1 month to go...

Here's a video with some new functionality, including the tool selector and undo / redo.

Over this past week I have been working on a number of aspects of the program.

1. I have modified the current circle and rectangle tools to make them more useful. Instead of drawing a continuous line of circles or rectangles, each click of the Wiimote's A button draws a single circle / rectangle, which increases in size the longer the A button is pressed.

Originally, I had another plan, of creating a click and drag tool for rectangles and circles, where the user can exactly specify the size of the shape by clicking and dragging. However, this had proved to place too much load on the program, especially when it is a large drawing (lots of shapes), as the whole pane needs to be redrawn each frame (to allow for increasing and decreasing rectangle size).

2. I have also created a save form, to handle saving images. The images are saved to a default location (C:\WPP) and the pane can be saved as a bitmap or jpeg. I may possiblly introduce my own file type (.wpp) if I manage to get shape selection working - a part of the extended functionality. To save an image, the user presses the down arrow on the wiimote (up will be used to Load, if I get this working).

3. I have modified the clear form, to display larger buttons and text. To clear the canvas, the user presses the Home button of the Wiimote

4. I have added a close button to the form.

5. I have implemented Undo / Redo for the most recent change to the drawing canvas. Pressing Left on the Wiimote performs an Undo, while pressing Right does a redo of what was just undone.

And that's about it...

The biggest challenges I have left to overcome are:
- Making the Shape selection tool
- Making the colour selection cube work...

I will try and upload some videos of what I have described in this post asap.

Completed Line Tool

I managed to figure out a better way to draw lines.

I used the inbuilt DirectX Line class, which has a draw method that takes an array of points that make up a line, and draws rectangles between them.

I also drew a circle at each point on the line, so that the line was smoother (as the rectangles sometimes had gaps between them.

The following image shows the line tool at work. It was drawn using the Wiimote.



The width of the line tool can be varied by clicking the + and - buttons on the Wiimote.

I have also optimised the painting of shapes, and now only the most recent shape is redrawn on the canvas (this reduces the load on the processor considerably, especially when the image is large).

Line Tool

Hello again,

So today I have been working on the Line tool... This is different from the other tools so far, because each point on the line needs to be connected.

The Line tool is simply a list of circles, with the extra step of joining them together being done by the Lines Draw method.

I am only half way there so far. The line tool draws circles, and lines between the centers of the circles. In the complete version, a rectangle will be drawn between the two circles, so that the line doesn't have blots all over it (see image below).



I am still thinking about the best way to draw the rectangles between each circle. It is not that simple, as I must account for the angle between each of the circles in order to draw the rectangle correctly...

We will see what I come up with to do this.

Until next time...

Colour Selection Cube - Initial Attempt

So I have managed to create the colour selection cube in DirectX, and it looks pretty good I reckon. Here is a screenshot:



The colour selection cube is made up of 125 individual colour cubes, all drawn using DirectX graphics. Each cube consists of only 3 faces - the three visible ones - to make rendering faster.

A loop is set up in my code to create each cube, and give it red green and blue (RGB) colour values, ranging from 0 to 255.

To change to colour selection mode, the user clicks the 1 button of the Wiimote.

The goal of the next week is to get the Wiimote working with the colour selection cube, including using the distance of the Wiimote from the screen to determine the depth into the colour cube.

Also, this week I have to submit my usability study questions to the university ethics commitee, so that they can be approved by the time that the questionnaire needs to be done.

Will update my blog again soon.

Colour Cube

Last week I handed in my partial treatise, with draft versions of chapter 1 and 2, and some content in the results and conclusions.

Now I am working on creating the colour selection cube in DirectX that will be used to change colours for painting.

Here is an example of what the colour selection cube could look like: