The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 31

THE GUARDIAN Thursday April 30 1992 COMPUTER 31 Mickey Mouse? Not this cartoon program. Mike Gerrard reports Jack Schofield Computer editor and Frame fortune A new line in cartoons Andrew Berend, left, and Peter Florence of Cambridge Animation PHOTOGRAPH: GRANT NORMAN A CAMBRIDGE firm is about to release a program that could create the biggest change in cartoon animation since Walt Disney decided to add colour to his cartoons in 1932. In two months time Animo, the program Cambridge Animation Systems has been working on since mid-1990, will be supplied to the first two of the many animation studios who have expressed an interest in using it Managing director Peter Florence says: "We want to restrict it initially to just a couple of studios so that we can work closely with them on Their first jobs. We'll have people from our company on-site full-time to help and support them." Technical director Andrew Berend adds: "We've written it in an object-oriented language to be as hardware independent as possible. We use a NeXT computer and have found it to be a very productive environment But we're not really interested in hardware.

My view is that every year the hardware gets faster and better. The real investment should be in software because if you write your software in as device-independent a system as possible, and you write it in an object-oriented way you should be able to port straightforwardly on to faster hardware, which is what we intend to do." Ever since Disney turned cartoon antics into serious business, the production process has been very labour-intensive. "If you go into a modern animation studio in the Far East," says Florence, "it's almost like stepping back into Victorian times. There are studios in the Philippines, Taiwan, South and North Korea, all doing animation for companies based in America, Europe and Japan. There are 15 studios in Manila The second bottleneck that Florence refers to is the hand-painting process, and while other companies have produced software to deal with this, Animo is, as far as they are aware, the first to combine painting techniques with intelligent inbetweening.

"Previous approaches," Florence says, "have looked at trying to reproduce the traditional quality of the output, which is flat fills of colour bounded by lines, in a way that's familiar to anyone who's ever seen a computer art program. On our system, they can have that if they want it, but we're not limited to that way of working. "If you wanted shading, for example, in the way that they had it in Who Killed Roger then that is a very expensive post-production process. For us, it's as easy as doing the flat fill. You can have textures, shading, air-brushing, very easy to do a metamorphosis from one shape to another, the lines sort of writhe around and you get telephone-garbage-garbage-garbage-galleon.

That's metamorphosis and it isn't hard: any I was going to say, 'any Mickey Mouse program can do it', but in fact Mickey Mouse is extremely good animation. "What is hard is to get from one shape to another in a way that makes sense to an animator. There are a million ways to get from shape A to shape but only one way the animator wants to go. It's a question of controlling, if you like, the trajectories of motion in a way which enables the animator to do anything that can be done, but also to change and control it sensitively. To achieve that interpolation is actually quite a hard problem, and we think we're the first people to solve it in some sensible way." Can't reach the help number? Paul Breeze on new on-line support for exasperated users Never fear, help is always here Digital Pictures, which has won awards for its special effects.

Its work can be seen in the film, Baron Munchhausen, in the title sequences for programmes such as Newsnight and the Money Programme, and in advertisements for everything from Smarties to Access cards. "I set up a similar company," says Berend, "which was producing lower quality work but much faster, then became more interested in special effects and set up the Computer Film Company, and then got interested in cartoon animation. There have been a number of attempts to automate cartoon animation, but none have succeeded, none have been commercially viable. One problem has always been the inbetweening. A program has to be able to go from one arbitrary shape to another.

For example, take two arbitrary shapes, say a telephone and a Spanish galleon. Now it's self internationally. Quarterdeck, for example, has its European headquarters in Ireland. From there it runs a BBS that is updated regularly from the US as well as being added to locally. Users in other European countries can gain access via local phone numbers.

While Quarterdeck doesn't normally put software on to the BBS, unless it is a patch for a specific application, it does allow users to upload utilities and shareware products so they are available to other users. RESEARCH Machines (RM), which runs a BBS to support school networks, uploads some small fixes and batch files for its users and also allows them to run on-line conferences. Gordon Derhain, RM's divisional director for schools, says the BBS was established quite recently, and although it is not advertised the number is passed Seagate 0628 478011. Softklo -e Info: 0628 810889. Solidisk: 021 212 1412.

Tabbs Opus: 0722 414605. Quarterdeck: 0245 263898. Sierra Online: 0734 304227. Virgin Games: 081 964 4033. West Point Creative: 0734 360287.

