DOC PREVIEW
Columbia COMS W4115 - c.def

This preview shows page 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-54-55-56-57-58-59-60-109-110-111-112-113-114-115-116 out of 116 pages.

Save
View full document
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 116 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience

Unformatted text preview:

- 1 - c.def (pronounced SEE-def) Macromedia® FlashTM animation language Final Report Dennis Rakhamimov ([email protected]), Group Leader Eric Poirier ([email protected]) Charles Catanach ([email protected]) Tecuan Flores ([email protected])- 2 - Table of Contents 1 Introduction 5 1.1 Business Level 5 a. Purpose 5 b. Proposed Solution 5 1.2 Language Level 7 a. Goals 7 b. Approach 8 Object-oriented design 8 Functional capability 8 Iteration, conditionals 8 Shape and motion tweening, motion guides 8 Layering 8 Compile to SWF 8 2 Language Tutorial 8 2.1 Program Flow 8 2.2 Nested Glyphs 10 2.3 Rotation 10 2.4 Translation 11 3 Language Reference Manual 11 3.1 Lexical Conventions 11 a. Keywords 11 b. Arithmetic and Comparison Operators 12 c. Block Operators 12 d. Color Identifiers 13 e. Coordinate Identifiers 13 f. Range Identifiers 13 g. Case Sensitivity 14 h. Scoping 14 i. Comments 14 Block Comments 14 Single-line Comments 14 3.2 Data Types and Attributes 14 a. Fundamental Objects 14 Document 14 Glyph 15 Path 15 b. Identifiers 15 c. Primitive Objects 16 line 16- 3 - circle 16 rect 16 ellipse 17 polygon 17 d. Colors 17 Basic Colors 17 RGB Colors 18 Color Precedence 18 3.3 Action Type 18 a. Render 18 b. Rotate 19 3.4 Control Flow 19 a. Conditional 19 b. Iterative 20 3.5 Compilation and Execution 20 a. Build CDEF Language 20 b. Compile .cdef Program 21 4 Project Plan 22 4.1 Planning 22 a. Timeline 22 b. Role Matrix 22 4.2 Specification 23 a. Nomenclature 23 b. Programming Style 23 4.3 Development 23 a. Environment 23 b. Strategy 23 5 Architecture 24 5.1 Diagram 24 5.2 Description 24 a. Back End 24 b. Front End 24 5.3 Features 24 a. Key Frames 24 b. Bezier Curves 25 6 Test Plan 25 6.1 Clock 25 a. Purpose 25 b. Output 26- 4 - 6.2 Guinness 26 a. Purpose 26 b. Output 26 6.3 Ferris Wheel 27 a. Purpose 27 b. Output 27 6.4 Toilet 27 a. Purpose 27 b. Output 28 6.5 Illegal Programs 28 a. Purpose 28 7 Lessons Learned 28 7.1 Dennis Rakhamimov (Group Leader) 28 7.2 Eric Poirier 29 7.3 Charles Catanach 29 7.4 Tecuan Flores 29 8 Appendix 30 8.1 Source Code 30 8.2 Examples 110 8.3 Citations 116- 5 - 1 Introduction 1.1 Business Level a. Purpose In the recent years, Macromedia® FlashTM has gained a prominent position in the web development sector, as the platform is powerful, the learning curve is manageable, and the support is excellent. However, the Flash GUI authoring environment poses significant challenges in creating relatively complex animations containing interdependent objects with differing actions. Short of manually creating an animation frame-by-frame, the GUI enables a Flash artist to utilize “tweening”, a process that automatically generates intermediary frames between a start frame and an end frame. The animations created by tweening are generally limited to simple scaling, translation, or color fade operations. While it is possible for an object to follow a pre-defined path in a translation operation, the complexity of the path is limited by a set of non-overlapping curves. Creating a number of distinct objects that follow the same type of animation could be tedious, forcing the Flash artist to spend considerable time setting up the right amount of layers and frames, copy-and-paste and adjust each object one-by-one, zoom in to precisely position elements, and perform other mundane tasks. As a bottom line, while Flash provides an excellent platform for effective web presentations, it hinders the ability to create complex scenes and animations. Although Flash includes a scripting language called ActionScript that somewhat facilitates a process such as the one described, it is limited in ability, still constraining the Flash artist to using the Flash GUI for creating the graphical components. The web and graphic developer community can thus greatly benefit from creation of a language that enables the programmatic creation of Flash animations. Such language could then be leveraged by a Flash artist to create complex Flash animations without having to utilize the cumbersome Flash GUI. b. Proposed Solution The solution: c.defTM, with the name created from a combination of our initials.- 6 - This language will enable a developer to algorithmically compose a Flash movie containing animations with scaling, layering, and translation of a complex group of objects. It will logically organize elements in an object-oriented structure, forming a level of abstraction above the Flash layer and timeline components, thus allowing the creation of fully-fledged Flash animation with less effort. Since the code will feature typical language elements such as iteration and arrays, it will also be possible to create a number of objects with similar properties using loops. Other language elements such as conditions and functions would also be present, allowing for sophisticated logic. While the language would permit access to Flash tweening, its main method of animation will automatically create frame-by-frame motion, thus permitting for movement that is generally not supported by tweening. For example, a developer would be able to create an object with a complex shape and set of colors, create a curve in the shape of an oval, and instruct the object to follow that shape over a period of 20 frames. In syntax, c.defTM will resemble a modern language such as Java. A program written in it will be interpreted to Java code, which in turn will leverage Flagstone Software’s Transform SWF [1] package to create a Flash SWF file. Transform SWF is a set of Java libraries that provide programmatic access to elements of the open SWF file format, thus creating an intermediary between low-level implementation details and the actual Flash components. To judge the success of the basic functionality of our project, we will write programs that create SWF animations of Ferris wheels. The choice of the Ferris wheel, suggested by Professor Edwards, comes from the fact that this animation would feature motion along a guideline, rotation of a complex object, as well as a number of similar objects with slightly different properties. For instance, while each swing on the Ferris wheel must follow the same trajectory, the start positions and colors would probably be different. We created a sample animation in Flash to test out this hypothesis [2], and while the Flash GUI did allow creation of


View Full Document

Columbia COMS W4115 - c.def

Documents in this Course
YOLT

YOLT

13 pages

Lattakia

Lattakia

15 pages

EasyQL

EasyQL

14 pages

Photogram

Photogram

163 pages

Espresso

Espresso

27 pages

NumLang

NumLang

6 pages

EMPATH

EMPATH

14 pages

La Mesa

La Mesa

9 pages

JTemplate

JTemplate

238 pages

MATVEC

MATVEC

4 pages

TONEDEF

TONEDEF

14 pages

SASSi

SASSi

16 pages

JTemplate

JTemplate

39 pages

BATS

BATS

10 pages

Synapse

Synapse

11 pages

TweaXML

TweaXML

108 pages

Load more
Download c.def
Our administrator received your request to download this document. We will send you the file to your email shortly.
Loading Unlocking...
Login

Join to view c.def and access 3M+ class-specific study document.

or
We will never post anything without your permission.
Don't have an account?
Sign Up

Join to view c.def 2 2 and access 3M+ class-specific study document.

or

By creating an account you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use

Already a member?