Can I playback a SVG animation within SMIL? - html

for a digital signage project, I created a SVG based rundown, which plays other SVG files in a loop on a Spinetix box.
Now I had to change the playback device. The new one supports SMIL and I'm looking for a way to reuse my old solution on this device. I think of creating a SMIL rundown which plays the standalone SVG files (basically it's the same, I think).
I googled and searched and didn't find a way to realize this. Any ideas? I appreciate your help on this one.
Thank you,
Juri

SMIL is less powerful then SVG as it only handles the playlist timings.. Therefore it will be dificult for you to have the SVG projects taken over on a SMIL-only device ...
SpinetiX launches apparently a new software which is running inside their players, according to the video's it's realy simple to update content now ...
james

Related

Looping animation over web content

I've been searching for a way to put a looping animation with alpha over top of web content for a few weeks now. The fact that I can't seem to find anyone asking this question or any answers to it makes me think the solution is so mind-numbingly easy that no one needs to ask it.
For an example of this effect go to bonfirestudios.com
They have used this technique multiple times throughout the website, most notably their logo on the main page. They have an animation loop playing over top of their website content. It could just be a video played with a screen blending mode, but my knowledge of html and css is so limited I'm not sure what I should be looking for.
It seems so simple in concept: play a video (with alpha data) on loop, but I can't find anything (or don't know where/how to look specifically) that explains how to achieve this effect. Notably, there are no video controls or anything to otherwise indicate it is a video that's playing. I've checked their code, but my limited understanding of javascript and the like find it hard to know what I'm looking for.
Any help or direction is greatly appreciated, thank you.
It is a video playing (right-click over the animation and you'll see such option as "save video").
The container format is webM (which can contain VP8 or VP9 video codec). This format is from Google and supports transparency.

Embed 3D models on website

Is there a way to embed Sketchup models on a website? Preferably a free one, if it's a commercial solution I'd like a confirmation that it's actually worth the money... I know about the 3D warehouse thingy where you can rotate it (javascript and some images), but I can't upload anything to the 3D warehouse 'cause it always "resets the connection".
You can try the upcoming WebGL Functions in modern Browsers. There are some Javascript Libraries that can read model files and show them within your (HTML 5?) website. I have not used them yet, but try these links if this sounds interesting:
https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/
https://github.com/timjb/sketchup-threejs/
I made a patch of an example game in three.js. Added ColladaLoader and Sketchup model + Third Person Shooter controls:
https://github.com/irony/Nemesis
Try it out (Works best in Chrome)
http://peaceful-woodland-4410.herokuapp.com/index.html
You can use http://sketchfab.com, they even have a SketchUp exporter.
Yes, you can do it without cost. See here: https://help.sketchup.com/en/article/3000258
EDIT:
There were some free rendering sites apart from Google, but they don't seem to be in operation anymore. Posting to the Google 3D warehouse is going to be your best bet. Regarding your problem posting there, try it with Chrome.
EDIT #2:
If you don't want to upload to Google 3D Warehouse, you can achieve a similar effect with a little work. 3D Warehouse doesn't actually give the visitor the power to manipulate something in 3D, but rather it lets them "rotate" the image horizontally by simply showing a series of preset images of the 3D from various angles. You can take shots of your 3D object, import to Photoshop and create your own gif of the spinning object. A little more work than relying on Google, so you'll have to decide if it's worth it.
EDIT #3: If all else fails you can simply post the 3D model on your site as a downloadable file and advise visitors to get Sketchup to view it.

Html5 Canvas animations

I am looking to get into learning how to use the html5 canvas to do animations as well as other things. I have an excellent knowledge of javascript and programming in general (mostly php but can adapt to anything). However, I have not had the opportunity to do much with graphics in the past. I have created nice smooth animations using javascript/jquery but the canvas object seems to be alot more than just that. The hardest part I am finding as I have been playing with it is that you have no reference to an object on the stage unless you store the reference. For example if I create a div on the page I have that reference to the object. However, with the canvas object if you create something within it, it draws that element on the stage giving you no reference to it. So you have to manually store the details of that object as I understand it and I could be wrong (if I am please correct me).
Anyways the whole point of this post is to see if anyone can point me to some really good articles/help about working with the canvas object. Not just drawing graphics to it cause I have been able to accomplish that very easily. But I would like to articles/help on managing the objects on the canvas. I want to make sure that I am doing this correctly/efficiently for the future of the technology. Also I am willing to purchase a book on working with html5 canvas/graphics/animations but most of them that I have seen go over the whole scope of html5 and leave out alot of the details of actually working with the canvas. So if you know any good books with my requirements please recommend them here.
Any help is appreciated.
There are nice libraries to do very basic to complex graphics using HTML5/WebGL
This may not actually teach you how the animations work. But if you are interested, check Three.js
https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/
Read article "Creating a Framework For Canvas: Objects and Mouse". Not animation, but you can find there something interestring.
Read source code of any big framework, e.h. three.js, or LibCanvas
Read "HTML5 Canvas - Native Interactivity and Animation for the Web"

