PC go! 1995 July

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ PC go! 1995 July / Image.iso / pcgo / programm / demos / elastic / getstart.txt < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-11-01 | 33.4 KB | 874 lines

Elastic Reality Demo -- Version 1.01 Getting Started Guide Contents: o What is Elastic Reality? o Installation o TransJammer o Tutorials =========================================================================== What is Elastic Reality? Special effects! ---------------- You've got a deep passion for special effects. Perhaps it goes back to childhood when you sat in a theater, popcorn forgotten, horrified by a monster climbing out of a flying saucer. Although you cheer and scream with the rest of the crowd, simple awe and terror aren't enough for you. From the start, you've demanded to know, "How do they do that?" For a select few, that curiosity leads to a career in the business. Many Elastic Reality users create special effects (or "FX") for TV, film, advertising, or commercial design. You don't need to be a professional, however. With a PC running Microsoft Windows(tm), even casual hobbyists can create eye-bulging special effects. Whether you're a weekend dabbler or the industry's senior image wizard, welcome home to Elastic Reality. Your world will never look the same. Morphs, warps, and other ways to stretch the truth -------------------------------------------------- As you probably know, computers have drastically altered the work of the FX artist. Effects that used to require lots of physical hardware and labor now occur in silicon chips at the speed of imagination. The advantage of using a computer for visual effects is that you have total control over an image. After all, to the computer, a picture is just a collection of pixels, individual dots or "picture elements" that correspond to data values in the computer's memory. The computer will happily move those pixels around, change their colors, or obliterate them. In the hands of an imaginative FX artist, computer power can make you doubt your hold on reality. If you watch TV or go to the movies, you've undoubtedly seen lots of computerized special effects. The star of the bunch is the morph, a phantasmagoric effect in which one image gradually transforms into another. You've probably seen morphs of human faces changing into animal faces, people turning into machines, and many other mind-bending effects. Elastic Reality specializes in morphing. With a little practice and coaching from this manual, you'll be able to create morphs that rival the ones you see on TV and film. In fact, you'll be working with the same software that created a lot of those effects. There's lots more to Elastic Reality than morphing, though. Along with morphs, it can create these effects: -- Warps. This effect stretches and distorts an image. For example, you might warp a picture of yourself so you look twenty feet tall. -- Composites. These images are made from parts of other images. Typically, a foreground image appears in front of an unusual background. You might make a composite image of your Aunt Florence standing on the tip of the Eiffel Tower. -- Animation. Elastic Reality can help you create several kinds of animated images. For instance, you can provide two pictures that define the start and end of a motion sequence. Elastic Reality fills in the intermediate frames for smooth movement. -- Mattes. A matte is an image that controls how other images blend together. For example, when a superhero flies across the sky in the movies, a matte places his image against the image of the sky. In fact, when you work with Elastic Reality, it's like having an entire special effects department on your desk. Elastic Reality: Software to transform the world ------------------------------------------------ As the name implies, Elastic Reality warps things. Images and minds, primarily. When you work with an image in Elastic Reality, the image becomes flexible. It's as if the picture was printed on a sheet of rubber. You can stretch it, squeeze it, subtly reshape it, fold it over itself, or transform it into something totally different. The only limits are the boundaries of your creativity. To keep up with your imagination, Elastic Reality offers these features: -- A complete set of drawing tools for defining the parts of an image that change during special effects. -- Powerful matting and compositing tools. -- Advanced automatic "tweening" and key frame tools. -- A Motion/Transparency Editor that lets you define the direction of an object's movement as well as its visibility during an effect. -- Resolution independent input and output. -- Many popular image formats. The Elastic Reality package also includes TransJammer! This powerful tool automates much of the work that normally goes into digital video effects. With TransJammer, anybody, even beginning image wizards, can instantly create professional quality special effects. Just specify the pictures you want to transform and choose an effect. It's never been so easy to produce dazzling images. =========================================================================== Installation System configuration ==================== If