Synfig Project Forum

From state 2, if the user press Render button again it will re-render all the frames. Starting from first frame? Does it enlist to erase all the frames first?

From state 0, the user press the Render button and it changes to state 1. Being at this state, after a while user press Play button, it starts to play and render continues. User press Render button again and it halts render but continue playing.
Questions:
1) If user press the Render button again, from which frame does it continue rendering?
2) If user press the Erase button, how will it affect to rendering and playing?

Don't misunderstand me my friend, but it is a good exercise to catch all the possible toggle combinations before implement it.
-G

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Hi Genete, thanks for your input, it is really helpful.

I try my best to explain it clearly .

These buttons have to behave as simple as possible.

[Erase] button:
Erase is erase all. It will remove all rendered frames if they existed, and the "preview window" will return to the beginning: nothing rendered, all the buttons will be reset to initial state except the "Loop" button, it is staying as it was.

So the answer of Quesiton2 is rendering and playing will stop. these two buttons([Play] & [Render]) will reset to initial state.

[Render] button:
"Render Start" always starts rendering from scratch, and "Render Halt" will stop rendering completely, and we will have no a state called "pause" for Render.

So the answer of Question1: once the user pressed/toggled off [Render] again, the [Play] pops up and the animation preview will stop at the same time, the time slide indicator back to the frame filled in the "From" entry.

[Play] button:
Once [Play] button is toggled on, the scene will be start playing, when it is toggled off from previous state, the preview will have a pause state, toggled on again, the playing will continue.

[Loop] button:
Nothing special, It affects "playing" behaves, but never be affected by the Render, Erase, Play buttons.

All these buttons will never be affected by "zoom in/out" the previewing scene.

more questions
1) To have a "pause" for rendering seems nice, but I am not sure if it will help artists.

2) How about to bring "Seek to Begin/End, next/prev rendered frame" on preview window? Do these functions help the "preview" job?

3) The time slider, what the length it should have?
3.a) the entire of scene (canvas time)
3.b) the specified in the preview window via "From" and "To" entries?
3.c) the rendered time length (rendered frames)?


3)

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Hi jcome!
looks like we are narrowing the behavior of the buttons.
My comments:
-Erase button: ok. It will clean everything and it will reset any new render to the start of the time. If the user press erase button meanwhile it is rendering. It will move the render current time to start of time and play would do similar.
-Render button: Hmmm... If I press the render button (do render) and then press it again (stop render) I would expect to NOT ERASE any frame at all. User will get confused if he loose the already rendered frames. Remember that render can be a time and cpu consuming act and mybe the user just want to test some first frames and don't continue waste cpu for frames he is not intersted. Later he might want to continue rendering witout loose the already rendered. I don't like the descrutctive behavior of the render button. I would like to have the same behavior than play button. Play->Pause->Play (from the same frame): Render->Halt render->Render (from the same frame). Maybe an indicator of the current render frame would be good to have apart of the playing frame.
-Play and loop are fine to me.
-Other questions:
--Seeking keyframes could be good to have but I would implement it later, once the basics are done.
--The time slider should have the From - To length.

I insists on get used of the current behavior of the preview dialog. It does the job fine IMHO and it needs just a face lifting.

-G

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I agree with Genete, current behaviour is generally working well, BUT there are a few things that can be improved...

1. play/stop can be joined as you have done it.
2. When I have played the preview once the the timeslider is at the end. If I then want to see the sequence again I have to either use the loop function or drag the timeslider back to frame 1, then press play again.
I would like that if the timeslider is on last frame and play is pressed, then preview starts from beginning again.
3. FPS settings - please use scene settings.

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WANT!

...Okay, I don't mean to spam, but the mock-up is radical, dude! I just think that the Play and Loop buttons should be at the extreme left, while the parameters to the right, just to minimize confusion.

@Genete - How about using QT4 for designing the interface? Just throwin it out there. Heard about it today, and they say it's excellent!

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it will be nice improvement. added to my list

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time flies...

in current version 0.63.0, there are:
[loop] [play] [stop] [halt render] [re-preview] [erase all]

play - play the rendered frames
stop - actually, it is not a stop but a pause.
halt render - it stops render, (doesn't pause).
re-preview - it always remove all rendered frames then starts rendering again according your current time settings(From To).
erase all - stops playing and rendering, then remove all rendered frames.

the clicking on time scrollbar or soundtrack will stop playing as well.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I plan to

1) clean up the buttons without modifying their functionalities.
1.1) rename the stop to pause
1.2) rearrange/organize these buttons in a clear way
1.3) redraw buttons icons
1.4) hide the soundtrack since we don't support sound currently
1.5) try to merge play and pause buttons and improve the behaviors according to rylleman's input.

After 1) is done:

2) replace time scrollbar with time slider widget as those used by other media player, Gnome Movie Player, totem for example.

3) try to merge "preview options" pop-up dialog into preview window to reduce sub-windows for more smooth workflow.

4) once 3) is implemented and works well, then consider to replace re-preview button with render button.

5) try to implement pause render function for render button.

6) try to fix "the render fit into the window size when it is resized by the user".

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time flies...

Good plan jcome
-G

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Great plan!

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Hi guys, I didn't forget this plan

How about using an animating icon to indicate rendering status?

see the attached for more detail, it is nice to build animated UI mockup in Synfig Studio.




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edited: added rendering icon.

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time flies...

Coolio as itself!
-G

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Good idea with an animated icon!

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Beware on compatibility of Gtkmm versioning. Please be sure that you don't use a Gtkmm version higher than the current one which is the 2.4 series. It is probable that the aniamated icon is a newly gtk addition.
-G

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another brain-storming

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time flies...

Dear Artists,

Will it help you if I add a new previous/next rendered frame for playback widget? as following:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| [Prev Frame] | [Play/Pause] | [Next Frame] |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
or you can ref to the above mockup.

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