Mapbox GL JS - Stacking/Layering Image overlays on each other - mapbox

I am wanting to layer multiple image overlays over each other on a map (minimum will be 3, maximum 10). These are weather radar images with each image being a higher elevation in the storm. I have attached a screenshot. Just imagine several layers over that image in the same spot.
I am hoping there's an easy image style like "HeightAboveGround" or something like that that will let me do this.
If this is possible, is there also a way to tilt/rotate image overlays? This would be such a nice feature in the map.

I am wanting to layer multiple image overlays over each other...with each image being a higher elevation in the storm.
There is no way to render image overlays at any height other than zero.
If this is possible, is there also a way to tilt/rotate image overlays?
If by "tilt", you mean, along an axis parallel to the ground, such that one end of the image is higher than the other, then there's no way to do that.
If, by "rotate" you mean, along an axis perpendicular to the ground, so that the image no longer aligns with north, then there's no way to do that either.
Sorry this couldn't be more helpful. :) If 3D is important to your application, you might want to consider using a true 3D library (as opposed to 2.5D) such as Cesium.

Related

2D sprite problem when setting up an instant messaging UI

I'm new to Unity and to game development in general.
I would like to make a text-based game.
I'm looking to reproduce the behavior of an instant messenger like messenger or whatapp.
I made the choice to use the Unity UI system for the pre-made components like the rect scroll.
But this choice led me to the following problem:
I have "bubbles" of dialogs, which must be able to grow in width as well as in height with the size of the text. Fig.1
I immediately tried to use VectorGraphics to import .svg with the idea to move runtime the points of my curves of Beziers.
But I did not find how to access these points and edit them runtime.
I then found the "Sprite shapes" but they are not part of the "UI",
so if I went with such a solution, I would have to reimplement
scroll, buttons etc...
I thought of cutting my speech bubble in 7 parts Fig.2 and scaling it according to the text size. But I have the feeling that this is very heavy for not much.
Finally I wonder if a hybrid solution would not be the best, use the
UI for scrolling, get transforms and inject them into Shape sprites
(outside the Canvas).
If it is possible to do 1. and then I would be very grateful for an example.
If not 2. 3. 4. seem feasible, I would like to have your opinion on the most relevant of the 3.
Thanks in advance.
There is a simpler and quite elegant solution to your problem that uses nothing but the sprite itself (or rather the design of the sprite).
Take a look at 9-slicing Sprites from the official unity documentation.
With the Sprite Editor you can create borders around the "core" of your speech bubble. Since these speech bubbles are usually colored in a single color and contain nothing else, the ImageType: Sliced would be the perfect solution for what you have in mind. I've created a small Example Sprite to explain in more detail how to approach this:
The sprite itself is 512 pixels wide and 512 pixels high. Each of the cubes missing from the edges is 8x8 pixels, so the top, bottom, and left borders are 3x8=24 pixels deep. The right side has an extra 16 pixels of space to represent a small "tail" on the bubble (bottom right corner). So, we have 4 borders: top=24, bottom=24, left=24 and right=40 pixels. After importing such a sprite, we just have to set its MeshType to FullRect, click Apply and set the 4 borders using the Sprite Editor (don't forget to Apply them too). The last thing to do is to use the sprite in an Image Component on the Canvas and set the ImageType of this Component to Sliced. Now you can scale/warp the Image as much as you like - the border will always keep its original size without deforming. And since your bubble has a solid "core", the Sliced option will stretch this core unnoticed.
Edit: When scaling the Image you must use its Width and Height instead of the (1,1,1)-based Scale, because the Scale might still distort your Image. Also, here is another screenshot showing the results in different sizes.

Is it possible to create a 3D photo from a normal photo?

If I have understand well, 3D 360 photos are created from a panorama photo, so I guess it should be possible to create a 3D photo (non 360) from a normal photo. But how? I did not find anything in Google! Any idea of what should I search??
So far, if nothing available (I don't think so), I'll try to duplicate the same photo in each eye. One of the pictures a little bit moved to the right, and the other one moved a little bit to the left. But I think the distortion algorithm is much more complicated.
Note: I'm also receiving answers here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115463690952639951338/posts/4KdqFcqUTT9
I am in no way certain of this, but my intuition on how 3D 360 images are created in GoogleVR is this:
As you take a panorama image, it actually takes a series of images. As you turn the phone around, the perspective changes slightly with each image, not only by angle, but also offset (except in the unlikely event you spin the phone around its own axis). When it stitches together the final image, it creates one image for each eye, picking suitable images from the series so that it creates a 3D effect when viewed together. The same "area" of the image for each eye comes from a different source image.
You can't do anything similar with a single image. It's the multitude of images produced, each with a different perspective coming from the turning of the phone, that enables the algorithm to create a 3D image.
2D lacks a dimension hence cannot be converted to 3D just like that, but there are clever ways for example Google Pixel even though doesn't have 2 camera can make it seem like the image is 3D by applying some Machine learning algorithm that create the effect of perspective and depth by selective blurring.
3d photos can't be taken by normal but you can take 360 photos with normal camera ..... There are many apps via which you can do this ..... Also there are many algorithms to do it programmatically

