Make Your Own "FOX" Style Theater Logo

[blazer003]

Seeing how popular the FOX Logo thread is, and how much work Reaper has had to do to make images for everyone, I have taken my Blender file and made a simpler version of the file that I hope everyone can use along with this walk through to change the words to whatever you want, and render yourself an image.

This should only take about an hour to do!

Download Blender
To start, you'll need Blender, available at www.blender.org . This amazing, yet completely free (no strings attached, whatsoever, full version free program No spyware, or adware. I know, it's hard to believe. I could spend another couple paragraphs explaining why it's free, and yet so powerful, but thats not the point of this thread, so just take my word for it... ) like I was saying, this amazing free program is just a 7 MB download. Setup is a sinch.

Download File
Ok, so now that you have Blender, download the blender file. Go here to my blend files and download the FOX logo (about 1 MB) by clicking on the movie camera above it.

Once it's on your computer, double click to open it.

So if you've never done 3d work before, the interface looks daunting. Relax. Here's what you do.

Basic Principles
First, something must be clear. In Blender RIGHT CLICKING SELECTS OBJECTS. This is weird at first. So when I say to select something, I'm meaning right click it. Also, if I say Xkey or any other letter I mean that letter, in this case X, on your keyboard.

OK, so let's start on the left side of the screen, I have isolated the 20th Century Fox words to get rid of all the clutter. Let's start by changing the 20th to what you want.
I'm going to change it to Thunderclap.

Changing the Text
First select the "20" (RIGHT CLICK IT). It is a seperate object from the "th". Press delete key on your keyboard or Xkey they both do the same thing, then enter to confirm.

Now select the "th". Press Gkey to grab the th", then, without clicking your mouse press Xkey on the keyboard. Now as you move your mouse, the "th" will only move side to side, not up and down, so move it to the center of the pedestal, and (left) click to release it.

Press your TABkey to go into edit mode. You should see a cursor after the text. Backspace twice and then type like normal, whatever you want there. Don't worry if it doesn't fit right now.

Press TABkey to get back out of edit mode once you are finished typing your top line. Ok, the text should still be centered, but it may be to thin or too wide, or not tall enough. That is what those colored handles are for in the middle of the text. (See "handles" image below)


Scaling (sizing)
It's pretty straight forward. With your text still selected, and out of edit mode, click and drag the green handle (green square on the end of the line) to scale the height, and the red handle to scale the width.

Edit the other lines
OK, now you should be able to edit the middle and bottom lines. Remember, TAB goes in and out of edit mode, and Gkey will grab them and move them.

Reveal the Rest of the Project
So now you have your text that you want, we need to bring back the rest of the project that I hid. With the mouse cursor in the screen we've been working in, press the / KEY (the forward slash key) on the number keypad on the right side of your keyboard. You should see a lot of complicated stuff surround the text you've created.

*NEW*
Sorry, the black title bars were just for my image. I didn't think to take them out. Anyway, all they are are two black planes parented to the camera. If you don't want them, go into camera view, by placing your mouse cursor in one of the 3d view windows and pressing "0" (zero) on the number pad, you can then select the bars (by right clicking them) and press delete to get rid of them.

Rendering
Now we go to rendering, or a computer graphics word for the computer making your image. First go to the render buttons, which is the last button at the top of the bottom window (shown in image below "Go to RENDER SETTINGS").

Ok, everything is already set up to render an image with a resolution of 1280x960, as shown in the resolution settings. (see render settings image below) The file type is already set for jpeg. You can choose a more lossless format (better quality) like TGA, BMP, or PNG if you'd like, or enter a different resolution in the resolution settings by clicking the number that's there, and typing your own in.

Press the render button as shown, and wait. You should see another window come up, and it will slowly fill with more and more of your fox style logo image. When the entire image is completed, which will probably take a few minutes, press F3 on your keyboard. This will bring the main blender window back up, and a new window where you can save your image. Type the name where I have typed "FOX logo image", and press save and there you go. (see saving.jpg)

I will try to keep up to date with this thread, so if you have any questions, ask them here and I'll try and answer them. I think I was pretty thorough but if there's something you don't understand, or I forgot to cover, let me know.


