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Transparent “cut-out” text?
I’m looking to accomplish a text effect that seems quite simple in theory, but I can’t seem to find a way to execute it.
I’m doing a title sequence and I have an image of a landscape. I want some very large letters to appear over the landscape, and to recede into the distance. The letters will be transparent, so that the landscape is still visible “behind” the large letters spelling out the title of the film, and as everything recedes you see these transparent letters against a black background.
What I have in mind is very similar to the opening credit sequence in “Raising Arizona”. I hope some of you may be familiar with that sequence (I cannot find a clip of it online).
I imagine I should put a bit of black (say an empty text event) above the event image of my landscape, and then my title text above that. What I can’t figure out is how to get the letters to be transparent against a black background. If I can do that I could handle everything else regarding the motion, keyframing, pan/crop etc., I just can’t seem to get these letters to act like “windows” that will allow me to see the landscape image through the black background.
What frustrates me even further is that I accomplished this effect some other time without trying to do so, on a different project! I think I may have been experimenting with masks at the time. Either way I can’t get this to repeat.
Any thoughts, guys?
R Gould
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6 Replies
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See if this veg does what you want.
It was done in Vegas 5 using Generated Media so it’ll load on almost any system.I started with the Transparent Text at the desired end size and dropped the colour from blue to black.
I then doubled the text size from 720 x 480 to 1440 x 960.
Next I added a Drop Shadow.
Add a Keyframe at the beginning with Alpha set to 0%.
Add a Keyframe at the end and set Alpha to 100%.
Open Pan/Crop, add a Keyframe at the start and set the size and position as desired.
Set Smoothness to 0.
Go to the last frame,add a Keyframe and set the size and position as desired.
HTH. -
Mike:
Thanks very much for that file! It definitely got me started in the right direction, and cleared up some misunderstandings I had about the way that text events work. However I am not fully there yet. I just took a look at the Raising Arizona opening and what I really liked about it was that the letters “shrank” from an initially HUGE size…. as if they were occupying the entire screen. In Vegas terms, it’s as if the transparent part of the letters was taking up the entire text box at the beginning of the event, and the scaling brought it down so it was a normally sized title on the screen (with black around it.)
My problem is that I can get the font size only to 800, and then I can try to increase it from there with positive scaling. However I can never seem to get it so that transparency takes up the entire screen… it is either too small or it suddenly happens that black is taking up the screen.
Do you have any advice as to how to accomplish exactly what I’m going for?
thanks in advance,
gould -
My problem is that I can get the font size only to 800, and then I can try to increase it from there with positive scaling. However I can never seem to get it so that transparency takes up the entire screen… it is either too small or it suddenly happens that black is taking up the screen.
Take a closer look at the veg file I made.
Text in that was around 90 point, that’s all.
The key is to double (or more if necessary) the initial size in the window in the top left corner of the text box where it says 720 x 480.
I used Pan/Crop to zoom into it as large as needed and set that as the first keyframe.
I set the last keyframe so that it would be normal size.
Feel free to modify it as needed for your particular application. -
deleted duplicate message
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Makes sense, Mike!
I’m working on it now and it’s turning out beautifully! I have full confidence I’ll be able to get this thing looking just like I imagined!
Thanks again!
Gould
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Glad to hear that you got it worked out.
Have fun!!
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