Electric Image Animation System 7 Tutorials
Texturing / Stacking Textures
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Subtitles of the Movie (Electric Image Animation System 7 / Texturing / Stacking Textures)
Let's finish off the Texture Window before we dissect the Material Window. We'll skip around a bit and click on Special. Currently there are no Special options. The Special tab is reserved for Textures or Shaders that have additional controls beyond normal texturing. We'll see how that comes into play in a bit. Click on Image and we see options very similar to those in the Lights Projection tab. This particular image has an Alpha Channel so you see a small color image in the RGB box and a small grayscale image in the Alpha box. The Info box contains information about the file and you can replace the file here if you don't want to go back to the Material Window. Also, we have Cropping controls which we're already familiar with. Change the View to RGB or Alpha and you can Crop the image by dragging a Selection box, or you can enter values in these fields. We'll set it back to No Crop. Let's go ahead and replace the image with a video or an animation. Here's one. This animation has an Alpha Channel, too. Also, we have Time Controls as we've seen before: Start Frame, Speed, what to do after the last frame of the texture animation. Let's undo that replace file and get back to our clown. Next is the Filter tab. The check boxes on the left are familiar to us because we saw most of them in our Light's Projection tab. EI blurs the Texture image slightly to stifle any chatter in the image when it's animating. You can also set a Blur value higher than 1 to create a Blur effect. The last checkbox is important. Negative Z refers to how the image is projected onto the model. With our cube model and a Texture aligned to the middle we can see that it does cover the face of the cube. This is because the image is projected forward along the Z-axis and backward, or a Negative Z projection. If I turn Negative Z option off, then the Texture only projects in one direction and we no longer see the image on the front face. I'll turn back on Negative Z and we'll get our Texture back on the front of the cube. Falloff is seldom used and it's probably best used on a plane if you're going to use it. Here's an image that's already been rendered. Starting from the center of the model a Falloff value will fade out the Texture toward its edges. The field's values are in World Units except a value of zero, which means no falloff. Just leave the Falloff values set to zero unless you want this kind of fade. Strength is basically the opacity of the Map. Full opacity is a value of 1 down to zero and it's no longer visible. Skip down to Use as value, which takes the luminance of the RGB or grayscale image and applies it to whatever material attribute you're editing. For any normally color attribute, like Diffuse or a Reflection, use this value will convert the color of your image into a luminance value, basically turning it into grayscale. And Invert flips the values around the color wheel just like we saw in the Projection Gel lesson. Let's take a look at the Texture list. This model has another Texture applied called grid.img, but it's turned Off. Let's turn it on and open its Texture Window. This Grid image has an Alpha Channel. Wherever you see Y in the Alpha, that portion of the image may be revealed. You have the option to pick between using only the RGB or only the Alpha, or using both where the Alpha Channel masks, or reveals, the RGB color. Using the Alpha to mask the color is also known as Decal Mode. Let's choose Use as Mask. Now we see in the Camera Window the red grid. Let's render a Snapshot. And we have the red grid on top of the clown box. If I go back and invert the Alpha here and render, now we have the Cyan color revealed instead of the red. Let's click off Invert. At the bottom we have Blend Mode. This is a very cool feature. This is the same as Transfer Modes in After Effects or Photoshop. The Blend Mode popup shows the usual type of Blends, like Screen or Hard Light. Let's switch it to Difference and render. Now we see the red grid differenced over the clown box. If I change the option to Use only RGB, or Ignore Alpha and render it, then the entire red in Cyan Texture is applied and overlayed in Difference Mode on top of the clown Texture. Let's set it to Screen and render. Finally, let's talk about the stacking order of your Textures. The topmost Texture will be closest to the camera. In other words, EI calculates the Texture stack of images from the bottom up, so whatever image is on top of the list will appear to be on top of the images below. You can reorder the stack by dragging the name of a Texture and placing it lower. Now grid.img is below the clown Texture. Let's render a Snapshot. And now we don't see the front of the grid at all. It is covered by the clown Texture. We're not using the clown Texture's Alpha Channel, so there's no way to see through it with a normal Blend Mode. Let's open its Texture here and change its Blend Mode to Screen and render it. Now the clown Texture is blended with the grid.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Electric Image Animation System 7 |
| Author: | Scott Simmons |
| SKU: | 33996 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-45-9 |
| Release Date: | 2009-06-01 |
| Duration: | 8 hrs / 102 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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