At this point, you should be familiar with most of the aspects of creating a rendered image, including creating a design, deciding where to view it from, deciding how to illuminate it, and rendering it. This chapter explains how to make RenderBoy create a collection of similar rendered images (like frames in a movie) which can then be played back as an animation.
Movie View Settings
Any design file can be used to create a rendered movie. A movie (collection of PICT files) can be created by manipulating any of the same parameters used to specify the eye view: scale factor, rotation angle, height angle, and eye distance. These settings are specified using the menu item "Render -> Movie View Settings...", which will open the dialog box shown below.
 
The scale factor, rotation angle, height angle, and eye distance are defined and controlled in the same way as the eye view settings. You can refer to the "Image Preparation" chapter for a complete description of these.
The frame count values specify the number of frames to create and the "counter value" for each. For example, if you specify a frame count of "5 to 10", this will create six (not five) PICT files with counter values of five through ten. For each of these frames, the rotation and height angle settings are obtained by taking the start value and adding the specified move value multiplied by the counter value. Likewise, the eye distance and scale factor are obtained by taking the start value and multiplying by the move value raised to the power of the frame number. In equation form, that is...
[scale factor] = [scale factor] x [offset value] ^ [counter]
[rotation angle] = [rotation angle] + [offset value] x [counter]
[height angle] = [height angle] + [offset value] x [counter]
[eye distance] = [eye distance] x [offset value] ^ [counter]
Yeah, I know....Math, ick!! OK, explaining it is hard, but it's really simple. Maybe an example will help...
If the rotation angle start value was 20, the move value was 10, and the frame counter went from 0 to 10, then eleven images with the following view rotation angles would be generated: 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120. See? Each subsequent frame just gets offset by the move value. And for scale factor and eye distance, it works the same, except you multiply by the move value each time. Not that bad. To simplify the task of specifying these parameters, the eye view settings dialog box can be used to experiment with different parameter ranges in order to decide what you want.
Lastly, you can use the "Wireframe" and "Shaded" buttons to control whether your movie is just drawn in wireframe (like in the eye view window) or fully rendered. The wireframe movie is useful when you want to see how your movie will animate before you commit to a fully shaded movie rendering, which can take a really long time.
Rendering A PICT Movie
Rendering a movie is just as easy as rendering a single image. Remember though that a shaded movie requires a complete shaded rendering for each frame of the movie. So a movie with ten frames will take ten times as long to create as a single rendered image. For this reason, rendering a "Wireframe" version of your movie first is usually a good idea.
To create a rendered movie, just choose "Render PICT Movie..." from the Render Menu. A standard dialog box will appear in which you must specify the "base file name" for the frames of the movie. You can also use this dialog to create a sub-folder (highly recommended) into which you can place the movie frame PICT files. RenderBoy will create a PICT file for each frame in the movie. The name of each PICT file will be its base name followed by the frame counter for each. For example, if your movie had ten frames (0 to 9) and your base file name was "Frame", then your ten PICT files would be named: "Frame 0000", "Frame 0001", "Frame 0002", "Frame 0003", "Frame 0004", "Frame 0005", "Frame 0006", "Frame 0007", "Frame 0008", and "Frame 0009". Get it?
Once you have specified the base file name and location, RenderBoy will hide all of its windows and begin rendering just as when rendering a single image. Except that it won't stop until all of the frames in your movie are complete. Each rendering will be saved to disk (one by one) as it is completed.
Note that if you stop the rendering of a movie image before it is completed, this stops the rendering of the entire movie (not just that image). If you need to do this, simply change the frame counter value in the movie view setting dialog to re-start at the frame where you stopped. For example, suppose you stopped the movie mid-way though "Frame 0005". To continue, you would trash "Frame 0005" (since it will be incomplete), then use the "Render -> Movie View Settings..." dialog box to tell RenderBoy to render frames 5 to 9, since 0 to 4 are already done. Select the "Render -> Render PICT Movie" menu item to continue where you left off, using the same base file name, "Frame". That's all there is to it.
Playing A PICT Movie
With your movie complete, you have two options for viewing it. The first is to use the PICT-Play utility (provided) to load the individual PICT files into memory and "play them". Details about using PICT-Play are described in a separate on-line document.
The other option for viewing movies is to convert them to Apple's QuickTime format using available utilities. I've included a separate shareware utility called Moover(written by a buddy of mine) for just that purpose. IMPORTANT: His shareware fee is independent of mine. If you register RenderBoy, you still need to register his software (or vice versa) if you use it.
