Director Animation Technology Tutorial

Animation technology has not only been widely used in film and television, but is now widely used in web and multimedia products, and has become a trend. The animation is actually: a series of nuanced static pictures are displayed continuously on the screen, and the nuances between the pictures form a continuous animation in the human visual error. Director is a popular multimedia authoring tool with powerful animation capabilities. We will introduce you to various ways to create animations in Director.

First, Step Recording Step Recording is the most basic method of animation. It records the information of the sprite (SPRite) frame by frame, including position, size and Model member, etc. We use two examples to introduce the "step-by-step recording method". The first example & ldquo; falling ball rdquo;: the ball fell from a height and then bounced upwards. The second example is “open flowers”: a whole process of flower growth and opening. The first example is implemented as follows: (1) Draw a small ball in the Paint Windows. (2) Drag and drop the newly drawn ball onto the stage and move it to the upper part of the stage. Figure 1.

(3) Select the sprite on the stage and select the menu: Control /Step Recording. Open the Score window, you can see a small red arrow on the left side of the channel of the selected sprite, as shown in Figure 2, which shows that the sprite is in a progressive recording state.

(2) In the Score window, the frame span of this sprite is pulled to 30 frames, and the current time pointer is moved to the position of the first frame of the sprite; as shown in FIG. 2 . (3) Open the control panel with the menu: Window/Control Panel; as shown in Figure 3.

(4) Change the time to frame 2 via the Step Forward button on the control panel, then drag the ball to a new one on the Stage. Position; repeat the above actions to change the subsequent frames in turn. (5) When the ball falls to the ground, it will deform — — This will change the shape of the ball while changing its shape. You can change its shape by dragging the outer frame of the ball on the stage with the mouse. (6) After setting all the frames, use the menu command: Control /Step Recording to cancel the step-by-step recording status. (7) In the step-by-step recording method, we can not only change the position of each frame of the sprite, but also change its transparency and transparency. The above example is just a simple move and morph, but animation is not just that. Some animations are complex and cannot be described by simple movements and morphs. For example, the process of blooming flowers, we can not describe the movement of the character on the stage, it has been transformed into the transformation of the role on the stage. That is to say, different styling members are successively displayed at different times, instead of the movement of a styling member on the stage. Let's do this animation of "open flowers". To do this animation we need to use some of the images in the version of Director8.0. The methods obtained are as follows: 1. Open the “Director installation directory \\\\Learning\\\\Completed_Tutorials\\\\fun.dir ”, 2. Select all the pictures we need, then press CTRL+C (the purpose is to copy, you can also use Copy Cast Members in the shortcut menu of the right mouse button). 3. Open our movie (Movie), open the Cast Window, and paste the desired image with the Paste Cast Members item in the shortcut menu. (Please confirm that fun.dir has been closed before pasting, otherwise you can't paste it.) Figure 4

After successfully obtaining the desired image, let's implement this animation. Here are the steps: (1) Drag the first picture ——“flowerFrzero” to the stage and position it. Tip: “flowerFrzero” is a black bottom after dragging to the stage. Not good looking. We can let its black color go away and become transparent. You can use Ctrl+mouse to click and select: Background Transparent from the pop-up menu. But I found that nothing changed! Don't worry, this is because the background is wrong. Open the Property Inspector window and change the original white background color to black, as shown in Figure 6. (2) Open Score to move the current pointer to the first frame of the sprite. (3) Open the step-by-step record with the menu command: Control /Step Recording. (4) Use the next frame button of the control panel to move the current time to the third frame. (5) Open the Cast window, select the second picture ——“FloserFr01”; (6) Select the menu Edit /Exchange Cast Member command; this is to change the menu command that acts as the styling member of the sprite, then you will find The elf on the stage has become like FloserFr01. (7) Repeat the above operation, and the character members of the sprite will be changed to the corresponding modeling members on Cast every two frames until the last FloserFr14. Play this video from the beginning, you will see the whole process of growing a flower. Through the above two examples, we have initially experienced the powerful animation features of Director. At the same time, it is not very convenient and fast to create animations with step-by-step recording. In fact, we have a better way to create the above two animation effects. I will give a brief introduction below. Second, from space to time (Space To Time) When using the progressive recording to make the ball drop animation, we only see a small ball when setting a frame, so it is difficult to grasp the relative position before and after the ball movement. Fortunately, Director provides us with a solution to this problem. It is a space to time technique animation. The animation of making a small ball drop using space to time technology is as follows: (1) Open the drawing window ( Paint Window), draw the motion track of the ball; (2) Put the drawn track on the stage. (3) Drag the ball from the Cast window to the starting point on the track on the stage. (4) Drag the ball to the track in turn, as shown in Figure 7

(5) Open the Score window, select the 11 sprites of the ball, and frame their spans. Change to 1 frame, as shown in Figure 8

Tip: Modifying the sprite's frame span through the Property Inspector window is convenient and accurate, especially when the sprite frame span becomes 1 In the future, if you want to change to greater than 1, you can also re-stretch the sprite's frame span in the Score window with “Alt+Drag Wizard”. (6) Select menu Modify /Space to Time and enter 1 in the Space To Time dialog box that pops up, as shown in Figure 9. You can also enter a larger number, the higher the number, the slower the drop.

(7) Open the Score window and you will see that the 11 little ball sprites have become a sprite. This is the animated sprite that we want to drop the ball. (8) The final step is to delete the track on the stage, because it is no longer useful. If you think the ball is falling too fast, you can adjust it by changing the length of the frame span of the sprite just generated. Third, Cast To Time In the use of step-by-step recording method "open flowers", use the Edit /Exchange Cast Member menu command when you need to replace each frame, this operation will be carried out 14 times. If we use a step-by-step recording method to make an animation with hundreds of frames, then our workload is very huge. If you use Cast To Time to do the "open flowers" animation, it is much simpler, the specific implementation is as follows: (1) Open the Cast window, select all the required shape members, as shown in Figure 10.

Tip: You can change the Cast window view to the list as shown by clicking the Cast View Style button in the upper left corner of the Cast window, then click on the upper part of the list. ;#\\" button, the Cast table will be arranged from small to large according to the serial number. This way, we are very convenient when we choose, and we will not make the wrong order. (2) Select the menu Modify /Cast to Time command, or Alt to drag the group of members to the stage. An elf will be generated on the stage, which is what we want. Note: Cast To Time generates animations according to the serial number of your selected member (number), not in the order you choose. Each styling member has a unique serial number, which is also their logo. This serial number can only be changed at the stage of movie production, and cannot be changed during movie playback. The way to change is to drag and drop with the mouse in the Cast Window. (The thumbnail view mode allows you to drag and drop the shape members in Cast Windowk, which is the view mode as shown in Figure 5.)

(3) If you think this flower grows too fast You can change the frame span of its sprite in the Score window and pull it to your desired length. So far we have introduced four methods of animation, each with its own characteristics, step-by-step recording method is more accurate, it can accurately control the change of each frame; space to time is more intuitive; and Cast to Time is a Compare my quick methods. As for which method to use, it depends on the actual situation.