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The following tutorial barely scratches the surface of DF3's
incredibly flexible new text tool. It makes use of the shading
elements and their hierachical relationship to the main text
layout, as well as calculations.
Quicktime: View
the movie. (1 Mb)
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Step
1
Start a new flow with 240 frames. Check the high quality box next
to the start render button.
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Step
2
Place a text+ tool in the flow. For this example, I left the size
at 640 by 480 with the default 1 by 1 pixel aspect ratio. |
| Step 2 Click
for larger view |
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Step
3
Copy these
capital 'I's into the text box under the text tab. The font
you're using should be the default: 0.08 Arial. Once they're
in there, get rid of the returns to make one long string:
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
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Step
4
With the playhead on frame 0, slide the right hand 'write-on'
handle to a value of zero. Right click on the word 'end' and set
a key. Your 'I's will disappear. DON'T PANIC. |
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Step
5
Move the playhead to frame 60, then move the handle back to a
value of one. Now, if you play your animation, the string of 'I's
should reveal themselves over 60 frames. Don't worry if you can't
see all of them, we'll fix this in a minute. |
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Step
6
Go to the 'Layout' tab of the text+ tool. Change the 'type' pulldown
to 'circle'. Go to frame 0. Set a key on the 'Angle Y' slider,
with a value of 0. Go to frame 240 and change the value to 1440.
Your text will eventually spin around 4 times over the length
of the flow. |
| Step 6 Click
for larger view |
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Step
7
Go to the 'Alignment' tab. Select 'character' from the pulldown
menu, and change the character spacing to a value of 0.8498. This
should pull your 'I's together to make a circular band. |
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Step
8
Go to the 'Shading' tab and enable Element 2 through 7 by checking
their enable boxes. Element 1 will already be enabled. |
| Step 8 Click
for larger view |
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Step
9
Go to frame 60. Select Element 2, click the transform button.
Set a key on the 'Offset Z' slider giving it a value of zero.
Change the 'Angle X' value to 90. |
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Step
10
Repeat this process for each of elements 3 through seven. For
Element 1, change the 'Angle X' value to 90 like the others, but
you can leave the 'Offset Z' value alone. |
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Step
11
Go to frame 120 and change the 'Offset Z' values of the various
elements as follows:
Element 2: 1.0
Element 3: 2.0
Element 4: 3.0
Element 5: -1.0
Element 6: -2.0
Element 7: -3.0
Now that we've got these 'I' rings spinning around, we'll fade
them out one by one. Rather than just keying each of the elements
to fade out in sequence, we'll use calculations based on a single
opacity change. We'll start with element 4, because it's at one
end of our cylinder. |
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Step
12
Go to frame 180. Click on the Shading tab. Select Element 4. Click
on the colour button. At the bottom, right click on the Opacity
slider and set a key with a value of 1.0. |
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Step
13
Go to frame 190, and change the opacity value of Element 4 to
0. |
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Step
14
Go to Element 3. Right click on it's opacity slider, and modify
it with a Calculation. A blue box appears in the modifiers tab.
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Step
15
Go to modifiers and you'll see a calculation box. Right click
on the box and rename it to something related to element 3. I
called mine 'element 3 calculation'. This saves confusion later. |
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Step
16
Under the 'Calc' tab of this modifier, right click on the 'First
Operand' slider, and connect it to Text + 1 > Opacity |
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Step
17
Under the 'Time' tab, set the value of the 'First Operand Time
Offset' to -4.
What you've done here is told Element 3's opacity to match what
Element 4's opacity was 4 frames ago. |
| Step 17 Click
for larger view |
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Step
18
Go back to step 13 and repeat this process for each of the other
elements using the following First Operand Time Offsets:
Element 2: -8
Element 1: -12
Element 5: -16
Element 6: -20
Element 7: -24
The rings should fade out roughly around frame 215. Right click
on the text tool, and create a preview. BOOYA! |
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