Animation introduces an artifact, also how do I up the resolution on the final frame?

[JustKen]

Hi all, my first post to the forums.

I'm working on an animated logo for my wife's company, and I've got one problem and one question. My problem is this: If you open the attached file and preview it, you'll see a thin yellow nearly-horizontal line that isn't in any of the component frames. The line also appears if the animation is exported and viewed in a browser. Any ideas of how to get rid of it?

And my question is, I'd like the last frame to be at the high resolution of the original non-animated logo, instead of the jagged one you see now. Can I do this in the Flash file itself, or should I use a web scripting language like PHP to replace the animation with the high-rez logo after it runs?

Thanks for your help!

[xtom]

I think you might be looking at it in low quality in the browser/preview. Right click on it in the preview/browser and change quality to high if it isn't already.

[Soquili]

Hi Ken,

I cannot see the yellow line you mention. Have you checked the animation by viewing it on another computer?

The capitol letter R does seem to be rough. Is the letter from a font or did you create it? You might try adding more nodes to help smooth the Flash version.

[JustKen]

Hi Bill and xTom,

I'm in high resolution already. I've tried the animation on my Dell laptop and on my HP desktop, and both of them have the same problem. The line goes through the "hole" in the e and the g. I'll get someone to try it on a Mac. It's encouraging to hear that you don't see the line, xTom. It seems to get worse each time I run it (and it's there no matter what frame I delete).

The logo text is font-based, though it's not native Xara. If you look at the individual frames, the logo is nice and smooth.

[Soquili]

The reason I asked about the font is in outline view there are lines that would not normally be included in a font.

Are the yellow lines you mentioned in line with the lines shown in my attachment?

[xtom]

Oh sorry, I see the line now in high quality too, I didn't notice it before (low quality made it more obvious). You have a ton of shapes making up the yellow hoops, if you could simplify them using less shapes and groups it would most likely sort it out.

Edit: I see what you mean about the jagged shapes too. If you right click and zoom in on it in the browser preview the letters seem to be made of straight lines. I tried copying one of the letter shapes into a new animation file and it previewed nice and smooth. So there seems to be a lot of problems with your current animation file, I don't know why it's doing that but my suggestion would be to copy the shapes out and create a new simpler, cleaner animation file from scratch.

[JustKen]

Beauty! Thanks, xtom.

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics Just Ken

I suspect the original logo was done in Illustrator or perhaps was an EPS file and has suffered greatly in the translation.

The attached image shows the two rings un-grouped, about 87 objects. And the way the type has been broken also suggests Illustrator.

I un-grouped both and used Arrange > Combine Shapes > Add Shapes to create a single outline for each. But even so, when I add an outline to the text there is a lot of very weird stuff going on and this is what is making the objects look so ragged.

When I look at the outline of the text at 1000% zoom I see some odd nodes that may be causing the rough outline.

If possible, I would try to recreate the logo. The font is Souvenir Demi and is fairly common, SouvenirDemibold. The X is usable as is.

And there is a diagonal line that appears in your Animation file. It appears to be a path for your rings and is unnecessary.

[JustKen]

Thanks for your help, gwpriester. I worked at simplifying the design as well: looks like I took the same steps as you, even down to using a font recognition service! I redrew the rings as simple ellipses, the company name as plain text over a white copy, and re-animated the whole thing (the diagonal line is just a register mark for the animation). The result is much improved.

[gwpriester]

Is this the new file? The text is still grouped and the animation still looks a bit rough.