
Back in the '80's there was a program on Apple IIE (Amiga and MS-DOS too) called "Fantavision". It allowed one to create vector artwork (although I didn't understand at the time that that was what it was called) and animations. It allowed one to create frames of animation where you manually repositioned, recolored, scaled, rotated etc. the objects from one frame to the next. However, it then automatically interpolated frames between the 2 frames (the number of interpolated frames was configurable) such that it create a smooth transition of the object moving from one frame to the other. The effect was very similiar to the "Morphing" effect for raster graphics (popularized in a Michael Jackson video, I believe). That is, the system calculated the trajectory of "Key Points" of the objects from one frame to the next. This process is often called "Tweening" (a term used by Macromedia Flash). [[Sketch|Skencil]] (formerly known as [[Sketch]]) supports this functionality and describes it as "Blending".

I guess what I'm saying is that I think a nice interface to create animations would be similiar. So to animate you would do the following:

* Draw the initial SVG Image

* Increment Frame (from say 1 to 20)

* Reposition the elements in frame 20 (including scaling, color changes, adding removing objects, etc, etc, etc)

* System would then calculate a trajectory for each key point from frame 1 to frame 20. Trajectories would be calculated for things like:
** Each "node" of an object
** Color
** Transformation Matrix
** etc

* You could display/manipulate the trajectories (using the trajectory editor shown above by the original creator of this topic)

* The system would then store the animations using SVG trajectories and the "Key Points" would be the frames you manually created

:So, to create say a 100 frame animation, one might only need to manually create/modify 10 frames and the system would interpolate the additional frames as necessary.

* Also, once the system interpolated frames it would allow you to manually modify the interpolated frames creating further "Key Points" and allow further refinement and interpolation.

NOTE: 3D apps such as blender also use a technique like this, which I think is most widely known as "keyframe animation" or simply "keyframing". However, many such systems tie the keys too closely to actual animation frames, and this creates problems when the frames-per-second rate changes. Particularly in the case of vector apps which are not so low-level as bitmaps and animation frames, I would suggest that frames should be as abstract as possible.

Having key positions in simple percentages of the total animation time might be a better solution. This would also need to be a global/local system, of course: animated objects would have their own animation time specified when inserted into a larger document. A character's walkcycle would end at 100%, but in the larger animation, it would perhaps only be 5% of the total time, yet repeating as the object moves across the screen.

One issue with this abstraction of frames might be that important animation effects do not occur exactly within frames: small things could be mistimed, or simply missed altogether. If you set the frame rate too low, this would be an obvious side effect, so it's not necessarily a problem
that Inkscape should try to fix. On the other hand, a few things could be done to ease this. For instance, "snapping" animation events to frames when exporting (thereby slightly altering the timing), or perhaps just warning that certain animation events are not visible at such a low frame rate.

Of course, on the web, with SVG and DHTML, where most Inkscape animations will hopefully be used one day, frames are not an issue at all, and we just worry about keys in time :)

ANOTHER NOTE: Interpolation does not necessarily occur along straight lines and linearly in time. Paths are already part of Inkscape, so points could move along paths; also he time-length graph can be something like a path, instead of a straight line.

==== Jahshaka example ====

I have used jahshaka for a small animation. This was my first real experience with animation. Thought rough, jahshaka is all about key frames and setting properties for those key frames.

Things I liked

* Key frames are on a per object basis
* When an object is selected you can quickly move from one key frame to another
* properties values for rotation can span beyond 0 and 360, permetting to set three or more complete rotation with too key frame. I think this kind of feature could be used for all bounded values (like color, transparency and so on). Is this compatible with SVG or should it be an artifact ?
* representation of properties values on a time line graph. This functionnality was still not very usable, but being to interact through that kind of object could be very useful (see below)

Things that lacks (and Inkscape shall have)

* possibility to copy animation properties from one object to another (say copy color animation, or whole animation)
* possibility to modify a property value for all key frames at once (eg. translation of object for all key frames or a selcted group). I think this could happen through the value = f(time) graph metioned above. You could select points (representing keyframes) and move them up (more), down (less), right (sooner). This graph could be organised by properties set (color, position). I think this kind of graph would be very close to SVG animations tag.
* macro that helps sets common effects (like blinking for example, or crossing the screen....)

