Not much to look at but I've been working on my new Argus software idea. The breakthrough today was making it flip between a fully normal Windows-based looking program and a full screen DirectX 3D environment in one program. I've not made a program that did both before and it required the right amount of setting up.
I have lots of options. I wondered whether to make it like Prometheus, having 'actors' that are made from a chain of plug-ins. A plug-in might create a 2D square shape at a particular x,y,z of size x,y,z and transparency a. Another plugin might modify position, for example, so that a modulator can be attached, a wave based low frequency oscillator. Another plug-in might add a second shape, creating a composite object analogous to an instrument in music.
The actors would appear (analogous to note-on) and move or vanish.
This might be over complex. A simple shape that moves might be all that is needed, but I would like to modulate any parameter, as I do in Prometheus, and turn these on or off at specific frames, so a visual track-like display will probably be needed.
This is all so new. I have never used animation software apart from full 3D programs which are so very different and rarely (ever?) use real-time motion recording which I consider essential for both speed and naturalism.
To get anywhere I would need to set a target and deadline. It's easy to tweak things for day/years as a hobby and never produce anything worthwhile or useful.
If I'm going to make something like Prometheus, I might need to copy the extensive GUI system from it. My modulator display and controls are very useful and would almost certainly be a part of this anyway, so adding all of the window system would probably help but also be a lot of work. So many options, and complexity to work out.
That would mean an awful lot of integration. Uniquely here I have to balance complete DirectX hardware stuff with Windows programming. The input for example, the Windows mouse pointers won't work in the 3D world. The switch between modes doesn't seems sleek. It can work, but when I jump into 3D and back, the window appears to be gone. It's almost like a lot of Windows needs to be initialised and de-initialised with each switch of mode. Lots of problems to solve.
Will this ever be useful? I feel Beethovenish, locked in my own world feeling that I am making nothing anyone notices. Hopefully, our creations get better and over time, so good that they do get noticed. I'm not chasing others for some fleeting definition of 'success' but to do the best I can, to see what is good out there and aim to make something I think is better, because nobody else seems to, they merely create products for customers, not to excel for its own sake, for the sake of improvement of culture itself. Perhaps Argus will grow to be a useful tool if I can work out how to do it. I need to define problems... perhaps what it could do at its most basic level... or start something moving simply and then work out how to break that process up.
