Graphics

For our election coverage our newsroom would like to have a graphic that shows a dot for each of the 100 U.S. Senate seats and they would like to be able to change the amount of seats each party holds on the fly. In the past we have just made these graphics in Photoshop which doesn't allow them to be changed quickly. I would think something like this would be able to be scripted so if the number 40 would be typed in for the Democrats then 40 of the dots would turn blue. I have not been able to figure out how the scripting would work for this to happen, if it is even possible at all. If anybody has any ideas how to make this work it would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Jeff,

This is certainly something that could be scripted.

For this you would have to build a project that contains:

1 group with 100 Quads in it which are named seat1 to seat100

3 materials which are called Red, Blue and White for example.

1 Textobject which is called txtDemocrats

The code would look something like this:



dim matRed as xpMaterial

dim matBlue as xpMaterial

dim matWhite as xpMaterial

dim quadSeat as xpBaseObject

dim txtObj as xpTextObject

dim i as integer

dim amountDemocrats as integer

' LINK THE MATERIALS TO THE OBJECTS

Engine.getMaterialByName("White", matWhite)

Engine.getMaterialByName("Blue", matBlue)

Engine.getMaterialByName("Red", matRed)

' EXTRACT THE AMOUNT OF DEMOCRATS FROM THE TEXTOBJECT

Self.getObjectByName("txtDemocrats", txtObj)

amountDemocrats = cInt(txtObj.Text)

' LOOP THROUGH ALL OF THE DOTS AND ASSIGN THE APPROPRIATE MATERIAL

for i=1 to 100

Self.getObjectByName("seat" & i, quadSeat)

if i

#XPression

Hi Kenneth,

Thanks for this script. This is a huge step forward to accomplishing what we're trying to do. One question though, would there be some way to make it so you could say type in a number for democrats that colors seats blue starting at 1, type in a different number for republicans that colors seats red starting at 100, and then have the remainder of the dots show white for seats that are still up for grabs for races that aren't over yet?

Thanks,

Jeff

#XPression

Hi Jeff,

Sure you can, anything is possible! Well almost...

We only have to include an additional condition.

Below you'll find the amended code.



dim matRed as xpMaterial

dim matBlue as xpMaterial

dim matWhite as xpMaterial

dim quadSeat as xpBaseObject

dim txtObj as xpTextObject

dim i as integer

dim amountDemocrats as integer

dim amountRepublicans as integer

' LINK THE MATERIALS TO THE OBJECTS

Engine.getMaterialByName("White", matWhite)

Engine.getMaterialByName("Blue", matBlue)

Engine.getMaterialByName("Red", matRed)

' EXTRACT THE AMOUNT OF DEMOCRATS FROM THE TEXTOBJECT

Self.getObjectByName("txtDemocrats", txtObj)

amountDemocrats = cInt(txtObj.Text)

' EXTRACT THE AMOUNT OF REPUBLICANS FROM THE TEXTOBJECT

Self.getObjectByName("txtRepublicans", txtObj)

amountRepublicans = cInt(txtObj.Text)

' LOOP THROUGH ALL OF THE DOTS AND ASSIGN THE COLOUR

for i=1 to 100

Self.getObjectByName("seat" & i, quadSeat)

if i [SMALLER THEN]= amountDemocrats then ' CODE NOT DISPLAYING PROPERLY

quadSeat.setMaterial(0,matBlue)

else if i [BIGGER THEN] amountDemocrats And i [BIGGER THEN] (100 - amountRepublicans) then ' CODE NOT DISPLAYING PROPERLY

quadSeat.setMaterial(0,matRed)

else

quadSeat.setMaterial(0,matWhite)

end if

next



[EDIT]

Some of the code is not displaying properly on this forum. So you'll see two lines in the code above which have [SMALLER THEN] or [BIGGER THEN] in it. Replace those with the symbol equal to the text.

#XPression