Blufftitler rotation ?

[Jim Adams Profile Private message]

Does anyone familiar with Blufftitler know how to move the axis of rotation away from the center ? No matter where I move my image to (however skewed) the rotation is in the middle. I contacted Blufftitler support and they sent me a link for a door opening video.

http://www.outerspace-software.com/gall ... icleID=219

Only members can view and I am not interested in purchasing if it will not do what I want.

Jim

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Jim, I just downloaded the file and will take a look at it. I'm a rank amateur with BluffTitler, but if I figure this out, I'll let you know. More than likely, one of the people here on the forum who are much more adept at using the program will tell you how it's done.

Barbara

[heckydog Profile Private message]

You need to change the center point or point of rotation of the picture.

In the first picture below you can see the center point of rotation roughly in the middle of the door
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/4845 ... 135yf3.jpg

In this picture I've moved the door over so the point of rotation is at the edge of the door
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/7125 ... 516es2.jpg

If you wanted have it spin along the top corner for example you could expand the canvas size so the center point is located directly on a corner.

Once you save it as a png or tga (BT doesn't accept tif's) with a transparent background all you will see is the door and not the canvas that it's on. Since BT works in 3D mode you can move the door in the X, Y, and Z axis.

Joe

PS Version 7.24 has been released and it's free, as usual, to paid subscribers

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Joe, I downloaded the file too, and you've jumpstarted me on figuring out how it was done. Thank you for taking the time to post the pictures.

Now off to download the newest version.

Barbara

EDIT: How did you place the rotation points? I just looked all over the place in BT and couldn't find out how to do it.

[dilyla Profile Private messageWebsite]

Barbara-

Actually, the center rotation point doesn't move, the positioning/size of the graphic (in this case, the door.png) is what gets manipulated. Notice the positioning (not the rotation) change of the png file in Blufftitler when it's played.

In this example, the center point of the left graphic is enlarged/shifted to align on the left side of the visible canvas, and vice versa for the right. Then the rotation is either 90 or -90 depending on what side is opening, with perspective added to obtain the effect.

Please jump in here & correct me if I'm mistaken, Oh Great Blufftitler Guru (Joe )

- Diana

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Diana, that's exactly what I thought too, and when I played around with some of my own stuff, all it took was sliding the graphic over so the edge of the screen was in the center of the graphic, but Joe had that little mark showing a moved axis.

Joe, you'd better get on over here and explain yourself!

Barbara

[dilyla Profile Private messageWebsite]

No (or would that be, yes?), you're doing it the right way (like Joe depicted)... take a look at Joe's graphic again. The center point (depicted by the little circle) did not move.

Note the door is centered in the canvas in his Picture #1. The door is aligned/shifted to the right in Picture #2. The center point of the canvas didn't move.

As Joe pointed out, if you want it to rotate from the top right corner, you simply enlarge the canvas & position the graphic to align its top right corner to the center point.

- Diana

[heckydog Profile Private message]

As it relates to BluffTitler, the axis of rotation is always the center of the canvas. In a program like After Effects for example you can change the Anchor Point. The same is true for Hollywood FX in case you're familiar with that program. But for BT it's not moveable, at least not yet.

My sample showed moving the edge of the door so it aligned with the center point because there was room on the canvas to do it. But what Diane says is actually what you're doing. You're manipulating the size of the graphic (the canvas) so the center point of the graphic is placed at the spot where you want your object to pivot.

So, everybody was right I think

Joe

[Jim Adams Profile Private message]

That's the ticket ! You're both right. The axis is created in the editing program (not Blufftitler). Once imported into Blufftitler the axis remains in the same spot on the image no matter how you shrink, expand, move, rotate or skew the image. I just tried it with 3 different areas of an image and it executed perfectly.

The axis will always be dead center of the CANVAS, not the image.

If you create a canvas with double height and width (relative to image size) then you can have the rotation point be any corner or any point along all four edges just by moving the image to the appropriate location within the enlarged canvas.

Thank you all so much for your help. I would never have figured this one out since I was only looking within Blufftitler.

Jim

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Like Jim, I just had an aha! moment. I was doing an equivalent in BT, sliding the image sideways, but it's a whole lot easier to calculate and execute it in Photoshop. Now I can go and look like a genius when the fact is that my brains are being propped up by a guy named Joe and a gal named Diana.

Isn't this forum great, Jim?

Barbara

[Jim Adams Profile Private message]

Yes, it is a wealth of information. I was Googling something the other day and where did it lead me ? Right to this forum. I found out about something I was not even looking for.

Jim