This would have been my submission to robertleger.net Xpresso Task 8. Apparently I filled in the form on his site but when I woke up my information was still in the form. So this is an incomplete assignment from me since I didn’t submit it on time.
I created the XStage because, although I love keyframing, setting key frames just to switch a camera always seemed tedious using the stage object. Also whenever you need to adjust it you had to hunt down the key frames and then play it out and see how it looked. A back and forth process that seemed a bit much to me. So after getting the assignment this is one of the first things I thought of doing.
This Xpresso setup lets you set 6 cameras plus your start camera to switch based on whatever key frame you input. Just enable the camera, drag a camera in, set the frame, and repeat for the next one. You can also offset the begging key frame and all the rest after based on the start value. This can come in handy if you need to have more than 6 cameras to switch between in a scene.
I created the XShatter simply because I wanted to see If I could do more effects without keyframes. This effect simply lets you choose when you want the effect to begin and how long based on seconds or frames. I made this option because it annoyed me sometimes in the CS Tools, which are great, that you couldn’t base the length of a tool’s animation or property based on frame just duration in seconds. It worked most of time but sometimes I just wanted it to end on x frame instead of having to adjust the beginning to get it where want.
I also created XMelt which has the same setup as XShatter and was mainly a test to see if I could transfer the Xpresso setup to another effect. I did a test with it on my 365 project if you want the see witch hat melt and shatter. http://365project.org/g2b/365/2011-06-13
The tentacle setup was a project setup by DAGraphix- http://dagpx.deviantart.com/
Once I finish my final render I will upload the files here and on my DA page.