From: entpph@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Subject: artists and programmers united for better animation
Reply-To: entpph@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 23:05:45 GMT

I'd like to start this off by trotting out a pet obsession of
mine and that's recommending the book _Digital Harmony_ by John
Whitney.  It's sadly out of print, but most university libraries
seem to have a copy (attention Cornell folks! your copy is in
the music library).  Whitney is one of the pioneers of abstract
animation and one of the pioneers in our field--he looked at
computers and animation for IBM in 1968 (?)--near enough.

Whitney's thesis is that there is this human drive to build a color
organ--a machine that somehow combines colors (and shapes) with
music.  He predicts that this is the machine/workstation we are
headed for.  

Given that there are 26 letters out of which an infinity of works
of literature can be written, and there are 3 basic shapes out of
which an infinity of pictures can be created, is there a basic
vocabulary for movement?  Whitney describes his quest for the
answer to that questions and some of his early experiments.  He
thinks he's found the answer, which has to do with the way music
is constructed.

One of the most memorable things he says in the book is that the
problem of the painter is a figure/ground problem while the problem
of the animator is more like herding sheep.  He believes the 
computer is the first tool that lets us control, exactly, the motion
of hundreds of elements at a time, and thus is the perfect animation
machine.

Now his thing is abstract animation, which ain't for everyone.  But
his aesthetic can be applied to the motion of any object--abstract element
or realistic model--and it works.  

Be aware that he's tough to read.  He writes a a very high level and
It's slow going--a pause at the end of every paragraph to digest what
he's written.  Oh, yeah, it's got code in it.

It's kick ass.

There's a pioneer laser disc in the visual pathfinders series called 
the world of john whitney, but it's really only an introduction--
the films on it, though, explain what he's talking about in the book.

To more practical matters: here at RIT rendering speed is everything.
Students are expected to do a 5 minute thesis film--9000 frames.
We don't have an hour a frame for elegant, photorealistic images.
We got 5, 6 minutes tops.  We use TOPAS and have both a 486/33
and an i860 rapid render system.  What we need (are you listening,
TOPAS and Crystal programmers?) is a HOLD command.  As much as
animation is about movement, it's also about holds.  When I'm
shooting animation film I like to shoot a 200 frame hold at the
head and tail--just in case, and often there's a hold in the middle
of a shot.  A HOLD command would let me just record frames without
have to recalculate and rerender the same frame over` and over
again.

The next most important thing we need is a CYCLE command.  Cycles
are a standard animation technique, but I have never seen an computer
system which permitted their use, no no, each repetitive movement
must be entered into the script over and over.

Two more things:  There has been an aesthetic already suggested
here that movement in animation is more important than realistic
rendering.  Are there other, perhaps conflicting aesthetics out
there?  Maybe story is more important than either realism in
rendering or movement?  (And what is meant by movement here,
anyway?--the disney animation techniques as imported in computer
animation by John Lasseter?)

And, between discussing file formats and hardware, what are people
using these tools for?  Let's hear about some animation!

Erik Timmerman
Film/Video Department
RIT