use-revolution digest, Vol 1 #1521 - 13 msgs

[Jim Hurley]

>
>Message: 9
>From: "Mathewson" <richmond at mail.maclaunch.com>
>Subject: Rotating Images: the rot sets in...
>To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
>Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 08:21:13 -0400
>Reply-To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
>
>I'm playing around with rotating images and am wondering
>about the phenomenon of "fuzzy edges".
>
>Let us just suppose I have a GIF image which I want to
>rotate in increments of 45 degs:
>all very simple: described in Help files & so forth.
>
>What is not explained is that the edges of the image (if it
>is plain colour) or the whole image (if it is a picture)
>will deteriorate markedly as it rotates.  This effectively
>means that the
>'rotate' term is not much use. 
>
>If one has a family of images (in the case above I would
>need 8) that each represent the image rotated at certain
>increments one can keep replacing images (like a slide
>show) to give an impression of rotation.  One could use an
>animated GIF.....or a Quicktime Movie....or....blah, blah,
>blah.   Makes your stack much larger!
>
>The problem with this is if one is using the rotating image
>as the template for the windowShape......
>
>The 'rotate' term is great, in theory; but how can one keep
>the image quality intact?
>
>Ideas gratefully received.
>
>Richmond Mathewson


Richmond,

You might want to try  the new "set angle" feature in 2.0

As I mentioned in a previous post, I  have been having some problems 
with this. In that  post I said:

>I have been having some problems with the new "set angle" feature of 2.0
>
>My image (a fish) is  long and thin. If I resize it, lock position
>and size, and then set the angle to, say, 45, the image rect is
>changed and the image distorted.
>
>A work-around is to change the *canvas* size (in Photoshop) so that
>it is square before importing it into RR as an image.

The action is rather slow. You can't do any quick succession of 
rotations but shape preervation is very good. As an application of 
optical  refraction of light moving from water to air, I wanted to 
let my fish (an Archer fish who squirts a jet of water at passing 
bugs) angle  himself to aim at the perceived position of an bug on an 
overhanging branch, but alas, it runs too slowly.

You can rotate a graphic much faster, but not with the "set angle" 
(unless they are regular polygons). This issue has been discussed on 
the list before. It requires just a little bit of trig to find the 
new position of the graphic points after rotation. If you always 
start from the original shape, there is never any distortion.

Jim