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scrimshaw1803
05-22-2006, 04:44 PM
I have a shatter effect that I am trying to roll across a line of text.

So I created a new solid layer, applied a Ramp effect and set this as the gradient for my shatter effect. I then keyframed the Shatter threshold from 0 to 100.

The problem is the gradient layer seems to have no effect. If my threshold is 0, then no shatter occurs. If it is 1, then the entire layer shatters.

I have checked and double checked my gradient layer and it is a ramp as expected. I have a simple black to white ramp.

From what I understand, if I set the Shatter Threshold to 38%, then everything that corresponds to 0-38% white on my gradient layer will shatter. Yet if I set it to 38%, the entire thing shatters, even though I can clearly see the gradient underneath shows only 1/3 of the layer should correspond to 0-38% white.

Any ideas of what could be wrong here?

Thanks!
DLangley
05-22-2006, 08:26 PM
I believe that in order for shatter to recognise the ramp, you will need to precompose the layer with the ramp effect.
scrimshaw1803
05-23-2006, 12:57 AM
Thanks for the reply but I already tried pre-comping the ramp and shatter layers. No luck.

I actually tried using the text layer as a shatter gradient and that seemed to work. So not sure why the ramp layer does not.
scrimshaw1803
05-23-2006, 02:30 AM
Figured it out.

i did not need to precomp but I did need to have the ramp in the alpha, not RGB. Interesting because I found a couple shatter tutorials using threshold but they did not mention this and the documentation does not indicate this either.

Perhaps this behavior is new to 7.0?
Mylenium
05-23-2006, 05:45 AM
Perhaps this behavior is new to 7.0?

No, actually it shouldn't matter at all whether you use Alpha or Luminosity. Sounds indeed rather strange.

Mylenium
scrimshaw1803
05-23-2006, 01:23 PM
No, actually it shouldn't matter at all whether you use Alpha or Luminosity. Sounds indeed rather strange.

Mylenium

I didn;t actually experiment with this but I know that I could not get a solid layer with a ramp effect to work even after an hour of trying. So I created a photoshop file with a gradient alpha channel and used that. Worked perfectly the first time. So I assumed it was an alpha problem but I could be wrong.

I should just try a PS file with a gradient in the RGB channels. If that works, I am curious why the ramp layer does not.
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