Lightweight 3D

GUI development for consumer electronics products, as well as portable, home and automotive appliances is more and more influenced by the demand for stylish interface designs with rich effects and 3D appearance – driven by trendsetting products, e.g. the Apple iPhone, iPad or Android based devices. In order to support GUI developers to realize such fancy and compelling GUI concepts on - sometimes limited - embedded platforms, Embedded Wizard introduces Lightweight 3D.

 

 

Lightweight 3D: Image Flow

Lightweight 3D: Image Carrousel

Lightweight 3D: Perspective Images

Lightweight 3D: All 3D operations, like rotation, scaling and perspective distortion can be applied to images or entire Embedded Wizard objects/groups (Click image to enlarge).

Why Lightweight 3D?

Easy to use: The creation and modification of Lightweight 3D effects is seamlessly integrated into the familiar workflow. No dedicated 3D tool know-how or OpenGL programming skills are required. Perspective distortions, zoom or rotation can be applied to any object with drag-and-drop in the composer or with dedicated functions during runtime.

 

Suited for "lightweight" embedded platforms: Embedded Wizard's graphics engine - including the lightweight 3D operations - can be optimally adapted to the specific hard- and software capabilities of every suitable platform. Thus, the best possible graphics performance is achieved on embedded platforms.

Capabilities of Lightweight 3D

  • Rotation, scaling and perspective distortion
  • New effects for motion, rotation, flipping
  • Support of new design concepts, e.g. analogue, rotating controls and needles, image flow, moving, zooming and rotating menu systems, objects moving in a 3D space, mirrored and illuminated objects (depending on the platforms capabilities).
  • The transformed surface of an object remains able to react to mouse and touch inputs.
  • Applicable to images and all visible objects in Embedded Wizard.

 

Based on Perspective Correct Projection

Lightweight 3D effects are solely based on perspective correct projection of an image to a four-point polygon. Depending on the shape of the polygon the original image can be scaled, rotated and deformed in any desired way e.g. to create the impression of an image tilted backward in a 3D space. The following illustration demonstrates this idea:


Perspective Transformation

 

Available for dedicated embedded platforms

The new 3D effects are supported for dedicated target systems, which offer e.g. sufficient CPU power or provide a dedicated 3D hardware engine. In coordination with the responsible semiconductor manufacturers, TARA will reserve the decision for which target system the lightweight 3D functionality is offered. In case of a non-3D capable target system, the GUI application will still be executable, but no 3D output will appear on the screen. For details about the supported target systems please contact TARA Systems.

Demos

The following demos with Lightweight 3D features are available as Win32 Executable: