GettingStartedControls Part 2

Part 2 of the GettingStartedControls Tutorial covers the creation of a scene for climate control using various predefined Scene Composer controls. As basis for part 2 of our GettingStartedControls creation tutorial please use your own created solution from part 1.

The final result of our ClimateControl Scene will look like this:

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Preparing the Climate Scene

1. Create a new scene via the menu "Scene" - "New 2D Scene" or press < Ctrl+2 > on your keyboard
   
   • The "Add New Scene 2D" dialog will be opened.
     
2. In the first row select "/Scenes" from the drop-down menu. Enter "SceneClimate" as name and press [ OK ]. We use the prefix "Scene" to have all scenes listed next to each other in the Solution Explorer panel.
   • A new scene "SceneClimate" is created and visible in the Solution Explorer panel in folder "Scenes".
   • The new scene is opened in the Scene Editor and in the Scene Tree panel.
   • In the Scene Tree panel you can see that the scene already has a camera.
   • In the Render Targets panel you can see that the camera is already added to the RenderTarget.
     
     

     
     

3. In the Render Targets panel check the checkbox of "SceneClimate\Camera" in order to enable rendering.

Configure the ClimateScene's Layout

For the climate scene we will use a more realistic setup of the scene than before, because very often the layout of the elements of a scene are dependent to the screen size or language. Some languages for example are written from right to left and others from left to right. This for sure will influence the layout of texts and controls. Instead of absolute positioning of all elements, we will use a GridLayout.

1. In the Toolbox panel under [ Nodes 2D ] drag and drop a GridLayout (see image below) into the Scene Editor or into the Scene Tree panel on the SceneClimate node.
   • A GridLayout is visible in the Scene Tree panel.
   • It is also available in the Scene Editor, but only its pivot point is visible when it is selected.
     

     
     

2. In the Scene Tree panel right-click on the GridLayout to open the context menu and choose "Configure Layouter...".
   • The "Grid Layouter Editor" will popup where the GridLayout can be configured.
     

     
     

3. On the Grid Layout Editor's lower left corner, use the [ + ] buttons to add rows and columns (see image below). Configure 6 rows and 4 columns.
   • The GridLayout is configured with 6 rows and 4 columns.
     

     
     

4. Configure the columns' widths and the rows' heights according to the table below using the input fields on the top and right.
   • Rows and columns are configured as in the image above.

     Column	Width		Row	Width
     Column 1	0.05		Row 1	0.20
     Column 2	0.30		Row 2	0.20
     Column 3	0.50		Row 3	0.20
     Column 4	0.05		Row 4	0.20
     			Row 5	0.20
     			Row 6	0.20

5. When you're done configuring, press the [ OK ] button.
   • The Grid Layout Editor will be closed.

     Be aware that you cannot see the GridLayout. Its size is 0 as long as no size and no content for its cells has been configured.

     
     

6. In the Properties panel's [ Transformations ] section configure the following position of the GridLayout.
   
   • The position of the GridLayout in the Scene Editor has changed.
     

     Target Item	Setting Value
     Position X	0
     Position Y	0

7. In the Properties panel's [ Transformations ] section configure the following size of the GridLayout.

   The size is currently calculated automatically. In order to be able to change the values for the size, you have to click on the [ A ] button to disable the automatic calculation of the size.

    

   • The size of the GridLayout has changed.
   • The GridLayout's grid is now visible.
     

     Target Item	Setting Value
     Size X	1024
     Size Y	714

     

     
     

8. It is recommended to save the Scene Composer solution.
   

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Adding the Climate Scene Content

To put real content into our scene, import a few images by clicking (Import > Import Resources) and selecting the images in /cgi_studio_content/Resources/GettingStartedControls/Climate:

Let us start with the texts needed for our Climate scene. Use the Text controls from the Toolbox panel (Controls - Common - Text) to place the following texts:

To set the text itself please edit the Control property, "Text". We are using a smaller font than the default one. Please choose OpenSansRegular25.

