Hierarchy possible?

[bobschm]

I tried to create this:  All RGB strings red. A group of blue pixels morphs across the red strings. When I set that up, the blue morph came out purple-ish. So wouldn't it be nice if Superstar had a hierarchy, like video editors have (The clip in "front" completely hides the clip "behind").  I could move the blue morph up to the top and the blue pixels would overwrite the red ones totally, instead of mixing with them, unless I specifically declare them to mix (like a video crossfade).

 

I figure the workaraound for now is to export just the blue morph and fill the strings with red manually in LOR. Or is there a better way?

[BrianBruderer]

You are correct, the behavior you describe would be desirable. Currently SuperStar does not support a "hierarchy" of layers. Currently you can move the effects to any layer and they play back the same, that is, it plays them back simultaneously and if one is red, and one is blue, they mix. Also, if the effects contain the same color, it is a "channel collision" and the shortest and/or dimmest command gets thrown out.

 

At some future date I hope to support "hierarchy" as you describe.

[Frank Farmer]

Hey Brian,

I just wanted to bump this thread so you wouldn't forget about it.

Currently I really take advantage of the mixing, but to control it with a"hierarchy" would be a rich feature.

This is a feature I would like to see too.

Thanks,

Frank

[BrianBruderer]

This feature will not happen this year, but there is a good chance I will have it in next year.

[Ron Boyd]

I tried to create this:  All RGB strings red. A group of blue pixels morphs across the red strings. When I set that up, the blue morph came out purple-ish. So wouldn't it be nice if Superstar had a hierarchy, like video editors have (The clip in "front" completely hides the clip "behind").  I could move the blue morph up to the top and the blue pixels would overwrite the red ones totally, instead of mixing with them, unless I specifically declare them to mix (like a video crossfade).

 

I figure the workaraound for now is to export just the blue morph and fill the strings with red manually in LOR. Or is there a better way?

There's several ways to do what you're speaking of, but it's labor intensive.

One is to have your red strings on as a scene, then 1 by 1 delete a red line and add a blue line in it's place.

ie: r r r r r r r r      b b b b b b b b     b b b b b b b b

     r r r r r r r r      r  r  r r  r  r  r  r     b b b b b b b b

     r r r r r r r r      r  r  r r  r  r  r  r     r  r  r  r r  r  r  r  etc,etc. (the spaces are just for visual spacing)

 

The other way is using an image. I’m not even going to try to explain this one. The effect was copied from a bought sequence so I can’t take the credit for it. I’ll just attach it.

The original was Green to Red, but I modified it to your red to blue.

 

 

Edited September 4, 2013 by Ron Boyd

[BrianBruderer]

Indeed it would be desirable if SuperStar supported a hierarchy but it won't happen this year. As for doing what Ron Boyd is saying, not sure if filling it in after export will work or not. You are forging new territory here.

 

Myself, I try to stay within what SuperStar can do and not modify it afterwards. There are some things SuperStar won't do, but there is a lot it will do and the trick is to creatively use what it currently can do.

 

For the techies out there, the hierarchy thing is not easy to do because an effect sends a command to a channel to stay on for a certain time and then turn off. So if another effect comes in and wants to do something in the middle of another effect's command, you would have to split the original command into two commands with a hole in it, and then place the new command in the hole. And there are other variations of all that.

 

But I have a design in mind for next year that should handle it all. It will be something you can enable or disable because it needs to support all the "non-hierarchy" sequences that already exist.