Mouse Click "Ripple" effect?

[drventure]

Ok, a bit of a peculiar question maybe...

But would anyone know what software/cursor/whatever is used to get that "circular ripple effect" on screen at the mousepointer when you click the mouse?

I've seen it most often in youtube screencasts and such. Maybe it's a function of the screen capture software?

The reason is I think it'd work quite nicely on my touch screen jukebox.

That machine is running XP however.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

[GadgetGeek]

something like this?

[Mysterioii]

It kinda sounds like you're talking about the pointer finder (not sure the actual term), but that's not when you click the mouse button.

In XP go to control panel, mouse properties, the "Pointer Options" tab, and check "show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key."

Then, press the CTRL key.   

Not sure if that's what you mean though.

Edit: Shoulda read GadgetGeek's link first since it covered exactly what I mentioned....  nevermind...   

[drventure]

Well, I was about to slap myself in the face for missing that one.

GadgetGeeks pointer to the AHK script definitely is close, but it's not quite the effect I was looking for.

Ah, finally found an example.

This is from a Camtasia example

http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-sample-project-cursor-effects.html

You can see the effect about 3 minutes in (ignore the yellow highlighter effect, just the rings effect.

The Built in windows effect is close, but not quite the same


I did alter the StackOverflow script slightly so that it doesn't do a double pop effect when you click (instead of press hold).


#SingleInstance force

Clicked:=0

~LButton::
Clicked:=1
SetTimer, ClickDelay, -200
return

~LButton UP::
Clicked:=1
SetTimer, ClickDelay, -200
return

ClickDelay:
if Clicked = 1
{
    Send {Ctrl}
}
Clicked:=0
return


Still, the effect isn't quite what I was looking for, but very close.

Thanks for the links.

If anyone else knows a way to get closer to the camtasia effect, i'd love to hear about it!

[drventure]

Just in case anyone else is interested

I did turn up this

http://www.pointerfocus.com/screenshots.html

Again, not quite what I had in mind but it's pretty close.

[drventure]

Since I couldn't find an app to do this silly little thing, I went ahead and built one.

But here's the problem.

I haven't been able to find an decent "ripple effect" animated GIF.

I did find this:



But I really need one that starts small, ripples out and dissipates. That would look the best, I think.

Anyone photoshop/maya ninjas out there that wouldn't wind contributing?

I'll open source the project, if anyone's interested.

[Howard_Casto]

Since I couldn't find an app to do this silly little thing, I went ahead and built one.

But here's the problem.

I haven't been able to find an decent "ripple effect" animated GIF.

I did find this:



But I really need one that starts small, ripples out and dissipates. That would look the best, I think.

Anyone photoshop/maya ninjas out there that wouldn't wind contributing?

I'll open source the project, if anyone's interested.

Did a quote so I could see the thing... stupid alternating colors. 

Hmm.... my shop skillz are pretty good but I'm not sure about this one.... gifs don't have true alpha channels, so it's gonna look kinda white-ish

[drventure]

I didn't realize that GIF's were mask transparency only.
Better than nothing but still.

So that got me looking.

Turns out, there's APNG, animated PNG files. And there are support classes for them for .net and WPF.

http://apngwpf.codeplex.com/

Plus tools to convert a series of PNGs into an APNG.

So, using that wouldn't be a problem.

But then that spawned a few more google searches and I turned up this demo.

http://blog.pixelingene.com/2006/09/an-improved-water-effect/

And +THAT+ is what I was truly after in the first place.

So, a little rejiggering, some screenshot code, and global mouse hooks and I should have something that makes the actual screen image shimmer and ripple when you touch the screen.

here's a screen cap of the ripples in action.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah that'll work, but you are trying to essentially manipulate the system cursor right?

That is going to be the real issue.  It's hard enough to insert a real cursor to work with every application, I can only imagine the problems that would occur using a png image over the desktop or what have you.  "Aero" might have some functionality that will help you, but expect things to just not work on a lot of apps. 

[drventure]

Yeah, There could be issues with that. I've done similar things in the past but nothing quite like this.

On the other hand, my real intent is to have this thing run over the top of Album Player, which is the software running my Jukebox. I think it'd be very interesting visually to touch the screen and have it ripple like that.

Outside of that use, and maybe just a few more cases, it'd probably be irritating (I certainly wouldn't want it running on top of a dev environment, word processor, etc). So it's fairly special case.

[Turvey]

Any good?

Download from http://devrexster.deviantart.com/art/iTouch-touch-ur-screen-136460003

Works on my Win7 but dont know if it works with touchcreen though. Dont see why it wouldn't 

[drventure]

@Turvey

That's Great!

I suspected something had to be out there like this.

That one actually uses a simple pixel shader to simulate the ripples. It's a great effect. I wish the guy had included his source.

I'm still gonna have to give mesh ripple demo thing I found a try.

But in the meantime, iTouch is going up on my jukebox to see what it looks like.

Many thanks!