Animation Sprite - graphics

I want to create a 2D sprite that mimic the provided image:
http://a4.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/069/Purple2/v4/e6/0d/73/e60d73a8-6d78-64c2-dd59-9aabb54c7837/mzl.ujapwanw.320x480-75.jpg
and create different face expressions as provided sprites to unity3d in order to create an android application has multiple face expressions with those sprites... so my question... is what exactly the software I might use through out this process ??
Please, let me know the simplest step-by-step procedures, as I am in my first steps in computer graphics.
Thanks a lot.

Image manipulation is what you are looking for. To modify the current image you have and generate other facial expressions from it, you need to be very good at math. Image manipulation is not a basic stuff and I hope you are not new to programming.
Now that you understand that, you need OpenCV to be able to do this. You need to make a wrapper for it in c#. You can get the already made wrapper [here].1 https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/21088 .It works on Windows,Mac, Android and iOS and will save you time. Its NOT free but the price is worth it compare to the time you will spend building the wrappers for all platforms.
Once you get this, you can start learning OpenCV from the following link.
http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/tutorials.html
http://opencv-srf.blogspot.com/
http://shervinemami.info/openCV.html
http://www.cs.iit.edu/~agam/cs512/lect-notes/opencv-intro/opencv-intro.html
If you the Unity plugin I mentioned, you can ask the author of the plugin to help you out if you are tuck.

Related

SharpDX multi-threading inside the game toolkit

I'm looking for an example of multi-threading implementation inside the game toolkit? I have the MultiCube example, but that is for WinForms and I use WPF, and I can't use the game toolkit tools from Direc3D11 because I need an instance of the GraphicsDevice. The MultiCube example is not displaying anything but a black screen, I tried it on several computers. My video card doesn't support command lists, don't know if that has anything to do with it. I was wondering how many models can SharpDX handle, because I have to draw hundreds of small
scaffold couplers, and after adding about a 100 on the default GraphicsDevice, the application slows down and gets locked. Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Haris
I was looking for the same thing but I couldn't find any examples. I tried converting the MultiCube example to use the toolkit and got it basically working, still very messy at the moment and needs optimizing, but at least it renders.
https://github.com/PlehXP/SharpDX-Samples/tree/MultiCubeToolkit/Toolkit/WindowsDesktop/MultiCube

real time refreshing in processing

I am new to processing, i found it by searching for "draw with coding" , and i tried it, seems every time i modify the code, i have to stop and render again to get the final result
Is there any way to get updated graph without re-rendering? that can be much more convenient for creating simple figures.
if not, is there any alternative to processing that can draw a graph with coding?
I've used Tikz in Latex, but that is just for Latex, I want something that can let me draw a figure by coding, I've suffered enough though using software like coreldraw, it lacks the fundamental elegance of coding..
thanks alot!
Please have a look at the FluidForms libraries.
easy to setup
documentation and video tutorials
as long as you don't run into exceptions, live code comfortably
if you prefix public variables with param you also get sliders for free :)
Do check out the video tutorials, especially this one:
Also, if using Python isn't a problem I recommend having a look at:
NodeBox
Field
Python is a brilliant scripting language - which makes prototyping/'live coding' easy(although it can be compiled and it also plays nicely with c/c++) and is easy to pick up and a joy to use.
In Processing, you must re-run your program to see the changes (graphically), unless you write code to receive input from the user to dynamically adjust what you are drawing. For creating user interfaces there's for example the controlP5 library (http://www.sojamo.de/libraries/controlP5/).
It doesn't support "live coding" (at least that I know of).
You must re-run the code to see the new result.
If Live coding is what you're looking for, check out Fluxus (http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/) or Impromptu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impromptu_(programming_environment)

