When using the Style Palette in Grafitti there seems to be a number of tabs that have no effect on the type. The Natural, Material, Extrusion, and Brush tabs do nothing at all when applied. For that matter the thumbnail never even changes (i.e. the weave pattern on the materials tab never updates to reflect changes).

So if there's anyone out there that's ventured beyond the template mode to advanced: HELP! 

paul37:

When using the Style Palette in Grafitti there seems to be a number of tabs that have no effect on the type. The Natural, Material, Extrusion, and Brush tabs do nothing at all when applied. For that matter the thumbnail never even changes (i.e. the weave pattern on the materials tab never updates to reflect changes).

So if there's anyone out there that's ventured beyond the template mode to advanced: HELP! 

The Style Palette by it self does nothing more then set your presets. To you have to be in the right mode, and have the right tool window open to use your presets, I usually get access to these from the window pull down in the Composite window.

I have figured out how to use the Natural, Extrusion and Brush tools settings, The Material still has me stumped. For the Natural you have to have a Text track selected, then pick open up the right window from Composite window. At least that's how I did it, in trying to figure this one out I somehow got into the paint mode, and the Brush mode started working. Every time I get in here I figure out a faster and easier way of doing the previous task.

I'll see if I can document the steps to get in and out of these modes.

Thanks for the help. I'd pay a kings ransom for a good tutorial for this software. If you get a chance to document some of the steps, it would be much appreciated.

I'm totally lost in this program. I can't even get a line of text to rotate. Tell me this, when the key is red, that means animation is set to "off" - correct?  Not that it matters, I've tried it both ways and it makes no difference.

Are you seeing what I am with the Natural tab - no matter what type of material category I select from the drop down (ex marble), the thumbnail stays on a heather cloth pattern. I get all the marble samples but the main thumbnail stays on this cloth and apparently won't select any of the marble or other materials. I'll take your advice and try some of the windows and tool settings and see if I can decipher anything.

Thanks so much for the suggestions.
 

paul37:

 I'd pay a kings ransom for a good tutorial for this software.

Hi Paul,

You've probably already been thru this?   In any event, no need for the ransom...

I found going thru these tutorials really helpful, although you do need to "adapt" some of the material to the version that's in Studio.

All the best 

Thanks Kero,

I've been through those and everything is still clear as mud. I think I will go through them all again to see if the "light" comes on. 

I messed around for an hour last night trying to follow up on Ghuck's suggestions to no avail. I'm wondering if something went haywire during installation and something is screwed up with the software. I'm getting nowhere fast. 

Paul;

To get text to rotate, here is what you do, I find it easier to work from the time line window;

1) Insert your text using any method, I use the "Add Vector Text" push button on the time line window.

2) This will create a time line for your text that you can key-frame, clicking on the little arrow by your text (far left in these window) will also show two more tacks that it created, called Transformations, and Text.

3) Position you scrubber at the beginning (frist key-frame), double click on the time line that contains you text, this opens up the Controls window, from here set you starting position of you text. Then click on the last key-frame and set your ending position of you text. These controls you static stuff with you text.

4)  Then click on the "Transformations" time-line (Right below the time line with you text on it) these controls control you dynamic stuff with your text. i.e. stuff that is changing inside of the above time-line, this is why it's indented. Adjust your "rotate Z" here. Do this for each key frame you have.

5) For fun, then double click on the next time-line down called "text" this will make adjustments to every letter inside of you text frame, try setting the "Letter Rotate" to something like 90. Now not only does you entire text rotate, but every letter in you message rotates as well, I did a 90Deg rotate of the text "Always Visible" and as the text moved corner to corner the letters always stayed up and down (readable) never upside down or sideways.

Five easy steps (yea right) this took me and hour the first time to figure out. But I'm starting to see how this interface works, you have to start in the Control panel, and work you way out from there. 

Thank you kindly for taking the time to put this together. I haven't had the opportunity to work on it yet, heavily into the stark reality of Real Life® (kids, grandkids, pets, etc).

I will post a reply to let you know how I made out.  Thanks Gerry.

Paul
 

I ran through these steps word for word over and over again to no avail.......then I decided to reinstall Boris Grafitti.

I went back in, did steps 1-3 and Voila!  I'd been experimenting all night and when I couldn't even modify an existing effect I knew something was screwed up with the software. Keyframes had absolutely no effect. The reinstall fixed everything up I hope.

I still haven't had any luck with materials, natural, etc. so I'll keep trying with those.

