The masking approach i.e. >>set the mask of member qtmember to member
bitmapmember
certainly allows you to keep the crucial performance advantage of DtS.
My tests with extra tracks in Qts always show a performance hit which you
don't get with the mask approach.
Points on masking:
- masks can be changed dynamically (the dictionary warns against this but I
have been doing it extensively for a couple of years now. Seems fine. But
animations are not a requirement in my work.)
- masks are 1 bit so obviously no transparency. Aliasing is visually not as
bad as you might expect.
- you can use imaging lingo to create masks (either dynamically or during
dev)
- since lingo can access sprite properties & do loc calculations
this can be a great time saver for generating appropriate masks.
- don't forget to give them unique names.
- I have an issue when setting the reg point then removing white
pixels (How do you actually force Director to remove the white pixels after
you set trimWhiteSpace = TRUE ? I currently do this by viewing in the Paint
window which is not ideal.)
- Quirk: the mask prop of Qt members can be set in the PI (useful to check
you've got your loc & reg right) but this doesn't get saved so you must use
run time lingo.
- there are update issues when doing dynamic changes
- when the mask is applied/or grows there is no prob as Qt is DtS.
- when the mask is removed/or shrinks D's compositing is not aware
that it needs to redraw that area (to display whatever sprite you are
wanting to show). (While you can bring your sprite on stage after the mask
change which will obviously tell D about the area to be updated this depends
on it being off stage initially...
Suppose you require a sprite to be toggled on/off over video then I like to
leave the sprite on stage all the time, change the mask as necessary and
have a 2nd dummy 'refresher' sprite under the real one that uses the mask
member at loc(0,0). Whenever changing to the mask that reveals your target
sprite you can toggle the on/off status of the 'refresher' sprite - this
avoids having to move the real sprite off when changing to the no mask
because that causes a nasty FLASH. Phew !)
cheers
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Colin Holgate [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>>Sent: 30 August 2002 18:11
>>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Subject: Re: <lingo-l> Theoretical: Layering graphics over DV
>>
>>
>>>If this idea I have works I may well be able to convince the
>>powers that be
>>>to put up the $300 to purchase the Xtra but cash is a bit
>>tight presently.
>>>So, in the event they won't open their pockets, anybody else
>>have other
>>>suggestions (or cheaper Xtras - no offence, Tab).
>>
>>
>>There are more economical approaches. You can make a mask in
>>Director, which would be a one bit bitmap. You say "set the mask of
>>member qtmember to member bitmapmember". Then you would play with the
>>regpoint of the bitmap to make it line up. You have to set the mask
>>again after each regpoint change.
>>
>>That would give you direct to stage QuickTime in any shape, and you
>>could have a graphic behind the QT sprite, and where the holes were
>>would look like the background picture.
>>
>>If you want to have a static 32 bit picture on top of a video, with
>>an alpha effect on it, you could import the 32 bit PICT (or PNG or
>>PSD) into QuickTime Player, copy it, Add it Scaled across the
>>duration of the video clip, go into the info for that track and set
>>its graphic mode to straight alpha. Save that as a new movie. You
>>should now have a QuickTime movie that looks like you want it to, but
>>will play DTS.
>>
>>It's still not going to play as well as the one bit mask one, but it
>>should play a lot better than if you made Director do the compositing.
>>
>>[To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest
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>>helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
>>
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