==== Bob Sabiston Example ====
Bob Sabiston's animation software is an amazing vector-based package that stores line width within the points that make up a line -- derived from a tablet pen. usually in a simple stroke there could be a hundred data points storing width information. Then in the next keyframe, a line from a previous key is selected and re-drawn restricted to the same number of points. The software allow sthe points to be "repositioned" as you watch their previous locations be re-positioned. When you run out, the line ends automatically. This information is interpolated in tweening frames to change shape, width, position, but retains the same number of data-points. See the film "Waking Life" for the making-of video for a demonstration. Also visit his website for examples of it's capabilities converted to flash. http://www.flatblackfilms.com

==== Other thoughts ====

Suggestion from someone else: working like [[CinePaint]] (compared with Gimp), with each frame independently from each svg document (working like this or providing this feature) - providing vectorial edition quality we can't get on apps like Macromedia Flash or any other (maybe [[ToonBoom]] or Moho) - allowing us to make our work fast publish without further lack of quality.
(One more suggestion about it: being able to convert .swf to .svg sequence (or animated .sgv) and vice versa.)

It is suggested that there be basically two modes: Local (Object) mode and Global mode. Below is a picture showing a very rough design of the local mode:

http://www.inkscape.org/wiki_uploads/anim_gui1.png

In local modes, all properties of the object editing will be shown on a timeline, and one can create and edit frame within the timeline. Then one may assign different value of that properties on different timeline, or make it change linearly, or nonlinearly :)

For an example of a similar model, have a look at:

http://www.uni-bremen.de/~felwert/inkscape/Animation01.html

==== Powerpoint Example ====
You select an object and add types of animation. These are listed in the custom animation pane. They can be set to occur all at once, one at a time, onclick, with previous or after previous. A number appears next to each object in the editing window when the object has animation applied to it, representing the sequence of the animations. When an object has an Entrance type animation added to it as the first animation, it will not appear on screen until the timeline reaches this point. animations can be linked together to create quite complicated sequences.

==== Onion Skinning ====
Onion skinning is a standard animator tool, previous or next frames (sometime both) are displayed under the current frame with differrent color, or less contrast, allowing to understand wich drawing the animator is actually working on, and wich frame is 1 step or 2 step before or after the actual frame.

This can easily be implemented using transparency parameter of layer, and automatize selection of layers to be displayed, parameters following a specialized gui entries.

Onionskin in gimp-GAP is a good example of what should be a minimal requirement. that is managin backword, forward and both direction onion skin, with variable visiblity increase decrease. Color changes on onionskinning could be another useful option to increase visiblity of different frames, as generally the onionskinning is done at the sketching animation step (meaning mostly grey or black & white drawing)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion-skinning Onion skinning on wikipedia].

==== Interactive ====
I have started using svg to develop interactive displays. Having used several other svg tools currently on the market, I am interested in a more generic implementation that doesn't have animation effects get in the way of interactive controls.

==== Playback of Construction Steps ====
We, at [http://www.classapart.org Class Apart] ( www.classapart.org ), plan to use Inkscape in a manner similar to the classroom whitebord to create taught lectures and record the screen in an mpeg movie. The problem is that raster based formats would take about 50 MB for an hour of content, and does not go very well with our unstated goal of getting a whole course on a cd or all courses of a semester on one dvd. It would be great if we could store the construction steps of the svg keyed against time while recording. Then while playback we can patch the svg dom with the steps as needed, using something similar to smil script. How does one go about implementing this? We could find some members willing to implement.

[[Category:Developer Discussion]]

Animation-(Timeline)

2007-07-11T11:51:15Z

S m: /* Existing animation programs (Free & non-Free) */ formating and small corrlection

[[Animation|Back to main page for animation]]

