Transparency/visibility question...

[Kagehi]

Ok, so.. Here is what I am wondering. I want to create an animation of sorts. This means creating individual smaller frames, then patching them into a larger image. Not sure how many frames yet though. But, the main problem is making them. I plan to have it like this:

Top Layer - Runes
Second Layer - Smoke
Third Layer - Visibility
Fourth Layer - Glass
Yeah, this isn't probably the order they need to be in. It is only for purposes of explanation.

Now, the trick is this - I want to have something like a radial gradient, which fades to transparency (or from white to black?), for the "Visibility" layer. Now, in PaintShop Pro I could simply apply this as a mask to the "Smoke" layer above, and this "get" smoke that is only visible in the parts of the image that are white - i.e., the sub-layer, when linked, defines how much of the result is transparent, and how much is visible. Obviously, I could then move the "transparency" layer, in effect revealing, for each frame, a different part of the smoke image. But, its more complicated than even that, in this case - The original idea was just to have the ruins change transparency. I added the smoke so that the ruins being visible, but only the parts exposed "in" the smoke.

So, in actuality, what I am looking to do is this - "Visibility" determines which parts of the "Smoke" can be seen (i.e., whether is fully visible, or invisible), which in turn is applied up/down, or how ever it needs to work, to the "Runes" layer, making the parts covered by smoke, and more opaque, appear over top of the glass. I suppose I could break out Natron for this, but then.. not sure how you go about taking frames and consolidating them into a single image, short of loading them all in to Photoshop, after they are created, then copy and pasting them. I also have no clue how to use Natron, at all, and I definitely do not have, nor can afford, After Effects. lol So, easiest would be to work out how the heck to make this happen with Photoshop, by itself. Just.. I am pretty sure blend mode settings do not include anything that "specifically" effects only transparency. Or, of it does, its not named anything that looks like what I am looking for..

So.. Assuming I explained this well enough.. What would I need to do to manage this?

PS: How, other than using the html tag, like I did, do you keep the forum from eating basic formatting, and rendering your question/explanation one big blob of text?

 

[IamSam]

I may not be understanding, but layer masking can effect transparency.

Here is a smoke layer on top of a black BG.


Here is the smokes transparency being controlled with a layer mask (Plus the Brush Tool).

 

[IamSam]

Hello?

Here are some ruins with a smoke layer set to 'screen' blending mode.


Here, I have placed a mask on the smoke layer and used the Brush Tool (or it could be the gradient tool) to remove the smoke on the path leading to the door.


Am I even close?

 

[Kagehi]

Hmm. Yeah. That is more or less what I am looking for.. Mind.. I am guessing that I need to.. use the mask to determing what part of the smoke is visible, then use the smoke as a new mask on the final result, to get what I want? Your examples are a "one step", just removing part of the smoke, but I am using the smoke itself as a mask, so, but it has "its own" mask, more or less.. Sigh. Let me try to show what I mean with an image - mind, I am going to have to use the program I do know how to do it in to manage. lol

 

[Kagehi]

Oh, and, the point here is that, presuming Photoshop can manage the same thing, I am hoping for a less.. complicated solution. I had to do about 30 steps to get this "demo" result, because the other program doesn't allow you to pick up a layer to use as a mask, there is no straight forward way to marguee a section of non-transparent image (where Photoshop lets you ctrl-click the layer), etc. Even a "small" decrease in complexity when trying to do this would be helpful.

 

[IamSam]

Can you provide the reference image for the glass?

 

[Kagehi]

Uh. Not really. I just took a bluish box, and applied a filter to it, to get something that looked interesting. Also - the glass itself is the only layer "not" effected by anything. Its just "background", over which the effects will be placed. In the final version I plan its just going to be something like a 50% transparent, or something, background, which will be the only "visible" part, when the runes are not themselves visible. You could use a picture of your cat (assuming you have one) for it, or anything else as a stand in. lol

 

[IamSam]

Something like this?

