Autodesk Animator Software

Autodesk Animator Software

History

Developers  :-  Jim Kent, Yost Group, Autodesk.

Initial release  :-  1989; 29 years ago.

Last release  :-  "Studio" / 1995; 23 years ago.

Operating system  :-  MS-DOS, Windows 95

Platform  :-  x86

Type  :-  Animation Software.

      Autodesk Animator, also known as Ani Pro, PJ Paint, PJ, was a 2D computer animation and painting program in 1989 for PC with MS-DOS. The program was considered to be groundbreaking in the field of computer animation when it was initially released, and was very popular in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

Development history:

    Animator originates back to its author's Jim Kent earlier program Cyber Paint for the Atari ST. Jim Kent evolved in 1989 his software into Animator for Gary Yost's "Yost Group" for 80286 PCs with MS-DOS. Animator was then licensed to Autodesk, who published the software as Autodesk Animator.

Releases:

   Animator was debuted at SIGGRAPH 1989, featuring a VGA graphics mode of 320×200 pixels with 256 colors.

     In July 1991, the successor Animator Pro was released, with the significant improvement of allowing almost any resolution and color depth. The software was sold for approx. $800, significantly more expensive than the previous version, addressing the professional audience.

    The 1995 released Animator Studio was a complete re-write for Windows 95, but was not anymore developed by the Yost Group.

Abandonment and legacy:

   Eventually development of the product ended and it became no longer supported by Autodesk. Filed on December 18, 1989, the trademark for "Autodesk Animator" expired on July 21, 1997. DOSBox emulation allowed later to run Animator Pro on current hardware, despite missing official support.

   As Jim Kent kept copyrights to the 300,000 lines source code base of Animator Pro, he allowed to make it available to public under the open source BSD license in 2009. The original 256 color Animator version for DOS is also provided as Freeware download. After some initial code review porting to modern platforms was started on GitHub. As of April 2014 most of the assembly language source code was ported to platform-agnostic C code and SDL was used as target back-end framework.

Features

Functionality:

   Animator gave the ability to do frame-by-frame animation (creating each frame as an individual picture, much like traditional cel animation). Animator Studio also had tweening features (transforming one shape into another by letting the computer draw each in-between shape onto a separate frame). Animator and Animator Pro supported FLI and FLC animation file formats, while Animator Studio also supported the AVI format. Animator was particular strong in Palette based editing, effects (like Color cycling) and animations a favoured technology in the time of indexed CGA and VGA graphics modes.

    Unlike other DOS software from that time, Animator was not restricted by the 640 kilobyte conventional memory limitation as it utilized a DOS extender by Phar Lap. Animator's combination of twenty tools multiplied by twenty inks, 3D 'optics,' unparalleled palette handling, custom fonts and many other useful features (such as its own internal scripting language POCO), put it many years ahead of better known animation tools of the time.

Animation hotkeys

Animation Operations:

 

S  :-  Set key

i  :-  Insert Keys Tool (for Graph Editor) (press and release)

Shift S  :-  With left mouse button for Keyframe marking menu

Shift S  :-  With middle mouse button for Tangent marking menu

Shift E  :-  Set key for Rotate

Shift R  :-  Set key for Scale

Shift W   :-  Set key for Translate

Alt j  :-  Toggle Multicolor Feedback Playback Control

Alt  :-  Move forward one frame in time

Alt  :-  Move backward one frame in time, Go to Next key, Go to Previous key

Alt v  :-  Turn Playback on or off

Alt+Shift V   :-  Go to Min Frame

k  :-  With middle mouse button for virtual Time Slider mode (press and hold and scrub timeline)

Camera hotkeys

Tumble, Track, or Dolly:

Alt  :-  Left mouse button, Tumble Tool (press and release)

Alt   :-  Middle mouse button, Track Tool (press and release)

Alt  :-  Right mouse button, Dolly Tool (press and release)

2D Pan/Zoom:

\+  :-  Middle mouse button, 2D Pan tool

\+  :-  Right mouse button, 2D Zoom tool

\   :-  Enable/disable 2D Pan/Zoom.

Display hotkeys

Displaying Objects (Show, Hide):

Ctrl h  :-  Display > Hide > Hide Selection

Shift H  :-  Display > Show > Show Selection

Ctrl+Shift H  :-  Display > Show > Show Last Hidden

Alt h  :-  Display > Hide > Hide Unselected Objects

Shift l  :-  Show > Isolate Select > View Selected (in the panel menus)

Display Settings:

4  :-  Shading > Wireframe

5  :-  Shaded display

6  :-  Shaded and Textured display

7  :-  Lighting > Use All Lights

0  :-  Default quality display setting

1  :-  Rough quality display setting

2  :-  Medium quality display setting

3  :-  Smooth quality display setting

Interface hotkeys

Window and View Operations:

Alt  :-  Middle mouse, Pan in the Outliner

Alt + Ctrl   :-  Middle mouse, Fast pan in the Outliner

Alt   :-  Middle mouse, Pan in the Attribute Editor

Ctrl a   :-  Switches between Attribute Editor or Channel Box–displays the Attribute Editor if neither is shown

a  :-  Frame All in active panel, or with left mouse button for History Operations marking menu

Shift A  :-  Frame All in all views

f  :-  Frame Selected in active panel

Shift F  :-  Frame Selected in all views

space  :-  (When tapped) Switch between the active window in multi-pane display and single pane display

Ctrl space   :-  Switch between the standard view and full-screen view of the current panels

] (Right square bracket)  :-  Redo view change

[ (Left square bracket)  :-  Undo view change

Alt b  :-  Switch between a gradient, black, dark gray, or light gray background color.

Shift { (Left brace bracket)  :-  View previous layout

Shift } (Right brace bracket)  :-  View next layout

 

F1  :-  Help > Maya Help Selecting Menus

Selecting Menus:

Ctrl m  :-  Show/hide main menu bar

Shift M  :-  Show/hide panel menu bar

Ctrl+Shift M  :-  Show/hide panel toolbar

h  :-  With Left mouse button for Menu Set marking menu

F2  :-  Show Modeling menu set

F3  :-  Show Rigging menu set

F4  :-  Show Animation menu set

F5  :-  Show Dynamics (FX) menu set

F6  :-  Show Rendering menu set

Hotbox Display:

space  :-  (When pressed down) Show the hotbox

Alt m  :-  Default Hotbox Style (Zones and Menu Rows)