Invisable GUI Window

[Daystar]

I am using Irrlicht as a 3D rendering tool and I was wondering if it was possible to make the rendering window invisible to where the 3d character looks as if its walking around on the desktop; if it is possible could someone help me with this?

[rogerborg]

According to hybrid (one of the devs), it should be possible, but it'll need someone to pony up and get on with implementing it.

While wishing you the best of luck, I'd like to recuse myself.

[SirSami]

One way is do that: Take screenshot from deskop and then place it to screen in fullscreen mode There is only that problem that you can't open any folders or use any deskop items with mouse without closing program etc.

[hybrid]

Well, I assumed that it's possible to make a transparent render window. However, this is still different to using the desktop background as a render image (which was some years ago done by someone with Irrlicht - at least they told so). Moreover, you cannot interact with the desktop through the window, it's still a window, even if it's transparent.

[Daystar]

well how exactly would you make the render area transparent? Does anyone have any code?

[hybrid]

For Windows I could only find a keycolor transparency:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/winsdk/quaker1.aspx
For Linux it might be enough to have an alpha supporting visual and use a composite window manager. But since I don't have the latter ATM I cannot test it.

[Gianni]

i not know if it is possible, there is who says yes. I think we will try to google, it is a good idea

[Vsk]

Well, I assumed that it's possible to make a transparent render window. However, this is still different to using the desktop background as a render image (which was some years ago done by someone with Irrlicht - at least they told so). Moreover, you cannot interact with the desktop through the window, it's still a window, even if it's transparent.

But could it be clicks be "passed" to the "parent windows" wichh wiill be the desktop? or explorer windows? It will just to change the focus or something like that using windows libraries. I don't know, just ideas .

[Vsk]

More specif, is it posible when inside a winwons application to call a click event (for example) on other Windows window? Is there any way to know every windows explorer has pop up?
if so, then we could take the "focus" windows (that is not yours, it will be something like the next in the z buffer) and apply it the click event, and will react.
Or just send the click to the specific x,y and if a windows recivied is enough.

is it possible?

[hybrid]

That should be possible, using mostly native API calls. However, it might be possible to use a background overlay and only render into the background instead of doing the event handling on your own. But that's just pure guessing, I don't know the win32 API enough.

[BlindSide]

Yeah I've seen some programs do it by picking a colour key, and rendering to any part of the screen with that colour. So basically, they would set the desktop colour to bright pink and render to that. Look at the visualisation for WinAmp called MilkDrop, it uses this method.

How this is done I'm not entirely sure, but a quick browse through the windows API may reveal something.