Thanks for sharing that with us Spot. I actually have an idea of how to use that in an upcoming project.

Is there any way to get rid of the horizontal lines in the image?

John

The horizontal lines are intentional. That's part of the Star Wars look. Otherwise, you could approach it from a different perspective. Using a displacement map and smoke, using a bump map would probably be the angle I'd take. You could also reduce the interlacing in the TV Simulator to zero, but you'd still have some lines.
zcheema, I hear George Lucas is pretty tough on folks messing with his techniques, so expect Darth Vader to show up any time. I paid em' off already.

Thanks Spot,

I'll try that.

John

That was really cool! Thanks dude.

Ed.

Nice SPOT.

Another StarTrek type transporter kind of effect.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/%7Ewvg/Billy-Elvis.htm

Couldn't see the tutorial. After waiting 5 mins on my satellite access system, I bailed. Looks like your FLASH file is huge.
IMO, flash is way overused, but if you're using it for a tutorial, use compressed media for load speed. On my screen it looked to be 640x480, and that's MONSTROUS if it has many layers.

Loads for me in 2 seconds, but I'm on a 1700 MBPS broadband connection. Flash is the future. HTML alone is old news. Anybody else having trouble?

BTW, its not a tutorial, see a silly little flash movie.

Looks great. Loaded immediately. I always have my screen resolution set for 800 x 600. Broadband connection

John

Honest... I didn't mean to run over Elvis, he just got in the way. ;-)

I, too, am on broadband and have no access trouble, but am a bit old fashioned -- though not old at 41 -- and prefer straight-up HTML. I'd encourage you to save the glitzy stuff for your videos and simplify your web site (the transitions between pages really don't do anything to improve the quality of your wonderful tutorials).

what a great tutorial. "Thanks spot" this kind of effect can be used in any SciFi type film. (My Opinion) And be accepted by most. Unlike the transporter effect which is pure star trek.

Nice one.

Just my opinion, but I think the transport effect they use in Star Gate SG1 is the best

http://www.scifi.com/stargate/

As far as going to DHTML and FLASH with PHP its lets me do my thing.
With the limited space I have now at Wide Open West, my creative juices are stifled. You ain't seen nothing....yet. Just how far I'm going to push it I really don't know yet. Unlike HTML, you can do anything you dream in Flash. I'm still in the dreaming phase. So I don't want to say exactly what till I see if it works out as I hope. ;-)

I'm new to this forum after being linked here from another location. I enjoy reading the posts very much.
I do flash work as part of my daily job. Our corporation has requested less flash rather than more and reading threads on the web would indicate that others concur.
My question is; It appears that each time someone points to something wonderful Billyboy uses that thread to point to himself or to vociferously argue ? (I just read a number of posts, I thought clicking on Billyboy's name would let me email him directly to ask this question but I received links to all your posts instead) I did find some nice tutorials on your site, Billyboy. Thank you for taking the time to create those.

Geez.... I posted to this thread because my little Flash demo also had a transporter effect. I'm damned if I reply to a thread, I'm damed if I start a new thread. I just feel damed. Maybe I am a damn fool for trying to help people for FREE.

BTW, Flash in on the rise as far as web use is concerned. Of course what do I know. I've just been using it since version two. Back then it was a little too much with bandwidth issues if you tired to do anything extensive. That isn't true anymore. Many people have broadband, most at least have a 56K modem.

Use of Flash is sometimes misunderstood. Most people only have seen some elementary uses. And YES what I put up on my site is elementray. A gag. Get it? I guess not. Took about ten minutes to put together. That's not what I had in mind for my new site.

If I go forward (someone please kick me) it will use Flash as it can be used to make a fully interactive site. Hint: Maybe do the tutorials in real time using a mirror image of the Vegas interface on screen embedded in the web page. I guess nobody would like that. Silly me.

Care to show us your "flash" work ladyblade?

