Surface Object

[Gibbon]

HI Looki, what happens when you "load a file"? Does this add the file into a new image slot? or compeltly right off all other images and put this in as 0? or something else, im getting mixed results whilst trying to work our which it is?

Im looking for a simple way to load a png with a transparent background (but an image in the middle) fill the transparent background with a colour (not effecting the image inthe middle) and then saving back out? How easily can i do this?

Thanks
Andy

[Looki]

Hi,

Loading a file will, like all actions below the last -------- separator in the actions menu (unless you don't use the Surface 1.5 beta which has been out for ages!), affect the current image slot (editing image). Loading an image never creates a new image, it merely modifies the editing image.

What you want to do can be done like so:

Load image
Add image with size (Width(), Height())
Set editing image to 1
Clear with red
Blit > Onto the surface > Image > 0
Save to file


Note: If you ever need to blit from alpha-channel images to alpha-channel images (i.e. not blitting onto solid background like here), you have to set this:
Blit > Transparency > Set alpha mode > 2 ("Compose alpha")

[Gibbon]

Ok thanks looki that's great. It really is an amazing extension and so powerful. I hope you continue the excellent support and its future.

One last question is what's the main differences to set current image and set editing image?

Thanks
Andy

[LB]

The current image is the one that is displayed, the editing image is the one that you are editing.

[Looki]

I should have called current image "display image". Makes more sense. Maybe I will rename it sometime! I hope to release a new Surface version sometime.

[Gibbon]

Thats fine, makes sense once you know.

Ok, one more issue & im sure im doing this correct but i cant seem to get it to work. I decided to use a seperate surface for each layer, but these are to be created at runtime. To determind which layer to "edit" i assign each surface a Alterable Value at time of creation, but for some reason im getting odd results such as: The first surface just seems to get the newly assigned alterable value as apposed to the newly created surface. Is thre anything that needs to be done to surface when creating at runtime?

NOTE: Fixed, well im not sure if its something i dont understand but it works fine if when i "create" object, i DONT set it relevent to another surface object, if i specify coords it works.

NOTE2: One more thing i have noticed since doing this, i seem to be able to have as many surface objects at runtime that i can paint, blit ETC onto without much slow down at all, but the minute i "load an image" into one, it becomes very very slow? Why is this, is there a work-around?

continued...
Ive basically noticed when i load large images thats what kills it and its just unfortunate that what im tryign to do is just that, at a minimum i only want to load one large image, large being 2000x2000. When i do this it seems to take the FPS from 50 (max) to 20 - 30, any other work on the surface then decreases to below 20's somtimes dips to below 10's. Is there an efficient way to laod a large image into memory without it then killing the application FPS?

Thanks
Andy

Thanks
Andy

[Gibbon]

Hi looki, dont want to double post but just thought i would bring this to your attention as you may be able to shed some light

http://community.clickteam.com/showthread.php?t=79250&p=584938#post584938

Thanks
Andy

[Gibbon]

Hi Looki, i hope your not getting annoyed with the posts, im sure it looks like im just having a big moan but im not, im just trying to learn about the surface / help find any issues.

So after lots of debugging and trying to find out why my software goes from 300+ FPS down to 20/30 ive got to the bottom of it.

In a nut shell, having a surface MOVING over another creates the big drop. If i load in an image into 1 surface (even one that is 4000x4000) and load a small 100x100 into another one that follows the mouse, it drops to about 40 from 300 (on this machine) when it moves over the other surface.

Note: also noticed its the same if i replace the big surface to an active picture, same FPS drop when surface moves over picture.

Is this a bug or fact (really hope not), or is there a work around?

Thanks
Andy

[LB]

The Surface object uses MMF2's own surfaces via the MMF2 API. At this point I'm pretty confident that the answer you'll get from Looki is that it is MMF2 and not his code.

Try the same experiment with sub-applications and see what happens.

[Looki]

Hi,

That's most likely MMF's background saving routine. I didn't code the part that renders the Surface, I just pass the image to MMF. As I said in the other thread, try rendering with HWA. Plus, if your images aren't transparent, then try unchecking "Transparent" in the Surface's display settings.