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New Shape Meter

Changes made during the Rainmeter 4.0 beta cycle.
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Yincognito
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by Yincognito »

jsmorley wrote: April 17th, 2020, 4:18 pmDoing the Mona Lisa as thousands of Shape meters is fun, but stupid...
...only if you're doing it manually. If any sort of automatic process is involved for like 99% of the job (requiring only very few manual touches), then it's not necessarily stupid. Sure, Rainmeter isn't exactly the right tool for continuous animation, as you repeatedly said, but think of all these shapes coming from all directions to "join into" forming the Mona Lisa in a skin. I'm sure this effect - often used in video editing software - has a specific name, I just don't remember it...
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balala
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by balala »

jsmorley wrote: April 17th, 2020, 4:18 pm MonaLisa_1.0.rmskin
1.jpg
:o OMG!!!! How have you generated that Shape meter? I'm extremely curios. Because I definitely can say not manually. :o
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eclectic-tech
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by eclectic-tech »

fonpaolo wrote: April 17th, 2020, 4:49 pm I know the difference.
I thought of using Shape meter to be able to change the size of the skins without the consequent problems given by the images.
As you probably already know, the advantage of using vector shapes is they will not distort when scaled up or down, whereas images can be scaled down, but will get ugly quickly when scaled up.

There are literally hundreds (thousands?) of free vector graphics in SVG format that you can easily convert to shape meters using the convert tool provided by theAzack9.

Here is a previous post I offered with more details. Raiguard has incorporated this into most of his skins in Modern Gadgets.

Hopefully you can succeed without too much trouble.... :)
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by fonpaolo »

Yes eclectic-tech, that's the first reason I immediately thought of Shape meter, the ability to scale an image without any distortion, but I don't want to use a ready-made vector image, I want to use my images, and it's not so simple to do.
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by eclectic-tech »

fonpaolo wrote: April 17th, 2020, 6:02 pm Yes eclectic-tech, that's the first reason I immediately thought of Shape meter, the ability to scale an image without any distortion, but I don't want to use a ready-made vector image, I want to use my images, and it's not so simple to do.
Yes, in your case, to convert specific images to shapes is going to be a major undertaking, and I understand your frustration. O.O

Maybe it's time to develop a new suite of skins? :confused: :uhuh: ;-)
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Yincognito
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by Yincognito »

eclectic-tech wrote: April 18th, 2020, 12:52 am Yes, in your case, to convert specific images to shapes is going to be a major undertaking, and I understand your frustration. O.O

Maybe it's time to develop a new suite of skins? :confused: :uhuh: ;-)
By the way, what's the explanation of this trend of converting images to shapes in skins recently? I remember jsmorley mentioning a technical reason for this in one of his posts, but I forgot what it was...
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by jsmorley »

Yincognito wrote: April 18th, 2020, 1:27 am By the way, what's the explanation of this trend of converting images to shapes in skins recently? I remember jsmorley mentioning a technical reason for this in one of his posts, but I forgot what it was...
There is no strong technical advantage to using Shapes instead of Images. The advantages are more a question of design and preference. Things like:

1) Shapes can be dynamically resized without any loss of resolution.
2) Shapes can be made any color(s), without resorting to "tinting", which is at best pretty brute-force.
3) Shapes do not require that a physical file be included in the .rmskin.

For myself, I would tend to ALWAYS use a Shape meter to draw a "shape". If I want a rounded rectangle as a background for instance, I would certainly use a Shape and not an Image. On the other hand, if I want a photo-realistic weather icon, I'm certainly not going to go to the fair amount of trouble to trace and convert that to .svg in Inkscape, and then convert it to what might be a pretty hefty and complicated Shape meter. For that, I'm just going to use an image.

Another, less intuitive use for Shape is to roll your own Bar meter. The advantages are that the shape doesn't necessarily need to be a rectangle, and having them use a "gradient" as the fill color is pretty easy. Using images with Bar meters is all well and good, but for the same 3 reasons above, I'd lean toward a Shape.
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Yincognito
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by Yincognito »

jsmorley wrote: April 18th, 2020, 1:50 am There is no strong technical advantage to using Shapes instead of Images. The advantages are more a question of design and preference. Things like:

1) Shapes can be dynamically resized without any loss of resolution.
2) Shapes can be made any color(s), without resorting to "tinting", which is at best pretty brute-force.
3) Shapes do not require that a physical file be included in the .rmskin.

For myself, I would tend to ALWAYS use a Shape meter to draw a "shape". If I want a rounded rectangle as a background for instance, I would certainly use a Shape and not an Image. On the other hand, if I want a photo-realistic weather icon, I'm certainly not going to go to the fair amount of trouble to trace and convert that to .svg in Inkscape, and then convert it to what might be a pretty hefty and complicated Shape meter. For that, I'm just going to use an image.
I see. I still don't think these reasons justify the effort of converting every image in the skin to a shape. I mean, ok, the obvious ones that you mentioned, but hunting down each and every image in a skin just to have them all as shapes seems a bit odd (e.g. Raiguard's Modern Gadgets) ... or maybe I'm missing something here. I doubt that the quality loss due to resizing is that significant (especially for close enough resizing values) to determine such a radical approach...
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by jsmorley »

Yincognito wrote: April 18th, 2020, 2:17 am I see. I still don't think these reasons justify the effort of converting every image in the skin to a shape. I mean, ok, the obvious ones that you mentioned, but hunting down each and every image in a skin just to have them all as shapes seems a bit odd (e.g. Raiguard's Modern Gadgets) ... or maybe I'm missing something here. I doubt that the quality loss due to resizing is that significant (especially for close enough resizing values) to determine such a radical approach...
Don't disagree...
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balala
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Re: New Shape Meter

Post by balala »

jsmorley wrote: April 18th, 2020, 3:02 am Don't disagree...
jsmorley, I still ask you to let me know what have you used for that conversion. It's theAzack9's Vector Converter, or there is something else as well?
Thank you for your answer.
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