[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Doug,

You asked:

>>1) Once the image(text) from Illustrator is brought into the Zaxwerks plug-in, I know it’s rendered immediately, but is all the motion controlled and keyframes done in AE?

Yes. Using the Invigorator plug-in controls, you assign your letter objects to sets. You keyframe the movement of those sets as well as the camera. You can do this in the AE timeline or in the Effect Control panel. Zax did a wonderful quicktime tutorial for Invigorator Classic. Have you seen that?

>>Does the lighting that’s controlled in Invig, get pulled into AE?

Invigorator’s lights affect only objects in the Invigorator layer. Using comp lights and camera is an option in the Pro version.

2) Does the 3D box need to be checked in AE to take advantage of the motion within Invig?

No. The Invigorator layer should normally be left a 2D layer, if you’re using Classic.

3) Do you create the background in Invig or is that created in AE?

It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. You can use Invig to create background elements. However, the beauty of using After Effects is your ability to create complex, multi-layered backgrounds, to which you can add Invigorator objects and motion.

As for the manual, I would encourage you to give it a go, even if you just do the first part. Following along will help you get up to speed very quickly. Watching Zax’s video, if you have it, is an even faster way to get your head around the basic concepts.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi arash,

A solution – for now – would be to convert the words to outlines in Illustrator and work with the resulting file in Invigorator.

Hope this helps.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Chris,

A few thoughts:

First, field rendering your animation will provide slightly smoother motion, so long as you have the field order correct. NTSC DV is lower field first. You are correct in using a lossless codec for your intermediate movie to avoid compression artifacts.

Second, when you import your movie into AE, be sure your interpret footage setting is correct… that is, tell AE whether to deinterlace the video for you and what the field order is supposd to be.

Third, be sure you have the video quality toggle for your movie set to best quality in your timeline. This will

And finally, the only way to see how a field-rendered animation will look for real is by playing it back on an NTSC monitor or tv set. It will show jaggies on your computer screen because computer screens are not interlaced video.

Does any of this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Gav,

The interaction between the Invig camera and comp camera works in many cases, but you might find it a lot easier to map your psd of your street scene to a plane inside Invigorator and do the entire thing using Invig’s native camera.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

This tidbit from Zax in the forum archive should help — Jon

When you animate the depth Scale of a Set it will scale all of the geometry of an object. This will result in an unflattering flattening (!) of the bevel if the depth scale is reduced too far.

Here is a little trick you can do when you absolutely positively have to animate the depth and want the bevel to stay rock solid.

In a nutshell you make two objects. One contains only the bevel. The other contains only edge thickness with no bevel. By positioning these two objects in front of each other, and putting each in a different Set, you can animate the depth Scale of the edge object all the way to zero and the bevel object won’t be affected at all.

The secret is, how do you make these two objects?

You open the same Illustrator file twice, then give the bevel object the Straight Flare edge profile. (Edges/ Special Purpose/ Flare, Straight) The depth of the bevel is determined by the depth of this first object. Somewhere between 2 and 10 is all the more depth you’ll probably want to give to the bevel. By adjusting the Edge Scale setting you can control the angle of the bevel.

Once you have the bevel done, give the second object the Outline edge profile. (Edges/ Inset Face/ Outline) This profile creates an offset to the front faces. Adjust the depth to your liking, then use the Edge Scale slider to adjust the offset so that the edges of this second object just touch the corners of the front object. Move the second object backward so that it looks like these two objects are one continuous model.
(NOTE: If you have the Pro version, you can use the Basic, Flat Sides edge profile and adjust the offset with the Edge Offset slider.)

Now you can animate the depth Scale of the back object. Note that you may also have to animate the z position of the back object so the front and back objects stay touching.