Animation Falling From the Sky -- Revised Aug 25 2010 --

Chasester_aka_you | 2010-02-19 19:54

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Animation Falling From the Sky

Lets define some terms: READ FIRST

Fr: frame rate
Ss: user defined as the square size for the user particular movie
Wd: width
Ln: lenth
Cs: cube size--the size of the cube in a texture in pixles-- smallest 8x8
Px: pixel--one square of one color in a picture
Mts: Max texture size--the largest size that cube can import-- set at 4096 or 2^12.
Cell: defined as one piece (as a square) that displays part of the movie-- this will be later converted into a texture.
Grid: defined as a set of cells (squares) that define one overall movie
Pixelated: the effect when you see little boxes of color. Like a low quality pic or mov
Pic: picture
Mov: Moive, Video, or other movie like multimedia
Multi piece texture movie: a movie divided with a grid creating cells which are imported into cube and pieced back together
Min: Minutes
st8-^2: a term which means a number greater than 8 and is a power of 2 (ie 8,16,32,64 ect)

Note: all cubes are 8x8 px and incress by *2 or st8-^2.
Note: Quick interpretation assumes that you have flash 8 or greater. If you do not have flash read below

Quick ez interpretation

See example: CFE's Movie Map
This was set by Chris, using my article (and my help) :)

Tips And Tricks

☻ When making the first texture, use the align functions (window-align). Lay down all the horizonals then use the distribute command. Then group each row and distribute vertically. Note: make sure that the top and bottoms are perfectly aligned before you distribute or you will have gaps.
☺ Before exporting each image piece (or cell) of the movie change the stage size to the size you need this way you dont make to much or to little.
☻ Use the properties window to change the x y wd ln (this will make it more accurate.
☺ Export as jpg sequence not gif sequence (gif has a lower color depth--which means less colors to choose from-- it will make it look pixelated).
☻ Dont export at a fps lower then 12 or higher then 30.

Without Flash

Use any program that allows you to edit movies. Windows Media Player will work:

Start at step number 14.

Graph And Cells For Your Movie

Note: this is a graph that you need to look at.
First find the length of your movie in min.

   ln	        px x px
140 min	        8 x 8
9 min	        32 x 32
34 sec	        128 x 128
2 sec	        512 x 512

Now you need to figure out how much space you want your animation to take in cube. Take a grid size according to the cart and plot out the space you want the movie to cover in cube.

Ss ingame grid size number
8 1
32 2
128 3
512 4
♪ The easiest way to find your grid size is to scroll down your grid size to the bottom (g + downscroll) thats 1. 1 g + upscroll is 2 and one more 3 etc.
♫ Now count how many wd you want. Count the number of cells in game. These will translate to the same grid cells when doing the process.

Figure out the ratio of your movie 16:9 (rectangle) or 5:4 (square). Note it is best to use something that 9 or 4 can fit in. You need to figure out how many height that is. So simply divide your in game cell count by the width ratio and multiply by the hieght ratio---

ht = wd
N    gc

Note N is the ht count and gc is the ingame count.
If you do not know how to do this simply cross multiply here

i.e.

If your in game count is 8 cells and you are working with 5:4 ratio. If i 8/4*5 i get 10. Now i need to put a 10x8 grid over my video and then render each cell separately.

If now your in game count is 18 cells and you are working with 16:9 ratio. If i 18/9*16 i get 32. Now i need to put a 32x18 grid over my video and then render each cell separately.

Note: YOU MUST come out with an even number-- you can not half a cell-- it would be a pain in the @$$ :)

Explaination

Problem

We need to take a picture and convert it to a movie. To do this we must trick the mind by flashing images by the eyes at such a rate that it looks like it is moving. Cube does not allow us to use any file type but image files. So we must use some type of code to solve the problem.

Solution

To solve the problem we must use a combination of code and texture format. Baby Rabbit came up with the code. Now we must apply the code to the texture.