=== User interface for timeline-based animation ===

==== Existing animation programs (Free & non-Free) ====

* [[MacromediaFlash]] is a good non-Free example.
* Ikivo Animator is a good non-Free example producing SVG Tiny animations (http://www.ikivo.com/animator/index.html)
* Macromedia Director prior to version MX had a different interface (http://www.rice.edu/fondren/erc/howto/director.html) which I prefer(ed) over Flash
* QFlash is a FUNCTIONAL free-software mock-up of the Flash 4 interface, which can import SVG files but not edit them. (http://qflash.sourceforge.net)
* F4l is a non-functional free-software mock-up of the Flash 4 interface.(http://f4l.sf.net/)
* Anime Studio, formerly known as [[Moho]] (http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/1913/1/793?sbss=793) a non-free example. (Written in Java.) Features skeletal animation and automatic tweening of vector operations, [http://img.osnews.com/img/2547/moho4-rh.png view screenshot].
* [[LimSee2]] (http://wam.inrialpes.fr/software/limsee2/) is an excellent almost-free basis. (visible-source limited-use license)
* Spalah Flash (http://spalah.sourceforge.net/?p=10) (not to be confused with Spalah CMS) "is a GTK2[[/GNOME2]] based application for generating Macromedia SWF and [[W3C]] SVG animations." The GUI is today minimalist but the author is trying to integrate it with inkscape. See http://spalah.sourceforge.net/?p=19
* SMIL 2.1 player: http://www.cwi.nl/projects/Ambulant/distPlayer.html (GPL)
* Bob Sabiston's proprietary animation software http://www.flatblackfilms.com
* [[Synfig]] ([http://www.synfig.com/ link]) is a film-quality 2D vector animation editor and renderer. It features image morphing between drawings and output animation that is resolution independent both visually and temporally. (GPL)
* Ktoon (http://ktoon.toonka.com/) is a 2D Animation Toolkit designed by animators for animators, focused to the Cartoon Industry. (GPL)
* Jahshaka (http://www.jahshaka.org/) multiplatform QT animation program powered mostly by OpenGL (GPL)
* Powerpoint (http://office.microsoft.com) has an easy but basic interface. No flash killer, but some nice ideas.
* The Tab (http://www.the-tab.com/) Another non-free example that features elegant systems for parent-child animation and a very interesting feature that is designed for pseudo-3D camera moves.
* Pencil (http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=Home) vector and bitmap free animation package using Qt toolkit run on Win32 (XP and works fine on wine), and MacOSX. Simple but already powerful basic animation. It uses blender like timeline with multiple layers and Author plan to export SVG.
* SVGDeveloper (http://www.perfectsvg.com/) is a non-free SVG authoring tool with animation support.
* Blender3D (http://blender.org/) is a 3d (eq. vector) animation program featuring [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation_Basics key frame, motion curve, path animation] using [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Ipo_Curves_and_Keyframes interpolation (IPO) curve editing] combining with [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Shape_Keys shape keys] and [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation/Lattice_Animation deforming by a lattice] (GPL)

==== Fantavision example ====
Back in the '80's there was a program on Apple IIE (Amiga and MS-DOS too) called "Fantavision". It allowed one to create vector artwork (although I didn't understand at the time that that was what it was called) and animations. It allowed one to create frames of animation where you manually repositioned, recolored, scaled, rotated etc. the objects from one frame to the next. However, it then automatically interpolated frames between the 2 frames (the number of interpolated frames was configurable) such that it create a smooth transition of the object moving from one frame to the other. The effect was very similiar to the "Morphing" effect for raster graphics (popularized in a Michael Jackson video, I believe). That is, the system calculated the trajectory of "Key Points" of the objects from one frame to the next. This process is often called "Tweening" (a term used by Macromedia Flash). [[Sketch|Skencil]] (formerly known as [[Sketch]]) supports this functionality and describes it as "Blending".

I guess what I'm saying is that I think a nice interface to create animations would be similiar. So to animate you would do the following:

* Draw the initial SVG Image

* Increment Frame (from say 1 to 20)

* Reposition the elements in frame 20 (including scaling, color changes, adding removing objects, etc, etc, etc)

* System would then calculate a trajectory for each key point from frame 1 to frame 20. Trajectories would be calculated for things like:
** Each "node" of an object
** Color
** Transformation Matrix
** etc

* You could display/manipulate the trajectories (using the trajectory editor shown above by the original creator of this topic)

* The system would then store the animations using SVG trajectories and the "Key Points" would be the frames you manually created

:So, to create say a 100 frame animation, one might only need to manually create/modify 10 frames and the system would interpolate the additional frames as necessary.

* Also, once the system interpolated frames it would allow you to manually modify the interpolated frames creating further "Key Points" and allow further refinement and interpolation.

