Copy/paste the url just below the link does work.
Randy

Dave, not sure if you'd noticed that the word "Presence" is misspelled? I like the lightning streaks, very nice.

Dave, I liked what I saw. Very nicely done.

This is not a criticism, but I wonder if you experimented with speeding up the effect where the words are burned onto the cross? I'm not sure it makes a difference one way or the other, and in fact going faster may reduce viewer anticipation of what is about to appear. I ask only because I find in my experiments that goofing with rates of change, clip lengths, etc. often yields vastly different results with only minimal changes. Again, not to suggest that anything in your clip needs to change.

Only "flaw" I noticed was the misspelling DSE mentioned.

Again, very impressive!

That's what I was afraid of - mispelling, I checked in the spell checker, and it came up fine so I'm cheased now. Guess I'll just keep a dictionary with me from now on.

Dave

(BTW - I guess that for some reason there was a whole sony partial link in front of the hyperlink address that showed up for no reason. The click link works now)

Care to elaborate on how you did this Dave?
TIA,
Randy

I like it - looks very good. It might be cool if the text had a reverse bevel effect so it looked like it was actually carved into the cross? Also maybe a light-ray-through-clouds type background?

Nice Job.

I was wondering if anyone was going to give me a good solution to the carved look question. - I think that I would have to change the spacing or something for that because the masking was PRETTY FREAKIN CLOSE as it was.

Dave

It's good. But honestly, something's not right with it at all. I think I know. The cross is too CG, the yellow text is too 2D, and the particle illusion stuff looks to real. In other words, the cross looks like a cartoon, and the lightning and fire is too photo-realistic, so the two don't match well. I'd say, come up with a better cross, ditch the straight yellow text, and perhaps tone down the lightning/fire and color correct (or FX) the whole shot to give it a more uniform appearance to washout the differences. Then again, your intended audience might not see it that way and depending on how it's being shown, might make little difference.

Care to elaborate on how did you do this Dave?

1. Ok, first thing I did was decide on the text font,size, etc...
2. Saved a frame grab of it.
3. Put that frame grab in the BG of Particle Illusion 3.0
4. Traced the lines of the text in PI3.0
5. Set all the animations in PI
6. Exported the image series and imported them into Vegas as an image sequence as to maintain the Alpha channel
7. Then the masking all had to be done
8. I then put a copy of the text above the gold text track that was white
9. Masked that text with a slit of viewable area on a diagonal slant set to the far left side.
10. I Slid the mask of the white text from left to right across the clip at the time that I felt it was usefull.

So the lightning animation was on the top track, the White text was underneat that but not viewable because the mask was too far left to show anything at the begining and through all the "writing." The Gold text track was on the bottom, and was unmasked as the lightning "wrote" it.

Hope that helps.

Dave

The cross is too CG, the yellow text is too 2D, and the particle illusion stuff looks to real

I know, I noticed that too, but there was no real way for me to do it, as far as I can tell. The limitations of the software, and the user I'm sure ;-).

Dave
Thanks though

I'm betting a reverse bevel in Photoshop would do the trick. It would make the text look like it's "cut into" the cross. Did you use Ulead cool 3d for the cross animation?

You got hired... meaning paid? The text is badly pixelated, there's really no excuse for staircase edging on text, the color of the text seems wrong, you didn't using kerning, the P in passion has too much space between it and the next letter 'a' that follows it. In a similar vain the last r is too close to the proceesing 'o'. The cross spins too fast, is sort of fake looking. Christian crosses tend to be wood. If your cross is suppose to be metal, then it needs light to reflect off it as it rotates, which if you have to rotate the cross it should be slower. The texture of the cross changes not because of any light dancing off it as it it was shiny metal, rather because the effects you used seem to interfer with each other seemingly causing distortion. You zoomed in too much, so much it no longer looks like a cross. The lightening effect looks fake, however the fire, and flames are pretty good though. If you were going for an 'burned in" look as the text is written, a better result could be had if the texture of the cross was something that burned (like wood) and left evidence of it getting burned as the text was written. The lightening bolts are the wrong shade of blue. Again, while the flames look good, they are too much to the yellow orange range which wouldn't be the result of lightening. You may wish to consider a smaller cross on top of a hill, less is more woulld work better. It also needs some kind of low sound

Wow! BillyBoy really hit this one and I agree with his comments.

Depending on the audience, you might be better off deep sixing this effect. Still, it was a good learning experience.

-Jeff

nah, not Ulead - Bluff Titler DX9 and a cross text character. - takes like 5 min. to make and render.

Lighting is not the strongest suit of this program.

