Lin Evans

Hi Tom, That might be interesting, I'll see about coming up with that.... I think 1280 x 720 is about as good as Youtube will support with any animation. That's what I used. Lin

Lin

Thanks Jean - I think it would make a nice opening, especially for a video presentation on YouTube, etc., where the extra 14 meg of the little video of Earth turning wouldn't be so noticeable as with an exe show. Maybe I can convert it to Flash and get the size down a bit without sacrificing the quality. I was finally able to capture a decent Earth rotation AVI from Celestia and it works well with David's code for the text. Best regards, Lin

http://www.lin-evans.org/dave/mond2exe.zip (about 17 meg) http://www.lin-evans.org/dave/mond2pte.zip Lin

Hi Daniel, Very beautiful and I appreciate that you left the control keys so it was possible to linger a while on some of the wonderful scenes! Thanks for sharing this - a lovely place even in winter.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Paul, Beautiful photos and beautiful show! It all works very well for me!! Absolutely no need for animation or changes in my opinion. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jean, Yes, that's exactly how I feel about PTE. It's a means of creating some amazing animations without having to go through the process necessary with 3D construction software including wire frames, skinning and other very labor and time intensive processes with a rather steep learning curve. Of course with the requisite skills in the dedicated 3D programs, many amazing things can be done, but then these programs do not allow the ease of presentation and the ability to also easily incorporate stills, videos, masking and other features of PTE. PTE is rather unique in this and I think the popularity will grow not only with photographers and AV enthusiasts, but in the future I see animators taking advantage of these unusual features. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Actually, unless you wanted to actually "go into" the house via a door, the easy way would just be to create the door and windows with masking. If you were following the little fun that David and Jean and I were having with "bending" text. David created a very nice circling text and titled it Le Monde. I then provided "Le Monde" or more precisely, the Earth rotating for the text to circle. This was a small video captured from Celestia of the rotating Earth. Of course with a video and without yet the ability of PTE to handle the alpha channel transparency via green screen, the only way to avoid the dark "rectangle" surrounding the Earth was to place the spinning globe inside a little circular mask easily done inside PTE. The the mask under a controlling frame to dynamically change the size to accommodate Davids dynamic text size change. I think doors and windows could easily be done in the same manner without getting too fancy with framing around them when constructing a simple cabin. Of course if one wanted them to be "functional" then it would necessarily be done differently. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jean, Of course, you are absolutely correct. In my little tutorial, I begin by addressing the fact that "actually" building a house is much more complex than creating the components or "material" to build it with. But of course it (building a house with PTE) could be a very interesting learning process for one's advancement in learning to manipulate objects in PTE. The "title" of my tutorial (Building a House With PicturesToExe) was rather "tongue in cheek" or perhaps the title C'est une remarque un petit peu taquine. Your tutorial in French is very complete, but as you say, few probably found it helpful only because "most users" of PTE are using it to display their photographs rather than as a 3D animation tool. I use a little screen capture tool called Screen Recorder Gold http://www.capture-screen.com/ to make my tutorials. It's rather simple and doesn't have lots of flexibility, but I usually don't do more than talk and use the mouse cursor, so serves fairly well for the purpose. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, Are you creating them with the "zip" option? I find that's the easiest way to send then to Mac Users. If not, try that. Best regards, Lin

Have you ever considered building a house? To do so, we need timbers and siding and roofing, and perhaps bricks, etc. Can this be done with PTE. Actually it can. If you've looked at Jean Cyprien's amazing show about the little bell (Choupinette de retour de Romea), he has built a very nice and attractive wooden bell-house structure to house the bells. So my purpose for this tutorial is not to actually "build" a house - that would take too long. But what I would like to do is show you how you can easily use my cube template to construct wooden timbers, planks or sheets of wood, to use for construction material. Though the tutorial deals with "wood" timbers, sheets, planks, etc., you could just as easily build a "brick" wall, a chimney (just use the right shaped mask) or many different shaped three dimensional objects via the basic concept and masks. Here's a link to the new tutorial - I hope some of you have time to look at it and enjoy the ease of manipulation of the cube template to do many more things. http://www.lin-evans...akingahouse.zip Lin

