Thank you for trying out paint* v2.0 Option 2! This demo version is fully functional, with the following exceptions:
1) Saving of projects is not allowed.
2) A red "X" appears in the center of the screen and in the rendered output.
If you have obtained this demo version from the discreet logic website, please take the time to also download the tutorial lessons, if you have not already done so. Please print this document, it contains some additional information and usage tips not included in the tutorials.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1) Installation Notes
- Installing under Intel and DEC Alpha processors
- Installing the 3D Studio MAX plugins and connectivity
2) Features added since the printing of the manual
- Animated GIF support
- Foreign character text input
- Mesh preferences
- Context-sensitive tracker palette messages
- Tracker preview window (usage tips)
3) Compatibility with edit* 4.0
- Opening clips from an edit* bin
- Rendering to an edit* bin
4) Third party plugin compatibility
5) Contacting Discreet Logic
1) Installation Notes
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This section contains important instructions on how to install paint* under Intel or DEC Alpha processors. Choosing the wrong installer may cause paint* to run incorrectly, or not at all. Please read the installation notes carefully.
WindowsNT users note: YOU MUST BE IN ADMINISTRATOR MODE TO INSTALL PAINT*. The device drivers necessary for paint* to function will not install in User Mode.
INTEL INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
To install the software, open the folder labeled "Paint for Intel", double-click on the "Setup.exe" icon, and follow the on-screen instructions. A new folder hierarchy of "discreet logic/paint/option2" will be created in your "Program Files" folder, and paint* 2.0 Option 2 will be added to the Start Menu under the Program Group "discreet logic".
DEC ALPHA INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
To install the software, open the folder labeled "Paint for Alpha", double-click on the "Setup.exe" icon, and follow the on-screen instructions. A new folder hierarchy of "discreet logic/paint/option2" will be created in your "Program Files" folder, and paint* 2.0 Option 2 will be added to the Start Menu under the Program Group "discreet logic".
Installing the 3D Studio MAX plugins and connectivity:
1) Make sure that 3D Studio Max R2 or R2.5 is installed on your system. The connectivity features and plugins will not work with previous versions of 3D Studio.
2) Exit 3D Studio MAX and paint*, if they are currently running.
3) In the paint* folder, locate the Kinetix/3dsmax2/Plugins folder.
3) Copy the contents of this folder into the "Plugins" of your 3dsmax2 folder on your hard drive. Two files should be placed in this folder:
- Ipp.bmi
- Iptex.dlt
If you wish to use the 3D Studio MAX paint* plugins for network rendering, do this:
1) Locate the paint* folder on your hard drive.
2) Copy two files - "PaintEngine.dll" and "XPLib.dll" to the root level of the 3D Studio MAX folder.
You can now use this computer's installed version of 3D Studio MAX to perform network rendering.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you run paint* FIRST before attempting to access the 3D Studio MAX plugins!
2) Features added since the printing of the manual
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Animated GIF support
paint* can now open and create optimized animated GIF files from projects, using any number of colors from 2 to 256. These files are commonly used for low-bandwidth animation playback from web pages. GIF files are automatically recognized and converted to 32-bit format by paint* upon opening.
To create an animated GIF file from a project:
1) Choose File | Render. The Render Movie dialog will appear.
2) Click the Output Settings button, and choose GIF from the Format list.
3) Click the Options button for the format. The GIF Options dialog will appear.
3) Set the desired options and click the Close button.
4) Click the Render or Render As button to render your project as an animated GIF file.
GIF Options settings:
- The Optimise images for size checkbox performs a high-quality optimisation pass on the GIF file to reduce the file size as much as possible. This option should be checked if you intend to use the animated GIF for a web page.
- The Palette controls set the palette to one of four types: Adaptive, which creates a new reduced-color palette generated from the original colors of the project, Netscape, which uses the 216-color palette favored by the Netscape Navigator web browser, Windows, which uses the standard Windows system palette, and Macintosh, which uses the standard Macintosh system palette. You can also specify the number of colors in the animated GIF from a list, as well as the Use Transparency check box for incorporating the alpha channel of the project into your animated GIF (transparency in animated GIF files is either ON or OFF per pixel, unlike the 256 level depth of an alpha channel; the transparency reduction will also be calculated for you automatically).
- Color Reduction Scheme determines the process used to generate the reduced-color palette. Slow gives the highest quality and most accurate palette, but at the expense of time.
- Looping Options determine the number of times the animated GIF file will repeat. Click the Infinite Looping checkbox to repeat indefinitely, or type a specific number of loops in the text entry box.
Foreign character text input
You can now enter foreign characters into paint* via ASCII codes. To do this, first make sure NumLock is active, and find the correct ASCII code for the character you want (you can use the Windows Character Map utility for this, found in the Start Menu under Accessories). Make a note of the number. In paint*, while the text cursor is visible on screen, hold down the Alt key and type the appropriate number using the numeric keypad ONLY (this will not work with the number keys in the top row of the keyboard). The selected character will appear at the cursor location.
