Vector Text
Boris Graffiti is the first integrated titling application to offer vector text.
Video graphics are typically composed of individual blocks called pixels. As a graphic's scale increases, the individual pixels become increasingly visible and the images degrade. Vector text uses outlines to display text with razor sharpness at any scale.
A classic compositing workflow was to create text in an application like Adobe® IllustratorTM, convert it to outlines, bring the outlines into a compositing application to animate them, then import the rendered output into the editing application. Once converted to outlines, the text is no longer editable as text. Any changes thus require returning to the beginning of the process: create text and convert to outlines in one application, animate in another, then import into the editor.
Instead, Graffiti 2 creates vector text that remains fully editable as text throughout the compositing process, within your favorite editing application. Fewer steps, more flexibility, and all the power you want, exactly where you need it.
Type On
Text animation has always been both easy and powerful in Graffiti. Title containers provide one-click auto-animation of rolls, crawls, zooms and fades of multiple pages of text. Graffiti 2 adds the additional option of shuffling pages.
A new auto-animation feature in Graffiti 2 is Type On text, although typing letters on one at a time is only the beginning. Type On allows the progressive application of multiple text animation parameters in user-defined combinations: set letters to spin, tumble or rotate, to fade or skew, scale, and more.
Text on Path
Along with the creation of vector text, Graffiti 2 provides a variety of ways to exploit the power of vectors, including text on a vector path. Simply create the path in Graffiti 2, which also supports importing paths from Adobe Illustrator. Unlike many other applications that offer this feature, Graffiti 2 allows you to animate the shape of the path over time, as well as its position and orientation in 3D space.
AE plug-ins
Boris Graffiti has always offered more filtering options than any other titling application, including powerful animated blurs, ripple, wave, and particle effects. Graffiti 2 adds support for leading third-party Adobe After Effects filters.
Once installed, compatible third-party AE plug-ins appear in the Boris Graffiti filters menu, where they are applied as easily as any other Boris filter. Supported filters include Media 100 Final Effects Complete, DigiEffects Cinelook, and many others that were not previously available inside nonlinear editing applications.
Audio Import and Playback
Unlimited numbers of both synch and scratch audio tracks are supported. Scrub audio to coordinate effects with music, view waveforms, even animate volume and pan from within Graffiti 2. There is also an option to play back audio during Preview to RAM.
Vector Backdrops
Boris Graffiti has always featured integrated backdrops, which scale automatically as text is added. Graffiti 2 features new vector, or Spline, backdrops. Spline shapes include rectangles, ovals, arcs, arrows, hearts and stars, any parameter of which may be animated. Map textures independent of the text. For example, map video to text while the backdrop uses a wood grain or reptilian skin.
Because these backdrops are fully functioning vector objects in Graffiti, they may also be extruded and animated in 3D space.
Natural Media
Graffiti 2 includes procedural Natural Media. Apply Natural Media to the faces of 2D or 3D objects including text, or use it to create backgrounds for Graffiti animations.
Because they are mathematically generated, Natural Media displays smoothly at any scale. Each texture category includes a variety of animatable parameters, any of which can be saved to the Graffiti Style Palette. (The Style Palette also comes with dozens of preset, editable textures.)
Natural Media types include Wood, Wood Plank, Fractal Noise, Marble, Granite, Fabric, Reptilian and Random Color. Apply Natural Media as realistic surfaces or animate them to create organic backgrounds.
New 3D Power
Boris Graffiti has always led the way in making 3D title animation as painless as possible, without sacrificing power.
Extrusion in Graffiti couldn't possibly be easier: one pop-up menu to choose "3D Extrusion" and you're done. Any parameter related to extrusion can be animated (depth, bevel, etc.), and media such as video, still images, gradients, and text can be mapped to any side of 3D objects, again, with a single menu option in Graffiti's hierarchical nested timeline.
Graffiti 2 also adds the ability to create and save a wide variety of materials to map to extruded objects, including glass, gold, aluminum, and plastic. Knowing that not all compositors have the time or inclination to become 3D artists, Graffiti 2 includes a number of preset materials, as well as variations saved to the Style Palette, ready to apply to any object. However, Graffiti 2 also offers an Advanced Materials options for adjusting your own settings for reflectivity, transparency, specularity, color and more.
Add to this full control over reflection and texture maps, multiple cameras per scene (any of which may animate Pan, Orbit, or Position), 3D lights and Graffiti's ability to map text to a variety of 3D shapes, and you have the most powerful 3D titler available.
Style Palette
Among the many new features in Graffiti 2 are powerful new text styles with multiple strokes (which can be plain, beveled or glowing) and shadows (drop, solid and cast). These are among the handful of parameters that can be saved to the expanded Style Palette in Graffiti 2, and applied to any new text.
As always, Graffiti styles are applied to any selected text, including a single letter, allowing easy application of multiple styles in a single text element.
Other parameters that can be saved to the Style Palette include colors, gradients, Natural Media settings, combinations of stroke and fill for spline backdrops, materials for extruded objects, and extrusion parameters such as bevel and depth.
Improved Interface
New timeline buttons create new media tracks (text, extruded text, stills, gradients, color) with a single click. Favorite filters (as defined by users in the Preferences) can be applied with one click as well.
New Controls window buttons allow one-click application of drop shadows (using the last applied shadow as a starting point), toggle to wireframe view, and the direct selection of the Face track in the timeline. By toggling the selection of a track's Face, users can make significant adjustments to any track's media: editing gradients, selecting still image files, setting colors and so on. A color/grayscale ramp is also provided to speed color selection.
Export to Flash, Movie Files, and Still Images
As an integrated title application, Boris Graffiti allows host applications to handle rendering. Graffiti 2 offers a number of new options to take advantage of new features in host applications, as well as offering features that most NLEs do not.
Chief among these is direct export of title animations as .swf files, Flash animations. Titles composed for use in video and film projects can thus be deployed for the web, with a single click.
Many NLEs support real-time playback of static files with alpha from the timeline. To take advantage of this, Graffiti 2 can export still image files with alpha. These can then be re-imported to the NLE, and composited over video in real time.
Some NLEs also support moving alpha channels. To take advantage of this, Graffiti 2 can export movies of text over alpha, which can render at speeds little more than 30 frames per second on some systems. Animated files with alpha are then composited over moving video in real time, and may be reused without re-rendering.
The Bottom Line: Speed, Power, Flexibility
Easy export of Flash, movie and still files are just the beginning of the speed improvements made to Boris Graffiti 2. It also features a more responsive interface, faster loading fonts, as well as faster 3D display and rendering.
The full range of new features in Boris Graffiti 2 also make it the most powerful 2D and 3D titler on the market: vector text, auto-animation, text on path, texture generation, 3D materials, multiple cameras, 3D lights, extrusion, and animation of 2D and 3D text in three-dimensional space.
As a result, no other titling application offers more flexibility for video editors and compositors, working inside leading NLE and effects applications on both platforms. Unprecedented power, speed and ease of use are just some of the ways that Boris Graffiti 2 is setting a new standard for title animation.
Graffiti 2
Vector text
