The Movement

Here is the video I promised in my last post. It displays a basic example of movement applied to OpenGL Jewels.



In this video we can appreciate two different effects, Shake and Movement (A.K.A. Run baby run!). Both created for testing purposes, in the final version they will be much more slower and ubiquitous. However, I've accelerated them for the video :-)


These days I've been working on the Design Tool used to create and personalize the Jewels. In the next post I'll talk about it and display a few screenshots or even a video of the Jewel creation process.

Back to the Origins

After the stop brought by the mid-term presentation day, I'm back!

These past days I've been playing around with the graphic layer of Ambient Jewelry. The result: I switch to OpenGL. One of the main reasons for doing this, is because of the lack of documentation in "normal drawing" and the lack of "cool" efects. If you have a really great software but is completely undocumented, it's worth nothing. So, after seeing the amount of tutorials and howtos that uses OpenGL, apart from the power of using the GPU. I consider this a good change.

Finally I got some OpenGL based Jewels with a 3D tetrahedron:




In the next post I'll upload a video showing some movements performed by the Jewels :-)

From now on, I'll focus on the Designer Tool and how the creation process is going to work.

One GEM to rule them all

Hi folks!

After a few days of headaches because of C++ pointer issues, now, I can say I have all the interface joined together. As the title of this entry says "One GEM to rule them all" all the interface windows are joint together under the main program on the system tray icon.

I took a moment to reboot on Windows Vista and take some pictures for the ocasion:


And its equivalent on Linux under KDE:



That big white and blue striped bubble is the first animated Gem with a basic and hypnotic effect. Not to overload this post with images, I'll put just one more to show the Design Tool Window and the Gem List Window. The Design Tool will be used to design the Gems, that is, apply the effects and transitions to the different actions. On the other hand, the Gem List Window will be the main window where all the Gems loaded and unloaded will be. From this window you'll be able to manage all your contact's Gems.



I must say that this windows are just mock ups and probably they wont have the same aspect in future versions.

I'd like to use this last lines to thank Mike for helping me understand C++ and its pointers :-) He ended up my last two days of headaches because of scope problems... now I can find another ones ;-)