you're using Windows 3.1 on your PC, chances are that you can also use Elastic Reality. However, to take full advantage of the features in Elastic Reality, we recommend the following system: Component Recommended Minimum required --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer 100% IBM PC/AT compatible 100% IBM PC/AT or compatible with 80486DX or with 80386 processor Pentium(tm) processor ------------------------------------------------------- Mouse or pen and tablet Mouse ------------------------------------------------------- math co-processor --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Display 24-bit accelerated 16 colors --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Application memory 8 or more megabytes 4 megabytes --------------------------------------------------------------------------- System software Windows 3.1 or later Windows 3.1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hard disk space 12 megabytes 12 megabytes --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although Elastic Reality runs on computers that do not have a math (floating point) co-processor, it runs much more efficiently on those that do. We highly recommend you use Elastic Reality on a computer equipped with a math co-processor. Note: Some computers have built-in floating point units, including 80386 DX/DX2, 80486 DX/DX2/DX4, and the Pentium line of processors. Others may have separate math co-processors (80387 or 80487). Installation ============ Before you install Elastic Reality, make a backup copy of the disks. Then use the copies to install the software. 1. Insert Elastic Reality Disk 1 in the disk drive. Start Windows, if you haven't done so already. 2. In the Program Manager, choose Run from the File menu. If you put Disk 1 in drive A, type a:\setup and press Enter or click the OK button. If you put the disk in a different drive, use that drive letter instead of a:. 3. Select a directory to install the Elastic Reality files and choose the options to install. Enter the name of the path where you want to install Elastic Reality. In most cases, you can use the default path, C:\EREALITY. Change the name of the path if you want to install Elastic Reality somewhere else. While the software installs, complete the registration card. Send in the registration card so you can receive technical support, updates to future versions of Elastic Reality, and news of other related products. 4. Follow the instructions on the screen to install the Elastic Reality package. When installation is finished, you have a new program group called Elastic Reality. The program group includes the Elastic Reality program, TransJammer, and a readme file describing last minute changes to the package. Starting Elastic Reality for the first time =========================================== To start the program, double-click the Elastic Reality icon shown at left. You see the startup screen, then the main window. Navigating the main window ========================== Start at the main window, the Elastic Reality workspace, when you want to create special effects. Use the menu bar to select options that let you open and work with images. Select items from the toolbox to edit images. Use the buttons on the tool bar to control the image you see. To select a menu option, use your mouse to click the menu name. Then click the option you want. You can also press Alt and the underlined letter in the menu name. For example, press Alt+F to choose the File menu. To select a button, use your mouse to click the button. Use the toolbox buttons when you're working with an image. You can also use the following keyboard shortcuts: Button Keys ------------------------------------- Select tool s Reshape tool r Correspondence tool c User edge tool e Zoom tool: zoom in i zoom out o Move tool m Freehand tool f Pen tool p Square tool Shift+S Circle tool Shift+C Getting help ============ For guidance on using this demo version of Elastic Reality, use the on-line help for quick reference to commands, tools, and topics, such as mattes. Use the options in the Help menu or press F1 to get help while you're working with Elastic Reality. About the tutorials =================== This Getting Started guide includes sample tutorials to guide you through using TransJammer and warping and morphing images. =========================================================================== TransJammer Elastic Reality includes a separate application called TransJammer, which provides you with more than thirty digital video transitions. If you want your images to shatter, for example, choose the appropriate TransJammer effect, select your images, and let TransJammer take care of the rest. You can then play the resulting image file, or edit the transition in Elastic Reality to add a new background, for example, or enhance the effect. Experienced users can modify the bundled TransJammer effects or create new ones. This section introduces you to TransJammer, and includes instructions for using it with your images. Selecting an effect ------------------- Start at the Elastic Reality program group. Then you're ready to use TransJammer. 1. Double-click the TransJammer icon. You see the TransJammer window. 