Buttons lying upon each other show highlight?

nataq wrote on 1/8/2006, 3:14 AM
Hi,
I have a problem: I have to make a special menu, and the buttons have to lie upon each other. But when I do this and look at the preview, all the buttons show their highlight mask.

Is there anything I can do about it?



To explain: I have a grafic of a small manikin. When the user presses the up or down button on the remote control, a different part of the body shall be marked (see a picture of the stomach marked at: http://www.amridesign.com/pictures/manikin.gif ).

What I did is the following:
create a button with the stomach only (without the rest of the manikin) in the same color as the background, so it is actually invisible in the inactive state.
Then I use the picture in the link above as a highlight mask.

This is what I do for every part of the body.
Because there is allways one button active, there should allways be one part of the body + outline visible.

All the pictures are pngs with everything with transparencies.

The buttons work, when I place them beside each other, but not when they overlay.

Thanks for any help,
Wolfgang

Comments

richard-courtney wrote on 1/8/2006, 2:53 PM
You need to break up the image so you do not have overlapping sections.

A rectangular section for left arm, head, right foot, etc.
One method that would be cool is to have the highlight be
the manikin itself. Just have a blank background.
Create a highlight mask and choose colors so the active button section is brighter than the inactive button sections.

In a previous thread: http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=428654
I talked about how you can select colors sets
in the Menu Page Properties - General tab make sure you have:
COLOR SET 1 - Selected button colors.
COLOR SET 2 - Activated button colors.
COLOR SET 3 - Inactive button colors.
bStro wrote on 1/8/2006, 6:29 PM
Download the DVDA2 New Features PDF file and read the section on custom highlight masks starting at the bottom of page 54. It's a different method than what you're using, but I think it will work quite well for what you're trying to do.

Rob
richard-courtney wrote on 1/8/2006, 7:06 PM
I took the liberty to create a dar file and png file for you to look at:


if this is what you were thinking of.... I will send you a bill.
nataq wrote on 1/8/2006, 11:36 PM
RCourtney,thank you for your effort.

I allready had these ideas and in fact the buttons themselves don´t overlap at all, it is just the highlight states that overlap. I think I didn´t explain that well enough, because DVDA3 shows the size of the button "including" the size of the highlight. So I was just talking about the button.

To explain:
I have a light green background, the button itself does also have the same color, so it actually is invisible (in the example, it is only the stomach).
The highlight is exact the manikin you saw in the gif file for download.
So only when it is active it becomes visible.
Because all the buttons work that way, there will allways be a manikin (with a selected body region) visible.

Actually it is all quite easy, only if there weren´t the problem of DVDA3 that shows all the highlights at once, when the highlight sections overlap.

I am pretty familiar with the color settings, because I tried a lot to get the best output for the highlights.


bStro, thank you too. I have allready read this pdf sections, but I didn´t think it was good for my purpose. I will go over it once more.


Thanks for your help you two, I will come back to tell if I could do it the way I wanted.
richard-courtney wrote on 1/9/2006, 7:03 AM
I don't think you can layer highlights. There actually is only one
highlight layer in the spec and a bounded selection area is read
and color selected for display.

The only other way is to have a complex set of menu pages with the
graphic backgrounds showing a different color and automatically
select when highlighted. Only when the user presses enter or select
on their remote does it leave your menus.

In your example with the stomach highlighted. You can press
up to go to the chest menu page. The other directions, left, right, down,
go to left arm menu page, right arm menu page, etc.

The chest menu page could have up for head menu with left, right, turned off.
Press enter or select on the remote goes to the chest
video. Down goes back to the stomach menu page.

Good luck. Hope that helps.
nataq wrote on 1/9/2006, 11:36 AM
Thank you for the input on this. I might give it a try, although I expect a delay within the menue selections.

Anyway, thanks again,
Wolfgang