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Starfield pan shot
Hi everybody!
I need some help of yours…Im making a movie,and i have an intro in it,that i want to look like James Cameron’s Aliens intro…
If you remember there was a very long starfield panning sequence,that was showin a ship in the end…
So how can I do something like that,avoiding flat jpg backs,or “boxes” made from same jpgs?
Please help… -
9 Replies
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Can’t recall that shot (altho the rest of the title sequence is burned into m memory with the text building from vertical lines, horizontals, and finally the diagonals. Very cool. Movie gave me nightmares for months.) but layering copies of starfields is easy. Just set them to pan at slightly different rates. Or set ’em up in a 3D comp.
You can use any of several particle systems to create traveling stars by applying the filter to very wide layer and just moving the emitter.
bogiesan
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it’s pretty easy to make a fairly believeable star field with fractal noise.
just adjust the bightness, contrast and scale to get something that looks like a star field. then you can animate the offset to pan for as long as you need and you’ll never get to the end of a layer.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
I know,i can use different particle systems,like particular or prarticle world,but i think of it as of some kind of a sphere…,so i could rotate my camera in any dimension and direction inside it…And flat backs won t let me do it!=( Bytheway another example i can remember is from the new Star Trek movie,when there are end credits,and camera pans from one planet to another,a bit too fast,but still…Well,any ideas?=)
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[Val Mike] “but i think of it as of some kind of a sphere…,so i could rotate my camera in any dimension and direction inside it..”
That wasn’t the original question. AE doesn’t do spherical environments without third party enhancements.
bogiesan
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you can try to do it with cc sphere….
you’ll need to first create a flat starfield image with cylindrical projection that is twice as wide as it is high to use as a spherical texture map (try googling: photoshop spherical texture map for techniques).
once you have that, you can bring it into ae and add cc sphere. set the effect’s render setting to ‘inside’ and set the radius to fill the screen. then in the shading settings set ambient to 100, diffuse to 0 and specular to 0.
now you’ll need to link a 3d camera’s rotation values to the rotation controls in the cc sphere effect. add a camera and reveal it’s rotation properties. add expressions for each of the cc sphere rotation porperties and use the expression pickwhip to link the x, y and z rotations to the same properties for the camera, except for the z property, add a minus before the expression (you’ll need the inverse of the z rotation to make that value correct).
now, as you rotate the camera, the starfield sphere will rotate with it, making it appear to pan with the camera movement. it will need a bit more tweaking depending on the lens of the camera and the radius of the sphere, but that will get you close.
however, it would probably be faster to fake it with fractal noise and animate the offset turbulence value in the transform properties of the effect.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Thanks!That’s exactly the thing i was thinkig of!)
I tried to use cc sphere,but i didnt go so far…
Only one thing…,could you please explane:”…expressions for each of the cc sphere rotation porperties…”,i’m not very familiar with expressions so far(((What are those expressions? -
…yes,but AE can simulate almost everything=)and that is the orig question…,how to make a simulation of a 3d enviromet…space…=)
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[Val Mike] “could you please explane:”…expressions for each of the cc sphere rotation porperties…”,i’m not very familiar with expressions so far(((What are those expressions?”
to add expressions to a property, select the property and choose animation>add expression (or alt-click (pc)/option-click (mac) the stopwatch for the property). then, in this case, you can just use the expression pickwhip to pick the respective rotation value of the camera… essentially you are just parenting the value in the effect to the value of the camera. but, since you can’t ‘parent’ an effect property to an object you have to use expressions. for the z value, you’ll need to modify the pickwhip expression by adding a minus in front of the expression. this is just t o get the inverse of the rotation value, so the sphere will rotate on that axis correctly.
as dave mentions, there are effects that are designed to do this and will work much better. cycorefx.com has improved versions of the cc effects that come bundled with ae. in that package are 12 other effects, one of which is environment, which is designed to do exactly what you are looking for.
i’ll also say that it would be easier to fake it with the fractal noise effect. just tweak the brightness, contrast and scale (fractal scale within the effect) it to look like a starfield, then animate the offset turbulence property (also in the transform properties of the effect)… you’ll be able to get an endless pan in a minute or two.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Sorry to bump, but this method is flawless. Thanks!
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