Spring 2003

Activity 1. Using reveal ink. In this activity you will use the reveal ink in the paint window to create a title. The goal in this activity is to use the Reveal ink to create an irregular rice paper background for the title. You'll also use the Transparent ink to make the background behind the title text transparent.

In this example, you will use a scanned image of rice paper for the background of the text. instead of just a rectangle of rice paper, however, you will paint the rice paper on to the background in an irregular shape.

Reveal ink works like this; Imagine a cast member and the bacground behind it painted on a pane of glass that covers another cast member. As you use the Reveal ink to paint over the cast member in front, you remove the cast member and its background, revealing the other cast member underneath.

1. First create the background.
   1. Open the movie named "Reveal". Cast member 3 is the scanned image of the rice paper and cast member 4 is a template for the shape you want to create. You don't need a template for the Reveal ink to work, it is just provided to make the lab easier.

      Note: When you use the Reveal ink, the cast member you're revealing must be located immediately to the left of the cast member that defines the area to be revealed.

   2. Double click cast member 4 to display the template in the paint window.

   3. Select the paint bucket.

   4. Choose Reveal from the Ink pop-up window.

   5. Fill the template with reveal ink. The rice paper background fills the template.

   6. Remember that unless you've unchecked the Ink Effect Sticks to Tool in the Preferences menu, Director will automatically select the Reveal ink the next time you choose the paint bucket.

2. Next we must type the text of the title on the irregular rice paper background we just created with the reveal ink. If you just type the text of the title on the rice paper, you end up with an opaque bounding box around the text. To make sure that the rice paper show through the bounding box around the text, we must use Transparent ink.

   1. Select the text tool in the Paint window.

   2. Use the foreground color chip to select black from the color palette.

   3. Change the selection on the Modify/Font menu's Size submenu to 18 point.

   4. Choose Transparent from the Ink pop-up menu.

   5. Click the I-beam on the rice paper to set the insertion point and type: Noh Tale to Tell.

   6. Click anywhere else in the drawing area. The bounding box around the text disappears and you can see the rice paper through the letters.

      Remember that the ink will stick to the text tool the next time you use it.

3. Place the text on the stage:
   1. Select cell 10 in channel 3 of the score.

   2. Make the paint window active again.

   3. Point to the Place button,and hold down the mouse button. The pointer changes to a hand.

   4. Drag the hand to the stage. As soon as the hand mvoes out of the paint window and onto the stage, a dotted outline representing the text appears. When you release the mouse button, the text appears on the stage. Make sure that all of the sprites last to frame 37.

   5. Close the Paint window.

   6. Position the title in between the two supports. The bounding box around the title is opaque, so we must use the Matte ink to make it transparent.

   7. Make the score active, and then choose Matte from the Ink pop-up menu. The white box around the title disappears.

   8. Play your movie and verify that it works. Then save it as "reveal" on the desktop in a folder labled with the name of the people doing this lab.

Activity 2. Titles with masks and ink effects. Another way to provide a transition is by creating a custom mask to hide words and gradually reveal them as you want them to be seen. Assigning the appropriate ink effect to the words and to the mask covering those words is the key to achieving the proper effect. Some of what you do in this example is a review. You will need to first open a new movie.

This example uses a custom mask created with the gradient fill effect in the paint window.

1. Start a new movie. Make the background white. Create a title in the paint window and copy it to frame 1, channel 1. The title can say anything, but should have 3 lines. Make the title last for 30 or 40 frames.

2. Creating the mask:
   1. Double-click the next blank frame in the cast window.

   2. Clear the paint window and open it to the size of your stage. Double-clicking the eraser tool is a shortcut for clearing the visible portion of the paint window.

   3. Select the filled rectangle tool.

   4. Choose Normal from the ink effects pop-up menu.

   5. Choose solid black from the pop-up pattern sleector palette.

   6. Choose Paint Rulers from the View menu. As you drag the crosshair, a dotted line appears in both the vertical and horizontal rulers. These lines mark the position of the crosshair, and can be used to measure the rectangles as you draw. If the ruler is marked in pixels, you can click on the word pixel in the upper left corner of the paint area (where the horizontal and vertical rulers meet) and the scale will change to inches.

   7. Drag the crosshair diagonally to draw the black rectangle. Start drawing your solid rectangle near the bottom of the paint window and make it large enough to cover all the words in your title--about 4 inches high by 6 inches wide.

3. Next, create the gradient fill pattern:
   1. Click in the space between the foreground and destination color chips on the paint toolbar and choose "Gradient Settings". A dialog box will pop up.

   2. Choose Bottom to Top from the Direction pop-up menu.

   3. Choose One from the Cycles pop-up menu.

   4. Choose One Color from the Method pop-up menu.

   5. Choose Equal from the Spread pop-up menu.

   6. Choose Paint Object from the Range pop-up menu.

   7. Click OK.

4. You are now ready to draw a rectangle with a gradient fill. Since you want to draw a shape that has no border, you will need to select the dotted line in the line thickness selector in the paint window tool box.

   To draw the rectangular gradient fill:

   1. Click the dotted line in the line thickness selector.

   2. Now make sure the foreground color is black and the destination color is white. Then click on the Filled Rectangle button.

   3. Drag the crosshair diagonally from the top left corner of the solid black rectangle to the upper right corner of the paint window. The rectangle should be larger than the black rectangle. You should see a gradient that goes from white at the top of the paint window to black at the bottom. On the bottom of the paint window there should be a solid black rectangle.