NOTE: 3D apps such as blender also use a technique like this, which I think is most widely known as "keyframe animation" or simply "keyframing". However, many such systems tie the keys too closely to actual animation frames, and this creates problems when the frames-per-second rate changes. Particularly in the case of vector apps which are not so low-level as bitmaps and animation frames, I would suggest that frames should be as abstract as possible.

Having key positions in simple percentages of the total animation time might be a better solution. This would also need to be a global/local system, of course: animated objects would have their own animation time specified when inserted into a larger document. A character's walkcycle would end at 100%, but in the larger animation, it would perhaps only be 5% of the total time, yet repeating as the object moves across the screen.

One issue with this abstraction of frames might be that important animation effects do not occur exactly within frames: small things could be mistimed, or simply missed altogether. If you set the frame rate too low, this would be an obvious side effect, so it's not necessarily a problem
that Inkscape should try to fix. On the other hand, a few things could be done to ease this. For instance, "snapping" animation events to frames when exporting (thereby slightly altering the timing), or perhaps just warning that certain animation events are not visible at such a low frame rate.

Of course, on the web, with SVG and DHTML, where most Inkscape animations will hopefully be used one day, frames are not an issue at all, and we just worry about keys in time :)

ANOTHER NOTE: Interpolation does not necessarily occur along straight lines and linearly in time. Paths are already part of Inkscape, so points could move along paths; also he time-length graph can be something like a path, instead of a straight line.

==== Jahshaka example ====

I have used jahshaka for a small animation. This was my first real experience with animation. Thought rough, jahshaka is all about key frames and setting properties for those key frames.

Things I liked

* Key frames are on a per object basis
* When an object is selected you can quickly move from one key frame to another
* properties values for rotation can span beyond 0 and 360, permetting to set three or more complete rotation with too key frame. I think this kind of feature could be used for all bounded values (like color, transparency and so on). Is this compatible with SVG or should it be an artifact ?
* representation of properties values on a time line graph. This functionnality was still not very usable, but being to interact through that kind of object could be very useful (see below)

Things that lacks (and Inkscape shall have)

* possibility to copy animation properties from one object to another (say copy color animation, or whole animation)
* possibility to modify a property value for all key frames at once (eg. translation of object for all key frames or a selcted group). I think this could happen through the value = f(time) graph metioned above. You could select points (representing keyframes) and move them up (more), down (less), right (sooner). This graph could be organised by properties set (color, position). I think this kind of graph would be very close to SVG animations tag.
* macro that helps sets common effects (like blinking for example, or crossing the screen....)

==== Bob Sabiston Example ====
Bob Sabiston's animation software is an amazing vector-based package that stores line width within the points that make up a line -- derived from a tablet pen. usually in a simple stroke there could be a hundred data points storing width information. Then in the next keyframe, a line from a previous key is selected and re-drawn restricted to the same number of points. The software allow sthe points to be "repositioned" as you watch their previous locations be re-positioned. When you run out, the line ends automatically. This information is interpolated in tweening frames to change shape, width, position, but retains the same number of data-points. See the film "Waking Life" for the making-of video for a demonstration. Also visit his website for examples of it's capabilities converted to flash. http://www.flatblackfilms.com

==== Other thoughts ====

Suggestion from someone else: working like [[CinePaint]] (compared with Gimp), with each frame independently from each svg document (working like this or providing this feature) - providing vectorial edition quality we can't get on apps like Macromedia Flash or any other (maybe [[ToonBoom]] or Moho) - allowing us to make our work fast publish without further lack of quality.
(One more suggestion about it: being able to convert .swf to .svg sequence (or animated .sgv) and vice versa.)

It is suggested that there be basically two modes: Local (Object) mode and Global mode. Below is a picture showing a very rough design of the local mode:

http://www.inkscape.org/wiki_uploads/anim_gui1.png

In local modes, all properties of the object editing will be shown on a timeline, and one can create and edit frame within the timeline. Then one may assign different value of that properties on different timeline, or make it change linearly, or nonlinearly :)

For an example of a similar model, have a look at:

http://www.uni-bremen.de/~felwert/inkscape/Animation01.html

==== Powerpoint Example ====
You select an object and add types of animation. These are listed in the custom animation pane. They can be set to occur all at once, one at a time, onclick, with previous or after previous. A number appears next to each object in the editing window when the object has animation applied to it, representing the sequence of the animations. When an object has an Entrance type animation added to it as the first animation, it will not appear on screen until the timeline reaches this point. animations can be linked together to create quite complicated sequences.

