Picture Effect

[kevinp]

Has any thought been given about adding a 3rd axis (Z) to the start and end position of the picture effect?  I could see some neat effects (racing towards or away) using images.  A 3rd axis to the text effect could open up a whole new dimension too instead of a 2D flat surface.

I had this thought while playing with a single png of the Star Wars logo and the picture effect today on a matrix and wanting it to zoom away like in the opening, without going through the process of converting a movie file into hundreds of images using ffmpeg.

Only a thought, as I have no clue about the math behind a 3rd axis.

[flyinverted]

On the conference chat last night, I was surprised to hear Dave Pitts say that the opengl(?) library that is used by xLights does support the third axis. It's been there all along, but no real reason to implement it yet.

[bpducman]

Sounds like some neat effects to me

[Gilrock]

Currently opengl is not used to render any of the effects.  I've thought about it yes.  The problem is it becomes difficult to provide the user an interface to specify the motion they want.  There are full blown programs that are dedicated to things like that.  I used to have one called Cool3D.  You can't just specify a Z axis it would need to be X,Y,Z positions for all four corners of the image.  Otherwise all you really need is a start scale value and an end scale value.  But if you want to tilt back and/or rotate images you need a lot more settings.

[kevinp]

Otherwise all you really need is a start scale value and an end scale value.

A start and stop scale number/percentage would accomplish what I was describing.  I'll put it on my Christmas list to Santa for this coming year unless I find out where to send the beer money to in the mean time.