I want to prevent the hour & minute hands on a simple analogue face from covering the date field placed at the traditional 3 o’clock position.
No fancy animation required or attempt to simulate a mechanical design. Date must just never be unreadable.
My solution for the above requirement:
When the hour or minute hand approaches the 3 o’clock position (say 15 degrees before 90), start moving the date field down as if the hand is “pushing” it ahead until the hand reaches 90 degrees.
When the hand goes past 90 degrees jump the date field to above to the hand and then move the date field down as if the hand is “dragging” it back to the original position.
If both the hour and minute hand are close to the 3 o’clock position (shortly before and after 3:15) jump the date field to the 9 o’clock position until it is possible to revert to the above method.
I have managed to get this working in my test face, but my solution feels clunky.
See expressions in my test face below (open for inspection).
Suggestions for a more elegant approach and/or expressions will be appreciated.
This is going to sound stupid, but I’m a firm believer in the KISS theory. (Keep It Simple Stupid) So…why not just put the date on the top level in the creator and let the hands pass underneath it? Using the “Stroke” effect to put a 1 pixel black border around the date would highlight it against the white hands. Or just shadow it so it stands out or even make it an off white color. Like the old saying goes, “there is no need for an elaborate lie when a simple one will be just as effective”.
Thanks, I also subscribe to KISS and did consider that approach
It works for the simple case, but it does depend on the colours in use.
However I also like a challenge and thus sometimes abandon the KISS principal…
I came up with this idea to create a face where the watch hands as well as the date change colours…
Due to Facer not supporting expressions to set colour (yet) this face will need to have several layers with their opacity being managed to get the desired effect. Complex enough to not want to try and ensure good contrast between the hand and date colours as well.
So with KISS long gone out the window, I continued down the rabbit hole and here we are!
Many things that are undoable in mechanic watches we can do it in smartwatches. So, one of my first concerns when I started to do analog faces with a lot of info were that the hands always are blocking something… so I come with a solutions that involves interactives areas. I always put a button so the users can hide the hands to see the info and show them again. So, it’s not a crazy idea to came with some math to make the date always visible
I totally understand, just one thing, while you are down in the rabbit hole, make sure you choose wisely between the blue pill and the red pill. Good Luck on your quest!
Yes, that is the neat solution, if you subscribe to Creator Pro.
I might consider subscribing to pro in future, but for now it is not worth it for me; building faces is just a hobby in my spare time.
< rant >
US$6 might not be much (if you earn in a strong currency).
Unfortunately the SA Rand has more than halved in value over the last decade
According to the Big Mac Index the SA Rand is undervalued by 62% at present (most undervalued currency measured by the index in 2020!)
However, if it was possible to offset (part of) the Creator Pro subscription by selling a few pro faces in a month to non-premium users, it would be a different story. Even if 50% (or more?) of each sale went to Facer it might still break even for the pro designer, giving us a win-win (should not have much influence on the current Facer Creator Partners; they are still in a class of their own)…
< /rant >
Whenever I am trying to do the same I sometimes with go with the Interpaccel function to have a rotation motion for the hand when the watch wakes. I have a quick tutorial here. Just look for the rotation section. In your case, just replace the rotation for your minutes with the following: (interpAccel (#DWE#,0,1.5,1)*#DWFMS#))
Thanks @eradicator09, that is an idea I did not consider.
Also for your many tutorials; have helped me a lot! Edit: added to my test face (in addition the existing logic).
Nobody brave enough to dive into the mess of expressions I have concocted or provide their implementation of the idea I described in my original post?
The best solution in my opinion is the 3rd “nudge mode” in my… tribute watch face In that mode when the watch screen wakes, the hands do a simple cycle around the face, fast enough that you can still see the proper face after the cycle before the watch goes into AOD, but slow enough that you can actually see whatever was being obscured. Out of the 3 modes this is the one I use all the time.
The other 2 being variations where you need to tap a “button” to “nudge” them out of the way for a short bit.
Make sure to get a utility patent on this feature. You only have a few months left (because you publicly posted this). You can use the patent to get a licensing deal from a watch company.
I just thought of this idea a few hours ago, I think you’re the first to solve this issue.
Good job!
Good Luck on your quest!
In that mode when the watch screen wakes, the hands do a simple cycle around the face, fast enough that you can still see the proper face after the cycle before the watch goes into AOD, but slow enough that you can actually see whatever was being obscured. Out of the 3 modes this is the one I use all the time.