I thought I was an idiot when I couldn't do even the simplest of effects and I've been at it for weeks in my spare time. What a relief.

Thank you again for the assistance.
 

Successes is a wonderful thing , even better when it's was the install missing you up.

Now if you ever figure out how the get the text colors to change like in the template 'jittering text' pass this back to me, I have looked and looked, and can not find the setting that make it do this.

You know it.  I thought I was losing it.

Sanity restored, I'll take a look at that Jitter Text.
 

ghuck:

Now if you ever figure out how the get the text colors to change like in the template 'jittering text' pass this back to me,

Take a look at the Variations drop down on the Generator Tab. I haven't tried it but I was paging through the Graffiti documentation online and this caught my eye as possibly being the settings you were looking for.

 
Style Shift maybe???
 

I NEED loads of help with Boris. I have gone through the manual, the tutorials on the Boris website.  Is it me, or is Heroglyph actually easier to use???

Perhaps there are just too many options and I don't know where to look. Or I need more time. I see Boris offers a student DVD tutorial for Graffitti. I wonder if anyone has used that?

I would be whary of that tutorial DVD. I'd be willing to bet it's outdated. That's the problem with the tutorials they are either outdated or not specific to the version included with Studio. The new Studio 12 training system has a section on Graffiti but I want to hear from someone who has it to see if it's topical vs. in-depth training.

Even trying to breakdown the included effects is hard to do because of all the tabs and track options. The manual as we all know - laughable. 

Heroglyph gets real easy after messing with Graffiti, that's how it worked out for me also. I look at Heroglyph now and think "why did I find this so difficult".

 

 

Paul,

I needed that - thanks.

Not to be a contranian but I still think Heroglyph is hard to learn for what it can do. Graffiti is also hard to figure out for some things, but I consider Graffiti to be a LOT more fixable in what you can do with it, and thus this is where some of the complexity comes from. I good manual would go a long ways. I have done some stuff in Graffiti in hours, that took me a couple of days to do in my favorite animation package (Blender), but Blender can do stuff Graffiti cannot do.

Here's the link to the online manual: http://www.borisfx.com/image/graffiti/help/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

I printed it out and am in the process of experimenting. The manual is very detailed and should answer a lot of our questions.

This site is also very useful and has a Boris tutorial on it: http://declic-video-fx.com/

Great find, this manual really helps.

djetton:

Here's the link to the online manual: http://www.borisfx.com/image/graffiti/help/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

I printed it out and am in the process of experimenting. The manual is very detailed and should answer a lot of our questions.

This site is also very useful and has a Boris tutorial on it: http://declic-video-fx.com/

is there any way to print it out without printing each page?

The printer icon in the upper right corner will print the entire section that is displayed on the screen. I wasn't able to find anything that allowed you to print the entire manual with one click. It would have been nice to have.

Apologies if this has been resolved but the thread seemed to have come to a dead end without solution. This is a fairly old thread but I came across it while browsing through the forum for stuff I've "left till later". Boris is one such item.

I've been using Boris a little bit by simply tweaking the provided templates, but after looking at this thread I decided to get stuck into it a bit more. I believe I've worked out what is going on re paul37's puzzlement over some Style Pallete tabs not doing anything. The manual kind of tells us that only certain tabs work with certain types of layers... 

"Other tabs in the Style palette contain styles that can be used with objects other than text such as Splines, Natural Media textures, Materials and Extrusion".  

Where as most of the Style Palette tabs allow you to double-click on icons and your text will change accordingly, other tabs were having no effect - I too found that (for instance) the Natural tab does nothing. Then, I created a backdrop to my text by clicking "Add Gradient Media" in the timeline window. This put a "backdrop" as the top layer so I had to drag the Text layer up the list in the timeline so that my text was on top of the backdrop. Now, in Style Palette I went to the Natural tab, making sure my Gradient layer was "live", now double-clicking on the Natural icons changes the backdrop. As well as the icons you can see in these tabs, there are lots more "styles" to be had by clicking the button top left within each tab (above the thumbnail). As paul37 said, the thumbnail does not update in the Natural tab as it should.

Likewise, if you add Gradient Media as a backdrop, the Gradient tab in Style Palette comes to life. Spline tab works on text and Spline Primitive objects, Extrusion on 3d Text.  Sadly, I haven't yet figured out what the Materials tab does??? Maybe this is obvious to anyone who actually knows what Materials are in Boris!! 

Hopefully my findings will help people to get started and explore a bit more.

Did you print the manual available here ??

Boris FX manual 

 

DV