Iphone Speech Bubble

It would be great if anyone could provide a tutorial or best approach to create a dynamic speech bubble in iphone. Here is the link of an application that already has a dynamic speech bubble built in - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bubble-up-free/id364054415?mt=8 . Since I am starting to develop applications in xcode I am not sure whether to approach this using quartz 2d or open GL etc.
http://www.uinnoblog.com/sms-bubble-ui-in-iphone-apps.html
The previous approach is not really the good one where you can use only one image and use the advantage of the stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth / topCapHeight according with a setAutoresizingMask:UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleLeftMargin of an UIImage allowing to stretch an image by its width and/or height without stretching all angles...
In that case, your speech bubble image will be smaller, you'll need only one (instead of 9) AND your code will be really smaller...
Here is good cocoa UI Component on GitHub: https://github.com/AlexBarinov/UIBubbleTableView

VB6 Game Development

I am developing a game in VB6 (plz don't ask me why :) ).
The storyboard is ready and a rough implementation is underway.
I am following a "pure-software-rendering" approach. (i.e. no DirectX, no openGL etc.)
Amongst many others, the following "serious" problems exist:
2D alpha transparency reqd. to implement overlays.
Parallax implementation to give depth-of-field illusion.
Capturing mouse-scroll events globally (as in FPS-es; mapping them to changing weapon).
Async sound play with absolute "near-zero-lag".
Any ideas anyone. Please suggest any well documented library/ocx or sample-code.
Plz do suggest solutions with good performance and as little overhead as possible.
Also, anyone who has developed any games,
and would be open to sharing her/his code would be highly appreciated.
(any well-acknowledged VB games whose source-code i can study??)
UPDATE: Here is a screen shot of GearHead Garage.
This picture ought to describe what i was attempting in words above... :)
(source: softwarepod.com)
EGL25 by Erkan Sanli is a fast open source VB 6 renderer that can render, rotate, animate, etc. complex solid shapes made of thousands of polygons. Just Windows API calls – no DirectX, no OpenGL.
(source: vbmigration.com)
VBMigration.com chose EGL25 as a high-quality open-source VB6 project (to demonstrate their VB6 to VB.Net upgrade tool).
Despite that, and despite my opinion that VB6 is often criticised too harshly, I can't help thinking there must be better options for game development in 2010?
You may want to check out the Game Programming Wiki -- it used to be "Lucky's VB Game Site" (and we're talking a LONG time ago) but all of the content (VB5/6 centric) moved to the Wiki with the addition of other languages.
It appears that much of the legacy VB6 content is still available on the site.
Have a look at DxIce : http://gamedev.digiapp.com/
I think you will find no well-acknowledged written games in VB6 for precisely the reasons you state above.
It was not designed to be a high performance language. For that you NEED to use the graphics libraries (DirectX, OpenGL) you said you didn't want to use unless you want to BitBLT everything yourself using API calls which is probably not going to get what you need.
VB6 is interpreted, outdated, and I'd be surprised if it runs on Windows 7.
I think you need to seriously re-evaluate the methodology here.
For audio playback, I have used http://www.fmod.org/ in the past. This, and other libraries like BASS, are only free for non-commercial use. I also suggest avoiding the built-in multimedia playback object.

What would you recommend to do simple 2D Graphics?

I want to build a program that will (as part of what it's doing) display lines organically growing and interacting horizontally across the screen. Here's a sample image, just imagine the lines sprouting from the left and growing to the right:
The lines would look like the lines used on Google Maps Transit Overlay or OnNYTurf's transit pages.
It's a personal project, so I'm open to just about any language and library combination. But I don't know where to start. What have you used in the past to create graphics that are similar to this? What would you recommend? I want it to run on Windows without any extras needed (.Net is fine), and it doesn't have to run elsewhere. I needs to run as an actual program, not javascript in the browser.
There's obviously no 'right' answer to this, but the purpose isn't to start an argument about X better than Y but rather just find a list of graphics toolkits that do simple 2D graphics that people recommend because of their ease of use or community or whatever.
Processing may be just the tool for you.
Like you said, there are many ways to tackle this problem. Me personally, being it is a windows based project, I would go with the .NET based implementation utilizing WPF. There are tutorials on how to use the 2D drawing feature out there ( http://www.wpftutorial.net/DrawOnPhysicalDevicePixels.html for one ) Again, there is no right answer here. I might also pick some new technology and let your project be a mechanism to learn something new, providing you do not have a looming deadline.

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