==== Onion Skinning ====
Onion skinning is a standard animator tool, previous or next frames (sometime both) are displayed under the current frame with differrent color, or less contrast, allowing to understand wich drawing the animator is actually working on, and wich frame is 1 step or 2 step before or after the actual frame.

This can easily be implemented using transparency parameter of layer, and automatize selection of layers to be displayed, parameters following a specialized gui entries.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion-skinning Onion skinning on wikipedia].

==== Interactive ====
I have started using svg to develop interactive displays. Having used several other svg tools currently on the market, I am interested in a more generic implementation that doesn't have animation effects get in the way of interactive controls.

==== Playback of Construction Steps ====
We, at [http://www.classapart.org Class Apart] ( www.classapart.org ), plan to use Inkscape in a manner similar to the classroom whitebord to create taught lectures and record the screen in an mpeg movie. The problem is that raster based formats would take about 50 MB for an hour of content, and does not go very well with our unstated goal of getting a whole course on a cd or all courses of a semester on one dvd. It would be great if we could store the construction steps of the svg keyed against time while recording. Then while playback we can patch the svg dom with the steps as needed, using something similar to smil script. How does one go about implementing this? We could find some members willing to implement.

[[Category:Developer Discussion]]

Animation-(Timeline)

2007-07-10T11:50:10Z

S m: /* Existing animation programs (Free & non-Free) */ - Blender3D added

[[Animation|Back to main page for animation]]

=== User interface for timeline-based animation ===

==== Existing animation programs (Free & non-Free) ====

* [[MacromediaFlash]] is a good non-Free example.
* Ikivo Animator is a good non-Free example producing SVG Tiny animations (http://www.ikivo.com/animator/index.html)
* Macromedia Director prior to version MX had a different interface (http://www.rice.edu/fondren/erc/howto/director.html) which I prefer(ed) over Flash
* QFlash is a FUNCTIONAL free-software mock-up of the Flash 4 interface, which can import SVG files but not edit them. (http://qflash.sourceforge.net)
* F4l is a non-functional free-software mock-up of the Flash 4 interface.(http://f4l.sf.net/)
* Anime Studio, formerly known as [[Moho]] (http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/1913/1/793?sbss=793) a non-free example. (Written in Java.) Features skeletal animation and automatic tweening of vector operations, [http://img.osnews.com/img/2547/moho4-rh.png view screenshot].
* [[LimSee2]] (http://wam.inrialpes.fr/software/limsee2/) is an excellent almost-free basis. (visible-source limited-use license)
* Spalah Flash (http://spalah.sourceforge.net/?p=10) (not to be confused with Spalah CMS) "is a GTK2[[/GNOME2]] based application for generating Macromedia SWF and [[W3C]] SVG animations." The GUI is today minimalist but the author is trying to integrate it with inkscape. See http://spalah.sourceforge.net/?p=19
* SMIL 2.1 player: http://www.cwi.nl/projects/Ambulant/distPlayer.html (GPL)
* Bob Sabiston's proprietary animation software http://www.flatblackfilms.com
* [[Synfig]] ([http://www.synfig.com/ link]) is a film-quality 2D vector animation editor and renderer. It features image morphing between drawings and output animation that is resolution independent both visually and temporally. (GPL)
* Ktoon (http://ktoon.toonka.com/) is a 2D Animation Toolkit designed by animators for animators, focused to the Cartoon Industry. (GPL)
* Jahshaka (http://www.jahshaka.org/) multiplatform QT animation program powered mostly by OpenGL (GPL)
* Powerpoint (http://office.microsoft.com) has an easy but basic interface. No flash killer, but some nice ideas.
* The Tab (http://www.the-tab.com/) Another non-free example that features elegant systems for parent-child animation and a very interesting feature that is designed for pseudo-3D camera moves.
* Pencil (http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=Home) vector and bitmap free animation package using Qt toolkit run on Win32 (XP and works fine on wine), and MacOSX. Simple but already powerful basic animation. It uses blender like timeline with multiple layers and Author plan to export SVG.
* SVGDeveloper (http://www.perfectsvg.com/) is a non-free SVG authoring tool with animation support.
* Blender3D (http://blender.org/) 3d (eq. vector) animation program featuring key frame, motion curve, path animation (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation_Basics) using interpolation (IPO) curve editing (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Ipo_Curves_and_Keyframes) combining with shape keys (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Shape_Keys) and Deforming by a Lattice (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation/Lattice_Animation)(GPL)

