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I've created some 3D text and want it to be visible over the movie strip shown below. This works well until I insert key frames to move it.

Why do I loose the visibility of this text when I animate it and how can I make it visible again?

enter image description here

Here is my .blend file so you can have a look.

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  • $\begingroup$ Could you please post your .blend, it is difficult to find the problem from the screen shot you provided $\endgroup$ – GiantCowFilms Jun 14 '14 at 13:19
  • $\begingroup$ Try 'alpha under' as the Blending mode? $\endgroup$ – Mike Pan Jun 14 '14 at 21:55
  • $\begingroup$ The 3D text doesn't seem to be connected to the scene strip highlighted and circled above, and I don't know why. Thus changes made to the strip don't have any effect.This un-linking seemed to happen when I animated the text, prior to that I could see the text over the video. $\endgroup$ – reggie Jun 15 '14 at 7:42
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The quick fix is to set the Trim duration (hard) start = 1083 on the strip for the 3D.

The root of the problem is that by default an action strip pulls its data from the start of the animation. You animated your text timed to line up with the start of the action strip, not the beginning of the scene.

The current Best Practice is to keep your VSE and your 3D separate. The VSE scene should only have action strips and no 3D objects. You can create a separate scene for the 3d animation that has no VSE strips in it. Then the VSE scene has strips that refer to the separate 3D scene.

If you're not in a hurry, you can duplicate the scene using the + button at the top and choose Link Objects. This action does not actually copy all the VSE strips, but it does copy all the 3D objects, so you can use it for the source of the action strip.

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  • $\begingroup$ app.box.com/s/b2lhbcj5gl17wacilbhl $\endgroup$ – reggie Jun 16 '14 at 8:43
  • $\begingroup$ I've tried your "(hard) start" trick and bingo. However I want to work to best practice, so I tried to copy all 3D objects to another scene, but I cannot get the 3D text over the image strip. Here is a link to my latest blender file blendfile: app.box.com/s/b2lhbcj5gl17wacilbhl. What have I done wrong? $\endgroup$ – reggie Jun 16 '14 at 8:52
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    $\begingroup$ Your "3d text" scene still has VSE strips. I'd remove those. The animation doesn't start until t=1083. I'd use the dopesheet to move those back to start at t=1. For the "bandtastic" scene, I'd remove all the action strips that pull frames from the "bandtastic" scene (since that's almost recursive). You'll put in an action strip that refers to the "3d text" scene instead. $\endgroup$ – Mutant Bob Jun 16 '14 at 14:20
  • $\begingroup$ OK, Iv'e managed to get two 3D scenes (loomtastic & 3Dtext) to show in my main scene (bandtastic), but when I add a third scene (text 1) , I loose visibility of the video strips below it. Iv'e included the latest blender file, why can I not see the words loomtastic over the video strips? link: app.box.com/s/cusm1izktma0wx7iyevf $\endgroup$ – reggie Jun 17 '14 at 22:10
  • $\begingroup$ Your latest version with "text 1" obscures lower layers because that scene has no transparency. If you look at the Render tab of the properties in the Shading section you will notice that the good text scenes have Alpha: transparent, while the bad one has Alpha: sky. $\endgroup$ – Mutant Bob Jun 19 '14 at 20:21

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