Graphics

I have a scene that is an L-Bar... to those who don't know, that is basically a side slab and a l3rd bar combined.

Presently, I have the topics on the sidebar advance with pause events. The primary title for the l3rd advances with them too.

BUT - there will be a need to change the content of the L3rd between these shifts in topic, which is where TL comes in.

However, when I try to set it up, going to the next 'page' if you will takes the scene to the last pause point, instead of just changing the text on the L3rd and leaving everything else alone.

Of course I would need that changed text to also be there when the scene was advanced to the next topic as that advance results in the text animating out.

I'm still pretty new to XPression, and have only done a couple of the most basic TL setups, so I feel in a little over my head on this one. I'm sure it CAN be done, as this type of graphic is used all over the place, I just don't know how to make it so.

The only thing coming to mind right now would involve putting each topic transition in it's own scene director, but that for me almost creates more questions than it answers.

I'm under the gun on this, so any advice or help would be HUGELY appreciated.

Thanks in advance

I made a simple, eight button, L-bar for a client before I had much chance to work with Transition Logic. All eight topics were static and highlighted as the show progressed. The problems started when the client showed up to record with a change of topics to be discussed---I had to make the changes to each request. I decided Datalinqing the topics to a delimited text file was the way to go. Yours sounds more complex so you might benefit from that approach.

What if you numerically reference the topics with hidden text fields? Create a scene director that plays the lower third, a scene director that plays the lower third but stays on topicN, and a scene director that plays the lower third and advances from topicN to topicN+1..and so on. Use a check text object condition to decide whether to advance topic or not. Seems like it might be pretty tedious and a lot of scene directors, but workable depending upon the number of topics.

Hope this makes some sense, I'm only just now getting to eat dinner.
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Thanks for your idea... It does indeed seem a bit daunting, and of course the big issue comes from not knowing how many times a L3rd element will need to change while a given topic is highlighted in the side bar. One of my biggest obstacles in trying to figure this out stems from what I can only describe as an absence of documentation on TL.. The in-built help document returns 0 results when searching, and the one video on XPression U, while helpful for getting one's feet wet, only covers the most common-use scenarios, and I am quickly learning that this is some black-belt level TL ninjitsu.

Full disclosure - I know nothing (yet) about the datalinq side of things, as our scenes to date have had that aspect of them sussed out at the client's site by the good folks at Rocket Surgery. I hope to remedy that ignorance however, so I can take fuller advantage of what XPression has to offer.
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Here is a screen grab of the scene, just so you can better visualize what's happening. When the topics to the Left on the side bar advance to the next topic, then all 3 move up, so that the topic in the 3rd box becomes the topic in the second box with the bar highlighted, the previously active topic slides up to the first position with it's image grayed out, and a new image slides up from the bottom to sit in that 3rd position.

When this happens, I have the main text in the L3rd bar area (Currently reads "Flacco sitting out pre-season") scroll up with a new line of text relative to the new topic coming in to replace it.

So far so good, continue points in a single scene director can nail that no problem. The curve-ball comes from them needing to change the text on that L3rd several times before advancing to the next topic. This is where I am hitting a wall, as I simply don't know enough about TL to even intelligently experiment.

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That's pretty cool! You've got to think about what you want to happen and all the scenarios you need to cover.
Making this all in one scene with all the info is probably what seems the most daunting---and it seems daunting to me, too.
The Datalinq part is straightforward enough, build a text file that looks like this
1|Topic One|imageonepath
2|Topic Two|imagetwopath
3|Topic Three|imagethreepath
4|et cetera...
but you can ignore that at first.
In show, the first scene would have the starting lower third and topic/thumbnail. The second scene would be the next lower third with the same topic. Third scene would be next topic with lower third...and so on.
If you break this down to AnimationControllers, it might be easier. An animation controller that slides up the lower third and animation controller(s) that slide up the topic/thumbnails...then you can paste those where you need them in all the scene directors.
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Right - I do have right now separated animation controllers, I've attached a screen shot to show what my scene director currently looks like (It's just the 1 director at the moment).

What I am getting from this is that I would need to create:

- A scene director for the main in (where everything builds on and resolves to topic 1, with relevant text in the L3rd)
- A second scene director that has ONLY the l3rd text advancing while the rest remains in place
- A third scene director that has BOTH the topic and L3rd advancing.

Of course these seem more like categories of directors, it feels like I would need to have multiple instances of each.. like an l3rd advance 1 to 2, and 2 to 3, and 3 to 4, etc up to the maximum amount of 'sub topics' which might occur between the main topic (on the side) advancing, and I would need to have these for every state the the side topic is in. As is, I have built it to have 6 side bar topics, with 5 of them being capable of moving into the center 'highlighted' position. This gives them some headroom above their stated goal of 4 topics per segment, with the idea that a fresh scene instance could be put in the sequencer for each segment of the show.

So, to extrapolate that, I could have.. let's say 5 sub topics per topic, and 5 topics per segment which would mean I would ultimately have 26 scene directors in this one scene? And the big question then comes, how do I trigger one vs the other. The text compare condition in TL seems to rely on text either being there or not, or containing a specific value. Since all of the text will likely be pre-loaded, I am not making the connection on how to put this together.

Calgon, take me away! (dated 80's reference)

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What are the chances of you sharing the scene? Our entire arena is a construction site and I have nothing to do. This could be a good challenge to keep me from flying the drone in the halls.
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I can ask, but I am not sure if they would be cool with me posting it, at least not publicly. I could probably send it to you privately though.
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- A scene director for the main in (where everything builds on and resolves to topic 1, with relevant text in the L3rd)
//Should be pretty basic

- A second scene director that has ONLY the l3rd text advancing while the rest remains in place
//Build the L3 with Transition logic so only the L3 changes

- A third scene director that has BOTH the topic and L3rd advancing.
//Add an event in the L3 to trigger the LBar Scene Director to advance topics

]
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Yes, but tying all of that together with the rules / conditions is where it falls apart for me. For now, I have simply made separate scenes for each one of these that can be setup and loaded in to sequencer easily enough. There is some coordinated management that will be necessary when setting up the show, but since this one XPression element runs for the entire show, I figure said management won't be too crazy. I would still love to find a more elegant solution via TL, but it is what it is for now...
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So, ultimately, I just made a group of scenes consisting of topic advances and l3rd advances, which can be put into the sequencer in the needed order, and played back to back. It does require some additional prep during setup as the operator will need to make certain the last state of scene 1 matches the first state of scene 2 and so forth, but it works...
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