Graphics

I've got an L3 that uses an 'in' Scene Director to animate in. I want it to stay online for 7 seconds, then fade out. This used to play out in reverse with an 'out' scene director but was taking too long. I discovered that by removing the 'out' scene director from transition logic, the Take ID would respect the transition settings from the sequencer. However, I also want the 7 sec timer and to automate the fade out afterward.

When I add a pause and 'resume in x frames' event in the 'in' scene director, the pause/resume works, but how do I trigger a fade-out after that? If I insert a 'take offline' event immediate after the pause, I don't get the fade out - it cuts out immediately. I could create a new 'out' scene director that fades out, but our L3 (and the many flavors of it) wasn't built with a top-level container, so I can't just animate one keyframe to reduce alpha of the entire to zero - I'd have to do it for every object in the scene - way too complex for this (and annoying).

I'd rather use an 'out' scene director than the sequencer transition settings so it's baked into the scene and so we can set up proper B2B transition logic between L3s. However, I don't want to have to rebuild our L3 scenes just to have a single object that I can alpha to zero to create a simple fade out anim controller. Isn't there a simpler way to accomplish this? I'm guessing scripting something is an option (in the 'set offline' event?), but I'd be surprised if it's the only option to accomplish something that seems relatively simple (animate in, hold, fade out).

Edit: Is there some event/command/way of fading out after pause in the 'in' scene director to keep it simple? It's unlikely we'd use B2B transition logic as this is specifically for name/title L3s and we'd typically only have one at a time on air (and separate scenes for multiple titles). But you never know...

What's stopping you from keyed an alpha ramp of a group object containing all of your elements timed exactly when and where you want after advancing past the pause?
#XPression

Only the fact that we'd have to add the group, nest the existing objects, and reposition all the objects relative to each other once they're children of the group. That's what I was going to do but all the positions got messed up. They were built by someone else who was also new at Xpression. Also, having to do it this way means building every single object this way that doesn't have its own explicit in/out animation - which has to be done at design time. Not the simplest overall solution...

Is there an object I can nest them inside without it resetting all relative locations?
#XPression

It sounds like you have top-level objects animated, or un-nested layer objects. In either case, make a group right under the parent, or the layer object, zero it out, take back outside the hierarchy and nest the group or layer you just zeroed to under that. Then you can create a new default group, and nest all of those underneath it, and everything will stay put.

You said - Also, having to do it this way means building every single object this way that doesn't have its own explicit in/out animation - that's not true, unless I am missing exactly what you mean by this, but if you follow the steps above, that one main group object will fade the entire element out, regardless of what else may or may not be going on with the child objects.

Alternatively, you could keyframe an alpha ramp for one object, and then link the alpha properties to the other 'parents' with visual logic. This way, you're still working with a single set of keys, and if you put it on its own animation controller, it will be easier to re-time if you need to finesse.

A third option would be to bring back the 'reverse' out move by setting the pause event to play in reverse upon a continue, but have it do so at 2x speed (or faster if needed), as this might mitigate the original issue you had with it
#XPression

You're correct - there are multiple top-level objects and groups, but not one single 'parent' I can alpha out to get everything. By 'every object' I should have said every scene, not every object in a scene. :)

Thanks - this is helpful, if not exactly what I was hoping for. I'll try the first method and unless I learn some new method, we'll build all future scenes with a parent group for this purpose. Grrr...
#XPression

You know that in the take item settings you can set an entire scene to fade out whenever it goes offline right?

Also if you want to do this to a number of scenes you can set a blank scene to have a fade on, on the same layer and just trigger that when you want a fade out. Since it works like a "silent" scene you effectively get a fade-out effect.
#XPression

Thanks for the post. I know you can do that in the sequencer and was hoping to use that, but the 'Take Offline' event in the SceneDirector, which I need after the pause event to automate the offline, doesn't respect the sequencer transition (From my original post: "If I insert a 'take offline' event immediate after the pause, I don't get the fade out - it cuts out immediately.") Don't know why this doesn't work and was hoping to hear a solution with this post.

I did get it working by creating a top level group and putting everything in that, then keyframing its alpha channel out, but a) I have to do that for every L3 scene we have, and b) if we ever want to change the timing, we have to adjust keyframes - not the most intuitive method for inexperienced XPN users (volunteers).

The 'fade' scene is interesting - I wonder if I could do that by referencing a SceneDirector/AnimController with an event and automate that too - as long as we keep our L3s on the same FB & layer. Makes playout a little more complex but if it's fully automated... will try this out as an alternate.

But I am curious why the 'Take Offline' event in the scene director doesn't respect the sequencer transition setting when there is no 'Out' transition logic SD selected - that would have been the most intuitive and simple to change on the fly, in my most humble opinion. Still time for putting that in v8? :)
#XPression

V8 is already in testing for release.

The Take Offline is actually a trigger to clear the frame buffer, perhaps it's named wrong but that is what it does.

Perhaps you could try using a Scene Trigger Event to trigger the out scene director instead?
#XPression

Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing, with a new scene that keyframes out the alpha channel on the new top-level group I'm adding to all our L3 scenes. Thanks.
#XPression