WordPerfect: 0932 826900. floppy and a keyboard. The specification may change before the ThinkPad is finally delivered. It seems Go's PenPoint will be the ThinkPad's operating system. Other pen-computer suppliers have either chosen Microsoft's Windows for Pen Computing or support both.

Rings true APPLE is also preparing a pen-based handheld computer, either called or code-named Newton. Unconfirmed US reports suggest it will appear at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago at the end of May. Sharp, Apple's Japanese partner on this project could also launch a consumer-oriented version of the system. Newton is a Filofax-size machine far smaller than a ThinkPad and uses a Rise processor derived from the Acorn Rise Machine developed in the UK for the Archimedes. IBM clones IF YOU can't beat them, join them? IBM can't compete with PC clone manufacturers, so it is negotiating to buy one.

according to reports in the American magazine PC Week. IBM is already test market ing clones in Asia, and plans to form a European subsidiary to market them here. Taking over Northgate Computer Systems, a Minnesota-based direct sup- plier, could be its solution for the US market But as the Wall Street Jour nal commented, "whether IBM can make money on the razor-thin margins that clones carry remains to be Alpha NT DEC and Microsoft have, as expected, announced that Microsoft's Windows NT (New Technology) operating system will be available on ujsc superfast Alpha processor, alongside VMS and Unix. Windows NT already runs on Intel and Mips processors, in pre-launch versions. DEC will integrate NT and Microsoft applications into its Pathworks and NAS client server networking system, and will also back Microsoft's MAPI mail and WINsockets program interfaces.

Microsoft will adopt DEC'S server and OSFDCE remote Drocedure call, based on HP-Apollo and DEC technology, to integrate NT mto corporate VMS and Unix networks. GST Rooms ROOMS, the Xerox windowing system, will soon be available for Microsoft Windows 3 from GST, a firm best know for its Timeworks desktop publishing program. Rooms, previewed here a year ago, extends the "desktop Instead of one desktop arrangement you can have lots of different ones, and access them by going through iconic Tel: 0480 496789. Perot factor THE talk of the US elections is "the Ross Perot the billionaire Texan action-man could get up to 25 per cent of the vote, and is only 10 per cent behind George Bush. Perot a former IBM sales man, founded EDS (Electronic Data Systems) in 1962, eventually selling it to General Motors for $2.5 billion.

He is famous for hiring commandos to rescue two EDS employees taken hos tage in Iran in 1979, and for giving Oliver North $500,000 to ransom an Army general kidnapped by communists. Everybody says: "Perot, you don't understand Well, I understand it doesn't work," he told Business Week. He wants "to get the people to reassert themselves as owners of the country," bypassing Congress and the White House with plebiscites. People could vote on issues electronically, via cable TV networks or PCs, or by phoning in. Perot also wants a new paper less tax system to cut out the huge IRS bureaucracy.

This might justify the networking of the us population. Ana it might also provide Perot Systems, his nost-EDS company, with some interesting possibilities. EIS Day (Executive Information Systems), Business Design Centre, Islington. Information Resources: 0828 826911. May 18.

Networking 92 European conference, Paris. Diana Pitcher, Cap Gemini Institute: 0491 410222. May 18-20. ICL User Show, Metropole Hotel, Birmingham. Dave Cutts: 0934 625964.

May 18-22. Virtual Reality Systems, a British Computer Society seminar, School of Oriental Studies, University of London. Concilia: 0943 872763. May 20-21. CIM Europe 92, the 8th annual conference on computer-integrated manufacturing, organised by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Commission of the European Communities, Metropole Hotel, Birmingham.

Clearway International: 0273 697149. May 27-29. Spring Computer Shopper Show, Olympia, London. Blenheim Pel: 081-742 2828. May 28-31.

OIS 92 exhibition and conference on document management, Wembley, London. Alice Taylor, Meckler Ltd: 071-931 9985. June 2-4. Microsoft Windows Developers' European Forum, CNTT, La Defense, Paris. Partir Ailleurs: Paris 45 81 02 03.

June 17-19. HILIPS and Nintendo have JL both launched home entertainment systems with products already available in a limited number of shops. Philips' offering is its long-awaited CD-I player, while Nintendo is the Super NES games console. CD-I (for "compact disc provides interactive TV capabilities with sound and graphics far superior to those available from PCs or games consoles. CD-I can also play audio CDs.

