Does any one know how I can get a strobe effect like the one in Jeff Lews Killer Bean. I bought and watched his tutorial and I was disappointed he didn't explain how he got the effect.
I have tried many times to create such an effect in AM using Frames of a short movie. I have each frame on its one patch in a model that looks like sheets of paper. I then made Poses for each patch with Transparency to fade the image from 0 to 100% Transparency.
However I cant get the patches that have the image to stay transparent. The sheet model has back layer that serves as a back drop for back ground.

One thing at a time I guess so I grabbed this one.

I take it you are working in the timeline?
If not that is where you'll be able to see most effectively what is happening in your transparency channel.

I didn't explain myself clearly I want the images on a transparent background (like a rotoscope).
I want all the frames of a short movie sequence to be in one place Then have each frame fade as I move to it's preceding frame. I can get a effect using Windows Movie Maker but its not what I want.
By the sound of your reply I don't think it is possible with Animation Master. I guess Jeff Lew must have used some other program to get the effect.

Yardie,
You explained clearly enough.
You can control the transparency (i.e. animate it over time) on just about any object in a Choreography.
You'll need to crack open the Timeline or channel view to do this effectively.

In other words... its easy to do in A:M.
The first thing to realize is that it is possible. Then you are prepared to succeed.

Testing
- To test you can create a rotoscope (or two) in the Choreography. Say one has an image... the other pure white or black. The order the rotoscopes are in does make a difference so experiment and learn.
- Find the surface attribute for the color rotoscope in the Project Workspace (PWS).
- Go to frame 10 (for testing purposes)
- Adjust the transparency attribute to 80 in the PWS
- Go to frame 20 (for testing purposes)
- Adjust the transparency to 5
Now go back to frame 0 and view your animation.

If everything is setup correctly you should see your image fade to white (or black)
Assuming the images you are using for rotoscopes is designed to correctly convey the particular transition effect it'll work a charm.

Note: There are many ways to do the same thing in A:M. This is only one.
You could use a patch image or A:M composite feature to do this as well.

if the transparency thing isn't working you could always just animate a patch in and out of the front of the camera

Are you guys giving me theory are have you tried this out. I dont hink you have cause you idea will not give me the effect I am after. The images have to over lap to give the stobe effect.
I have a feeling the program Jeff Lew used was called after effects.

If my expanation was that clear Rod why dont you try it out. I cant do all that fadding of stuff in any part of AM with or with out the time lime channel. I think what you ment was to have as many of the same model with the same action in a chory with eah model fading way as the frame numbers go up

Tried it...and seen it done by others. The effect is really that simple.
You're specific type of transition/dissolve I cannot say.
Since you haven't been able to do it its still theory for you though.



I didn't say was clear... just clear enough. A few pictures of what you are trying to achieve will help.
There are a lot of strobing/dissolving/transition effects in 'Killer Bean'.
Only you know what you want to achieve.

Yes you can do the effect in other programs and probably quite easy but you can also do them in A:M.
For instance you can download a trial of Adobe Premiere and have it done in short order.

You seem to want to do it in A:M so we stand ready to assist.
Or would you prefer to do it in another application in post?

It might be harder for you to set up initially but once you get it setup and understand how to do it you can reuse the effect over and over and adjust to your specific taste.

Are you still interested or are you moving on to a different solution?
If still interested we can see if we can put together a project file to demonstrate.

Yes I have been trying the effect with AM for the last 2 weeks. I think the problem might be the AM v12+

each update while addressing one problem creates many others. I now truly wished I had stuck to the CD version of AM v10.5. I only moved on to 12+ because it promised loads of goodies that it didn't have.

I guess its time to go back to v10.5

With the rotoscope in the chory and the key colour set I still cant get unused area of the Roto to be transparent. I have even tried a decal of the image on a backdrop model with a back ground image and the transparency of the decal not showing.

Upgrading further is not an option. the last upgrade messed up a good 90% of my poses for previous models

This won't be a demonstration of the effect you want but hints at the potential of transitional effects in A:M.
The file was created in v12n+ (I suppose I should update that to v+)

The file may be more confusing than necessarily. I apologize for that.
There are several models that are included that can be swapped out with the IrisInOut_Filter model.
Also I have no decals or patch images in this example but creating transitions with them can be quite useful especially when you might have odd shapes that you want to transition.

The file uses two images (same image actually one color and one grayscale)
Two rotoscopes

The IrisInOut effect using a model made from a 5 point circle extruded out and squared off at the outer edges. Included in the project is another model of the same but with the 5 pointer filled in. Doubt you'd ever need such a thing as a rectangular patch will do the same.

The grayscale rotoscope begins at 0% transparency and ends with 100%
The color rotoscope begins at 100% transparency and ends with 0%
The 5 points on the Iris spline are just dragged in out out with occasional keyframes added.
The top CP in the circle demonstrates that you can adjust the shape of the Iris as you need to by manipuating/animating splines.

So basically this project demonstrates.
- Fading In from light grey to an image
- Fading to Black from an image
- Transitioning from one image to another
- Transitioning from greyscale to color image
- Iris In and Out
... and I dunno what else.

There are millions of things A:M can't do if you give up trying.




This looks like a hint at your problem.
It sounds like you have an image that doesn't have transparency set up as you'd like it.
Was the image created in A:M with an Alpha Channel/transparency?

If you can share the image and describe what you want maybe we can set you up for success.

[attachmentid=17412]
Ok Rod here is an example of what I am tring to do. I didn this with an old ation video clip from AM. I used Windows Movie Maker to get the fade effect between frame. As you can see it's a bit rough cause Movie Maker will not let me split the frames evenly