Beginner Help

[Sphynx]

Hey guys,
I'm new here and a total noob.
I can't code (that is done by another guy) - I'm more the artist/concept guy.

I'd like to know what is and what is not possible with the CEGUI.
E.g. Would it be possible to create a GUI like that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loUDwDKzSXI
(sorry - for that crappy vid - isn't mine)

Lots of animation, a film running in the background, etc..

Speaking of animations - if it's possible how would they be made (e.g. the buttons floating in).
Thanks for your help.

[CrazyEddie]

Hi, and welcome

Everything is possible, it's a matter of time and effort

CEGUI currently has pretty much no built in support for animation, although various effects are very possible with some effort - although this currently means coding in one form or another

As a quick example of some animated CEGUI windows, see: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QOX_0DTD918
This video is using UIAE which enables animating via CEGUI::Window properties and uses XML to specify the animations.

See also, http://www.cegui.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2761

So, yes, it's possible, some effort is likely required though.

CE.

[Sphynx]

Hi Eddie and thanks for your first help.

What interests me most is how the artist/gfx type approach would be.
Some examples:
Moving stuff- e.g. I click a button and the button zooms out or to another place.
Or an animated glow when I hover a button.
Or a movie running in the background.
etc.
I mean - one could hardly "code the movie". I suppose one would have a movie file (of a certain filetype) and that gets loaded into a box/container or something like that, no?

[CrazyEddie]

I'm not sure there's a simple way to approach this for a graphics/artist perspective. As I said, there is no built-in animation support; this means animation support must be provided in external code.

To move stuff, like in the button scenario, you would maintain state - such as the starting location, the destination location, and then move the button by changing it's position (via setPosition or whatever) a certain amount according to the speed that the button is to move and the total time elapsed since the last frame that was drawn (i.e. the previous call to System::renderGUI()).

There are a couple of potential approaches to animated imagery. The CEGUI based solution would be to have your button skin defined in such a way that the CEGUI::Images that make up the button are fetched from user properties. Within your Imageset you would have a set of images that make up the frames of the animation. Within your main loop you would then have an update function that would set the properties defining the images to the appropriate animation frame image according to time elapsed.

A movie running in the background would be done by rendering the movie output to a texture and using that texture as the basis for an Imageset, which is then used as the image on a StaticImage (does not have to be, but that's just for an example).

The above is what I mean by 'code'. Some of this was wrapped up into the UIAE which I linked to previously, and things such as movement can be specified in XML (I'm not sure of the full details, I did not write the thing!), although it's now apparent that the UIAE code is not easily available. I'll be checking towards the weekend if I have a copy of UIAE, the license, compatibility with the latest CEGUI and perhaps making a download available.

CE.