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