I thought you did a great job on this. And I am a devout atheist!

the color of the text seems wrong - please extrapelate for me BB, what you mean by the wrong color, thanks. - it's a matter of taste IMO
Christian crosses tend to be wood - I'm pretty sure that christian crosses tend to be crosses - I've been around Christian's enought to know ;-)
rather because the effects you used seem to interfer with each other seemingly causing distortion - please clarify
The lightening effect looks fake - I only have so many lightning effects in PI - and there aren't many "real" lightning bolts that "write" so there's not really anything much I can do for that.
The lightening bolts are the wrong shade of blue - the "color of lightning" has everything to do with the distance from the viewer - it is a bluish white - however it's possible that our monitors are not the same, and therefore there is a discrepency there. I would like to know what shade of blue you would suggest - as I can change the color tint somewhat.
You may wish to consider a smaller cross on top of a hill - yea - if I was gonna render a whole scene and I didn't want to pay attention to how long I worked on the project but simply did it with no regards to cost to the church.
It also needs some kind of low sound - no it doesn't , I'm afraid - please read the posted info on cheinworks site. It has to be no sound for the customer.

Though I appreciate the comments - I need more info for them to be helpful to me. Some however do not apply as I do not have the time/money/software to spend making an entire scene to render etc... Also, you should know that the payments from this job are relatively small because they only needed something that gets the job done, and they don't have the kind of budget to afford a HUGE ordeal. I know that you couldn't have known that, and that probably adds to why you told me to scrap it and do something different, but that would not be worthwhile to the client. I did not however really ask for what I should do for the client - so I have no real need for your suggestions in that area. Thanks for your input, and I welcome more explanation on the subjects I requested.

Dave

I hesitate to give honest, frank critics, exactly because now that you got one you seem upset, and are now in the odd position of critiquing the critique which begs the question why you asked for a critque in the first place, unless your were expecting only the wow, looks great, nice job variety which of course isn't a crique at all. Maybe you find it hard to believe, but I'm only trying to help you make it look better.

I've been a Christian since I was baptized, now almost 60 years ago. So I have a pretty good idea how your typical "cross" looks, and all it represents. Sorry, in my opinion, which is what you asked for, yours looks artifical. I was half expecting to see Michael Jackson go into his moon walk routine or someone start to sing Oklahoma, complete with a dozen backup dancers because the effect you picked seemed a bit too "Hollywood" for a Christian endeavor. For starters, I've never seen a cross spin. Somehow it just doesn't seem to be what you would expect. While illusion is the mainstay of movie making, reality is also important.

So bottom line, you didn't appreciate my comments at all, your very defensive over what you did, even making excuses that you don't have the right software to do the effect you were going for. So shame on me for giving you what you asked for and trying to help. You seem to be in a huff because I did what you asked... gave you a critique. That's not what you really wanted. You just wanted a slap on the back and a that-a-boy comment.

OK, here you go. Looks great, nice job!

That may make you feel better, it won't help your project at all. I thought 'thou shall not lie' was one of the Ten Commandments. I told you the truth, you couldn't handle it.

So sorry.

hoooo boy... Here we go again.

I liked it, thanks for sharing.

I was playing around with Xara to see if reverse bevelling might work, and it sort of did. Also, as someone mentioned, putting a texture on the cross, or the text, or both, might enhance the overall effect.

Good stuff. You did mean "cheesed" though, didn't you ;-)

Pierre

BB - I'm not offended by the comments, the way in which they were made was somewhat insulting. But I still want the input. I'm not trying to battle it out here with you, and I wouldn't have asked for critiques if I didn't want them. You need to calm down and not read into my post. please answer my questions. That's what I asked for, that's what I want. Thank you.

(BTW - please don't try and pick a fight with me, I don't need any more garbage cluttering up this forum)

Dave

Dave,

Pretty good stuff! You asked, What would we do differently? Given the tools and more importantly my lack of artistic ability, probably nothing. I know what I would like to see, however, and maybe you can do it with the tools you have, maybe you can't. I'm pretty sure I could not do it.

I think the text is pretty jagged, and I've had that problem with BT before too. I don't know what the solution is if using only BT.

Maybe try experimenting with black text with some residual "smoke" coming off it after the main burn, it might look more burned in. It is very 2D-looking, could use some depth somehow.

I liked the lightning, the fire, and the spotlight after the burn. The cross spinning was fine. Do you have some suitable audio for this (I'm viewing at work with no sound here)..if not, get some, it'll add a lot to the presentation.

I also thought the "writing" could've happened a little quicker.

But all in all, very creative! If you change it, please let us know.

thanks,
David

Well, the text was in Vegas - can someone tell me why it came out so "jagged" (that seems to be the #1 complaint here) keep in mind that you're viewing this in half res. - there is no audio as per the instruction given me on the project.

The fact is that I don't think that the cross can be "fixed" well, I went through a bunch of different wood skins for the cross etc... and everything didn't work. I know that the cross doesn't look like wood, nor does it look like a reflective metal - but I decided that that wasn't entirely what I wanted. The fact that there is no realistic way for Gold text to come up after Lightning strikes something is not an issue, it just is what I wanted to go with. It give's it a clear distinction from everything. This is not a reality based event, so I didn't try and make it one.

Also - is there a way to get better lighting in BT? - I realize that this isn't a BT forum but I can't seem to get a "realistic" look. Which seems to be the mass problem everyone is haveing with my video. (I guess it's too much of a distraction to not have a "realistic" looking cross and lighting on a video that's being used to display a sermon point here, that it may cause problems for those viewing it and I don't want to make it so that people get distracted by the "fakeness" of something and don't pay attention to the message.

Dave