Gilford Posted September 17, 2009 Share Posted September 17, 2009 Can anyone offer advice in making a mega tree spin smoothly? Does anyone have any tips to offer? How about the star sold at Christmas Light Show. Any tips on making it spin slowly and smoothly?ThanksBob-- I would love to here the explanation of your method! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LENNY RUEL Posted September 18, 2009 Share Posted September 18, 2009 You'll need to decide how long one spin will take and subdivide the timings in that time frame so you have smaller units to work with. I'll divide to 20 cells per second, what ever I need to get to that per timing is basic math. Smooth spins require fades for sure, usually down but sometimes both up and then down. The up is usually very quick while the down is longer. The shorter the fade the quicker the spin. A quick spin would be say you had a 16 channel mega tree. Start at the beginning of the first channel in the time frame you want the spin to be and turn on a couple cells. Next go to your tool options and set a fade rate from 15 to 100 if you are using regular minis. Now fade down from those two cells 4 more cells. I usually double my fade to what I have on at 100%. Now you can drag across the 6 cells you have and click copy, move down to channel 2 and go one cell right and click in the box and paste. You'll have the same cell info in the next channel bur shifted one cell. Go down to channel 3 and do the same (click one more box right and paste) Do this for all of your channels. This will give you one full, quick spin lasting slightly longer than one second.To slow it down you can lengthen your effect on each channel and make that shift from one channel to the next longer. Say turn on 4 cells and do the same fade for 8, and you just doubled the length of your effect. When you copy this and move down a channel, go three cells right and paste. As before keep this up through all of your channels. Now your one spin is 60 cells or 3 seconds long. You can copy and paste the entire spin as far as you want to use it. The star works the same way just with three channels IIRC. I'd use the latter example but instead of first 4 cells at 100% use the same 15-100 fade value but fade up, then do the down fade as before or even extend it longer. The 15% is a good place to start and end fades because that's about where most incandescent lights become visable. You should be able to find examples where people have coppied their chases right off their editor screens in the forums here and have them pictured. I'm at work know so can't go much farther for you. But I had seen no answers in awhile.Lenny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilford Posted September 18, 2009 Author Share Posted September 18, 2009 Lenny-Thanks so much for answering. That helps me a bunch. Saves a lot of time in the trial and error mode. I have not been able to find examples. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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