Knob that transform a bitmap layer

trogluddite · 2 Apr 2012

I see no reason why not. There would be a slight CPU increase compared to the usual "animation frames" method - just because rotating graphics takes a bit more working out. But on the other hand, I'm quite a fan of "unique" controls for each purpose - somehow symbols/colours etc. work better for me to find the right control than identical looking knobs with text to read. But with "strip" animations that means lots of bitmaps to keep organised. Editing just one picture that shows the whole GUI sounds really attractive. The only other problem I can see is that SM can only deal with square/rectangular areas - so controls would need to be surrounded by areas of flat colour (no texture/gradient) - otherwise the square edges of the rotated areas might look a bit messy (or maybe psychedelic and cool!).

trogluddite · 2 Apr 2012

Hi again, Hope you don't mind, but I used my moderator "superpowers" to move your thread into the Graphics Forum - it's not possible to upload attachments in the "Ideas and Requests" forum (that forum is really for requests to the program developers - but we're not sure if they really read it!). Your idea really caught my eye, so I thought it would be nice to put it somewhere that people can share some crazy ideas!

Here's something very quick and silly that I knocked up, inspired by your post - it's a very challenging game called "Find the Knobs" (promise, no cheating by looking for the "little hand" cursor!!!!)

The "Invisible knobs" trick will work with any bitmap big enough to fill the panel - everything shares a single bitmap. As well as showing the "square areas" problem quite well, it also shows another little hassle - when you move controls around the panel (when editing), they don't have any way to know where they are! - hence the "X" and "Y" inputs to the knob modules (you can read those values when a GUI is selected for editing a front panel - hint: click on the numbers to change from grids to pixels). But neither of those problems are huge - so long as controls have a bit of "space" around them, the "square areas" need not be a problem - and the X,Y thing only takes a few seconds to sort out (if the front panel is all one bitmap, you won't be moving them too often anyway).

Chaoslala · 3 Apr 2012

I love it ! Thanks ! 🙂 The circle limitation could maybe be fixed with another bitmap layer with transparancy.

trogluddite · 3 Apr 2012

Glad you like it! 🙂

Chaoslala wrote: another bitmap layer with transparancy.

Yes, I've been thinking about this myself. It is possible to take small sections of a bitmap, or even individual pixels, and create a new bitmap from them using SM components. So a circular area could be "scanned" into a new knob bitmap with transparent 'edges'. Certainly, simple shapes like circles, triangles could be done. Doing this uses a lot of CPU power, but, the moving parts only need "creating" once, when a new "master" bitmap is loaded - so it need not be a problem. The small sections will be remembered inside the schematic, and don't need re-making even when saving/loading the plugin.

Chaoslala · 7 Apr 2012

I combined it with an another module. we can make it move with key. Press G to go left, j is right and y = jump. Could be a way to easily place the knob.

philter5 · 30 Apr 2012

...great schematic trog , when you load the right pic´s in it you can even create some nice 3d looking shapes with it (birds eye view by rotating some sides 45 degrees). really cool stuff 😀