   4. Close the paint window.

   5. Now you should make the gradient cast member 1 bit. Click on the gradient in the cast, then go to Modify->Transform bitmap. In the resulting dialog box, choose 1 bit. When the next dialog box comes up, click "OK".

5. Applying the gradient mask to the title. The cast member you just created is a special mask that will cover the words on the stage. By applying the correct ink effect and moving the cast member, the words underneath will be revealed.

   First, arrange the words on the stage.

   1. Make sure that your text cast members are centered and in the upper third of the stage.

   2. Now drag the mask into the score. Make sure that it lasts as long as the text. Position the mask so the words on the stage are obscured by the solid black part of the mask.

6. You are now ready to animate the sequence in the score:

   1. Select the first frame of the the mask sprite. Make sure that the black rectangle is completely covering the text.

7. Select the last frame of the mask in the score and make it a key frame. Then drag the mask down until you have completely uncovered the words.

8. To make the mask invisible, you can apply the Ghost ink effect:
   1. Click in the mask sprite to select the entire mask.

   2. Choose Ghost from the ink effects pop-up menu in the score window. This choice affects all the selected cells in the score. Ghost Ink has the effect of turning black pixels to the color of the background and white pixels transparent.

   3. View the movie again. The Ghost ink effect turns the black pixels of the mask to an opaque white, so that as the gradient fill passes the words, they emerge on the stage.

9. Ink effects are an important tool for creating special effects like the custom mask. However, if you decide to change the color of the background and foreground, you must change the ink effect of the mask so the title sequence will still reveal the text.

   To reverse the title:

   1. Go to Modify/Movie/Properties and change the background color to black.

   2. Play the movie. The words and custom mask are invisible against the black background. Changing the ink effects applied to the words and to the mask will make the text fade in as it did earlier.

   3. Select all of your text sprites in the score.

   4. Choose Reverse from the ink effects pop-up menu in the score window. The Reverse ink effect reverses the colors so that the letters now appear as white against the black background.

   5. Now select the custom mask sprite in the score.

   6. Choose Transparent from the ink effects pop-up menu in the score window. The Transparent ink effect makes the white pixels of the mask transparent so that the words in the title show through as the mask moves down the stage.

   7. Play the movie.

Activity 3. This activity will teach you how to make "pulsating" text. Note that this effect is more dramatic with large text letters and when the color cycle is over more colors.

1. Open a new movie. Set the background of the stage to black:
   1. Choose Modify/Movie/Properties.

   2. Use the pop-up color palette to choose the black chip in the last position of the last row.

2. Open the paint window. Double click the text tool to bring up the font dialog box. Set the font as:
   1. Monaco.

   2. 36pt.

   3. Choose the color to be the red that is the fourth chip in the third row.

3. Write the words "Cool Title" in the paint window. The text should be a red color.

4. Close the paint window. Select frame 1 of channel 1 and drag the text cast member to the score. Center the text on the Stage. Make the sprite last 60 frames.

5. Now click in frame 1 of the palette channel and then shift-click in frame 60 of the same channel to select all of the frames from frame 1 to frame 60. If you can't see the palette channel, you need to click on the small double-arrow button on the right edge of the score. 5 more channels will appear when you do this.

6. Choose Modity/Frame/Palette to bring up the palette dialog box. Make the following choices:
   1. Color Cycling.

   2. Span selected frames.

   3. Then click on the next to last purple in the second row and then shift-click on the red chip that is the 4th chip in the third row.

7. Play the movie.

Activity 4. In this activity you will cycle ink to make an animation.

1. Open up a new movie and make the stage black.

2. Open up the paint window and make a circle with a sun burst gradient (yellow to orange). This will be our sun. Close the window.

3. The system palette (both Mac and Windows) is not very useful if you want the palette to have consecutive colors that are similar. So change the palette of the sun that you made so that it uses the rainbow palette. Do this by clicking on the sun in the cast window. Then choose Modify->Transform bitmap. In the resulting dialog box, choose the rainbow palette from the pulldown palette box. Then click "Transform". Answer "OK" when you get another dialog box.

4. Now open the paint window and bring up the sun cast member again. Choose a reddish-orange color for the foreground color and a bright yellow for the destination color. Then choose a small paint brush from the paint brush pop-up menu (click and hold down on the paint brush button on the tool bar). Finally choose "cycle" ink from the ink pop-up menu at the bottom of the paint window.

5. Make wavy lines comming out from the sun. As you paint them, the color should cycle through the palette from the foreground color to the destination color. When you are finished, close the paint window.

6. Now drag the sun to the score. Move it to the upper left corner of the stage. Make it last for 60 frames.

7. Now highlight frames 1 through 60 of the palette channel. You can do this by clicking on frame 1 of the palette channel and dragging to frame 60. All of the frames should be highlighted.

8. Choose Modify->Frame->Palettes. You should get the palette dialog box. Choose the rainbow palette, color cycling, span selected frames, and loop. Look at the palette in the upper left hand corner of the dialog box. Choose the same colors in this palette that you chose for the cycle colors in the paint window. Click "OK".

9. The example projector has a stop button. You don't need this.

10. Save your movie. Play the movie to ensure that it works correctly. When you are finished, save the movie in your folder for this lab.

Last updated on February 1, 2003 by John Barr