CAMP(ID:7910/)

2d Animation system 

for Computer Aided Movie Production

Sherwood Anderson, Syracuse University

Animated movie picture language
Related languages
CALD => CAMP   Adaptation of
CAMP => CAMPER   Extension of
CAMP => Cartoon Design   Influence
References:
  • Repko, Marya Goldman "Animated cartoon design with a CRT" view details Abstract: The background section of this paper reviews some of the activity of other workers in this field. In the succeeding sections of the paper the author's approach to computerised cartoon animation design is discussed and a program developed by the author is described from a user viewpoint. Detail is given of the internal organisation of the program. Extract: Background
    Background
    Reports of efforts to produce animated films with computers
    date from as long ago as 1964 (Knowlton, 1964). The attendance
    at the recent symposium at the Atlas Computer Laboratory
    in Chilton, Berkshire, on computer animation
    demonstrates that interest in this technique is prevalent among
    a wide spectrum of professionals : educationalists, animators of
    films for entertainment, scientists, and computer graphics
    programmers. The papers and discussions at the symposium
    showed that progress towards practical computer-aided animation
    has not advanced considerably since its inception.
    Most activity has been in filming mathematical functions for
    teaching mathematics or science. The best known example of
    this is the Bell Telephone Laboratories film 'Space, Time and
    Motion', demonstrating the inverse power law over two moving
    bodies. More recently, in England, the Open University has
    been sponsoring the development of films for helping to teach
    the concepts of interpolation and the Nuffield Foundation
    Science Teaching Project has been involved with computer
    produced films for demonstrating statistical mechanics at
    atomic level.
    In the area of less specialised graphics, only a few of the many
    plotting packages have been designed for the film animator.
    One of these is CAMP (Computer Animated Motion Pictures),
    with its three-dimensional partner CAMPER (Hopgood and
    Ralphs, 1971). The program uses fixed-format data on cards
    to draw pictures, perform transformations on them, and output
    them. There is no hidden line suppression in CAMPER.
    Instructions for drawing geometrical shapes as well as electrical
    symbols are provided. One unique feature is the clock, or
    meter, drawing facility.
    In the UK at the Atlas Computer Laboratory in Chilton,
    GROATS (Graphic Output Package for Atlas using The SC
    4020) (Hopgood, 1969) has been written for the Atlasl anda
    Stromberg-Carlson microfilm recorder. The package is an
    extension of ALGOL and provides procedures for drawing
    curves and alphanumeric characters, for transforming them,
    for windowing or blanking-out parts of a frame, for shading,
    and for preparing a magnetic tape for input to the SC 4020. A
    film available from the Atlas Laboratory demonstrates that the
    package is quite powerful.
    Although these systems have useful graphics capabilities, they
    are not conducive to the free designing techniques that the
    artist is accustomed to with pencil and paper. Graphic data is
    meaningless to human eyes in digital form. A sneak preview of
    a film showing some development work at IBM in New York
    indicates that a system using a 360 computer with a 2250
    graphical CRT display and Rand-type tablet is being designed
    for drawing and animating pictures. ACIANS (Artist Gomputer
    Interactive Animation System) allows the user to draw pictures,
    store themTcal1 theG up, define movements and combine
    foreground and background pictures.
    An interactive system using a PDP/I5 with graphic CRT
    display and tablet is being developed at the Atlas Computer
    Laboratory. It is intended that sequences of animation can be
    previewed and edited before being filmed on the SC 4020 and
    will be a useful extension of the work already done there in
    animation.
    Anderson (1971) has adapted CAMP and CAMPER for
    interactive use on a CRT. Using a function keyboard, the user
    can step through frames of animation. The editing procedure
    involves changing the card images that define the pictures. A
    digitiser off-line relieves the tedium of coding the original cards.
          in The Computer Journal 15(4) 1972 view details