SIGNWAVE UK - Products

Signwave Auto-Effects 0.1

Auto-Effects is the software you use to transform your Auto-Illustrator .AFX animation files (created with the Recording Tool) into various animation formats. At this time, it allows you to load, preview, edit, save .AFX files, and renders Macromedia Shockwave Flash .SWF files. In the future, it will also generate QuickTime .MOV files and individual anti-aliased bitmap frames (as PICT or BMP files).

Important Notice

Signwave Auto-Effects is no longer developed and is provided only for legacy use. This software is provided without any warranty or support and those wanting to use it do so at their own risk and understanding that the software may be unstable and incomplete. Auto-Effect was beta software that never reached final release stage.

Requirements

Signwave Auto-Effects runs on Macintosh G3/G4 PowerPCs running MacOS 8.5 or higher, requires atleast 64MB of RAM and a fast processor. The Windows version requires a fast Pentium running Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT (recommended), and atleast 64MB of RAM. Additionally, QuickTime 4.0 or higher is also required for both Macintosh and PC versions.

Download

The software is free to download on the condition that Signwave is not held responsible for problems that may occur either directly or indirectly because of it's use. Please read the release notes before downloading, and be aware that this software is very experimental and is made available only to facilitate the use of animation features in Auto-Illustrator.

Macintosh Classic (recommended) SWAE012-Classic.sit 556k

Windows (not recommended) SWAE012-Win.zip 492k
Auto-Effects was never released for Mac OS X.

Release Notes

0.1-r2
- Made file opening routines less strict - Auto-Effects will now open corrupted
files and will try to recover information. This help relieve a problem with the
current Auto-Illustrator b0.4-r19 which is not quite producing valid .AFX files
- Added an Effect menu with:
- Arrange menu: Arrange randomly - scatters objects
- Masking menu: Flicker - randomly causes objects to flicker
Write-On - objects appear from first frame onwards
- Motion menu: Slide - move shapes in single direction
Sparks - move shapes in spark-like directions

0.1 - first preview release

- Opens and saves .AFX files
- Preview window shows current frame in animation
- Timeline slider allows you to move to any point in the animation
- Basic copy/cut/paste clipboard functionality on multiple frames
(hold down shift while dragging timeline to select frames)
- Reposition artwork: Allows you to position frame contents on stage
- Stage size: Changes the size of the stage (doesn't scale contents)
- Resize stage: Changes the size of stage (rescales contents to fit)
- Export: Shockwave Flash generates SWF files (can be slow for large animations)
Note: Windows NT/2000 users should schedule Auto-Effects to be Highest
priority (or even realtime) while rendering SWF files. Take a look at
your Task Manager to see how to do this. It will greatly speed up
rendering time.
- Export: QuickTime movie renders high quality, anti-aliased QuickTime
movies (MOV). At this time, antialiasing can only be offered on
Macintosh systems - this will be resolved in a future release.

KNOWN ISSUES

- Win32: Do not double-click .afx files if you have associated them
with Auto-Effects, it will not work, and may cause Auto-Effects to
crash from that point onwards. On a Macintosh, double-clicking an
.afx file will launch Auto-Effects, but will not open the file.
This will be resolved in the future
- Splines occasionally cause corrupted SWF files. If you are unable to
generate SWFs that work properly, try removing all your splines.