Hi,

We are going to produce a poker tv show, with video table etc. I was wondering, what is the best way to bring hole cards animation on screen? You can check out an example from here: YouTube - NEW Poker After Dark s05e46 Season 5 episode 46 FULL , HD HQ 3/4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMLpzfI53ZM) scroll to 40s(cards on left side of screen).

So basically, I need to show what cards every player has and what table brings. Cards should come and go with little animation. There are 2600+ possible combination of two cards(13cards, 4 suits), so I can't really render all combination out before the filming and use them. I need to create some kind of default animation, where I could replace the cards as needed. What is the best way for that? Can I do this with After Effects?

thanks for helping!

Hi Andzei. Yes you could use AE to do it. Firstly you need each card as a separate image. Create your animations using any cards. To change which cards are displayed select the card's layer then ALT drag the new card onto that layer. You will have the same animation but with new cards. Hope that helps.

You can't do this using AE. Are you revealing the graphics live as they play poker? Or are you adding the cards in post?
If its live you need to look at somthing like 'Newteks Tricaster' to play your animations in realtime from a list of preset animations.
This show uses a progrom like VIZ trio to playout various graphics live.. fairly complicated and expensive.

Yes, you're absolutely right Blake. I presumed that it would be done in post, so now I'm intrigued: as the table doesn't appear to have any clear panels with cameras under them how do you know which cards are being dealt (or is that the 'video table')? Just curious as to how it works.