Mesh preferences
A new preferences panel has been added to control the appearance of the wireframe mesh while using paint* in conjunction with 3D Studio MAX in UV Unwrap mode. In this dialog, you can set the anti-aliasing of the wireframe lines, control whether the mesh appears while scrubbing and playing back animations in paint*, and the color of the overlaid wireframe lines.
Context-sensitive tracker palette messages
The Tracker palette now displays an appropriate heading and number of possible track options, depending on what is currently selected. For example, if you select one object, the Tracker palette will display "Track 1 Object" to indicate how the tracker controls will affect your work, once you begin tracking. If you select two objects, the Tracker palette will indicate that with "Track 2 Objects", and so on. Other options are also displayed in a context-sensitive manner; if you select one or more control points of an object, the Tracker palette will display "Track x Control Points", with x corresponding to the number of control points selected. Experiment with editing various objects, control points, effect Pick points, and other options in the program to get a feel for how the tracker will behave in each case.
Tracker preview window (usage tips)
When tracking, the tracker preview window (enabled by choosing Show Result from the Tracker palette popup menu) can not only display the found track region, it can also be used to quickly spot wandering track points. If you've chosen a good region of the clip to track, the display inside the preview window should remain relatively stable and centered in the preview window while tracking - if it starts to move around a lot, you may need to pause the tracker and adjust your tracker settings, or choose a different region to track. When a track is stopped or paused, the preview will scrub in real-time when you move through the project, and can be played in real-time by clicking on the window directly. To quickly evaluate the accuracy of a completed track, use the playback feature of the preview window. The preview window only displays the contents of the currently selected tracker box - if multiple tracker boxes are selected, it displays the contents of the last one you selected.
3) Compatibility with edit* 4.0
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paint* 2.0 features seamless compatibility with edit* 4.0. If edit* is installed on your system, you can open clips directly from a bin from within paint*, and render clips directly to an edit* bin from paint*.
Instructions for edit* media sharing
Note that edit* does NOT have to be running concurrently in order to open from or save to bins; as long as it's properly installed on the system you're using, you have full access to the bins from paint*. Bins can only be accessed using the thumbnail browser in paint*.
You may choose to run both edit* and paint* concurrently, but there's one important thing to remember - you cannot perform operations that require the hardware codec in both programs at the same time. For example, you can't render directly to the bin in paint* in the background AND continue to work in edit* simultaneously, because in that case both programs will be trying to access the Truevision or Matrox hardware at the same time, which is not possible with these boards. You can, however, render an image sequence or anything else that doesn't use the codec, while running edit* simultaneously in the foreground. You can also complete a render to a bin from paint*, then switch to edit* without closing paint* or the clip.
To open a clip from an edit* bin:
1) Choose File | Open from the menu. The standard paint* thumbnail browser will appear.
2) If edit* 4.0 is correctly installed on your system, there will be an entry at the top of the left-hand list labeled "edit* Bin Database".
3) Click the expand arrow next to this entry to see a listing of all edit* Jobs on the system. This could take a few seconds.
4) Click on the expand arrow next to a Job to see a list of the Bins contained in the selected Job.
5) Click on the name of a bin to see its contents in the right-hand window. You can choose to display either a list view or picons for each entry by checking the Show Thumbnails checkbox.
6) Double-click on an entry to open the clip in paint*, or click once on the item and click the OK button.
To render a movie directly to an edit* bin:
1) Choose File | Render from the menu. The Render Movie dialog will appear.
2) Click on the Output Settings button to choose your settings. For saving to a bin, you should specify Video for Windows from the Format menu, a frame size of 720x486 for NTSC or 720x576 for PAL (if this is not already specified as the document settings), Color for the channels (with premultiply Color ON), and Lower First for the fields.
3) Click OK to leave the Output Settings dialog.
4) Click the Render to Bin button. The Render to Bin dialog will appear, this is where you specify the settings for the bin entry. The options are:
- Job lets you select from a list of all the jobs on the system.
- Bin lets you select from a list of all the bins currently on the system.
- clicking the Create Bin button brings up a text box to type in a new name for a new bin.
- clicking the Refresh button re-reads the Job and Bin lists from the system to update them.
- Source name is the name of the clip as it is stored on your hard drive.
- The other three fields, Description, Scene, and Take, are optional edit* fields that are stored for each clip entry.
5) Click OK to enter the standard Video for Windows codec selection dialog, the same one you get when you save an AVI movie normally. In this dialog, you must choose the "Truevision MJPG" codec if you have either edit* option 2 or option 3. For edit* option 1, choose the "DigiSuite M-JPEG Codec" from the list.
When the render is finished, the new clip will appear in the selected bin in edit*.
4) Third party plugin compatibility
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Discreet Logic has tested a wide variety of plugins, originally designed for Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop, with paint*. While the great majority of them function properly, there are certain plugins that are not compatible with paint*, often due to issues beyond our control. For a list of compatible plugins, please contact Discreet Logic Technical Support, or visit www.discreet.com. Discreet Logic cannot guarantee the compatibility of plugins not verified for use with paint*.
5) Contacting Discreet Logic
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You can contact Discreet Logic at these telephone numbers:
