request on animation file format

[mondaymorninglunatic]

Hello.

I've been trying to check out the .m3a-file with notepad to see what's in it. I cannot soo very much - it all looks cryptic.
First a question:

When i create an animation (that is 50 frames between 2 keyframes) and save it - are the parameters of all 50 frames inside of the m3a.-file?
(I guess they're not, am I right?)

The thing is, that I am planning a bigger animation project. And it would be crucial to be able to modify individual frames (camera positions + fractal parameters + colors) outside of M3D.

The thing is that I want to create an animation with very complex and/or subtle parameter changes. Since it is very difficult to make frame-by-frame animations without losing the view on the "bigger picture" i need to be able to write animation files from another programm. Mathematica 7 would be my choice for creating the datasets for the individual parameters.

I would create a huge array (m x n-Matrix for m-frames with n-parameters in each picture) in mathematica and write it in the animation file.

Is it possible to allow another kind of animation file, where in the header there are just the formulas used. And after that there are just the parameters for each frame.

like this:
<header>
formula 1: "icosahedron", iterations=5 , parameters=12, repeat from here=0;
formula 2: "Amazing Box", iterations=1, parameters=3, repeat from here=1;
formula 3: "Sierpinksy", iterations=2, parameters=5, repeat from here=0;
<header>

frame0000001={0.1,0.2,0.5,10,23,-0.5,5,10, ......,22} (list contains parameters in the right order - in this case 20 parameters because 12+3+5=20)
frame0000002={.......}
...
...


I would really love to see an animation-file, that i can understand and use easily within other programs.
Because:
 - it is very hard to do a turn of the camera around an object when there is a quadratic interpolation between the keyframes - the motion can be near a constant angular momentum but to be sure you have to manually make every single frame.
 - in mathematica one can make plots of individual parameters over time and get a feeling of the motion.
 - time dependent interpolation can be done in many ways - newtonian, damp, linear, oscillating, ... whatever.(One could even make a fourier-transformation of the individual patterns and add a lowpass/highpass filter on it.)

If this would be in any way possible - i'd love it.

[Jesse]

Hi,

the m3a file is binary and contains a little header plus only the keyframes parameter with the preview image.
So this is not really possible yet.

Of course, a kind of timeline with tweaking would be useful, but it is not that easy to implement... so it will not be made in the very next time  

[mondaymorninglunatic]

Ah ok.

So if there was an option like "don't save a preview image" and "No interpolation" between keyframes - i could actually save every image as a keyframe?

Is there a way, that i could create a .m3a-file via notepad++ ?
I cannot really read it unfortunately - So I don't know what's going on inside of it.

But good to know you read this

[Jesse]

To use only keyframes by setting the subframe counts all to 1 would give many problems, but...

i could think of an extra textfile that contains a list for tweaking parameters:

[KeyframeNr, SubframeNr]
ValAddress, Abs/Rel, Value
ValAddress, ...


Then i would have to make a list of the addresses of all tweakable parameters and the specific value format.
Abs/Rel is an option so you can also change the value relative to the interpolated value to get a smooth kurve independent on the choosen interpolation.

Should be ok to implement, and a user interface could rely on it later, maybe.
The only problem i see is when changing the subframe count.

[mondaymorninglunatic]

That would be great!

A Textfile is a simple solution. In my case i would use mathematica to calculate all the values, so i could set the keyframes in mathematica itself and generate interpolations between (linear, quadratic, cubic, and so on).

My Idea is to have a plot of each individual parameter in mathematica. So I can see all the movements.
A relative movement from the curve wouldn't be needed i think (for my purpose at least).
Actually - I am not quite sure i understand it right with the relative value.
Do you mean this:

If I have 2 Keyframes with 50 interpolated frames between (with quadratic interpolation i have a curve).
The relative value would then define a change relative to the interpolated value?
Like Adding a noise to the camera movement for a "handcamera" feeling? hm could be interesting. But this could be done also in mathematica itself.

