Animation testing tool?

Hi, to speed up my artists who occasionally make duff animations I thought it would be neat to have a tool that:

a) loads an anim strip (maybe you specify height and width of each frame and it works out number of frames autoamtically
b) you can enter an anim length in millisecs
c) it plays anim at normal speed.
d) speed can be reduced and increased in 5% increments for testing
e) scale of object can be boosted up for careful examination.
f) perhaps you can save the current project settings (filename/width/height/anim length) so you can tweak the anim strip and reload for quick retesting.

that's it, sounds cool and would save me loads of email time with the artists as they could see if it was duff straight away.

Anyone know of such a tool as freeware? Thanks.

P.S. It would be possible to make this in Bmax in no time at all, so I might do it if nothing is forthcoming.

You can do this in Promotion. It`s a feature that I managed to get the author to add a long time back as I am a beta tester.

Variable speed can be adjusted at run time either faster or slower and the program automatically works out the size of the strip if you specify the frames. Animstrip can be imported or exported.

It`s not free though but the demo should work. Note that the lite version does not include this feature. The program is practically DPaint for the PC so that says how good I think it is.

http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/

Jason.

thanks Quicksilva.

I didnt even realise there were any artists around here
that cant code! ;)

the artists aren't from this forum :-)

Get some artists who know what they're doing might be a wiser move.

IDRAW or GRAPHICS GALE ;)

By !

And PIVOT for Stikman animations ;)

This would probably be useful if you're planning on writing one:
http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=55639

EDIT : just seen you have already tried this - oh well..

Hujiklo:
"Get some artists who know what they're doing might be a wiser move."

I resemble that remark! ;O)

Yeh.

problem is these artists know how to make nice art but weren't very technical when it came to anim strips and testing them, so I wanted ot give them some tools to save me hassle. It's worked out fine now thanks.

See, you didn`t have that trouble with me ;) Did Promotion do the job ok?

Jason.

yeah your stuff was cool and the animation was sorted. The new graphics are all 32 bit pngs with alpha and they keep doing stuff like not making the squares big enough so the alpha shadow or glow gets truncated at the edges, and also sending the odd anim with a misaligned frame or one that needs tweaking in some way. Now they are actually using an app for compiling anim strips that shows the anim too. So not using promotion but I do have the demo thanks.

Cool, as long as you have it sorted. I know it`s a chore when you have to program and sort out the graphics too.

Jason.

yeah, the joke is the game has a producer so he should really be sorting this out but not being ultra technical, it seems to be up to me to spot stuff and report back. Not as smooth as it could be and thus time consuming on my part. I just wanna plug in and code.