2D character edit /create application - animation

I want to make an application(to run on windows) for creating or editing 2d characters.
I want to transform the outline, change color/components.
Which libraries do i need? In which platform can i program?

There are many options:
i would suggest using C# with XNA framework (it is built for 2d & 3d animation).
there are many tutorials around here is one with 2d development explained.

Related

VR 3D Drawing Game From Scratch

I'm currently doing a personal project to make a VR drawing game in which you can draw a 3D image in your surrounding. I have very little experience with visual studio and unity which i am using currently. Does anyone have suggestions on what i can do to get going in the right direction?
I've currently been looking online for tutorials and making a 'Frankenstein' code using what i have found. I can only do 2D drawing currently and have yet to implement VR. I can send out my current code if it would be helpful.
There was an easy to start demo in the internet like 1 or 2 years ago, but I can't find it right now. But I'd suggest you look out for it. Perhaps it even was the official unity demo. That demo already had the motion input covered and some basic functions. Good Luck on your project.
You find a good tutorial here:
https://unity3d.com/de/learn/tutorials/topics/xr/getting-started-vr-development
And some resources here:
https://unity3d.com/de/learn/tutorials/topics/virtual-reality/resources-getting-started-vr
That is maybe a pretty complicated project to start with. But I think you should be able to draw lines in 3D with generating meshes at runtime, that are rotated to the viewer, or the hand. So you generate or spawn some Sprites at your controller/digital-hand position, rotate them so they face to the viewer and scale them accordingly.

Procedurally generated GUI

I've developed an interactive audio visualization engine. I need to make its GUI scalable to various screen sizes with various PPIs (this includes both very large screens and mobile devices). Designer simply sent me a PSD with graphical representation of supported widgets. I'm exporting these into PNGs. The problem is that those bitmaps are of course not scalable and looks ugly.
I've thought about several ways how to achieve resolution and PPI independent GUI:
Export PNGs with various sizes and select the current set on runtime (waste of space simply for storing bitmaps in various resolutions)
Use scale 9 images only (no fancy stuff)
Use SVG (not supported by rendering APIs, could use smth like nanovg for OpenGL but what to do with raw framebuffer then?, also performance problems and too much complexity for what I need)
I came to an idea to pregenerate bitmaps at runtime for specific device once and use them afterwards. Are there any specific libraries for that and maybe already available themes which I could employ for now? I imagine tool could work similarly to how cairo graphics library or javascript canvas work by reading command list and outputting a bitmap. Any other ideas?
One possible solution is this:
CPlayer is a procedural graphics player with an IMGUI toolkit. It can
be used for anything from quick demos, prototyping graphics apps, to
full-fledged apps and games.
http://luapower.com/cplayer.html

How do I do simple 3D in XNA on Windows Phone 7

I'm a newbie to 3D on WP7. All I want to do is nice simple 3D
A. Add/Draw a number of coloured primitives, cube and spheres etc. to a 3D world
B. Rotate the World x, y and/or z
That's it, nothing else. I don't need any collision detection, I don't need any clever physics I don't need any textures or backgrounds or anything else, just that nice and simple.
I've been through about a gazillion examples on various websites and they all obscure the basics with bloated code and objects that I just don't want. I don't want any marble or spaceship examples, just some nice clean, clear code.
I have Blender to create the 3D models and these will be simple models with no textures. just solid basic 3D objects.
Please don't point me to anything that's based on a game which every example I have already found is.
Oh and please only examples that actually work.
Well the best way to do 3D on Windows Phone 7 is to use XNA which is generally associated with games which isn't the whole truth. You can still build traditional applications using XNA, although it might take you longer to construct your ui as opposed to silverlight.
You should probably check out App Hub from Microsoft as there are a ton of samples, in fact they have a category specifically for 3D. Keep in mind since your just starting you should make an attempt to understand the examples there giving you. Even though code you see for the first time might seem like bloated or extra code, there actually necessary components to consider when developing 3D applications.
At any rate, this example goes over the basics of 3D using XNA on Windows Phone 7.
EDIT: If you don't want to use XNA, there's this question that was asked previously. There's a couple of solutions for using 3D in silverlight.

