Elvis Deane
Forum Replies Created
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When you turn on motion blur, some single particles that aren’t moving much become semi-transparent, which may be what’s happening in your scene. You can duplicate the box’s particle type a couple of times to make sure it remains solid.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
If you render out to a sequence of TGA, PNG, TIF, or a few other image formats, the alpha channel box will be available to be checked in the Output Options, and that will give you a transparent background.
There is a 3.01 updated on the wondertouch downloads page.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
In version 3, if you hit Ctrl+M or right-click in the Library window and choose the Manage option, you’ll get a Library Manager that will allow you to grab emitters from different libraries and move them into a new one.
If you’re using SE, the only way to reorganize a library is to place a few of the ones you like on the stage, and then right-click each one and choose Add to Library.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
If you go to Project>Add Media File, then you can bring in AVIs or other videos.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
If you have a compositing program like After Effects or Combustion, you can create masks in that, and then render out your effects in pI and place them behind the layer with your actor on it.
Wax from Debugmode ( https://www.debugmode.com/wax/ ) is a free compositing program that lets you draw masks around people and animate them if you don’t have any other compositor. I haven’t used it in a few versions, so I don’t know how good the masking is (the feature you’re looking for is called RotoMate), but it might do the job for you.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
You need DIVX 5 installed to be able to view that clip.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
Is it possible your alpha channel wasn’t saved out of Photoshop properly? I know that with TIFs in Photoshop, there are two places you have to check a box to export the alpha, the Save options in the Save As dialogue box, and in the Tiff Options box. I don’t have Photoshop here, so I can’t say for sure if the same is true for PNGs or TGAs.
The other thing you can try in pI is to load the image with the alpha as your Background image, and turn Get Transparency from Layer on in your emitter’s color options. It won’t give you exactly the same effect as Area Emitter Masks, but it should at least let you know if your alpha channel is loading up.
With Area Emitter Masks, you should always make sure that the emitter is in the exact center of the stage. Since the image is loaded into the emitter, it gets tied to the position of the emitter. This might not explain your problem, but it’s possible that if the center of your emitter is too close to the edge of the screen, your particles are appearing off screen somewhere.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
Have you got the 3.01a update from the wondertouch downloads page? That’s the usual reason people get that error. Otherwise, I’m not sure. It opens up fine here if I download it.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
Here’s a REALLY quick test that I made of that sort of effect. This does use a pI3 only feature (where you can specify each particle type’s emission angle and range), but you could still recreate it in pISE using 3 emitters instead of one.
https://pi.shockingtales.com/videos/boatWake01.aviI have to run to a class now, but I can try to write some instructions when I return.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures -
What are your project settings in Vegas before you export? This is a bit of a guess, but if it’s a DV or broadcast project, then the pixel aspect ratio would be set to 0.9. Since pI only writes square pixels, the pIed clip may end up being wider than the Vegas project settings.
So the solution would be to go into the clip’s Properties in Vegas and change the pixel aspect ratio, or export the clip from Vegas with square pixels in the future before you do any pI work on it.
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Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures