Flipbook / SubUV authoring

Development Asset Creation
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1

Is anyone aware of any tools that would help automate the process of creating a flipbook / SubUV texture from a video file? For example creating a fireball flipbook from stock video clip?

2

Hi Jason,

Here’s what I do:

  1. Open the footage in After Effects.
  2. Create a composition of the exact dimensions you want each SubUV frame to be and use the snippet of footage you want. Framerate doesn’t matter one bit.
  3. Math is your friend. If you want 28 (7x4) frames on a 1024x1024 texture, then you need a 146x256 composition.
  4. Render it out as a Targa Sequence. That gives you a folder with all frames of the footage you used.

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  1. Now a little tedious bit. Delete the frames you don’t want. If you edited the footage to contain only the frames you want, you are golden.
  2. I use Contact Sheet II plug-in for Photoshop, which needs to be installed: (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4688) or you can use the one from Adobe Bridge.
  3. Import all your frames using ContactSheet. Include no spaces or dividers.

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  1. Final tweaks: move all layers 1 pixel up and 1 pixel left (I always found that necessary), give it all black background.
  2. Export as a single Targa subuv image.

Hope this helps,

Kind regards,

Marcin

3

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4

Great, I will try this out. Thanks for the tip!

5

Thanks for the writeup and detailed explanation, Marcin!

6

Ok I tried this method out using AE and the Conact Sheet II Photoshop plug-in and it works great. (I also tried using Adobe Bridge output for the contact sheet but couldn’t quite get the right results). Regarding step #5, yes I found that lowering the frame rate in After Effects to the appropriate value can eliminate this step. (This can be found under the basic Composition Settings)

40734-ae_compset.jpg

7

Hi Stephen,

I am perfectly fine with this.

Kind regards,

Marcin