[Jon Okerstrom]

Excellent news. Post an image if you can. I’d love to see it.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Varangian,

I would suggest upgrading to the current version, which I believe is 4.1. Check out the support section of http://www.zaxwerks.com.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Ed,

It sounds like you need to select both of the objects in thhe problem layer and use compound path>create.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Roland,

I think so, depending on how you intrepret the objects and whether you ever see the back sides of them.

Interpretation one: Each object is a hemisphere with a flat surface partially cut away. You could make this pretty easily with a custom bevel and a transparency map.

Interpretation two: Each object is a cylinder with a flat surface cut partially away as well as the side of the cylinder partially cut away, the cylinders are angled to give the appearance you see. Again, pretty easy to do with transparency maps.

In both cases, the illusion falls apart when you rotate the objects to reveal the sides of the model not surfaced.

Which interpretation are you going for – or is there another that I’m missing?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi sbrand,

Both ProAnimator and Invigorator work with AE 7 and let you type in text. Invigorator uses sets and keyframes to animate. ProAnimator uses a sesparate timeline made up of poses and transitions. Hopefully this will help identify what you’re using.

Being able to move a pivot point in Invigorator is simple – the concent really doesn’t apply to ProAnimtor, though I know some people are exploring work-arounds.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Duncan,

I’m doing a project with lots of chrome and metal right now too. For me, it’s not important that I get a crisp reflection because there’s nothing else in the scene that needs to be identified.

Good luck with your project.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Duncan,

The one thing to remember about mapping is the difference between how the front faces are mapped compared to bevels and sides. Your layermap reflection won’t “bend” from the front face to the bevel and sides.

Think of it this way: the layermap is stretched to fit the front face of the object.

In the case of sides/bevels, the map is stretched to start at the lowest, leftest corner of the object, and wrapped around the object back to the starting point. (Think of a long ribbon). You may want to make a separate layermap for the sides/bevels. Use a very short, wide comp.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Duncan,

good chrome starts with black objects, very high reflectivity and a great reflection map. The specular settings you choose for the highlights also make a diffference.

You can’t change the geometry of the front and rear faces but you can modify or make a new reflection map. Try making a larger reflection map to gain more detail. Try animating the reflection map via layermapping to make your chrome come alive even with very little object or camera movement.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi dnavarrojr,

Here’s a recipe from Zax in the forum archives, It’s not exactly looping but will get you there.

Jon

The 3D Flag plug-in is a completely physics-based cloth simulation, so you can’t set exact start/stop keyframes. However, wind in this simulation is very very smooth, it doesn’t suddenly dip or turn unless you tell it to. So if you set the wind speed to be constant the flag will fall into a rhythm. You can then render out a few seconds of the animation and find a decent looping point to do a crossfade and, viola!, you have a looping segment of video. Here it is in steps. . . 1- Set up the flag. 2- Set the wind speed to 11. 3- Set Pre-roll to 8 (you want to make sure the flag is well into the simulation before you start to render) 4- Render out 10 seconds of animation. 5- Take the clip into an editing program. 6- Duplicate it and make the top layer partially transparent. 7- Slide the bottom copy back and forth in time, until you match up the wave patterns. 8- Set the transparency back to normal. 9- Do a short dissolve from one copy to the other at the match point. (“short” means something like half a second) 10- Render out the looping section of flag. There you go! -Zax

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Festival,

Try doing a “save as” and unchecking the “use compression” box.

Also, convert any text to outlines and be sure your file includes vector rather than bit-mapped elements.

Does this help?

Jon