Graphics

Hello folks, first timer here and finally got my stubborn self to just sit down and type out what I'm trying to do here because I just can't make any sense of it. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong or going about it the wrong way, so hopefully you guys can point me in the right direction.

Here's the scene: A lower third animates in the scene natively (In After Effects I have animated it in) and it has a loop point at 150 frames. I have stripped out each element needed for the lower third;

The lower third background

A strip of black for the second line of text

The Logo (there are two versions, one for news and one for weather)

Now in the scene director, I have placed the materials containing these elements in their own track and placed an event to where it starts the loop point at 150 Frames, and then I have a Stagger Animation that fades the text in. I have called this scene director my "LWR IN". Now, I have created another scene director, took all of the elements, reversed the video and cut it to where it just starts to animate out, along with another stagger animation that animates the text out and then named this scene director "LWR OUT".

So, I go to the scenes' Transition Logic and add a new rule: LWR IN/OUT and under "If Rule Is True:", I have selected "LWR IN" for the In: and "LWR OUT" for the Out:. Alas, it does not play right. Is there an alternative way for me to go about this or should I just simply fade the lower third off? Please keep in mind, I am very new to this program (A little over 2 weeks), so go easy on me haha.

Can you upload the XPP to dropbox for me to take a look Phillip? I might be able to give you some suggestions.

You aren't going to be able to get a clean animation out however as the video would need to cut from wherever it currently is in the loop to the beginning of the out animation.

For the transition logic, "In" Scene director; you should not have a loop event on that scene director as that will stop the transition logic from completing and it will never actually think it has finished putting the graphic online. The IN scene director should just contain the In animation. If you want a looping video or something you would want to put that in the Main Scene director with a loop point there. I'm not really sure you'll be able to get it working exactly as you imagine, as the Transition Logic capabilities are built more around doing the animations inside of XPression rather than using 3 point looping video clips; but I can try playing with what you've got to see if it can be made to work.

#XPression

Phillip,

Brian Ford has helped me out quite a lot, so if he can make a solution to your problem it will do it. I had a somewhat similar issue crop up and thought you might take a similar approach. I needed to transition from a lower third headline to a bite font on a higher layer---my designer suggested using a separate Take ID with the transition effect only. A script I found here (probably from Brian Ford, by the way) made it work.

On my primary scene director, at frame 70, I inserted a pause. At frame 71, a script event with the following script:

Dim MySequencer as xpSequencer = nothing

MySequencer = Engine.Sequencer

Dim MyTakeItem as xpTakeItem = nothing

MySequencer.GetTakeItemByID(1235, MyTakeItem)

MyTakeItem.Execute()

Now in the Keyframe Editor, you would want a series of keyframes to zero the alpha values of the objects you want to clear after your pause is released. Timing of this might be tricky, but quite doable.

Back on the primary scene director, at frame 91, a TakeOffline event.

If you take your animation back to AfterEffects and reverse it, trim it down to just the effect and make a dissolve up to what is now the head, this should work as your transition Take ID.

If you loop the video on a secondary scene director, with a Jump to frame event, you should be close.

I failed at attaching images here to support my description, but I could email you that if it would help.

James.

#XPression

Thanks James. I don't know if you've seen it, and I'm sure others haven't so I'll mention it here. XPression version 6.0 has a new "Transition Logic" feature built in.

Here is a basic video on it: http://www.rossvideo.com/graphics-system/xpression/xpression-u/video-tutorial-109.html

#XPression

Thanks everyone for the tips, I figured I was going about this the wrong way and continued to work on trying to go around the problem. I figured I'd have to make a looping scene director and a scene director with just the animation coming in, and then have it trigger the looping scene director. I'm working on animating the elements out for each scene and I'll let you know where I get from there. I've been trying to refer to that tutorial, Brian, and there are what seems to be basic functions that I'm not sure how to do (like turn off the BG for the "Update In" transition logic. I would've liked to see how he built that, maybe even provide that project to refer to. That would be great! haha

#XPression

To turn off the BG on the update IN, you can click the checkbox "Render animated objects only" when you set the Update In transition; or you can set the alpha of the BG to zero on the first keyframe of the Update In Scene director.

I can try to find a sample project similar to the one in the video and post it later.

#XPression