==== Fantavision example ====
Back in the '80's there was a program on Apple IIE (Amiga and MS-DOS too) called "Fantavision". It allowed one to create vector artwork (although I didn't understand at the time that that was what it was called) and animations. It allowed one to create frames of animation where you manually repositioned, recolored, scaled, rotated etc. the objects from one frame to the next. However, it then automatically interpolated frames between the 2 frames (the number of interpolated frames was configurable) such that it create a smooth transition of the object moving from one frame to the other. The effect was very similiar to the "Morphing" effect for raster graphics (popularized in a Michael Jackson video, I believe). That is, the system calculated the trajectory of "Key Points" of the objects from one frame to the next. This process is often called "Tweening" (a term used by Macromedia Flash). [[Sketch|Skencil]] (formerly known as [[Sketch]]) supports this functionality and describes it as "Blending".

I guess what I'm saying is that I think a nice interface to create animations would be similiar. So to animate you would do the following:

* Draw the initial SVG Image

* Increment Frame (from say 1 to 20)

* Reposition the elements in frame 20 (including scaling, color changes, adding removing objects, etc, etc, etc)

* System would then calculate a trajectory for each key point from frame 1 to frame 20. Trajectories would be calculated for things like:
** Each "node" of an object
** Color
** Transformation Matrix
** etc

* You could display/manipulate the trajectories (using the trajectory editor shown above by the original creator of this topic)

* The system would then store the animations using SVG trajectories and the "Key Points" would be the frames you manually created

:So, to create say a 100 frame animation, one might only need to manually create/modify 10 frames and the system would interpolate the additional frames as necessary.

* Also, once the system interpolated frames it would allow you to manually modify the interpolated frames creating further "Key Points" and allow further refinement and interpolation.

NOTE: 3D apps such as blender also use a technique like this, which I think is most widely known as "keyframe animation" or simply "keyframing". However, many such systems tie the keys too closely to actual animation frames, and this creates problems when the frames-per-second rate changes. Particularly in the case of vector apps which are not so low-level as bitmaps and animation frames, I would suggest that frames should be as abstract as possible.

Having key positions in simple percentages of the total animation time might be a better solution. This would also need to be a global/local system, of course: animated objects would have their own animation time specified when inserted into a larger document. A character's walkcycle would end at 100%, but in the larger animation, it would perhaps only be 5% of the total time, yet repeating as the object moves across the screen.

One issue with this abstraction of frames might be that important animation effects do not occur exactly within frames: small things could be mistimed, or simply missed altogether. If you set the frame rate too low, this would be an obvious side effect, so it's not necessarily a problem
that Inkscape should try to fix. On the other hand, a few things could be done to ease this. For instance, "snapping" animation events to frames when exporting (thereby slightly altering the timing), or perhaps just warning that certain animation events are not visible at such a low frame rate.

Of course, on the web, with SVG and DHTML, where most Inkscape animations will hopefully be used one day, frames are not an issue at all, and we just worry about keys in time :)

ANOTHER NOTE: Interpolation does not necessarily occur along straight lines and linearly in time. Paths are already part of Inkscape, so points could move along paths; also he time-length graph can be something like a path, instead of a straight line.

==== Jahshaka example ====

I have used jahshaka for a small animation. This was my first real experience with animation. Thought rough, jahshaka is all about key frames and setting properties for those key frames.

