Fading in/out an entire Node?

darkfrog · August 19, 2006, 1:24pm

Perhaps this is a simple question, but the answer eludes me on this Saturday morning. :) How do I fade in/out an entire Node with various objects in the node that I also want to fade at the same rate?

darkfrog · August 20, 2006, 2:34am

I'm beginning to wonder if this is even possible at all without making changes to the underlying spatials?

dtaylorjr · September 4, 2006, 5:36pm

there may also be a way to use multitexturing to do this. will probably need to look into this more.

llama · September 4, 2006, 5:45pm

Hm somehow missed this thread before. Some of the RenderPasses we currently have can force a RenderState for all object rendered, so perhaps you can take some inspiration from that code.

darkfrog · September 4, 2006, 6:15pm

I'll have to look into that, thanks!

dtaylorjr · September 22, 2006, 2:09am

Hi,

If anyone is still looking into this, I found an easy way to fade a Mesh. Basically all you have to do is call setDefaultColor(r, g, b, a) on the mesh with the appropriate alpha value. I'm not sure if it is expensive to keep setting the default color, but it should work. Also, one note. If you try to setDefaultColor on a SharedMesh, make sure the backing TriMesh is not locked. So, I guess you do sacrifice some performance, since you can't lock the meshes.

Thanks for the help,

Dana

MrCoder · September 22, 2006, 8:13am

and still, you would need to go through all spatials and set them up to make use of vertex colors…

darkfrog · September 24, 2006, 3:51pm

This could be very useful. I look forward to seeing this.

dtaylorjr · October 7, 2006, 7:55pm

Well, I'm finally done. I have a really cool text effect system coded with a reusable Controller that translates, and a reusable Controller that fades the text. We can add more controllers for more effects later. Let me know if you want me to post the source or a demo. Also, I named the Text object CoolText. Not sure if that is a good name for it. Perhaps it should be called EffectText or something instead.

Thanks,

Dana

darkfrog · October 8, 2006, 12:26pm

What all does it do?

dtaylorjr · October 9, 2006, 12:11am

It does everything described in the previous post (ie - a text managerthat loads a .fon file, converts all the letters to Quads.,

Sfera · October 10, 2006, 8:11am

do you have any screenshots or a demo?

i30817 · October 16, 2006, 9:21am

I could really use something like that soon. Thanks.

dtaylorjr · October 16, 2006, 12:44pm

I'm just cleaning up my code now. I also need to create a few demos before it can be released. So, hopefully this next weekend I'll post the code, and some examples (demos) for it. Not sure where I'll post it - (I think you can only post text on this forum, and you must link to everything else).

dtaylorjr · October 31, 2006, 8:11pm

the sample jar with beta java source, and classes can be found at this URL:

www.geocities.com/danataylorjr@sbcglobal.net/sampleFiles/TextEffects.jar

basically just include this jar with the rest of the JME jar files. (this jar file should only be used for testing, since i am not sure if it is legal to distribute generated fonts. although you think it should be legal, otherwise it would be illegal to print a piece of paper.)

I have included 3 test classes to test the code:

com.jmetest.effects.text.TestFade

com.jmetest.effects.text.TestRotation

com.jmetest.effects.text.TestCenterRotation

notes: 1: i am not sure what the legal status is of using generated font files is in your own work (so be careful)

2. i still have some bugs in the font spacing (some fonts do not appear to be spaced correctly). the font spacing math is definitly wrong, but appears to work with most fonts.

Happy Halloween