I hope this post drops into the dashboard much faster than yesterdays. It took well over twelve hours to appear. I have no idea what causes such wobbles but it is a touch annoying. Yesterday you couldn’t see my offering and today you probably won’t want to..
I love sparks and trails of them in titles but have never been able to work Bezier curves and animating a spark emitter would take for ever. I settled down in front of the computer and decided to sort the job out. If Renault invented curves to design car bodywork then the damn things must be controllable. They are. What I had in mind was a spiral of sparks climbing the rotating text in yesterdays video and by using a mask make the sparks appear to reveal the letters.
Many who have tried to use curves in either Photoshop or Blender will no doubt have given up using them for anything other than making text follow a path. I’m not going to go into great detail and this applies to Blender; Adobe call Bezier curves Paths. If you are interested then email me; the link is in the post header. The first problem I have is that the curve loads with a control point at each end both of which have two handles. Moving these adjusts the radius of the curve but they don’t work independently. They do if you select them and press ‘V’. Extruding is another little devil as selecting the end of the curve and pressing ‘E’ pops the new bit in a heap and it is a horrible muddle to sort out. If you move your mouse to where you want the curve to end up and press Ctrl and LMB then that solves that. When you get so you can’t see what is what then SHIFT and ‘B’ then left click draws a box which magnifies the confusing bit of the curve.
(A) is a circle that I used to draw the curve round. I then duplicated the nearly circle that I had drawn found and selected the ends and pressed ‘F’ to join them. It is not a spiral but it is a vast improvement on my previous efforts and I’ll get better with practise.
I don’t think this is too shabby. I now have to find the command for equalising the distance between all the little chevrons as they determine how fast the particle emitter travels along the curve. I may be able to juggle it by using the Dope sheet. I’ll see, I don’t want too much excitement at my age so I’ll save that bit until I've got the curve spot on.
Have a great weekend and remember if you think this is tedious spare a thought for the children who in this country are having to learn what a past imperfect conjunction is in historic English. They would be better learning a couple of foreign languages imperfectly but what do I know. I’m not a teacher.
PS. After all this I have found a spiral curve generator. I should have looked in Preferences>add-ons> curves. Not to worry I learnt some stuff along the way and feel much happier using Bezier curves.
I love sparks and trails of them in titles but have never been able to work Bezier curves and animating a spark emitter would take for ever. I settled down in front of the computer and decided to sort the job out. If Renault invented curves to design car bodywork then the damn things must be controllable. They are. What I had in mind was a spiral of sparks climbing the rotating text in yesterdays video and by using a mask make the sparks appear to reveal the letters.
Many who have tried to use curves in either Photoshop or Blender will no doubt have given up using them for anything other than making text follow a path. I’m not going to go into great detail and this applies to Blender; Adobe call Bezier curves Paths. If you are interested then email me; the link is in the post header. The first problem I have is that the curve loads with a control point at each end both of which have two handles. Moving these adjusts the radius of the curve but they don’t work independently. They do if you select them and press ‘V’. Extruding is another little devil as selecting the end of the curve and pressing ‘E’ pops the new bit in a heap and it is a horrible muddle to sort out. If you move your mouse to where you want the curve to end up and press Ctrl and LMB then that solves that. When you get so you can’t see what is what then SHIFT and ‘B’ then left click draws a box which magnifies the confusing bit of the curve.
(A) is a circle that I used to draw the curve round. I then duplicated the nearly circle that I had drawn found and selected the ends and pressed ‘F’ to join them. It is not a spiral but it is a vast improvement on my previous efforts and I’ll get better with practise.
I don’t think this is too shabby. I now have to find the command for equalising the distance between all the little chevrons as they determine how fast the particle emitter travels along the curve. I may be able to juggle it by using the Dope sheet. I’ll see, I don’t want too much excitement at my age so I’ll save that bit until I've got the curve spot on.
Have a great weekend and remember if you think this is tedious spare a thought for the children who in this country are having to learn what a past imperfect conjunction is in historic English. They would be better learning a couple of foreign languages imperfectly but what do I know. I’m not a teacher.
PS. After all this I have found a spiral curve generator. I should have looked in Preferences>add-ons> curves. Not to worry I learnt some stuff along the way and feel much happier using Bezier curves.
Almost perfect.
I've am having exactly the same problems with slow appearance of posts. I assume Google are 'improving' their service again.
ReplyDeleteWeird - I ticked the box to receive follow up comments by email and up comes the following in red text: Comment subscription by email is not allowed for this blog
John, I just had similar on Margaret's blog, It wouldn't let me post comments. I wish they would leave stuff alone.
DeleteIn spite of the message I got your reply by email. I do wish they would stop letting 14yr old work experience programmers tinker with things. If it aint broke, don't fix it.
ReplyDeleteYour 'notify' box seems to be working properly again.
I see my early morning post hasn't shown in your side bar yet.
DeleteNo it isn't on my reading list either but then this post isn't. I blame IT teachers. I met one the other day, her ignorance was frightening so is mine but it is not a worry as it only bothers me.
DeleteI've put up a question about these delays on the Blogger help forum. I'll let you know if anything sensible ensues.
DeleteThanks John. I'll let you sort the wheat from the chaff. Get your orange pencil ready.
DeleteWe have a saying in Newfoundland, "I don't know what you're saying but I guess you're right." It applies to your descriptions of the process you use for your titles and my understanding of them. All I know is that you do a great job, whatever the process is. Besides, it interests you and is a great hobby. To me, that is the most important part of the whole thing. It keeps our seniors' brains active when we learn new things and challenge ourselves. You do that all the time. Well done.
ReplyDeleteHave a great weekend.
Marie, the more I play the more I find that I don't understand. It is now possible to create most effects on a laptop as long as it has a descent graphics card and plenty of RAM. I enjoy puzzles though were you to hear me cursing the computer you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
DeleteMy delicate ears have never heard that stuff, Adrian. Lol...so not true! I know people who make up the curse words as they go.
DeleteMarie, I stick with the tried and tested ones but the computer doesn't understand.
DeleteI, too have wondered why the delay. I suspect Google is messin' wid us.
ReplyDeleteI suspect you may be correct Bill.
DeleteI've been having some problems too but presumably it will all settle down again. It usually does.
ReplyDeleteGraham, let us hope so.
DeleteGoogle did announce at the the top of the dashboard they were changing the html codung or something technical that I don't understand which probably has something to do with the issues
ReplyDeleteDouglas, can't see that making a difference as as far as I know all versions of HTML are backwards compatible. You could well be right though.
Delete