For the Steering heater text we adapt the settings to be able to use multiple lines. Check the "Multiline" property.

Repeat editing the texts and text styles for all of the listed texts. Also, you can press Shift and click all the text controls, and then set the VerticalAlignment of these texts into VCenter, all at once.

Please instantiate the following controls by dragging from the Toolbox to the SceneClimate root node:

Before structuring the Scene Tree, we rename the controls accordingly:

Now it's time to restructure the controls.

The following Radio Buttons will be placed inside the Stack Layout:

• RadioButton_AC On
  
• RadioButton_AC Off
  

And the StackLayout itself will be dragged into the content anchor of group box GroupBox_AC.

The controls for temperature adjustments will be dragged into the GridLayout_Slider:

• Slider_Temperature
  
• Text Value
  
• Button_TempDec
  
• Button_TempInc

The elements for the fan will be dragged into the GridLayout_Fan:

• MultiStateButton_Fan
  
• Button_Fan Max
  
• Button_Fan Off

We will now remove all Solid Color Nodes and fill the GridLayout with our new controls.
Select all SolidColor Nodes and press the Delete key or use the context menu to delete them. Confirm deleting the SolidColorNodes in the delete items dialog with OK.
Drag all new items onto the "GridLayout" node. The resulting scene tree structure will look like this:

In the context menu of the GridLayout, click "Configure Layouter…".

Drag the elements to their positions.

The result should look like in the Scene Editor:

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Setting up the Temperature Controls

As you can see, the structure of the climate scene can be roughly recognized. However, we need to layout the elements carefully.
We start with the GridLayout_Slider. Configure the GridLayout as below using "Configure Layouter…" from the context menu:

Set the "Format Text" property of the Text Value under GridLayout_Slider to %2.1f °C, and the "HorizontalAlignment" property to "HCenter".

For the Slider_Temperature, set the following properties:

To adjust the images (Normal Image and Pressed Image) of Button_TempDec press the magnifying glass icon on the right of the property and select the correct image from the imported SceneClimate images as below:

Do the same for Button_TempInc, but using the corresponding "TempIncrease" images:

Next, we will configure the images for Slider_Temperature as below:

The slider's TextValue Control is supposed to display the value that is set via the slider. To add this functionality we need to drag a ForwardValue Behavior from the Toolbox to the Slider_Temperature in the Scene Tree Panel.

The Slider_Temperature's value needs to be forwarded to the TextValue control. Therefore, we need to set the ForwardValue Behavior's "TargetNode" property to the "Text Value". Click the magnifying glass icon on the right side of the property in the Properties panel and select the Text Value Control from the choose item dialog.

And this is what the fully configured Slider looks like.

Our next goal is to center all cell content vertically in order to have a similar distance between the lines. Even for multiple lines inside a cell the optical impression will be improved

We have already centered the text controls. Next, we will set VerticalAlignment of the following controls to VCenter:

Setting up the Steering Wheel Heating Controls

To configure the heating controls, select the "CheckBox_Steering heater" and change its text to "On".
Finally, configure the images for "CheckBox_Steering heater" as below:

The configured "Checkbox_Steering heater" now looks like this.

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Setting up the Air Condition Controls

In this section we focus on the radio buttons for Air Condition (AC). The Text of the Radio Buttons needs to be changed to "Off" and "On" in respect to their names. "RadioButton_AC Off" should be the one on the left, so you might have to change the order of the RadioButtons in the Scene Tree Panel.
Additionally, we have to configure the correct images for our RadioButtons. Remember if you select both RadioButtons in the Scene Tree panel, you can configure the images of both RadioButtons at once.

Keeping both RadioButtons selected, we will adjust the right margin to 100 so that there is enough space between them.

The default background of GroupBoxes makes them appear with a frame. As we don't want to see a frame in our design, we have to uncheck the "Enable Background" property of the GroupBox.

