Digital Workshop

Hi

I have been trying, without success, to get a simple animation to run smoothly and have the animated object stay clear. It's minimally passable, but could be better: the object moves with a little bit of jerkiness and is a little blurry. While my graphics driver is up to date, it's not too robust a card (ati 128). DirectX also does not improve the animation.

I'm wondering what I am doing that is wrong. Ideally, the object should not get less distinct as it moves, and the movement should be smooth, not evidencing tiny fits and starts.

I have attached the .imp file with this very rough sample to illustrate.

Any help would be appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Hi Stephen,
I have been looking at this for a couple of days and I have a couple of observations.
1. Do you need the objects to go so fast? Using white against a dark background will tend to produce a 'vapour trail' both from a processing point of view and also from the way our eyes react to it. The faster the object goes, the more pronounced the trail is!
2. A star compared to a circle, is a complex shape, and this also promotes the jerkiness in motion. Generally speaking the more complex the shape, the jerkier it gets, but again the speed has a lot to do with this.

I have attached another page to your sample with four objects following different paths at different speeds. The yellow and the red balls still break up a bit, as they are the faster objects, but you do not get the trail at the slower speed. Also, the graded fill makes the movement easier on the eye. The star moves more slowly and the jerkiness has all but gone.

Interesting problem this, because trying to produce seamless graphics at this level, without access to megagigs of computing power, is about working around the limitations and managing perceptions, using any tips and wrinkles to hand.

I hope this is helpful...

Regards,

Hi John

Thank you for your reply and alternative animation. These are far better than what I have and clearly illustrate how texture, speed and attention to other characteristics can diminish the problem and improve perception.

I appreciate your help.

Kind Regards,

a general comment about graphics quality, which affects static graphisc and animations. LCDs have a native resolution which is the physical number of pixels on the display. If you set the display resolution to anything under the native resolution, the quality can be much worse than expected. For example, using full screen, a 1024 wide display set to 800 has to fit 800 image pixels over 1024 physical pixels, so it has to somehow stretch an image pixel by 1.3. It does this by extrapolation and anti-aliasing. Often the result can be extremely poor. That's why a display which is pin sharp at 1024X768 can look very 'fuzzy' at 800X600.

Thanks, Sandy.

I'll take another look at the way I've set up the pub.

The best solution, so far, for me is to work around the issue, by changing from animation to another useful effect.

Kind Regards,

Stephen