Little Halloween Nonsense

[Lin Evans]

http://www.lin-evans...e/pteflames.zip (11 meg zipped exe)

UPDATED 10/29/11

http://www.lin-evans...eoffireshow.zip (For PC - an enhanced and more sophisticated sample of fire techniques) 42 meg

http://www.lin-evans...fireshowmac.zip (For MacIntosh - an enhanced and more sophisticated sample of fire techniques) 43 meg

NOTE: The above two shows will tax your video card and resources. If you have less than perhaps the performance of an nVidia 8800GT you might have issues with smoothness, especially at the flame run around the elk picture frame and with the last page which runs simultaneous videos and a mask.

Lin

[colin hill]

Lin,

Very good. I think would work well as an intro to a halloween presentation.

Colin

[Ken Cox]

'TIS A SMOKER ALRIGHT ))

ken

[ContaxMan]

Very entertaining! Give us a clue how you did it? Please.

[Lin Evans]

LOL - When you were a kid, didn't your mamma tell you not to play with fire???

O.K. - Before I reveal the Halloween secret formula for making and playing with fire - let me whet your appetite with a little further fun and then I'll confess the whole demonic plot and explain exactly how it's done....

http://www.lin-evans...eoffireshow.zip (42 meg)

Lin

Very entertaining! Give us a clue how you did it? Please.

[Ken Cox]

WELL DONE - JC WAS THE TOUCH -- should put the elk under the trees next demo

ken

[ContaxMan]

Splendid - the need for elucidation deepens!

[Lin Evans]

O,K. - here's how it is done:

The opening sequence was a mix of a portion of a fire video with normal PTE text manipulation. The first "Ring Of Fire" behind the PTE Lepona Cube is a video I created manually using ParticleIllusion SE 2.0 software (hereafter I'll refer to it as PI). ParticleIllusion is a particle emitter software used by makers of multi-million dollar movies in Hollywood. It's a wonderful software which lets the user import still images or videos and "modify" them with thousands of particle effects including water, fire, dust, smoke, flashes, lights, objects, etc. The SE variety which I used is relatively inexpensive ($99 U.S.D) and there is also a slightly more sophisticated Version 3.0 which costs about three times as much, but does some more sophisticated things. I'll provide a link to the website after this message.

So ParticleIllusion was used to not only create the "fire ring" but I took a jpg image of one of my wooden frames into PI and added the fire effects then created an AVI file of the frame and fire effects to which I added a mask and image of one of Lisah's paintings. PI allows you to work on a timeline of "frames" and add effects at desired frames. Though I only used single effects for this demo, it's possible to add any number of effects to the same screen, object, video, etc. You choose the display resolution which can be way higher than HD and adjust your display resolution accordingly. The single PTE in fire was created manually along this frame time line then made into an AVI video. The second wooden frame was made like the first, then that AVI was brought into PTE and a mask was added to put one of my landscape photos of fall color into.

The final page was also done with PI and PTE. I created the white text script "RING OF FIRE," in a broad and bold font with PTE, screen captured this font and used it as the "mask" to run the flames inside. The flames were created quickly in PI (about 20 seconds) then an 800 frame AVI was exported and this was run behind the mask for the lower portion of the last screen. A second 800 frame video of the actual Fire Ring was created and both these videos were displayed simultaneously and their positions adjusted in PTE to get the final page with PTE generated text.

ParticleIllusion is very easy to use for simple "particle effects" but you can also learn to "modify" and "create" your own particle emitters to make incredible special effects such as those used with PI in multi-million dollar Hollywood studios productions.

Right now, you can download and install PI for a free, no restrictions 30 day trial. If you intend on using videos with PTE, PI is well worth the investment in my opinion. Here's a link:

http://www.wondertouch.com/index_2.asp

Best regards,

Lin

[Ken Cox]

THOSE ELK WILL BE "MOVIN ON" shortly with tails a twitchin' )))

good job

ken

[ContaxMan]

Thanks Lin.