reflections

[perry59]

Still more poking around in studio and the api spec and dont see any mention
of a capability for reflections (i.e. casting a reflection of some other object on the sage screen). So I take it this is not yet possible? Has anyone else desired such a capability or attempted to implement such?

[GKusnick]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but you can access the classes and methods in java.lang.reflect the same way you'd access any other Java classes from Studio. What that has to do with displaying things on the Sage screen I'm not sure.

If you're talking about printing out object values for debugging purposes, one way to do that is via the DebugLog function in the Global API. Or you could take a look at gkusnick.util.Log in my Studio Tools package. Use a console window see the debug log output in real time.

Or is this question about something else entirely that I'm just not getting?

[MeInMaui]

I think the OP is asking about a function to draw the reflection of an image/object on screen (as in a reflection on a shiny surface).

Sage doesn't have a built-in function for this, but it is an interesting idea.

I think I would like the more generic ability to set a transparency gradient and the displayed orientation (in degrees) of UI elements. Then on-the-fly addition of reflections could easily be programmed, but lots more could be done as well.

Aloha,
Mike

[GKusnick]

Sorry, I guess all the talk of "casting", "objects", and "reflection" made me think this was an OOP question, not an image-manipulation question.

For the latter, there's GetImageAsBufferedImage and GetScaledImageAsBufferedImage in the Utility API. Once you have a BufferedImage, there's all kinds of stuff you can do with it in java.awt.image.

But I'm not sure that doing these sorts of manipulations on the fly is an efficient way to use the Sage rendering engine. I'd be worried about filling up the image cache with a bunch of redundant transforms. If you know at design time what transforms you want, it's probably better to do them in advance in Photoshop and save them as reusable image files, rather than generating them on the fly at runtime.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

But I'm not sure that doing these sorts of manipulations on the fly is an efficient way to use the Sage rendering engine. I'd be worried about filling up the image cache with a bunch of redundant transforms. If you know at design time what transforms you want, it's probably better to do them in advance in Photoshop and save them as reusable image files, rather than generating them on the fly at runtime.

I agree with you that photoshop is the way to go if possible, but I was thinking along the lines of generating reflections for album/DVD cover art and the such, where you don't have access to the specific image up front. I would hope that the reflection effect could be handled without having to load additional copies of images into the image cache. I was thinking of new property settings for panel widgets (and maybe image/text/item widgets as well) applied along similar lines to the gradient property. UI object(s) to be reflected (or references to them) could be placed within a panel widget and the transparency gradient, gradient angle, and orientation angle could be set via the panel's properties.

I'm just thinking out loud. Thanks for the java.awt.image tip. I'll have to check that out.

Aloha,
Mike

[perry59]

Yes, I should choose my words a little more carefully when talking to .NET guys, where "reflection" and "casting" have entirely different meanings!
I think Mike has a great idea if it could be implemented in the core. To have a panel where you could set a transparency gradient, orientation etc. Im sure would be far less taxing on the cpu than actually doing something like ray tracing an existing image.

The reason I even ask about this is I figure the best way to learn studio is jump right in head first (after reading the studio manual and doing the tutorials) So Im trying to create my own STV which would duplicate my favorite theme from a different htpc program. I figure if I can pull this off then I will be reasonably up to speed with studio.
Thanks for the help guys !