Everything has some degree of reflection (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see it).

Paper Roll backdrop

Create by making a 3-point linear spline, chamfer the angle, then put into an Extrude Nurb (may need to change the Axis depending on where you created the spline)

Can smooth off the edges by dropping into a HyperNurb, but in order for the edges not to be very rounded off, you need to create more segments by using the knife tool in Plane mode to add in more vertical segments.

Paper Roll backdrop Material

Colour – Can set a radial gradient (2D circular) with some Turbulence (10%) – this helps avoid banding on the colour change.

Reflection – by default, it looks like a mirror
> Texture > Add a Fresnel shader – you get Mat colour in the middle but more reflective around the outside. Turn off Texture Max Strength (set to 0%) then change the Brightness % to select how reflective you want the mat to be facing towards you. 20% is good. Then adjust the Mix Strength back in to add back the Fresnel effect. 25% is good.
Then adjust Bluriness to set the material’s roughness. 30% is good. (These settings are for a paper backdrop material)

Ball Material

1. Create a basic object – a sphere will do.

2. Simulation > Hair Objects > Add hair

3. For neatness, make the Hair a child of the chosen object.

4. With the Hair selected, in the Attributes panel Use the Guides and Hairs tabs to dictate the the hair length (e.g. 30cm) and number of hairs (e.g. 100,000).

5. Add a simple 3 point lighting set-up – use the default Omni Light but set the Shadow to Shadow Maps (Soft)

6. Adding Hair automatically creates a new material, edit this to define the specifics of each hair.

Things to adjust (and good basic settings) can include:

- Thickness Root (0.5cm) Tip (0.01cm)

- Length – Variation 50%

- Scale Variation 40%

- Frizz 20%

- Clump 40%

- Curl 5 degrees

7. In the Color section, you can create a cow / Monsters Inc Sully effect by selecting Root > Texture select Noise

8. Increase the Contract to 100% and change the colours and scale to suit but you must select Space > Object to apply the pattern to the underlying object to create a patterned fur effect.

These are default

Space = Play/Stop
j,k,l = Rewind, Pause Fast forward
a = Selection tool (normal arrow cursor)
, and . = trim minus and plus (nudges tracks left and right)
Apple + r = Render selection
Alt + r = Render all
Backspace = Delete / Cut
Delete = Ripple delete

Can be complicated and needs a lot of checking but produces good results.

1. Prepare your assets. Use Prem to top and tail video clips – put a fade at end (use opacity keyframes just before end of track otherwise it doesn’t go completely black). Fade up / down sound and vis as required. Extend work area at the end so there’s a period of black before jumping back to menu.

2. To create animated opening, use AE and end on a loopable menu. The loopable section needs to be at least 10 secs long and be self contained (i.e. any animation / sounds needs to return to the starting values so that when the menu loops there isn’t a jump.

*** In CS3 the loop point function doesn’t work off the back of videos – i.e. if you return to the menu it will play the menu movie from the start regardless of the loop point.

To get round this you MUST create 2 menu movies, one for the first playthrough only and then a version that plays from the intended loop point, that is linked to off the back of videos. Call them x_full.mov and x_still.mov***

In AE make the project 1024 x 576 Square pixel. Before final export, put comp in a 720 x 576 Widescreen comp and export that (to make it DVD dimensions). Export as DV_Pal Widescreen etc. mov.

3. In Encore import your assets. With a video asset selected, create new Timeline. This will appear in the bottom section. Add chapter points as required. Repeat for all video assets.

4. For the main menu, create Menu (call it Main Menu full) and select Motion tab – assign your x_full.mov AE movie as the video and audio. Aspect ratio = 16:9. Set the loop point (this stops the buttons appearing right from the start).

5. Buttons. Crikey. Several ways to do this but this is the way to create areas over text that work as buttons – the best way when using a pre-rendered AE movie. If there are no buttons in the Encore Library that can be dragged, copied and modified….

With Menu onscreen, r-click > Edit Menu in Photoshop
In Layers click on New Folder
Rename folder    (+) whatever…      //The brackets plus brackets helps tell Encore it’s a button.
With that folder highlighted, choose your colour then go to the Rectangle tool (make sure in upper menu bar ‘Shape layers’ is selected) and draw the shape of your button over the wording in your still.
Reduce opacity to taste.
Rename layer    (=1)     // Again important for Encore
Deselect the eye for that button layer
In Photoshop, File > Save

Back in Encore, you can see your button in the layers window and the highlight area in your monitor window if you select the middle of the 3 ‘button’ buttons under the monitor.
- If you want to keep your buttons for future use (to avoid adding in the code again, drag it into the Library window. You can easily resize in Encore and change colour (back in Photoshop)).

