• Adobe After Effects

  Depth of Field techniques and camera movment…

  Posted by Joe Falcione on May 9, 2006 at 2:23 pm

  Hi..

  First post to this forum but I’ve been reading them for a long long time.. Anyway, is there a technique I can use to create a depth of field view other than masking foreground assets in every single frame of video? I’ve tried using smart masking which doesn’t work for crap, so I’m back to basically masking frame by frame. I’m not a total nooblet to AE but not a pro either.

  My second question would be camera flow and movement… Does anyone know of a plug-in or tutorial which would assist me in camera movement or flow of movement?

  Any help is greatly appreciated, very much so.

  -TheDeacon
  http://www.reliantfilms.net

  Joe Falcione replied 20 years ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Alon_a

  May 10, 2006 at 4:48 am

  If you’re trying to create DOF on a video file (rather than an actual 3D comp with varios elements placed in 3D space), then I don’t see how you could get away from rotoscoping and blurring the foreground elements. Depending on the footage, you might be able to duplicate the video layer and use various adjustment and levels effects to create a matte for the foreground, for instance if you have sort-of well-lit characters over a sort-of dark background. You can then use this matte as a filter or track matte for a blur effect. But I don’t expect this would be perfect; in the end, you’ll have to roto – always a grueling task.

  The question on camera movement comes up often, and the typical answer is Rick Gerard’s tutorials here on the Cow. They’re really great tutorial but of course they can’t cover every situation. They’re the top two here:

  https://www.creativecow.net/articles/script_gen/authorsort/gerard_rick_script.html

  AA
• 

  Joe Falcione

  May 10, 2006 at 5:47 am

  Thanks so much for the info.. I’ll check out the tutorials to be sure. I figured I was kindof in the pitfall of rotoscoping, but was hoping for the “Magic Bullet”.. I’ve seen some work out there, it was just beautiful and the only way it could have been done was a.)using 3d models, Not likely or b.)rotoscoping each frame, again not likely unless the person doing it was a real beast.

  Anyway, in my research I will of course post what I find. Thanks for the response!

  -TheDeacon
  http://www.reliantfilms.net

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