[Jon Okerstrom]

Martin,

Use the material editor to create a new material. Click the top material thumbnail to link it to your image (tga format works really well). Apply that material to the front face of your object.

Please take into account that Invigorator will stretch/squish the image to fit the face. If you have a border around the image, the border will be seen on the Invigorator object.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi,

You’ll find the scene preview window in the effects control panel in After Effects. The parameters are available below that or via the twirlies in either the effects window or the AE timeline. Click the little red ball below the window to get to the set-up window, where the modeling and texturing happen.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi tbmotion,

The filmstrip animations are actually fairly simple. I created the strip (with empty frames) in Illustrator, each frame can be filled with a still image or a movie. Put all of that into a precomp that’s the size of the strip itself… really wide and short, in my case.

Now apply the 3D Warp effect to another layer and use the first precomp as the colormap.

Let me know if you get stuck and I can go into more detail.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi dups303,

I wrote a tutorial for just that kind of effect. Find it here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=41&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/okerstrom_jon/reflections/index.html

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Serge,

Thanks for the compliment. I’ll have to modify the airplane project file a bit so it works with the current version of the plug-in. I’ll see what I can do.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

You’re very welcome, Jason.

I’m with you on that. We all get stuck in ruts. It’s fun to explore uncharted territory.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Lord Scales,

If the fon’t available in your sytem, you should be able to see it. If you have an issue with a particular font, you may want to send it to tech support so they can take a look.

The short-term solution, of course, is to convert the text to outlines in Illustrator. It’ll behave the same as any other object then.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Kevin,

Using a layermap instead of a static image gives you lots of options. Want to create a traveling glint or glimmer on just part of the object where you’ve applied the image? Create a precomp containing the image to be layermapped and the effects, then make the precomp your layermap.

Want to animate transparency of the image in a creative way? Do it with by animating a grayscale layermap you’ve applied to the the transparency portion of the material.

There are so many possibilities I won’t begin to name them. But I’m sure you get the idea.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Kevin,

It’s a pretty simple process.

Open your Illustrator document in Photoshop… this will convert your gradient to a bit-mapped graphic which you can save as a tga file.

You can now apply this image to your 3D object either as part of a conventional material (use the material editor to create a material and select your tga file) or as a layermap if you want more control. It’s important to crop the image because any border around the part you want will be applied to the object as well.

If any of this sounds cryptic, ask a question and we’ll try to help.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Agreed. It’s powerful and elegantly simple to use. A great combination.

Jon