Graphics

Hi!

I am making a scoreboard for ice hockey and I'm getting a bit confused around how to make my timeout clock to automatically show and hide based on its value. I am using a widget as my countdown timer.

This is what I want:
- When the timer widget is set to a value above zero; animate the timeout clock in.
- When the timer hits zero; animate the timeout clock out.

I've been experimenting with visual logic and scene directors to make this happen, but I cannot get it to work consistently. Sometimes it animates as expected, and the next time nothing happens. What confuses me mostly is that the function block comparing values sometimes returns equal values to be true and sometimes not. I've tried both "String Compare" and "Equal To", and trying to compare the text element containing the widget data to other text elements, "String Values" and "Value".

I'm quite new to Xpression, so any hints to the right direction is highly appreciated :)

Hey,

Here's a couple of solutions I have done in the past to very similar.

This first one uses a timer to control the animation of an option and then I convert the time to frames (if you're in the US where I have 25 would be 29.97 for example).

This next one uses the compare to see when a value has changed and play an animation, at the end of the animation I have an event that sends the playhead back to zero ready for the next play.

Let me know how you get on.

#XPression

Thanks for your respons, redmile!
I seem to have the same problem with your second solution as with my own. And I think I have figured out why. The compare function fails from time to time, and I have realized that when my text element (containing the clock value that gets compared) is animated out of view, it is no longer updated, and therefore wont animate in the next time. I have done some tests and it seems like whenever the text element is not visible in the viewport (behind something else or alpha set to 0) it's not updated. I've created a "data text element" to be compared instead of the actual element being animated, and this works, but also has to be visible. Alpha set to 0 = not updating, alpha set to 0,1 = updating. Is this a system bug or supposed to be like this? I'm running Xpression Designer v.8.0 build 4106.
#XPression

@redmile ref: https://discussions.rossvideo.com/forum/default-forum-gc1/xpression-cg-and-graphics-system-gc12/18422-text-objects-updated-by-widgets-and-datalinq-how-what-and-is-this-bugged

I made a post about the above mentioned problem with testing values on hidden or out-of-bounds text objects.
#XPression

One option would be to link to a text box that isn't visiable (the eye is off) but that always stays within bounds. I know it's a bit of a hack but that would likely work.
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