Layer Mask Function ?

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Vidi, you can create simple swf's in Xara which can be used possibly for import into CTA.

Here's an example. It doesn't use a mask, the eyes are just holes under which is an eyball and then under that a blue background.

If you want to see if this imports into CTA open the vidi.xar file and export the flash animation as a swf. The vidi-construction.xar is just to better explain how it's done.

[pauland]

Egg, that's a nice try but it's not going to work with Reallusion.

Reallusion is essentially a puppet type system working with a set of different components to form a puppet that Reallusion can animate as a figure.
For the eyes it expects an eye shape which includes a pupil. The pupil must be a Flash MovieClip named pupil.

When the pupil is moved Reallusion expects that the pupil won't be seen outside of the eye shape because it will be inside a mask layer which will clip any part that is outside of the shape.

You will see that in the video that Vidi provided, that the movement of the pupil wasn't direct with the mouse on the pupil - the pupil followed the mouse position - that's because the Reallusion editor was moving the pupil MovieClip.

The system needs to work with single components and can't rely on a head to be placed over the eye to hide the pupil overspill.

Looking inside Flash at the swf that you made, none of the constituent parts are MovieClips, or named, so besides the absence of the mask layer, Reallusion would be unable to move the pupil.

A good attempt, but sadly it won't be usable with Reallusion.

[wizard509]

So what do you think the solution is? A full blown 3D program such as Blender?

[pauland]

No!

Reallusion expects a Flash swf with certain elements in place. Flash is the natural software for this, or a graphics program that can create the required elements in exactly the same way as Flash.

This has nothing to so with 3D. Reallusion is a 2.5D program.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Paul, thanks for the clarification. Never used CTA but as a matter of interest I d/l'd the trial version. Unfortunatly as you state Xara swf's aren't up to inclusion here. You can name all the relevant parts and apply a clip view which looks promising but CTA is unable to move "Pupil" around within the clipview. Of course it's simple to do in Flash but as Vidi say's he was hoping to do it in Xara. Xara's Flash is very limited and unforrtunately can't even get one swf file to load another swf file.

[wizard509]

Hope you don't mind Egg but I edited your post and this is what I came up with, did it differently than you, I cut out the eyes and used that shape to cut out the whites of the eyes and paisted it back in and put it to back then added the other parts of the eyes and moved them back then animated. Of course the eyes cannot follow the mouse pointer around and the pupils are fixed to the iris's as is the white reflection. The white reflections could possibly have been dealt with but I didn't.

vidi rev.swf

[pauland]

That is a scary eye movement, Larry!