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Nov 19, 2003, 2:59pm

In a similar vien to the fx= command arguements for the light
command, it would be cool if some simple effects could be
applied on the client side to animate textures.

'create texture foo fx=scroll dx=5 dy=0 skip=3'

might be used for example to 'scroll' a texture horizontally by
5 pixels every three times the animation engine loops. This
might be useful for example to simulate scenery moving by
a window in a train, but without having to create a full
texture image for each step.

Scrolling a texture in particular should be easily done on the
client side just by manipulating the drawing paramters of the
polygons. In other words, it should not be neccessary even
in the browser to create all of the intermediate frames from
the original image.

It should also be possible to perform a few other 'tricks'
to create dynamic textures without explicitly creating each
frame. Most of the 'fx=' options from the light command
could probably be applied directly to textures... controlling
how brightly the texture is applied to the object, again without
having to generate all of the in between frames.

If the lighting effects in particular could be applied to textures
(not to mention that they could also be applied to the create
color command), then it would be easy to create things that
blink or do other strange things.

Most of the same things can be accomplished now using other
means, but this would be a very simple, simple way to let
everyone regardless of their skill level make their builds more
dynamic.

Other possible effects for animation could include inverting
it (making a negative image), swapping it left to right or up
and down, or spinning it around. These effects can all be done
using the features of the 3D drawing engine and do not require
the original texture to be altered, so they should be just as fast
to render as everything renders now.

I'll save the wish for wipes, fades and dissolves using the
same draw engine tricks for another day :-)

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