Advice for creating Google Maps-like interface

I'm trying to make some web-based board games, and I want the interface to be pannable and zoomable. Much like how in Google Maps, you can pan and zoom the map, I want the game board to be moved and zoomed. Unlike Google Maps of course, I do not want to work with image tiles.
Can anyone give me recommendations as to what technology to use? Would this be a good fit for plain HTML? HTML 5 Canvas? or SVG? Any particular JS libraries to recommend or something else entirely?
I'd like to avoid flash and Java. And browser compatibility is plus, but not the most important factor. For example, I think it would probably be OK to require Chrome Frame for older IEs.
Any ideas/advice would be appreciated.
A few thoughts:
Use the OpenLayers UI with a "fixed" strategy to load vector graphics for your board all at once. (This is overly heavy-weight, probably, but comes with pan-zoom and IE compatibility.)
Use Raphael to build your board in SVG, using RaphaelZPD for pan-zoom. RaphaelZPD isn't cross-browser (even though Raphael is), so you'd need Chrome Frame for IE compatibility. This would be pretty lightweight, I think.
Use pure SVG for your board, use SVGpan for pan-zoom. Chrome Frame required here too, though you could use SVGweb if you wanted. You could draw your boards right in Inkscape, clean up the SVG's and add whatever ID's you need in the XML (SVG is XML under the hood), and interact with the board with jQuerySVG if you like, or script interaction by hand. Did I mention that CSS works with SVG? I think this is your best bet.
I can't think of an advantage to using Canvas here, unless you had lots of animation or bitmaps. SVG is far more transparent in how it works - it's XML under the hood, and when rendered in a page, becomes DOM nodes you can easily manipulate in modern browsers.
Plain HTML would probably be hard to handle scaling with. I've seen plenty of image scalers, but haven't seen complex HTML structures, and complexity would be compounded by needing to pan at a zoomed level.
If you want total control of your development environment you could create your own web rendering plataform. I think you can use HTML canvas 5 as your interface with the browser.
You can easily implement drag, pan and zoom using HTML canvas. This approach is very similar with game development in many plataforms. Here an example of using HTML canvas 5 for an interface that supports pan, drag, and zoom.
Having the control of your environment you will have a wide range of possibilities.
If you don't mind tiles, I'd suggest checking out Polymaps "A JavaScript library for image- and vector-tiled maps using SVG". It's probably possible to borrow some parts from there for panning and zooming.

simple music or tunes via HTML?

I'm looking for a simple way to put up musical "tunes" on a website.
So here's an analogy to explain my question:
Let's say I want to put up a couple of big triangles as a picture on my web page. I can either draw a bitmap and save as GIF/JPG/PNG, put it up somewhere on the internet, and link to it with an element. That works but the larger the picture the more space my image file takes up.
Alternatively, I can use SVG (even though Internet Explorer support is lacking, grr) and use vector graphics which uses very little bandwidth regardless of image size.
In the music world, I can use WAV or MP3 files. Works great -- but if I just want to publish a 1-minute song of simple notes, by knowing the durations & pitches, & don't care that it sounds 100% exactly like a piano or accordion, is there a way to (a) create a file with the song, and (b) put it online in a format that is space-efficient? 1 minute of MP3 usually takes up hundreds of kilobytes.
You could use a MIDI file, this stores durations/pitches etc. as you suggest. You should be able to easily find software to create this type of file. However you will probably find the results sound terrible, as it is very dependent on the synthesiser hardware/software that is available on the end-user's machine.
For what you need this might be reasonable though.
Look into playing music files on websites using Flash.
You can control the Flash through JavaScript calls.
This is currently the "recommended" way to play small audio clips in a website.
For larger media files, look into streaming FLV files using a Flash player.
Hope this helps :)
Check out the MIDI format for instruments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI