"Flash" attribute in Effects

8100

Hi Guys - any way to add a "flash" attribute to "effects" - this would be enormously helpful to create attention grabbing hotspots or text boxes for effect rather that trying to animate these as images and then importing them which is hugely time consuming and complicated!

carlfink

Do you want a simple one-time flash, or a continuous flashing?

Don't make anything red and large flash at around once per second, please. This can trigger epileptic seizures in susceptible people.

8100

Cheers Carl - I wanted to have 3 flashes to draw attention to the image - for example we have a exclamation warning sign to draw attention to a key learning point in the video - being able to attach a "flash" attribute from the effects tab would make this process very simple - CenarioVR could even limit the number and flash frequency to protect the photosensitive users!

johnb

What I generally do is "spin" the object, rather than flashing it. Give it a try, use an "animate" action, you can specify the number of spins, and the speed of the spin. Does a great job of drawing the users attention. and won't be an issue for photo sensitive users.

8100

Thanks John - yup, tried that but it does not give the effect we are after. A flash effect is more urgent and draws attention...spinning just looks nice

carlfink

I also use the spin idea. You can also just use a very contrasting color, e. g. bright blue if the image you're putting it in front of is mostly earth tones. Of course, this only works for those who can see color. A substantial minority have some sort of color vision problem.

If you're dead-set on flashing, you could presumably use the timeline and have actions every, say, half-second to hide and reveal the object, and then loop the timeline. It would be somewhat laborious to set up, and you would need a second, invisible object to actually click on (so that when the visible object is hidden, the click would work).

EDIT: you could spin a 3D object that's two different colors and rotationally symmetrical, so as it rotates it repeatedly changes color. That might be close enough to substitute for flashing. Say it's a cylinder--make one half white and one black, and spin it. It wouldn't look exactly like flashing, but it would be hard not to notice.