A Fan Style

[davegee]

Please note a couple of things:

A fast PC with a good Graphics card is required to deal with this kind of Style. Full frame PNG files are treated by PTE in the same way as full frame JPEGs with respect to file size and 40+ full frame pics in a slide is quite strenuous on the PC. There are other ways of dealing with the required PNG files but they will probably appear elsewhere. I have used full frame PNG files - one for each blade of the fan - 19 in total. The "Pivot Pin" has been "grouped" with the 19th blade. After applying the action the Fan Object must be resized to 1200x800.

The Procedure.

Apply the PanosFX Fan Action in your Image Editor. Since this lies outside of the remit of PictureToExe I will not go into detail about it.

Resize the resulting file as shown in the attached screen shot.

 

It is essential that the guides intersect over the Pivot Point and that the guides are placed with "Pixel Perfection".

This part of the Style deals with the Fan itself and the Background and Shadow can be ignored.

Now Save each layer as a PNG-24 file where Layer 1 equals Blade 01 (through to Layer 19 equals Blade19).

Browse to your Project Folder and create a new folder for the images created.

In PTE:

Browse to the Project Folder and the Folder containing the Blade PNG files.

Select all 19 Blades and add to the Slide List. Check that they are in the correct ascending order.

Import the Style attached below.

Highlight all of the Blade PNGs in the Slide List and Apply the Style. The result is a 5 slide sequence.

Fan Style.ptestyle

The Shadow

In your Image Editor, create a solid black version of each blade in turn. Select Transparency / Invert / Fill with Black. Make sure that the holes in each fan blade are selected.

When finished it should look like this:

Now Save each layer as a PNG-24 file where Layer 1 equals Shadow 01 (through to Layer 19 equals Shadow 19).

Browse to your Project Folder and create a new folder for the images created.

Add all 19 shadow images to the Slide List after the original 5 slides and with all 19 shadow blades highlighted apply the following Fan Shadow Style.

Fan Shadow Style.ptestyle

This creates 5 slides with the shadows.

In O&A, copy and paste the blade frames from slide 1 to slide 6 (slide 2 to slide 7 etc). When complete you can delete Slides 1 to 5.

The result is a combination of two applied styles and to complete the project just add a Background Image to all five slides.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

Your idea of having the shadows separated from the fan is a good one for more than one reason. The user may want to use the fan style in situations where having a shadow would be detrimental. For example, they may want to use a video as the background and having the shadow would be unnecessary.

Great style by the way! 

Best regards,

Lin

[davegee]

I have had to modify the Tutorial Text.

The File / Output / Layers as Files will always save in the wrong order.

Using that procedure is by far the quickest way but requires a re-numbering procedure after saving.

Or, you can use "Settings / File Sort Order / Reverse Order"

[davegee]

It is fairly quiet at the moment so a REVISION of this project seems to be a good idea.

I have created a Photoshop Action (Daves Set.ZIP) which prepares the PanosFX Fan Ceation for Export to a folder for PicturesTo Exe.

1. It Merges Down the Pivot Layer to the Layer 19.

2. It turns the Background Layer and the Shadow Layer OFF.

3. It resizes the project from 4140x2341 to 1200x800 and puts the Pivot Point on the correct point for my PicturesToExe Style.

After running the "PanosFX Setup Action" the Layers can be Exported   using the File / Export / Layers to Files command.

Dave Set.zip

Some issues arose out of the EXPORT of the various components from Photoshop in an order which was the reverse of the Layer order in Photoshop. So I completely re-ordered the Main Image Settings in the Fan and Shadow Styles. I also created a Composite Fan and Shadow Style:

Fan Style 2.ptestyle

Add the Fan Blades in the order that they were Exported from Photoshop and Apply this new Style.

Fan Shadow 2.ptestyle

Add the Fan Blade Shadows in the order that they were Exported from Photoshop and Apply this new Style.The Shadow Blades can be re-used and only have to be made once.

Fan and Shadow Style.ptestyle

Add the Fan Blade and Shadow PNG files in the order that they were exported from Photoshop (19 Fan Blades followed by 19 Shadow Blades - 38 PNGs in total) by dragging them into the Slide List in PicturesToExe. Highlight all 38 Slides and Apply the "Fan and Shadow Style". Add your choice of Background in Slide Options. The Shadow Blades can be re-used and only have to be made once.

[JudyKay]

You are amazing!  Thanks.

[nelson]

Thank you for taking the time, and your generosity.

Kieron

[Tauratinzwe]

Thanks for this, Dave.  It is truly impressive.  I must confess that I initially had a bit of difficulty.  My fan was pivoting around the wrong point.  I'd run your action, so knew things had started out aligned correctly.  Then I discovered that the "trim layers" box in the export layers to files dialog had been ticked.  I unticked it and everything worked perfectly.  Moral of the story:  Check your boxes to be sure you want them checked before proceeding.  ;-)

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tauratinzwe,

It's a good learning experience. When any action creates positional relationships with independent parts it's necessary to have the full sized file including all the empty transparent space to keep the parts properly aligned in space. 

For example, let's say you had pieces of a puzzle and you wanted to move them about or begin a slide with the pieces scattered randomly then assemble them correctly. By having all the transparent space in the file, each piece is easily moved to its proper assembled location by simply setting the pan, and rotation values to zero and the size to 100%. Every piece is then positioned as it was when the original file was created. You could move each piece of the puzzle in any direction or position or distance and then cause each piece to find its proper assembled location by setting the pan and rotation values to zero. But when each file is trimmed to remove as much empty transparent space as possible, there is no simple reference point of zero to reassemble. Each individual piece would have it's own pan x or pan y value and it greatly complicates proper positioning.

The value of trimming, of course, is file size. Removing the seemingly extraneous transparent space greatly reduces the size of each file and for components which are used as totally independent objects, trimming is of significant value. But anytime components must be in precise positional alignment with other components to create a whole, then never use the trim feature of Photoshop on export.

By the way - I posted a sample of the waving fan on PanosFX for you with some more information....

Best regards and welcome to the PTE forum!,

Lin 

[Tauratinzwe]

Yes, Lin, it's not good to be inattentive when dealing with dialogue boxes.  I'm still surprised that I figured out what was going wrong quickly.  Usually I need at least one night's sleep before resolving an issue. ;-)

I saw your example over at PanosFX.  Impressive.  Went back and looked through my old files and discovered it was TheDom that produced the  template using the old PanosFX fan action.  I embedded a clip I did with it long ago to show the kinds of motions I've been thinking about.

By the way, whatever happened to TheDom?  Can't find his web site any more.

[Lin Evans]

Dominique stops by now and then - he's been busy with trail running for some time now but with the new and truly exciting features of PTE 9.0 soon to be released into beta testing and available to all registered PTE users (the beta test versions) he will be back shortly.

Dom had his site hacked so many times that he finally threw in the towel and took it down. It's absolutely insane that people could be so cruel as to continue to hack his site which was truly a great resource for PTE users. I would like to find out who did it and string them up by their privates for about two weeks! Seriously!!! 

Yes, you could gain some great insight by studying the way Dom created his template and animations by carefully observing what is happening in the Objects and Animations screen. I think if there is sufficient interest, I could create a couple video tutorials to help users get some understanding of how to animate the waving fan. I'll work on that this coming week. 

Best regards,

Lin