2. Select a transition effect. For example, select the transition called SideSlam.er. Check the description for information on how the SideSlam transition is set up, and for tips on doing it yourself. Watch the image in the sample box to see the sample effect. SideSlam uses two images--one remains stationary and the other slides across it from the right, slams and compresses on the left, then springs back to the right. If you don't see a list of effects in the Available Effects list, click the Select Effects Directory button and select the TJ_Projs directory. 3. If you like, select a variation on the effect. Check the Reverse Effect box, for example, to create a side slam transition that switches the image that gets "slammed", but preserves the original starting and ending images. Selecting images ---------------- 1. Click the Select Images button. Depending on the transition you selected, you may need to open one or more images. The transition description advises you what to do. For example, the SideSlam transition requires two images, one on the A-roll and one on the B-roll. 2. In the Sequence Editor, click a roll and choose Insert from the File menu. For example, if your transition needs an image on the A-roll and the B-roll, click the A-roll, and then choose Insert from the File menu. Do the same later for the image on the B-roll. 3. Select an image. Move to the directory containing your images, then choose the one you want. For SideSlam, the image on the A-roll is the stationary image, and the image on the B-roll is the one that slides and slams. The transition description explains how to set up your images for a particular transition. 4. For other images, repeat steps 2 and 3. If your transition uses more than one image, click the appropriate roll, then insert another image. For example, click the B-roll and insert another image. 5. From the File menu, choose Accept. Viewing the results ------------------- Once you select a transition effect and the images you want to use, set the output options and create the transition. 1. Click the Output Options button. You see the Output Options dialog box. 2. Set the output options. You can accept most of these options as they are for now, though you need to select the file type and directory. When you apply a transition to your images, TransJammer creates a file or sequence of files. Select the type of files you want to create. For example, if you create an AVI file, you can play the file as a video in the Windows Media Player or in an application such as Premiere. You can also create a sequence of image files, such as Targa files, and edit them later in Elastic Reality. Select the directory where you want to store the files. Then click OK. 3. Click the Go! button. When you click Go!, TransJammer applies the transition you selected to your images, then creates files and stores them in the directory you specified. All this may take a few minutes. 4. If you saved the transition in Video for Windows format, play the transition with an AVI movie player. =========================================================================== Tutorials If you looked at TransJammer in the previous section, you're probably eager to try some special effects yourself. This section includes tutorials that show you how to warp images--you'll distort them to create particular effects. Then you can play with an image to create your own effects. About warping ============= Warping an image means reshaping it. Create a warp when you want to make a girl's face look surprised by widening the eyes, for example. Warp a picture of a building so it looks futuristic, or a vase so it looks squat. When you warp in Elastic Reality, you start with a single image. Then you create the shapes that describe the distortion--draw a wider outline of a girl's eyes, for example. Set up the rendering and output options and save all this in a project file. Then render the project--rendering transforms the image according to your drawing. Finally, view the warped image to see the results. Let's say you're warping an image of a man so that his smile turns into a grin. The warp--the transformation of the man's smile to a grin--takes place across a series of frames. Think of the warp as a strip of film. Frame 1 is of the man smiling. In frame 2 his mouth and cheeks widen slightly. In frames 3-5, his mouth and cheeks continue to widen. In the final frame, he's grinning from ear to ear. For the tutorials in this section, start Elastic Reality by double-clicking its icon in the Elastic Reality program group. Birthday: A sample warp ======================= In this tutorial, you start with an image of a girl blowing out candles on her birthday cake. You can warp the image so that the girl's cheeks puff out and her eyes narrow as she blows out the candles. 1. Open the project file called Bday1.er. From the File menu, choose Open. Select Bday1.er from the ER_Projs directory. In the Edit window, you see an image of a girl with her birthday cake. We've already outlined the shapes to transform--notice the red curved lines around her face and cheeks. 