Anim8or Community
General Category => General Anim8or Forum => Topic started by: mysterysmith on March 07, 2009, 12:56:11 am
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Hey all,
Im new here but Im using anim8or for a school project. Im trying to make a cityscape at night (but cant find any textures but thats another story) and I was wondering if it was possible to make moving billboards. Can anyone help?
Thanks in advance
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Ofcourse this is possible. Suggest try taking some tutorials (http://anim8or.com/tutorials/index.html) reading the manual (http://anim8or.com/manual/index.html) and get used to the programs. Then use you creativity to create something.
A good texture site is : http://cgtextures.com/
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Moving billboards? In what sense? Anything is possible really, just takes some tinkering to get the right method :P
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like at a football ground, electronic advertisement board ?
or a mechanical, vertical, scrolling one ?
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Cool. I've made some moving billboards.
Will post an example 2moro, after i get home and dig out the old vid and files. Could be 24-36 hours away
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Guys,
Don't forget that in 3D graphics, the word "billboard" has a special meaning, which has nothing to do with the big signs you see along highways. I'm still confused as to which johnar means.
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whats it mean in 3d graphics then?
one is eager to see johnars examples in any event.
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The Wikipedia article on sprites discusses them.
"More often sprite now refers to a partially transparent two dimensional animation that is mapped onto a special plane in a 3D scene. Unlike a texture map, the sprite plane is always perpendicular to the axis emanating from the camera. The image can be scaled to simulate perspective, rotated two dimensionally, overlapped with other objects, and be occluded, but it can only be viewed from the same angle. This rendering method is also referred to as billboarding."
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)) for details.
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Actually, i've dug mine out, and it needs some tweaking.
If you could let me off the hook for another 24 hours :P ;)
Mine has like 'vertical strips, which when stood together, wide-face forward and side by side, appear as 1 continuous flat plane.
An image is applied to that '1 apparent plane'.
Then, each strip rotates, ( together, but seperately), along the x axis, for a rotation of 180 degrees.
At 180 degrees rotation, the backs of the strips are now displayed, This new 'apparent single plane', has a different image attached.
whew. :)
Does that make any sense.
Anyway, i'll get it posted just ASAP.
;)
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You can do that sort of thing with Terranim8or then import back into anim8or. I believe there's a tut on Terranim8or site for a TV with a moving picture which is along the same sort of lines as you want.
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Wow thanks so much for all these quick responses. I'll clarify what I mean.
I'm not talking about sprites but I meant physical billboards (like coca cola). I was trying to get animated textures to work at first, then I tried morph targets but neither seemed to work for me. Johnar yours sounds interesting I'm eager to see it.
Oh I meant electronic, not mechanical. I'll look into Terranim8or.
Thanks again :D
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cheers seldon.
yeah johnar[after a second read] i think i can picture it .
with a rotating bone for each strip.
i have just posted a mini article on animanon concerning the fading of an image/animation to a transparency.
possible futuristic holoscreen perhaps
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If you make all of the vertical faces the same width, you could display four different images. This wouldn't work so well in reality because the vertical bars would have to be farther apart than with thin slats. It'd work fine in graphics if you don't mind them interpenetrating.
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sorry mysterysmith i know you dont want mechanical.
but i thought i'd make some sense of this approach and someone might
find it use full.
have made a vid and put file .an8 on animanon tutorials.
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Hi guys.
sorry i'm l8. Got called away to work. So, now i've made it down to the internet cafe, with a video on my flashdrive, only to discover that i've got the large version. 177mb! ::)
Thats a bit large to be uploading.
So, i'll have to make a compressed version 2nite, and post it up 2moro. Haven't been able to organise a free file hosting yet, so will have to use youtube for now.
Captaindrewi. Yes, originally i tried bones, but in the end, found that morph targets worked well. But then, after thinking about it a bit more, i realised, hang on, couldn't we just as easilly import each tile into scene mode as seperate objects, and rotate them manually. ie: no bones, no morph targets. ?? :-\
I'll still post my vid. It has one using morph targets, from a couple of different views, but it also has my original 'moving billboard', which i think will be a surprise. Its not quite how you'd expect. ;)
But i got a question.
mysterysmith. I'm not exactly sure what you measn by 'electronic'. Is that sort've 'flashing lighted images' or something like that?
