Flying JPEGS???

LSHorwitz wrote on 7/11/2010, 1:46 PM
I am trying to find an application or plug-in which allows me to take a collection of JPEG photos and move them in an animation as particles.

I would like to achieve the appearance of montages, drifting photos with various trajectories, fountains or sprays of pictures, or other similar effects much the same as can be achieved with the particle generators found in some of the NLE and titler (BluffTitler) software, but specifically for photo JPEG images.

Is anybody aware of software to do this type of thing?

Thanks for any advice and suggestions.

Larry

Comments

Rory Cooper wrote on 7/12/2010, 12:50 AM
Larry you have a few options

With Bluff titler use Alphabix to convert characters to images save as a new typeface and use text character which will be images select type face use images as particles

Particleillusion save images in one folder name 001, and use image as particle

Boris Red use brush to create spline track and save all images in 1 layered psd import psd as brush texture . works as a plug in Vegas

Boris blue create a particle track and place image sequence as with particlillusion 001 002 etc inside particle track proper 3d particle animation very cool

Heroglyph has its own unique way of doing things , works as a plug in Vegas
willqen wrote on 7/12/2010, 4:38 AM
Unless I have more than say, 25 images or so, I prefer to create and edit montages manually, right on the Vegas timeline.

Just need to make sure I get the project properties right, so the images look their best, or as good as can be achieved for my purposes.

It is much more random to do it this way, and you get exactly what you want, once you learn all (or most of) the possibilities. (You never really learn what all Vegas will do.)

Besides being able to pan&crop to the nth degree, I can use track motion, both 2D and 3D, as well as all manner of composting (for drifting and floating images, as well as image fountains),

Video FX, secondary color correction (use this one for a single color in a B&W image, such as a girl with red lips, everything else gray) etc,.

Anyway, it's endless what you can accomplish with a few images, and some time, within Vegas.

For many images, more than 30 or so, both Production Manager from Sony, and VASST's S Pro 4.1 plug-ins, can do much with these montage type projects, without spending heavy-weight money on other plug-ins, and getting a pretty decent professional outcome.

Will
ushere wrote on 7/12/2010, 4:59 AM
add excalibur to that list of plugins for vegas.....
willqen wrote on 7/12/2010, 5:27 AM
I apologize . . .

I should have remembered them as well.

They are all 3 similar, and different.

Will
Rory Cooper wrote on 7/12/2010, 6:12 AM
I think Larry has particles in mind not a montage, Particle images is very taxing on your PC so be prepared
LSHorwitz wrote on 7/12/2010, 2:04 PM
Thanks to all for suggestions. I do indeed wish to apply the same type of effect which normally apply to particles, and use photos as my particles. In particular, I am trying to get fountains, sprays, rainfalls, and other such effects with a collection of photos moving along trajectories to suggest that they are being sprayed, are falling like droplets, etc. The eventually ending of the animation may be called "a montage" but it really is specifically the motion of the images as they are being moved that I most want to animate and achieve.

I will research and try the suggestions above, but most certainly welcome any further thoughts now that I have explained myself better. My apologies for not being a lot more crisp in my original post.

Once again, thanks for the assistance,

Larry
farss wrote on 7/12/2010, 3:26 PM
I've seen this done. You need serious software and hardware. From memory it was done in 3D Studio Max. That handled the basic particle issues. As well as exporting the frames from the animation motion data was also rendered as 16 bit pngs and that data also used in AE or Fusion with some rather expensive plugins to add the DOF and motion blur to the animated images of which there were 1,000s.

It can look incredibly effective, I think the particles / images in that tutorial all came together to form a final image .

Apart from anything else each frame of the final output is made from a huge amount of data, each pixel from each photo has to be manipulated in a 3D space, render times would have to be in the minutes if not hours per frame.

Bob.
LSHorwitz wrote on 7/12/2010, 7:15 PM
I took a look at the suggestions offered above, and think that MotoFoto in Vaast is my best bet. I also liked the ease and simplicity of BluffTitler, but I could find no way to preserve image quality for 1920 by 1080 resolution video when the font/photo characters were scaled up to any decent size. I am guessing that the bitmaps which Alphabix creates for fonts are pretty small / coarse, and this becomes a problem when the images are enlarged. BluffTitler does offer very nice particle effects, but it appears also that the text layer can only get some very simple animations (essentially up, down, left, right, and scale) with no trajectory / path definitions for the text characters or spline fitting.

I have to do a lot more playing around here to find the "correct" solution but I now have a nice variety of choices I would have never known about or considered, were it not for your kind assistance.

Thank you once again,
Larry
Rory Cooper wrote on 7/13/2010, 12:14 AM
Larry is your project 1920 x 1080 or do you want to maintain image particles at 1920 x 1010
If it’s the latter wow just the thought is making my eyeballs hurt
LSHorwitz wrote on 7/13/2010, 6:30 AM
Rory,
My project is at 1920 by 1080, a pretty standard HD format, and the jpegs are from digital camera stock images, each originally 4-10 megapixel size. I can use much lower rez thumbnails, but the current limitation of Alphabix appears to be that the photos, once converted to font bitmaps, are maybe a couple hundred pixels by a couple hundred pixels in size. When they show up on the animated project in Bluff Titler with the maximum (high quality) settings in smaller sizes they look fine. When they are scaled to occupy a larger area of the screen they are entirely fuzzy.

I am playing around further with the other approaches also to see what they can do. I am trying to make a "spray" of photos, sorta' like a garden hose pumping out pictures, preferably in an arc rather than a straight vertical or horizontal trajectory.

Your creativity and suggestions are great, and thanks again!

Larry