balala wrote: ↑March 15th, 2019, 10:17 pmOk, do it, let's see what we can get out of it. If you found / manipulated properly the needed images, having differently colored balls, post them back here and we'll see...
Ok, so I found plenty of pool balls images, but these are the most realistic from the 15 images I've downloaded:
I can crop the balls from the images (it's easier for PNGs with transparency, obviously, but I'm good enough at cropping from JPGs with no transparency at all - done a few "fakes" on a couple occasions), but just wanted to show them to you, so you can settle on the one you think it looks better. By the way, it seems there's no need for text meters on the balls anymore, since every ball has its number (only the : time separator will probably need to be drawn on, say, the cue ball image - since it has no number on it and it's perfectly fit for it). I have some doubts about the numbers' visibility when the ball dimension will decrease, but I have one or two images with a bigger text on them - they just don't look this realistic though...
The cropping process will most likely happen tomorrow, as people do sleep once in a while
EDIT: One other thing I've noticed at your skin, is that from time to time it uses A LOT of CPU, even though the balls are not moving. At first I though it was because of my skins (my Feeds skin uses some very low impact animation and eats a bit of CPU when updating), but then as soon as I unloaded your skin the problem was gone. You might want to investigate this.
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Those are all great images! It's been so long since I've played pool (or even seen a table), that I don't remember what colour the seven and fifteen balls are supposed to be--but I definitely like the brown on those balls in the second image (the one with the green background)--that would be my choice.
For the purposes of time-keeping, you could probably erase the underline on the six and nine balls, since they will always be right-side up.
qwerky wrote: ↑March 16th, 2019, 12:30 am
Those are all great images! It's been so long since I've played pool (or even seen a table), that I don't remember what colour the seven and fifteen balls are supposed to be--but I definitely like the brown on those balls in the second image (the one with the green background)--that would be my choice.
For the purposes of time-keeping, you could probably erase the underline on the six and nine balls, since they will always be right-side up.
But what about twenty-four hour time?
Yeah, well, I like the 2nd one the most too The image, however, is unfortunately a JPG and not a PNG, so the cropping will be a bit harder than on a transparent backrgound PNG. The image itself is of lower resolution than others, so another disadvantage. That being said, these 2 drawbacks are not enough to make the option of using this image unpractical, so it's all good.
I never liked 12H clocks, the 24H clock is exactly what I'm thinking of. There isn't any problem however, irrespective of the clock's type, since every digit will be on a single ball. For example, if you have 21:45, the first ball is 2, the second is 1, the third is :, the fourth is 4 and the fifth is 5. It's not like there are two digits on the same ball, you know. Of course, a slight disadvantage in this is that, apart from 0 (that I could draw on the ball number 10) and 9, there are only solid balls, no stripes (since all stripes are greater than 8). But I think 2 stripes (0 and 9) will be enough. There isn't a 0 ball in pool, but a little suspension of disbelief doesn't hurt for the sake of a good looking skin...
Yabadabadoo!
A movie should be made about this monumelemental endeavour of these Rainmeter heroes here! Would you be interested to be the director of such a masterpiece, jsmorley?
Yincognito wrote: ↑March 16th, 2019, 12:10 am
Ok, so I found plenty of pool balls images, but these are the most realistic from the 15 images I've downloaded:
I can crop the balls from the images (it's easier for PNGs with transparency, obviously, but I'm good enough at cropping from JPGs with no transparency at all - done a few "fakes" on a couple occasions), but just wanted to show them to you, so you can settle on the one you think it looks better. By the way, it seems there's no need for text meters on the balls anymore, since every ball has its number (only the : time separator will probably need to be drawn on, say, the cue ball image - since it has no number on it and it's perfectly fit for it). I have some doubts about the numbers' visibility when the ball dimension will decrease, but I have one or two images with a bigger text on them - they just don't look this realistic though...
Ok, I think anyone of those images can be used. Later today I'll try them out, to see how do they look...
Yincognito wrote: ↑March 16th, 2019, 12:10 am
EDIT: One other thing I've noticed at your skin, is that from time to time it uses A LOT of CPU, even though the balls are not moving. At first I though it was because of my skins (my Feeds skin uses some very low impact animation and eats a bit of CPU when updating), but then as soon as I unloaded your skin the problem was gone. You might want to investigate this.
Agree. There are a lot of calculations to be done continuously. The Update value is set low, to have a properly played animation and even if the balls don't move, the update is still low. Probably a better way would be to use an ActionTime plugin measure (again), to can set the Update to the default value. Probably this will be the next step along the development of this skin. Let's see...
balala wrote: ↑March 16th, 2019, 7:15 amOk, I think anyone of those images can be used. Later today I'll try them out, to see how do they look...
This is how they look - pretty nice, IMHO:
Demo 1.jpg
This is a prototype only for the ball number 1 (the PSD is 156x760px in size, calculated precisely to be able to be resized to the 47x229px, which is the original size of Left.png - with no change of position, size or anything else on the elements like the "rope" or the ball). I have all things set up to copy-paste the rest of the balls in the same position and in the same PSD file, so it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to finish, if there isn't any unexpected issue along the way. After that, I'll do the 0 ball by removing the 1 from the 10 ball and centering the 0 afterwards, and of course the : ball, which will probably be the (white) cue ball (or the 13 ball, since I had to use another pool ball image that had slightly bigger numbers visible when the balls are smaller, and that image doesn't have the cue ball).
Then, I'll just let balala modify the skin to dynamically change the loaded image name when a time digit changes.
NOTE: When I'll post all the ball images, I'll post the PSDs as well, maybe they'll be useful.
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