Drifted into the world of animation

One aspect of implementing a Reyes render would be that ability to render animated sequences. To that end I have 'branched-off' into the world of animation, or to be more specific SMIL - the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. SMIL (pronounced Smile) is a 'framework for incorporating animation onto a time line and a mechanism for composing the effects of multiple animations'. Although a W3C recommendation in it's own right it is also the animation component of SVG.

Given the work I have done to-date with X-Reyes you wont be surprised to here that I have started implementing a SMIL interpreter using XSLT. The idea being that the XSLT transform(s) take an SVG graphic, with inline svg:animation elements, and generate the 'inbetweens' for each animated primitive. There is an SVG/JavaScript test harness that allows you to run, pause, step forward/backward and stop the animated sequence using conventional video playback style buttons.

The next step would be to generate a sequence of whole graphics, one for each frame of the timeline that can be subsequently fed into the X-Reyes render to generate the required frame images. In an ideal world I'd by generating an animated GIF but X-Reyes only supports TIFF at present.