CAMPER (Computer Aided Movie Perspectives) is a program designed and implemented by Sherwood Anderson as part of his MSc Dissertation at Syracuse University. The aim was to produce an efficient picture language for producing computer animated films. This manual derives from a number of papers available on the system (see references at end).
CAMPER is a 3D extension of a 2D system called CAMP. No knowledge of computer programming languages is required. The user produces a set of data cards where each card is a statement in a very simple language. each data card contains all the relevant information needed to describe a particular figure or to perform some operation upon a previously defined figure. The card format consists of a maximum of five letters defining the command followed by a group of numbers located in the appropriate card columns which specify the arguments of the command. the language is planned so that a potential user can quickly design and produce films without guidance.
The basic philosophy is to approximate all picture elements in the film by straight lines. Although curved regions of the figure may suffer, there is considerable economy and simplicity because of this. Only the coordinates of the endpoints of each line are stored. A simple storage structure is used to keep complex pictures in a fairly compact form. Using this, the same picture can be produced repeatedly without wasting time regenerating the points defining each frame. If the user wishes to change only certain parts of a figure, he can easily do so by altering only those points in question in the storage structure.
The storage area is broken down into a number of distinct parts called stacks. Each new figure is added at the end of a stack when it is defined. the individual figures are called arrays. A single command can either operate on a single array or a whole stack. Arrays are numbered and care must be taken to generate them sequentially. For example, a circle might be defined as array 1 in stack 1. this could be followed by a definition of a triangle as array 2 of stack 1 and so on. Arrays can be processed in any order once generated. the contents of an array can be replaced by a second figure providing that it requires the same number of locations (see the Appendix). The 1906A version of CAMPER has an 8000 word area of store defined as 8 stacks of 1000 words.
