Animations are HARD! (3 Viewers)

CyberSimian

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    Recently I have been tweaking the "DefaultWide" skin to make it more to my liking. During this, I have noticed that animations do not seem to work correctly. Now I did have a problem trying to get the "rotate" animation to work in the TV and radio guides, but after re-reading the Wiki and trying different tag mark-up, I eventually stumbled upon the mark up that gave the desired result. So I am not convinced that there is/are bugs in the skin engine -- it seems more likely that I have not yet found the correct tag mark up to produce the result that I want.

    I tried both the "slide" animation, and the "fade" animation, and both have "quirks". To make it easier to see what was happening, I changed the background for the left side-bar menu to mid grey, and slowed down the slide action so that it took 5 seconds. I then took the following screen shots:

    (1) Panel before initiating the slide action.
    (2) Panel while the slide-on action is in progress.
    (3) Panel after the slide-on action has completed (side menu fully on screen).
    (4) Panel while the slide-off action is in progress.

    (1)_off_screen.jpg (2)_sliding_on.jpg (3)_on_screen.jpg (4)_sliding_off.jpg

    Screen shot (2) (slide on) shows that the sliding menu lies on top of the list of items and their channel icons. This is the outcome that I would expect. The screen shot that does not look right is screen shot (4) (slide-off), which shows that the list of items resides on top of the sliding menu. :eek:

    Is this an undocumented restriction in the skin engine, or is my tag mark-up incorrect? I can post a relevant XML extract if that would help. Thanks.

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    mm1352000

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    The screen shot that does not look right is screen shot (4) (slide-off), which shows that the list of items resides on top of the sliding menu. :eek:
    Are you sure it's not just transparency fooling you?
    The background of the sliding menu is opaque in screenshots 2 and 3, which makes it obvious that it's on top. However to my eye it still looks like the sliding menu is on top in screenshot 4 when the sliding menu background is somewhat transparent. "Layout: Big Icons List" text looks like it's rendered on top of the "BBC News HD" text, and the "news/current aff..." text which should be behind the sliding menu looks blurrier/duller than the "...airs (general)" part which is not.
     

    CyberSimian

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    Are you sure it's not just transparency fooling you?
    Thanks for looking. My intention had been to make the sliding background completely opaque. I have just checked the XML code, and the COLORDIFFUSE tag for the background has the value ff666666. If I have understood this correctly, 666666 gives the mid grey tone, and ff makes it completely opaque? Also, DIMCOLOR is set to ffffffff, which I think means that there is no change in brightness or opacity when the control does not have the focus?

    Also, in the "Big Icon List" layout, there is a folder icon immediately to the left of the channel name (see screen shot (1)), but those icons do not show through the background when the menu is sliding off (screen shot (4)).

    I wondered whether the order of the controls in the XML file dictated the order in which the controls were rendered on the screen, so I moved the definition of the sliding menu from the start (where it has always been) to the end, but it made no difference to the result. :(

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    wizard123

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    I wondered whether the order of the controls in the XML file dictated the order in which the controls were rendered on the screen, so I moved the definition of the sliding menu from the start (where it has always been) to the end, but it made no difference to the result. :(
    It does indeed dictate the render order, although this looks like your importing the facade at the end. Try moving the import of facade to before the action menu.
     

    CyberSimian

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    It does indeed dictate the render order
    Thank you for confirming this! (y)

    this looks like you are importing the facade at the end.
    I again tried moving the definition of the sliding menu to the end of the file, but it does not change the outcome. I guess that the animation must cause the render order to be modified in some way (such that the render order no longer corresponds to the order of the controls in the XML file). :confused:

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    ajs

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    I again tried moving the definition of the sliding menu to the end of the file, but it does not change the outcome. I guess that the animation must cause the render order to be modified in some way (such that the render order no longer corresponds to the order of the controls in the XML file)
    Try make changes and then quit from MP, clean cache and try again ...
     

    CyberSimian

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    Can you post your xml ?
    I have included some files in the attached ZIP file. I think that there is enough to display the "Recorded TV" panel, if you replace the relevant files in a skin of your choice. Apologies if I have missed any needed files.

    There are two new PNGs that should go in the "Media" folder. And I have not included my modified language file (so some of the text constants may differ from the screen shots in my first post). Finally, in the interests of "radio" support not falling behind "tv" support, I have merged "MyTvRecordedTv.xml" and "MyRadioRecorded.xml" into a single file "MyRecordings.xml", which is imported into the original files.

    Try make changes and then quit from MP, clean cache and try again ...
    One thing that I was pleased to see when I first started modifying skin files was that MP would pick up and use a modified skin file the next time that it was needed. :) No need to shutdown MP and then restart it each time a change was made. This makes testing skin changes very quick. (y) (I know that there are a few files where it is necessary to shutdown MP and restart.) However, I had not tried clearing the cache and restarting. I have just tried that, but with the same result as before. :(

    Thanks for looking at this. I am still learning about skin mark-up, so I have probably made some obvious error, but I cannot spot it. :cry:

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

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    ajs

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    No need to shutdown MP and then restart it each time a change was made
    I agree, but a lot of pictures, property expressions are cached at the start of the MP. And then the skin file may not display correctly.
     

    catavolt

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    Skin engine does the following:
    Opening a side menu sets it immediately in foreground.
    Closing a side menu sets it immediately in background.
    The effect you see comes from the long sliding time you used to open/close the menu - therefore the standard slide times are only about 70 milliseconds. ;)
     

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