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Can anyone help a total newbie?
Hi All
I’m a web designer by trade, but my boss has asked me to put together a showreel for the company. No problem, I’ve done little bits with video for personal use and while I was at uni. However, I’m having a few problems with what I’m trying to achieve. It doesn’t help that I’ve only been using After Effects (CS3) for 4 hours total over the last 2 days…
I’m technically minded and pick stuff up easily, so hopefully being familiar with flash etc will help me a little.
Anyway, on to the problem. I’m trying to recreate a table with bits and bobs laid out, and having the camera pan/zoom across (I’d say random camera movement but i know where i want it to go, i just don’t want it to be totally linear from left to right etc).
I’ve been playing around keyframing certain bits, and it looks fine in the comp window, but when i render the movements are in different places in relation to my backgrounds etc than in when viewed in the comp window (if that makes sense).
Is there any way to add a motion guide like in flash for the comp to follow? I played with the anchor points too, but I’m not 100% on what it’s anchoring to?
Anyway, it’s going to be fairly large, so I’ve got a comp with the background, a comp with the objects/photos on the table parented to the background comp, nested in a 720 x 576 Pal comp. I’ve also tried parenting the comps to a null object and using a camera to try it in 3D space but seeing as its 2D i think this was overkill, besides, i was still getting odd camera movements with that approach.
Could anyone give me an indication as to how to do this?
Sorry if it’s a little blabberish, its time to go home for today!
Thanks
Lee -
2 Replies
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AE will always render the Active camera (top most camera), and if you have a view with something like Custom View 1 it won’t render what you see in the Ram preview, set View (next to checkerboard, Comp Window) to Active Camera or whatever camera you’re using.
AE camera’s can be a pain. Here are links to the two best guide to camera use:
This post by Chris Smith on how he uses Nulls with camera movements:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=878237
Here is an AE project file (aep) for a nifty camera move Australian commercial by John Dickinson, very cool:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/872881?
And I like this oldie from Rick Gerard for flying down an Illustrator file:
This post by Chris Smith on how he uses Nulls with camera movements:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=878237
Here is an AE project file (aep) for a nifty camera move Australian commercial by John Dickinson, very cool:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly1.php
and
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly2.php
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[Lee Ellam] “Anyway, it’s going to be fairly large, so I’ve got a comp with the background, a comp with the objects/photos on the table parented to the background comp, nested in a 720 x 576 Pal comp”
I’m not entirely clear on how you are achieving your motion. You say ‘camera’ several times but then it sounds like you’re not working in 3D. What properties are you animating? The position of the table? The position of the background?
[Lee Ellam] “I played with the anchor points too, but I’m not 100% on what it’s anchoring to? “
FYI, the anchor point is in layer space and the position is in composition space. Imagine you have an index card (representing the layer), a push pin (representing the anchor point) and a cork board (representing the composition). You first put the push pin in your index card, relative to the index card’s form (do you put it in the middle of the index card? the upper left corner? the lower right quadrant?), this is setting the anchor point. Next you push the push pin into the corkboard… but again you can attach it anywhere on the corkboard (In the upper left? The middle? ), this is setting the position. So the position is where the push pin (anchor point) is attached to the corkboard (composition) and the anchor point is where the index card (layer) is attached to the push pin (anchor point). I hope that helps you understand the relationship a little better. Any other layer transformations you make (rotation/scaling) will happen with the anchor point as the center (imagine rotating the index card with a push pin in its upper left corner vs. lower right).
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA
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