What’s the best approach to sloooowwww things down? (newbie)

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

One wy is to raise the frame rate, as you said, and then render out. Bring the image sequence into your editor and then interpret the footage at a lower frame rate. SO if you were set to 240 FPS in pIllusion, and then 30 in your video editor, then it would play back at 1/8th the speed.

For emitters that use image sequences, this gets hairy because it changes the speed at which those sequences play back. But in terms of emitters that don;t use a progressive sequences of images (like a video of an asteroid spinning, or a person walking) this should work fine – Sometimes. It’s not always perfect…

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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com

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[Jebvideo]

Thanks Aaron but that didn’t work!

For some reason when I make some changes to an emitter such as tint or color, the change “sticks”.

For instance, I’ll create a 640×480 project, and add the Sandman TV BG.
The stock Sandman emitter is too bright and too fast. So I highlight the Sandman TV layer, right click and choose properties. I lower the visibility to say 30% so it’s more subtle and I lower the frame rate in that window so that it plays slower . I close the window and watch the preview window and it looks great. I then create a QT movie. When I playback the movie the BG is as bright as it ever was and plays fast again. I have tried several frame rates from 10fps to 240 fps but the output is always 30 fps!

There must be a simple step or “concept” that I’m overlooking, please help!

Why does the preview look SO different to the output???

If desired I can send you a couple of screen shots of my project setup so that you could see what I’m getting as a preview and then what happens on output. Send me an email location and I’ll upload a few pix.

[Alan Lorence]

The framerate of the preview window that you’re changing is just that — the framerate for the preview window. To change the project framerate, use the Project Settings dialog.

If you want the effect to slow down, don’t decrease the project framerate — increase it (so it’s slower when played back at 30 fps).

I’m not sure about the brightness issue — just change the “visibility” value in the hierarchy window (don’t open the properties dialog) so you see the changes in the stage window immediately.

Alan.

http://www.wondertouch.com

[Hamishofangus]

So there’s really no way to slow down these effects in the software? For example, the “Crazy Squares” emitter in the sample library is really cool but almost painful to look at: the colors just change so fast that its uses are severely limited. I know that I could export the file at 240 fps, import it into premiere etc and then export at 30fps, but that seems like an unnecessary extra step.

The “velocity” variable doesn’t seem to have the desired effect. Every single emitter is frantically fast-paced by default; there must be a way to slow things down in the software?

[Elvis Deane]

Velocity is the speed in which a particle will move away from the emitter. In the case of the Crazy Squares, the particles aren’t moving so Velocity won’t do anything.

The Life graph is what controls how long a particle is on screen, and the apparent speed of some emitters is really determined by that due to things like the Color over Life gradient, and the other Over Life graphs. If you were to increase Life with the Crazy Squares, then lower the Number, you’d get a lot closer to slowing down the speed of the overall emitter.

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Elvis Deane!

The Apprentice Magician’s Guide to particleIllusion

Wilbur of Wumbaberry