Managed Properties and Managed Shortcuts¶

Managed Properties¶

Most properties of a Shady World or Shady Stimulus are managed properties, which allows them to be manipulated in a number of powerful ways. Many of them are simply containers for values that are automatically transferred to the GPU on each frame, where the shader handles all of the computations required for drawing. Managed properties are mediated by descriptors of class ManagedProperty.

Managed properties support intelligent assignment. They are all technically arrays, and you can always assign a tuple, list or numpy.ndarray, or any other sequence of numeric values. For the sake of syntactic laziness you can also just assign a single scalar value, if you want that value to be copied automatically to all elements. For example:

# Let's assume you have a running World, and that  stim is a reference to
# one of the Stimulus instances that is being rendered by that World.

stim.scale = ( 3, 1 )    # anisometric scaling
print( stim.scale )
# --> 3, 1

stim.scale = 4           # isometric scaling in x and y
print( stim.scale )
# --> 4, 4

stim.color = 0.5         # a simple way to set color to mid-gray
print( stim.color )
# --> 0.5, 0.5, 0.5


A property may be addressed by its canonical name, but also by aliases. These are provided to allow code to be less verbose, and to ease the burden on one’s memory for arbitrary names. For example, the envelopeTranslation property answers to any of the following names:

stim.envelopeTranslation
stim.position
stim.pos
stim.xy


Similarly, you don’t have to remember which of the following synonyms is correct, because they all work:

stim.envelopeRotation
stim.orientation
stim.rotation
stim.angle


Some properties also allow their individual elements to be addressed by name (see the subsection on Managed Shortcuts below).

The Set() method can be used to set multiple properties or shortcuts at once:

stim.Set( scale=3, color=0.5 )


The class method SetDefault() allows you to configure the default values of managed properties for all future World or Stimulus instances until the end of the current session:

Shady.World.SetDefault( anchor=[ -1, -1 ] )
# Now, all future World instances will have the origin of their coordinate systems
# in the bottom left corner

Shady.Stimulus.SetDefault( color=[ 1, 0, 1 ], angle=30 )
# Now, all future Stimulus instances will be tinted pink and lean thirty degrees to
# the left by default when created. How useful.


Managed properties also support dynamic value assignment. This means that, rather than simply assigning a static numeric value to the property, you can tell that property how to change its value as a function of time:

# ...
def dynamic_scale( t ):
return ( t % 1, t % 2 )   # ( x, y )
stim.scale = dynamic_scale

# or equivalently:
stim.scale = lambda t: ( t % 1, t % 2 )


Note that a callable function object, rather than a static numeric value, is being assigned to the Stimulus’s managed scale property. Shady will evaluate this function on every frame to determine the final property value for drawing. When you query the property value, for example by saying print( stim.scale ), you will still get a numeric result— whatever the current value is at the time the command is issued. If you actually wanted to retrieve the function object, you would say stim.GetDynamic( 'scale' ) instead.

Finally, managed properties can be intelligently copied, shared, and inherited across stimuli. The simplest way to share a property between two stimuli is to assign the stimulus itself:

# ...
stim1.color = lambda t: ( t % 10 ) / 10   # dynamic: slowly change from black to white every ten seconds
stim2.color = stim1   # assign Stimulus instance to share color with
stim1.ResetClock(); time.sleep( 5 ); print( stim2.color )
# --> 0.5, 0.5, 0.5   (because five seconds have passed)


Note that sharing is bi-directional, because it causes the properties of both stimuli to point to the same array of numbers in memory:

stim2.color = stim1          # first, forge the link
stim1.color = 1, 0, 1        # then, change the value here...
print( stim2.color )         # ...and the change is felt here
# --> 1, 0, 1

stim2.color = 0, 0, 1        # ...and vice versa:
print( stim1.color )         # turnabout is fair play.
# --> 0, 0, 1


See Property Sharing for a more in-depth explanation.

Managed Shortcuts¶

Some managed properties provide subscripting shortcuts that allow each element to be accessed by name. These are mediated by descriptors of class ManagedShortcut. Examples:

stimulus.Set( xscale=10, red=1, blue=0.5 )   # change horizontal scale, red color channel, and blue color channel
print( stimulus.scaling )
# --> 10, 1        # y scaling remains at its previous (default) value
print( stimulus.color )
# --> 1, -1, 0.5   # green channel remains at its previous (default) value

stim.x = 100
print( stim.x )   # .x is a shortcut for  .envelopeTranslation[0]
# --> 100

print( stim.envelopeTranslation )
# --> 100, 0   (y remains at its default value)


The Set() instance method and SetDefault() class method support managed shortcuts just as they do for managed properties. Also, managed shortcuts support dynamic value assignment in the same way that full managed property arrays do:

import time
stim.y = lambda t: t ** 2
stim.ResetClock(); time.sleep( 5 ); print( stim.position )
# --> 100, 25


On each frame, dynamics are evaluated for full ManagedProperty arrays first, and then for ManagedShortcut values. This allows you to (for example) dynamically control the color property and then, independently and also dynamically, override just the red channel value.

Note that shortcuts cannot be shared directly between instances in the way that full property arrays can. This is because sharing is accomplished by sharing the memory segment for an entire property array or not at all (See Property Sharing for more details). If you need to work around this limitation, one way to do so (at the expense of a few extra CPU cycles per frame) is to use a dynamic value:

stim2.red = lambda t: stim1.red


Unmanaged Dynamic Properties¶

Some properties, despite not being managed themselves, support dynamic value assignment. Many such properties affect managed properties indirectly. For example, the following properties of Stimulus support dynamics, and indirectly manipulate managed properties:

frame:
Changing the value of the frame property causes carrierTranslation[0] to change in discrete steps, thereby showing different parts of a texture at different times. This is one way to animate multi-frame images.
page:
This property allows indirect manipulation of multiple properties that affect the stimulus carrier texture. This is another way to animate.
scaledSize, scaledWidth and scaledHeight:
These properties allow indirect manipulation of the managed property envelopeScaling, dependent on the base envelopeSize, to achieve a target size expressed in pixels on screen.
points and pointsComplex:
These properties allow simultaneous manipulation of nPoints and pointsXY, providing a view into the array of points either as a two-column array (points) or as a one-dimensional array of complex numbers (pointsComplex).

By contrast:

text
supports dynamic value assignment (as a shortcut for assigning text.string), but this does not work via indirect manipulation of a managed property.

Finally, it’s worth noting that a dynamic can be associated with any attribute name at all: it will still be evaluated, and the result assigned, once per video frame. However, newly-created attributes will not support the lazy syntax of dynamic value assignment, so if you do this:

stim.foo = lambda t: t * 2
print( stim.foo )
# --> <function <lambda> at 0x1006dd848>


you can see that stim.foo really is a lambda object, just as you would expect from Python’s default behavior. The way to create a custom dynamic is with SetDynamic():

stim.SetDynamic( 'bar', lambda t: t * 2 )


Then stim.bar = t * 2 will be performed automatically once per frame while the World is running.

List of Managed Properties for the World Class¶

In each case the first name given is the “canonical” name. Subsequent names, if any, are aliases. Names in brackets, if any, indicate managed shortcuts.

List of Managed Properties for the Stimulus Class¶

In each case the first name given is the “canonical” name. Subsequent names, if any, are aliases. Names in brackets, if any, indicate managed shortcuts.