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Happy Star Wars day. I was playing around with the image manipulation functions in Mathematica in an attempt to recreate the Star Wars crawl. There's an HTML/CSS implementation which is in my opinion pretty impressive and I'm wondering if it's possible to obtain the same quality out of Mathematica (ideally using features that can be exported as a CDF).

For starters, I was focusing on the crawl (with the "long time ago..." and diminishing Star Wars title components to be added eventually). The text and theme song:

text = "It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.\n During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.\n Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy...."; theme = Import[ "http://www.moviewavs.com/0093058674/WAVS/Movies/Star_Wars/starwars.wav"]

One can get the gist if the effect fairly succinctly with a combination of ImagePerspectiveTransformation and TranslationTransform after rasterizing the text:

i0 = Rasterize[Panel[Style[text, Yellow], Background -> Black], RasterSize -> 400, ImageSize -> 300]; Animate[ Show[With[{a = 5.25, b = 5}, ImagePerspectiveTransformation[ ImagePerspectiveTransformation[i0, TranslationTransform[{0, crawl}]], {{1, 0.5 b, 0}, {0, a, 0}, {0, b, 1.}}, PlotRange -> All] ], ImageSize -> 600], {crawl, -3, 1}, AnimationRate -> 0.075, AnimationRepetitions -> 1, Initialization -> (EmitSound@theme)]

There are some problems with this approach, however:

  1. Text quality isn't great. The quality can be improved by adjusting the Rasterize options; however I noticed a significant performance hit in doing so.
  2. The transformations result in white bars above and below the crawl.
  3. The theme song repeats and is not easily stoppable.
  4. The notebook size bloats to 2 MB even with the low res settings
  5. Use of Animate won't work when it comes to exporting as a CDF

I am interested in finding solutions to these problems.

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    $\begingroup$ Fourth. When I saw the title, I thought this was going to be a question about the stack-based programming language. ;) $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 15:27
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    $\begingroup$ @OleksandrR. I never know whether to agree with spell/grammar check or to stretch the pun a little too far. $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 15:35
  • $\begingroup$ Ok, if wikipedia uses fourth, it must be true. $\endgroup$ Commented May 5, 2014 at 13:50

1 Answer 1

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This is not the full answer but I've solved most of the problems. The hardest one, with sound, remains.

Embedded version without music

enter image description here

bobthechemist's points

  1. Quality is not a problem anymore since here nothing is rasterized.
  2. White edges are due to "features" with Texture, I've fixed that using strange VertexTextureCoordinates.
  3. I can't handle this song now. Just adjust the speed and put it to the initialization as OP did.
  4. The song is also the most heavy thing. It has to be reduced but it won't be a problem.
  5. There is no animate so it will work as deployed CDF.

some notes

Code.

Copy text from OP first.

logo = ImageResize[ Import["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/\ Star_Wars_Logo.svg/694px-Star_Wars_Logo.svg.png"], 300]; Composition[ CellPrint, Cell[#, Deployed -> True, Selectable -> False] &, BoxData, ToBoxes ]@With[{size = {500, 500}}, DynamicModule[{graphics, pol, proc1, proc2, procR, proc3, LOGO, shading}, Dynamic[Refresh[ Overlay[{graphics, LOGO, shading}, Dynamic@obj, Alignment -> Center], None]], Initialization :> ( obj = All; op = 0; h = -1.3; LOGO = Graphics[{Inset[Image[logo, ImageSize -> Dynamic[Round[300 (-op + 1)]]]]}, ImageSize -> size]; shading = Graphics[Dynamic@{Opacity@op, Rectangle[]}, ImageSize -> size]; pol = TextCell[ Fold[StringReplace, text, {"\n " -> " ", "\n " -> "\n\n"}], "Text", TextJustification -> 1, CellSize -> {320, 540}, FontFamily -> "Helvetica", 18, Bold, Yellow, LineIndent -> 0, Background -> Black, CellFrame -> 10]; graphics = Graphics3D[{ Texture@pol, EdgeForm@Black, Polygon[{{0, 0, 0}, {0, 1, 0}, {2, 1, 0}, {2, 0, 0}}, VertexTextureCoordinates -> {{.98, .02}, {.02, .02}, {.02, .98}, {.98, .98}}]}, Boxed -> False, Background -> Black, ViewVertical -> {0, 0, 1}, ImageSize -> {500, 500}, ViewVector -> Dynamic@({{-h, .5, 1}, {2 - h, .5, 0}}), ViewAngle -> 1, Lighting -> "Neutral"]; RemoveScheduledTask@ScheduledTasks[]; procR[] := (RemoveScheduledTask@ScheduledTasks[]); proc1[] := RunScheduledTask[ If[op < 1, op += .005;, procR[]; obj = {1, 3}; op = 0; proc2[]], .05]; proc2[] := (RunScheduledTask[ If[h < 1, h += .002, procR[]; proc3[]];, .05];); proc3[] := RunScheduledTask[If[op < 1, op += .05;, procR[];], .02]; RunScheduledTask[proc1[]]; )]]
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  • $\begingroup$ Nice! Interesting application of scheduled tasks. $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 17:54
  • $\begingroup$ @bobthechemist Thanks :) to be honest it is always tricky to use them for me :P relevant topic $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 18:11
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    $\begingroup$ @gwr will update it as soon as possible when I'm back next Monday :) $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 30, 2017 at 6:56
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    $\begingroup$ I just had to push you over the 100K - and it had to be this post ;-) congrats! $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 25, 2018 at 9:11
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    $\begingroup$ @user21 Ha, thanks. Hope to see you in three weeks! $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 25, 2018 at 9:26

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