Animating
For anyone more advanced that wants to make an animation, this file is MUCH better than the old one in that regard. As long as you have the latest version of Blender (2.42) this file will render much faster. It won't work with previous versions (at least not correctly.)

To animate this, you should probably set the format to AVI RAW or AVI Codec and your codec of choice. If you leave it on jpg or another image format, it will save a series of numbered stills. Some video programs (Premiere and others) can convert the stills to video. If you know how to edit video like this, stills might be better. Mainly because if you get rendered through frame 353 or something, and your computer gets shut down, with numbered stills, you just look in the directory where you are exporting your animation too, find what the last frame rendered was, and start fom there (by setting that number in the sta: under animation). With an AVI, you might have to start over, or guess where it ended and then splice them together.

Also, you probably want to change the resolution to whatever video format you'll be exporting to. You can set frame rate and resolution manually, or there are presets to the right for NTSC, PAL, and HD.

*NEW*
Your resolution directly and dramaticaly effects render times. Rendering at 1280x960 will take about twice as long as a 720x480 rendering, so if you are going to be playing this off a DVD or something, 720x480 will work fine. If you are playing it off of a HT computer, then maybe higher resolutions are more appropriate, but maybe more like 1080x720.

After you have your format set, just hit "ANIM".

The rendering will take a long time. It is set for 600 frames of animation, which is about what it needs to be to match the music, plus a little extra time to fade out at the end. Whatever time it takes you to render 1 frame, whip out your calculator and X that by 600.

The only other thing, is that when the camera first swoops over the letters, it might not look quite like the fox one, because your letters are likely not as high and therefore the camera is not as close, losing some of the effect.

You can go to the first frame and render it and see what it looks like, or render the first 50 frames by hitting anim, then stopping it by pressing escape, and then going back into Blender's main window and pressing play to view what you've just rendered.

The frame number is shown on the right of all the other buttons. The left and right arrows go to different frames. The up and down arrows skip 10 frames at a time. Shift+an arrow will skip to the first and last frame of the animation, and if you click on the frame number, you can type the number of the frame you want to go to.

If it doesn't look right, and you have little experience in Blender, PM me and I'll give you my email. You can email me the file, I will fix it for you, and email it back, and you can render it (or at least I will try).

If you do have experience in Blender, the camera is parented to a curve. Find the curve, take it into edit mode, select the first vertex, and move it up or down to get the desired height above your text.

So that's it. Let me know if you need anything else.

[b curry]

Thank you very much blazer003!

Very Cool!

[GPowers]

File locations per: blazer003

Blender 3-d web site link:

http://blender.org/


Page with blinder files & New fox type logo:

http://blender.sixmonkeys.geek.nz/vi...umName=album41

[blazer003]

Thanks GPowers. Anyone tried it so far? It should only take about an hour. I'd like possitive feedback as well, so I know people are able to follow this all the way through. Anyway, enjoy.

PS. Now that I have 5 posts, I've gone back and inserted the links into the tutorial. YAY!

[Cocophone]

Thanks.... I really liked your tutorial. Could you make one as simple to follow for an animated version?

[rmohanr]

How can we make trailers like this?
http://store.nibbin.com/thtr.html

<<once clcik on the trailer, you can download sample movie>>

[Ktulu_1]

blazer003, link "Go here to my blend files" in the first post is broken. Link in GPowers post works.

[Robert_S]

What is different with this Fox blender file versus the one that reaper has been sending out in the other thread?

[VorlonFog]

Here's the blender file:
http://blender.sixmonkeys.geek.nz/al..._Hoecker.blend

[Iceblade]

Blazer,

Thanks so much for providing the original file to Joe. I got a chance to check out your gallery and I think your work is just GREAT! Thanks for sharing this with us. I look forward to trying out your new file. The last render I did took in the neighborhood of 27 hours... so if it's down to an hour, I just might faint.

