How to distort a text with a bulge…

[Mike Clasby]

I don’t understand, Distort>Bulge has a “Horizontal Radius” stopwatch that controls how wide in pixels the bulge is, it seems very controllable to me. Just put the Bulge Center in the middle of the line and make the Horizontal Radius less in pixels than the line is wide, no?

[Joe Moya]

Thanks…. but, the Bulge only seems to use radius as a criteria.

What I would prefer is a block or more precisely a rectangle bulging shape (in order to match the letter shapes).

I probably should have been more clear with my original post.

Joe

[Andy Ford]

Aharon video tutorial on Magnifying will help you learn more about Bulge and other tools.

[Joe Moya]

I reviewed that tutorial… but, this tutorial uses a circular mask (which I could replace with a rectangle) that will not work because the mask blocks out the words outside of the the text line.

Basically, this works in that the bulged becomes rectangular/square to match the text being bulged but it also eliminates the texts outside the mask area. I need the text to bulge (in a rectangular format) but not eliminate or effect the other words in the line of text.

You would think something as simple as this could be done easily. If the bulge filter had a option to use a square/rectangle instead of circle, this would be simple solution.

Joe

[Jeremy Sexton]

What if you put the filter on an adjustment layer above the text and masked that?

[Joe Moya]

The problem with that idea is that this buldging text is only on layer that has other layers that have Rotoscoped 3 moving characters that walk through the text.. (I wanted the text to bulge where the characters walk through the text)… when you have a rotoscoped matte you have one section of the roto-ed layered under the text layer and the other above the layered text. Putting an adjustment layer between either of the roto’ed layer (above or below the text layer) would effect that layer. Trust me… this is not an easy effect to pull off and can be very time consuming… and, as such…you will not see it very often.

Joe

[Jeremy Sexton]

Couldn’t you precomp the text then and have the adjustment layer only effect the text layer, then composite that precomp with the characters?

Your description was tough to follow, but it sounds like that would work.

[Joe Moya]

Well, I could pre-comp the text if it wasn’t dependent upon the fact that the text would have to bulge at the moment that the person(s) went throught the text.

And… that could be done provide I never change the timing of when the bulge occurs and the walk through of the people occur.

So… yea… a precomp would probably work… but, it would then make the project VERY inflexable (specially when I start adding the sound/music).

I guess I’ll have to dig up that project back up and try it… as a side note, I set it aside to work on more pressing projects… and with a little luck during this time-out I would have an epiphany.

Joe Moya