]Animation Help Needed

**Grunt** · 07 July 2006, 01:24 PM

Hi All,

I'm a total newbie to XaraX and I'm having trouble working out how I can animate line drawings. I need to be able to show say a circle or line being drawn real time. Could someone please point me in the right direction? There don't seem to be a whole bunch of tutorials on animation around.
Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Art.

**jamesmc** · 07 July 2006, 01:47 PM

The are other ways to do this, but this is what I do.

If I want to illustrate in an animation how something is drawn, I make the completed object first (i.e. circle) then I mask out (cover up a portion with a partial circle), go to the next frame and do a tad more. This works for any object.

In Xara Xtreme for a circle, you can use the ellispse tool> circle>convert to editable shapes>select all points>break at points. What this does is allow you to have four portions of the circle evenly divided.

Copy that shape with Frames open (Utilities>Frame Gallery). The first frame is your circle that is broken into four sections. Click on copy and then pick one of the arcs to start and delete. Click on Copy to go to the next frame, delect the next arc on the circle and so forth. Then drag the last frame to the first frame, repeat this procedure until the circle ellipse is at the very end. Should take five frames total for this.

**gwpriester** · 07 July 2006, 01:53 PM

Here is a very simple animation tutorial that will show you the basics A Very Simple Animation

Gary

**Egg Bramhill** · 07 July 2006, 01:54 PM

Hi Grunt,

As James say's there are a few ways of doing this. You could place a rectangle over a line. the rectangle would have the same colour as the Background.

In the Animation Frame Gallery, click 'Copy'. (It helps to go to wireframe here)
Reduce the size of the rectangle.

Repeat the above proceedure as often as required.

I attach an image that might give you a clue but I've deliberately made the background a different colour than the rectangles or you would'nt see them.

**Egg Bramhill** · 07 July 2006, 02:01 PM

Using the above technique.
Left one in wireframe and the right one as it would be normally.

**Grunt** · 07 July 2006, 04:16 PM

Thanks a lot guys. All very helpful stuff. I don't know if the attachment will work, but I'll give it a try. It works fine on my computer, but who knows? Of course that was just to try it out, I'll have to tidy things up.

Thanks again
Art.

**Grunt** · 07 July 2006, 05:07 PM

Hi,

I just spoke to the guy who's putting the DVD together. Apparently his editing suite won't recognize .gif files. It has to be an .mov file, an .avi file or a quicktime file. There doesn't appear to be a facility for anything other than animated.gif in Xara. Any suggestions anyone?

Art.

**Soquili** · 07 July 2006, 05:27 PM

Hi Art,

Ask the person making the DVD if he can use png images to import into individual frames. If it can be done with the software being used, you can export the images from Xara Xtreme.

If not, there are several programs that can convert the animated gif into avi format. I did a search on google and found many. Some of them are:

Gif Movie Gear at http://www.gamani.com/
Gif Construction Set at http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html
AVI GIF Convert at http://www.shareup.com/AVI_GIF_Conve...oad-35856.html

They range in price from $19.95 to $29.95

I can convert the animated gif to avi for you if you would like to email the file to me. Click on my username in this post and you can send me an email.