Frame Animation Method (repeat of subjectless message)

[J. Landman Gay]

Mark Greenberg wrote:
> Oops!  Sorry for the previous message without a subject.  Below is a 
> repeat.
> 
> My students are animating three characters on a card by hiding and 
> showing .png images against a background.  Each character has a dozen 
> moves or so, and each move has between 5 and ten frames.  Each figure is 
> approximately 400 x 600 pixels in size.  My question is which would be 
> faster, having the frames be separate image objects and using hide/show; 
> or having just three image objects that draw their contents from images 
> on another card with a repeat loop and something like...
> 
> Put image "p1punch" & frameNo of Card 2 into image "Player1Main"?
> 
> Speed is important because we are starting to reach the limit of the 
> computers' ability to display the images.

I think the fastest thing would be to combine all the images into a 
single animated gif. You can control which frame is displayed in a gif, 
and with a little scripting, you can also show only a range of frames. 
Using this method, the engine only needs to load the image once (instead 
of loading each frame from a remote location) and you avoid the overhead 
of hiding and showing images.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com