How do I create a border that draws across the screen?

[pdknell]

I am trying to create the effect of a 2" border that will begin at the top of the screen and continue (move and grow) clockwise until it meets back where it started, thus creating the effect that the border just drew itself all around the screen, and on top of a photograph. The photo must alwasy be entirely visable. The photo is not "revealed" as the border is drawn.

I created the entire border in a jpg file. I managed to get the effect of it drawing itself across the screen using the "sweep" transitiion. When I put the border and the photo together, the sweep leaves a black line that sweeps over the photo, like the second hand on a closk. I don't want to see this "second hand" type of sweep. I have used the mask functions, but a faint line still shows.

Any ideas?


Paul

[Terry Stetler]

Sounds like a job for Video Paint. If you have MSP7 it's bundled. If MSP8 then you need to get Uleads VideoGraphics Lab.

First create a *.jpg the size of your video frame and with the image sized and pasted where you want it. Next load the image into Video Paint, setting the frame rate and duration in the Open Image File dialog. 900 is the maximum.

Now select the pain brush from the toolbar and a paint mode in the Easy Palette (try Marker POP/Wide). Also select a brush type from the top toolbar (try Oil Paint) and in the Brush Panel/Options tab select to draw a connected line (freehand is the default). Also set a transparency & wet control of 0%. In the Shape tab set random to 0 and denaity to 100.

Almost ready to animate the frame draw....

First select the frame you want the draw to start in on the Strip View at the bottom of the VP window. Now click on the Macro button (the red, round icon on the top toolbar). This will put you into Macro mode (duh). Now draw your border. In the connected line mode you click ESC to finish draing. Now that your line is finished click the Macro button again to finish recording it. You'll be presented with a dialog where you should name your new macro.

Now just drag the Macro from the Easy Palette over the image. The Macro Playing Options window will open asking you first how many frames you want it applied to. The default is 1, but you should run it up to the full duration of the project.

Once the spinbox goes past 1 frame additional options will arise. The 2nd is "Progressive", meaning the draw will proceed from start to finish. "Regressive" would start with the fully drawn frame and erase it gradually over the full duration.

Click OK and watch the pretty picture draw itself.

Preview to make sure you got what you wanted then save the Video Paint project file. You can either render out a video or just load the VP project file to MSPro's timeline. A video file will work faster once loaded into MSPro.

Obviously there are a ton of settings to tune the look of the line, including one that draws multi-colored lines. Play with VP a while and you'll see the creative possibilities.

[mikefoster]

pdknell,

Terry has an excellent write up on this technique. I have a video tutorial you are more than welcome to check out which shows you how to do this in video paint.

http://www.streamload.com/seeitdoit/msp ... Frame.html

Hope you find it useful.

Thanks