CAT Project(Computer Aided Tweening)

Andrew Yurovchak

What the hell’s tweening?

• Comes from the term in-betweening, the process by which an intermediate frame of animation is created by using two “key frames” (usually drawn by the head artist) as references to create smoother animation.

• CAT’s goal is to steal the human tweener’s job by automating (to the greatest degree possible) the process of interpolating frames.

Program Organization

• Two main components: CAT and the Server

Feature Descriptions

CAT File – simplified model of picture used for tweening

Format Extractor – converts an image into a CAT file

Drawing Pad – allows the creating of CAT files directly

Player – displays the animation sequence created with tweened frames at a given frames per second

Tweener – core of the program, configures the point arcs that ultimately determine the interpolated frames

Server – used to store and organize frame sequences, CAT files, and tweening data among different animators

Technical Target

• Somewhere between shape tweening and morphing

Motion tweening:

Shape tweening:

Right about here

Morphing:

Phase Progression

For each phase CAT should be able to draw, extract, tween, and play the following:

1. Lines 2. Arcs 3. Colors

Implementation

• CAT: Java/swing

• CAT files: XML

• Server: Wishful thinking/force of will