Useful Things
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Now that we have our elements in place, we can begin manipulating the controls to generate our end effect.
Since pe_GenFaces is currently selected in the Elements in Effect Area, we can make a few modifications to the script.[an error occurred while processing this directive]Instead of having a swarm of smiley faces, it might look better to have a variety of faces – some with big smiles, some upset, and some who don’t care either way. We can control the smile amount by adjusting the variables. Nearly every generator in Useful Things will contain settings to control variation in an effect. For our smiley faces, our base Mouth Curvature is 75 (not too bad of a smile). Changing the Var. Mouth Curvature to 100(%) will give a series of faces with smiles going from –75 to 75. Also to mix it up a bit, changing the base size to 200 and the Var. Size to 100 will give us a random number of sizes to our faces.
Since pe_GenerateCapToss has a pretty good default, I’ll let you explore this generator on your own and experiment to get different results.
We do, however, need to set up the renderer. Click on the pe_renderPSWithShapes element, and make the adjustments in the Scripts area.
Begin by clicking on Psystem Source. From the black flyout menu, select pe_GenerateCapToss from the menu.
This tells the renderer, that the Cap Toss generate is being used. If you had several generators in your Elements in Effects area, you could select from those other items.
Do the same with the Shape Source control.
If you click on OK and make a RAM Preview, you should see a multitude of White faces being tossed into the air. To give more variety to the faces, we can tweak the fill color.
Back in the Useful Things Panel, change the Fill Color Mode to Random Interporlated. This will take each face and assign a color between the Minimum and Maximum Fill Colors. By default those colors are black and white. By changing the Fill Min Color and Fill Max Color to different colors (I used Yellow and Red), the resulting animation results in a colorful display of faces.
By adding additional generators (like pe_genHSL) you could even have a rainbow of faces falling around the screen.
| ...or use a combination of elements to create a full blown animation. |
Once you understand the “thinking” behind Useful Things, creating complex and dramatic effects with Useful Things will be a snap. If you find that you want even more effects to use with Useful Things, you can download user created effects at the Profound Exchange website. If you understand Python Scripting, you can even write your own scripts and use them as well.
When not working deep in the labs of the DMN Central Division testing the latest and greatest software/hardware products Stephen Schleicher can be found at the local university teaching a few courses on video and web production. He can be reached at schleicher@mindspring.com. You can also visit him on the web at www.mindspring.com/~schleicherSource: Digital Media Online, Inc.
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