CDs which incorpo rate text and graphics (CD G), Kodak Photo CD discs, and suitable CD ROM XA (extended architecture) discs. CD-I players are now on sale in 25 shops in London, along with 32 discs such as Time Life Photography, Treasures of the Smithsonian, a music disc about Pavarotti, and a golf game based on the Palm Springs Open. Half the discs are aimed at children. The CDI-205 player costs 599, including iso-wortn ot sort- ware. Interactive disc prices range from 14.95 to 39.95.

The system will become available throughout the UK over the next six months. Mario IV NINTENDO'S Super NES is the UK version of the Famicom 16-bit games console, and a competitor for the Sega MegaDrive, It costs 149.99 with the Super Mario World game. Initially only a handful of Super NES games cartridges are available, including Zelda HI, F-Zero, Super R-Type and Super Tennis. Cartridge prices start at 39.99. The connection? Nintendo plans to offer a CD add-on for the Super NES, and will use the XA format It lias also signed up to offer some of its most popular games on CD-I discs that run on Philips, Sony, Matsushita (National, Panasonic) and other standard players.

IBM tops IBM has beaten Hewlett-Packard and Sun to become the first with a Unix processor rated at more than 100 SPEC- marks. The new RS6000 Model 970 server uses a new version of the Power chipset with a bigger cache memory tor instructions (32K instead of 8K), an enhanced version of ATX, the IBM version of Unix, and has four times the bus through put The 50MHz machine scored 100.3 SPECmarks on the suite of benchmarks backed by the Systems Performance Eval uation council, a consortium ot workstation manufacturers. The 970 comes with 64 mega bytes of memory and only 2.7 gigabytes of disc storage, but is expandable to 512M of RAM and up to 133G of disc, using external cabinets. It can support up to 512 terminals. The starting price is $97,822 that's what the Model 950 used to cost, but its price is being cut with the introduction of the 970.

The 970 must be as powerful as one of the lower-end IBM ES9000 mainframes at from five to 200 times the price, but as IBM doesn't run the same commercial benchmarks on both ranges, it's hard to know. The 970 scores 100.9 on the TPC-A transaction processing benchmark, if that's a help ThinkPad IBM may be lagging behind pioneers such as GRiD and NCR in the introduction of pen- driven computers, but it isn't as far behind as usual. It showed its first machine at the launch of Go's PenPoint operating system in San Francisco this month. However, the ThinkPad, as itis called, will not be generally available until the fourth quarter of the year. The ThinkPad Model 2521 is a notebook PC-sized machine with an Intel 386SL (SX-compat-ible) processor, four or eight megabytes of memory, and a built-in faxdata modem.

It weighs about 6 lb. It has ports for connecting an external 3.5in Jack Schofield Display Screens and the Law conference (495 plus VAT), Holiday Inn, Swiss Cottage. London. ICE ErgonomicsDigi- text: 084421 4690. May 5-6.

Open Systems with Unix conference, The Conference Forum, London. Nicky Wheeler, Unix Systems Laboratories: 081-567 7711. May 6. International OS2 2.0 Con ference, Hotel Russell, London. OS2 User Group: 0285 641175.

May 12-13. ITTF (Information Technology Trainers Forum) national conference, Moat House Hotel, Stoke. National Computing Centre: 061-228 6333. May 11-12. Telecottages 92, Acre's third annual one-day conference, Joseph Rowntree Folk Hall, New Earswick, York, aukjb: 0453 834874.

May 12. Amiga Shopper Show, Wembley Exhibition Centre, Wembley. Ticket hotline: 051-356 5085. May 15-17. All Vnrmnfa ftammitoi- Vnlr.

Horticultural Hall, Westminster. Tickets, John Riding: 0225 868100. May 16; Brunei Centre, Temple Meads, Bristol. May 17. at the last count including the Hanna-Barbera studio which employs 800 people alone." The reason for this is that no one has yet invented an alternative way of producing the vast numbers of individual frame of film a cartoon demands.

Each second of film requires 24 frames, and each frame can easily have four or five different levels for the various characters and scenery. For a five-minute TV cartoon that adds up to about 30,000 frames, each one hand-drawn and painted at A4 size. For a feature film, or a 26-part TV series, you're looking at almost a million frames of film. 1 "There are two bottlenecks in the process," Florence explains. "The first is what we call inbetweening.

