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Workflow tips and Puppet tool question
Hi all,
I’m just looking for some suggestions and or confirmation on how to go about essentially combining three video clips (all same shot – one static with no subject, the other two shots are two different subjects [a car and a person – each in their own shot]). Yes, I’m going for the whole getting hit by a car thing – as a learning exercise. 🙂Issues with the footage:
There are slight differences in shadows in all three shots and there are some tree branches slightly blowing around – this will probably not even be noticed as there’s barely any wind but it is a factor none the less..The car is naturally motion blurred in the raw footage – I don’t really consider this much of an issue either.
Planned workflow:
Put the background shot as the bottom layerPut the video of the person walking across the street as the next layer up. This footage would need a rough garbage matte so that the shadows and etc are showing from the background shot.
How should I handle the person’s shadow:
a) Include the shadow in the matte of the person
b) Create a second matte for the shadow – perhaps on it’s own layer
c) Duplicate the person layer, make it 3-d, tweak the person so he’s basically on the same plane as the ground in the direction of the other shadows, desaturate – actually make it a single grey color, change the transfer mode and transparency, blur to match the softness of the other shadows – maybe need to add a perspective transformation to it..
d) Add an AE light and cast a shadow with that (I’m clueless on AE lights so far but I would imagine that this wouldn’t be the easiest way to achieve a good quality result.
e) Something else that’s much easier!How is the easiest way to create the mask?
I just watched Maltaannon’s “Particle Playground on Fire” tutorial here:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/drozda_jerzy/ParticlePlayground.phpAnd although this isn’t what Maltaannon did, it seems like I might be able to use the basic technique – the time difference effect in conjunction with some other effects to get a fairly decent matte on both the person and the car (separately of course).. But I was playing around for a while last night and didn’t really come close. Any suggestions there?
Ok so, this person walking across the street footage (with the matte) would play normally up until the point where the car will strike him – one frame before actually.. I’d copy the person layer, and Time -> Freeze Frame it on the frame just before the car hit’s the person. (the video frame would be trimmed) I’d tighten up the matte on this layer so that I could use the puppet tool to distort the person’s body across the hood of the car and then out of the shot.
(Here’s a part that is basic and I’m not really sure how to go about this… but I’ll say what I think and you guys can tear it apart! Please!!)
The car layer would be essentially the same thing as the person – resulting in just the car being opaque (and maybe the car’s shadow). I could motion track the car – of course I’d have to manually do some of the frames because the car drives in and then out of the shot but that should be fairly easy since it’s going at a steady rate. Then assign the tracking data to a null object, create a black solid layer and draw a mask around one frame of the car where the whole car is visible and parent that layer to the null object so the mask moves along with the car. I’d probably need to make this layer much wider than the actual frame to keep the whole frame except the car black. Then I would pre-comp these layers (tracking data, the null object, the solid and the car). And probably use the Luma Matte on this precomp to make the black transparent, leaving only the car opaque. I’m sure there’s a better way to get just the car transparent – (especially since it’s moving at basically a constant rate…)
Right, so I tried this last night (quickly just to see if I had a clue – I don’t 😉 and ran into trouble with the puppet tool (among other things that I won’t get into now.) I got it to work, but rotating the person with the puppet tool proved to be quite hard to achieve good looking results.. Can I apply another effect or can I rotate the layer in addition to the puppet tool? The transformations I make using the puppet tool look great so long as I don’t try to rotate the person which would kind of happen if a car hit them – they’d be thrown more or less horizontally across the hood of the car…
I’m sorry for the length of this post – I just want to learn from you guys!
Thanks in advance!
–KTFA
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4 Replies
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Hi there,
You seem to have a decent idea of how to do it, but I’m not sure if you are using matte / mask interchangeably. You can probably just draw a rough mask around the car (apart from the bonnet – or hood, for my American friends 😉 – which would have to be neater), and do the same for the person. The feather the masks out and animate them over time to follow the person/car.
As for using the puppet tool etc, I think you’re learning the hard way that filming footage for an effects shot without knowing exactly how you’re going to pull the effect off is a recipe for disaster. What you could have done is got your actor to mime being hit by the car (twisting his body at the point of impact). Then you could time up the impact with the position of the car and animate the position of the person layer to fly off screen in front of the car, turning motion blur on to add realism. If in your shot the actor is not pushed off screen, you may have trouble faking this effect with the footage you have.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
Hi Simon,
Thanks – and yes, I wasn’t really using mask / matte correctly.. I was indeed using them interchangably in my post.This is just a project for myself to get to know AE and make my mistakes now if you know what I mean.. So I don’t expect this to turn out exceptionally well (which is why I [being the actor myself] didn’t mimic being hit beyond just a basic, initial impact kind of pose..) Not worried about it – but indeed, I’m learning the hard way – which is basically my purpose – get those painful experiences out of the way as much as possible when _I_ am the client..
So I now know a lot of the limitations (and strengths) of the puppet tool! Cool!
Anyway, since this is really a project where I’m trying to learn the ropes, I was hoping to learn some of the more or less best-practices in the industry…
(BTW, I’m a computer programmer by trade, though I worked in the Entertainment industry in CA for about 6 years a while back before I decided [ok, before my wife decided] that 18 hour days were a bit too long for a family life!)
So, I guess I really only have two more questions, one of which I’ll post as a separate question and probably on a more appropriate forum…
How should I deal with the person’s shadow – should I include that in the animated mask or re-create it using a different method? (I’m sure it depends on the footage to a degree – I’m just looking for a more or less best practice and I know that, especially in creative work, ‘rules’ should be broken in the right circumstances)
–KTFA
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If you can use it, it would always be better to go with the preson’s actual shadow. It’s realistic, after all. Plus you don’t have to make it yourself. But if there is too much change in light between the two shots, you may have to recreate the shadow somehow. The road may have a cambre, though, so the shadow is curved. But the rule should probably be to preserve what you already have and only get creative if you need to!
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
That’s basically what I kinda thought – thanks for the confirmation.. (And I didn’t even think about the road having a curvature to it – it does I’m sure..
Thanks again Simon! (Especially for wading through my verbose post!!) That’s the problem with being a fast typer (at least that’s what I’m going to blame it on!!!)
–KTFA
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