Animation, Onion-Skinning and Antialiased Graphics

> Bert:
>
> Thanks for your assistance and direction.  I succeeded in dragging  
> in a .png file with alpha channel, after setting the EToys display  
> to 32bit.  Works nicely, except I noticed that my finely  
> antialiased .png image got more pixelated around the edges.  Even  
> when sizing it smaller within EToys the phenomenon persists.  
> Probably not anything I can do about it.
>
> How about importing a sequence of .png images with alpha to produce  
> an animation, is this possible?  If not, could you elaborate on the  
> method for producing animation within EToys?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg Smith
>
>
> On Jul 7, 2006, at 3:00 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>
>> Am 07.07.2006 um 21:35 schrieb Greg Smith:
>>
>>> I just discovered EToys the other day and am thoroughly  
>>> fascinated by
>>> its potential to possibly teach an old graphics guy, like me, how to
>>> program and express myself graphically/interactively/experimentally.
>>> I'm hoping the EToys environment will allow me to do this.
>>
>> Welcome :)
>>
>>> In messing around inside the EToys environment I could not readily
>>> see any evidence of antialiasing being present on the results of any
>>> of the painting tools.
>>
>> This is true. The etoys drawing tools have been kept simple, both  
>> on purpose and because it's no small feat to rival professional  
>> drawing tools. The purpose is, for example, to allow for testing  
>> colors in a script, which would be hindered by smooth colors.
>>
>> Beautiful graphics you should author externally and import. Also,  
>> many of the more advanced features of Squeak are not exposed at  
>> the etoy level. For example, we can directly import and play back  
>> Flash vector animations, but you need a programmer for that.
>>
>>> I also discovered there didn't seem to be any
>>> support for the .png format with alpha channel for use as "sprites"
>>> for lack of a better term.
>>
>> Set Squeak's display depth to 32 to enable alpha-compositing  
>> (it's 16 by default to save memory), and drag a PNG from the  
>> Finder into Squeak.
>>
>>> Also, if really good animations are to be produced within the EToys
>>> environment, it will be necessary to have an untouchable set of
>>> layers that represent, at least, previous drawings in the animation,
>>> (onion skin).  I couldn't readily discover any such functionality.
>>> Is it possible within EToys?
>>
>> When you make a new painting, a previous painting is visible  
>> behind the translucent white background of the paint tool.
>>
>> - Bert -
>>