I can tell from discussions I have had that getting this idea clear and concrete will require some illustrations, verbal and otherwise, before the impact sinks-in.
A combo of new objects was touched on in the Bounding Box thread.
If you care to read more about the idea, here is a scenario:
I want to make a short Cartoovie. I have a few, cartoon cloud graphics, a nice sky background, a sun, some flowers with "growing" animations, a couple of birds, and a soundtrack. I will also note some problems.
The work part: I create a subapp with ASB's that have pictures representing my objects so I can choose them as needed.
At the start of my main frame, I set it up to start the timeline/recorder, and bring up my subapp. I also setup some events using Active Dragger Widgets so that I can click and drag the objects. I want everything precisely timed and queued by the music/soundtrack, so ths will be much easier than just eventing.
The music plays. There is an intro. As the intro ends, I pause the timeline and the soundtrack pauses, too. Here is where I want to drag the clouds in. Since I have the option to make an object "appear" when I drop it, or have my movements via the mouse recorded from point a to point b, I chose the latter. I click on a cloud, place a marker in the timeline box and set it to live action, (rather than static).
I have a problem here with having the cloud start outside the visible frame, but I should able to drag it outside, use a key combo, (since the mouse is being used) to start recording, and slide my first cloud out as the music plays a certain segment. I use another key combo to stop the recording. Maybe I will play it back now to see how it looks.
I do this with two more clouds. Perhaps there will be tweening/smoothing algorithms later on in this object, but for now the clouds move in nicely.
The music changes to something more triumphant and, using the above technique, I have a shining sun that I drag up from the horizon, (I will set it to be behind the ground later). I time it so the peak corresponds with the music.
Maybe we hear birds in the sound track and a few fly in. Using the bounding box, we spin the sun a few times. Then, I place flower AO's on the ground that appear as nubs and are punctuated by beats of the music. I stop, rewind, and then set the point where each flower animation starts "growing".
Keep in mind that the Timeline might have "layers" that you could use for each object you are manipulating to keep things in order, duplicate, and delete easily. You might also be able to select what sections to play, loop, or extend events across.
A marker would allow you to name it, so that if you had to use a condition to trigger something in MMF, you could call it, say, "ThisMarker" and when the timeline reached it, On Marker "ThisMarker" would trigger the actions, etc.
Then, I place a title text as teh music wraps up to a crescendo, and slide one of the birds to fly up and sit on it.
I now have all that recorded and can play it back, edit it, etc.
This could be applied to cartoon characters having various parts that can be moved, resized, rotated, and changed. Being able to slow down the sound/track timeline would allow us to use an AO with various lipsync graphics that we might be able to set properly by typing in the letters on the keyboard as words are spoken. Its not elegant, but it would work.
You never know if a lip synch could be created later on that could estimate the words and set the frames/directions of an AO to correspond
The rest is up to the imagination and any other objects that might come into play.
Oh, and you can substitute zombies, chainsaws, bats, and blood for the above elements if your imaginations prefers it.
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