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Man, I wish one could edit one’s posting at this forum once it’s posted….

Here is the correct link:

—- Dreamlight Effect

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If it is a moving sequence, Alan knows what he’s talking about, obviously.

That said, if you wish to use a still frame of a particle created in PI (i.e. as a brush or object in a PhotoShop and other such apps that allow you to do so), then you can do this:

— Export the project or frames range of your project in PI that holds the best example of you want as a .PNG sequence with alpha channel and black removed into an empty folder.

Then pick the frame you like best and import into PS, etc.

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That’s not too hard, but the thing is that the end-frame effect has to be the same — or visually indistinguishable from the first keyframe.

So maybe one way to start would be to tell us what effect you want to use — each one has different variables (i.e. emitters and super-emttters).

One of the best ways is if you have a separate NLE (non-linear editor), i.e. Vegas, Pinnacle, etc. etc. in which to import the effects sequence as an alpha channeled PNG sequence.

Then you can overlay it over the same clip you are using in PI as the backgroun over which you want this to happen, and tweak the fade-in and out, adjust the speed to fit your timeline, etc.

But then, you can do that in PI too. So just be more specific, maybe render out and link a Flash or WMV file of what you want to loop and someone will most likely give you some tips.

~ Soniclight

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Thanks, I’ll probably go Huffy UV, and if not, try your 2-fer idea.

I think I got my PI input and output codecs/formats mixed up in my mind, which is why I tried to play it safe with uncompressed. And/or oversimplified the AVI issue of the no-DV AVI in PI thing — which will change with the upcoming PI update.

I never liked using uncompressed files anyway due to size/space and processing effort needed.
So it’ll be a win-win to do otherwise.

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Rod,

Loved the forcefield-in-English garden 🙂 Is that you in the clip?

Now, coming from a design and details-compulsive background (and slowly but surely getting better at this PI thing), I’d like to suggest a few things that may improve the realism of your effects.

Let’s take your Forcefield clip as an example (though the gist of the following can be applied to anything):

— The curtain of light that goes across the red rods is a bit too intense/white. Perhaps lower the Visibility so one can see a little bit of the background scene bleed through. The lighter the background image, the more particles are prone to white-out.

— If you don’t wish to add this subtle transparency, you can play around with the “Number,” “Size,” “Life” and “Velocity” and see if you can reduce the white-out effect that way.

(The latter two will obviously change the speed and emitter range behavior, but experimentation and discovery is part of the fun 🙂

— Other or additional route, add some color variation to the particle’s vertical force-field “curtain” — i.e. thin, razor white-hot leading edge fading to translucent blue or whatever. Or, even to orange or red matching the rods. Fool around with the gradient range slider also, see what happens.

As to outside of PI:

I don’t know what NLE you use, if any, but the essence of what I eventually learned about the PNGs in that recent posting of mine you participated in (on color-to-background interaction and details loss) can be applied to your work too, whatever your file with alpha channel type may be.

If you do have a good NLE, the right compositing mode can keep the particles fidelity, hence bump up the realism and so on.

______________

Pardon my possibly tipping into an advice-giving pompous ass, but hey, I like to share what I’m learning as I go along, as others have with me.

Cheers and enjoy the particles ride 🙂

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[Soniclight] “I had also forgotten (whud??) to get the July ones”

Once 3.0.2 is released (and 3.0.6 on Mac) this will be a thing of the past, since you’ll be able to check for, download, and install new libraries from within pI3.

______________________

Very kwell 🙂
.

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Rod,

Thanks you for the kind words. I like to be efficient 🙂

As to using vid screen capture apps, I use Fraps suggested to me at the Sony forums. It’s cheap (I live on a limited disabilty income) but it’s used by game developers, so not some lightweight prog. Now also does HD/high rez.

I use it mostly for my NASA Worldwind and Celestia landscape/Earth terrain overflights (again, those are freebies too 🙂

I just don’t have enough neurons available to delve into true 3D stuff now, so may ask for credit-for-use donations from some of the artists I admire in the field. In due time.

Some of their work is absolutely elegant and magnificent, i.e. Rosenberg, Kleiner and others. Rosenberg has even now developed his own 3D landscape prog, GeoControl, with some of his colleagues.

But I digress. Back to screen cap:

I didn’t think of using motion clips as examples, but since you mentioned it, I may do that in further “help me” issue presentations.

All the best,

~ Soniclight
(a.k.a. Philip S. Knight, Los Angeles, CA)

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I second the motion of congratulations. I had also forgotten (whud??) to get the July ones, and both of these show the increasing refinement going on in Wondertouch-Land.

Since part of my project involves Earth/landscape beauty passes over terrain, the slow-moving clouds in the July batch was of particular interest. But the Fireworks in the August one and pretty much all of them are great.

The only problem is…

Over-choice: too much candy in the Wondertouch emitter store, so to speak 🙂
Just kidding. The more great raw material to work with, the better.

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Alan (and anyone else interested in this thread topic):

Below is a copy of my most recent posting at the Sony Vegas forums. A couple of people suggested that I try changing the track alpha modality for those on which the PI exported PNGs are located.

Perhaps this info may be of use to someone here too.

___________________________________

A Happy Update:

While the details aren’t quite as subtle as in pre-PI export, using “Add” in channel improved things a lot. At least now it reflect what happens when I develop the light effects in PI (i.e. said pink-leaning behavior in this particular example as shown on my screen-shots page).

Meaning that I get a far more accurate WYSIWYG feel going between the two apps.. I can then do some minor sharpening and color curving to polish them up in Vegas.

I may have gone a bit overboard in presenting this problem by spending so much time on the screenshots page to illustrate my dilemma. But for me then, it was a seemingly unsurmountable and can’t-have-this-going on’ situation.

Fortunately a simple solution was offered here which has only widened my mastery of Vegas..
So thanks to all of you for your input..

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Hopefully David’s project can wait until the update if he can’t find a solution that works.

As a participant in the thread referred to by Alan, I do have to say that I tried FrameServer as suggested since then, and also found it to be way too slow to use in PI.

The rendering progress bar in Vegas seemed to sit in the low single digit percentages forever. I lost patience with it and reverted back to my other temp background stand-in modality.

The logic behind using Vegas as a surrogate or bridge for the background image by using FrameServer as a virual bridge makes sense. Since Elvis has some experience with this:

Q: Does one have to wait until it’s all rendered before using in PI? And/or maybe there’s something David or I are not doing right?

I just