Need help with looping zoom

[Chimaera9]

I'm trying to make a background zoom in continuously, then dissolve to the same image where the zooming begins (continues) again. I'm not sure if it's possible to do this?

Basically, I'd like a background image of stars to slowly be zoomed in upon to the center, and just before it completes, I'd like the image to fade into another star image that is zooming in. It could work something like:

1. star background appears
2. zooming beings slowly at about 3x zoom and around 90,000 time.
3. around 85,000 time, a 2nd star background fades in
4. second star background begins slowly zooming at about 3x zoom at 90,000 time
5. original star background fades out and is deleted.
6. ad infinitum until clearstack? (not sure how to stop it.)

I've been trying to work from a previous script (based on Shimmersoft's advice in another thread), but am not having any success, because I don't know what I'm doing, honestly. (And I have a bad headache because I forgot to eat lunch, thanks to messing with this)

[keyframe name="whatever"]
[frame p=0% opacity=0]
[frame p=10% opacity=255]
[frame p=50% zoom=3 x=-120 y=110 time=1]
[frame p=100% zoom=1 x=0 y=0 time=10000]
[endkeyframe]
[image name="Stars" storage=default/Stars.png layer=0 visible=true x=0 y=0 time=0 width=1920 height=1080]
[kanim name="Stars" keyframe="whatever" count=infinite time=15000 easing=linear delay=2000]

[Shimmersoft]

Are you wanting the second and third star backgrounds to "bleed" into one another? As in, as the opacity of one goes down, the opacity of the next goes up? If you need the zoom to "reset" back to its starting point, then the only way I can think to make this work is for the background to be a uniform color (black 'cause space!) for some very brief period of time so that you can quickly reset the camera, and then let the new camera zoom begin as the new background fades in. To do that, you'd just need to make a new background image that's just filled with black, have the star image fade into that, and then let that fade into the second star image.

Not sure if that helps!

[Chimaera9]

Are you wanting the second and third star backgrounds to "bleed" into one another?
-Yes, during the transition phase of the cycle repeat.

Hmm, I don't like the idea of having a black background transition, because that means there would be a weird "lights out" effect during the transition between star scapes. Why would it be necessary? Couldn't the same be done with a second star scape? The stars fading in or out over each other wouldn't be as disruptive. If 3 have to be involved (the middle one being a transition between the two), then there could just be 3 starscapes instead of the black, right?

Thoughts?

[Shimmersoft]

Originally posted by Chimaera9:

Are you wanting the second and third star backgrounds to "bleed" into one another?
-Yes, during the transition phase of the cycle repeat.

Hmm, I don't like the idea of having a black background transition, because that means there would be a weird "lights out" effect during the transition between star scapes. Why would it be necessary? Couldn't the same be done with a second star scape? The stars fading in or out over each other wouldn't be as disruptive. If 3 have to be involved (the middle one being a transition between the two), then there could just be 3 starscapes instead of the black, right?

Thoughts?

To step back a second, my next question is: Does the camera have to reset completely after a background change? In other words, is it supposed to be like this:

1) star background 1
2) camera zooms from 0x to 50x (I'm making numbers, bear with me)
3) star background 1 fades into background 2
4) camera zooms back to 0x? Or does camera just keeping zooming in?

If you need the camera to return to its default state in order to zoom in again, the problem is the jarring transition, unless you plan for the camera to pan out as slowly as it panned in. But I don't get the impression that that's your intent. That's why I thought to use the black background to "hide" the camera transitioning back to 0x, and then starting the next background and camera pan.

If the camera is just going to keep zooming in, then you really don't need to do anything as far as background changes. As long as everything is set to crossfade, they should bleed into one another while the pan happens. Granted, I guess you're also wondering how to tie the camera to some "looping" kanim, and I have no answer to that, if so, ha. You might be able to write a script, but I wouldn't know how.

[Chimaera9]

Yeah, I'd need the camera to reset the zoom, since I'm looking for one of those continuous, starfield screensaver effects. I don't want to see any panning out, it should reset just by fading out during the movement and having the new zooming process fading in. I think if the dissolve/fade was smooth enough, and since there are so many stars, it might not be too jarring.

I do understand your reasoning for the black, so that might be worth a try, too, but I wonder if it might make the transition more obvious than not? Probably need to play with it.

I know there are probably other options like gifs and such, but as we tried before, the quality really dropped. Plus, I'm going to have planets flying by at some points, so hopefully a looping starfield will work.

As things are right now, I'm resetting the loop by moving the camera in to focus on one character while speaking, though this comes down to timing and if someone is a slow reader, the stars might just "stop" at some point.

[Shimmersoft]

Originally posted by Chimaera9:

Yeah, I'd need the camera to reset the zoom, since I'm looking for one of those continuous, starfield screensaver effects. I don't want to see any panning out, it should reset just by fading out during the movement and having the new zooming process fading in. I think if the dissolve/fade was smooth enough, and since there are so many stars, it might not be too jarring.

I do understand your reasoning for the black, so that might be worth a try, too, but I wonder if it might make the transition more obvious than not? Probably need to play with it.

I know there are probably other options like gifs and such, but as we tried before, the quality really dropped. Plus, I'm going to have planets flying by at some points, so hopefully a looping starfield will work.

As things are right now, I'm resetting the loop by moving the camera in to focus on one character while speaking, though this comes down to timing and if someone is a slow reader, the stars might just "stop" at some point.

What about a video backdrop instead of a GIF? Would that work?

[Chimaera9]

No, I tried running videos in the background already last year on TB, and even though they were very short, looping videos, they look terrible, with awful resolution and skipping. It won't fit with the level of quality I'm going for.

Maybe I'll just have to use creative camera work and cut away from and back to the fullscreen so I can reset the stars in the interim? You don't think the looping zoom would work, even after we (ie, you) were able to get the looping horizontal graphic to work?

[Shimmersoft]

Originally posted by Chimaera9:

No, I tried running videos in the background already last year on TB, and even though they were very short, looping videos, they look terrible, with awful resolution and skipping. It won't fit with the level of quality I'm going for.

Maybe I'll just have to use creative camera work and cut away from and back to the fullscreen so I can reset the stars in the interim? You don't think the looping zoom would work, even after we (ie, you) were able to get the looping horizontal graphic to work?

I do think the video problem is weird - TB itself shouldn't really impact the quality of the video. Like with other graphics, what you input is generally what you output. I'm just wondering if it's worth trying a different converter or file format (did you try both webm and oggv?) in order to see if this option is open to you.

My issue with the looping zoom is mainly that I don't know how to integrate the camera into an automated loop, and I don't see easy to accomplish that with regular TB tags. So it's either 1) see if you can find someone with more programming prowess to explore a script solution, 2) try the video/GIF approach again, or 3) tweak the presentation so that you can make it work with normal camera features.

[Chimaera9]

Yes, I've tried both webm and oggv. I'll try messing with other settings this weekend and see if I can get a different result, though.

Yeah, infiltrating the loop is a huge problem, but I've been cutting and pasting the same sequence every once in a while to keep it going. The problem is that slow readers might see the animation stop, so I'm trying to lengthen it appropriately, though people who walk away from the PC and come back can't be accomodated, of course.

I've seen it done in other VN's, though they used different programs. I will try exploring the video option more, though, because it's about the only thing I can think of working at this point.