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By request, the making of the animated DOTD menus...

OfficiallyUnofficial

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Hey! After the positive comments I received for my first project, especially with the DVD menus, plus a request to detail how I created said menus, I decided to throw together this quick little tutorial. Now this was all done with photoshop, Sony Vegas 7 (6 works too), and DVD Architect 3. Let's split it up into different parts:

1. The Main Menu:

This was mainly a case of just having multiple layers. First we have the background sunrise... or "dawn" if you will *insert Peter Griffin giggle*...



Then we have the famous zombie head from DOTD. It is completely surrounded by green so when put in Vegas, the green chroma keyer will remove it all so only the head will appear.



Then we have this semi-matted shot of the "zombie army", with green matting at the top...



Note that the green somewhat has a faded gradient look, so when the chroma key effect is used later on in Vegas, it'll appear a bit more seamless.

All right, now in Vegas, this is the order in which the three photos should be...



Zombie army at top, zombie head in middle, and background on the bottom. Also, this was the initial process. The background fades in for about 2-3 seconds. Then we have the zombie army slowly pan up. For this, right click on the video of the zombie army and click on "video event pan/crop". You should see this:



Now, click the 4-way arrow on the left so it turns into an arrow only going up and down. Then pull the rectanglular graph upward until it's sitting right on top of the image. Also, make sure that the smoothness option on the left is all the way at 100%.



Now, move the bottom marker on the pan/crop screen over three seconds and then scroll the rectangular graph down far enough so the bottom is right below the zombie army. Make sure the smoothness remains at 100%.



Now, you can add a wave effect if you want to create the illusion that the zombies are swaying back and forth. Now, aside from some changes, use the same technique to have the head pop up from behind the zombie army. From here, have the logo and on-screen text fade in...



Once all animation is finished, make sure the video is at the very last frame and then make sure the preview quality is set to "Preview (Full)". Then click the small screencapture button and save the last frame as a JPEG.



This JPEG will be used for the final interactive menu. After this, you can render the overall video, and then use it as an "overture/introduction" video clip on DVD Architect. Then when you create your main menu, use the JPEG image.

2. Chapter Menus:

All righty, creating these menus are a bit easier. First, I created a template menu which had four green rectangles



This being said, I attempted to create a number of chapters divisible by 4, so I ended up with 32 chapters. And from there, I created 8 pages. But for this tutorial, we'll just use the basic numberless/textless templates.So from here, I took a 30 second clip from each chapter and shrunk them using the pan/crop tool. For the four different positions, I created different pan/crop templates. Basically "up left", "up right", "down left", "down right".



This is basically all that was done, aside from adding different music for each page. 30 seconds is a decent length. Seeing as how someone probably only spends 10 seconds on a chapter menu (if at all), 30 seconds is sufficient.

3. Custom Buttons:

All right, while there are various ways to do this, we're going with the method used for the DOTD menus. First, a black and white "blood print" was created in Adobe Photoshop using a custom brush. Save the button as a PSD file. Here is the one I came up with...



When adding buttons to the menus in DVD Architect, select "image only", and then go to the button properties and click on "Highlight":



Change "style" to "custom"; click on "mask" and select the picture you want to use; and change "mask mapping" to "intensity".

After this, click on "color sets" and begin changing "color set 1" so that all the colors are based on one color. In this case, they were all red-based to create the blood look. However, do not change any of the opacity levels.



Now you should have your custom button!


I won't lie... this tutorial was done a bit quickly. Any questions I might've left unanswered, feel free to ask!
 

dark jedi

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Thanks a bunch for this,I see I will have some reading to do.

thanks again

DJ
 

OfficiallyUnofficial

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dark jedi said:
Thanks a bunch for this,I see I will have some reading to do.

thanks again

DJ

No problem! This should at least get you started, if anything. It's basically just a bunch of experimenting and "oh, this might work!" moments :lol:
 

boon23

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great guide, OU!
 

OfficiallyUnofficial

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boon23 said:
great guide, OU!

Thanks! I was flattered by the comments I got for the menus, so I thought I'd throw this together real quick. And I'm already working on my next project... well, two kinda... 8)
 
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