[Jon Okerstrom]

Forget my last post – I thought I was replying to a question in another thread instead of this one.

Actually, leaving the keyframing in other AE layers is far more flexible and powerful than it would be to try to do it all inside of the invigorator plug-in. Think of all of the modifiers you can use to affect AE keyframing.. .from ease in and out to curve editing and lots of others. Once you get used to the concept, it opens a lot of doors.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Actually, you can!

Use the transparency channel and layermapping.

Look for a discussion of that in a thread a few above this one.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Denis,

Before Zax introduced 3D Flag, I had found the best way to make a flag was using Forge Freeform. The results can be pretty convincing. though not in the same league with 3D Flag. (Nothing touches Flag’s real-world wind on cloth simulations and ease of use.)

I’ve seen a couple of tutorials on making flags with Forge Freeform.

Here’s one done by Kathlyn Lindeboom:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=41&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/lindeboom_kathlyn/flag_freeform/index.html

Here’s another one specifically dealing with looping a flag:
https://www.ayatoweb.com/ae_tips_e/ae02_e.html

Hope this helps,

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hello,

>>But what exactly do you mean by “(with the map active in the transparency channel)”? Do you mean just clicking on the transparency map checkbox, and making sure I select the layer to map to?

Yes.

Good luck with your project.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Ed,

The answer depends on what’s going on in your Invigorator scene.

If the text is the only thing in it, you could pre-render the movie and keyframe the transparency of the movie. Doing this is likely faster and more flexible than putting the Invigorator project into a precomp and keyframing the transparency of the precomp.

If you have Invigorator objects passing in front of or behind the text you wish to make transparent, or if you want more options for how the tranparency happens, you may be better off using Invigorator’s layermapping abilities. Essentially, layermapping means using any other AE layer in the timeline as a surface attribute for your Invigorator object.

In its simplest form, you could add a solid to the timeline. Make it totally black at 0 and totally white at 7. Assign this solid layer to one of the layermap numbers in Invigorator. Then use the material editor to apply that material (with the map active in the transparency channel) to the 3D text.

The beauty of this technique is flexibility. Consider this: If you’re using different materials for different faces of your 3D text, you can use different transparency maps for each of them, so the transpareny happens at different rates. And how about this: Rather than a basic black-to-white transition in your transparency map, you could add grids, fractal noise or other patterns to the transparency map to make the transition more interesting.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Video,

As I suggested in my earlier post, your best option is likely to use a steady wind, and do a fast dissolve between flag movies at a point when the motions are similar.

The plug-in doesn’t offer an automatic “loop me” function. I suspect that forcing the flag to return to a an exact position at a specified point in time isn’t easy, given all the work that’s gone into making the cloth dynamics look as real and random as they do.

Hope this helps.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Doug,

Are you saying your entire animation movie looks jittery, or the image mapped onto the Invigorator object?

I would check to be sure the field order and frame rate of the Invigorator movie matches the specs of your Media 100 system. If you’re getting some buzzing on high-contrast horizontal lines, you could use a more aggressive antialiasing setting when you render your Invigorator movie.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Building on Matt’s observations…

My guess is that there may be a stray point or some other object in the Illustrator docuument, beyond the bounds of the intended logo. This unseen point or object would cause Invigorator to “stretch to fit” the logo incorrectly. If the unintended point or object is not beyond the height of the logo, it would affect left-to-right issues. If it’s above or below the logo, it would affect the up/down placement of the logo.

If this is the case, or there is some other border element around the logo itself, you can either fix it in Illustrator or put the logo layer into a precomp that’s of the correct aspect ratio and size to “crop” the image. Then assign the precomp as your layermap.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Paule,

The short answer is: you can’t use bit-mapped art for Invigorator, whether it’s Photoshop, jpeg or something else.

You may export any photoshop paths you make as Illustrator format files. These basic shapes may be used in Invigorator. Closed paths work best.

The best way to deal with bit-mapped logos is to import them into Illustrator and use them as templates. From there you can use Illustrators tools to build a vector-version of the art, for use in Invigorator. There are several auto-trace options which may help you in the process, but often require clean-up.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi CabbeCabbe,

When you import the ProAnimator file, take a look at the interpret footage settings for After Effects. Be sure the field order and alpha channel settings are correct.

Does this help?

Jon