I just finished writing a short tutorial for the Things API. You can get it on my wiki:
otherwise.relics.co.za or from the CVS on the official website.
The tarball contains a PDF, an SVG file and a bunch of python files. You will still need to fetch the actual API and make a link to it where you want to run the tutorial samples.
It should all make a kind of sense. If it does not, then you need to panic! Run around yelling! Or something.
Have fun with Things.
\d
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Things! An easy animation API for Python.
Announcing "Things" - Vector animation in Python
I just got my Savannah project approved and have uploaded the code to CVS. I have never used a cvs before, so I don't really know what I am doing.
You can visit the project here:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/things/
"Things" is a way to make quick visual metaphors and animate them. Things can contain other things -- in this way you can have one Thing moving left-right and then put that into another Thing moving up-down and you'd get an animation doing both.
There's more to it than that; you can tell individual things when to stop and start; what to do and when to do it; how to move and so on.
There is a primitive event-system going; so you can produce buttons and hit areas and so forth.
Inkscape and SVGs
Things was written with Inkscape in mind. You draw your graphics there, give stuff id's and then in your Things Python code, you can refer to those ids and use the SVG directly. The whole idea was to use Inkscape as the "IDE" and Things as the animation engine.
There are ways to create:
1. "Sprites" - Single frame drawings.
2. "Loops" - Drawings that will change over time -- like a walk cycle.
3. "Paths" - Simple paths for things like line drawing or following.
4. "Masks" - Also simple paths, but intended for clipping and hit-detection etc.
Each of these is drawn in a layer within Inkscape (and there are a few simple rules to follow) after which you simply pull them out in Python and use 'em!
Help code! Take it away!
So, come on over and give it a whirl. Perhaps you can improve it and code it into some fast C/assembler. It sure needs more love and skill than I can bring :)
\d
I just got my Savannah project approved and have uploaded the code to CVS. I have never used a cvs before, so I don't really know what I am doing.
You can visit the project here:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/things/
"Things" is a way to make quick visual metaphors and animate them. Things can contain other things -- in this way you can have one Thing moving left-right and then put that into another Thing moving up-down and you'd get an animation doing both.
There's more to it than that; you can tell individual things when to stop and start; what to do and when to do it; how to move and so on.
There is a primitive event-system going; so you can produce buttons and hit areas and so forth.
Inkscape and SVGs
Things was written with Inkscape in mind. You draw your graphics there, give stuff id's and then in your Things Python code, you can refer to those ids and use the SVG directly. The whole idea was to use Inkscape as the "IDE" and Things as the animation engine.
There are ways to create:
1. "Sprites" - Single frame drawings.
2. "Loops" - Drawings that will change over time -- like a walk cycle.
3. "Paths" - Simple paths for things like line drawing or following.
4. "Masks" - Also simple paths, but intended for clipping and hit-detection etc.
Each of these is drawn in a layer within Inkscape (and there are a few simple rules to follow) after which you simply pull them out in Python and use 'em!
Help code! Take it away!
So, come on over and give it a whirl. Perhaps you can improve it and code it into some fast C/assembler. It sure needs more love and skill than I can bring :)
\d
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