By now, everyone has visited a website that utilizes Flash multimedia within its design. Since 1996, the use of Flash has grown in popularity thanks to its ability to add animation and interactivity to websites. More recently, Flash has become an essential component in the prolific distribution of intrusive “pop-ups,” or web-based advertisements. Flash also grants designers the ability to integrate video into web pages, and this has led many within the Web 2.0 space to use Flash to develop rich Internet applications. Many companies, including my own, Denver interactive agency Fusionbox, offer streaming Flash Video Solutions to clients in need of online video.
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Animations, whether they are in movies, television, or video games, would not capture the viewer’s interest if they were not accompanied by music. Music can set the tone for a scene and is generally added after the animation has been completed. It takes a large amount of work to coordinate a piece of music with a final animation, especially when specific movements must occur at certain times in the song. This paper describes a method of automatically synthesizing an animation that synchronizes with the input music. Our system allows the user to choose a piece of music and a character and outputs a synchronized animation that expresses the emotion and intent of the music through movement.
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You are free in your choice of objects, scenery, animation, etc. as long as all of the requirements below are met: • You must use the letters “DDM” (note that MAYA has standard functionality for creating objects from text) in your scene. The letters must be an active (moving) part of the animation. • You must use keyframe animation somewhere. • You must use reactive animation somewhere (i.e. an animation that is influenced by another animation, e.g. by using driven keys). • You must use dynamics somewhere (i.e. rigid bodies or particles or …) • Your animation must have at least 15 seconds of unique frames (but more is of course ok!),
at a reasonable speed of animation.
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