What is the best easing function to simulate a GUI item dropping? - silverlight

There are so many easing functions available in Expression Blend, and so many settings on each, it is often hard to know instinctively what easing function to choose. Trying all the options would take quite a long time.
In this instance, I want to give the impression that the item has fallen forward and down. I am using a projection rotation about X and currently using one of the circular easing functions, but it does not feel quite right. A subtle bounce would probably help.
What would be the best option (and specific settings) to give the impression of falling a short distance?
As always, thanks in advance.
Follow-up: After the comments below and as a potential long-term solution to the general problem posed here (choosing easing functions and settings by keyword), we have now setup www.easing.co. We will be seeking contributions from the community, so if you are interested in helping with the project, drop us a line via that website only.

I came across this post whilst looking for an answer to the same question.
I Used a 'BounceOut' ease with 2 bounces, and a bounciness of 10.
Pete

Related

How do I build simple D3 charts that display massive amounts of data?

I would like to use D3 to build simple charts with literally hundreds of millions of data points.
Obviously, I won't be attempting to plot millions of points at a time. Only a very, very tiny fraction of those points (<1000) would be in view at any given time. I'll download pre-processed data "on-demand" from the server depending on the current view and zoom level, and would like to use D3's built-in zoom and pan behaviors.
Basically, imagine an infinitely wide bar chart that pans back and forth, and alters itself to show the appropriate level of detail depending on the current zoom level (e.g. semantic zoom).
What techniques are available in D3 to achieve this, yet still have it feel responsive and smooth? What should I avoid doing? Are there any examples of this out there?
Examples: Have a look at Fabian Fischer's BankSafe, an award-winning entry to this year's VAST Challenge. Not sure if the code is available, but the report summarising the techniques he used certainly is. The dataset was also in the order of "hundreds of millions" and - if I remember correctly - had a zoom technique similar to the one you describe.
I would highly recommend you look into using canvas over svg. From what I've seen, having thousands of SVG elements doesn't scale particularly well. Microsoft has a pretty good writeup for how to know which to choose: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/gg193983(v=vs.85).aspx#Using_Canvas_AndOr_SVG

Looking for guidance on multi-part graphical gesture recognition

I'm trying to research existing works in the area of recognizing complex graphical gestures, but struggling to find good search terms or clear documents in the field.
For example, I might want to recognize an arbitrary shape drawn by a mouse as a path, or a path with an arrow head, or an enclosed region, or some combination of various shapes. One of the problems I'm having is that the shapes are not necessarily going to take a consistent symbolic form, so I'm looking for alternate ways to represent the data.
This article has been helpful so far, but does not discuss any concrete algorithms.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/l4235612gv479262/
Anyway, I'm not necessarily looking for solutions here (though I'd be interested if there were some), but if people can help direct me towards some pertinent papers or the right kinds of search terms, I would appreciate it!
If you take the sequence in which the gesture is made/drawn into account then you might want to make use of sequence alignment techniques. Asking Google gives quite a few matches which you might want to explore.

Tracking a person in a scene with a varying amount of illumination

In computer vision, what would be a good approach to tracking a human in the black and white same scene at different times of the day (i.e. different levels of illumination)? The scene will never be dark so I don't need to worry about searching using infra-red or anything for heat sensing. I need to identify the people and then also track them so there are two parts.
Any advice would be great.
Thanks.
SIFT feature matching works well for this purpose. It is implemented in OpenCV.

Creating "flippable" content in Silverlight

I'm currently trying to build my personal website with Silverlight 3 and I've got this idea that you should be able to flip through the content in a certain way. I haven't seen exactly what I wanted before, so I uploaded a screenshot of the design for you guys to get a better idea of what I'm talking about:
Picture of desired effect http://www.bo-mortensen.dk/bmdkflip.jpg
As you can see it's more or less a carousel on the X axis. I've seen a fair number of carousel tutorials, but it seems to be quite "complicated" for what I'm looking for.
My main problem is that I fail to understand how to make this thing dynamic. I can sure do the flipping animations, but when it comes to the best approach of making the bottom page (the mirrored one) the previous etc, I'm a bit lost :)
I'm looking for any good advice on how to make this dynamic in such a way that the only thing that needs to be changed is the content itself (text, pictures etc) Also, I believe that each page/usercontrol should be using the same two (flip up and flip down) animations, if that's possible at all?
Hope I made myself clear on this - it's late after all ;) If not, just let me know and I'll see if I can elaborate!
Looks like you are looking for a Flippable 3D control. So check out my blog for one and you can tweak it to make vertical rotation.
http://jobijoy.blogspot.com/2009/04/3d-flipper-control-using-silverlight-30.html

How can I manipulate a RagDoll made with farseer physics in Silverlight?

I made a ragdoll similar to the one in this demo. This rag doll will be used for a turn based rpg game where the physics will be used for animations such as character taking damage, dying, falling down, etc.
What I am pondering at the moment is as how should go about this, should I stick the rag doll by the head to the background (leaving the body dangling) and basically throw around its body parts around as to simulate punching etc (as shown in Fig 1), or stiffen the joints and statically rotate and move the body parts for the actions taken(as shown in Fig 2), and when it comes to the character dying(or a similar action) just loosen the joints and let the rag doll fall down. Or is there a better way to go about doing this?
I am new to farseer physics and don't even know if what I mentioned is even possible or overwhelmingly hard to do.
Illustration http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8681/charactermovementrg5.jpg
Please note that the red line in the figures represents the character's arm
Not sure that ragdolls are the way to go here, if you want animations. But if you do want to use them, I'd lock the feet to the floor and have some rotation springs in the joints so that when no forces are applied, the body stands upright. Then if it gets a hit, it'll kind of bend over, but should rebound to it's stand-up state afterwards (you may have to help it along the way back, e.g. apply some forces/torques until it's back where you want it).
For animations, such as the character punching, you could perhaps apply a spring joint (I think that's the name). Connect it to the fist and the destination, and the arm should automatically move there. You could do the same with a kick, just release the lock on that foot. However, I think it might be hard to get it to look right. On the other hand, it would look unique to other games, even though it might look kinda funny.
If you're skilled, you might wanna create an animation editor and save an animation as a sequence of forces and torques that need to be applied to limbs in order to get them to where and when they should be.
I think a better approach is to have an animated sprite played, rather than going through joint manipulation .
Maybe you can use some RotateTransform implementations to articulate arms and legs.
For sure animated sprites are the best, and painless, way of doing this.

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