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Turning a Jpeg or png into a vector directly in AE
Hi,
I am trying to animate some stills. Well as i zoom in a little bit, the pixels show. I figure if i could turn them into vectors i can resize infinitely.
Thing is i have something like 200 jpgs in my project i don’t know if there is a way in AE to make it treat those jpgs as vectors? -
10 Replies
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You cannot turn these images into vectors if they are not graphics and are just photos. They cannot zoom past 100% without quality loss. You need to get higher resolution source material if possible.
If you cand you can try fading or blurring slightly as the images scale, this would lessen the blockiness.Some jpegs will come with paths attached to them which you can see in photoshop, if they have a path that outlines the alpha then you should set the continously rasterize switch in AE. However if their is an image it will pixellate above 100% of its scale.
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Some programs like Flash have a vectorize option, but if you use just understand it creates prett yabstract graphic versions of the original images. But there is no such thing as vectorizing a bitmap image and getting the exact thing but now endlessly resizable. If so then that freakin “infinte zoom in and enhance” in CSI and movies would actually exist 🙂
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Chris, how do they do that “infinite zoom and enhance”, anywhose? How do you do a typical infinite zoom?
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Just transition between differnt shots. Wide shot of scene to closer shot of arm to closer shot of tatto to closer shot of detail on tattoo. Shot as 4 differnt pics. Then in some shows they just use the mosaic effect on the next close up and then animate it lower until it’s the normal picture and not all pixelated from the mosaic effect.
Sometimes they just do an animatic scale up and opacity blend to the next shot with motion blur turned on. Try it, it’s easy. Just make sure the transition is no more than like 10 frames. It will seem like a perfect morph if quick enough.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
In other words, they fake it. The closeup shot was actually shot with a zoom, not digitally enhanced.
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Aaaah, sweet! I figured as much! Thanks, gents!
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Hi Chris,
Very interesting point here.
If you don’t mind i would like more detail about this stuff. That’s a thing best done in a NLE right? When you mean transition it’s not the AE transition?
Can you define what an “animatic scale up” or “opacity blend” is please? More ressource or tutorial on this topic?Many thanks
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Sure, no I mean in AE.
Sorry ‘animatic’ is a typo , I meant ‘Animated’.
Transition I mean you have one layer on top of the other, keyframe the top layer’s opacity down over a few frames so it dissolves to the layer below.
So lets go from the image of the wide shot of the room. Keeping with CSI theme, let’s say it’s a photot from the top corner of the room to seem like a security cam. This is on one layer in AE.
On a layer below it, have a still image you took on set from the same POV of the wide shot, but now you either walked your cam closer to the subject or simply changed focal length to get a closer shot of his arm.
On this this second layer, add the mosaic effect and crank up the value till it’s good and pixelated. Add a mosiac to the top layer as well. Now animate top layer’s opacity from zero to a set number that looks pixelated enough. Then animate the opacity of the top layer down to zero over a handful of frames so we see the 2nd layer (that has the equal amount of mosaic). Shortly after animate the mosaic amount of the second layer down to zero.
It should look like we see the wide shot, then pretend somebody looks seriously at a monitor and asks the operator, “Enhance his arm”. We see the wide image pixelate then un pixelate and it’s the tighter image.
That’s one way. Another is with the zoom in effect.
Take the wide shot. move the layer’s anchor point to the persons arm. So that if you did scale up the image to match the second layer shot it would fit very closely on top of the it.
Now over a few frames, animated the scale of the wideshot form 100% to whatever size puts it as close to matching the tighter shot on the second layer.
Turn on motion blur. Now it will have that smearing effect as it zooms into the second layer. You can go to your comp settings and turn the motion blur higher by changing the film gate simulation number from 180 degrees to something higher.
In the middle of this scale up, dissolve (by animating opacity) from the top layer to the second layer.
You won’t notice the scale up down-rezzing of the first image because it should be very fast and the smear of the motion blur hides it.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
For the record, Illustrator CS2 can turn a JPEG into a vector image using LiveTrace.
Click on my head up there for a tutorial on turning an image sequence into a cartoon. If you watch only part 2 it shows you how to use live trace, and you can skip the rreally technical stuff at the open.
Still, the image will never be perfect, but you can scale it up infinately.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
i used Creaturehouse Expression – I think Microsoft bought them out – to convert image to JPEG with little loss of quality and it could scale up pretty well.
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