Animation Programs

1
Animation Programs

• Alice

2
Overview

• 4-step process for creating animations
• Step 1 Understand Problem
• Step 2 Design
• Step 3 Implementation
• Step 4 Test

3
Programming Methodology

• Understand the problem and think about a strategy
  for a solution
• Create an algorithm to solve the problem
• Storyboards are helpful for problems involving
  animation
• Implement the algorithm
• Test and refine

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Step 1 2 The Problem

• Decide on the problem to be solved
• Often the problem to be solved is given to you by
  your instructor, team leader, etc.
• Other times, you get to make it up!
• We will practice both
• Design a solution
• We will use a storyboard design

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An example problem (scenario)

• The scenario is
• Several snow-people are outdoors, on a
  snow-covered landscape. A snowman is trying to
  meet a snowwoman who is talking with a group of
  her friends (other snowwomen.) He says Ahem" and
  blinks his eyes, trying to get her attention.
• The problem is
• How can we create this animation?

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Designing a solution

• First decide on the objects that will be in the
  scene.
• Then, create a storyboard.
• A "storyboard" is a representation of what
  actions are going to take place in the animation
• A storyboard can take two forms
• sketches
• textual "to do" lists

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Sketch

• Objects A snowman and a snowwoman (and possibly
  other snowpeople)
• Opening Scene a snowy scene
• A quick sketch

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A Storyboard
Initial scene
Snowman tries to catch snowwomans attention
Snowwoman looks around
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Storyboard in Text Form

• Animation Artists (for example, at Disney or
  Pixar Studios) sketch their storyboards
• You might not have such expertise, so here is a
  textual form that can be used
• This is like a "to-do" list.

Snowman turns to face snowwoman. Snowman makes
eyes and calls out to snowwoman. Snowwoman turns
around.
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Step 3 Implementation

• Implementing an animation requires
• Setting Up the Initial Scene in Alice
• Writing the Program (Script)

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Create Initial Scene
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Techniques and Tools

• Mouse is used to
• set up the initial scene
• approximately position objects in the scene
• Camera Navigation is used to
• set the camera point of view
• Drop-down menu methods are used to
• resize objects
• more precisely position objects in the scene
• Scene Editor's Layout Manager is used to
• obtain specific alignments
• position one object relative to another object

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Writing A Program

• "Writing" a program (script)
• a list of instructions to have the objects
  perform certain actions in the animation

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Writing the Program

• Our storyboard (to-do list) is
• The idea now is to translate the design
  steps to program instructions.

Snowman turns to face snowwoman. Snowman makes
eyes and calls out to snowwoman. Snowwoman turns
around.
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Translating the Design

• Some steps in the storyboard can be written as a
  single instruction
• The snowman turns to face the snowwoman
• Other steps are composite actions that require
  more than one instruction
• The snowman tries to catch the snowwomans
  attention is two actions
• Snowman says ahem
• Snowman raises and lowers his eyes

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Actions

• Sequential
• Some actions occur one after the other
• first step (snowman turns to face snowwoman)
• second step (snowman tries to get snowwomans
  attention)
• Simultaneous
• Other actions occur at the same time
• Snowman says "Ahem" and while simultaneously
  blinking his eyes

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Action Blocks in Alice

Sequential Action Block
Simultaneous Action Block
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Write the Animation Program

• Will develop in class.

19
Coding the first 2 steps

• Things to note
• Nesting of DoTogether and DoInOrder blocks
• Arguments for the move instruction
• direction
• distance

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Step 4 Testing

• An important step in creating a program is to run
  it to be sure it does what you expect it to do.
• We recommend that you use an incremental
  development process
• write a few lines of code and then run it
• write a few more lines and run it
• write a few more lines and run it
• This process allows you to find any problems
  and fix them as you go along.
  

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Comments

• While Alice instructions are easy to understand,
  it is often desirable to be able to explain (in
  English) what is going on in a program
• We use comments to explain to the human reader
  what a particular section of code does

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Comments
Notes 1) Comments appear in green 2) Alice
ignores comments. 3) Comments make the program
easier to read.
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Assignment

• Read Chapter 2 sections 1 and 2
• Scenarios and Storyboards
• A First Program
• Read Tips Techniques 2
• Orientation and Movement Instructions

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Lab 02

• Exercises from 2-1 and 2-2