Duplicate the button until you have all text areas covered.
In the Layers menu, it’s a good idea to rename the button e.g. Robot package button. This will help with linking.
Button navigation is Auto by default but can be tweaked in the Prefs.

6. Duplicate the main menu and rename it Main Menu still. Replace the movie with your x_still.mov. Set its loop point to 0’00.

7. Link all the buttons to the video assets. Best way to do this is:
-     Menus window, select each button and link.
-    Project window, for each timeline set the end action to point to Main Menu_still > next video Button
-    Deselect everything in Project window – set First Play to Main Menu_full: Default and name the disc. For Main Timeline select your first video timeline.

8. Check project, and Build / Burn to DVD

Type ‘ = ‘ to tell spreadsheet that you’re writing a formula.

Press Enter to close a Formula (don’t click on another cell as this will add it to the formula)

& Joins content from different cells (e.g. for names. ” ” inserts a text string (in this case, a Space))

=A1&” “&B1 – Joins A1 and B1 with a Space in between.

=SUM(A1:A10) – Add up from A1 to A10 and put the result in this cell

Ranges – you can call a cell or group of cells a name so you can refer to it repeatedly in multiple formulas (if you just refer to the cell it will autoincrement as you copy the formula to other cells). Click on the cell(s) and select

Formatting

Select each column and assign it a Format (e.g. currency, percentage) and this allows you to define how many decimal places, whether a dollar sign appears etc.

Some useful links on more advanced formulas etc:

http://woorkup.com/2010/02/19/10-useful-google-spreadsheet-formulas-you-must-know/

Comprehensive Excel tutorials

http://www.youtube.com/user/ExcelIsFun

Best video quality – Mpeg – DVD_PAL preset BUT you need to make this manual as the audio seems to convert at 44Khz which distorts when brought into Prem / AE at 720P preset settings.

Settings that worked for me:

MPG, Mpeg-2, 2000kbit/s, Auto FPS

AAC, 192kbit/s, 48000Hz, 2-Stereo

Resolution: 720 x 576

My recommendation would be to create a matte from your Logo. Duplicate the layer, add a Color Correction>Tint effect to the duplicate with the default settings (making it B&W), add a Color Correction>Levels effect and increase the black input to a very high level (so that the parts of your logo you want to keep are entirely black and the parts that you don’t are white), add a Channel>Invert effect to the RGB channels to make the blacks white and the whites black, then set the original lower layer to use the upper layer (the matte you just made) as a luma matte.

Note that if there is a drop shadow involved here you can try to make those areas gray in the matte by tweaking your levels effect to maintain some opacity in the shadows.

After this is done you might find that Channels>Remove Color Matting set to White might help on the original layer, or a Matte>Simple Choker.

P – Snapping menu (2.5D is a good option)

V – Radial menu of all title bar menus

S – Centre view on selected object

Centre Mouse button – Display 4x View / Display on current view

CTRL + R – Render current view

C – Make shape editable

Space – Toggle previous tool

In Object / Materials etc windows CTRL + drag to duplicate an item

Quicktips

To enable Mograph 2 physics:

Right-click on layer, select Mograph > Rigid Body (On object like spheres seems to only within a Cloner object, but fine on a Plane)

Boolean objects – Put object 1 inside the boole and object 2 below and by default 2 will be cut out of 1. For multiple cut-out, make each extra cutout and child of the preceding cutout.

Accepted decent print resolution = 300 dpi / pixels per inch

A4 size = 210mm x 297mm

A4 size at 300 dpi = 2480 x 3508

Nos. 1 to 5 at Preset iPod Video, 640 x 480, QT Movie (default settings). AA = Best, max 2×2

1 – IR Still = Flicker. (IR Cache – Stoch = Low, Rec Dens = Low)

2 – IR Cam Anim = No flicker but burnt in shadows from when objects decending, still there when the object rolls away (i.e. as if it calculated it at the start and didn’t do it again afterwards). (IR Cache – Stoch = Low, Rec Dens = Low)

NB. If the render is started at a frame after the object has descended, the burn mark isn’t there.

3 – QMC – No burn marks but very noisy shadows. 21 frames = 17 mins

4 – IR + QMC (Full anim) (IR Cache – Stoch = Low, Rec Dens = Low) 21 frames = 5m30s

Seems OK

5 – IR + QMC (Full anim) (IR Cache – Stoch = Low, Rec Dens = Low). Longer anim. Frames 61 to 150

Prepass took 33mins.

Frame 63 = 31 secs

Frame 150 = 4 secs

NO FLICKER. Slightly unnatural reflection on some of the right hand side balls – will export at higher res.

I think this was caused by the 640 x 480 resolution – the reflection was only a couple of pixels wide.

90 frames = 49 mins

6 – IR + QMC (Full anim) (IR Cache – Stoch = Low, Rec Dens = Low). 1440 x 900.  Frames 121 to 150

SUCCESS.