KenAdam

Lin, My desktop which runs the demos fine is an 8800GTX. The laptop I'm using at the moment ia an ATI Radeon HD4330, which is jerky. Curiously, my digital map software (panning, zooming, rotating, fetching and decompressing tiles to give worldwide coverage, with complex threat and terrain overlays), which normally kills any low performance graphics card, runs fine on both. Perhaps the ATI chip does better for OpenGL than it does for DirectX.

I have checked it (I'm sure I had already in the pte file that is in the zip). It is a little jerky on 1 PC here, but not on another. (Both with similar Windows performance scores). I've tried various settings (low quality, edge anti-aliasing etc) but get the same result. The image is not very big (much smaller than the one that Lin had in the sample). I'd appreciate suggestions for anything else that might be causing this. Edit: I just went back to the "slidein.zip" file that Lin posted above, and it shows the same jerky result on this PC. I'll start a new project and build up the effect in steps...

Thanks for all the help. I think I've got the sequence I was trying to work out in the first place, although there may be a better way of doing it. You can see my results in this small project http://www.standpretty.co.uk/pte/SlideAround.zip featuring one of our chickens. I wasted some time, as I set the movement on the image, then realised that I needed it on a frame containing the image. I managed to fix that by cutting and pasting inside the project file, as I couldn't spot how to copy the animation sequence from one type of object to another in PTE (is there a way?) Now I just need to decide if I actually like what I was trying to achieve for the show I'm making, but I need to chain a few slides together for that.

Lin, Yes that is the bit I'm referring to. Your latest example still doesn't make it move into the screen (in the z-axis sense), but simply changing the z-position setting to about 200 at the second keypoint does get the right effect. I can start from here to get what I wanted to do in the first place (I still can't see where the WelcomeDemo adjusts Z, but I'll go back to trying to undestand that once I've worked through setting up this effect)

Lin, Thanks for that. At a quick look before I quit for the night,I think you're getting the same effect I was. The image comes in sideways, then rotates into position. In welcomedemo, the image moves into the z axis of the screen (a more realistic pseudo 3D slide, sort of "star wars sideways"), which is what I'm not getting yet. I'll spend more time on this tomorrow, when maybe it will suddenly click... Thanks agin, Ken

Lin, Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed reply. I guess I really wasn't making myself clear. My background is in systems development for aircraft displays, including generating perspective terrain fly-through in 3D, so that wasn't the problem, and I can create the masking effects OK (although I haven't yet understood why the mask over the text in the welcomedemo makes a white blur, regardless of the colour of the text). I only mentioned the mask in the original post to try and keep it clear which elements I was talking about. I'm doing your 3D tutorials from the forum at the moment, which, so far, confirm my understanding that the "Z position" control is intended to move elements along the z axis. My puzzle is in understanding the compound elements and transforms which create the effect of an image sliding into the view as shown in the "welcome demo", as this doesn't seem to use the Z axis. One problem I find with PTE (probably because I want to understand the underlying transforms) is that it is not easy to track how compound objects are interacting to produce the resultant matrix transform effect - e.g. as you look at one element, you can only see the transform sequence that is attached directly to it, not what other key frames there are on containing elements that are themselves impacting the effect on that object. When you are developing the effect, you know what you are trying to achieve (such as the build up of rotation and skew effects in the helicopter example), but if you try to understand how something was achieved (even when going back to an old project!) it is not clear what is going on. AFAIK there is no equivalent of writing comments in an animation sequence. I was trying to make sense of the combination of elements each with their own transforms that make the image move correctly (I'd like to create related effect where the image enters the display something like that, rotates to face the viewer and then uses the reverse effect to leave the display on the other side, probably as the next image enters). As a technolator, I probably focus too much on the technology before getting a good understanding at a higher level, but I guess it is too late for me to change my ways! I usually learn faster by trying and experimenting than by only reading, so I tend to take things apart to see how they work, which is fine if everything you find is part of how it works, but sometimes you trip over things that don't matter at all, and then waste time worrying about them. Thank you for your time here and for the time you have put into creating the tutorials. Regards, Ken

If you go to that website (as I noted above) you can't apparently actually get any of the tutorials anymore, however I've now noticed that 3D tutorials have been added to the forum - missed those on first look as I just saw the post was dated 2008 (I'd done theones that were there a year or so ago) and didn't notice that new tutorials had been added there for V6. Doing them now.... Ken

Sorry, I could have been clearer. I've made a few shows in the past, but not for a while due to other committments, and I just installed the new version. One of the new features is the use of 3D effect on objects, but there doesn't seem to be much information understanding how the parameters work. I've tried experimenting a bit, and I've managed to use the 3D parameters to create some interesting animation effects (e.g. by nesting a continer in a frame and applying two opposing Y rotations that vary in sync, canelling each other out to create a dynamic moving billboard effect), but I can't get the perspective effect that the example shows, so I tried to understand how the example works (I assumed the example was intended to demonstrate how these effects could be implemented). Can you point me to a tutorial that covers using the new 3D features? Most the stuff I've found has yet to be updated to V6, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places... Other members of my Camera club are hooked on Pro Show Gold, and I want to create some local examples to show them what they are missing, as (to me) the shows they create all have similar failings (which others might call features). BTW: It seems that Lin Evans's tutorials are not currently available (i.e. no "purchase" option).

I'm trying to understand how to use 3D effects, starting from the second slide of the WelcomeDemo project. I don't understand why "Main", which contains "Mask Container" is itself contained in "Frame", nor what the relevance of the different sizes of Main and Frame is to how it all works. As I understand it, frame applies the Rotate Y of 41 degreees and zoom of .77, but Main then applies a zoom of 1.4 (back where we started?) The animation of the picture is (solely?) due to the pan of the Mask Continer, so why does perspective get applied? I'd appreciate if someone could clarify how this works, as I'm obviously missing something here. Thanks