Hi Jean, Yes, I remember from JPD's first example! Your "Sorcerer's Apprentice" was also a great lesson in "geometry" and a pleasure to watch. I recently made a little tutorial after JPD's example of the elliptical "orbit" in much the same fashion as his example, though not nearly as beautiful with shadows, etc. PTE has given us an amazing tool with which to express creativity. I only wish I were more creative but must be satisfied with trying to help others learn the technical aspects so that their creativity can be expressed. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Dang, those weightwatchers lunches without the bread and butter can be so boring! But Igor can have all the bread he wants (he could stand to gain a few pounds!) while the rest of us drool and wish!! Congrats!! Keep at it and when you get the chance, try to capture some closeups of a gull in flight with the video on your camera and try creating an animated gif as I described. It will be a project which will teach you lots of patience and be ultimately rewarding because of the results! Best regards, Lin

Amazing Jean, I can't imagine the work which went into doing these with version 5. I was always impressed by both your and JPD's early creations which took PTE into uncharted seas! Best regards, Lin

LOL - "that" might be more difficult... Lin

LOL - You're absolutely right - just a quickie to see if it would work. Actually, that video is too large and I'll try to capture a smaller one. That one was captured using Celestia - a cool free program, in case you haven't used it - get it here: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Best regards, Lin

Little - "Le Monde" included.... http://www.lin-evans.org/monde/Le_monde2.zip (PTE) http://www.lin-evans.org/monde/Le_monde2ex.zip (exe) It "grew" a bit, but hey, I added the world - LOL Lin

Eric, I sent you the pte file, open it and run it. Look at how it's built. I made you an AVI tutorial - download it here - extract the archived AVI from the zip file and run it.: http://www.lin-evans.org/eric/eric.zip Lin