Thanks again,
Jeff

PS - If you have any advanced knowledge of how to take the raw digital output of the full scene render and create an anamorphic DVD, that'd be great. I still haven't worked out all the kinks in using Vegas Video and DVD Architect 3.0 to create the DVD. Right now it looks great on my widescreen tv, but it's letterboxed AND pillarboxed on my 4:3. Very weird.

[garykagan]

Originally Posted by blazer003

Thanks GPowers. Anyone tried it so far? It should only take about an hour. I'd like possitive feedback as well, so I know people are able to follow this all the way through. Anyway, enjoy.

PS. Now that I have 5 posts, I've gone back and inserted the links into the tutorial. YAY!

I tried it, it only took 20 minutest from start to finish and it is awesome. Thanks for the tutorial, it is perfect. I agree that now we need the animated tutorial!!!

Gary

[garykagan]

I may have figured out how to animate it. Checking now....

Gary

[Iceblade]

LOL!

I am an idiot. I misunderstood the "now it should take an hour" comment. I thought that the RENDERING of the animation took only an hour now. You meant editing and creating a single still frame, right? Is it Friday yet? Oh yeah, it is... t-minus 60 minutes to a cold beer.

Regs,
Jeff

[Makomachine]

Do you just hit the "Anim" button to animate it when you are done?

[Toxarch]

Well that was a cool thing for you to do. Maybe now Reaper won't have to wait for me to pick a theater name. I've been on his list as undecided for a long time now. Now I can try a few different names on my own and see what I like. Thanks Reaper for starting it and thanks blazer003 for making it easier for everyone.

[WannaTheater]

Having a difficult time here... Downloaded blender-2.42a-windows.exe and installed. For some reason it must not have installed Python, because it couldn't find it on startup... so I went to python.org and installed Python-2.4.3.msi. Now blender finds Python. When I try to load in the FOX_logo.blend, I get "Error loading, file incomplete)...

Any ideas?

Thanks! I am looking forward to getting this working

--------------------------------
Figured it out.... Placement of the .blend file is apparently important. Must be in .blend directory

[Toxarch]

Originally Posted by blazer003

Now select the "th". Press Gkey to grab the th", then, without clicking your mouse press Xkey on the keyboard. Now as you move your mouse, the "th" will only move side to side, not up and down, so move it to the center of the pedestal, and click to release it.

For that final click in that paragraph, you have to left click to release it. And when you move the red or green positioning tabs, you have to left click those too.

To move the words (or the bars between the words) up and down, right click the words, press the Gkey and then press the Zkey and move the mouse to where you want the words moved up and down. Then left click to release the word.

Had to redo it once or twice cause I accidentally messed with the Y axis placement and put it back in the wrong spot. Other than that, everything worked great for me and it takes maybe 10 minutes to do (including rendering) once you know what you are doing and with a decent speed computer. Thanks for making this nice and simple. I would love to see a video render intro in the same fashion if it were that simple.

Anyone else notice the gazebo thing on the bottom is not exactly the same as the original 20th Century logo? In this file, the building and the columns extend all the way to the base of the letters. In the original, the gazebo building is a free standing round building that isn't attached to anything. Just thought I'd point that out.

[WannaTheater]

Everything worked out great! Thanks so much for the guide.

Now how do I get it to animate?

[reaper]

I am not so sure about this new file. It forces black bars into the render even when you are in true 16x9 mode. Is that what people really want?

[FallingDown]

blazer,

firstly thanks for doing this file in the first place and letting us all mod it this way and also thanks to reaper for the original idea. it sure looks like a huge amount of pain to develop and it never ceases to amaze me when i run my animation ! bravo!!.

i came across the star wars blender file (ocrawl), by any chance did u ever see a blender gallery of this type of stuff....i would like to play around with a few of them now!!

[Makomachine]

Originally Posted by reaper

I am not so sure about this new file. It forces black bars into the render even when you are in true 16x9 mode. Is that what people really want?

I'm wondering is this true 2:35 width? If so, I would like that given my plans for a CIH setup with anamorphic lense in the near future.

I hit the Anim button and it appears to be doing the rendering of the animation - hope I didn't need to do anything else.

[BoblK]

To download the Fox file RIGHT CLICK and "save as:" will get you the whole file. Left click and saving will not.

