fading in text during an animation

[schmoron13]

I did an animation of a building with a soft story deformation. In essence the first story deflects 8x the second story deflection (the building sways in an earthquake and the bottom floor moves 8 times as much as the 2nd floor). Now the problem I'm having is in adding the text to show the scale. I can render with it or without, but isn't there a way to have the text fade in at some specified point?

 

It seems really simple, but I'm not sure if it's a post effect, or done in the track view, or any other way.....

 

HELP PLEASE

 

THanks in advance,

 

Doron Serban

Computer Graphics

CUREE

serban@curee.org

[STRAT]

do the animation without text, then composite in the text later using like either adobe premier or max's video post or something.

[schmoron13]

thanks strat,

 

but in max post, how do I do that exactly? (I've never done any post before)...

[quizzy]

well you can animate:

download this file,

 

http://www.3idee.nl/cgarchitect/animtext.zip

 

unzip, there are two screenshots and one maxfile

check them out... be sure to exclude the text from all lights,shadows,reflections etc.. and give the text a self-illumination of 100

 

to explain:

 

open the track view, and add a bezier float controller to the visibility track of your text, just select the text in the TV and press the little eye in the top of the TV to make a visibility track. also you want (if you have an animated camere) to link the text to the camera.

 

then you need to add keys where you want to fade it in and out, you need 4 keys to fade in and out. like in screenshot2.jpg

 

well hope this helps

 

[ January 28, 2003, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: quizzy ]