create a sunset

[Mike Reed]

I am trying to create a sunset behind a building. I have got the background sun moving as I require but cannot see how to change the brightness of the foreground building. I have tried to drop new images of the building suitably darkened into the time line of the animation but this does not work. Any ideas will be gratefully received.

[Barry Beckham]

Mike

Take a look at this slide show as it has something close to what your asking for. Its Called Schools out Surf's Up and here the sun comes up.

What your asking is not impossible, but its not something that is easy to explain in a short post. If you have the need to ask the question then it does indicate that it would be difficult to convey how to do this, but i'll have a go.

1. You will need an image editor and you will need to be familiar with layers and how to make a cut-out. You need to cut out the buildings from the sky. They should be saved as PNG files. The sun can now be made to sink behind the buildings, but if the cut-out is not really good, it will look a little amateurish.

2. You need a second copy of both these parts and they will need to be manipulated in your image editor to achieve the effect of lowering light levels as the sun goes down. They should be PNG files too

3. You would need to link the two skies and building together in the Objects and Animations window as parent and child.

4 Add Keyframes to the child objects so as the sun sinks you can reduce the opacity of the bight sky and buildings to the ones looking more like a sunset.

 

[Lin Evans]

Mike,

Did you look at the PTE file I linked you to in your other post?  Are you trying to only change the brightness of a building, or the brightness of the entire image other than the sun?  If you use the PTE default black background, when the "opacity" of the image is changed via keyframes, the entire scene will get dark as it did in the example I linked you to.

Why don't you zip up your project and link us to it so we can see exactly what you are doing?  It would be much easier to show you than to tell you how to proceed...

Best regards,

Lin

[Mike Reed]

Thanks Lin and Barry.

 

I seem to have cracked it so thanks for your advice much appreciated.

[Barry Beckham]

Do we get to see the result?

[Mike Reed]

Hi Barry 

 

 My solution was two images one with the building illuminated and the other with it in darkness (both cut outs saved as PNG's) and suitable sky on a separate layer I then did a long dissolve between the two. I thought that the moving sun was a bit too cheesy.

[Barry Beckham]

Well, that is the problem with some of these ideas. They sound good in theory, but as you say, they can look less than appealing in practice.