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Trapcode Particular: Moisture?
Hey all,
What’s the best way to make someone’s hands glow? Kind of like energy is forming inside their bodies and it’s going to escape from their palms?
I’ve used solid’s in the past and feathered them out to make glows or reflections from fire or energy. It looks okay but I had some people tell me it looks fake. Obviously the goal for me is to make things look organic as possible. Any experience with this?
Thank you!
Scott -
4 Replies
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Just masked solids?
You’d probably improve it 200% if you added some (veiny?) texture to it and tracked the texture to the motion of his hands. A slight grain or noise filter if you’re not using one already.
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Yeah, I’m pretty new to AE so one of the first tutorials I saw was using solids for glows, reflections, etc. So that’s what I did. I duplicated the layer a couple times and it’s okay.
So what you’re saying is to keep the solid and add those effects to it and tweak from there?
Sorry if that’s a dumb Q.
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Well you could do the same as you would with the solid, but use an image file with the texture you want instead of a solid layer. Use motion tracking to move it with the hand, and then mask it to the hand.
You ever do the thing where you stick a flashlight in your mouth so your cheeks glow? You can also see veins in your fingers if you have a light behind them. Maybe photograph a couple of those things for reference to get your veiny texture.
Depending on the shot and if you’re bending your fingers, you could maybe use puppet tool to keep the finger texture moving with the fingers.
If you’re rotating the hand, you might want to use Mocha or something to keep the texture matched to the hand’s surface.
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Thanks for the advice… I really appreciate it.
So after what you said I was googling around for images, etc. and came across “I am number four” or whatever that movie was called. They talked about how they got that one character’s hands to glow. I watched the footage and I really liked how his palms looked like smoldering embers in a fire. The red glow and shifting colors looked pretty real and I was hoping to get something like that.
So going with what you said, I should get a texture, image, etc. and use that in place of the solid. Then are there any tricks to getting that shifting color affect in the palms? It really looked like the glow was emitting from inside the hand. I know I’ve watched tutorials with Andrew Kramer where he uses fractal noise, etc. for getting that organic shiftiness for some effects, but since I’m new to this is there any way you could put it in layman terms for me?
Thanks again for all the help.
Scott
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