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So I bought Action Movie essentials…
And it’s awesome stuff! Well worth the $ (especially considering all of the free tutorials that everyone benefits from!! Thanks Andrew – I’ll be buying some more of your stuff soon!)
Anyway, I’m trying to use one of the fog animations (Fog_01) in a roughly 25 second comp.. The fog isn’t naturally looping (and isn’t 25 seconds..), so I was trying various ways to loop it.. Cross fading bewteen a couple layers isn’t working out so well because of the way the layers kind of multiply – ie, it gets brighter and then darker instead of just fading.. I’ve played around with the opacity settings over the fade and it was getting better but…. Still not good enough
So I thought I could make my own fog.. (But have it look as good and realistic as Andrew’s.. – or at least close!)
Here’s what I’ve done so far:
3 Comps which are a bit larger than my final comp’s dimensions:– Fractal noise, evolution animated over time (looping)
– Dynamic Twist effect, evolution animated over time (also looping)
– Top layer is a basic ramp effect – I want the bottom half(ish) of the frame to be devoid of fog..
– Animated the ?? offset of the fractal over time (30 seconds in my case – this is going to kill my loopability I think which is why I’m doing it for 30 seconds..)The 3 comps represent 3 different z space layers for my final comp.. The farther one evolves slower – and has smaller … uh, swirls I guess I could call them. The ‘closest’ layer has larger swirls – puff’s really, and moves much quicker (though not TOO quick)
I’ve tweaked the fractal settings as well as the Dynamic Twist effect settings and even the ramp’s Y position to make sure each layer has a bit different characteristics..
Finally, I put all three comps in my “final” comp, made the layers 3-d and spaced them out in z space.. I altered the opacity a bit for each level – closest being 60%, middle being 75 and the furthest back is 100..
It looks ok. But not as good as Andrew’s.. I’ll post a smaller render of it soon – but I’d like any help that can be offered with getting this to look as realistic as possible (I’m quite happy with Andrew’s – especially since I can slow it down a little, so if someone has advice on how to loop that over 25 seconds that would work for me too!)
The sample is here:
http:://countercultureyouth.org/temp/fog.mov
Note that what I put up there is still wider than my final comp so you’ll see the edges of the layers where I animated the position…
Oh, BTW, this is going to be used in an earthquake scene… So I want to have two versions – one somewhat calm, and another a bit disturbed for the aftermath..
Thanks in advance for any help
–KTFA
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7 Replies
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Don’t know why I put ‘Dynamic Twist’ for the effect, I meant the Turbulent Displace effect…
–KTFA
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Whoops – I didn’t realize how compressed that sample file was.. I’ll have to replace it tonight when I get home..
–KTFA
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It’s pretty hard to get a random effect like fog to loop worth a damn, but here’s my idea on how to get a loop out of it.
set up the fog layer(s) and render it out, or put it as it’s own comp, whichever you think is better for your purposes. You won’t need to tweak it.
add the fog to your original comp. enable time remapping for the layer.
set the layer to slow down to a stop about mid way through, then reverse the time back to the beginning. This can be done gradually enough as not to be noticeable.
or
put two copies of the fog layer, time reverse one, then fade between them at about halfway, or whenever it would look best to do so.
Unless your fog is blowing in one direction, this should work.
if it is blowing in one direction, then you might have to experiment with the evolution and see if there is a loop point that you can time to your animation.
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Thanks Ron,
I haven’t really thought about using the time remapping – but you hit on why it wouldn’t work in my situation – the fog does indeed move in one direction.But my problem isn’t really making the fog loop though – I’ve got that working (setting the evolution times around to the same number, or multiple of the evolution cycle setting), I’m just not all that happy with how realistic my fog looks. I like Andrew Kramer’s fog but it’s footage and not looping. It’s also 20 seconds less than I need.. That is what I’d like to loop if possible.
So my question, hopefully more clearly stated, is:
a) How would I loop a quicktime file of fog
or
b) Can anyone offer suggestions on how to make my own fog look more realistic (I’ll have to post a less compressed version of my example later)
But thanks again, maybe I can play around with the time remapping and Andrew’s clip along with cross fading / opacity tweaking to get something decent…
–KTFA
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well, the technique would apply to footage too. Of course, making it work where it goes in one direction is tricky, but you can use a couple of layers of it offset so that the begginning of one offset is in the middle and carries you to a loop point.
In other words, if you start the first one at the beginning and set the end of the second one so that it ends at 25 seconds, and blend between them in the middle, it should fix your time issue without screwing up the timing of the fog. To carry this further, if you start the fog layer at say two seconds in, then overlap the layers so that that two second mark repeats at the twenty five second mark, you have a loop…
hope that helps.
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Thanks again Roy,
That’s originally what I had tried to do – essentially I used the Keyframe assistant -> sequence layers to offset multiple layers for me. But the problem was that the blending of the layers kind of multiplied each other and I wound up with fog that got brighter then darker etc. I tried playing around with the layer’s opacity to get it right but it just wasn’t quite cutting it. I wonder if Dan Ebberts has an expression for blending two partially opaque layers to maintain the overall opaqueness.. (did that make sense??? 🙂 )–KTFA
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BTW, please have patience with me if I’m not understanding what you are suggesting.. And thanks again for your time!
–KTFA
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