Jon Okerstrom
Forum Replies Created
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Ken,
It’s hard to know why the alignment of the disk and the text objects doesn’t match up, but how about this:
Create one track, with the spinning disk and the letters flying off.
When you’re happy with the motion, make a duplicate of that track.
On one layer, make the disk invisible for the whole time. On the other layer, make the text invisible the whole time. Use the transparency channel.
Assuming you replicated the tracks AFTER you created the motion on the original, my sense is the two tracks would remain in sync because the math under the hood would remain identical.
Does this sound logical to you?
Jon
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Josh,
The model needs to be textured using UV mapping coordinates and exported that way from Maya in the obj format. Does this help.
Jon
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Hi Ken,
I’m not aware of any limit. Be sure you have enough time in your animation for all of the frames to be seen – this essentially amounts to choosing the correct “frame rate.” Also be sure that the settings are such that you start on the first and end on the last frame.
Jon
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Hi Tim,
As you’ve discovered, bump maps can suggest depth but really don’t do what you’re asking.
Another option that might work – create two spheres – located at exactly the same place in space. The slightly larger sphere has the continents and a transparency map knocks out the oceans. The slightly smaller sphere would be the ocean. You would get a slight but real distance above sea level – but the edges of the continents would not exist. If you zoom in too close or from the wrong angle, the illusion would be broken.
If you really want to model the edges of the continents and mountains, you’ll need a different kind of modeler.
Jon
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Hi Susan,
The mapping options for imported objects are limited to UV mapping. Whether you can get UV mapping to work depends on whether the model was created with UV coordinates for applying textures. Lightwave V7 format and the .obj format are two that do work.
Jon
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If you actually want to have the slices grow, layer cycling could do it. Look up the tutorial on that and let us know if that might work. I can go into greater detail when I have more time, if you like.
Jon
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Hi Ken,
This should be simple as… well… pie! I would suggest building your “pie” in Illustrator by creating a circle and cutting it into pieces using pathfinder. From there, I would put each piece on a different named layer. Then import into ProAnimator using layers. This will make it easier to select the pieces and move them to different object tracks, if that’s an option you want.
Jon
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Hi Ken,
Here’s the note going out to ProAnimator customers:
This is a quick announcement to let you know that version 4.5.0 of ProAnimator has been released. This version contains the following fixes/changes:
1 – ProAnimator is now compatible with multi-user environments. When several users share a single computer their swatches, animation presets and screen configurations are now kept separately. This makes it so that one user can’t accidentally goof up another user’s swatch library. It also means that users don’t have to have Administrator privileges in order to run the software. This makes it ideal for schools and business where users aren’t allowed to write to sensitive areas of the hard drive.
Because of the multi-user change, there is a new procedure to reset the default presets and swatches.
On the Mac go to the Root Hard Drive > Users > yourUserName > Documents > Zaxwerks folder and delete the ProAnimator folder. The next time you run ProAnimator the master files will be re-copied into your user folder.
On the PC go to the C drive > Documents & Settings > yourUserName > My Documents > Zaxwerks folder and delete the ProAnimator folder. The next time you run ProAnimator the master files will be re-copied into your user folder.
2 – Better QuickTime movie flattening. Some people were getting a *6 error when rendering movies. This was caused by a new version of QuickTime. A change has been made to make QuickTime movies cross-platform and more reliable. It also gets rid of the problem on Windows where extra #res files were being created.
3 – Work was done to optimize swatch performance. Now there are fewer problems caused when skipping maps, and duplicating materials which contained missing maps. Also, swatches aren’t re-saved so often which will keep them crisp looking and not get fuzzy.
The update is free and can be downloaded from the Zaxwerks site.
Jon
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Hi John,
I assume you’re talking about ProAnimator
A few ideas:
First – if you want the movement between two or more poses to be very similar in speed, it makes sense that the distance to time ratio for each transition should be similar. In other words, if you’re moving 5 units over two seconds in transition one, and you want to keep the speed constant, the next transition should also move the object 5 units over two seconds or ten units over four seconds, etc. Making the pose between the transitions as short as possible also keeps the movement going.
Second – you can use the ease function to smooth the way objects or cameras come to a rest at each pose.
Does this help?
Jon
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Hi Jay,
I’m guessing you have a couple of options. One would be to render the Invig movie then bring that movie back into your comp. The alpha channel will behave as you would expect.
You might also try putting your Invig layer into a precomp. This should force AE to render what’s in the precomp before applying additional effects to that layer.
Let us know what works.
Jon