How can I make the SCNCamera that i instantiated zoom into only nodes that i want in SceneKit

Pretend i have 3 nodes in total. One of the nodes is a large SCNShere and i put the camera inside this sphere and make the sphere double sided with a textured image. I then put in two smaller spheres next to each other in the center inside this sphere. I also allowCameraControl. I want to be able to zoom into these two smaller spheres without zooming into the larger sphere and messing up the detail on that sphere.
You can't put limits on the camera that's automatically created with allowCameraControl. You'll have to do your own camera management, using your own gesture recognizers.
Another solution would be to rethink your approach to the background image. Instead of using a sky sphere for the background (which is what it sounds like you're doing), use a skybox, or cube map. You can supply a cube map through the scene's background property. The SCNMaterial documentation explains the options for supply a cube map.
Hmm, I wonder what would happen if you use the large sphere's textured image/material as the scene's background, instead of putting it on an enclosing sphere?
I like the idea of using an image as the background but there are two problems. One is i looked on the web for ways to make an image the background and none of them work. Two I want the background to have depth so in order to go on that idea I need to find a way to zoom into the background and have the image pan in the opposite direction that I drag.

Unity3D - Make texture edges not stretch

I've been searching around for this one for a bit, and unfortunately I can't seem to find any good, consistent results. So, in the Unity UI system, buttons can stretch without becoming pixelated or distorted. This is because the texture is split up into 9 parts - the corners, middle, and sides.
This works because the button's middle and sides are stretched, but not the corners. Then, the button appears not pixelated, at any dimension.
So, the question is as follows: How can I do the same thing for a transparent, unlit texture in 3D space? I have a speech bubble texture on a flat plane that I know how to re-scale to fit the text in the speech bubble.
I've set the texture type to Multiple Sprite, and divided it up into 9 parts. However, I cannot seem to find where I can set the texture to act like the UI button does, and I'm not sure that this is even possible in this way in 3D space.
Is there a way, or should I just make the different parts of the texture different objects, and move them together? That would seem very inefficient and ugly compared to this.
To accomplish what you are asking, you would need to create tiles for this speech bubble and then write a script that procedurally builds a speech bubble based on the plane's scale value. You could also try just changing the texture's Filter Mode to Point.
However I really don't think you should be using textures for this anyway. Why not just use a Unity Canvas and set the Render Mode to World Space? Then you can just set your text box to be a sprite, not a texture, and set its filter mode to Point (See below). This would also make it a lot easier for when you want there to be text in the speech bubble later on.

Fastest / most efficient way to draw moving speech bubbles on screen - CoreAnimation, Quartz2D?

I am adding some functionality to an iPhone app, and could use some help in picking the fastest / most efficient / best practice approach for solving this problem:
At the upper-half of my screen, I have speech bubbles (think comic book) that are UIImageViews translating across the screen (dynamic x & y position). It is a UIImageView because there is an image as the background of the speech bubble.
Each speech bubble has a matching image moving around the bottom of the screen (elsewhere in the layer tree)
I would like to draw a tail (that triangle bit from a speech bubble) so the point of the triangle is tracking the lower image, with the base of the triangle being attached to the bottom of the upper UIImageView. (technically the base doesn't have to be butted against, it can overlap as long as I can match the color of my background image to the triangle).
I have already done all the tracking & drawn a line with CGContextStrokePath methods, and now I am stuck on how to replace the line with a triangle.
I have looked at drawing a triangle in Quartz and filling it. My concern is the speech bubbles are repositioned every 1/10th of a second, and it looks like drawing just the line used for proof of concept had a pretty severe performance / visual smoothness impact.
One idea I have is to do the trigonometry myself, and stretch & rotate an image of a triangle to connect each of these speech bubbles with the lower spot. Something is telling me there is a more efficient / more elegant solution, but I am not able to see it looking through the documentation. Any help on how you have or would approach this issue is appreciated. Thanks.
If the speech bubbles are fixed in size, just use a static UIImage. Set the image view's layer.position property at the point of the triangle. Then you can use view animation to move the bubbles around.
If you need the speech bubbles to be different sizes, I'd create a resizeable image using resizableImageWithCapInsets. Then I'd do the same as above to position it.
If there was something special about the speech bubble that I could't achieve with either a static image or a resizable image, I'd probably create a custom CA Layer or layers to get the effect I wanted (Like a gradient layer with a shape layer as it's mask layer)