Creating boxes or text outlines should be a simple task. And it is – to a degree. You can create and animate frames from shading layers in the Text+ node or from masks over a background.
Beyond that, the paint node offers even more flexibility. Animate your lines and use custom brushes based on images or other Fusion tools. The only caveat: the paint node does not draw rectangle frames by default. A simple solution is to create your own preset with 4 published points that you can link to the width and height parameters.
Finally, you may want to make sure that custom boxes still perfectly align and adjust together with the text box that you initially created. To achieve this, you can connect your text boxes to the Text+ node via expressions. The Domain of Definition (DataWindow array) can be used to calculate the width and hight of the text.
For a Text+ tool with the name Template, you can access width and height with these expressions:
Width = (Template.Output.DataWindow[3]-Template.Output.DataWindow[1])/Template.Output.Width
Height = (Template.Output.DataWindow[4]-Template.Output.DataWindow[2])/Template.Output.Height
What I like most in all the Bernd tutorials, including this one, is that he explains different options (including advantages and disadvantages of each) to achieve a result and with the “excuse” to explain the main subject he often explains as well very important/advanced tricks that can be applied on anything else.
In this tutorial for example, I found extremely helpful and hugely important:
1) How to create new versions of a project.
2) How to link parameters between nodes or within the same node.
3) How to use data arrays and calculations with them.
4) How to use shape tools to create a brush.
5) How to create you own control parameters.
I have just two questions regarding this tutorial:
a) How do get the name of the array to manipulate and details about it?
b) Can we assign random or specific colors to each star while animating the frame?
In the mean time, thank you Bernd to have published another wonderful tutorial.
Already posted an answer on youtube earlier, just posting here as well for completeness:
A) probably from the scripting documentation or maybe from forum posts, especially on the WSL fusion Forum. That stuff isn’t so well documented – but now you have it here😉
B) not this way. Don’t think that would be easy with the paint node. Would probably have to think about some other solution here