Scalable Vector Graphics

A major part of the Animatic's project is to be able to convert hand drawn storyboards into Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Vector graphics differ from conventional raster images in that they represent a series of vectors that make up the image, as opposed to pixel by pixel image data. SVG is a W3C standard for vector graphics.

Conversion to SVG will enable images to be scaled as required by an application without loss of image quality. This is not true of raster images which become blocky or pixelated as you enlarge the image, or increase greatly in file size if originally saved at a higher resolution.

Status

The vectorizing technique has produced initial results, albeit on trivial images. Unfortunately this area of the Animatic's will not be released publically at this time, and so will not be developed further on SourceForge, as is the intention with the Animatic compositor and player.

If you are looking for further information on the vectorizing component, drop us a note and we can point you in the right direction.

Bandwidth

Because SVG scales, there is no need to create multiple copies of the image at varying sizes. Thats to say that an SVG rendered at one size occupies the same filesize as the SVG rendered at a much larger size. This can be important when tranfering image data across the web, where tranfering SVG can be far more effecient than transfering raster image data, particularly for large image sizes.

Flexibility

The use of SVG also provides the potential for layering an individual frame. Each component within an SVG may be treated independantly of other components. This may allow for a particular component within a frame to be animated independantly of other components within the frame. For example, a foreground object may be moved over the frame while keeping the background static, indicating the intended motion of the object - not bad for one hand drawn frame of a storyboard.

Metadata

SVG is an open standard that is written in plain text. Included within the SVG specifivation are tags which allow for the addition of metadata to an image, that is data about the image. This metadata can be used to to describe the image, and may also be used to search for images which contain particular items, as described by there metadata tags.