Igloo Home: Editor

Software	Release Version	Icon

Software	Release Version	Icon
Igloo Home	1.0.3

Function:

Igloo Home functions as a “Home Screen” for the Igloo Software suit; every piece of content from web content to interactive game engine content can be launched through Igloo Home by the press of a button. Thoroughly customisable, it allows users to create the perfect user interface to enable flawlessly smooth demonstrations.

The user interface:

Igloo Home’s editor is split into 4 sections - the sidebar on the left that allows navigation of the various options, the canvas preview at the centre top, which shows a preview of the full size canvas, the canvas edit window just below, which is where a user can edit the canvas by adding, removing and editing the content buttons, and finally the properties section at the bottom, allowing for certain elements to be further customised.

The first two buttons on the sidebar allow the editor to switch from the canvas editor to the content database editor. Additionally, clicking any of the saved searches in the content dropdown will open the content view automatically.

Controller:

A drop down menu to define which type of controller should be used to control Igloo home. igloo_remote, open_vr and steam require additional setup and the use of the Igloo Controller service.

Content view:

At the heart of Igloo home is it’s content database - essentially, any piece of content, be it images, videos or web content, can have an entry in the database, which allows that content to be placed on an Igloo Home canvas.

The above image depicts a search of the content database by type: movie. All of the records in the database become visible in the centre-top of the view. Each record has an associated ID (unique, for linking content with buttons), Name (defines the name of the button), Type (For searching, and grouping buttons into content grids), File (where applicable, the filename of the content to be loaded), Location (where applicable, directory the file is stored in), Source (where applicable, defines the source of the content. This could be a webpage or a link to a relevant content management system), Command (where applicable, defines a command line switch to pass on execution. This can be a batch file), and Sender (where applicable, defines the name of the spout receiver the Warper should activate).

Metadata:

The metadata section is where a user can edit the data shown at the top. Note that the type defines which application is associated; the below image, as an example, shows websites associated with Igloo Web

The different content types have certain independent settings:

Movies and panoramas have an automatic download from a linked CMS, and also have the Warper’s autoscale setting

Website has the website URL, and a width and height for the Igloo Web canvas (match the warper canvas for fullscreen)

External has a file name and location (of the executable), the sender name the application creates, and any command line arguments. These could include the running of an autohotkey script, or a batch file. Additionally, a download button from the linked CMS exists

Capture has a file name for an Igloo Capture save file, the location of the file and the Spout Sender name the Warper should be set to receive.

Tabset asks for an Igloo Vision Tab Set (.ivts) file and location. These files are exported from the Igloo Web application

Command asks for a file containing the OSC command to be sent to the Warper

Canvas view:

Canvas view is where the editing happens. In the Canvas Edit section, a user can edit independent elements. At it’s simplest, a user can click and drag on a button, or group of buttons to move them around the canvas, but the Properties edit section can also edit the size and position on the canvas at a pixel by pixel level

The layouts section of the sidebar allow for individual layouts to be selected, and for buttons and panels to be created and placed on the layout canvas, and other cosmetic themes:

Expanding a layout provides layout specific options:

Canvas Size defines the size, in pixels, of the canvas. If this is equal to the rendering pipeline width and height of the warper this will be “fullscreen” by default

Themes defines the “look and feel” of the canvas - the background image, font sizes and accent colours can all be defined here.

The components tab allows a user to add, delete and edit the individual buttons or groups of buttons that trigger content. In the above example, there are two contentGrid components. Clicking on one will expand the properties edit at the bottom of the UI:

ContentGrid components act as a grid of each piece of content in the database with the defined type or tag (Which relates to the content database). The content grid will then be populated with a content button for each piece of content with the defined type & tag, and ordered. They look like this:

Content Buttons are individual buttons that trigger a pice of content

Similarly, the location and size can be altered, but here the content is defined by the Content ID seen in the content database. The button, when linked with a piece of content, might look like this: