Hey all -
After seeing how some others are approaching the 'cropping utility'
(using the script by Werner Sharp, or at least the technique) I'm
beginning to second-guess the way I've approached constructing things in
Director over the last 4 years.
Specifically, the technique using imaging lingo returns an image which
represents ONLY the differing pixels, and white space everywhere else.
When I wrote my AutoCropper utility I wrote it such that the resultant
bitmap was a pure rectangle, with the intent that it would be placed on
the stage with 'copy' ink. I have 2 problems with the other method:
1. This is a very fast technique but you end up with an image which must
be composited on the stage with 'background transparent' ink.
2. Aesthetically, it looks awful, but this is just a personal
preference. I much prefer to see a rectangle-cropped image in the paint
window rather than an image with bits and pieces hacked out of it. Call
me weird.. :)
I've always taught my junior designers to never crop images as anything
but a rectangle - again because I always, always use 'copy' ink unless I
absolutely must use something else. This was because I read early on
that 'copy' was faster than 'background transparent' - period. And I've
stuck to that idea since.
So, I just put together a quick test to compare the output from the
AutoCropping utility and guess what - when it comes to compositing on
screen, 'copy' is still way faster (a factor of 2x). Animating the
'copy-ink pure rectangles' on stage over 100 cycles took 359ms.
Animating the 'background-ink different-pixels-images' over 100 cycles
took 873ms.
The tradeoff is the one-time-only cropping time - using the 'crop a pure
rectangle' method (AutoCropper) took 1.28s, and using the 'return an
image with only the different pixels and lots of white space' method
took 0.42s.
It would seem to me that many using the other technique still put their
sprites on stage using an ink other than copy - is their some specific
reason for this?
Enquiring minds... :)
Kendall.
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