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/*!

    \example animation/stickman

    \title Stickman Example

    The Stickman example shows how to animate transitions in a state machine to implement key frame 

    animations.

    \image stickman-example.png

    In this example, we will write a small application which animates the joints in a skeleton and

    projects a stickman figure on top. The stickman can be either "alive" or "dead", and when in the

    "alive" state, he can be performing different actions defined by key frame animations. 

    Animations are implemented as composite states. Each child state of the animation state 

    represents a frame in the animation by setting the position of each joint in the stickman's 

    skeleton to the positions defined for the particular frame. The frames are then bound together 

    with animated transitions that trigger on the source state's propertiesAssigned() signal. Thus,

    the machine will enter the state representing the next frame in the animation immediately after

    it has finished animating into the previous frame.

    \image stickman-example1.png

    The states for an animation is constructed by reading a custom animation file format and 

    creating states that assign values to the the "position" properties of each of the nodes in the 

    skeleton graph. 

    \snippet examples/animation/stickman/lifecycle.cpp 1

    The states are then bound together with signal transitions that listen to the

    propertiesAssigned() signal.

    \snippet examples/animation/stickman/lifecycle.cpp 2

    The last frame state is given a transition to the first one, so that the animation will loop

    until it is interrupted when a transition out from the animation state is taken. To get smooth 

    animations between the different key frames, we set a default animation on the state machine. 

    This is a parallel animation group which contains animations for all the "position" properties 

    and will be selected by default when taking any transition that leads into a state that assigns 

    values to these properties.

    \snippet examples/animation/stickman/lifecycle.cpp 3

    Several such animation states are constructed, and are placed together as children of a top 

    level "alive" state which represents the stickman life cycle. Transitions go from the parent

    state to the child state to ensure that each of the child states inherit them. 

    \image stickman-example2.png

    This saves us the effort of connect every state to every state with identical transitions. The 

    state machine  makes sure that transitions between the key frame animations are also smooth by 

    applying the default animation when interrupting one and starting another.

    Finally, there is a transition out from the "alive" state and into the "dead" state. This is 

    a custom transition type called LightningSrikesTransition which samples every second and 

    triggers at random (one out of fifty times on average.) 

    \snippet examples/animation/stickman/lifecycle.cpp 4

    When it triggers, the machine will first enter a "lightningBlink" state which uses a timer to 

    pause for a brief period of time while the background color of the scene is white. This gives us 

    a flash effect when the lightning strikes.

    \snippet examples/animation/stickman/lifecycle.cpp 5

    We start and stop a QTimer object when entering and exiting the state. Then we transition into

    the "dead" state when the timer times out.

    \snippet examples/animation/stickman/lifecycle.cpp 0

    When the machine is in the "dead" state, it will be unresponsive. This is because the "dead" 

    state has no transitions leading out.

    \image stickman-example3.png

*/