Avatar pixelation

warhell · Post by **warhell** » 05 Jun 2010, 19:20

Hi, I'm creating an avatar from bitmapdata and inputting it into openspace. Everything works out great, except that when the user zooms in or out from the default zoom, the avatar gets destorted/pixelated. Is there an easy workaround for this? Because of the way our app is structured we have to use bitmaps for performance reasons.

Post by **Bax** » 07 Jun 2010, 08:07

Of course if you use bitmap avatars, when zooming they will pixellate. I don't think there's a workaround to this. It is the way Flash works.

laxersaz · Post by **laxersaz** » 07 Jun 2010, 08:28

Enable smoothing in the properties of the avatar images in flash.

warhell · Post by **warhell** » 07 Jun 2010, 18:19

How does resizing work when you load a bitmap into OpenSpace? By what factor is the bitmap resized?

Post by **Bax** » 07 Jun 2010, 21:12

When you use the OpenSpace.zoomView method, you choose the resizing factor. This is applied to the whole map container, which is scaled (using DisplayObjects scaleX and scaleY properties) accordingly.
Bitmaps on the map follow the scaling of their container.

warhell · Post by **warhell** » 08 Jun 2010, 20:15

Is there anyway to not apply scaling to the avatar? We would like to just change the avatar to a different bitmap (which is scaled before runtime). We are trying to avoid scaling the avatar (since it's a bitmap) so we avoid pixelation all together.

Post by **Bax** » 08 Jun 2010, 20:18

warhell wrote:Is there anyway to not apply scaling to the avatar? We would like to just change the avatar to a different bitmap (which is scaled before runtime). We are trying to avoid scaling the avatar (since it's a bitmap) so we avoid pixelation all together.

No, this is not possible. Avatars are nested sprites inside the map container, which is being scaled.

warhell · Post by **warhell** » 08 Jun 2010, 20:37

Is the scaling applied via setting the scale properties or multiplying the existing scale properties?

e.g.

obj.scaleX = newScale;
obj.scaleY = newScale;

or

obj.scaleX *= newScale;
obj.scaleY *= newScale;

I'm assuming it's applied the first way, I'm asking because if it's done the second way I can modify the scaling factor in the constructor, such that the scaleX and scaleY properties are 1.

Post by **Bax** » 09 Jun 2010, 07:22

The scaling is applied in the first way. Also, the scaling is not applied to each movieclip (tiles, avatars, etc) independently, but to the overall container.

warhell · Post by **warhell** » 10 Jun 2010, 00:59

bax wrote:The scaling is applied in the first way. Also, the scaling is not applied to each movieclip (tiles, avatars, etc) independently, but to the overall container.

Ahh, so I guess a nice hack would be to stick my avatar bitmap inside a movieclip, and scale that movieclip by a factor such that when openspace scales (when zooming) the scaling of the bitmap is 1?

Post by **Bax** » 10 Jun 2010, 07:16

Not sure I've understood... anyway yo can give it a try.

warhell · Post by **warhell** » 14 Jun 2010, 18:04

For example, say that I set the zoom value of openspace to be .5. This means that every object's xscale and yscale property (that is located inside openspace) will be changed to .5. So, if I stick my bitmap in a movieclip who's xscale and yscale is 2, once openspace resizes everything, the original bitmaps scale will be the equivalent of 1.

Post by **Bax** » 14 Jun 2010, 21:57

Yes, but when zooming we don't set the xScale/yScale properties on all the movieclips, but only on the main container.