Part animations?

[Stewart]

Is it possible to select a word 'within' a sentence or block of text that animates in 3d4? I know you can make a couple of separate gifs, one animated one not, but then you have the job of combining the two; better one gif with one background. Like the banner for X3D above.

I've had a try but can't, and if it won't, won't this be a useful addition for an upgrade?

Regards
Stewart

[Stewart]

Is it possible to select a word 'within' a sentence or block of text that animates in 3d4? I know you can make a couple of separate gifs, one animated one not, but then you have the job of combining the two; better one gif with one background. Like the banner for X3D above.

I've had a try but can't, and if it won't, won't this be a useful addition for an upgrade?

Regards
Stewart

[gwpriester]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> I've had a try but can't, and if it won't, won't this be a useful addition for an upgrade? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Perhaps. But probably not. Because it is much easier to add the animation to the text in Xara X.

Place your text and background on the first frame (without your animation) and set the frame properties to Background. And set the frame duration to 0 seconds.

Create your animation in Xara 3D.

Import your animation into Xara X in the Animation window.

Xara will import the animation and all its frames.

Match up the two.

Export your animation.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Every So Humble...

[Egg Bramhill]

Stewart

nullI believe Gary and I are saying the same thing. I would'nt have placed the background into Xara 3D except I was attempting to find the problems.

I don't think that it is possible in Xara 3D4 alone (not easily anyway). Not as the Xara 3D logo above anyway. The main problem is Xara 3D always places the animation in the middle of the screen. On the above logo the animated text is on the left (disregarding the "click here" text).

So even if you produce a static text bitmap for the background, and do the animation above this, when it comes to exporting you will have an animation with the animated text centred.

I attach an animation that was produced in Xara 3D4 using a fixed text background bitmap and animated text, but I had to import it into Xara X to clip the unwanted sections from the left of the animation.

There is also the issue of file size to consider, but having said this, I don't know if it's Xara X's enhanced gif export features but file size did'nt seem to be as much of an issue as I expected.

Finally, you could do the animated text with a series of small black coloured full stops on the right hand side I suppose to gat the required text across to the left, but again this would only work with text in a "swing 2" mode.

Having said all this I'm sure someone will come along and prove me wrong, which is whats great about this forum.

Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

This one was done completely in Xara 3D. I used the method mentioned above, ie with small full stops, coloured black with a matt finish.

I would'nt recommend it as the best way tho.
Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

This is another done entirely in Xara 3D. This time I used spaces instead of fullstops and only included a full stop at the end of the spaces. One thing I did'nt realise is you can give individual letters a gloss or matt finish.
You have to be a bit carefull in placing the background texture otherwise the full stop passes over it
Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

This one, including the background texture, was completely done in Xara3D

[Stewart]

Thx Gary and Egg

I have now had a fiddle and see how its done, but its still a bit round the houses for a relative newbie to XARA X.

The probelm i see with using XARA X is the finished file size, still a bit big to be really useful, unless you are trying out the new enhanced animation filters Gary?

Anyway I am getting my head round it and would like to thank you both and say you have too much time on your hands Egg! LOL

Regards
Stewart

[gwpriester]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> The probelm i see with using XARA X is the finished file size, still a bit big to be really useful, unless you are trying out the new enhanced animation filters Gary? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, yes the size can get quite large when you create a GIF animation. There are tradeoffs. If you use a 16-color palette, the size will be smaller than if you use 256 colors. Dithering produces cleaner transistions, but much larger file sizes.

More frames make larger file sizes.

You need to experiment and find the right combination.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Every So Humble...