Hello!
I am creating a watch face in Watch Face Studio where the background image of the watch face will be a slideshow of 6 photos, rotating on a loop. I have a question about the best way to go about doing this. Ultimately, the static images will remain on screen for a period of 5-10 min before transitioning to the next photo in the loop. I want to do this with a fade in/out between each image. I will trigger it to resume the location of the animation upon watch wake up
As I see it, there are two ways in which I can do it. and I want to do it using as little battery life as possible.
Method 1) I create an animation video (.webp… .gif ?) with all of the transitions already built in (created in After Effect or Premiere) and load it onto the watch. This would be a 30-60 minute long file to meet my goal.
Method 2) I load each of the 6 images onto the watch and additionally create 5-10 transitional images with changes in opacity between the two images in Photoshop. I then use the animation builder to display the image for the correct number of frames and loop the animation with the transition images programmed accordingly.
Method 3) something I am not thinking of.
Specific Watch: Galaxy 6 (and possibly a Pixel Watch 2)
WFS - Current Version
Thanks for you insights!
1 Like
Just learned there is a limit of the 15 frames per image (1 sec). Without duplicating a single image (x6!!!) literally hundreds of times, is there a way to insert a longer static image into the sequence?
Is there a way to place ALL of the images stacked in the background, then create individual subsequences of animation for each image’s transition to the next, which would somehow trigger the opacity of the background images…
Something like:
Animation Sequence 1 ends which triggers the opacity of Image 1 to be at 100%
Animation Sequence #2 starts, Image 1 is 0% opacity; Sequence 2 ends, triggers Image 2’s opacity to 100%
Etc…
but how to make the length of time on the static image long enough to meet my need of 5 min?
trying to avoid using the time condition so that is it NOT attached to a specific time of day (mainly, do not want 12PM to ALWYAS start showing image #1, etc.)
1 Like
I’m wondering if there is a method 3 with just the 6 images and serial ternary formula for up and down opacity between images. Not sure the numbers but something like:
Opacity
(TimeRange>a*TimeRange<b?0+TimePart)(TimeRange>c*TimeRange<d?100-TimePart)
Then a range of (c,d,e,f), (e,f,j,k) for each subsequent image. Maybe a 0-100 clamp in there. Nesting rather than serial will probably work better but would need more time to simmer that in my head.
Edit: So, this would cause an element to fade in and out by 20% per second between 0-5 and 15-20
(([SEC]<5?[SEC]*20:0)+(([SEC]>=5)*([SEC]<15)?100:0)+(([SEC]>=15)*([SEC]<20)?100-((30-[SEC])*20):0))
1 Like
@loserfamily6 . The method @Bodestone has outlined is about the only way . WE do not have a Timer that is set on The Display Waking . Seriously if the images are displayed for 5 minutes the transition is not something the User will be Hankering to witness every 5 minutes .
2 Likes
Looking at the numbers there I was probably off as well. Assuming 3 elements and a loop time of one minute then image 1 fade out would be 20-25 as image 2 fades in at 20-25 and out at 40-45.
Image 3 would fade in at 40-45 and out at 0-5.
I picked that as an easy example that could then be scaled up by element count, total loop time and fade increment/duration.
@russellcresser You could do an opacity 0/100 cut to a fade animation with much simpler expressions but you would need twice as many and it would be a far greater resources hog so maybe not the only way, certainly not the easiest from an expression perspective but definitely good for end results.
1 Like
Thanks folks! Not really being a developer/coder, your responses were a little above my pay grade for this personal project, but I do appreciate the insights.
I ended up just adding a bunch of static images to the animation timeline (for a total of 30 seconds each, and used a a total of 10 transitional images in between each image, which I created all in Photoshop. I checked the battery use and it is acceptable to me, and better than I had anticipated actually. I attached a screenshot of one of the images, just for the sake of curiosity.
Again, thank you to those that contributed!
2 Likes
