I was wondering if it’s possible that Blender could make animated DVD menus; has anyone seen Star Trek Nemesis?
Like an animated fly through type thing with a menu(like in Star Trek Nemesis, DVD version).
Maybe with a bit of scripting or something(or the logic panels)?
I have a feeling though that you need some special software or something and that a dvd player just wouldn’t read whatever Blender would output tho.
Thoughts?
No, you can’t do menus in Blender, that’s what DVD authoring software is for, like Adobe Encore or DVDlab. Or try DVD Styler, it’s free. If you want to make motion menus, you render out the video, then import it into your DVD authoring software. You can’t do DVD logic with Blender at all.
You can’t do DVD logic with Blender at all.
Well, I’m sure somebody could alway create a python script for it… 
OK, that’s what I meant; so you CAN make the animation in Blender, then export it to a dvd authoring tool?
Like DVD Styler?
Yes, you want to find in your DVD software where you define custom themes, and substitue your own picture as the background, and then even hopefully your own animation. iDVD by Apple for example automatically takes the first few seconds of your first video and uses it as a background.
in fact you could but it would need a talented coder to do this, as the dvd is only a xml file and the rest is files that blender can already output like mpeg2 and jpgs i think.
I am looking for a program to author DVDs (must be for windows, would be cool if it was opensource, but doesn’t have to be), that will allow me to get the clips from blender to form a menu. For example, one clip for the intro to the menu, and then separate clips for each time you change up or down a menu item, and then separate clips for when an item is selected.
I downloaded dvd styler, but seems you can only use background images for the menus. Has anyone here done a full interactive menu system on a dvd? What program(s) would you recommend, and is there a tutorial on it somewhere? Getting the images out of blender is fine, just need to know how to get them into dvd format.
Thanks,
MicWit
Maybe you can compile Cinerellaon windows…
Keep us informed about it. I searched a lot and the best i could get on windows was DVD Styler. Grab the beta if you want to use this because its much improved.
I may be wrong, but I don’t think cinelerra has support for dvd authoring. With DVD styler, it looks OK, but I dont know how to use animations when going between menu items.
You could render all of the animation in blender and then take it into your dvd authoring software,
where did i read that??
HERE IT IS!
next time read stuff…:no:
But thanks for helping anyways.
Yeah, I want to know what software lets you do that!!! As far as I can tell, DVD styler only allows still images for the menus, and you can only move between 2 buttons, not have an animation between 2 screens (for 2 menu items). I want to know what software allows for animated menus.
MicWit
Yes you can, I do it all the time and it works great. As long as your DVD authoring software is high end and allows you to do complete control you can easily render out animations and use that AVI in your video editor to get the mpeg files you need to insert them into the DVD authoring software.
I typically render all of what I need then use the DVD software to simply add the underline highlight or a box highlight over the graphics I want for the selection.
Add in some video overlaid on a graphic and it looks even better. the only decent DVD authoring app I have ever used is DVD lab. it’s better than the sony Vegas DVD app I bought for way too much $$$ and certainly easier to use than the Adobe software. It allows you complete freedom and is very much like using scenarist, the highest end DVD authoring software you can get and is what is used for all commercial DVD’s.
If you are on Mac then the final cut pro suite has a fantastic DVD authoring app. and under linux you are stuck as nothing exists that is worth using.
The most advanced dvd authring solution I found is the free Gui for dvdauthor, which actually also is a gui for muxman.
Dvdauthor(linux and win) and muxman(win) are the two freeware commandline dvdauthoring softs there are.
You can of course code you own files to author with them, but with the gui you can pretty much do every thing they allow you to do(also add animated menus(video) and transitions(video) between menus).
I’ve just added Gui for dvdauthor export(.gfd) to DVD slideshow GUI(also free), read more about in the link in my signature.
That sounds good, but I have downloaded GUI for dvdauthor, and cant work out how to do transitions between menus (I presume that can be between 2 menu items?) Is there a tutorial I can do somewhere on that? Or could you write some basic instructions out here? I can put animations into backgrounds of menus etc, but not sure how to make them between menu items.
Thanks,
MicWit
Instead of using a titleset as the first menu you can use it to play a video as background and let it continue to the first submenu.
But how do I make it so that if I press the left button it will play one clip, the right button a different clip, and the enter button another (that will then lead to the first chapter of the movie)? I dont have time until sunday to give it another go, but will try giving your instructions a go then.
Thanks for that.
I haven tried that, but have a look on switched menus:
http://download.videohelp.com/gfd/Help/SwitchedMenus.html