Although my examples would probably best be described as mechanical, i have added a short piece at the end, wondering if it's the sort've effect you're after.
I'm imagining that its a 'moving electronic image' on a 'stationary board'.
Would that be right?.
If not, and its a little difficult to explain, perhaps a link to a pic of what you mean.?
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Johnar, regarding free file hosting, I believe i have a good solution for you.
You may have noticed that Anim8or.org is basically gone, well it has been transformed into CG-nation.com, which provides members with a good deal of free filespace. I hope that helps!
Great to see you back in the community again
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I think he means this:
It is LED Display Screen.
Yes, this effect can be easily animated. You only need textures. The pictures or messages should look like made up of small squares or bulbs.
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Hey Indian8or yes thats exactly what I mean. I was trying to see if morph targets would allow my to change the texture but it didnt work. But basically what you have posted but moving like the first scene in Blade Runner with the Japanese girl if that helps.
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Mysterysmith. I know what exactly you want. Do this,
Either make your own 2 D animation clip or download it from the net. See that it should be small.
Then, split that animation clip into frames or images using softwares like VirtualDub.
Then, using Terranim8or's animated background feature, display the sequence of images in anim8or.
Refer terranim8or's tutorial page for 'How to do it".
Remember, to achieve the effect you want you need sequence of images that will be displayed on a stationary board. So, this can be achieved with a short code, which the terranim8or generates for us.
However, if you want to generate just a simple moving message like a scrolling text, you can do it in anim8or scene mode itself by turning the object's visibility on and off.
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Johnar, regarding free file hosting, I believe i have a good solution for you.
You may have noticed that Anim8or.org is basically gone, well it has been transformed into CG-nation.com, which provides members with a good deal of free filespace. I hope that helps!
Great to see you back in the community again
I beg to differ on that statement HiHo to some degree, Anim8or.org has actually been re-directed to www.animanon.com as Rounder felt it fitted the criteria for new users rather than CG-Nation and felt it was moving away from Anim8or and concentrating on more "professional" software.
The domain name anim8or.org is still held (as far as I am aware)
by Rounder.
We are more than willing to host anybodies videos/animations or files on animanon, as our competitions confur,
we have operated a " Buddy/Mentor " system for some time any new user to anim8or can submit to that
The Billboard posted by captaindrewi can be found in our articles section
http://www.animanon.com/Forum/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=18 with .an8 files to aid understanding.
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OK. Mystertysmith, I think Indian8or has the same answers as i would have given.
Now that i understand what type of billboard you are talking about, it seems that maybe i've missed my chance at posting my 'mechanical' examples in this post.
But i might upload and put a link into 'finished works and works in progress', for anyone that might want to see it anyway.
Thanks Hiho. :)
Kreator. Cheers for that info.
Mysterysmith. Good luck with your project. ;)
Edit: have uploaded vid, is now processing.
Will add link in Finished works this afternoon.
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we still want to see those johnar :)
an lcd animated billboard is what we should be calling it perhaps.
(http://l.yimg.com/g/images/spaceball.gif)
i suppose you could superimpose a template over the images of
the animation to get the lcd screen effect.
i'm going to have a bash at one. 8)
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Cool. I'm gonna have a bash at 1 too. :)
(My mechanical versions are posted in Works in Progress forum.)
Cheers for the comment headwax. :)
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i have had a go :) movie and files on animanon
.an8 files (http://www.animanon.com/Forum/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=20)
UPDATE... added another zip at animanon
with changes to transparency image also using bump and emmissive settings.
works better. further tinkering would produce better results i'm sure.
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Kreator, sorry, no disrespect intended there! I had forgotten it was redirected.
Basically what we're trying to get across here is that there's a great deal of resources from the different forums for you!
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Thanks all so much for this, I think I still havent got it working exactly how I need, but its not an issue right at the moment. I really like johnar's billboards and Ill prolly use that example in the future.
Anyway thankyou all very much :D