The height of our GroupBox_AC should be set to 40.
Currently the GroupBox height is calculated automatically based on the layout situation. Properties that are calculated automatically are displayed grayed out, the text "(Auto)" is displayed next to the value and you can see a button with an "A" on it next to it.
In order to be able to enter a value manually, you have disable the automatic calculation by pressing the blue "A" button first.

You can see the tooltip for the blue "A" button in the image below.

You might have wondered why we added a StackLayout previously. The reason is, the Stack Layout is able to layout child nodes horizontally or vertically. The "horizontal" arrangement is the one we need.

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Setting up the Fan Controls

Now we take care of the GridLayout_Fan. Open the "Configure Layouter…" dialog and configure the GridLayout as shown in the picture.
For the width of the third column, we are using the exact width of the MultiStateButton's image in order to get a pixel exact rendering of the image.

We now configure the images of the MultiStateButton. You can find a property "StateImages" in the Control section of the MultiStateButton's properties, where multiple images can be defined.

It is possible to add images using the "+" button or to remove images using the "x" button next to the image to be deleted (highlighted in the image above).
Please click on the magnifying glass to change the images. For our GettingStarted, we will configure the images from the climate folder of our resources ("NewClimate-0Bmp" - "NewClimate-7Bmp"). We have to change the Maximum State property to 7 in order to be able to display all selected images.

The MultiStateButton should be centered vertically, so we configure its layout accordingly.

To change the image of "Button_Fan Max" and "Button_Fan Off" use the resources available. A button needs two different images to be able to reflect a mouse press or a touch on a touch screen. Therefore we will change the normal and pressed image as shown below:

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Improvement of Interactivity using Behaviors

We want to add the reset of the MultiStateButton_Fan to the off button and also we want to add the max functionality to the max button. To be able to do this we will need to use an Event Handler. When you select the "Button_Fan Off" you can recognize two tabs: an active "General" tab and an EventHandler tab:

Select this "Event Handler" tab to be able to attach functionality to the button. Use the "+" button next to "Actions" to add an action to the already attached "Click Event Handler".

Use the drop down menu to choose "Send Value As Event". Select the "MultiStateButton_Fan" as TargetNode using the magnifying glass.

The Event Handler tab should now look like this:

Due to the more complex possibilities of event handlers we will now explain in more detail what the different properties are usually used for.
With the Event drop down you can select on which type of event a certain action will be performed. In our case a click event(mouse click or touch) will trigger the action. For a description of available events please have a look inside the documentation FeatStd::Event. The Condition property can be used for some events to only react if a certain condition is evaluates to "true". For our case the "Check Click" will count the number of clicks happened and compares it with the given ClickCount property. We have provided AnyClick which means we will react on single, double and even triple clicks. With the Sender property we can give the Action Behavior additional information on who has executed the action. In our example we do not evaluate this and it is left empty.

The Value is used to specify the type of the value and the value itself which will be sent to the target node. ChangeValue states if the change of the value will be relative or absolute.
Last but not least the Target Node has to be specified to know who will be the receiver of the event.

We will now add a similar action to the "Button_Fan Max" button to always change the value of the MultiState button to its maximum value of 7.

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Setting up the Seat Heater controls

For the Seat Heater controls, we just need to replace the images with new ones, as below:

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Setting up the Heating controls

Last but not the least, we will configure the SpinBox. The SpinBox allows the user to change the values by clicking the uptick and downtick buttons.

We will configure the SpinBox control as follows. We will also change the images of the SpinBox Control.

Set the width of the SpinBox to 150. Please note that this is an automatically calculated property which has to be unlocked pressing the blue "A" button.

You have finished step 2 of our tutorial. Please save your solution before trying the result using the Player application. Generate an asset file as described at the end of Step 1. Load the generated asset into the Player and select the climate scene. You can now play around with the controls. Slide the temperature slider, use the check box and radio buttons. Click onto the fan multi state button and on off and max. Even the Seat heater will react on your actions.

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