Warning This is still an experimental technology, to push forward the development in this field, please, consider leaving your donation or become a sponsor.

Teleporting is the process of splitting the story created in one machine into its constituting pieces and then from this pieces, recreate the story in a remote machine, in order to generate the physical story frames images in this remote machine.

Teleporting allows a user to create animations just by using a web browser from a computer or tablet without the need of installed software nor direct access to the computer files.

It was created with the main goal of allowing video hosting services, ad network, and e-commerce companies to allow their users or employees to build their animation in their machines, and then generate the video on the company's machines.

It can also be used, in case where the user is on a controlled computer environment defined by the company's policy or in case there is a faster machine available for rendering, specially when the story contains heavy computational WebGL elements.

The ABeamer Animation Editor will allow to bring the remote rending to new heights.

Without the ABeamer Animation Editor, it's required that the user has basic skills of CSS and HTML. JavaScript programming skills aren't required.

Due restrictions imposed by CORS It's required that:

  • The client either runs on a remote link or runs under a live server.
    ABeamer includes a live server. Just execute abeamer serve
  • The render server agent must execute the url from a live server.

With the current technology still has following limitations, some of them imposed due security reasons:

  • Code Handlers aren't allowed.
  • Only default scenes are allowed.
  • Scenes can't be removed during the execution.
  • Only fixed remote assets are allowed.
  • Use only functionality that isn't marked as: doesn't supports teleporting.
  • Assets inside CSS files must have the url("....") format
    and be part of the project structure.
  • No <style> tag inside html file is allowed.
  • No <script> files are allowed.

The whole process is fairly simple, just follow these steps:

  • create a project using abeamer command line called my-project.
abeamer create my-project
  • download animate-transitions, and unzip to the newly created folder my-project. When asked to overwrite the files, select 'Yes'.
    This is just a complete example of story ready to teleport.
    The following steps are for testing purposes, for production mode will be described after.

  • Run the live server:

abeamer serve

Due CORS and since this is a local file it requires a live server.

  • Execute:
abeamer render my-project --url http://localhost:9000/my-project/ --teleport

This will create a file called story.json on my-project folder.

  • create a project using abeamer command line called server.
abeamer create server

Download remote-server, and unzip to the newly created folder server. When asked to overwrite the files, select 'Yes'.

  • Copy the story.json from the my-project folder to the server folder.

  • Copy all the assets sub-folder from the my-project folder to the server folder.

  • Execute:

abeamer render \
--url http://localhost:9000/server/ \
--allowed-plugins server/.allowed-plugins.json \
--inject-page server/index.html \
--config server/story.json

This will generate the frames on server/story-frames.

The previous steps where built for testing purposes, since the teleporter was built to be used without the need of using anything but the web browser.

For production mode:

  1. Open on chrome the following url: http://localhost:9000/gallery/animate-transitions/.

  2. Uncomment both code lines on the 'animate-transitions/js/main.ts'.
    And either compile using TypeScript or port those lines into main.js.
    This will create the story with { toTeleport: true }.
    Which will record every part of the animation and instruct the library and plugins to behave differently.

  3. On chrome developer tools, you will see on the console the complete story as string.
    This data was generated via story.getStoryToTeleport()
    This is the data you have to send via Ajax to the remote server.

In this case, it's no longer needed: abeamer render --teleport, nor access to the computer disk.

When a story is created with toTeleport = true, ABeamer will:

  1. Store a copy of the initial html and CSS (due CORS, it requires a live server).
  2. When transitions, stills or pEls are used, it will behave differently in order to be recorded into a file.
  3. On each addAnimations, a deep copy will be stored before tasks modify its content.
  4. Plugins will check if it's on teleporting mode, and act according to it.

Instead of calling render, the getStoryToTeleport will generate data ready to be teleported.
This data must be beamed to the remote machine, usually via Ajax.

getStoryToTeleport will return a string, if you want to add more parameters, use getStoryToTeleportAsConfig, and it will return an Object.
ABeamer uses only config.abeamer record inside the generated object, any other field can be used to store extra data.

The remote machine has an empty story body, see remote-server, where it fills with the data has been teleported and injects the plugins.

ABeamer is an open-source library, which runs inside a contained environment such as a web browser, and doesn't allows the execution of any javascript code except from plugins.
However, in order to prevent malicious users or plugins, ensure that:

  1. Only allow 3rd party plugins from trusted sources.
  2. Execute the live server in a contained environment.
  3. Don't place any password files accessible to the live server.
  4. The provided live server, is just a simple live server, consider using a more restrict live server.
  5. Blacklist from the browser the access to the local network resources.
  6. Use only the latest versions of the ABeamer, browser, and render server.
  7. Set the maxWidth, maxHeight, maxFps and maxFrameCount parameters for abeamer render
  8. Move the files .allowed-plugins.json and story.json from the user access.