Use fonts. Spend an hour or so searching for fonts (dingbats and peculiar shapes). You'll have odd-looking masks and figures for any project. Scalable, keyframeable, alphaable (foreground and background), shadowable etc etc. Photoshop would be wasting your time.
Tor

IMO You can do a lot more in photoshop with the shapes than you can by just using a simple font.

I totally agree witn Jsnkc, Photoshop would be the quickest and easiest.

I totally and utterly disagree with you both. There is nothing easier and quicker than adding and manipulating a font (who said "a simple font"?) symbol in Vegas.
Tor

I agree and disagree with everybody!!!

Although I must admit, Photoshop is the proverbialy bomb (I really just got into it this year...and love it!) - if I had a font that did the same thing....I'm going with the font.

Well...that is, as long as I could get the desired look with the font.

Hi everybody

Tors, i trusted you not too long ago about a velocity issue , i am willing to trust you again(no offense for the others)

But if it is so easy to manipulate fonts in Vegas your gonna have to show me how , because to be honest before i read your reply , fonts were the furthest thing in my mind.

Thx a bunch

"Spend an hour or so searching for fonts "

Not to start a fight or anything :) ...but In an hour spent searching for fonts I could have the video done using photoshop and then importing into vegas. Why use pre-made fonts that are set graphics when you can create and tweak anything you want in Photoshop to get it to look exactly the way you want.

Regardless which method you use to creatre the pattern to make the effect realistic have it only appear a very brief time, change the background colors to something bold and add some goofy sound effects.

Adam West would be proud <wink>

Hi Billyboy,


great idea but i use it already , wanted to create something new for this particular shot. Learning vegas in the process is always valuable also

thx

Tors have you read my reply ;)

For something really "different" you could try a negative color image.

Drag and drop the Color Curves filter on the timeline. Grab ahold of the right top handle while holding left mouse down, drag it to the bottom. Now take the left one at the botton and drag it all the way to the top.

or...

Try the Convolution filter. Emboss and Bump together or alone can give some far out effects.

or...

Deform or Swirl

or...

Try the Satish plug-in that has explode and other stuff.

<<But if it is so easy to manipulate fonts in Vegas your gonna have to show me how , because to be honest before i read your reply , fonts were the furthest thing in my mind.>>

Phil,
First you must realise that a font is not letters, it's a collection of images. Look through Webdings, or Wingdings 1, 2, and 3 to see what I mean. But even when they are letters, you can treat them as images and use them as masks, borders, ornaments etc.

Take a look at this little intro (rightclick and download, it's 1.6 MB)
Exept for the montain footage and the music, everything is made with fonts in the Vegas text generator: the gun, the sight, the binoculars, even the words are made with a font (ha ha) and used as a mask.
I know this is not Batman. It is a creative use of fonts. And it's dead easy. You could do this with Photoshop too, but I'd be deep into my second pint before you finished.
Tor

Seems to me the new 3D manipulation feature in V5 would allow you to zoom the font in on an angle, etc.

Hi Tors


Found a sh*tload of dingbats and tried to experiment with and BOY it is easy.

Guess you won't see the bottom of your second pint.... sorry :)

THX a million

I have a avi clip that has a "Bang", "Poof". I guess I can zip it off to you if still interested.

email me if still interested. (It;s on my home computer so I need to check for the footage)

ggranata@speedware.com
(please use the subject line as :Batman)