[Dirk De jong]

Robert, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to improve on what you might already have done but can you send me your .red project file so I can take a look at what you’re trying to do and see if I can come up with any suggestions ?

Dirk de Jong
dirkd@borisfx.com

[Dirk De jong]

So it sounds like it’s probably not a seamless 360degree pano image then ? Basically the reflection maps in BCC 3D Objects are environment maps (dds cube map files) that are reflected by the materials. As you can see if you’ve opened some of the ones that install with the product in Photoshop and taken a look. For it to work well it needs to be some kind of image that can wrap around 360degrees without showing obvious seams. When we made the one’s that installed with the product we either started with synthetically created environments (made in 3D programs etc.) or it’s possible to use panoramic images (I’ve even started with Quick Time VR files which actually kind of work the same way). I will try to gather some more info and useful links relevant to this topic and post them here soon. Maybe I can make a quick tutorial on it.

Here’s some cube map tools (some of which you amy have already found);
– https://developer.nvidia.com/content/dds-utilities-83111271645
– https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop
– I’ve used this ATI app to generate cubemaps for 3D Objects before too (WIN only AFAIK though) ; https://download-developer.amd.com/GPU/executables/cubemapgen_v1.1.exe

this looks kind of interesting but I haven’t tried it yet ; https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/64119-Cubemap-Generator-%28Unity-Free-compatible!%29

[Dirk De jong]

yes they are cube maps – I saved the reflection map files for BCC 3D Objects so I can probably help you with this. What’s your source file look like ?

[Dirk De jong]

I kind of see what you’re talking about by looking at the image you posted…

Could you post (or even email me directly) the Motion project (if possible a simplified project including mainly the Extruded Text effect etc.) I’d like to have a look and play around with it.

The issue might be that in order to give the proper camera perspective the Extruded Text effect should be applied to a 2D layer in Motion – and I’m not sure how such 2D layers work (or maybe don’t work) in relation to Motion’s reflection feature. But I’d like to take a look at the project and see if there’s a decent workaround or way of getting the desired appearance.

Dirk from BorisFX
dirkd@borisfx.com

[Dirk De jong]

It occurred to me that another workaround in some cases might be to do such time effects on a lower video track applied to the full duration source clip and positioning successive shots on the track above such that they obscure the black frames that occur as a result of speeding up the original source clip. Obviously there would be cases where this might not be a feasible workaround at all, but in some cases it actually might be preferable to the other 2 possible workarounds mentioned in the previous post. Again, we are investigating and hope to be able to offer a better solution in an update of possible

[Dirk De jong]

I spent some time looking at it yesterday and agree that it’s a bug. We’re investigating to see if it’s something that can be fixed from the plugin side or not (we hope so). In the meantime the status (as you’ve seen) is basically that time effects that result in a duration shorter than the original source clip are unexpectedly truncated (with black frames) if the clip is trimmed shorter than it’s original duration. The workaround at this point seems to be to apply such an effect to the untrimmed source, then either prerender (render to another track for example) or use it through a nested sequence saved as its own (.veg file) which can be imported into the larger sequence and trimmed to the desired length. We hope to offer a better solution (hopefully to be included in a BCC 7 for Vegas point update)

_________________

Dirk de Jong
BorisFX
dirkd@borisfx.com

[Dirk De jong]

here’s a pass I took at creating that look (Lens Flare appearing only within text character boundaries) but doing it by compositing layers in the Vegas timeline (rather than by any built-in filter feature)

https://www.clickscape.net/lensFlareInTitle.veg.zip

I agree offering some pixelchooser / obscuration layer options in Lens Flare will be a nice feature but I expect that’s coming more in the next major version (BCC8) rather than in a near point update

[Dirk De jong]

currently the way to do this (Lens Flare over a title) would be to apply the BCC Lens Flare to the title track (rather than video event) and position it after the composite node in the effects chain (dragging it to the right in the effects chain)

I posted a Vegas project showing this setup here ;
https://borisfx.cachefly.net/borisfx/Dirk temp/lensFlareOverTitle.veg.zip

[Dirk De jong]

The Shatter deformer is more suited to making the extrusion seem to explode or for doing shatter wipe kind of transitions. I tried building something like what you described and posted a movie here ;
https://borisfx.cachefly.net/borisfx/Dirk%20temp/Comp%202H264.mov

maybe adding a good sound effect would sell it ? : )

and the AE CS4 project here ;
https://borisfx.cachefly.net/borisfx/Dirk%20temp/ExtrudedTextBreakage.aep.zip

there are limitations with the shatter deformer that prevent me from making something more convincing, but we’ll keep it in mind for the next version (interaction with a “ground” floor etc.)

[Dirk De jong]

Sorry for the delayed response – There is no immediate reason I can think of why the fields in interlaced video would not be preserved when using BorisFX AVX plugins in interlaced Avid projects… The quickest way to isolate what’s going on might be to start a support case by emailing support@borisfx.com so we can collect some more specific info etc. Feel free to mention my name and a link to this message thread and I can stay in the loop and help to reach a solution if necessary.

Dirk de Jong
BorisFX