Jon Okerstrom
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Parts,
Interesting.
I’m still on a PowerPC Mac… waiting for the new “big box” machines to come out.. hopefully to be announced any day. Of course, the rest of the wait will be for Adobe to give us Universal Binary versions of AE and the Creative Suite. .. that’ll be next year, sometime, I guess.
In any case, I suspect you’re running ProAnimator via Rosetta… my understanding is the software is not universal binary yet, though I could be wrong.
Are you trying to run it as a stand-alone, or as a plug-in for After Effects? From what I read, AE really doesn’t do well under Rosetta either… trying to use AE and ProAnimator via Rosetta together may be more than Rosetta can handle. The stand-alone version may work when the plug-in won’t. Then again, it just might not work on a MacTel machine yet. I’ve not seen any other reports like yours. Maybe Matt or Zax will jump in with some comments.
As a general theory, I suspect that all AE developers are waiting on Adobe to make a Universal Binary version of After Effects availalbe before they can really certify and release Universal Binary versions of their plug-ins. We can only hope Adobe is pushing hard to get it done.
Jon
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Hi everyone,
Invigorator does work as a plug-in for both Mac and PC versions of After Effects. Some of the advantages of Invigorator Pro have been pointed out. You can see a side-by-side breakdown on the Zaxwerks site.
Another option you should consider is Zaxwerks ProAnimator, a stand-alone application for Mac or PC. It includes the same easy but powerful modeling and texturing abilities as Invigorator, but adds some motion control capabilities you can’t get anywhere else. (No keyframes. No limits to the number of objects that can be controlled. Fast , easy creation of very complex moves.) And did I mention that as of version 4, it’s an After Effects plug-in too?
Hope this helps.
Jon Okerstrom
Zaxwerks COW leader -
Hi Lensflare,
I haven’t run into the banding issue with either app, but I suppose it’s possible with certain gradients, if the rendering engine is 8 bit. Perhaps Matt will jump in with the tech spec for you.
The cartoon color rendering option does create banding – a posterization effect – on purpose.
Jon
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Hi Lensflare,
When you use PA as an AE plug-in, there is a way to adjust the anchor point… look under the transform twirlie in the AE timeline. While this adjusts the anchor point it does not appear to affect whether scaling works in both positive and negative directions. If I find another solution, I’ll post the answer here.
Jon
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Hi Lensflare,
I’m not certain there is a way, but can think of one work-around:
Why not put a plane at 0,0,0 to represent the floor of your 3d graph. With the right size and camera angle, it’ll hide the scaling that’s happening in negative y space.
Jon
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In addition to 3D Invigorator, Zaxwerks offers ProAnimator.
It shares the same easy modeling and texturing workflow, but adds a very powerful behavior-based motion control system, which eliminates the need for keyframes. New with version 4.0 is the ability to use ProAnimator as a plug-in for After Effects or as a stand-alone application for those who don’t want or need to involve After Effects.
As for “common” choices, you’ll see Invigorator/ProAnimator on network and local television, as well as many other kinds of projects.
I’d recommend downloading the demos and running through some of the tutorials. If you get stuck, drop by the Zaxwerks forum. We’d be glad to help.
Jon Okerstrom
Zaxwerks COW leader -
It doesn’t show up under the effects tab>Zaxwerks>3D Invigorator?
Jon
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Hi G2,
Glad to help. The short answer is not directly.
One thing you might want to explore, you can save your ProAnimator project and have AE import the camera and object position keyframes from the PA project file. So far as I know, this works with AE 7 and not earlier versions.
Technically, AE and ProAnimator are two separate 3d worlds. The software links them together in a way that it looks like they share the same virtual space,… it’s amazing that it works as well as it does.
Have fun.
Jon
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Hi G2,
I’m guessing you have ProAnimator 3, based on your question.
The best solution for your question is ProAnimator 4, because it gives you the option of using ProAnimator as an After Effects plug-in… more about that in a moment.
First an explanation. The reflections in ProAnimator are based on reflection maps, which are most often still images. Moving lights won’t make those reflections appear to move. Moving the reflection maps or the objects themselves are your options.
Option 1. Moving the reflection maps. The really sweet way to do this is by using the AE plug-in version of ProAnimator 4. Check out the layer map offset option. Essentially, you can make your reflection map a layermap, then animate the offset or position of the layermap. This will make your reflection map move on static images.
Option 2. You could create a movie with what amounts to a moving layermap, then apply that in the reflection channel as you would a traditional layermap. This would work whether you’re using ProAnimator as a stand-alone or a plug-in, but wouldn’t give you as much control over how the layermap moves.
Option 3. Try rotating your objects a very small amount when they’re parked.. say plus or minus 2 degrees. It’s enough to make the reflections appear to move, but not very noticeable. This is very simple and quick. It may work in a pinch.
Does this help?
Jon
Oh yeah, about the lights. They can’t be animated in the stand-alone version of ProAnimator. (Although adding the ability to have a light animation track would be cool… maybe in a future version.) Anyway, when you use the AE plug-in, you get the option of using animatable comp lights and camera.
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Hi Kazden,
Making the chain isn’t hard. It could be as simple as creating a series of 3D ‘O” shapes, and spinning every other one 90 degrees (so the first one lays flat, the second is vertical, the third flat, etc.), then moving them closer to eachother so they are in fact linked. To get more complicated, you could make more complicated links in Illustrator or another modeling program.
The challenge comes if you need to animate the motion of the chain. The limited number of sets could keep you from animating enough individual links. Getting them to behave naturally during the motion process would involve lots of keyframes for the sets. Another way to do it might be to use layercycling and moving a series of links in your Illustrator layers.
If all the chain links are in straight lines that don’t bend, it would be lots easier.
Does this help?
Jon