 

[Kagehi]

Sort of.. Actually, it occurs to me I might have over thought things. If I was animating the smoke.. But that isn't practical.. lol So, what I can do is use the smoke as the mask for the runes, merge those to a single layer, then use the visibility thing to mask that, and thus get my result...

 

[Kagehi]

Well, that went.. semi-wrong.. lol Forgot to decouple the mask from the layer, so I could move the mask, made 24 frames, then.. realized I did it wrong. Had to go back and redo it all again the right way. But.. it more or less came out as intended. Though.. Given the resolution limitations I had to work with, the runes didn't quite come at as "clear" as I had wanted. Oh well..

 

[IamSam]

OK, not surprisingly as it happens frequently, we are having trouble communicating, do you know of any existing examples of animations that are even close to what it is your trying to accomplish? I'm referring to an actual working animation.

I know that this will be incredibly simple if we just had example. This is what I was thinking of....



Just to let you know how I'm approaching the problem is to create a starting point and then the animation. Your image above is is very confusing.
Maybe a better way would be for you to post all the layers in the order you would like them to appear, then we will work out how to get them to move.

Start with your base layer, your background, post an image of the actual texture you wish to use. Then repeat the process with the next layers.

 

[Kagehi]

Actually, the last one I posted is the "final" result. Animation in SL, for that image works with this command llSetTextureAnim(ANIM_ON | LOOP, ALL_SIDES, 2, 16, 0, 31, 5); This means - turn it on, loop it, the texture is divided into 32 frames, 2 columns, by 16 rows, and I want you to start with frame 0, end with frame 31, and do 5 frames per second. So, yeah, your example is exactly what I was looking for, just that I needed to, in effect, clip each frame out, and paste them as part of a larger image, before import (it doesn't support things like animated gif). What I got wrong, and had to redo, was that I forgot to de-couple the mask from the layer, so that I could move it independently. So, I was dragging the whole thing across, and after, realized that I was seeing the same runes, all the way across, instead of different ones. Whoops! lol But, I figured it out, in any case. Thanks. Mind you, yours looks a lot cleaner. But then, you where not constrained by the size you could make the frames. I had to, as I said, do 2x16 frames, each 512x64 pixels, so that it would all fit into one 1024x1024 texture.

 

[IamSam]

OK, I'm beyond confused. I thought we were working on a Photoshop problem. Animation in Photoshop and not SL. Your out in left field! But I'm glad you figured it out!

 

[Kagehi]

lol It was a photoshop problem - how to use photoshop to make the animation texture, to import to Second Life. I spent years working with Paintshop Pro, so knew, more or less, how to get what I wanted there, but.. some things, like masks, and the like.. work **very** differently between them. And, I had no clue what the heck I was doing. I thought my problem was more complex that it was, basically. I.e., I thought it was a case of needed to double mask - have a mask effected by a second mask. Well, yes and no. What it turned out to be was masking the runes, once, to get the smoke effect on them, as one step in the process, then using ***that*** result, with another mask, to animate.

If it was a blend option (rather than a mask), I suppose it would be the equivalent of thinking I needed to use two blend layers to get a result that only required one such later, applied over an image, after I ran it through a filter. I was thinking "three layer", when I needed two. Now.. This would have been very, very, different if I had wanted the smoke the move as well. Don't exactly like the result I got much, so.. might end up redoing it like that.

Make the runes more visible, somehow animate smoke, then use a blend layer to "highlight and glow" then instead (actually did that a bit in this one). Though.. I have no idea how to manage animating smoke.. Is there a procedural texture plugin or something you can use, where you can change something in for each frame?

If I was doing 3D, and using POVRay, I could vary one single variable, and since the result is non-random, it would give a smooth transition. But. most noise filters seem to use a purely random function, so there is no consistent change from one use of the filter to the next, to allow you to create an animation with them... Heck, many texture generators have this same issue - instead of being possible to vary one single variable, and have a smooth change in the result, its all random, from one attempt to the next.

