Re: making movies

[Darren Schreiber]

This is the bit of code that I have used to generate pngs automatically
within my modelswarm (shamelessly lifted from someone else's code
(heatbugs?)).  It will only create a pic of the one widget specified, but I
believe you could simply copy it and change the setWidget: to some other
object if you want to get pics of your graphs etc.

-takeAPicture  {
  char filename[40];

  sprintf(filename, "pic%07d.png", getCurrentTime());
  //[actionCache doTkEvents];
  [[[[[[Pixmap createBegin: [self getZone]]
        setWidget: graphCanvas]
       setDecorationsFlag: NO]
      createEnd] save: filename] drop];

  return self;
}

The result is a number of png files that I then converted to gifs (using
GraphicConverter 3.7 for Mac) and bound together as an animated gif (using
Gifbuilder 0.5 for Mac).  The software was simple and I was very pleased
with the results (see for yourself at http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~dschreib)

Some Swarmer also recommended GifConstruction Set for Windows at
http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gcsdemo.html

Best of luck...

        Darren



>Does anyone have suggestions for making web/viewer
>friendly movies of Swarm simulations under Windows?
>
>I've had good luck using the automated screen capture
>of SnagIt (www.techsmith.com) to capture a screen shot
>every second.  Then I use ULead's GIF Animator to glue
>them together into an animated GIF that's quite web
>friendly.  (E.g. it doesn't require plug ins to view.)
>See for example:
>http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~cath/GeoGraph/GeoGraph-movie02.gif
>
>BUT, now that my agents move smoothly between nodes
>instead of hopping from one to another, I'd like to be able
>to show off this great new feature.  Unfortunately, 1-second
>captures are no longer fast enough and SnagIt can't go
>faster in GIF/JPEG mode.
>
>SnagIt's AVI movie feature works okay, and TechSmith's
>Camtasia and Camtasia Producer are a dream solution.
>They produce extremely compact, smooth real-time movies
>of Swarm simulations.  Since they allow capture of arbitrary
>rectangular regions, I can even capture my equivalent of the
>Happiness Graph in real time along with the simulation.
>
>But they aren't so friendly to share.  Avi requires at least
>the RealVideo plug in to run, and compression requires
>users to download and install TechSmiths little
>compression utility.  It works great, but is nevertheless a
>barrier.
>
>Has anyone else had good luck posting Swarm movies to
>the web in user-friendly formats?  Are there other formats
>or utilities out there to try for this?   Or does anyone know
>of a way to convert AVI to animated GIF/JPEG?
>
>Catherine
>*===============================================*
>This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.
>                                            -- Charles Francis Kettering
> Catherine Dibble
> Department of Geography               www.econ.ucsb.edu/~cath
>*===============================================*
>
>
>
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_____________________________________________

                 Darren Schreiber
                  Attorney at Law
                 Graduate Student
             Political Science, UCLA
                address@hidden

                  ==================================
   Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day
   to day usage of Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp.
   [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden>
   with "help" in the body of the message.