Animated texture for KGPanels?

[morpheusxeno]

I have seen animated textures in UI's for minimaps they rotate in a circle, I am looking for an animated texture for the bottom that looks like black smoke.

Any suggestions?

[Phanx]

The "animated texture" you've seen on a rotating minimap isn't actually a single "animated image" like a GIF. WoW doesn't support GIF or any other animated image format. There are three ways to "animate" a texture in WoW:

1. Use a single texture, and rotate/scale/move it by a small amount every fraction of a second, so it appears to be spinning/shrinking/growing/moving/etc. An example of this in the default UI are the activation glows on the eclipse bar for druids -- the glow texture doesn't just appear, but is faded in smoothly, by changing its opacity many times in quick succession.

2. Use a sprite, and switch which "frame" is shown every fraction of a second. An example of this in the default UI is the animated eye on the LFG minimap button; you can see the sprite texture here: http://wowprogramming.com/utils/artb...ME/LFG-Eye.png

3. Use a series of separate textures, and switch which texture is shown every fraction of a second. This is really just a less efficient version of #2, and I'm not aware of any examples of this method in the default UI. However, #2 wouldn't work for very large images (dimension-wise, not filesize-wise) as there is an upper limit on the dimensions for images in WoW, so you would need to use #3 for such images.

So, in order to get a smoke-like animation, you would need to create each frame of the animation as a separate image, and switch between them rapidly using #2 or #3. To get a quality effect, you would probably need to use a 3D modeling program to model and animate smoke, and then render each frame of the animation out as a separate image, and then write code to animate them in WoW.

[Seerah]

An additional option is to find an in-game model for smoke and display that instead of a static texture object. (You may check out my older AmbientAura addon for an idea of this.)

[Resike]

The animated circles you saw is propably SexyMap, however there is an addon that you can configure to show animated textures and 3D models on any layer on your screen, even recolor, rotate, mirror, animate them:

http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/power-auras-classic-v4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRP6_MidlYY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpagQ8XOOkk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lrO-ua6yEo

[morpheusxeno]

Originally Posted by Seerah An additional option is to find an in-game model for smoke and display that instead of a static texture object. (You may check out my older AmbientAura addon for an idea of this.)

I like this idea, However I am also trying another.

I cannot seem to find a high quality smoke gif image online that I would like to use. This is mainly used for streaming I have tried exporting animations from wow with WMV but the quality of the gif is garbage.

Has anyone any idea where I can find a really nice smoke effect that I can use with transparent background?

[Torhal]

Originally Posted by morpheusxeno I like this idea, However I am also trying another. I cannot seem to find a high quality smoke gif image online that I would like to use. This is mainly used for streaming I have tried exporting animations from wow with WMV but the quality of the gif is garbage. Has anyone any idea where I can find a really nice smoke effect that I can use with transparent background?

WoW does not support GIF files.

[Phanx]

Yep, as I explained in my first post in this thread, you cannot use a GIF file or other animated image file in WoW. You would need to split each frame of the GIF animation out to a separate image, and write code to rapidly switch which image was displayed in WoW to make it look like a "real" animation.