Things I liked

* Key frames are on a per object basis
* When an object is selected you can quickly move from one key frame to another
* properties values for rotation can span beyond 0 and 360, permetting to set three or more complete rotation with too key frame. I think this kind of feature could be used for all bounded values (like color, transparency and so on). Is this compatible with SVG or should it be an artifact ?
* representation of properties values on a time line graph. This functionnality was still not very usable, but being to interact through that kind of object could be very useful (see below)

Things that lacks (and Inkscape shall have)

* possibility to copy animation properties from one object to another (say copy color animation, or whole animation)
* possibility to modify a property value for all key frames at once (eg. translation of object for all key frames or a selcted group). I think this could happen through the value = f(time) graph metioned above. You could select points (representing keyframes) and move them up (more), down (less), right (sooner). This graph could be organised by properties set (color, position). I think this kind of graph would be very close to SVG animations tag.
* macro that helps sets common effects (like blinking for example, or crossing the screen....)

==== Bob Sabiston Example ====
Bob Sabiston's animation software is an amazing vector-based package that stores line width within the points that make up a line -- derived from a tablet pen. usually in a simple stroke there could be a hundred data points storing width information. Then in the next keyframe, a line from a previous key is selected and re-drawn restricted to the same number of points. The software allow sthe points to be "repositioned" as you watch their previous locations be re-positioned. When you run out, the line ends automatically. This information is interpolated in tweening frames to change shape, width, position, but retains the same number of data-points. See the film "Waking Life" for the making-of video for a demonstration. Also visit his website for examples of it's capabilities converted to flash. http://www.flatblackfilms.com

==== Other thoughts ====

Suggestion from someone else: working like [[CinePaint]] (compared with Gimp), with each frame independently from each svg document (working like this or providing this feature) - providing vectorial edition quality we can't get on apps like Macromedia Flash or any other (maybe [[ToonBoom]] or Moho) - allowing us to make our work fast publish without further lack of quality.
(One more suggestion about it: being able to convert .swf to .svg sequence (or animated .sgv) and vice versa.)

It is suggested that there be basically two modes: Local (Object) mode and Global mode. Below is a picture showing a very rough design of the local mode:

http://www.inkscape.org/wiki_uploads/anim_gui1.png

In local modes, all properties of the object editing will be shown on a timeline, and one can create and edit frame within the timeline. Then one may assign different value of that properties on different timeline, or make it change linearly, or nonlinearly :)

For an example of a similar model, have a look at:

http://www.uni-bremen.de/~felwert/inkscape/Animation01.html

==== Powerpoint Example ====
You select an object and add types of animation. These are listed in the custom animation pane. They can be set to occur all at once, one at a time, onclick, with previous or after previous. A number appears next to each object in the editing window when the object has animation applied to it, representing the sequence of the animations. When an object has an Entrance type animation added to it as the first animation, it will not appear on screen until the timeline reaches this point. animations can be linked together to create quite complicated sequences.

==== Onion Skinning ====
Onion skinning is a standard animator tool, previous or next frames (sometime both) are displayed under the current frame with differrent color, or less contrast, allowing to understand wich drawing the animator is actually working on, and wich frame is 1 step or 2 step before or after the actual frame.

This can easily be implemented using transparency parameter of layer, and automatize selection of layers to be displayed, parameters following a specialized gui entries.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion-skinning Onion skinning on wikipedia].

==== Interactive ====
I have started using svg to develop interactive displays. Having used several other svg tools currently on the market, I am interested in a more generic implementation that doesn't have animation effects get in the way of interactive controls.

==== Playback of Construction Steps ====
We, at [http://www.classapart.org Class Apart] ( www.classapart.org ), plan to use Inkscape in a manner similar to the classroom whitebord to create taught lectures and record the screen in an mpeg movie. The problem is that raster based formats would take about 50 MB for an hour of content, and does not go very well with our unstated goal of getting a whole course on a cd or all courses of a semester on one dvd. It would be great if we could store the construction steps of the svg keyed against time while recording. Then while playback we can patch the svg dom with the steps as needed, using something similar to smil script. How does one go about implementing this? We could find some members willing to implement.

[[Category:Developer Discussion]]

Talk:Animation-(Timeline)

2006-10-11T10:38:11Z

S m: /* Blender NLA Editor */

== Blender NLA Editor ==

May be Blender NLA (Non Linear Animation) Editor (groups of repeatable animations with groups blending) can give some ideas:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Non_Linear_Animation

The Ipo Curve Editor:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Ipo_Curves_and_Keyframes

Talk:Animation-(Timeline)

2006-10-11T10:28:52Z

S m: Blender NLA Editor