LOL, Are you telling me that you're "henpecked?" I don't know if there is a right or wrong way to do lots of things - just the way or "ways" that work! I can see where Ctrl E could be very helpful here!! Regardless of the methodology, the "effect" is great. I wonder if it would be possible to bend text horizontally around half of an object? It looks like Jean has done it that way on a couple of his creations? If it is, then with a second set and opacity switches one could have fun with text circling the Earth or one of you soccer balls? Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, That's cool!! But why the second frame? Couldn't you achieve the same effect with one controlling frame and changing the X axis at the bottom and top to opposites such as -32 and +32? Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Probably, for the purposes of what you are doing this is irrelevant, but here is one of the problems with this type of animation. The left wing view is consistent whether the gull's wings are up or down because you see the "top" view of the wing at all times. However, for the right wing, with the position of the gull when photographed, you see the underside of the wing when it is in the upward position, and would expect to see the top side when the wing is down. Because of this, a whole new can of worms is opened if you want somewhat "realistic" animation. A "far" better way to achieve realistic animation with this type of scenario would be to capture the gull with the movie mode. Then take the video into a video editing program and choose enough frames to get one full wing "flap" so you go from full downward to full upward (or vice versa). Crop the frames so that you have only those frames between these extremes. Generally that will be around 10 frames. Then take this small video clip into software which will output the individual frames as jpgs. Next make transparent PNG's from each jpg by copying and pasting the jpg on a transparent background and use the eraser tool to remove all except the bird and wings. Next take these png file into any "animated gif" sortware (there are numerous free ones available) and create an animated gif. When you have done this, you can insert the animated gif under a controlling frame and you essentially have a "real" animation complete with all the nuances of flight. You simply use the controlling frame to adjust size, position of the bird and speed of traverse across your frame. You may have seen my "flying eagle" in some of my animations. That's how it was done. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Quit Kibitzing, you're frustrated because of the time you've spent without results, but you really need to examine each feature thoroughly until you understand it. The manuals are designed to tell you what the features do, not to teach you how to do each step of a particular project. To do that the manual would be thousands of pages and no one would read it. You already know that what you want to do can be done, you just don't know how to go about it and that takes a little time and experimentation to get straight in your head. Here's your pte file so you can see how to accomplish this: http://www.lin-evans...ric/birdfly.pte Essentially it works like this. The first thing which you need, if you want it to really look realistic, is a "good" set of components. The "cut out's" must be precise with no extraneous fragments left over. The png files must have transparency right up to the elements and cutting them out is best done with the eraser, not with the lasso which it appears you used. The right wing of your gull, for whatever reason is backward. That is the leading edge and trailing edge of the wing were reversed. To correct it required a horizontal flip and 180 degree rotation. That's why I asked for the original jpg of the gull. Essentially, you have three components - the gull's body, and the left and right wings as separate png files with transparency surrounding the feathers. Step 1: open PTE and put the png of the gull's body in as a starting place. Step 2: go to Objects and Animations and add a frame Step 3: select the gull's body, right click and choose "cut" Step 4. paste the "cut" (body of the gull) as a child of the frame you added Step 5. add the left wing as a child of the frame and size it appropriately Step 6. add the right wing as a child of the frame and size it appropriately - a little larger than the left wing because it's closer to the camera view Step 7. move the child components (body and wings) so that the gull's body is in the center and the right wing is on the top of the "stack" with the left wing on the bottom Step 8. click on each wing and move them into their rough starting positions. Step 9. click on the small dot in the center (the center) of the bounding rectangle, of one of the wings. Hold down the shift key and drag this dot to the center of the gull's body adjacent to the base of the wing where it attaches to the body of the gull Step10 repeat above for the other wing What you are doing here is setting the center of rotation for the wings. step 11 play with the rotate for each wing to see what happens when you drag the rotate step 12 set the initial wing positions as desired for the beginning of your picture step 13 import your "sea" background and size it appropriately as desired. Do not make it a child of the frame step 14 move the sea background to the very bottom of the stack step 15 set the time for this slide via customize slide - choose sufficient time for your animation step 16 click on either of the wings then at some interval on the timeline set a keyframe step 17 with this keyframe highlighted, click on the other wing and set an identical keyframe so it's on the timeline at the identical time of the keyframe for the other wing step 18 click on one of the second keyframes - see which wing is active and rotate the wing as desired step 19 click on the other second keyframe and rotate the other wing correspondingly step 20. repeat the above with another "set" of corresponding keyframes further along the timeline step 21 with one of the wing keyframes selected, change the rotation of the corresponding wing to the opposite position step 22 with the other wing keyframe selected, change the rotation of the other wing to correspond to the opposite step 23 click on the controlling frame step 24 click on the timeline and set a keyframe where you want the action to end step 24 drag and/or size the controlling frame to move the ensemble to the ending position step 25 Run the preview and do any necessary fine tuning step 26 save your work. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, If you could send me the original gull picture before the wings and body were separated, I think I can make you a quick example to work from. The problem with what you have is that it's not going to look very good because the "cut-out's" are too crude and there is too much residual around the components. Essentially the way I would approach this is to create a parent "frame" which will control the direction and speed of the assembled "bird." Next the bird's body as a "child of this frame and the two wings as same level "children" of the frame. The "children will inherit the motion of the parent (gull's body) via the controlling frame and the gull's body will inherit the motion from the controlling frame. The two wings will be synchronized via exact placement of keframes for each and their motion between these keyframes. It "sounds" much more complicated than it is, but to make it look right I would like to make the cut-outs from the original. The "wings" are probably all right but the body isn't. If you could post a full resolution image of the gull, I'll separate it into the components with the essential clean transparency needed. The best way would be to just post the jpg on one of the file sharing services like MediaFire. Best regards, Lin

Hi Davy, You got it! I think the person who made the show was quite serious. The issue is that it's just too hard to do the things we can do with ease in PTE using Producer. Producer is very good for what it does really well and that is that it is superb for lending itself to the manipulation of rectangular objects in novel ways. It's also very amenable to "styles" and such making the inexperience user able to produce a decent show with minimal effort and experience. Kudo's to Photodex for this. The bottom line is that when one becomes tired of "toys" and wants a tool, they gravitate to PTE. Like the comic (though perhaps not intended that way) animations in AquaSoft's example, they simply appeal to a totally different user I think. Lin

Absolutely! Lin