Blender Projects and Studio Themed Intros - Page 5

tpag2000,
All I can say is WOW! That truly was incredible and far beyond my own capabilities. I can still barely putter around in Blender but with enough trial and error I've managed to copy existing works such as the movie studio intros. Creating something entirely new is a whole different story and I think you did a fantastic job.

Do you have any plans for future projects or was this your one big hurrah? I'd love to see the .blend file for this project if you were inclined to share it. In any case, congratulations on a job well done!

Well I've just finished tweaking the audio file supplied by w84no1 to a point that it's a good enough match with my animation. I wrapped up the .blend file, the tweaked .wav, and the Disney style truetype font into a 6.72MB zip file that is ready for you all to dig in to. All credit for the font of course goes to the original author, and his readme is included as well for completeness. The .zip file was just sent to w84no1 and hopefully he'll let you all know where to go get it shortly. DenW, or anyone else for that matter, send me a PM and I'll be more than happy to email or FTP the .zip file to you for rehosting.

I also finished my 1280x720 test render and everything looks pretty good. There are 2 very minor things in the animation that bug me but I'm convincing myself to ignore them as the last thing I want to do is work on this anymore I'm also not going to tell what they are as I figure why draw attention to the flaws and potentially ruin it for someone else

A funny observation: Once compressed with Xvid my 1280x720 render is only 6.11MB... ie: smaller than even the *zipped* files that created it. I just thought that was interesting.

Thank you all for your support!

DenW,
The file is now on the FTP site where you asked me to put it. Thank you!

As far as your other problem I have no idea. Have you uninstalled Blender and reinstalled it clean to see if that helps? Playing the RAW .avi file is a difficult task and most computers would be expected to skip and stutter, but there is no reason that they wouldn't at least play the file. Sorry I couldn't be of any more assistance.

ewwww Vista...

Since you say it tries to find the proper codec and can't, it really sounds like a Vista problem. I don't use Vista myself so I don't know how to help you, but I still don't see any reason why WMP wouldn't be able to play a raw rgb .avi file.

If you want to try something different, change your file output type from AVI-Raw to AVI-Codec in Blender and choose one of the codecs that it finds on your machine. I would recommend using the latest version MSWMV codec it finds so you know it's compatible with WMP. Render a short clip this way and see if it plays, and that should prove that it's not a blender problem but something with Vista's WMP.

Thanks again for hosting my Disney intro. I hope people are able to make use of this with their own theater names. Please feel free to ask for help if you get stuck, and lets see some screenshots of your finished renders!

DenW I'll put together some brief instructions another time as I'm currently on my way out to Disney's Blizzard Beach water park. Kinda a fitting reward for completing the animation .

Anyway, as best as I can summarize here:
1.) Right click the text, press TAB to enter edit mode, backspace out the text and type what you want, press TAB to go back to object mode.
2.) Go to frame 187 and move what used to be the "Walt Disney" text to wherever you want it (ie: recenter it, etc.). A tip here is to render a screenshot while you're playing with it to make sure your text is fully inside the halo on this frame. Also, you can press "s" and move the mouse to scale the text larger or smaller to make it fit in the halo. Once you're happy with the placement press "i" then choose "loc" from the popup menu. This sets a location key at frame 187.
3.) Go to frame 225 and repeat step 2 for what used to be the "pictures" text. Here you don't have to worry about any halo or anything, just line it up with the rest of the objects by eye and scale it however you like. Dont forget the location key ("i" -> "loc") when you're done.
4.) Final step is to render a screenshot on frame 375 (last frame) and check out where Tinkerbell's arch is. Depending on what you've entered for text there might be some overlap with the arch, and you might want to go back to step 2 to reposition or recale your text. It's all a matter of taste.

That's all there is to editing the text, it's mostly just changing the scale and position to taste and then making sure you set the location keys on the appropriate frames to tell it where it needs to be. Now let's see some screenshots of your guys' efforts!

