I have just upgraded SS to SS Pro and am trying to make an image increase in size from a thumbnail as in the Tutorial> Advanced Topics> The Key Frame Editor> Introduction. I am new to Animation as I came from SS rather than Web Engine so please bear with me. I have read the Tutorial but find it not very explanatory, I have found the "Key Frame Editor" which is actually in Quick Properties> Action. Having found that I discovered that I need to Define an action first. With an action defined, Key Frame entered in Action Method, both pictures, a thumbnail and the full sized picture on the work page are selected and entered into the "Key Path time-line Editor" but when I preview the page the thumbnail flicks but nothing else. Can anyone help who has managed to get this feature working.
Thanks
Tony

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TonyC,

You may have the timeline set too short. It is also useful to do your experimentation on a fresh page -- any errors on a page will likely upset the animation.

Does the example in the tutorial work for you? -- just making sure it is not a browser issue.

Hi Bruce,

Yes the example in the tutorial works fine.

I hope there are no errors Anyway IE7 doesn't show any.

Tony

Here's what I would do: As the tutorial example works and yours doesn't, I would carefully review each of the settings (particularly the key-frame editor) and investigate the discrepancies.

If you are still stuck, can you post your .ims project file?

Thanks, I will try that. BTW how do I post the .ims file, haven't done that before?

Another question, I have the two images on the work page (thumbnail & 450 x 350 approx)should either be hidden before or after loading and could it be reversed to go from large to small??

If you publish a test page to your site, SiteSpinner uploads the .ims file automatically as a backup. Just tell us the name of your project file.

I suggest start by following the tutorial example exactly, even using the same image. Then once you have that working, substitute your own image. Then try the other variations you are thinking of -- we all learn by doing.

Sorry for the couple of days silence but I have been trying to learn by doing... and not "doing" very well.

As you suggested I have been trying to follow the tutorial but unfortunately there is no step by step instructions regarding the animation of the picture of the Lake, which is the animation that I am trying to create. I have opened the Key Frame tutorial in my workpage and find that the Lake Picture is act23 & act24 in the time-line editor. However I also notice that if you select act23, act23Path is also shown on act24 and vice versa if you select act24, act24Path changes and is shown on act23. I have tried to recreate this but I'm really strugging to see how to do it. I have put a picture on a test page on the site and put in a time line similar to the one in the tutorial. The link is here.

If you have time to have a look your help would be much appreciated as always.

Thank you
Tony

For this step-by-step exercise, we'll make an animation like the lake in the KeyFrame tutorial -- an image that starts small and grows larger. These are the steps:

1. New project.

2. Using the Mona Lisa button, add your full-size picture -- this will form both frames of your animation.

3. With picture selected, open the Quick Editor > Action tab.

4. Click the Action button (bottom left) -- the QE will assign an action, probably act1.

5. Select an Action Method of "Key Frame" from the drop down list box. The Key Path timeline editor will open.

6. Move the Key Timer (Keyframe Editor) to about the 3 second point.

7. Click Append. This will set the start and end points at 3 seconds. They are superimposed.

8 On the Time bar, drag one of the points back to the zero position. Note that the active point shows in red; inactive is dark blue or similar.

9. With the zero point active (showing in red), resize the image down to thumbnail size by dragging the edges.

10. Click Update. This will update the first point to start at the small image.

11. View the animation on your workpage by dragging the Total Time slider back and forth between the 0 and 3 positions.

12. Leave the Total Time slider at the 3 position or past it. This sets the image that SS Pro will use as the base, and so avoids a pixellated full-size image.

13. Preview

Thanks Bruce for your detailed step by step instructions for the Lake Animation. They were of course exactly right and it worked perfectly once I had practiced a few times.

As I wanted the images to return to a thumbnail size I had a problem with the pixellation and If I set the Total Time Slide to the largest point the images showed on the page. I experimented and found that if I set them to the largest point and then just reduced them in the workpage and moved them just out of sight, the animation still works. Is there a way round this??

The page on the website is now here any comments would be appreciated.

Thank you so much for your help once again

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TonyC,

Looks good -- this kind of animation works well here.

I don't think there is any way of avoiding the pixellation other than by having the full sized images on your page at build time.

