Watchmaker Wiki

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
===== Markers (Freeform) =====

This widget allows you to create marker dials.  It may seem redundant, since both the "Watch Background" and "Hour+Minute Markers" already provide such a feature.  However, this widget gives you a LOT more control over the output.  So, what can we do here that we can't do elsewhere?
  - Size -- Here, you have direct control over the width and height of the marks, whereas with others, you could only specify small, medium, large, etc.
  - Number of Marks -- With the other dials, you have 12 hour marks, and 60 minute marks, period.  Here, you can control exactly how many marks you have, from 1 to 360.  It's great for making dials with quarter-hour marks, compass directions, days of week, or any time you want a number other than 12 or 60.
  - Shape of Marks -- Your marks can be circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, or triangles.

Here are a couple of nifty tricks that this widget allows:

{{ :monthdial.png?200|Month Dial}}By combining multiple freeform dials with circle shaders, you can make a dial that doesn't span 360 degrees.  You can even make the endpoints of these dials different widths or colors.  Look at the example picture to the right.  Here, we quickly made a month indicator that spans from 48 degrees to 312 degrees.  We made the endpoints a little wider, and colored them red.  This was done with a 15-count freeform dial, two 1-count freeform dials (rotated to -48 and 48 degrees), and black circle shader (to black out the top three marks).

{{:timedial.png?200 |Time Dial}}Our second example also utilizes a combination of objects to create a unique time dial.  We made a minute dial using a 60-count freeform dial composed of circles, and an hour dial using a 4-count freeform dial with red rectangles, that result in marks showing only at the 3, 6, 9, and 12 positions.  Then, we simply filled in the numbers with a number dial with its "show every" field set to 3.

So, you can see that while this widget alone gives you a lot of control over your dials, it really shines when combining it with other objects, allowing the creation of unique dials that simply couldn't exist otherwise without the aid of an outside graphics editor.  The possibilities are truly limited only by your imagination!