Problems with theme packaging on iMX53

[jhollister]

I'm having two problems packaging our Inflexion UI for use on the iMX53 Quick Start Board:

1) The document titled "Inflexion UI for Select i.MX Processors by Mentor Embedded" says that I should install and use the "Freescale OfflineShaderCompiler" and also says this tool is available at the Freescale Compass Extranet. I can't find any mention of this tool at the Freescale web site, the iMXCommunity site, or through Google searching. The doc says that installation and license info for this tool can be found in the readme.txt file, but I can't find any mention of this shader compiler there either.

2) I've tried packaging my Inflexion UI without using the OfflineShaderCompiler mentioned above and using TheCompressonator as instructed by the doc, but the image compression fails because UI Express is telling TheCompressonator to write the compressed output to a temp dir, but that dir hasn't been created by UI Express yet. I can verify that TheCompressonator works if I create that temp dir manually. Unfortunately, UI Express expects the compressed output to be written to a different temp dir for each packaging run so I can't create the temp dir in advance.

I have a very tight deadline so help of any kind would be much appreciated.

[jhollister]

I have access to the Freescale Compass Extranet but can't seem to find the shader compiler there.

We were trying to use the Freescale shader compiler and TheCompressonator because the document said we should use these when running on the iMX53. We also had a problem with distortion of color gradation in many of our PNG images and were hoping that using a different image compressor might help with this problem.

In the end, we found that we could disable image compression entirely and this solved our PNG distortion issue. Our target system has plenty of file system space so the increase in image file size isn't an issue.

Thanks for your quick response.

[PhilBrumby]

Hi Jim,

1) Someone from Freescale will have to grant you access to the Freescale Compass Extranet or send you the shader compiler, it's not something i can do sorry. Have you created some of your own shader .effect files that need to be precompiled (to shorten start up time)? If not then you to not need to precompile anything (the default shaders if you have used them are already precompiled in the runtime). Just export your UI design in the standard way, using a shader compiler is not mandatory. (the ShaderCompiler is used with OpenGL/ES effect files not gfx resources)

2) Again use of the TheCompressonator is not a mandatory step of packaging but a means to potentially gain back some performance and memory usage. Are you concerned about either with your current UI? If not I would package in the standard way.

Thanks,

Phil.