GUI Animations

#1 Interesting you should mention that. I have the same exact interest at the moment. There isn't anything specific within the engine that supports animated GUI - but - the engine does render multiple scenegraphs concurrently. I'm playing with the idea of rendering a 2D scene as a rich GUI system for a 3D game. That way, I can add components to GUI elements to have them animate, rotate, show/hide, etc. I thought it might be a more flexible way to create a rich user interface than creating custom GUI controls. But new custom GUI controls would also be great approach, I guess it depends on the game.

John K.

#2 How expensive are using multiple scenegraphs? An app I'm making in TX is GUI heavy and I am debating on if I should use regular GUIControls or do the rich-GUI in scene graph idea. The scenegraphs would allow some extra flexibility (with the addition of gui animations, easier to see drag and drop functionality, etc) however due to the layout I would have 3 scenegraphs showing at a minimum (with the possibility of the user showing more).

Will going this route end up biting me in the butt later performance wise? (Note: I do not have to worry about AI calculations, gameplay calculations, etc.. The app is GUI intensive with a 2d rendering window in the center)

#3 I really don't know for sure. As far as I can tell, is should be only slightly slower to go with the 2D scenegraph approach... but... performance is what you make of it - it's possible to create really slow GUIs using the GUI Control Framework too. I would like to test it out side-by-side, but it's going to take a while before I can get to it.

Also, are you positive that you need a minimum 3 scenegraphs? Remember that 2D scenes have layers that you can work with... it' essentially a 2D game running over a 3D game. I would dare say that any game that is "GUI intensive" would really benefit from the 2D over 3D approach. That small performance hit might be worth the time you save creating all of your custom GUI controls.

John K.

#4 Unless said GUI controls were rolled into a commercial product or starter kit for torquex that's nearing completion and might happen to make it on display at a convention.. such as IMGDC ;)

#5 All of my application is 2d. However, after thinking about it I should be able to do the full GUI in one scenegraph, and be able to perform the other functions with only 1 scenegraph visible at a time. So having 2 scenegraphs shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Non-visible scenegraphs do not take a performance hit right? (by visible I mean setting the visible property to false).