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[BenJeremy]

Yes, that fixed the visual effect nicely....


My test menu file

I added "3" and "-3" elements, normall invisible, but fading to the prev/next color on the appropriate ends.

Period of 200 looks nice. Might even be ok with a faster one, but then you'll lose any smoothing with "ease" options.

[BenJeremy]

Oh, and for those looking for "masked video" - you can now do this, after a fashion, by using a ZPoint set of TriangleList primitieves to create the area you want to display, leaving off, of course, the holes. Tricky part: Mapping the TU/TV coordinates to the triangle vertices (get out your graph paper!)

[geniusalz]

[BenJeremy]

It's a sequence of points, in multiples of 3 describing a set of one or more triangles in 3-D space. With a ZPoint set, you can define a hundred of these triangles, for example, in full 3-D, and map a texture on it.

In the image above (Snagged via GIS), you could define the two triangles with 6 points. Put them together, and you get a quadrangle (but then you could use a quadlist.




Trianglefans start at a point, then you "splay out" with subsequent points (at least 2 more) - they are very efficient.



TriangleStrips are also efficient.

Mapping for TU and TV is simple enough - TU is between 0.0 and 1.1 representing the width of the texture applied to it. Mapping TU=1.0 and TV=0.0 means you've mapped the Top Right corner of the texture to the vertice (or point) when the Xbox renders the triangle.

[geniusalz]

Wow.  I haven't ever played with DX 3D stuff, but I think I got it.

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (geniusalz @ Jan 9 2004, 09:33 PM)

Wow.  I haven't ever played with DX 3D stuff, but I think I got it.

Yeah, it's not too hard. Keep the "Normal" (Fourth parameter) at 1.0 and it will be fine - that's the angle from the vertice, in this case a right angle, that the texture is laid onto the primitive. Warp the normal and you get funky effects. This is used for things like spheres and such...

[geniusalz]

I'm seeing something here
Spherikal!

[geniusalz]

at all...

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (geniusalz @ Jan 9 2004, 10:25 PM)

Hmm.. Z and N values don't seem to do anything at all...

Try intersecting two primitives with differing Z values.

They become more useful with rotations, anyway.

Hmmm... Normals not working? They are assigned with "w="  in the point element.

[geniusalz]

Ah, thanks.
Know of a place I can find a detailed guide for this?
Edit: or an app that lets me do this in realtime.

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (geniusalz @ Jan 9 2004, 10:55 PM)

Ah, thanks. Know of a place I can find a detailed guide for this? Edit: or an app that lets me do this in realtime.

Hmmm... you might be able to with some 3-D apps, then export to 3ds, which I think is a text-based format, and grab mappings and such from that.

Dunno... I'm just getting into the 3-D stuff from the programming end in earnest.

[geniusalz]

Too bad Blender doesn't do 3ds ... only VRML.  It's only 2.2 megs too


BTW, can you set the priority of the video thread to low?  This will prevent a lot of choppiness with the menu animations.

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (geniusalz @ Jan 9 2004, 11:14 PM)

Too bad Blender doesn't do 3ds ... only VRML.  It's only 2.2 megs too BTW, can you set the priority of the video thread to low?  This will prevent a lot of choppiness with the menu animations.

Hmmm.... perhaps VRML format might give you the information you need. It's XML like, isn't it?

As for the choppiness, that's a side effect of loading the video files from the hard drive (bandwidth bugaboo) - The test skin gets bad when more than one preview video is opened at a time, and on my system it's particularly bad, because the drive is dying. Don't know that there's much ofa way to smooth it out, as the video is somewhat tied into the frame rendering anyway. I will be working on some of the image rendering stuff anyway...

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (boomboom @ Feb 27 2004, 03:16 AM)

BJ - I've been working on the UnleashX converter code some more, (I'll have a complete list of modifications needed to be 100% compatible with UnleashX skins).   I was wondering, though, if you could allow values greater than 1 for TU and TV?  That way, you can tile textures (think the background for UnleashX/MS Dash).

It would depend on my addressing mode, but you could try it out.... I may need to include the texture addressing mode in the ZPoint spec.

[boomboom]

What may be easy is to include tweens based on the passage of time.  You could tween the X-Y coordinates of the tiled texture.  This way, you wouldn't have to rotate the entire 3d object, but just alter the Y value of the texture:

Matrix uvmat = Matrix.Identity;
uvmat.Translate(0,slide,0);
dev.Transform.Texture0 = uvmat;
dev.TextureState[0].TextureTransform =
TextureTransform.Count2;
dev.SamplerState[0].AddressU = TextureAddress.Wrap;
dev.SamplerState[0].AddressV = TextureAddress.Wrap;

This would allow UnleashX type animation (normals on a sphere pointed inwards, sphere encloses viewport, texture spinning).

What fun!  I'm envious that you get to write this code!  Fun, fun, fun!