use pix-objects without [gemwin]. this is something that fakes a [gemhead] to a certain extent, but doesn't use [gemhead]. with one float argument, turns rendering on/off with two pointer arguments, sends a GemState* and a GemCache* around. same as what [gemhead] does, except the GemCache has no "parent". I don't know what this means. 1 turns rendering on, 0 turns rendering off. simulate one [gemwin] frame using a gem_state message with pointers. simulate turning [gemwin] on/off using a gem_state message with a float. depending on your camera, using [pix_rgba] might be necessary... this doesn't seem to have any effect on [pix_video], but I don't know whether it's ok to not use this.