I added a picture, of what i would do in mathematica. I created random numbers-pairs as Keyframes and then made interpolated Subframes.
The thing is, that if i make everything in mathematica i don't need to have subframes at all. I make my subframes in mathematica and save them as keyframes in M3D.

But I have one Idea: Some kind of text-field in M3D could be useful. The textfield would have exactly the form, you used. One could copy the string or paste a string in it (would be experimental, because one has the have the right formulas in the formula editor loaded - but for a pro-user this would be more convenient. Also a "write this line in .txt would be useful".
The field would go like this:
[frame000012153]{{ValAdress,Value},{ValAdress,Value},{...,...}, ...}

The process of creating new frames in mathematica (like: make a rotation around the x axis) and check them up as a preview in M3D would be useful. Also the opposite - finetuning a keyframe in M3D and then copy the parameters in the mathematica list.


I know this all sounds very geeky/creepy(?). But I use mathematica for some time now and it is very very VERY powerful. Especially when handling huge lists. Using filters on List elements, like moving average, fourier-transformation are filters, i have in mind. Also creating camera movements.
I am planning to create a huge timeline paralleling a Song to which the fractal shall dance. this could really be great.
(like those fractal-flights by bib993 on youtube. some really have a nice - dance-like movement).

And since this is more a bigger project - it has time. There are other people having there wishes for M3D

btw - i am rendering some kind of fractal balls (20 000*20 000 pixels). great for printing. If you are interested you can have the files. (only - they are big in size).



 

[Jesse]

I have to explain a bit further, the lighting parameters are first translated into another format that contains floats before the interpolation.  So the subframes are not really the default parameters.

My suggestion is a way that would not need much work, only a little textparser to check after the interpolation for values that should be overwritten.  The relative values would rely on these intern interpolated ones, for example if you just want to increase a lightsource for some time to fit to a beat in the soundtrack.
If you overwrite the whole timeline you could only use absolute values, of course.

The common m3a file with keyframes is still needed, but without much work, for what i have no time now and dunno if later, there is no way around it.


I think i saw your fractal balls on DA (you know what i am talking bout), looks surely cool printed out.
Would be nice if you would send the tiles or stitched, let's see if my mailbox can handle it. 

[mondaymorninglunatic]

Ah... so the lightning parameters are different than the normal parameters ?

I think that if I would understand the .m3a-format, i could write it from mathematica.
Then i would create a stream of thousands of keyframes with no subframes at all.
Instead of creating keyframes and having subframes in between, i would have only keyframes.
I don't know if this is in any way bad (maybe having an m3a file with 10000 keyframes would be too much to handle?), but i think i could do it. (also i could split the parameters list in mathematica in smaller parts)

Is there a way to open the m3a-file in notepad++ ? It seems in some way encoded.


I have some of the balls already stitched together. Stitching them yourself could take a while (i had to do it on another pc, because opening a 20k^2-pixel image requires too much ram )

I could upload the files at some place (complex images are ~1.2 Gbyte)
Last week i went to a print shop and they made me some examples ( i wanted to see if 300, 600, or 1200dpi was the best). actually 300dpi is already enough. with 600dpi you can be sure and the image still can be 33 times 33 inches.
If you want i can make you some pdf files with the print-foo already in it. (they need to have the image in cmyk and stuff).

(and wow - i just now realized that the image my pc is rendering right now is actually too big. 40000^2 pixels.
in 300dpi it is so big one needs a ladder to see fine details at the top - shit!)

[Jesse]

The m3a is like the parameters in a binary format, no text at all.

But you can make just a kind of dummy m3a file and overwrite all parameters with the textfile, so the keyframes won't matter very much.
Only the right amount of keframes and subframes and maybe some other stuff, because there is relative much stuff to consider.


And i guess uploading the giga-image somewhere is better, 1.2 giga is surely to much for my e-box. 
300 dpi should be enough for a printout, without anti aliasing maybe a little higher...

[mondaymorninglunatic]

i rendered the images in antialiasing mode (2:1). Will get some files ready at the weekend.