Director-like multi-image "sprite" animation

[Scott Rossi]

Recently, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> I may have a need soon to try my hand at putting together some
> mult-image sprite animations like the sort of thing we commonly see done
> in Director.
> 
> But since Director's engine is well optimized for that sort of thing and
> Rev isn't, I'm not sure Rev is up to the task.
> 
> For example, one of these "sprites" is a 900-frame animation of a
> walking figure that needs to be anti-aliased against an image
> background.  The figure itself is about 200px by 200px.
> 
> That's a lot of images, and I can't imagine that swapping those out of a
> button icon while also moving the button will be all that smooth.
> 
> Or can it be?
> 
> And what if I need to have two or three of those running at once?
> 
> Should I give it up, or have any of you had success doing this sort of
> thing in Rev?

The first question I would ask is, do you need all 900 frames of the
animation?  The only reason I can imagine there are 900 frames is that you
have video/photographic frames, as opposed to illustrated art.  But even
then, it seems unlikely that you will need 900 frames to effectively pull
off a walking animation.  If there are multiple sequences that are part of
the animation, you could break them out into smaller pieces for management
purposes.

Since you say you need the frames antialiased against a background, animated
GIF will not be an option for you.

Regardless of the above, perhaps you could do some tests with some dummy
images.  Create some simple animations that contain the required number of
frames at the size you need, and see how Rev performs.  In my experience, I
don't believe 200x200 pixels is too demanding.  It may turn out that loading
900 frames worth of images is the demanding part, not running the animation
itself.

There are a few tricks one can use the create this kind of thing, but they
depend on the art and the implementation.  I would be happy offer more
feedback offlist if you like.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design