#text in 3ds
6 messages in this thread
Does anyone know an easy way to annotate drawings that have been rendered in 3D
studio R4? I don`t want the text itself to be
rendered, but would like to add labels to drawings after I have already
rendered them. I tried simply importing the .bmp file into a paint program or
Word, but I got all kinds of errors because the file was
too big (9 megs). I would appreciate any suggetions. Thanks in advance.
Darin
Try this, darin, if you have a program like Freehand or CorelDraw. I'll use
CorelDraw for the example, since that is what I am most familair with.
1) Create a proportionally scaled down version of your image with 3DS (for
example divide your horizontal and vertical rez by 8 and keep the aspect ratio
the same.)
2) Import this image into CorelDraw and create circles and arrows as needed.
3) Delete the scaled down image object from CorelDraw, but first create a
_black_ bounding box the same size as the scaled image for a background.
4) Export this image to a TGA or whatever. Upon exporting make sure you
export the created objects only (as opposed to the whole page). Also export to
the same rez as your original big image.
5) Use 3DS Video Post with two entries. The first is your image, the second
is the new annotation bitmap you just created in CorelDraw. Click the Alpha
for the bitmap and use Queue RGB and Key color (selecting black for the key
color).
6) Render to the finished image.
The biggest trick is making sure the exported image from CorelDraw matches the
rez of the original image, and that it only includes the region bounded by the
background box. In CorelDraw, this is done be choosing Edit/Select All before
exporting, and then checking the "Selected Objects Only" checkbox.
Wow, words just don't cut it for communicating a graphical concept!! Oh, well.
It's one idea for you, anyway. There are many variations on using scaled-down
images as proxys until the final composite. Hope it works for you.
— James — Choreo Motion —
James-
Thanks for the advice. I actually don`t have either of those programs,
but I`ll try similar things with what I have.
Darin JAmes-
Darin:
Altamira's Composer is quite good for putting lables on images. It'll give you
text in any color with automated drop shadows also.
Bob
Darin,
<< Does anyone know an easy way to annotate drawings that have been rendered in
3D studio R4? >>
How about making the text on another image of the same res. and overlaying the
2 through Video Post.
Mark
Mark,
>> annotate drawings that have been rendered in 3D studio R4?<<
It all depends if you want the text to move in the animation along with camera
motion or not. If you want the text to be part of the scene, then I like to
use Photoshop or HiRes QFX to generate antialiased text with alpha channel.
Then go into the shaper, make some boxes, assign them, go into 3D Editor and
Create.Object.GetShapper. This will make a 2D flat object that you can apply
the text to. In the material editor, make sure that you use the same texture
for both opacity and texture mapping and use the alpha for the opacity
information. You can get really nice text this way.
If on the other hand you want to "overlay" text on the animation, composite
32-bit text and graphics using the Video Post module. Remember to "queue" the
alpha channel.
Ang, President Dynamic Technologies, Inc. An Autodesk Systems Center for
Multimedia in MD