 

[IamSam]

Well stated! LOL!! I live in a constant state of confusion interrupted occasionally by moments of clarity....................I'm not having one of those moments now! LOL!

I'm glad you figured it out. Let us know if we can help you with anything else!

 

[dv8_fx]

@Kagehi

Let's start over..... I too, am quite confused here and more than lost .... :banghead:

You need the text to reveal in the animation similar to the ani IamSam created but taking on the texture of smoke .... or with a smokey look to it?



addendum.... and you want the smoke to move within the animation as well......

I'm playing it in my mind..... Kinda tricky but the way I envision the process if I'd try a hand at this...... you have to move the smoke layer upward at a slower pace than that of the gradient mask.

Depending on how tall the mask is as well as your final image height, it might add on to the illusion of smoke movement it creates to add a bit of left and right movement to the smoke as it rises....

And in the frame sequencing, tweening the frames by 1 frame may smoothen out the animation effect......

just my 2 sens....

 

[Kagehi]

Hmm. Well, dv8_fx... I was commenting on how I might redo the result, since I don't quite like it. And, no.. Just moving the layer won't work. What I asked was if there is a plugin, or the like, of some sort that can procedurally generate textures, in a consistent manner, so you can produce animation of something like smoke. Smoke doesn't, in the real world, just drift up, it changes shape, and thickness, etc. Same, for that matter, with fog, or any number of other things. Heck, even simple bozo textures (this is one of the mathematical systems used to generate textures in some renderers) can be animated, because the result is basically non-random and consistent from render to render.

Photoshop's own "clouds" rendering is, for example, ***not*** like this, because its specifically designed to seed the generator differently every single time you generate the clouds. You never get the same pattern twice, and you certainly don't get two renders that are "slightly different". While most of the time this a good thing... in some cases, such as when you want consistent changes, frame to frame, its useless. But.. Guess I could actually fiddle with a real raytrace engine to produce the smoke...

 

[dv8_fx]

What I asked was if there is a plugin, or the like, of some sort that can procedurally generate textures, in a consistent manner, so you can produce animation of something like smoke.

Smoke doesn't, in the real world, just drift up, it changes shape, and thickness, etc. Same, for that matter, with fog, or any number of other things.

Now that we sort of know what you want, we can come up with something better. The above was a sort of simplified (but still complex), off the bat idea...

There is no plug-in that I'm aware of. Unless someone here knows of one.

Like any complex animation, there is work involved....

One option is to look for an animated smoke image. I remember seeing a few sometime back. Open the gif in PS and incorporate the resulting layers into your project. Doing this may require a bit of preparation and "choreography". Examine the animation playback to see if you can either shorten the play to a few frames. But you may not need to if the nnumber of frames correspond to your project. If it's less , just repeat a few frames. Doing the animation of your project could be confusing.... but if you pre-plan the choreography before doing the frames in the timeline, it makes work easy.

Another option is to take a static smoke image.... apply just the right amount of PS's WAVE filter on 3 or 4 duplicates of the image to get the sense of movement and shape shifting that the filter will do. You may need to do a bit of trial and error.

It works this way..... first layer image is the original..... 2nd layer, apply filter to get an initial movement look you want. Use minimal settings to get smaller movement..... 3rd layer and succeeding layers - adjust the settings in increments to get just the right amount of bending and shifting movement.

Here's an example of what I'm saying but using the ZIGZAG filter.... it's discussed in STEP 4.... https://www.photoshopgurus.com/foru...imating-ps-post1533717077.html#post1533717077

 

[IamSam]

Using Ps' video time line, you can create any number of dynamic smoke effects using REAL smoke video! You could break down any smoke video into frames.

If you want real smoke drifting behind the Rune, you can have it. Problem is, after all of this discussion, I still have no feasible understanding of what it is you want.

Please show any examples of the work you have done. Post a psd file....anything.

 

[dv8_fx]

LOL.... poor Sam.....

Let's see if I can come up with a simplified form of what I think he wants..... But I gotta eat dinner first. Can't think on an empty stomach that missed lunch as well........