Re: animation tools -- was RE: acid test stuff

Is it true that SMIL lacks visual tools? SMIL has long been popular in  
the mobile space, and SVG is as big as mobile in the TV space (Opera  
is a popular component for use in Set top boxes and the like, and the  
middle-ware used for the EPGs and the like is often SVG based). I've  
no experience of these authoring environments, as they seem another  
world from that of the regular web, but I'd be surprised if they don't  
have tool chains and build everything by hand.


On 30 Mar 2010, at 02:53, Dailey, David P. wrote:

> Hi Alex, when Patrick first mentioned that "SMIL is not tool  
> supported" I wasn't quite clear what that meant, but I gather from  
> your statement, the term means application software (like Macromedia  
> Director or Inkscape) that allows end users to animate things.
>
> I have talked only a little with Jon Cruz of Inkscape about this,  
> but they are considering UI's for animation. Since I first played  
> with Macromind VideoWorks on the Mac in 1986, I was struck by how  
> the animation metaphor was wrong*. It was based on staffs borrowed  
> from music (pitches combined and plotted over time) with the time  
> line being one of the primary axes. That is fine for the auditory  
> medium but it sucks for the visual medium. The dimensionality of the  
> interface is wrong. Instead of actor-events being mapped in 2D  
> crossing time, and with space somehow perpendicular to the screen,  
> let us allow the x - y plane (the actual playing field) to be the  
> drawing surface -- sort of like football play-diagrams -- a far more  
> natural interface -- with time being symbolic or perpendicular to  
> the drawing surface. This former is how Labanotation attempted to  
> solve the dance choreography problem and why Labanotation submerged  
> in popularity as portable movie cameras became cheap! Think instead  
> of how video games give users a way of controling the actions of the  
> characters -- the same class of interfaces would be natural for  
> authors of animations!
>
> So long as VideoWorks/Director's flawed metaphor dominates the field  
> then only programmers and professional animators will make  
> animations -- no wonder the field seems opaque to the outsiders!
>
> So any failure to have tool sets emerge for SMIL probably ends up  
> being due to the fact that the SMIL model of the universe is  
> intrinsically closer to the solution to the problem than the  
> conventional interface, which is why the application developers  
> haven't noticed it yet!
>
> There... that is quite a mouthful, but it may perhaps stimulate  
> discussion on the subject for this group (which seems, occasionally,  
> to be in need of fanciful digression)!
>
> David
>
>
>
> * I had build a prototype animation studio in 1980 that was intended  
> to run on something like an iPad (which of course we didn't have at  
> the time, but the idea was to have the toolset (as well as keyboard)  
> appear on the touch screen).Animation primitives (like translate,  
> pitch, yaw, scale, morph etc, would be part of the control panel). I  
> tried pitching the idea to Disney and they were completely  
> unimpressed with the possibilities of computer-assisted animation (I  
> guess following Tron's lack of commercial success).
>
> -----------------
> Alex wrote: [...]
>        However more seriously: I totally agree that authoring
> tool-chains that exploit the SMIL capabilities in SVG are
> basically non-existent. This has been a huge failing with SVG
> in general.
>
>        The true reality is that the majority of web content
> will be generated by graphic artists, not geeks using emacs,
> vi or Visual Studio. And so, no tools means no (significant)
> content will be created.
>
>        _But_ as long as it is on your road-map then all is
> well with the world, suffice to say there is a lot of content
> in both the mobile space, and the STB space that requires
> animation to work. SVG as a technology covers more than just
> a browser, and I fully expect you guys to eventually set the
> benchmark for all others to aspire to. But to do so, animation
> is essential - heck in the Tiny test suite there are something
> like 88 animation tests out of 500 or so tests, so at
> best you can only get approx 80% pass rate without animation
> and how would that look...
> [...]
>

David Storey

Chief Web Opener / Product Manager, Opera Dragonfly
W3C WG:  Mobile Web Best Practices / SVG Interest Group

Opera Software ASA, Oslo, Norway
Mobile: +47 94 22 02 32

Received on Tuesday, 30 March 2010 19:21:13 UTC