Layer Size

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 2:37 am

I was wondering if you had suggestions on the best way to figure the size of a layer -or maybe there is room here for a feature request (didn't post it there first since it seems there are often already ways to do what I suggest

)

Let me explain, I draw a background in PSP and import it as an image layer only to find that when I move it in the z direction it is not wide enough to fill my scene and if I just resize often becomes too high or looses quality. I figured if I could just put a quick 'place holder' layer and render beyond the camera view, or somehow figure out the widest and highest point i.e. 1800 pixels x 250 pixels- I could create some of my backgrounds in PSP at that size and have an idea how it will look.

Other ideas welcome -not sure if I am overcomplication it and should draw tileable backgrounds instead? Don't have any production experience so not sure how most people handle this.

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 4:38 pm

Let's see if I can give some useful information, I've never tried that before...

First about the scaling, the loss of quality doesn't make a lot of sense, let me explain: you import a bitmap and it looks good. You put it somewhere along the z-axis and it looks small. You scale it to be as big as before and it should look just as sharp and detailed as before. As long as you do not enlarge it in comparison to the orginal you can scale to your hearts' desire. Understand? Good!

Second how to design your bitmaps. First decide what resolution your animation will be. 720X576 PAL? Ok, I can dig it! So what do you want to show? A nice pan across a street from left to right? Well, why the Hell not! How big should those houses be? About 2/3 of the height of the frame? Sounds a-ok! (is this getting annoying, I bet it is) Well, design your block of buildings and the only important thing in this case is the HEIGHT. Create a graphic about 400 pixels hight (approx. 2/3 of 576) and as wide as you want it to be but at least 720 pixels. In this example 2000 pixels. Then import in Moho. Height is fine, 2/3, width is too wide for the frame for panning across. Now put it somewhere along the z-axis and scale back to the original size. Quality is fine.

So, bottom is line is simple, the defining factor of size is the resolution of your final animation and the size of the visible part of your graphic. Does that make sense? Look at this thread and see what I mean: http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1167

Good luck,

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

PS. Since I dislike Adobe I'll just pretend you mentioned .PNG images instead of PSP, I just turned dyslexic for a moment ok?

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 5:34 pm

I made the bigger images but when I pushed it back in the z direction you of course 'loose' height and width. I thought the resizing of the image layer to make it bigger would lead to a loss of quality -at least I know in my 2D editor you do better scaling down than up, but now that I hear you say it -it does sound straightfoward. Thanks nobudget.

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 6:40 pm

You are correct about your "2D editor" (smart choice of words, thank you), fortunately Moho doesn't actually scale the image, just the appearance, also for that reason if you have some really high quality flowers that will be used for tiny background objects scale them down before using in Moho so it won't take up all computer resources.

Good luck,

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 7:09 pm

Ahhhh, didn't know that -thanks.