DekoCast Glossary

An Action Item refers to an individual line in the list of Parameters controlled by a given Action. View the Items associated with an Action in the Action Item pane of the Timeline Editor window. Right-click on an Action Item in this pane to show a pop-up menu of commands affecting the selected Item, such as Copy, Past, Delete, or Select a new Parameter or Object to control with this Item.

When DekoCast is in Animate Mode, any changes made to Parameter values in the Object Editor or Parameter Editor window cause a keyframe to be added or modified in the currently selected Action, at the time currently indicated by the Timeline Thumb. Use the Animate Mode toggle button in the main window toolbar to turn Animate Mode On and Off. The button appears pressed when Animate Mode is on.

A Capture Keyframe is a Keyframe in an Action Item that does not contain a fixed value, but takes its value from the current value of a Parameter at the moment the Action is played. Double-click the Keyframe in the Timeline Curve pane to open the Parameter Value Editor to view or change the Parameter from which the Capture Keyframe takes its value.

When Capture Mode is active and DekoCast is in Animate Mode, in addition to adding a keyframe at the time indicated by the current location of the Timeline Thumb when any changes are made to Parameter values in the Object Editor or Parameter Editor window, a Capture Keyframe is added at time 0. If the normal keyframe is added at time 0, no Capture Keyframe is created. Capture Key mode has no effect if Animate Mode is not on. Use the Capture Keyframe toggle button in the main window toolbar to turn Capture Key mode On and Off. The button appears pressed when Capture Keyframe mode is on.

The primary tool for creating and modifying DekoCast scenes.

The GUI provides the Scene Browser, Object Browser, Timeline Editor, Scene and Parameter Windows. Use the View drop-down menu to show or hide the windows.

Other interfaces for controlling the DekoCast display engine include the Windows™ COM-based RocketEngine Application Programming Interface (API) and the XML-based Rocket Engine Bytestream Command Interface (BCI).

Select the View >> Parameters menu item to show/hide this window. The window shows a list of Parameter names and their current values. The Scene/Object/User/Canvas check boxes at the top window indicate what type(s) of Parameters to show. The Search: typein field lets you enter a match string to show only those parameters where the string matches some part of the parameter name. This typein is case-sensitive. Press the X box to clear this typein. The New button creates a new User Parameter.

View or edit a Parameter's value using this dialog window. To view it, double-click on a keyframe in the Timeline Curve Window, or on a Parameter value in the Parameter Editor Window.

This window is necessary because parameters can take on a wide range of specialized value types. Click the radio button at the top of the window to select the type of value, then use the value-specific fields below to view or select the value. Press OK to finish. If invoked from the Parameter Editor Window, pressing OK while Animate Mode is On causes a new keyframe to be created for this parameter in the currently selected Action.

The Targa board is the PC board in the DekoCast chassis that does the image and audio processing, video decompression, compositing, and display for the DekoCast graphics. The Targa has about 120 Megabytes of memory on the card itself. Every DekoCast object takes some amount of that memory, but the biggest user is the Cel Animation object, whose images must all reside uncompressed in that memory. To see the amount of available memory on the card at any time, select the Help >> About DekoCast... pulldown menu item.

View, create, and edit Actions (animations) in the selected scene.

The editor contains four Panes - Action List, Action Item List, Bar, and Curve. Adjust the size of the panes by dragging the vertical gray bars between them.

In the curve editing pane of the Timeline Editor, the pentagon-shaped button at the top of the window is called the Timeline Thumb. While the Action is paused, drag the thumb with the mouse to scrub through the animation. In Animate Mode, the current position of the Thumb determines where in time any new keyframes are added.

A parameter associated with a scene that was explicitly created by the scene designer to hold a miscellaneous value. This value is saved with the scene file, and can be read or modified by an external program. A User Parameter value may also be captured into a capture keyframe when an Action is played.