Bob

[blazer003]

Sorry, the black bars were just for my image. I didn't think to take them out. Anyway, all they are are two black planes parented to the camera. If you go into camera view, by placing your mouse cursor in one of the 3d view windows and pressing "0" (zero) on the number pad, you can then select the bars (by right clicking) and press delete to get rid of them. Then, just set the resolution in the render buttons to whatever you want (More about resolution later).

To animate this, you should probably set the format to AVI RAW or AVI Codec and your codec of choice. If you leave it on jpg or another image format, it will save a series of numbered stills. Some video programs (Premiere and others) can convert the stills to video. If you know how to edit video like this, stills might be better. Mainly because if you get rendered through frame 353 or something, and your computer gets shut down, with numbered stills, you just look in the directory where you are exporting your animation too, find what the last frame rendered was, and start fom there (by setting that number in the sta: under animation). With an AVI, you might have to start over, or guess where it ended and then splice them together.

Also, you probably want to change the resolution to whatever video format you'll be exporting to. You can set frame rate and resolution manually, or there are presets to the right for NTSC, PAL, and HD.

After you have your format set, just hit "ANIM".

The only other thing, is that when the camera first swoops over the letters, it might not look quite like the fox one, because your letters are likely not as high and therefore the camera is not as close, losing some of the effect.

You can go to the first frame and render it and see what it looks like, or render the first 50 frames by hitting anim, then stopping it by pressing escape, and then going back into Blender's main window and pressing play to view what you've just rendered.

The frame number is shown on the right of all the other buttons. The left and right arrows go to different frames. The up and down arrows skip 10 frames at a time. Shift+an arrow will skip to the first and last frame of the animation, and if you click on the frame number, you can type the number of the frame you want to go to.

If it doesn't look right, and you have little experience in Blender, PM me and I'll give you my email. You can email me the file, I will fix it for you, and email it back, and you can render it (or at least I will try).

If you do have experience in Blender, the camera is parented to a curve. Find the curve, take it into edit mode, select the first vertex, and move it up or down to get the desired height above your text.

[Toxarch]

Originally Posted by reaper

I am not so sure about this new file. It forces black bars into the render even when you are in true 16x9 mode. Is that what people really want?

I set my resolution to 1280x720 and did not have any black bars.

[SS Commodore]

Download File
Ok, so now that you have Blender, download the blender file. blender.sixmonkeys.geek.nz/view_album.php?set_albumName=album41] Go here to my blend files[/url] and download the FOX logo (about 1 MB) by clicking on the movie camera above it.

I cant get access to this file, actually I am told it does not exist. Neither do any of the others listed in this topic.

I got the Main program OK, just cant get this file

[tonybradley]

Originally Posted by WannaTheater

Having a difficult time here... Downloaded blender-2.42a-windows.exe and installed. For some reason it must not have installed Python, because it couldn't find it on startup... so I went to python.org and installed Python-2.4.3.msi. Now blender finds Python. When I try to load in the FOX_logo.blend, I get "Error loading, file incomplete)...

Any ideas?

Thanks! I am looking forward to getting this working

--------------------------------
Figured it out.... Placement of the .blend file is apparently important. Must be in .blend directory

I'm having the same problem. Downloaded Blender and the File. I get the same error when I try opening the file once it's been downloaded.

[Robert_S]

Here are two links talking about how to make a true 16:9 image with this:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8173304

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8186803

[rmohanr]

This is great.
Your instructions are excellent.
It just took 10 to 15 min.
Thanks a lot.
How can I attach some some DD or DTS clip and burn to a DVD??

[FallingDown]

Originally Posted by rmohanr

This is great.
Your instructions are excellent.
It just took 10 to 15 min.
Thanks a lot.
How can I attach some some DD or DTS clip and burn to a DVD??

thats the type of ones i wanna add...anyone else find a dts blend file?

[BritInVA]

Originally Posted by rmohanr

How can we make trailers like this?
http://store.nibbin.com/thtr.html

<<once clcik on the trailer, you can download sample movie>>

Some cool trailers there - anyone know of some more affordadble ones?