The Code

To understand how to make a format for the code we must understand the code. The code takes an image scales it to a section (starting in the top left corner) of the texture and displays this area. Then it moves one cell over (cell means a distance of x value). When it reaches the end of the row it down one cell and back to the left side. Thus sliding thru the texture. If we can do this fast enough then we can trick the mind to think that it is a movie.

Formating

So what we need to do is to make our movies frames line up with the frame that the code displays. So we simply line frame 1 next to frame 2 etc until we get to the end of the texture and then we drop down and go to the left side and continue. We do this until the image is done.

Max Size Problem

Cube has a make size of 4096px. This does not seem like a problem until you have to display 30 images a second. To solve this we are going to cut our video into pieces. We will call these cells or pieces. These cells get exported as separate textures so that we do not reach above are make texture space. The smaller each cell the longer the image can go on. The cap is around 1hr 1/2 at about 30 fps. But if we divide it up too much we will run into the problem that we have too many textures to lay out which becomes a nightmare. It is best advised to keep your movies less then 9 min, because a game is only 10 or 15 min long and if you use 9 you can stay in the 2 grid size which will make it easier.

Charts and Graphs

Ok so to explain the tables and how they work and how i got the numbers.
First chart:

   ln	        px x px
140 min	        8 x 8
9 min	        32 x 32
34 sec	        128 x 128
2 sec	        512 x 512

The formula is:
(((Ms/Ss)^2)/Fr)/60
Note:
Ss: squ size
Ms: max size
Fr: frame rate
60: because there are 60 seconds in a min
---------------------------------------------
The formula takes the Ms which is a const set at 4096 and divides by a Ss. Ss is a set of the following: Ss[8,32,128,512]. These are st8-^2. This gives you how many Ss's you can fit in a strait row down your texture, but a square has two sides. So we square the sides because the sides of a square are equal. Thus more or less we found the area of the cube as the Ss was the unit of measurement. Then we divide by the fr. This is because we need to know how many images we need to display in one second. Now we have the amount of seconds that we can run our video, we divide by 60, cuz there are 60 sec in a min. Note: to find hours divide by 60 again.
Second chart:

Ss     ingame grid size number
8                1
32               2
128              3
512              4

This comes from the cube code. This is simply the amount of px that each texture takes when a particular grid size is used.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

The above should give you a complete understanding of the medthod in which you create movies. If you have any question post them, if you have any areas of the explaination you would like me to expond opon leave a comment. If you have question about programs (other than flash) to use for this process, leave a comment. :0 And if you have any ways to improve the process please comment.

Thanx

Your Humble Master
chasester

Rating

points

(2 votes)

Attachment	Size
MovieShader.txt	590 bytes

Comments

Suicizer | 2010-02-20 23:03

sorry but i think im not fully getting it.
is this something when recording a movie on cube engine (2)? or is this about the shaders of an animation?

Windecker | 2010-02-20 23:07

Perhaps follow the first link in his post, and find out.

Chasester_aka_you | 2010-02-21 03:41

The first link is only the tool u need the guide to get there

Chasester_aka_you | 2010-08-25 01:27

i know its about animated textures, but what does your screensize has to do with animated textures 0.0?
Due to the fact that your animation can only be 4000 something (noted in the node). Therefore you could use a texscroll but you can only go as long as 30 sec at 10 fps ... i think. This is due to the fact that you can only use 4000 px of the 4000x4000 image. So by using baby rabbit's script you can use all 4000 x 4000 of the jpg.
i know its about animated textures, but what does your screensize has to do with animated textures 0.0?
the above should due.
Why are you talking about a complete movie while the script (originally by "a baby rabbit", not meatrome) only goes about just 1 texture, that gets rendered in pieces?
Same thing just longer :)

Suicizer | 2010-08-25 12:52

thank you very much for the way easier explanation, but how can you let cube engine 2 show up the movie then? i couldnt find anything information about that (wich is actually the most important part) :S.

Chasester_aka_you | 2010-08-25 17:21

still in edit--we will get to that :)

Quin | 2010-08-25 01:44

Node is unreadable due to poor paragraph formatting.

