Yes! OK. Thanks. Whew.
Part 2 ii)… so, the arrays (_a and _b) on the “seconds” face are overlayed in such a way that you get them to fill the face of the cube… the transparent padding in character set _a pushes the tens out of the way and the transparent padding on character set _b pushes the units out of the way…
Because the “seconds” face is on the bottom right of the watch, array_b was used to push the units off the screen…
However, array_a pushes it’s tens towards the middle of the watch… in fact, onto the “minutes” face of the cube… oops!
Fear not… a simple opaque mask does the job…
Part 2 iii)… as you build up the watch, a similar principle can then be applied to the arrays (_c and _d) on the “minutes” face of the cube…
However… whereas array_b had pushed it’s unneeded half into an empty space on the watch (the “minutes” face; which had been resolved by adding a mask and thereby creating e a “blank canvas” for minute arrays _c and _d)… it is the unneeded half of array_c that causes problems, because it pushes it’s unneeded half onto the “seconds” face… this looks VERY messy… unless ???
Oh, and the unneeded half of array_d is pushed off screen… phew!
The answer, is of course, another opaque mask… but this one took me several hours to work out… not only the size and position of the mask but which layer (order) it occupied in the grand scheme…
A bit about the character sets…
This watch has six character sets and all are based on the same font… seconds are _a and _b, minutes are _c and _d and hours are _e and _f… _a and _b have the same orientation and slant… _c and _d have the same orientation and slant but not the same as _a and _b… likewise, _e and _f have their own unique orientation and slant…
Every “number” on the cube is a different picture… each “picture” has the image of a number and an important transparent space above, below or to either side…
If _a has transparent space to it’s right, then _b would have transparent space to it’s left… similar for the other sets…
The transparent space (for example) in set _a creates a blank space and allows room for a character from set _b… similar for the other sets…
To illustrate… where a normal font character measures 20x40 pixels I might usually put that on a layer of 22x42 (a 1 pixel space on each side)… and in a digital array any two numbers side by side would be 44x42… but by adding extra transparent space to one side of the number, then each character now measures 42x44… when two arrays are overlayed, the “space” in _a is used by _b…
On the Cube, I stepped the overlays so that two character sets occupied each cube face…
“Seconds”, “Minutes” and "Hours…
The story so far… we’ve got both the “seconds” and “minutes” faces aligned (four arrays and four character sets)… a bit of clever masking and both are working just as they should…
On first sight, the “Hours” might seem completely unfathomable… at least the other two faces had numbers side by side, and only needed to be adjusted up-and-down… and the number appear vertical - the “Hours” are on their side !!!..
Smoke and mirrors…
You’re not really looking at numbers, your looking at pictures… so even though the “numbers” looks to be lying on their side, they’re no different to the way that the other faces were created… they’re just character sets with different transparent padding, overlayed in a similar way…
Yep, I use this technique. In my fast Belgrade skin I just posted I make the digit graphic 300 (transparent) pixels wide with the digit centered, this will give 600 pixels between them (one will definitely be off the screen). Move it left or right depending on whether you want 10’s or 1’s.
For my empress of China design the face moves using the 1’s portion of a seconds array, and is stationary every other 10 seconds by using the 10’s portion of another seconds array. As @Andrew_Davis says, think pictures not digits.
Here’s where I sense some true magic at work in the Hours display. All makes sense for the minutes and seconds when thinking of simple rectangular pictures. We know the engine works with vertical and horizontal lines, not slopes, not curves, not circles. Si I can see dropping a vertical line between the tens and units images for the minutes and seconds and dividing the images where they don’t touch. The same is not true for your Hours. There is not way to divide the “set” of two numbers with a vertical line and not cut into the image of the number itself, either tens or units position. So what in the world would the character set look like to include the entire number together with transparent padding in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the other number set? Of course, if it is all transparent and the number images never actually overlap in each set, I guess it could work. It’s interesting to watch it ticking now keeping all this transparency and masking in mind.
Thanks Andrew. You’re a good sport explaining all this in so much detail. Really appreciate it. Nothing beats stretching my mind beyond the inside of the cube sitting on my neck.