I work for Olympus USA as one of several designers. No one receives personal credit for any of our work. http://www.olympusamerica.com/ Until recently all of our public pages contained Flash. Few of our intranet pages do. Web design is my second career. Before this I was a professional photo journalist. Now I'm branching into multimedia and streaming and I found Vegas due to an article on streaming that Mr. Spotted Eagle wrote.
I honestly didn't mean to criticize, I simply noticed that you seem to be very assertive and quick to judge. You are clearly talented & I merely wondered why you are always taking the hard line with posters. In reading your many posts it seems that you have difficulties with numerous specific people.
My sister in law has Bell's Palsy. She is in Florida where the humidity is easier for her eyes. It doesn't make her mean-spirited, however. She is also diabetic. I'll go back to observing now. I'm sorry to offend.

ladyblade,
don't take BB too much to heart, he's just a bit crusty that's all. Still a great bloke. I think we all tend to say things in writing we'd never do in person plus when it's written it's more open to misunderstanding then when it's delivered in person.
Apart from the odd lapse this would be one of the most well behaved forums there is.

I'm not offended. I'm blunt, OK crusty, (not, not that clown on Simpsons. He smokes I don't) I hardly think I'm mean spirited. I hope you didn't take my inquirty the wrong way. I was simply asking since you said you do Flash, if you'd wanted to share some of what you've done.

I took a quick look at the site you mentioned. Nice, but typical. Not what I'm talking about. I'm thinking more where you control the Flash with scripting, using PNP and SQL.

Does Bell's Palsy make you grumpy? Well, unless you're unlucky enough to get it, you don't know how it going to effect you. Its a highly personalized thing that at least according to my doctors effects people in many different ways. For me its mostly left eye that's so far very slow coming back. Christmas Eve marked the 6th month... and counting. Its hell.

<Maybe I am a damn fool for trying to help people for FREE>
Didn't I recently get castigated by a certain person for making essentially the same statement? :-) Seems I did.
I understand the confusion tho, BB, because you made it look (in your post) like you were referring to a transporter effect tutorial. There is a very cool transporter effect that can be downloaded as a veg from the Sony and Sundance sites.
Anyway, Flash use is NOT on the rise, it's peaked, and will rise and fall again. It's enough of an issue that MacroMedia had a questionaire about this very subject not that long ago at the Seybold show in San Francisco/Sept 2003. Flash is cool, but folks are into information more than they are into cool. The whole Sundance site was once flash, but we pulled everything except the menu. For tutorials, Flash has major benefits though, if they are compressed correctly. I have a very basic knowledge of Flash, but that's it. I HATE Macromedia anything. I hated FCP as it was under their care. I use Swish for anything we need done. the new VASST site has a Flash template, but we'll be killing that.
Ladyblade, just keep hanging out, you sorta need to see the whole dialog before jumping on BB even though he's a little rough around the edges. Did I meet you at CEMA? Are you the lady that showed me the Oly greenscreen 3D system?

What is 4.0E ? I have Vegas 4.0 is that OK?

Garo, open Vegas, go to and click on Help, go down to the About Vegas section and in the General tab screen, you'll see the current version of Vegas you are running. I'm presently up to version "D", the latest - much discussion hereabouts about this update - is actually "E".

If you want to update, go to the top of this screen and select Support. There you will find updates for the lkatest versions of loads of stuff - yeah?

Hope this helps,

Grazie

OK,
I can make the thing work with some footage I shot myslef, must say I'm amazed at how easy CKs are to make work, just used the blue wall in my office. Then again with that amount of blur around the edges the actual CK doesn't have to be that brilliant. The section of the frame that wouldn't key due to a shadow I just manually touched up the mask.
So I thought I'd try something a bit more advanced and render the holographic wife out to a new clip so i could play around with it by itself (the clip, not her BTW). So I removed the background and rendered out to an uncompressed AVI with the preserve alpha channel box ticked. Except when I bring that into a new project the tranparency of the hologram itself is preserved but not the mask for the background.
Is such a thing doable in Vegas or have i hit a limitation. I know there's ways around this but I was trying to avoid them, not so much for this, it's only a learning exercise, but I can imagine scenarios where you'd really need to do that.

This is why I suggest rendering the mask separately. Check the 'Show Mask Only" box, and then render to new track. You'll have the original and the matte/mask. Group them, you'll be able to do whatever you need,and it's just a matter of parenting.