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nan · Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:11 pm Post subject: Testing 3DTime Photo Mosaic

The following video is a test of 3DTime's new photo mosaic package. 3 styles are used in this video: MosaicPS0001, MosaicPS0002 and MosaicPS0004. I tried different settings for different mosaic effects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoabSTQER50

It would be nicer if the speed of photo to text zooming effect could be slowed down a little bit. Using video editing software to slow down the effect definitely drags the quality down.

Bill Smith · Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:35 pm Post subject:

Thanks for sharing this with us. I for one appreciated the titles telling us what you would then be showing us next.

I always say that "all brides are beautiful", and so was this young lady.
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Bill

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oldsoul · Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:21 pm Post subject:

It seemed to me that the zooming was not smooth/even - can this be controlled? Or is that inherent in the mosaic effect?

nan · Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:34 pm Post subject:

You are correct that 3DTime's mosaic zooming is not an even speed motion. It has acceleration, starts from a slower speed and accelerate to full speed in the middle and then slow down at the end to give more time to show full size photo. This acceleration is controlled by the "Speed" factor in the Photo tab.

I did have a sort of impression of the "choppy annimation" when I first use the mosaic templet, especially for the zooming out effect. I have dicussed this issue with 3DTime and some of my friends in the field of video animation. It turns out that our eyes fool us. They are smooth but the square edges in zooming give us the illusion of bumping. just take a look at some mosais animation made by other software:

By After Effect

By Apple's Leopard

By the way, at the end of the video (the last section), I used Vegas to slow down the animation because I do not want to spend more time to recapture the video in a slower speed. It turns out that the lazy fix is not good. The annimation is a little bit choppy becuase of the video stretching in Vegas.

vellestudio · Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:40 pm Post subject:

nan, in your first link, do you know for what reason they provide this only in terms of service while they offer other ae animation in templates? sorry if the question is irrelevant.

nan · Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:29 am Post subject:

I just started learning to use AE and I cannot answer your question. Maybe Frogprintz , Alex Talis or Mufasaxx can.

I suspect, however, if the AE template were created, it would not be that easy to use. This is the reason I guess why they provide service only.

Alex Talis · Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 2:38 pm Post subject:

AE does not offer template to create mosaic effect.
It actually takes two separate programs to produce this type of effect.
First program, creates the actual mosaic file.
Second program (AE) imports that file that was created by the first program and creates an animation that you see on the website.
Very first time that I attempted to create it, took about two hours. Now I can create this effect in about 10 - 15 minutes.

AE will give you much, much more control, and freedom to create simple or a lot more complex effects then mosaic but it takes time and experience to work with Adobe AE.

What 3DTime had created is PERFECT for a simple and a good looking effect that will draw WOWs from your audience anyway and you do not have to spend a lot of time and money to learn the complexity of AE environment.

Best wishes and season greetings.

mufasaxx · Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 2:53 pm Post subject:

As far as Photo Mosaics go "Alex Talis" use to have a link posted to one of his Photo Mosaics created with After Effects and I must say it was the best example of an animated "Photo Mosaic". I've seen.

The templates "3D Times" have created are pretty nice, however, unless I'm missing something I haven't seen an example of an image created from a collection photos where one tile could be zoomed into or out of from the image.

Like Nan I'm Just getting my feet wet with AE, but I haven't had much time to play around with it yet.

Maybe Alex will provide a link to his example again I can't recall if he called it a Photo Montage or Mosaic but the effect was awesome.

Frogprintz · Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 6:43 pm Post subject:

Nothing more to add.

AE is a fairly complex and expensive product to use. The learning curve is steep. However, if you spend the time and effort, the results can be very satisfying. From my observations over the past years, most 3D-Album users want something simple and quick. 3D-times products give you this.

Let me encourage everyone else to continue broadening your tool base and depth of knowledge. Any time spent with the Adobe library of software, is time well spent.
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FrogPrintz Productions
Authorized Resellers of 3D Album

Alex Talis · Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 10:37 am Post subject:

Here are couple of AE examples:

First Example:

Steadi control of the speed and motion, and the opacity control where the effect starts as a mosaic and completes as a normal photo.

http://uondvd.com//v_demo/video/trailer/MOSAIC_EFFECT.wmv

Second example:

My second example is a raw AVI file where the entire photo segment was completed with After Effects. A complex effect that when finished took almost 9 hours to render.

http://uondvd.com//v_demo/video/trailer/REFLECTIONS_EFFECT.wmv

vellestudio · Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 3:16 pm Post subject:

wow! thank you all so much! i cannot agree more that 3dtime's templates have a simple and quick solution while ae gives you more power and flexibilty. if i can do a similar effect in 3d-album, i will use it because it saves me a lot of time - i really mean, a lot.

mufasaxx · Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 9:50 pm Post subject:

Alex,

Thanks ffor posting the examples. I saved them to my HD for later reference when I learn AE until then I'll continue to use 3D Times for most of my projects involving stills.

To be truthful the way 3DTimes continues to improved their products and my lack of time it may be awhile before I actually dig into AE, but it's always nice to see excellent work and to say to yourself "one of these days I'm going to do that."

Thanks again!

Alex Talis · Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:23 am Post subject:

Here are two more animations sometimes we doing, just for fun.

http://uondvd.com//v_demo/video/trailer/PHOTO_PILE.wmv

http://uondvd.com//v_demo/video/trailer/PHOTO_BLINK.wmv

3DTimes is one of the better programs to produce quick eye catching effects in the quickest turnaround time possible.

Any animator will tell you, it's just feels better when you can actually produce the effect as appose to a template method.
I also could not agree more with Mufasaxx that 3DTimes continues to improved their products.

Best regards
Happy Holidays and Happy Animating

Alex Talis · Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 8:08 pm Post subject:

Another very powerful example of After Effects motion control that I just experimented with. Combining it with the other 3DTime should make it interesting presentation.

http://uondvd.com//v_demo/video/trailer/Around_Around.wmv

KatN · Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 8:03 am Post subject:

Very nice Alex! I meant to comment sooner on the previous examples as well. Thanks for sharing!