CompuServe Messages

>>Lets hear from you all on what YOU use flying masks for. I make music videos…. Let me explain, I just finished doing a piece for some promotional stuff we're doing. In a former life, I was a rock musician. So I took one of my old songs and made a music video for it using nothing but still images and PhotoMorph 2. The intro features an unique use of alpha channels: First I constructed an AVI that featured a constant stream of Morphs on varous objects. This was saved as its own AVI. Next, I wanted the screen to start 'black', then have a skinny area revealed, sliding down from the top. I constrcted an image that looks like: +——–XXX——-+ | XXX | | XXX | | XXX | +——–XXX——-+ I used a white start image and this as end, transition, slide down. Next CLIP: I wanted the shape of the Bar to be "shaken" for 5 frames. I used one of the new Stylize effects: Reflection, however, any distortion would have worked. I had the effect move in and out over those 5 frames. This would be in time with the music. Filter 2 featured a Zoom In distortion from 0-20% Thus, as the bar shakes, it would get slightly bigger. Next clip… I held the bar 'bigger' at 20% for a number of frames to keep time with the music. Next clip, I repeated above, increasing the zoom size every time. Thus, with every strong beat of the song the mask gets bigger. I rendered that as an AVI file. Finally, I used the distored bar AVI as a mask. The start image was the Morph sequence I previously created, and the end was black. The final result, had the morphs going on inside the bar. More of the morphs being revealed with each beat of the song. The finished effect is very cool. Look for "Society of Sponges" on a promotional CD-ROM coming soon…. Unfortunately, I can't make it public 🙁 I will try to include the .PMP files and *maybe* a tutorial on the Promotional CD so that all PM2 users can benefit (and we can pay the bills 🙂 Actually I use Alpha Channels for almost everything. That's just one of many things I've done. Anyone else? -Ed