Desktop Animation?

DK · Post by DK » Thu Aug 02, 2007 4:45 am

Does anyone know how one would go about making an animated character appear on the desktop along with all the icons?

Edit:
I'm familiar with animated gifs as wallpaper but I am trying to get an animation to appear as an icon rather than wallpaper, similar to a virtual pet for kids.

Cheers
D.K

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:11 am

you can use in windows a html as wallpaper.
with tazatriste's people we have a page in which you can upload images, take and drag it around, i used to use my page to create something as "interactive wallpapers" with movable png's and animated gifs.
i have upload mi files into the pages, and then download it into the hard disk and used this as wallpaper. it works fine.

see this http://www.tazatriste.cl/?bubujos

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:13 am

I use MDM Zinc myself. It's great for making your flash animations into transparent flash projectors. There are others apps that do the same. SwishStudio does the same but at runtime it dumps the swf files in a temp folder instead of running them in memory. That just means someone could easily get access to your flash files. Here's a couple of links...

http://www.multidmedia.com
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area ... uct=studio

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:19 am

Oh, and I have a copy of SwishStudio I could sell, if you're interested. I got permission a while back from Swish to sell my registration key but just never got around to it.

DK · Post by DK » Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:51 am

Hi .
Selgin, that technique is great thanks. I did'nt realise you could use a html file as a wallpaper. J, the projector idea is almost perfect but it seems you have to click an executable to make the animation run. Is that right?

Cheers
D.K

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:55 am

Yes you do. Or just have the executable in your startup folder and it will run at startup.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:58 am

DK wrote:J, the projector idea is almost perfect but it seems you have to click an executable to make the animation run. Is that right?

you could put the program into "start" folder in programs menu (i don't know if this is the name of the folder in english. in spanish it's called "inicio")

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:06 am

Check out this file made with SwishStudio. It may run slow as the animation wasn't optimized for flash export. Right click to drag and left click for menu and exit. http://flashpulse.com/moho/invisable_bike.zip

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:11 am

J. Baker wrote:Check out this file made with SwishStudio. It may run slow as the animation wasn't optimized for flash export. Right click to drag and left click for menu and exit. http://flashpulse.com/moho/invisable_bike.zip

wow, i love it!

DK · Post by DK » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:11 am

Wow that's great!!!

D.K

human · Post by **human** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:19 am

Selgin is right about embedded HTML into the Windows Desktop.
The old buzzword to describe this is Active Desktop.

Perhaps this will prove useful (I haven't checked it out):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171437
"How to Configure the Active Desktop"

Also see

"Active Desktop
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop

Two caveats, though. First, I don't think Vista supports this the way XP does.

Even more importantly, I'm not completely sure this gives you the transparent floater solution you're looking for...

EDIT: On the other hand, maybe? See here:

http://www.animetheme.com/animetheme.ht ... ctive.html

DK · Post by DK » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:20 am

Ok J....you just opened up another can of worms for me. You said the animation is not optimised for Flash? I've been learning Flash for the last few weeks in my spare time and have had terrible trouble figuring what's going on with Moho swf exported files. How have you been optimising Moho swf's for Flash export?

D.K

DK · Post by DK » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:24 am

Hey, many thanks for the links Human.

Cheers
D.K

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:37 am

DK wrote:Ok J....you just opened up another can of worms for me. You said the animation is not optimised for Flash? I've been learning Flash for the last few weeks in my spare time and have had terrible trouble figuring what's going on with Moho swf exported files. How have you been optimising Moho swf's for Flash export?

D.K

The best way to get your optimized flash files from AS/Moho is to follow the instuctions in the manual. But that still leaves a problem. AS/Moho exports one shape as many symbols in the swf file, instead of morphing a single shape over frames.

Real flash apps will morph a single shape over many keyframes. So you'll have one shape in a 300 frame animation, instead of 300 shapes (symbols) in a 300 frame animation, like AS/Moho does. So hopefully efrontier solves this issue in one of the upcoming updates.

Next, Mike says flash doesn't use bones so when using bones in AS/Moho and exporting to flash, you'll end up with larger flash files. This is true and false. Flash doesn't use bones but bones are just tools to move points. So there's no need to save this info in a flash file. KoolMoves uses bones, although they're not as good as they are in AS/Moho. But KoolMoves uses them as a tool and they don't effect the expoted swf file size.

So, all we can hope for is an update that resolves this from efrontier.

DK · Post by DK » Thu Aug 02, 2007 8:35 am

Hi J.
Thanks for your help on this topic. A question on Swish. Will a projector created from Flash files in Swish, like your invisible bicycle exe, play on most operating systems? What about a Mac?

D.K