Help for Animators
As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.
understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.
Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.
This is a brief introduction to the development environment we use in creating animations. Refer to Adobe documentation of Flash and Flex/Flash Builder for most details - here we concentrate on the specifics of the UU system.
Project sources are saved in CVSROOT on led.maths.org - in the uuflex folder.
Running alongside the standard Flex Builder tools are a set of Ant tools that
automate the compile, link, and install process. These are designed to generate the
three different kinds of animation that we typically need:
- A pre-installation test version linked in the same way as the final site distribution. This is installed in the project build-debug folder.
- A version to be installed on the server. On the development system it resides in the project build-site folder. On the server it resides in files/animations/project.swf.
- A standalone version that is statically linked, and with all configuration files embedded, for use in powerpoint presentations.
Independently, Flex Builder will create bin-debug and bin-release folders which remain useful for development testing, and to create simple RSL-free, unkeyed
site distributions when these are needed.
In order to key animations to UU, and also create smaller, faster loading swfs that
take advantage of player and browser caching, we use 2 generic Ant build files, and one held in each animation project. These are:
- UUBuildLibs: to create and install Remote Shared Libraries (RSLs) on the server. These reside in /files/rsl and have a build number appended to their filenames. To avoid breaking previously compiled animations, new library builds do not overwrite old library builds. Also, all RSLs keep an internal digest, which will be verified by an animation that uses them. Sites other than UU using these libraries must be listed in /html/crossdomain.xml.
- UUAnimationGenerator: Downloads libs from the server, and creates base animations linked against them. Run this to populate a new project. It also has targets to patch existing animations with further tabs, view/mediators, and commands. It will also install the Animation Build files into each animation directory.
- The Animation Build: A build file that creates the 3 different kinds of distribution mentioned above.
See Detailed Animation Build Help for the even more gruesome details.
