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Home ? How Do I ...? ? Optimize appearance of text as imported texture

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16/12/2016 23:56:23

mjluser2
mjluser2
Posts: 7 		I have a character who is doing a presentation to students in a lecture hall. The 'slides' in her presentation are separate textures assigned to a backdrop as a key-framed animation. My question is about optimizing the appearance of the text on the slides. I do each slide in Illustrator and then export the slide image to a .png or .jpg file for importing into Muvizu as a texture. There is way too much text to do the text directly in Muvizu.

By trial-and-error I have discovered that the clarity of the displayed text in Muvizu is affected by the camera settings (e.g., distance from camera to backdrop displaying text) and by the type and resolution of the imported image. For example, in one comparison a 72-dpi lossless jpg had better clarity than a 300-dpi png. Any suggestion on the combination of variables that would optimize the appearance of the displayed text in Muvizu? Are there other variables that I need to consider also? Is there a better way than using key-framed textures on a backdrop?

I am a newbie with Muvizu but an old-timer with displaying graphics. Muvizu is awesome fun! Thanks in advance.
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17/12/2016 00:26:07

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		First of all, welcome to the forum! We're happy to have you here, and to hear what cool stuff you're doing with Muvizu! Cool ideas inspire us all!

In my experience, distortion increases as the camera loses perpedicularity to its subject. So, try to keep the camera at the same angle as the backdrop so the camera is squarely facing it. The easy way to tell is that when the camera is not directly facing the backdrop, one side of the backdrop will look larger than the opposite side. If this is the case, keep tilting the camera left/right up/down until the sides of the backdrop look symmetrical.

But if you are using a video editor to combine all your scenes, you might consider inserting the original graphic for a few frames in your video editor. This will be very clear, and will come across as a close up of the presentation (when in fact you are bypassing Muvizu altogether for that shot... but the audience won't know that)

This approach also lets you use your graphic editor to mark up or hilight any text in the document that you want to emphasize. Plus, you could show a bunch of different copies of the same document, all marked up differently, at different places in the presentation.
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17/12/2016 00:50:33

mjluser2
mjluser2
Posts: 7 		PatMarrNC wrote:
First of all, welcome to the forum! We're happy to have you here, and to hear what cool stuff you're doing with Muvizu! Cool ideas inspire us all!


Thanks for the welcome! I will do whatever I can to help others as I learn.

I had forgotten to mention the perpendicularity issue and thanks for bringing it up. I had solved it by setting the backdrop to keep upright and then pulled the camera far enough away to align the edges of the backdrop with the edges of the camera window. Then moved the camera back into position so that the edges of the backdrop disappeared.

I have been doing each lecture session as a separate scene so had not even thought about using a video editor. That is an option I will explore more.

My primary issue for the view when the presenter is included is the jaggedness of the individual letters. Part of the issue is their mapping onto the monitor resolution, but there seems to be more to it than that. So far I have not been able to get the presentation slides looking professional enough. Are there any guidelines for creating text such as signs that are imported? Any and all suggestions to improve the slides are greatly appreciated!
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17/12/2016 05:53:57

mjluser2
mjluser2
Posts: 7 		Great news!! The jagged-letters problem is in the Muvizu user-interface camera window rather than in the video itself. Because I am new to Muvizu, I was learning how to use it rather than stopping to create a video that included the presentation. When I got everything ready, I realized the problem might be only in the Camera window.

So I key-framed the slides and made a video. The presentation slides are fine in the video. In case it would be useful, I exported the slides from Illustrator as 1024x1024 300-dpi pngs. All the slides for one presentation are in a single file on separate artboards, and the Artboards box is checked at export. That exports the images as individual files numbered in sequence. In Muvizu, the images are displayed on a square backdrop that appears to be part of a larger backdrop for the blank screen.

Here are the instructions from Jamie in support for doing the images as key frames (requires the key-frame expansion pack). I had been trying to do the images as a directed animation, but that method is limited to 10 images by the size of the image palette.
I think there shouldn't be any problem having 27 images on 1 backdrop - if you use the Key Frame option.
1. Select your backdrop
2. Prepare > Object Properties
3. Select "Image" from the properties drop down
4. Select "Key Frame" as the animation type
5. Select the Initial Image to show
6. Go to Direct > Object Properties
7. Place the Playhead, on the timeline, at the point you want the second image to show
8. Click the + button to add a new key frame
9. Click the thumbnail icon and select the second image to show
10. Repeat steps 7 - 10 until you have all 27 images loaded
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17/12/2016 06:17:36

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		Kudos to Jamie for having a good solid answer to your question! And congratulations to you for having the patience to work through the problem, and the kind nature to share the answer with the rest of us!
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17/12/2016 08:35:02

ritsmer
ritsmer
Posts: 110 		+1
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17/12/2016 23:17:55

Tangledbliss
Tangledbliss
Posts: 66 		Putting imagers or video on slides is sometimes useful for backgrounds in muvizu but I would never use that method for anything that needs any clarity, certainly not text. Assemble your exported video clips from muvizu in a video editor, or better still 'make video ' as a a png sequence and then put that into your editor in layers. The quality is so much better. Export your 'slides' from illustrator as .pngs and add them into the frame between the muvizu characters and a background.
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18/12/2016 03:44:48

mjluser2
mjluser2
Posts: 7 		MrDrWho13 wrote:
I would agree with Rocque that HitFilm is the best free video editing software out there. ... Image sequence are the best output since they're not compressed in any way, but you do need to use a video editor/compositor to import them. (Unlike MP4 where it's just a video)

Found the above in another thread as helpful information. I am starting to figure out how to improve the quality even though I was pleased with the rendering from Muvizu showing the key-framed text slides. I have used one video editor, but it is not adequate for this new task. Suggestions always appreciated!
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18/12/2016 05:27:52

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975 		HitFilm. 100%. The basic version is free and brilliant.

Don't look any further.
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