2. From the Window menu, choose Wireframe Preview. When you choose Wireframe Preview, you see the window illustrated below where you can choose wireframe settings and work with the wireframe image. You may need to move the window so it doesn't obscure the image. The Wireframe view shows you only shapes so you can review the changes you're making. You can check how the image changes before you render. 3. Drag the Frame scroll box from frame 1 to 40. Watch the shape of the girl's cheeks puff out and eyes widen, then return to their original state. 4. Click the Play button, then the Stop button. This plays the entire effect for you. Use the VCR-style buttons in the Wireframe Preview window to preview a series of frames. 5. Close the Wireframe Preview window. Double-click the Control-menu box in the upper left corner of the window. 6. Using the Frame Selector, select frame 24. Drag the scroll box in the Frame Selector until you reach frame 24. This warp is set up to take place over forty frames. The girl's face is the most distorted at about frame 24. If you render frame 24, you see the full effect. 7. From the Render menu, choose Render Preview. This transforms the girl's face. Because you selected frame 24, you see the girl's cheeks bulging and her eyes squinting as she blows out the candles on the cake. 8. Click the "A" roll mode button once to hide the A-roll shapes. This button acts as a toggle, allowing you to show and hide the visible shapes in that particular image roll. To see the results of the rendered preview, temporarily hide the shapes. 9. Click the View Preview button a few times to compare the warped image to the original image. After rendering, you see a preview of the image (notice the View Preview button is pressed). We call it a preview because you can still adjust the image before you save it in a file. 10. Close the project. From the File menu, choose Close. Smile: Another sample warp ========================== The Birthday tutorial showed how to warp parts of a face--this tutorial shows how to warp a whole face so that it's comically distorted. 1. Open the project file called Smile.er. From the File menu, choose Open. Select Smile.er from the ER_Projs directory. In the Edit window, you see an image of a smiling man wearing a suit jacket and tie. Click the "A" button to temporarily hide the shapes on the man's face. 2. From the Window menu, choose Wireframe Preview. In the Edit window, you see the outlines we already drew for different parts of the image--the man's head, ear, eyes, nose, mouth, neck, and one shoulder. These are the shapes you'll distort in the warp. You'll work more with shapes later in this section. 3. Experiment with the Wireframe Preview settings. Click the VCR-style buttons and watch the image. Change the Frame Rate setting, then click the Play button. Select a play style button, then play the effect again. For example, select the play style button with a straight arrow to play the effect once from start to finish. 4. Decide which frame you want to render. As you play the wireframe preview, choose a frame that shows a lot of distortion, such as frame 30. 5. Close the Wireframe Preview window. 6. Use the Frame Selector to choose a frame. Drag the scroll box in the Frame Selector, or click the frame number, type a new number, and then press Enter. Choose the frame you decided on in step 4, one with a lot of distortion, such as frame 30. 7. From the Render menu, choose Render Preview. This distorts the man's smile. You see the man's smile widen to a grin and his eyes bulge out comically. 8. To remove the shape outlines, click the A image roll button. 9. Click the View Preview button to compare the warped image to the original. 10. Close the project. From the File menu, choose Close. Man's face: Your own warp ========================= The Birthday and Smile tutorials showed how to warp images already set up for you. This tutorial shows how to set up your own warp to reduce the size of a man's face. You'll select the image, draw the shapes, join them, and render a frame to create a warp. Creating the shapes to set up the warp -------------------------------------- Once you open the image, draw shapes that define what you want to warp. For this sample, you're making a man's face smaller, so you start by outlining the whole image. Then draw the shape to define the distortion--the smaller area where the man's face appears after warping. This time, you create your own project. 1. Load the image into the Sequence Editor. From the File menu, choose New. Make sure the A-roll is highlighted. From the Sequence Editor menu, choose Insert from the Image menu. Then select Busnsman.jpg from the Images directory. In the Sequence Editor window, you see the man from the last exercise. 2. Accept the image. From the Sequence Editor's File menu, choose Accept. You now see the image in the Edit window. Look for the toolbox on the left side of the window. 3. From the toolbox, click the Square tool. You can also press Shift+S to select the Square tool. 4. Outline most of the image. Start with your pointer in the upper left corner of the image, just outside the lavender background, then drag to outline the whole image. The goal is to make a border around the image. If you make your outline too small or too large, you can resize it. Using the Select tool, click on the square to select it, then grab a handle (a box at each corner of the outline), and drag to resize. 