Chasester_aka_you | 2010-08-26 03:57

Revised:
Grammar and spell checked

BdR | 2010-09-20 20:29

@Chasester_aka_you: it' s not the grammar or spelling, it's the absence of a clear question that is confusing us (me at least)

Can you explain the problem you are trying to solve, or phrase you question in one or two sentences? Because I really don't understand what you are trying to communicate in the opening post.

Suicizer | 2011-10-03 16:40

I tried this custom shader once again for a texture pack which I'll release in the future, but it seems like I can't make it work. This is exactly what I've used:

shader 0 "frameworld" [
@vpstart
DP3 result.texcoord[0].x, opos, program.env[0];
DP3 result.texcoord[0].y, opos, program.env[1];
TEMP off;
MUL off, program.env[6], 1; // animation rate
FRC off.x, off.x;
MUL off.x, off.x, 2; // squares in a row: 4x4 5x5 6x6. so on
FLR result.texcoord[2].xy, off;
@fogcoord
END
] [
@fpstart
OPTION ARB_fog_linear;
TEMP dtc;
FRC dtc, fragment.texcoord[0];
ADD dtc, dtc, fragment.texcoord[2];
MUL dtc, dtc, 0.5; // 1/squares in a row - so correct scaling
TEX result.color, dtc, texture[0], 2D;
END
]

Some aspect which probably have impact on this, my "movie" is just 4 frames (just like the old "movieshader" content) and are all 128x128 pixels (so movie-texture itself is 256x256 pixels).

Anyone has any idea how to fix this problem?
When you know how, please do me a favour and don't "push" me in the "right" direction since I won't learn anything of that (even some people say you do learn of it, I just don't). I know how the script works, what the values mean but I just can't find what's wrong with it (or with Cube Engine 2). That's why I request for help here.

P.S.
The link to the content of "CFE's movieshader" isn't working, it's just linking back to this content (which is pretty odd).

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-10-04 02:38

@link
Im guessing that the content was removed.

@shader
ill look into and see if i cant solve whats wrong
it would be awesome if you gave me an image that you are trying to use

chasester

@edit
her's the values that chris used in the movie map thingy

shader 0 "CFEmovie" [
@vpstart
DP3 result.texcoord[0].x, opos, program.env[0];
DP3 result.texcoord[0].y, opos, program.env[1];
TEMP off;
MUL off, program.env[6], 0.734375; // animation rate
FRC off.x, off.x;
MUL off.x, off.x, 40; // thus 4x4 tiled image
FLR result.texcoord[2].xy, off;
@fogcoord
END
] [
@fpstart
OPTION ARB_fog_linear;
TEMP dtc;
FRC dtc, fragment.texcoord[0];
ADD dtc, dtc, fragment.texcoord[2];
MUL dtc, dtc, 0.025; // 1/4 - so correct scaling
TEX result.color, dtc, texture[0], 2D;
END
]

The bolded is were the code differs which are more or less vars, but with out a image that you are trying to use i can not help you any further.

Now to babying ;p
ok the first number is (((Ms/Ss)^2)/Fr)/60 (Note Ms in this case will be the size of your image). The second number is the number of images across which should be the same as down (as commented). The last number is 1/(the amount from the second).

Suicizer | 2011-10-04 07:40

There a link to the texture right here.

I know those values are different and I took the exact same values as the config of "movie_map" (since that also has a 2x2 tiled image, while CFE had used a 40x40 tiled image).

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-10-05 03:48

ok i revied this .. and something is messed up the image is stretching horizontally (which is probably not new to you) basically ur sol. My guess is that something changed in the code so that fudged this thing up.

...but texture scroll should work still ;p if u get it goin fast enough it looks the same (almost).

chasester

Suicizer | 2011-10-05 06:08

So what's the solution of it? What do I have to change in the shader to make it work :P?

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-10-05 14:29

not positive its awkwardly stretching it for no appearent reason. It think it was something added in the new version. So I would first download the last version (last release) check if it works there and if it does then you will have to go into the scr and figure what was changed with the shaders and then fix it accordingly.

chasester