BritInVA,
I didn't actually install the font the way that it seems you did, but rather just import it into Blender. It has to be imported once and then unless you move the .blend or .ttf file it will remember to use the font from then on. Don't ask me why it doesn't just embed the font into the .blend file the way it does textures or softbody bakes... but anyways here is what you need to do:

1.) Right click on the text to select it and press F9 to bring up the edit panel.
2.) On the font tab click the load button and browse to the .ttf file.
3.) Click the "select font" button once you've clicked the .ttf and the font will be automatically applied to the text. Now you're good to go.

Sorry for the lack of instructions associated with this file. It sounds like I should whip some up, you just might have to give me a couple of days. I figured that those who had done the Fox animation or especially the Universal animation would have minimal problems with this one, but loading the font is something that only those who played with my 2D Disney animation would recall. Anyways, continue to bring up the issues and I'll do what I can to walk you through them.

Atagert,
It's been a long time since I've heard from you. Tell me you've got something up your sleeve, even a half-done project, something that tells me I'm not the only one still playing with Blender .

In all seriousness I hope you had fun on your vacation. I hadn't worked with Blender since May when I temporarily gave up on this Disney thing, but just last weekend someone rekindled this thread and I decided to give the project one last hurrah. Now that it's done I'm not sure what I'll do, but I probably won't produce anything new for a while.

Someone else is going to have to pick up the Blender torch and run with it *nudge nudge*.

BritInVA,
Your render is looking great except you Brits misspell the word "theater" j/k. I think I know what may be up with your "jumping" text problem; did you by chance change the resolution and/or aspect ratio? I designed the animation for a 16x9 aspect ratio, doing the development and test renders in 800x450 with the final product expected to be rendered in 1280x720 or 1920x1080. The trick that I use to make the "Walt Disney" and "Pictures" text appear is to enter a position keyframe with them slightly off camera and then when the time is right enter a new position keyframe with where I need them to be. In the case of the "Pictures" text it has off-camera keyframes at frame 1 and 224, and then at 225 I have it jump to where I want it.

It sounds like you may have changed something that put the original location within the field of view after the camera zooms out a bit, and then of course it will jump to where it needs to be at frame 225. I'm guessing that you used a 4:3 aspect ratio and created this problem? In any case it's easy to fix. Just go to frame 224 and drag the text out of the field of view and set a new position keyframe, then go to frame 1 and do the same thing. This should keep it off camera until at frame 225 it goes where it's needed.

Roar,
BritInVA already answered your second question about the scaling, you'll need to rescale any text that is significantly longer or shorter than "Walt Disney" to make it fit inside the halo. The best frame to experiment with placement and scale is frame 187, as this is where the keyframe is set to make the text appear inside the halo. See the instructions a few posts up.

As far as your issues with the black boxes I'm not entirely sure what that would be. The trick I used to cover up and reveal the arc involves 2 boxes the same color as the background (ie: invisible), and if the spotlight were to shine off them the right way it can make them slightly visible. I know this because I had to make sure it didn't happen when animating their movement and the spotlight, and I also turned off their ability to reflect light and their specularity. Unless you changed something with the scene lighting or the materials on those boxes I cant imagine they would be the problem, but I also can't think of any other issue that would make you see boxes in your render. Perhaps you could post a screenshot so that I could help identify the issue?

Glad to see people have already dug into this one and I'll be glad to help with any other issues that you are finding.

Well Mark I'm glad that your problem was easy enough to fix. Now to figure out what is wrong with Roar's render. Hopefully with a screen grab of what he's seeing I can help figure it out.

For my own custom render I tried a few different things and eventually settled on "Welcome To" - "Herndon Theaters" and/or "Herndon Theaters" - "Feature Presentation". I've attached screenshots of what they both look like if anyone is curious. For one thing, the 2nd pic proves that fairly long text can be made to fit under the halo without looking too bad. (HerndonTheaters is 15 characters, to WaltDisney's 10, and Wright Family's 13 )

There's aspects that I like about both of these pics, so I'm not sure which I'll wind up using in the theater. I may also create a 3rd option changing "Feature Presentation" to some other tag line, assuming I can think of something clever.

Anyways, I can't wait to see what else some of you come up with. We should give out a prize to the person that fits the most text under the halo while maintaining the overall look of the logo . According to Roar he's only trying for 14 (Sheahan Family), so someone else is going to have to step up and top my own character count.