To avoid having those images visible on your page at run time, with horizontal scroll bar, you should be able to hide them under the client list. Give the list a grey background rather than the "no shading" one you probably have at present.

Very nice effect!

Thanks Bruce & Derry for your kind comments.

I have made a few changes and speeded up the animation... I thought it was a bit slow! Also when I put set the image size to maximum and moved them to the bottom of the page I discovered that they all disapear when the animation is finished so I don't think it's necessary to cover them with a rectangle, but thanks for the suggestion Bruce.

Derry I think that you should add Brucee's step by step instructions into the Tutorial, for me it was a big help as I couldn't fathom out how it worked, I don't know if others have any problem.

A link to my updated page is here.

- Tony

Sorry, I gave you the link to the site not the page. It's here.

Looks good still -- you haven't screwed it up! The only problem I see with placing the large images at the bottom, is that visitors can scroll down and see them while the animation is playing.

Here's a better way of doing it that I have just discovered: Select a scaled down image, then with the Quick Editor > Object tab, set Anti-Alias and Re-Render both off. This tells SiteSpinner not to make a thumbnail image. Rather at run time, the browser will make it by scaling down the large image.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bruceee,

Yes that is the problem

I nearly did screw it up, it's very tricky to do. I think there should be a "maximize page" feature then there would be more room to manoeauvre on the Total Time scale bar

I did try your idea first but for some unknown reason it produced a very large image when previewed... maybe I did something wrong, I'll give it another try.

Thanks for the input

- Tony

Bruce,

quote:

Select a scaled down image, then with the Quick Editor > Object tab, set Anti-Alias and Re-Render both off. This tells SiteSpinner not to make a thumbnail image. Rather at run time, the browser will make it by scaling down the large image.

I've been trying your suggestion but found a few of problems.

1) After the page had loaded I had the small images dotted randomly around
2) When the images reached their final destination some were not the correct size to line up with the other images.
3) While trying this the computer kept hanging up if I tried to put in more than 2 or 3 animation paths.

So I reverted to leaving the large images below the main part of the page

The computer hanging produced the following error reports that I forwarded to MS.
C:\DOCUME~1\TCLAYT~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERec1f.dir00\SiteSpinnerProV2.exe.mdmp
C:\DOCUME~1\TCLAYT~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERec1f.dir00\appcompat.txt

szAppName : SiteSpinnerProV2.exe szAppVer : 2.9.0.0 szModName : hungapp
szModVer : 0.0.0.0 offset : 00000000

EventType : BEX P1 : drwtsn32.exe P2 : 5.1.2600.0 P3 : 3b7d84a2
P4 : dbghelp.dll P5 : 5.1.2600.5512 P6 : 4802a0b2 P7 : 0001295d
P8 : c0000409 P9 : 00000000

This is beyond me!! I'm not sure if this is my computer or is it a bug in SS Pro? AnyiIdeas?

- Tony

Hi Tony,

The program should not be hanging. It may be a bug in SiteSpiner Pro. If you can list the steps that cause it to happen and provide a link to the ims file or email it to us at vmsupport (@virtualmechanics.com), we will take a look. Can you also tell us what version of Windows you are using?

But before you do that, can you make sure you have the latest release of SSPro. From the information you posted, it looks like you have version 2.90. There have been a couple of updates since then. We are now up to 2.90b. The changes were minor but could potentially fix your problem.

Hi Harpo,

Yes I do have SSPro v2.90. I just looked for updates and presume that I have to use the Free Trial Download to update. Should I uninstall the 2.90 version before downloading 2.90b or will it replace my present version??

The program was hanging when I was working on the Projects page setting up the animation. I found that if I didn't save between setting up each image animation the program would hang after 2 or 3 images (I was going to do more images but it was hanging so many times I gave up) Also I found that clicking the update button didn't work on the first time of clicking, it required 2 clicks to make it work.

Link to the page is here.

Harpo,

I have just uploaded an RSS file into the index.php on the same site and the RSS feed doesn't work. If I copy and paste the same file into another site it's working fine.

Can you or anyone help with that please?

- Tony

The trial version is the same as the registered version, and your existing registration details will activate the "trial" version automatically. Just install 290b without uninstalling the 290 version.

I'll leave your RSS question to the experts.