ART:
OTHER:
Glossary of terms
Introduction
This is a glossary of many terms used in the scene.
OK, initially I'm going to be really lazy and just throw up the definitions from CIAs web site but when I have time, I'll re-write most of it and add more and do it myself. But for now...
Art -
I'm not even going to attempt this one...
BBS -
Stands for Bulletin Board System, this is a remote host type of system allowing people from all over the world to dial into someones computer system with only a phone line and a modem. Most BBS softwares display information and graphics in ANSI or ASCII format (see format section below)
Pack -
An archive of artwork or programs, many groups release monthly packs.
Storyboard -
A storyboard is a series of sketched, usually drawn by hand, that is
a general outline of the story that an animation will intend to tell. Storyboarding
is one of the earliest steps taken in completing an animation, and many times is
constantly modified to meet the ever-changing needs of an animation.
Objects -
An object is anything you see in an animation. If you see a house, then that
is an object. Through the manipulation of these objects, a story is told, and an
animation takes place.
Model Creation -
Model creation is the term given to the making of any object that is in an
animation. Everything that you see in a computer-generated animation must be designed,
and modeled in 3D and this is the process through which these objects are made.
Shaders -
Shaders are textures and materials that effect the appearance of objects. When
the shaders are applied to the objects in your animation, they effect the appearance and
overall mood of your animation.
Keyframing -
Keyframing is the process of telling the computer where the most important frames
of an animation are. The computer then takes the information in these frames, and through
careful calculation, interpolates the intermediate frames. For instance, if you have a ball
in one location at frame 1 of an animation, and then 100 feet away at frame 100, the computer
will interpolate the frames between 1 and 100 to move the ball between the two locations.
There are more advanced methods of controlling how the ball moves, but we will not get into
those here.
ANSI
The term ANSI stands for American National Standards Institute.
The institute is responsible for selecting and keeping records of national
standards in things such as weights, measures, technical drawing formats,
etc. The standard character set on most IBM based systems is referred to
as the ANSI character set. This set includes 255 available characters and
sixteen available colors. The term ANSI, when used as a noun, is a
reference to a file that includes these characters and colors. ANSI files
most commonly have the extention of .ANS (although some computer-based
art groups that produce ANSI files choose to rename their .ANS files to fit
their group name, for example our ANSI files are released with the
extention .CIA representing pictures and .LGO representing logos). If you
have ever used MS-DOS based file managers, install programs, or called up a
local Bulletin Board System with a DOS based terminal program, you have
most likely encountered ANSI graphics before.
ASCII
The term Ascii refers to a few basic characters from the full ANSI
set, and no real color codes. The Ascii character set is shared by such
operating systems as DOS, UNIX, and basic Amiga. Ascii based drawings and
fonts are common on the internet and IRC, as the majority of servers are
UNIX or LINUX based. Files created in this format usually have the
extention of .ASC. Some files ending in .ASC may contain ANSI characters
and color codes. These .ASC files are not true and pure ascii files,
but in reality another form of ANSI files.
ADF, ANSI/2, IDF and XBIN
These formats are extentions of the ANSI format. These formats were
created for use with special DOS programs such as electronic magazines and
program interfaces, as they can not be properly displayed with a standard
text mode program. Each of these formats includes additional information
allowing the original 16 colors and 255 characters to be changed beyond
their original format. Xbin also theoretically allows for additional
characters or colors to be used, although there is no program to take
full advantage of it as of yet. Several programs can edit and read ADF
or ANSI2 formats, such as Artworx and CiaDraw.
iCEDraw Files (IDF) - This is iCE's format used by IceDraw and iCEView.
BIN (Binary)
Binary or BIN files are often used for programming. When released
seperately in art packs they are usually files containing ANSI information
with a wider aspect ratio. ANSI files are limited to an 80 column width
in text mode, while BIN files are usually 160 columns wide. Some viewers
and editors allow for even more columns to be edited and displayed. Like
ADF / XBIN files, you can not display BIN files via basic DOS type
commands, a special viewer is required.
RIP
Rip is a somewhat failed attempt to surpass ANSI as the standard DOS bases Bulletin Board graphics systems. RIP allows for 16 colors at a higher resolution representing lines, curves, colors, etc with a series of letters and numbers. Special terminal programs were needed to read and convert RipScript files into viewable graphics. When RIP was first introduced, paint programs were awkward to use and unoptimized. A few BBS softwares actually supported RIP such as SearchLight and MajorBBS. Despite improvements in editor and displaying capability, RIP as a standard BBS interface format just didn't catch on. Today, RIP exists mainly as another creative format for artists.
EXE and COM
These are the extentions for executable files. Executable files
are what make your computer work. These are what actually 'run' when you
open a program. Files in executable formats include viewers, coded demos
(usually a combination of vga graphics, sound, etc in one file), and
other things such as games, and programs.
VGA - including JPEG / GIF / PCX / etc
VGA, or "video graphics adapter", is a generic term given to
files that have a higher resolution than text or ega mode. VGA allows
for sharper pictures with anywhere from 2 to 16 million colors. You
are most likely familiar with several VGA formats including GIF and JPEG
files, the two most popular file formats on the World Wide Web. These
files are usually larger in file size than ANSI or ASCII files due to
increased resolution and color depth. GIF files feature things such as
transparancy and interlacing. JPEG files can have a high rate of
compression allowing very large images to be stored in a relatively
small file. PCX is another VGA format, not
used on the web, but found in some art packs. It lacks the color depth
and compression of other formats. Some VGA file formats can be viewed
on DOS, Windows, Amiga, Mac, SGI and many other platforms. Users of
these and other platforms can can use paint programs or web browsers
to load these images.
S3M, MOD, XM, MIDI
These are music file formats. Each requires a special program to
read and play back the music, or a multi-format playing program. There
are many DOS based programs to read these files including an older file
from cia called intenseplay which read MOD and S3M format.
ZIP / ARJ / SIT / LHA / RAR / etc
All of these extentions represent a compression and storage format used to shrink file sizes and store them in one file. ZIP, created by Pkware, is the most common format these days. All of these are called "archive" formats because of what they do. ZIP files are viewable in DOS, Windows, Mac, Unix, Etc.. with several programs including unzip for unix, winzip for Windows and pkunzip for DOS. ARJ is another popular format that can be uncompressed with a new version of the ARJ program. SIT stands for the Macintosh StuffIt format, LHA is an older Amiga based format, and RAR is a unix/linux based archiver. Our art packs and other releases are presented in .ZIP format to allow for quick and easy downloading. By Zipping our releases we can release one or two files a month rather than hundreds of smaller files. Sometimes .ZIP files are included within the pack ZIPs, these usually have special information or releases within them such as network information packets or special program releases.