How to glow effect on visualizer

[Yincognito]

so you could even make it like a light-saber ... that responding to the music lol there are many way's to use the glow :P

Yeah, something like:

Code: Select all

[Bar]
X=40
Y=40
Meter=Shape
Shape=Rectangle 0,0,[Frame],4 | Fill Color 255,0,0,255 | StrokeWidth 40 | Stroke RadialGradient GlowGradient
GlowGradient=0,0,0,0,([Frame]/2+20+[Frame]/5),(4/2+20) | 255,0,0,255 ; 0.0 | 255,0,0,0 ; 1.0
DynamicVariables=1

Replace [Frame] with any measure value (preferably an incrementing one, so you can notice how it looks at different sizes) and you'll get this:

Shape Glow.png

Not perfect, since an ellipse cannot approximate a rectangle properly and Rainmeter can do only linear and gradial gradients and not gradients that "follow along" a variable shape, but still, much better than using a single color, right?

[Yincognito]

Right, indeed. Its name have been written as Visbubble (not VisBubble, as I'm used with it), so I didn't realize this is the skin.

Oh, I didn't even notice that difference, all I saw was that it started with a capital letter and been a regularly used skin name, so...
It's not a problem anyway.

P.S. By the way, thanks for sharing your approach on a rotating globe a while ago, I just made mine using a similar Bitmap meter (a 105840 x 294 px TIFF file at roughly 60 MB).

[Yincognito]

lol other thing this looks like cylon or night rider effect :P if you could move it from left to right lol

Yeah, it's the cyclonic Yincognito night rider effect... Buyaka!

[balala]

Oh, I didn't even notice that difference, all I saw was that it started with a capital letter and been a regularly used skin name, so...
It's not a problem anyway.

Yep, for me this was enough to not realize what skin is the OP talking about.

P.S. By the way, thanks for sharing your approach on a rotating globe a while ago, I just made mine using a similar Bitmap meter (a 105840 x 294 px TIFF file at roughly 60 MB).

Not sure which approach are you talking about, but I'm glad if I helped.
Have you tried your skin with and without Hardware acceleration? Because here on the forum seems that there are some cases when the Hardware acceleration creates problems on my RotatingGlobe, so I'd be curious if it does for you as well.

[Yincognito]

Not sure which approach are you talking about, but I'm glad if I helped.
Have you tried your skin with and without Hardware acceleration? Because here on the forum seems that there are some cases when the Hardware acceleration creates problems on my RotatingGlobe, so I'd be curious if it does for you as well.

By your approach I mean using the number of the frame in a Bitmap meter to display the Earth, instead of using separate frame images. The former is very light on the CPU compared to the latter (despite the huge size of the TIFF image, at 105840 x 294 and 60 MB with TIFF compression), and I'm not even mentioning the fact that it doesn't overwork the HDD like the latter. Basically there's almost no difference between the CPU usage without the rotating Earth compared to with the rotating Earth.

I run Rainmeter with Hardware Acceleration disabled, and I didn't experience any issues whatsoever. But I did enable Hardware Acceleration after reading your reply, and it indeed looks there are some issues with it, as the image / skin dissapears after a couple of frames are shown. Of course, since the rotation is endless, those few frames reappear after the rotation is 360 degrees complete, but then the rest of them dissapear again. I suppose there's a limit to how wide can be an image while using Hardware Acceleration, that's the only explanation I can think of for the skin only displaying the first few frames from a Bitmap meter.

In any case, this isn't a code problem, it's a Rainmeter one, so for sure I won't change the approach for something that works without Hardware Acceleration just because enabling it is a bit buggy.

the lose gif variant doesn't have that... balala...

Yeah, but you can't display an animated GIF in Rainmeter unless you extract its frames beforehand, or you add them to a Bitmap meter. My point is that directly using a GIF doesn't work in Rainmeter. One way or another, you still get to the 2 options I mentioned above, just liked stated by the manual as well.

[balala]

By your approach I mean using the number of the frame in a Bitmap meter to display the Earth, instead of using separate frame images. The former is very light on the CPU compared to the latter (despite the huge size of the TIFF image, at 105840 x 294 and 60 MB with TIFF compression), and I'm not even mentioning the fact that it doesn't overwork the HDD like the latter. Basically there's almost no difference between the CPU usage without the rotating Earth compared to with the rotating Earth.

I run Rainmeter with Hardware Acceleration disabled, and I didn't experience any issues whatsoever. But I did enable Hardware Acceleration after reading your reply, and it indeed looks there are some issues with it, as the image / skin dissapears after a couple of frames are shown. Of course, since the rotation is endless, those few frames reappear after the rotation is 360 degrees complete, but then the rest of them dissapear again. I suppose there's a limit to how wide can be an image while using Hardware Acceleration, that's the only explanation I can think of for the skin only displaying the first few frames from a Bitmap meter.

In any case, this isn't a code problem, it's a Rainmeter one, so for sure I won't change the approach for something that works without Hardware Acceleration just because enabling it is a bit buggy.

Yes, Bitmap meters are not too much used I suppose. The less CPU usage and required hard-drive space are stated into the advantages and disadvantages of the two methods in the Animated .GIF Files Tip & Trick.

Yeah, but you can't display an animated GIF in Rainmeter unless you extract its frames beforehand, or you add them to a Bitmap meter. My point is that directly using a GIF doesn't work in Rainmeter. One way or another, you still get to the 2 options I mentioned above, just liked stated by the manual as well.

It does work, GIF is a perfectly valid format in Rainmeter, only the animation is not supported. If you directly use an animated GIF in Rainmeter, it shows the first frame.

[Yincognito]

It does work, GIF is a perfectly valid format in Rainmeter, only the animation is not supported. If you directly use an animated GIF in Rainmeter, it shows the first frame.

Yep, that's what I meant. If you disregard the fact that you have to arrange the frames in the Bitmap image file (a tedious process if the animation is longer, although it can be partially automated in Photoshop), one can in theory play an entire movie like this, something that dvo had questions about in another thread. You can use TIFF files if the size of the image is too big and the PNG format can't handle it, or you can use multiple Bitmap meters or even dynamically changing the BitmapImage option's value in a single Bitmap meter to achieve that.

Before (static desktop):

Static Desktop.jpg

After (dynamic desktop):

ezgif.com-optimize.gif

No 500 MB Wallpaper Engine needed, the 2 MB Rainmeter is enough.

[balala]

You can use TIFF files if the size of the image is too big and the PNG format can't handle it,

Is there a size limit for the PNGs? I'm not aware of such a limit, but this means nothing.

[Yincognito]

Is there a size limit for the PNGs? I'm not aware of such a limit, but this means nothing.

Yeah, Photoshop, in which I designed the 3D Earth from 3 flat maps (the proper blue marble map, the NASA elevation / bump map and the clouds transparency map) complained that if either the horizontal resolution or the vertical one is above 30 000 px, it won't be "compatible" with "older" software, and only the PSB (Large Document Format), DDS (I have a plugin for that), RAW (Photoshop RAW) and TIFF formats were available for save. Fortunately, TIFF was supported by Rainmeter and proved to be just the right "big" format to save the file to - had to check Save Transparency and choose the appropriate compression (I tested to see which ones had the least CPU impact in Rainmeter and apparently LZW and Discard Layers offered a good balance between compression and the resources needed to read the file, although the rest didn't fare bad either) and that was it.

[Yincognito]

btw the wallpaper engine isn't that big... i should have some in my backup some ware

300+ MB without the "projects". The default projects are around 150 MB.