In the production of a cartoon, the key animator will produce a series of what are called key frames. Each one shows the main stage in the movement of a character, so for instance the first key frame may have the character's arms in the air, the second key frame will have them down by his side. The principal animator will then hand these to an assistant animator, who will produce all the frames in-between those two positions, which may be four or five, maybe seven or eight different frames. We have some new techniques which enable those inbetween frames to be produced automatically on the computer, without inhibiting the creativity of the animator. This came about because Andrew had some very innovative ideas as to how to address the problems." Andrew Berend met Peter Florence when they were working for the Moving Picture Company, which specialises in computer-generated special effects for feature films and commercials.

Peter Florence left to set up his own company, European technical manager, says there were 300-400 callers before the service had even been announced. The number of firms running BBS is growing daily. WordPerfect UK is one of the latest, with a 24-hour BBS offering marketing information, the facility to send problem files to the customer support department, and a library of technical data, help sheets and printer drivers for downloading. Running a BBS has advantages for a company as well as for its users. Pechey expects the Hayes BBS will help to even out the workload for the technical support staff.

Every call to the BBS is one less voice call, and the BBS queries can be dealt with when the voice lines are quiet. And while it's hard work setting the BBS up properly, once it has been established it is easy to maintain. Running a BBS can also help a company to extend it AST Support: 081 847 5389 Central Point Software: 081 569 3324. Datasoft: 0460 54615. Hayes: 081 569 1774.

Miracom: 0473 232540. Orchid Support: 0256 63373. Pecan: 0272 248076. Research Machines: 0865 796431. the of the finest examples of these was Lucasfilm's Ball Blazer, an extremely fast moving sci-fi sport which provided both, contestants with a first person view of the pitch via a horizontally split screen.

Another development appeared in the shape of the arcade game Gauntlet which was inevitably converted for home computers and is still available for some consoles. In this fantasy maze and combat game, up to four players adopt Tolkein-esque characters as they try to wipe out vast numbers of supernatural foes. Cooperation is the key to success, though sneakier players often turned on their erstwhile allies once all the ores were vanquished. The potential for player interaction in adventure games was also developed in the eighties thanks to a game originally written on a DEC 10 mainframe at Essex University. To play Mud (Multi-User Dungeon), lone computer users logged on via their telephones and entered a Dungeons Dragons HANGING on the phone is no fun, even with piped music and a "hold jockey" but it's what users have to do to talk to computer company support staff about problems that have ruined their working day or perhaps kept them up half the night.

It's usually a great service when you can get through. But what happens when you can't? Also, 99 per cent of technical support lines only run during office hours. If it's after 5.30pm, you're on your own. At least, that used to be the case. But now companies in the UK are importing an idea common in the US and providing their users with a technical support via bulletin board systems (BSS).

A BBS has several advantages over the normal telephone hotline. First, it's there night and day. Second, technical notes are available firsthand, instead of having someone read them over the telephone. Third, with a BBS, it's easier to get through. (If the service gets overloaded it doesn't cost much to install an extra modem and telephone line a lot less that providing an additional technical support person, anyway!) And fourth, a BBS is usually free to users except for the cost of the call.

BBSs are popular too. Hayes recently set one up in the UK and Bill Pechey, its Playing transparency, a whole range of styles, and whatever you want is automatically transferred to each frame in a sequence. You don't have to do them all by hand." If animation studios in the Far East might need to start looking for alternative employment, there is still one thing that Animo cannot do, according to Andrew Berend. "Any creative process has two elements. There is the flair, the vision if you like, and then there is the mechanical ability to be able to produce that vision.

You can help people with the mechanics, the painting-by- numbers aspect ot animation, but you can't help them with the flair. You could give me the best word processor in the world, but it won't turn me into Hemingway. And we haven't yet devised an animation program that you can just look at and say: Make it funnier!" lean on-line information service. This provides libraries, messaging and developer conferences. Microsoft is not alone.

Many of the major software firms such as Lotus, Borland, WordPerfect, Symantec and Novell also run support areas. Cix, a British conferencing system, also carries a wide range of software and hardware specific conferences that are supported formally or informally by suppliers. These provide a means of getting on-line support from firms that do not have a BBS, though as with CompuServe they do incur an additional online charge. action. Two Sega GameGears can be connected with a special cable, a four-way adaptor allows Nintendo GameBoys to interface, and Atari's Comlynx links up to eight Lynxs.

Often the multi-player versions of games include special features. In the GameBoy's classic Tetris, for example, rows of bricks which are completed vanish from one machine to appear on the other. More recently the company behind Tetris, Bullet-Proof Software, has developed a game which exploits Nintendo's four player adapter in a particularly impressive fashion. FaceBall 2000, currently only available on special import, is based on Midi Maze, an Atari ST original set in a 3D maze inhabited by smiley faces. The ingenious aspect is that each player has a subjective view of the labyrinth; each GameBoy's screen becomes a window into the "virtual According to Bullet-Proofs David Nolty, "We love to have multi-player games.

