GIF background

[Duskrider]

Hummmm.......

You know what would be cool?
...if we could use active gifs as Hal backgrounds.

The jukebox in background would have lights flashing,
or we could have active waterfall,
or have a breathng dog beside Hal,
etc, etc.

? ? ? ? ?



..........Hey, just remember we don't understand "impossible".

[markofkane]

Oh, yeah!! But I don't know if Robert could make it work, because it's basically a haptek product, is it not?? Of course I could be wrong.

I dream of a haptek character outside the window, too. Why can't they get out once in awhile??

If anyone can make a gif work as a background, that would be awesome!!

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by markofkane
I dream of a haptek character outside the window, too. Why can't they get out once in awhile??

I don't know how haptek works, but it might be easier to have the hal window actually be the screen, and have Hal handle the desktop icons. Rather than asking Haptek to handle the desktop wallpaper, icon images etc.

Presenting a 3d graphics area is complicated, but once done, new objects can usually be added fairly easily. Usually easier than making new 3d areas.

[markofkane]

You are giving me  ideas. what if the fullbody haptars could move desktop icons with their hands???

Oh, I wish I knew how.[]

[freddy888]

It's possible to change the background image constantly, thus doing the same thing as a gif.  It would probably be easiest to script a looping background from within Hal as I don't think Haptek Hypertext handles loops.

I had a movie file of a lightning strike which I was able to play within the Haptek player behind a character.  To do that you need to first convert your movie file to seperate frames then use a timed script to load each one in at the same frame rate as the original was.

Food for thought..

[PaleRider]

That would be nice active Gif's in Hal's window .
Sounds like a big Job to do. Did Sandee ask you for this
Duskey she do's have great imagination ?
There are such good idea's on this forum .
If I only knew how to do it ,but i don't so on my wish list
it will go.[]

[markofkane]

The frames would not be a problem. You can save individual frames as Jpegs  in animation shop.(in paint shop pro 8 )or another animation program.

The problem is a suitable animation. It would have to be only a few frames and look well in a loop.

Somebody else could take care of the script.[]

[freddy888]

Mark, you're right, the main problem is the size (bytes) of each frame.  Whilst Haptek Player can load in frames really quickly you can end up with a large assortment of frames.

My lightning experiment used a folder full of individual frames which added up to about 9MB (225 frames in total).  That was just for a few seconds of animation.  I'm sure you could reduce the size by saving out more compressed images though.   For a less detailed background this might work quite well.

One other thing to note is that loading backgrounds repeatedly can slow the rest of the player functions down.