Drawing in Vegas ? Box w/Transparent in & outside?

will-3 wrote on 8/8/2008, 8:47 AM

I need to create a simple sequence in a Vegas project using shapes, lines, & characters.

Thanks for any tips on how to do this in Vegas... (No Photoshop here and rusty on our Corel Draw & Photo Paint :)

Here is how I've done so far...

Lines: Looks like the Media Generators Solid Colors will work for straight lines... (take a solid color, then drag the edges in to get the horz or vert line... right?

Box with Clear Center: The only way I see to do a box with a transparent center is to use the Media Generator Solid Colors again... Pan/Crop the size to get... say a black square... Then create another Media Generated clip on a track above it... make it the color of the background... then size it and fit it inside the black square... right?

Thanks for any info on ways to do this in Vegas... else I'm going to have to spend the next couple of days with Corel and that will put me way behind schedule :)

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/8/2008, 10:09 AM

Personally, i think you'd go much faster using something like Microsoft Paint or Microsoft Photo Editor than trying to do this in Vegas. Any photo editor or drawing program you have lying around handy will work. Microsoft Word has some primitive but simple and easy to use drawing tools. Save any shapes you create as image files and import into Vegas.

Also, personally, i think you'd go crazy trying to do this all in Vegas.

Terry Esslinger wrote on 8/8/2008, 10:20 AM

I think many of the shapes etc that you are thinking about can be found in a font n(such as wing dings). They can be sized, moved etc.

will-3 wrote on 8/8/2008, 12:21 PM

Well, I've about come to the same conclusion you have :) Would take to many video tracks to get all the various things on the screen at once... and it turns out to be easier than I remembered to do it using Corel Photo Paint...

We wanted the background to be transparent... can you do that in Power Point and save the file as a GIF or TIF or whatever?

will-3 wrote on 8/8/2008, 12:22 PM

Terry, That is a valuable tip... should have thought of it... but in this case the work turned out to be to complex to do it in Vegas. But for certain applications the funny fonts should work fine. Thanks.

Chienworks wrote on 8/8/2008, 1:38 PM

.gif and .png support transparency nicely. .tif is a real hog i Vegas so i'd avoid it. Transparency isn't essential though. Merely create the background as a solid color that doesn't appear anywhere in the boxes/lines that you want to show and use Vegas' Chroma Keyer effect to eliminate it.

farss wrote on 8/8/2008, 3:19 PM

Pretty easy to do this in Vegas.
Gen media plus Beziers. Use one mask to cut the outside of the box and another to cutout the inside. Result is a frame. One needs to be a negative mask and the other a positive mask.
Just did several frames for various live comps into the one frame with only one track for a project, not that hard really.

Bob.