We feel that a video game should be a shared experience. Often it is but it's very frustrating because people have to take turns. So this way you all get to play at once and you're shooting your buddy." There's another aspect, too. To share the experience, Face-Ball owners must get friends to buy GameBoys and cartridges, which should ensure plenty of smiley faces among Nintendo and Bullet Proof shareholders. on informally it already has 800 users, mainly from secondary schools.

School IT coordinators can use it free of charge. Derham says that RM sees the BBS as the first step towards greater on-line support. It plans to extend it to provide interactive contact with network file servers in schools so that problems can be solved directly. And perhaps it could be extended to the curriculum, enabling pupils from different schools to communicate with one another. Pupils may, however, be more interested in the BBS run by software houses such as Virgin Games and Sierra Online.

Virgin Games set up a BBS recently: software developers use it to upload software for testing, sometimes on a daily basis, says software manager Ian Mathias. This area is closed, but there is a public area accessible to all. This holds more than 13,000 files including utilities and demos of games. The BBS is free. Users are allocated points which they "spend" by downloading.

More points can be accrued by uploading files, or by talking sweetly to Virgin. Not all support BBS are free. Microsoft runs a service called Microsoft Online, an umbrella term, says support services supervisor Anne Penton, for a range of electronic support services. home micros, with the most spectacular advances being made in the field of wargamlng. Apart from rendering geographical boundaries irrelevant rather like playing postal chess but without the wait for the mailman these games have unique advantages.

For example, lines of sight and concealment are calculated by the computer so opposition units are only revealed when they come into view and you don't have to worry about your opponent peeking over you shoulder. Some programs even include a message facility. numbers game Once video games were a solitary vice. Now, says John Minson, it's the more the merrier Microsoft Online is aimed primarily at company help desks and developers. The basic level of service, called Link, costs 250 a year and provides access to a database of technical information and a software library with printer drivers and the like.

For 495 a year, the Professional service adds the facility to send details of problems to Microsoft electronically. There are a number of permutations of the service for different products. For details, call 0734 270001 (voice). As well as its BBS, Microsoft also runs an area on CompuServe, the huge Amer- allowing microchip generals to trade insults. Probably the most ambitious plans for a multi-player computer game system come from simulation specialist Spectrum HoloByte with its long-awaited Electronic Battlefield.

According to the company's boss, Gil-man Louie: "Falcon 3.0 is our first attempt to design a vehicle simulator that has a life beyond the game itself. As a part of the electronic battlefield series, we plan to sell a tank game, an Apache game, an Advanced Tactical Fighter game, perhaps a shipboard game. "Computer flight simulators are basically you versus the machine. The machine sets up all the ground rules; you're flying against computer-generated targets. Falcon has the ability to network with other versions of Falcon and also with our next versions of A-10 and our Apache game.

Now you're fighting against people. We're creating the so-called virtual world which everyone's going to fight in." While the completion of this sophisticated system is still some way off, multi-player action is already becoming part of the world of video games. Many of the cartridges for the Nintendo and Sega consoles (which have succeeded the C64 and Spectrum for action games) offer two-player options, often with variations in gameplay. Even more original is the way handheld consoles can be connected for head-to-head Altogether now: Atari's Comlynx links up to eight players COMPUTING is generally considered a solitary vice, indulged in by adolescent boys behind closed bedroom doors. But contrary to popular misconception, many of today's computer and video games cater for communal play and a multi-player option is almost obligatory.

A decade and more ago there was an element of truth to the anti-social image. Computer hobbyists were rare and programmers had enough problems shoe-horning copies of arcade hits into the early micros' without worrying about the few who could co-opt a friend into joining them for a game of Invaders. The first games to make provision for a second player did so in an unsophisticated fashion, merely alternating between contestants as they battled to beat each other's score. But soon programs started to offer head-to-head challenges. Each person could control their own player in a tennis game, for example.

One style world. Though players were physically separated, relationships developed between their fantasy personae as they interacted within Mud. Even if computer fanatics were as socially-uncomfortable as they were made out to be. Mud was the electronic gateway to a peer group, and even a route to romance: at least one marriage resulted from two players turning their virtual encounters into actual meetings. Today the increased use of modems and computer networks has led to a new genera-' tion of multi-player games for.