Re: [fonc] iconic representations of powerful ideas

2012-06-04 Thread Miles Fidelman

BGB wrote:


and, recently devised a hack for creating component layered JPEG 
images, or, basically, a hack to allow creating JPEGs which also 
contained alpha-blending, normal maps, specular maps, and luma maps 
(as an essentially 16-component JPEG image composed of multiple 
component layers, with individual JPEG images placed end-to-end with 
marker tags between them to mark each layer).



dunno if anyone would find any of this all that interesting though.


well, I'd certainly be interested in seeing that hack!

Mile Fidelman




--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: [fonc] iconic representations of powerful ideas

2012-06-04 Thread BGB

On 6/4/2012 6:48 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

BGB wrote:


and, recently devised a hack for creating component layered JPEG 
images, or, basically, a hack to allow creating JPEGs which also 
contained alpha-blending, normal maps, specular maps, and luma maps 
(as an essentially 16-component JPEG image composed of multiple 
component layers, with individual JPEG images placed end-to-end with 
marker tags between them to mark each layer).



dunno if anyone would find any of this all that interesting though.


well, I'd certainly be interested in seeing that hack!

Mile Fidelman



from a comment in my JPEG code:
--
BGB Extensions:
APP11: BGBTech Tag
ASCIZ TagName
Tag-specific data until next marker.

AlphaColor:
AlphaColor
RGBA as string (red green blue alpha).

APP11 markers may indicate component layer:
FF,APP11,CompLayer\0, layername:ASCIZ
RGB: Base RGB
XYZ: Normal XYZ (XZY ordering)
SpRGB: Specular RGB
DASe: Depth, Alpha, Specular-Exponent
LuRGB: Luma RGB
Alpha: Mono alpha layer

Component Layouts:
3 component: (no marker, RGB)
4 component: RGB+Alpha
7 component: RGB+Alpha+LuRGB
8 component: RGB+XYZ+DASe
12 component: RGB+XYZ+SpRGB+DASe
16 component: RGB+XYZ+SpRGB+DASe+LuRGB
--

AlphaColor was an prior extension, basically for in-image chroma-keys.
the RGB color specifies the color to be matched, and A specifies how 
strongly the color is matched (IIRC, it is the distance to Alpha=128 
or so).


it was imagined that this could be calculated dynamically per-image, but 
doing so is costly, so typically a fixed color is specified during 
encoding (such as cyan or magenta).



CompLayer is the component layers.
currently, this tag precedes the SOI tages.

example:
FF,APP11, CompLayer\0, RGB\0
FF,SOI
...
FF,EOI
FF,APP11, CompLayer\0, XYZ\0
FF,SOI
...
FF,EOI
...


basically:
most component-layers are generic 4:2:0 RGB/YUV layers (except the mono 
alpha layer, which is monochrome).


the layers may share the same Huffman and Quantization tables (by having 
only the first layer encode them).


the RGB layer always comes first, so a decoder that doesn't know of the 
extension, will just see the basic RGB components. also all layers are 
the same resolution.



this is hardly an ideal design, but was intended more to allow a 
simple encoder/decoder tweak to handle it (currently, it is 
encoded/decoded by a function which may accept 4 RGBA buffers, and may 
shuffle things around slightly to encode them into the layers).


the in-program layers are:
RGBA;
XYZD ('D' may be used for parallax mapping, and represents the relative 
depth of the pixel);
Specular (RGBe), this basically gives the reflection color and shininess 
of surface pixels;

Luma (RGBA).


so, yes, it is all a bit of a hack...


there was also a little fudging to the my AVI code to allow these videos 
to be used for surface video-mapping (basically, the video is streamed 
into all 4 layers at the same time).


example use-cases of something like this would likely be things like 
making animated textures which resemble moving parts (such as metal 
gears and blinking lights), or alternatively as a partial alternative to 
using 3D modeled character faces (the face moving is really the texture 
and animation frames, rather than 3D geometry), however presently this 
is likely a better fit for animated textures than for video-maps.


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Re: [fonc] iconic representations of powerful ideas

2012-06-04 Thread Miles Fidelman

BGB wrote:

On 6/4/2012 6:48 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

BGB wrote:


and, recently devised a hack for creating component layered JPEG 
images, or, basically, a hack to allow creating JPEGs which also 
contained alpha-blending, normal maps, specular maps, and luma maps 
(as an essentially 16-component JPEG image composed of multiple 
component layers, with individual JPEG images placed end-to-end with 
marker tags between them to mark each layer).



dunno if anyone would find any of this all that interesting though.


well, I'd certainly be interested in seeing that hack!

Mile Fidelman



from a comment in my JPEG code:
--
BGB Extensions:
APP11: BGBTech Tag
ASCIZ TagName
Tag-specific data until next marker.


snip

Pardon my cluelessness here, but what exactly are you showing as JPEG 
code?  Is this part of a JPEG file header, part of code that's 
generating a JPEG file, what?


And... I don't suppose you have any examples of such files - either 
behind URLs, or for download?


Thanks,

Miles

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: [fonc] iconic representations of powerful ideas

2012-06-03 Thread BGB

On 6/3/2012 8:31 PM, Shawn Morel wrote:

I'm a very visual learner / thinker. I usually find it mentally painful (yes 
brow furrowing, headache inducing) to think of hard (distant) ideas until I can 
find an image in my mind's eye. Understood that not everyone thinks like this :)


I guess I often think visually as well, though with both a lot of 
pictures and text (but, how does one really know for certain?...).


I also tend to be a bit of a concrete thinker (or, a sensing type in 
psychology terms).




I was re-reading the original NSF grant proposal, in particular after reading 
this passage:

Key to the tractability of this approach is the separation of the kernel into two 
complementary facets: representation of executable specifications (structures of 
message-passing objects) forming symbolic expressions and the meaning of those 
specifications (interpretation of their structure) that yields concrete behavior.

I was gliding along the surface of a dynamically shifting Klein bottle.

Curious what other people might think.


personally I don't much understand the core goals of the project all 
that well either.


I lurk some, and respond if something interesting shows up, and 
sometimes make a fool of myself in the process, but oh well...


as well, it sometimes seems to me like maybe I am some sort of 
generalized antagonist for many people or something, at least given 
how many often pointless arguments seem to pop up (in general).



but, thinking of visual things:

I had recently looked over the SWF spec, and noticed that to some 
degree, at this level Flash looks a good deal like some sort of 
animated photoshop-like thing (both seem to be composed of stacks of 
layers and similar). or, at least, I found it kind of interesting.


then was recently left dealing with the idea of systems being driven 
from the top-down, rather than how I am more familiar with them in 
games: basically as interacting finite-state-machines (although top-down 
wouldn't likely replace FSMs, but they could be used in combination).



and, recently devised a hack for creating component layered JPEG 
images, or, basically, a hack to allow creating JPEGs which also 
contained alpha-blending, normal maps, specular maps, and luma maps (as 
an essentially 16-component JPEG image composed of multiple component 
layers, with individual JPEG images placed end-to-end with marker tags 
between them to mark each layer).


the main purpose was mostly though that I could have more advanced 
video-mapped surfaces (and, for the most part, I use MJPEG AVIs for 
these). there wasn't any other clearly better way.



among other things...

dunno if anyone would find any of this all that interesting though.


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