#ipas for mapping images?
18 messages in this thread
Does anyone know of an Ipas routine which alows you to place multiple images,
flics, or ifls. I want to create a material which is made up of 8 animations
in seperate ifls. the animations would be side by side with a border in
between. I would apply this as a cylindrical texture map. Any
help would be appreciated.
Bill
Hi William,
<< I want to create a material which is made up of 8 animations in seperate
ifls. the animations would be side by side with a border in between. I would
apply this as a cylindrical texture map. >>
Why don't you use 3DS and create 8 grid objects, use planar mapping, and map a
seperate material for each seperate *.ifl to each grid and render out the range
of images? Use this new set of files for a new *.ifl that you would use for the
cylindrical texture map. You could then also define the border between images
very easily with additional geometry between the grids.
Would this work?
jonas[adesk]
Thank you for your quick reply!
Yes I thought of that too. The only problem is that I have a minute of
animation
total. This takes up over 3 gig of storage. The animations are only seen at
certain times and each lasts only a few seconds. There are 35 different
animations which will ultimately be composited. One problem with the grid
method (or VPost method) is space: most of the time I would be duplicating
stills (though, I suppose I could use white or something), another is
inflexibility: If I decide that an animation should happen a few frames later,
I have to re-render the whole sequence. I may have to resort to this method,
though, it seems the only way to do it.
Thanks again,
William Peabody
Flying Spot, Inc. Seattle
Bill,
I'd apply these maps to rectangular objects in the Editor and Keyframer,
and render the new sequence to disk. Then use this as your resulting animated
map (or .IFL) and map normally. No IPAS required.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Thank you for your suggestion.
I was looking for a method which might give more flexibility in the placement
of each animation relative to one another along the time line. If I want to
modify the time at which a certain animation occurs, I would have to rerender
the seqment. I would prefer not to have to do that. Oh, well. Wishful
thinking.
William Peabody
Flying Spot, Inc. Seattle
William,
Well, you could go crazy with a batch file called from video post to
rename map files as you go along. Call out a texture that is, say, TEST.TGA.
Use a Basic program or other tool called from a batch file to copy the next
frame you want out of your .IFL (keeps it data-driven) to TEST.TGA. Beware of
the way Video Post works, your frame might be 1 off from the geometry (you
might have to start the timeline for the batch file's queue entry 1 frame
before using the first map). Nice problem – shouldn't really be difficult.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
You can modify the time at which an animation occurs ny adding black frames or
still frames in the .ifl.
DM
Bill:
>> Does anyone know of an Ipas routine which alows you to place multiple
>> images, flics, or ifls. I want to create a material which is made up of 8
>> animations in seperate ifls. the animations would be side by side with a
>> border in between.
You don't need an IPAS to do this – just use Video Post! Everything you need
is there, including placing a bitmap at a predetermined X,Y coordinate.
Greg Pyros
Thanks for the reply
I will probably use this technique, though I am faced with a space crunch.
The different animations take up 3 gig, the composited ones will take more
space. They happen at different times, so I will have to loop the animations
or padd with stills or white space. This will teach me to create style frames
without regard for how I will actually create the final product.
William Peabody
Flying Spot, Inc. Seattle
Bill,
In addition to what Jonas has recommended, another way would be to create 1
cylinder and map it with 1 material with the border just how you need it.
Then copy that cylinder 7 times positioning each portion next to the other.
Then apply the other animations to the newly created cylinders. If it needs
to move you can link them in the KFer or attack them into 1 object first.
Ralph
Thanks for replying
I will try this. In lieu of an Ipas routine, this technique should do the
trick. Or,
if not this time, I certainly see the usefullness of creating seperate objects.
William Peabody
Flying Spot, Inc. Seattle
>> I will try this. In lieu of an Ipas routine, this technique should do the
>> trick. Or,
>> if not this time, I certainly see the usefullness of creating seperate
>> objects.
Sometimes you must construct an object with mapping in mind. Other times
you may have to take them apart, apply mapping/materials, and put them back
together.
Good Luck,
Ralph
>>multiple image map…
I don't know if it could apply to your requirements, but I did something very
similar just last week. I had four viewpoints (top, left, front & camera) of
animated action, kind of like an animated engineering drawing. I rendered each
viewport to a little less than a 1/4 of the final image size, made IFL's, and
used Video Post to position each image and composite them against a blue
background to make a border between and around each quadrant.
The compositing goes very quickly as each image is small. This would have
taken much longer if the source images had to be rescaled in VP. If the source
images were the wrong size, I would consider a rescaling pass thru VP to make
proper sized copies.
The whole thing was a lot easier than I had suspected. If, as you mentioned,
you have to modify the timeline later, editing the IFL's and recompositing
should be relatively painless. BTW, don't forget that you can hold an image in
VP for an arbitrary time simply by duplicating entries in the IFL.
Sorry, but I don't know of any canned shortcut or easier way, other than
talking someone else into doing it. <g> (It looks like Ralph has a good idea)
JKJ
JKJ:
>> BTW, don't forget that you can hold an image in VP for an arbitrary time
>> simply by duplicating entries in the IFL.
Or even easier, just putting the number of frames to the right of the file name
(defaults to 1)!
Greg Pyros
>>frame count in IFL…
(wow, a whole message without a Pyros Pun!)
Ah, page 3-47 in the ole manual, huh? I clean forgot about that – much better
solution. Thanks, Mr GP.
JKJ
JKJ:
>> Ah, page 3-47 in the ole manual, huh? I clean forgot about that – much
>> better solution. Thanks, Mr GP.
You're welcome!
>> (wow, a whole message without a Pyros Pun!)
I guess I was just too surprised to be able to give _you_ any info on 3DS at
all, you manual-memorizer, you!
Greg Pyros
Why not just use Video Post to create the montage of all the animations into a
single animation ready for cylindrical mapping.
David "Twist bend and stretch" Gould
video post sounds like the easy way to me. and if you are looking for a really
easy
way to create an ifl like list for a cue entry you can use the KPT Gradient
designer IPAS which HSC Software just released. This will allow you to create
a pseudo ifl or in this case a (grd) . define a timeline of your desired
length,make your gradient completely trans. for the entire duration then
visually load background images by select each image of sequence you want to
include, at the point in the timeline you want it to appear. each one will
stay there until you load another image after it. when you are finished
creating this timeline you can play it back in order to see the timing and
sequence order of your finished (grd). Save it in the Gradient Designer and
then go back to
3DS and use this BXP process(grd) in video post as a que entry, with the size
and
positioning you want for that particular sequence. Or for that matter use it
any other place you might use a bitmap (texture, projection lights, backgrounds
etc) Creating an imaging sequence
in this way is extremely time efficient and the whole process within KPT might
only take 2 or 3 minutes