A way to blend platforms

[Jass_167]

When I transfer from platform to platform, you just see a black screen and I would like it to have a smoother transition. Any ideas

[faeran]

2 hours ago, Jass_167 said:

When I transfer from platform to platform, you just see a black screen and I would like it to have a smoother transition. Any ideas

Hi @Jass_167. Hoping you can be a bit more descriptive here. Is this related to the platform specific background images while on your platform view you are building?

[Jass_167]

This is relating to platform view as well as wheel game view. So basically as your scrolling through your platforms there is a moment of black screen I want to avoid 

[faeran]

1 minute ago, Jass_167 said:

This is relating to platform view as well as wheel game view. So basically as your scrolling through your platforms there is a moment of black screen I want to avoid 

The black screen, I'm guessing is happening because elements need to load and behind those elements is nothing, which shows up on screen as black. Can you give an example of one of your views? What elements are in play and when the blackness appears.

[Jass_167]

So basically I have a video of a ps1 game playing, when I go to ps2 it will show a black screen before the video is the ps2 shows. How do I get something else or another color to show so it’s not black?

[faeran]

29 minutes ago, Jass_167 said:

So basically I have a video of a ps1 game playing, when I go to ps2 it will show a black screen before the video is the ps2 shows. How do I get something else or another color to show so it’s not black?

You could place another element behind the video. Either a rectangle that you color, or another image.

[Jass_167]

Thank you

[Disco Lando]

Sorry to necro a thread, but I'm looking for something similar; the transitions between box art images and fanart backgrounds in the games list view of the default theme is a smooth crossfade between previously selected and newly selected, without a dip to black. I'm trying to figure out how to implement this using the Community Theme editor for both game list and platform/playlist views.

Nevermind, I figured it out. The code from the transitions in the Documentation.pdf in the main themes folder just goes right into a User Source element. So instead of using an image element for the background, you can paste:

<transitions:TransitionPresenter TransitionSelector="{Binding BackgroundTransitionSelector}" Content="{Binding BackgroundView}" Height="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualHeight}" Width="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualWidth}" IsContentVideo="true" />

into a User Source element and now the transition is a crossfade in either view.

For some reason the Community Editor throws up an error message the first time I implement it, though, so I'm dealing with a lot of crashes.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Disco Lando

[Jass_167]

@Disco Lando in simple terms what will this for my big box experience?

[Disco Lando]

They allow the crossfade that you see in the default theme on box art and background images when going through a games view. For some reason the platforms view does that quick fade-to-black animation, but you can use this to change that.

[Jass_167]

@Disco Landoso I can copy and paste what your wrote where?

[Disco Lando]

If you're using the Community Theme Editor, put that code into a custom XAML file created by a User Source element into the space above where your current background image element is nested. I've tested it in both TextGamesView and TextFiltersView, but it should work in any of them.
 

You'll have to set the x, y, height, and width of the element before you paste the XAML code into it, otherwise you might get a crash when trying to tweak it afterwards. You might have to restart the editor afterwards, too, it's giving me a lot of hassle.

[Jass_167]

@Disco Landothank you

[Disco Lando]

I was wrong about this, sort of. Turns out when navigating between playlists in categories view, if you're using platform fanart as the background, you still get a slight dip in opacity with the fade transition. I might be able to solve this by putting a static fanart background behind the transition element...

Edit: Success! A nice fade between platforms and no dip navigating through the playlists of a platform in categories view.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Disco Lando

[banggun]

Sorry to also dig up this old thread again but I think I'm trying to describe a similar effect as mentioned here.

To better explain if I were in a games view and wanted two fanarts "crossfading" into each other how would this be achieved? As mentioned the usual way themes go about this is by using a storyboard changing the opacity transition to 0 and loading the new one to opacity 1. However as mentioned above that leaves with a somewhat ugly and undesirable way of nicely fading two images over into each other. What you'll get is a brief moment where you just have to look at your empty/black/static background. So what you'll want to get is the new image fading on top of the old dynamically loaded image. I have looked at other themes for "inspiration" but so far most themes either have that full fade to 0 opacity leaving no/black background or they use different type of transitions. This could be a WPF limitation though. Also I'm trying this by editing the xaml files directly.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by banggun

[Jass_167]

Okay, so I don’t know how to do what I did on anything other then Community Theme Creator but what I did was have a cover art show when scrolling and then it pans to the left to revel the screen I want, it hides the black screen and does the job.