5. Use the Square tool to draw a second shape inside the first one. Make the second shape about one quarter smaller than the first, bordering the man's head, as in the following illustration. This second shape defines the size and position of the man's head after you warp--it should be smaller and centered against the lavender background. Defining shape correspondences ------------------------------ Once you create the shapes in your image, define which shape transforms into another. 1. Click the Select tool and select the larger square. You can also press the s key to use the Select tool. Start with the shape you're transforming from--the whole image at original size, defined by the larger square. 2. Hold down the Shift key and select the smaller square. Select the target shape--how the image appears after the warp. 3. From the Shape menu, choose Join. You can also press j to choose Join. Both squares should now look like dashed lines--that means you've joined the shapes. The source shape has long dashes, whereas the target shape has small dashes. Joining links the two shapes. When you're working with an image on a single roll, the order in which you select shapes defines the beginning shape and the transformed shape. 4. From the toolbox, click the Correspondence tool. You can also press the c key to select the Correspondence tool. You see the two shapes linked by yellow correspondence lines showing the relationship of one shape to the other. The number of correspondence lines indicates how accurately Elastic Reality resolves your shapes. With squares, the correspondence is perfect. With other shapes, such as irregular outlines, the more lines, the smoother the result, but the greater the render time. 5. Press the = (equal) key and the - (hyphen) key to adjust the edge density. The edge density controls the number of correspondence lines between your joined shapes. To increase the edge density, press the = key. To decrease it, press the - key. You can also choose Shape Options from the Window menu to adjust the edge density. Use the scroll bar to set an edge density of 8. The lowest setting is 1 and the highest is 50. Then close the Shape Options window. 6. Click the Select tool to turn off the correspondence lines. Then click outside the image. You can render while displaying the correspondence and joining lines, but you can see the image more clearly if you turn them off by clicking outside the shapes. Previewing the warp ------------------- Now you're ready to render a single frame to see if you've set up the warp to get the effects you want--to reduce the size of the man's face. 1. Use the Frame Selector to move to the final frame. In a warp, the final frame often shows the final result. The intermediate frames show the transformation from the first image to the last. In frame 5, for example, the face is slightly smaller than the original; frame 10 is smaller still. 2. Set the Warp Style to Cookie-Cut. From the Render menu, choose Render Options to display the Render Options dialog box. Set the Warp Style to Cookie-Cut. This mode will cause our square (closed) shape to define the area to cut out of the image. That cut out image will then be warped. Click OK in the Render Options dialog box when done. 3. From the Render menu, choose Render Preview. Elastic Reality renders the frame to warp the image as you defined it. You then see the man's head about one quarter of its original size. 4. View the results. To turn off the outlines, click the A image roll button. Click the View Preview button a few times. When it's pressed, you see the warped image. When it's not, you see the original image. 5. Save the project. From the File menu, choose Save As. Then enter a name for this project file. Use Man.er for this sample project. Quick steps =========== Here's a summary of a complete still image warp--transforming a single image over one or more frames. To create a warp: ----------------- 1. Open the image to warp. 2. Create the shapes that define what you want to transform. 3. Set up the rendering and output options. 4. Select the frame you want to warp. Use the Frame Selector to select a frame--the last frame typically shows the final effect. 5. Render the frame. From the Render menu, choose Render Preview. 6. View the frame and compare it to the original image. Click the View Preview button to switch between the original and the warped image. Working with shapes =================== Use the toolbox in the main window to create and change the shapes that define your warp. Draw squares, for example, to define an area to reduce or enlarge. Trace the outline of a facial feature to transform its shape. After you render a preview, you can adjust the shapes to fine-tune the effect. You can use the sample image of a man's face to practice working with shapes. Make sure the Man.er image with your outlines appears in the Edit window. Then you can adjust the shapes, preview the images, and test out the new effects. Repositioning shapes -------------------- Now you can try something a bit more warped. This sample shows you how to distort a face so that it looks like an image in a convex mirror. 