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Clarifying lighting text
I’d like to light my text from the back as they did with The Incredibles logo right after the tv interview in the beginning.
Lux and Shine don’t seem to do this.
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4 Replies
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VFX folks need to be good at explaining what they really want to do.
The missing piece of your puzzle was “3D text”.Mentioning the source helped though. As I watch the sequence, I see that the chest logo is a 3D object, lit by a source from screen right, giving an edge-lit effect. After it flares up and rotates, the title text is revealed. It too is a 3D object. To get the edge-lit effect, perhaps the light source is in the center of the text, and shadows have been disabled so the letters don’t block the light from their neighbours. It’s also possible that the camera is very close to the text with a wide “lens”, allowing you to see the sides of the text.
At any rate, if you want 3D letters, you have three options:
1. Use the shatter effect to “cut out” 3D letters. There might be a tut on the COW for that.
2. Buy Zaxwerks Invigorator.
3. Buy a “real” 3D app such as Maya/Lightwave/Max/Cinema4D.Does that help?
Steve -
Thanks, that helps alot. Sorry about leaving out “3d” text. I knew what I wanted. Been working with Invigorator without luck. Will keep trying though.
Thanks again.
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Can I use Xara for this?
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Maybe. I know nothing about it, sorry.
You just need to render out of Xara to a format that AE can use, in the frame size of your final comp. Quicktime movie, animation codec is good, as is a series of stills such as TGA or PICT. Make sure you render out of Xara with an alpha channel (transparency) if you want to composite something behind the text in AE.
Remember, if you are eventually rendering to DV, your final AE comp should be setup to the DV preset 720×480 comp size, but your render out of Xara should probably be 720×540, not 720×480. For more info on that frame size sort of thing, search the COW for “strangepixel”.
Steve
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