SO MUCH TO LEARN. (16/09/13)

I’m really suffering. This week I tried to make a short animated heading for my blog.

I wanted to have a pile of bits of letters crawl up  and merge into Adrian's Images.

I Have been at it all week. On and off. I got the fracture bit sorted. All the bits fell down flat. They didn’t fall down at all at first they just hung about in mid computer, I found a wee box that gives the virtual gravity. For those interested make sure it’s plus not minus. I quite liked them floating upwards and away.  I popped three little hemispheres on my ground plane and made them barriers. The bits of letters fell on them and piled up fine I don’t want an explosion effect. I want vertical slices, then to split them horizontally and randomly about three times.Then the hemispheres rendered. You Have to do sommit. Lord knows what but I’ve done it before.

I also wanted the inside faces of the lettering to be navy blue and the outside to be a neon blue. I’m along way from working that out. It is possible but it is desperately hard. I got as far as having the letters start to shatter as they hit the ground plane. I got further by selecting the top of the ‘S’ and pulling it out straight in four bits. It rendered four bits. I eventually solved that wee snag. I wish I could remember how. I started again with a ‘C’ . It worked. Again how I did it god only knows. Animation is not for the faint of heart.  I’ll get there by Christmas; if I don’t it will not be for want of trying.

I still can’t pan and zoom the camera which the animation needs….That will be easy peasy. I’m hoping a keyframe or two will sort it.  Then I have to reverse the rendered animation. I’m on with that now. I save all the frames as Pngs then instead of loading them into Photoshop as #1 first…. beggar me! Number one is last in Adobe. It is very hard to do but I intend to reverse the order of the frames and render. I’ll report whether my logic is a bit flawed at a future date.

I thought it would be easier to use a square text. Early on this morning I went to my font supplier Dafont They have lots of fonts. They are free and come as zipped files. I opened the Zip with 7-Zip, opened my windows folder found the font bit and dragged the file in….Computer she say no. After a couple or three goes and some rude words I purchased WinZip for the vast sum of TWENTY FIVE POONDS! It really made my day and it wasn’t even eight o’clock. Whilst paying this exhorbitant sum I asked to pay by debit card and it wanted an issue number. Debit cards haven’t had issue numbers in years. I pretended it was a credit card and their computer she say yes.

We went for a walk, by the time I retrieved the night camera I was spitting feathers. The dogs didn’t help by chasing a Hare through a hedge. It was freezing, Little devils did come back as they always do but only in their own good time.

I then popped this video together with a title and an end. I used the font that I got. I’m not sure why, it’s horrible.

BOB’S BAGGERS II

I hope the week gets better as it progresses. I’m sure I will have a bit of Blendering to show you next week….It may only be one letter though.

Have fun, life is a trial but it is entertaining.