Thought Bubbles

[greg]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to have a character sitting in a chair have a thought bubble pop up. Kind of like you would see in a comic book. I can't seem to figure out how to do this. I think for the most part I could just use decals and paste them into the air above the head. But, if I create a round white circle in Photoshop, of course the picture is square and I can't seem to get rid of the background and just leave the circle. When the top bubble appears, I then would insert a model, which I have to create and perform some type of animation on the model. Am I thinking right in using decals or is there a better way to accomplish this.

 

Thanks.

 

Greg

[robcat2075]

alpha channels. add an alpha channel in phtoshop to your decal to make the background transparent;

[Luuk Steitner]

Wouldn't it be easier to add the thought bubbles in a compositing program?

[robcat2075]

example bubble tga with alpha channel

 

bubble.zip

[heyvern]

You could draw it in AM (or in Adobe Illustrator and import), use surface properties with 100% ambient and no spec or diffuse shading and then apply constraints to it so it always faces the camera (or not depending on your needs).

 

There are also some custom fonts out there that have "thought" or "speech" balloons that could be used with the text import plugin. This way they come in already created with legal filled patches.

 

Of course you would need to apply the "contents" as decals but at least you don't have to worry about alphas on the TGA's.

 

This technique could give you more options. You could animate the thought balloon "popping" up or do some squash and stretch etc to make it more "exciting".

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

-vern

[Caroline]

I did it here a long time ago, using Robcat's way with a photoshop image and alpha channel.

 

It wasn't a decal - in the choreography I inserted a new layer, which is the image. It is 2d, so you have to aim it flat with the camera. I used Active On/Off for the time when I needed it to show.

 

Thread on creating an alpha channel

[largento]

example bubble tga with alpha channel

 

bubble.zip

 

Well, strictly speaking, that's a word balloon.

 

Here's a thought bubble (saved as a PNG with an alpha channel)

 

[greg]

Hi,

 

Thanks for all the help. I'm pretty sure how to get it done now.

 

Greg