Gradients

Makes pixel perfect gradients for a mapping: drawn to fit its canvas, written into the project as an image, and played by a video layer.

1. Select a layer in Designer that is on the mapping you want, then click New Gradient. It starts on that layer's mapping. With nothing selected it starts on the mapping whose editor is open, or the first one, and the mapping's button, under the gradient's name, changes it.
2. Choose a Type and its Colours. The preview is the image, only smaller, with the mapping's screens outlined over it.
3. Click Add layer, the button with the layers on it at the top of the preview, to the left of Create image. The image is written into the project and a video layer playing it is added at the play head of the current track, on the gradient's mapping, 30 seconds long unless Layer length says otherwise.

From then on the layer follows what you do here: each change is written as a new version of the image a moment after you stop, and Designer moves the layer on to it. The line that runs across the bottom of Update image shows how soon.

A gradient is named for its mapping and its type ("cam all feather") until you type a name of your own: click the name at the top of the preview and type over it.

Files lists the project's gradients, each with a picture of it, the one changed most lately first: the latest three, and the rest behind Show more. Click one to work on it. With the pointer on a row, the two buttons at its end duplicate it or delete it. A deleted gradient goes to the trash, which is saved in the project with the list: the button with the bin on it, beside New Gradient, opens it, to put a gradient back with Restore or to delete everything in it for good with Empty trash, which asks first. Either way the images stay in the project. New Gradient starts another.

Types

• Linear runs the ramp across the whole canvas at an angle. Drag the handle on the preview to turn it.
• Radial runs it out from a centre, as a circle or an ellipse. Drag the middle handle to move it and the outer one to size it. Centre X and Centre Y are measured from the middle of the canvas: 0% is the middle, and 50% either way is an edge.
• Feather fades each screen in from its own edges, for a soft edge or a blend. On a feed mapping each rectangle is a screen: untick one under Screens to leave it alone. Feather is how far in the fade reaches. Rounding rounds the corners of what is left fully on (with Rounding shape on Oval, all the way to an oval with no straight edge), and Corners is how the fade turns them: Round in a quarter circle, Square close to the corner, Smooth eased as a projector blend is.
• Polygon fills a shape with a soft edge.
• Multi mixes up to eight colours, each strongest at a point of its own. Drag a colour on the preview to move it; Blend is how softly they run together.

Linear, radial, polygon and multi gradients cover the whole canvas, so they run across every screen on it.

Drawing a polygon

• Drag a corner to move it. Drag the small handle on a side to add a corner there.
• Right click a corner to remove it, or choose it and click Remove corner.
• Click a corner to choose it: it turns white, and Shape shows where it is, X across and Y down, as a share of the canvas and in pixels. Type in any of the four to place it exactly. Under them is where that is on each screen showing it, in the screen's own pixels.
• Corner Smoothing, under the preview with the chosen corner's X and Y, bends the outline through the chosen corner. Linked gives it two square handles to drag, one mirroring the other; Bezier lets them move apart; Sharp takes them away.
• With Snap on, a corner being dragged catches on the other corners, the edges and middle of the canvas, and the edges and middle of each screen. A green line shows what it has caught on. Hold Alt to place it freely.

Feather is the width of its soft edge, which Soft edge puts inside the outline, across it or outside it.

Colours

Mattes are black to white, and white or black to transparent, each both ways round: for masks and fades. Colours are ready-made ramps. Reverse runs any ramp the other way.

To make your own, click the bar to add a colour and drag its marker to place it. Click a marker to change its colour, its position and its opacity, or to remove it. Two markers in the same place make a hard edge.

Finish

Blur softens the whole image. Noise opacity adds grain over the top: a little (5 to 15) hides the bands a smooth gradient can show on a screen, and more is a look of its own. Noise size is how large its specks are, in the image's pixels, 1 being the finest there can be, and Noise contrast how hard they are. The preview shows grain to scale, so grain too fine for it to draw is shown fainter. An image with noise is a much larger file, and takes longer to reach Designer. Blend mode is how the grain goes on: Add moves every value by it, and Overlay and Soft Light lay it over as an image editor would, leaving black and white alone.

Where the images go

Into the project's objects/VideoFile/GN_Gradients folder, as name_v001.png, name_v002.png and so on. Designer treats these as versions of one clip, called name.png, and layers playing it move on to the newest. Folder changes where they go.

• Designer keeps every version it has loaded open, so a version can't be written over or deleted while Designer is running. Delete old ones with Designer closed.
• Update Designer as I edit can be turned off, and then nothing is written until you click Update image.
• Bit depth is 8 bit unless you choose 16 bit, which has no bands on a long, dark gradient but makes larger images that are slower to write.
• Sync to the session's machines hands each image to Designer's Media Distribution, to copy to the session's other machines. It has not yet been tried in a session, so check the first image arrives.
• The images are written on the director only. On a session with actors or understudies they have to be synced to the other servers as any media is: the plugin doesn't do that yet.

When a screen changes size

Everything about a gradient is kept as a percentage, so it can be made again at another size. If a mapping's canvas or its screens change in Designer, its gradients are marked Canvas changed on the list, and Update writes them again to fit.

The list is saved in the project, so it is there for whoever opens the project next. Each image also has its settings inside it: one that is in the folder but not on the list is offered under the list, to add back.

Hover the ? beside any setting for what it does.