Cards/Surfaces in SynthEyes and Flame

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‌Cards/Surfaces in SynthEyes and Flame

The Flame exporter has special support for sending 3D planes from SynthEyes to Flame as Flame “Surfaces”, where clips, images, and other media can be displayed on them.

In SynthEyes, you can create cards using the “Add Card” mode of the Perspective View. It allows you to draw onto a plane defined by a collection of trackers, either those swept out in the course of defining the plane, or previously selected.

You can use that mode, or you can simply rename a regular SynthEyes plane so its name begins with “Card” or “Surface.” You can create that plane however you like, drawing it on a coordinate axis plane, or a grid you’ve set up, or whatever repositioning you’d like.

To become a surface in Flame, its name must start with “Card” or “Surface”, it must not have an existing texture, and it must not have an externally imported mesh file name. Both of those two latter requirements can be met by removing the texture or file name.

Note: You can set the mesh name of any mesh to start with Card and meet the other two requirements. Then, regardless of the mesh geometry, it will become a flat plane in Flame.

To scale the Card and Surface to match in both applications, SynthEyes needs to know the resolution of the applied imagery. By default, applied images are assumed to match the resolution of the shot, ie on an HD shot, cards are expected to be displaying HD footage also.

You can use the ‘Script/Flame/Set Card Resolution’ script or set the resolution manually by adding it to the end of the card’s name. Either way, something like Card05_1000_500 specifies that a 1000x500 image is to be attached. The 3-D size of the surface in Flame won’t be right until that image is actually attached. If you need to change to a different resolution, change the name (with the script or manually) and re- export the shot to Flame.

Tip: The ‘Script/Flame/Set Card Resolution’ script has options to make a plane or card exactly match (in 3-D) the specific aspect ratio of the image that will be applied, so for example an attached video won’t be stretched or squeezed.

Tip: Use the mesh resizing rectangle in the perspective view to place and resize the card. Use shift-drag to maintain the exact aspect ratio if desired.

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