These are excellent recommendations. Of course, there is no audience out there waiting for a Revolution-based desktop clock. This whole exercise was to honestly answer the question posed originally (by Richard Gaskin I believe) related to why I thought it was hard to do stuff like this in Rev, and what does K. do to make it easy. I hope the question is answered.
While I will look at the archive for some other clock examples in Rev, I don't know if I'm going to take this experiment much further. It's clear that Rev isn't designed for this kind of thing (to put it charitably). I have to say that Rev is awesome for the things I use it for -- processing data that doesn't lend itself to spreadsheets or databases, creating utilities I can distribute as EXEs, and applications that need to look like Windows. Your gallery also proves that impressive visual feats can DEFINITELY be accomplished with Rev. But I do sincerely hope that Rev substantially advances the capabilities regarding graphics handling (and other areas) so there is no question that Rev is the ultimate multimedia authoring tool. Bill "Scott Rossi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Recently, Bill Marriott wrote: > >>> As far as your clock app goes, I would look at creating the various >>> positions of the hands as antialiased bitmaps outside of Rev since, as >>> you >>> discovered, image rotation is not as good as it should be. The import >>> the >>> images, and use a button to serve as a "display" for the images, but >>> setting >>> the icon of the button to appropriate image at the right time: >> >> The "frames" method of animating the hands did occur to me, but I wasn't >> yet >> up to the task of creating 180 images (60 each for hours, minutes, and >> seconds). Plus this would result is a huge distro -- like 500K or more >> just >> for those pictures. > > Admittedly, it is more work than rotating a bitmap. But along the lines > of > a well known computer company that once encouraged people to think > different, I would suggest you "think real world". Nobody is going to sit > in front of your cock for a solid hour to determine whether or not your > minute/hour hands move precisely 1 degree for every segment of time the > elapses. For smooth motion, it's probably worth creating 59 frames for > the > second hand, but the other hands will not require 60 frames each for real > world use (unless maybe your app is going to run at 800 x 800 resolution). > Go with a smaller number of frames for the minutes, and especially hours, > and I think you'll be able to achieve a decent appearance. > > >> Also, I think a really nice aspect of the K. clock is that you can set >> the >> color of the face and the rim to anything you like. Even sexier, the rest >> of >> the UI elements adapt. If you pick a "dark" background, the hands and >> date >> display switch to complementary tints. >> >> Poking through the JavaScript supplied with the K. clock, I see the >> author >> accomplishes this with a "colorize" command applied to the PNG image. I >> think I can colorize in Rev, but this is only possible by using a >> blending >> mode in combination with another object. In other words, if I have a 50% >> grey PNG of the hands, to make them green I have to put a green object >> "behind" the hands and set the appropriate blend style. >> >> Am I right about this, or is there a way of colorizing an object >> directly? > > Two answers: > > 1) You can colorize images programmatically by script, manipulating > imageData and alphaData properties. Ken Ray has the technical details of > image/alphaData on his site <http://www.sonsothunder.com/>. You could > create a square solid colored image object with a "virtual" minute hand, > for > example, that is created by applying alphaData transparency to the image. > So instead of updating the image itself every minute or so, you update the > image's alphaData. > > 2) Somewhat like what you surmise above, another way to colorize the clock > face is to separate out the "effects" of your face art (hilites, bevels, > shadows, etc) as overlay/s, in translucent PNG format. Then in Rev, use > an > oval graphic as the base of the clock face and overlay the separate effect > image/s on top of the graphic. You can then adjust the backCcolor of the > graphic by script. You will wind up with a clock face that can be > quickly/simply colorized to any color while keeping your effects intact. > > Hope this helps. > > Regards, > > Scott Rossi > Creative Director > Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design > ----- > E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > W: http://www.tactilemedia.com > > _______________________________________________ > use-revolution mailing list > [email protected] > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your > subscription preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