1. Return to the original image of the man's face. Return to frame 1. You may have to click the View Preview button so that it's not selected. Click the A image roll button to see the original image of the man's face with the two squares you drew in the last sample. 2. Select one of the joined shapes. Click away from both shapes, then click on one of them. This ensures that only one shape is currently selected. 3. From the Shape menu, choose Unjoin to unjoin the shapes. Make sure the shapes are no longer joined before you adjust them. You can also press Shift+J to unjoin the shapes. 4. Use the Select tool to resize the larger square so that it's slightly smaller than the other square. Drag one of the larger square's handles to resize it. 5. Position the resized square inside the other square. Use the Select tool to move the square you resized. Grab any part of the square that doesn't have handles. Position and size the square so that the top two sizing handles are outside the man's eyebrows. The bottom border should be just under his mouth. This is the part of the face you want to distort. 6. Join the small square to the larger square. Select the small square, then hold the Shift key and select the large square. From the Shape menu, choose Join. Because you want to enlarge the middle part of the face, start with the small square outlining that part of the face. When you join it to the larger square, you indicate that you want to stretch the outlined features to the proportion of the larger square. 7. Select a frame to warp. Use the Frame Selector to select a frame--probably the final frame. 8. Set the Warp Style back to Linear. Choose Render Options from the Render menu, then set Warp Style to Linear. Click OK when done. 9. From the Render menu, choose Render Preview. This warps the image so you see the strange face illustrated below. You should also click the "A" roll mode button to hide the shapes. 10. Click the View Preview button to switch between the warped image and original image. Reversing the direction of a warp --------------------------------- Now you can try a warp that has the opposite effect of the last warp--this time you'll shrink the face instead of expanding it. You could switch the positions of the squares, but there's an easier way. 1. Unjoin the joined squares. In the original image, select the squares; click the "A" roll mode button if the shapes are currently hidden. Then choose Unjoin from the Shape menu, or press Shift+J. Click outside the image so the squares are not selected. 2. Select the larger square. 3. Hold down the Shift key, then select the smaller square. 4. From the Shape menu, choose Join to join the two squares. 5. Select the frame you want to render. Let's stay at the same frame--30. 6. From the Render menu, choose Render Preview. This distorted image shows a man with a tiny face on top of a distorted body. Hide the shapes from view to get a better look at the results. Both shapes are the same size and in the same position as in the first distortion. This time, however, joining the larger square to the smaller one means that you want to shrink the outlined features of the larger square to the proportion of the smaller one. Using barriers -------------- That last image was really warped, maybe more so than you want. Click the View Preview button a few times and watch what happens to the man's body--it adjusts to match the new dimensions of the face, but doesn't keep its own proportions. You can control this effect by using barriers. Use a barrier with the man's face to keep his hair tacked down while his face changes. Before you work through the tutorial below, close the current project. 1. Open the Hair.er project. From the File menu, choose Open. Select Hair.er from the ER_Projs directory. You see the man's face again, outlined this time with three ovals. 2. Join the two inner ovals. The middle and inner ovals are currently joined. We need to join them in the opposite direction--from inner to middle. Using the Select tool, select either oval and choose Unjoin from the Shape menu. Next, click the inner oval, then hold down the Shift key and select the middle oval. From the Shape menu, choose Join. This means you're warping the face from the proportions of the small oval to the proportions of the middle oval. The outer oval serves as a barrier, preventing distortion to the rest of the head: his hair, ears, neck, and shoulders. 3. Select frame 12 to render. 4. From the Render menu, choose Render Preview. You see the warped image below, with the area beyond the barrier shape remaining undistorted. Suggestions for experimentation ------------------------------- Now that you've created a few warps, you might want to experiment. Try the following exercises: -- In the image of the man's head, resize the ovals then move them around. Render the final frame. -- Use both square and oval shapes with and without a barrier, then render. -- Overlap one or more shapes, then render. Move one shape outside of another, and then render. ===========================================================================