[jmarshall]

Yes, loop="true" requires a conditional.

And it probably doesn't operate for condition="true" as there's nothing to trigger it on. Will see what I can do. It may be easier to keep the conditional stuff conditional (i.e. switching on and off on the condition) and introduce a new animation that is always running.

[Nuka1195]

JMarshall, I apologize. there is a way to use isvisble. I was using an id that was inside a group and it didn't work, but using the groups id works fine.

Code:

<control type="image">
  <visible>!Control.IsVisible(3000) + Control.IsVisible(4000)</visible>
  <description>background image</description>
  <posx>495</posx>
  <posy>270</posy>
  <width>180</width>
  <height>180</height>
  <texture>LCARS-starfleet-emblem.png</texture>
  <aspectratio>keep</aspectratio>
  <animation effect="rotatey" center="585" start="0" end="-360" time="3000"  loop="true" condition="Control.IsVisible(4000)">Conditional</animation>
</control>

Now is there a way to give the animation thickness. Pixture a coin spinning on the y-axis. When it get to 90 it disappears.

Even giving this control it's own id, you can use it in the IsVisible()

[Gamester17]

Love the illusion of 3D album covers Harley added to the MediaPoral FACE skin (now called the "Xface" skin), but I guess a such illusion can not be combined with this new coverflow/wrap-list animation effect in XBMC?
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/attach...1184080670
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/attach...1184080715

[jmarshall]

Ofcourse it can. Anything MP can do, XBMC can do.

They basically use the same skinning engine, or at least similar enough that you can pretty much do everything they can.

Ofcourse, ours can look nicer, as we actually have real 3D available. It'd still be done using a "pseudo 3D" diffuse texture on it, but if cleverly aligned it might look OK.

Real 3D could also be done, but it'd be way more code (XML-wise) to get it right I suspect.

[Nuka1195]

I would really like to know how to make a rotating circle on it's y axis look 3d when at 90 degrees instead of dissapear.

Are you saying there is a way to do that?

[jmarshall]

Nope. You can just fake "static" 3D look using images. Anything that does a 3D animation (particularly if it animates a lot) will be hard or impossible to fake.

I see no way of doing it other than having a full 3D model of the "coin".

Ofcourse, you could animate it outside of XBMC and use a multiimage :p

[Nuka1195]

360 images, maybe each degree wouldn't be necessary, but it would still be alot. I think I like it the way it is.

By the way I just committed the spinning emblem for the LCARS skin for AMT, if anybody wants to see it. You go to a category list to see it.

[MacGyver]

I was checking out the forums to see whats new, and saw this thread.
It seems like the easiest way to give the skinner the most control would be to use what I purposed a while back.
Say you have a list, and in that list the current focus is Item.Icon, just give the skinners access to the variables you use for the list ie. Item.Icon(1) would be the next item in a list, and Item.Icon(-1) would be the prior item in the list, and so on, say +20 and -20 or so. Then you you wouldn't need to create different styles of lists, the skinners could, and the location of the list icons could be wherever they wanted. If you wanted to use a listview like apple uses for their icon view and that list was 2000 files long, it would choke in a circular view, but if the skinner displays only 20 icons at a time, the list would still look circular but other 1980 items wouldn't be displayed. It would give the skinners the ability to create the same kind of icon displays they do in the home window, but instead with list items.
It would mean more code for the skinner if they chose to use it, and the current code for listviews wouldn't need to be altered, so current skin compatibility would stay the same.

The code for skinners would be cut down by 1/20 if we had a way to make a variable add and subtract a value: i=1, i++, Item.Icon(i), Item.Icon(i-5). 80% of my carousel menu's code is because I can't use math in the skin.

Would it be possible JM?

[jmarshall]

You can use ListItem(offset).* already. See XBox Classic's "coverflow" view. The main problem with it is that as soon as you move, all the offsets change, so it takes some creative animation work

I'm not convinced of the advantage of having math in the skin to be honest - usually it's because you're doing non-trivial transforms to the items that they require individuality.

You're welcome to come up with a set of proposals and why they'd be beneficial - anything to make skinning easier I'm happy to at least consider!

Cheers,
Jonathan

[MacGyver]

Thanks JM, I had no idea, I've still in the states, trying to keep up with what you guys are doing, looks like I'm not doing such a good job. It was right there in the SVN:

1221 <info>Container.ListItem(-4).Icon</info>
1222 <animation effect="rotatey" center="10" start="-60" end="-60" time="0" condition="true">Conditional</animation>

When did those get implemented? Looks like I'll have something to keep me busy when I get back. Wish I had an xbox here so I could see them.

[jmarshall]

About a week or two ago we did that bit. It's what convinced me to finally bother with the 3D stuff.

Constant nagging by Jezz_X, CHI3f and SmokeHead keeps me on my toes :p

(I don't mind it at all ofcourse!)

[MacGyver]

Does all the new 3D stuff create a hassle for the linux porting? I'm not real current on their progress, but I remember seeing that all the directx stuff was a hassle to try to port. Were they going to rewrite it all for SDL or use an emulator in the end?

[jmarshall]

It shouldn't cause much hassle at all. For the opengl version it's just a matter of setting up the camera correctly, so the changes shouldn't be too bad.

For the SDL version they just have to ignore the Z component and it should do the trick.

There's not a huge amount of actual drawing code that relies on the hardware - GUI-wise it's contained to GUIFontTTF and GUIImage.

[Asteron]

Have you given any thought to nonlinear animation effects like ripples or springiness?

I was thinking about implementing a tesselation for it but was wondering if it was something that could be more easily done with shaders...

[jmarshall]

Unfortunately anything that's not a geometry change or colour change stuff requires pixel and/or vertex shaders so would involve a reasonable amount of code shuffling, plus we'd need to write for both GL and DirectX (not that that's a big burden).

I think for springiness or ripples you'd require tesselation anyway (or do vertex shaders on a rectangle allow for that - never played with them!)

In either case, not something that's of a high priority to me at this point, as they're not exactly low-hanging fruit

Cheers,
Jonathan