3d software for real time character animation

My company is considering creating a interactive advisor(3d) for our customer. I was trying to find appropriate software for 3d modeling of human figure (realistic).
We are taken into consideration two approaches.
First option is to use one of the 3d modeling software for a creating model and the with help of some internal scripting language animate the model. The software should act as rendering server because 3d model should be reacting on user action in some way. Therefore we are considering applications that has some kind of scripting language.
The second option is to use 3d modeling software to create a character and then animate it with OpenSceneGraph.
There is also the hard way: do it all with OpenGL but I do not think it is a right way.
The project is at a very early stage of negotiations but I have to collect some knowledge to realize if its even possible to do that is such way. Therefore I have few questions:
Is it possible to use a software like Cinema 4d/Maya/Blender to animate in real time single character?
Which software would be the best to model a character (price is not an issue, what matter is rendering speed and very good 'realitness'). We are considering Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender or ZBrush, Poser, 3DMax (however last three does not have scripting language as far as I know).
Can OpenSceneGraph can be easily use for animating any character from software listed above?
As you can see the main issue is 3d software and question if it is possible at all :). I appreciate all suggestions.
Thank you in advanced.
The probably best way to do this is using a 3D game engine, like the CryEngine3 (it's free for noncommercial projects) or the Unreal3 engine. Technically you're interested in only the character animation, but you'll need sophisticated material and lighting support in addition for multi layered shaders. Those engines can do it.
3D Modelling programs like you suggested are not optimized for realtime rendering. Although Blender has a game engine built in with quite thorough shader support it may a bit hard to get started with it. But for modelling the character and get a high quality preview it's very well suited.
Is it possible to use a software like Cinema 4d/Maya/Blender to animate in real time single character?
The realtime rendering of each of those programs is meant as preview, not the final product. Blender has the game engine, but this is not optimized for such kind of things.
Which software would be the best to model a character (price is not an issue, what matter is rendering speed and very good 'realitness'). We are considering Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender or ZBrush, Poser, 3DMax (however last three does not have scripting language as far as I know).
Scripting helps you only so much with animating a character. You'll also need tons of reference and pose data from which the animation system can blend together the expression.
Can OpenSceneGraph can be easily use for animating any character from software listed above?
Not really. Use a game engine instead if you want to get this done fast. Take a look at the CryEngine3 gallery. And like said: The SDK is free if this is noncommercial. If the program goes commercial you'll require a licence though.
1.- http://www.thepixelart.com/10-best-real-time-animation-tools/
2.- I use Zbrush with 3D Studio Max. Combining those programs you can model a character really fast
Those 3 you mentioned (Zbrush, 3DMax & Poser) actually have script languages
Zbrush => ZScript
3DMax => MaxScript
Poser => Using Python => http://d3d.sesseler.de/store/tutorial/run_python/RunPython.pdf
3.- No idea on this :)
Luxology Modo is a very good option for your needs.

Windows Phone 7 indoor maps control

I am developing an application for Windows Phone 7 which needs to display indoor maps. This is my first app for WP7. It should be fast and beautiful (with sliding animations, etc).
I see following ways to implement it:
Movable canvas with polygons on it, but the sliding is quite slow as I will have about 500 polygons
Implement backbuffer bitmap, but memory could be a problem.
Implement own custom tiledlayer, but it's not so fast to implement.
Use built-in map control and customize it somehow, but I am not sure if it's possible
And a common problem with all these solutions, but last one is that I have to implement sliding and zooming myself.
Are there any controls for such stuff? And if not and built-in map customization is not an option, what's the best way to implement sliding like in Bing maps. I've done it on winmob 6 by writing some formulas, but I guess there should be a better way in WP7.
Depending on how you set your images up, you could take a look at the DeepZoomContainer on CodePlex. It has a WP7 control. You could also build your own version using the MultiScaleImage class. A good tip when it comes to manually animating in Silverlight is to user the object's transforms rather than directly setting their Canvas position properties (e.g. Canvas.SetLeft()). The reason for this is is because the transforms are done on the GPU, making them much faster. If relevant, you can also use storyboards for fixed animations as these are also run on the GPU.

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