Transitions on top of transitions?

[leaflover]

Hi, somewhat new to Magic. I just learned Magic has midi and osc capability and I'm wondering if that might be the answer.

I already have setup in the playlist an image followed by a transition, image, transition, image, transition. But on top of that I also want to independently have text that transitions, but that seems impossible because we essentially only get one timeline. My first idea was to render a video of the text to overlay, but maybe there's a better way?

[Sadler]

There are a few things to consider when dealing with transitions. A transition goes from one scene to another and therefore, must necessarily render both scenes during the transition - I often forget this and complex visuals stall on transition. This would be worse with layered transitions. Another consideration is that if you interrupt a transition, again which I've done accidentally, the transition is cancelled (in the Magic playlist). And lastly, there are currently few transitions to choose from (in the layer nodes or the playlist) - 'more transitions in the playlist and mix nodes' is a feature request.

That said, there are some things you can try. You could have your text all within a single scene that transitions using a multimix node driven by the playlist# internal value - you can then include this text scene in all others (or post-processing) which would allow you to temporally offset, delay or extend the transition of the text. I experimented with this and it looks quite cool though it's a subtle effect.

Because transition effect nodes exclusively accept just two inputs, one can only transition between two scenes. However, you could set up a hierarchy of transitions and move through them in sequence, though this would be quite complicated to set up. There may be a way to construct this so that it syncs with the playlist# though I couldn't work this out (got close though) but this could certainly be done driven by a timer - maybe Midi or OSC too.

On this forum, Terry Payman has demonstrated a blend node that takes up to six inputs which cuts down the need for complex blend node hierarchies. It is conceivable that this could also be done with GL transitions, even though blending is quite different from transitioning.

I might be useful to know specifically what you're trying to achieve and what you mean by 'independently'.

[Terry Payman]

... might be useful to know specifically what you're trying to achieve and what you mean by 'independently'.

Indeed, but perhaps some variation on the following would suit. By duplicating the same image in successive scenes you have the option to change the text while the image remains unchanged and change the image while the text remains unchanged.

Playlist:
image1, no text
image1, text1
image2, text1
image2, text2
image3, text2
image3, text3
.
.
.