Preserved Topic: Lasers?

I'm creating this image of a barcode and I would like to make an animation of it being scanned. I'm not sure how to go about creating a good laser light to pass over the barcode. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Here is the image so far


Thanks for the help.



[This message has been edited by Lao is good (edited 10-10-2001).]

mmm barcode scaners are infra red arnt they?

lens flare?

Thin red line, transparent and kinda blury.

Don't forget a little noise around the laser, the interference-effect.

Hmmmm, I'd suggest you go to the grocery store and take a look at what happens when they scan sometime. Especially if you go to some place like Best Buy where they use that little gun. If I'm not way off kilter here I think that the laser shows up as a red X on top of the barcode when it is scanned.

Just go buy a pack of gum and remember to watch as it is scanned.

I think he's been thinking of the old red line barcode scanners..but shining from behind?

Well odd concept, but I gave it the ten second whirl

Needs to be more red, and probably thinner, with more light diffusion through the bars, but was this sort of the idea?





ICQ:# 10237808

[This message has been edited by DarkGarden (edited 10-10-2001).]

I thought they were scanned UP and DOWN rather than across ?

Remember not to look directly AT the laser when you're examining it in the grocery store.

Yep DG thats exactly the effect I was looking for. Care to share how you went about creating it?

just make a 3 pixel pinkish line, give it a small motion blur, set to low opacity, then in the middle a nice bright reddish orange 1-2 pixel line with a small amount of motion blur...

Now use mbridge's technique description, put the layers above your "barcode" layer. Make a selection of the barcode itself....Inverse the selection, and set it as a quick mask on one of the layers.

Unlink the quickmask from the layer itself, and run a slight blur on it. Make a selection of the quickmask, and make a quickmask on the second layer as well. Repeat as necessary.

What the mask does is allow the "light" of your laser layers to diffuse around the barcode bits, but still seem to be blocked out by it a bit. I used three layers, one red, two white, all three blurred in increments and set to normal, screen, and dodge, respectively

Play with the masking techniques, then you just move the light layers wherever you want for each frame of your animation.

Hope it helps.

Peter




ICQ:# 10237808

For the record, bar codes are scanned from side to side. There would be no point in scanning top to bottom, since it reads the exact same all the way from top to bottom....the whole point of the barcode is the varied WIDTHS of the bars........see?

Sorry DG but I dont understand how you created the effect. I dont really understand the masking, could you post some images or a clearer step by step? Thanks.

All right Lao. What I'm talking about, are "Quickmasks"

In the Layers palette, there's a button at the bottom of the palette that looks like that.

When you're on an active layer (not the Background Layer) and you make a selection (with the marquee tool, or any other mask tool, lasso etc.) if you click that button when the selection is active, it will create a Mask for that layer that will mask anything outside of that selection that you made. (It doesn';t destroy the area outside on the layer, just renders it invisible) The mask itself appears right beside the thumbnail of the layer, and shows any area that is white, hiding any area that is black...if it's grey, it shows semi-transparencies.

Dig so far?

The mask is "linked" to the layer itself, so if you drag the Layer, you drag the mask too. If you click on the link, it unlinks the mask so that when you move the layer, the mask stays in place, so that you can expose different areas of the layer by dragging it into the unmasked area.

Still Dig?

What I was saying to do was to make a selection of the "barcode" itself (the orange parts, by using ctrl + Click or Command + Click on a MAC) inverse the selection (Select>>>Inverse) then click on the "laser" layer and click the Quickmask button. Unlink the mask you just made, and blur it a bit. Blurring will cause some of the "laser light" to appear over the barcode, but the rest will be behind it.

Now, when you move the "laser" Layer to the right for each frame, it will be slightly masked behind the barcode, but some of it will seem to shine through.

If you follow this and Mbridge's explanation of how to make the laser Layers, then you're good to go Take it into Image Ready, and drag the laser Layer to each position to make the frames for your animation.

Voila..we be jammin'

Let me know if you're still a bit hazy.

Peter




ICQ:# 10237808

An added point. When you animate it, the scanning laser blinks on and off really quickly, but still slow enough so you can see it.

Ya know, just for that added realism

Thanks DG much clearer now. I'll give it a go later today, thanks a lot.