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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Any suggestions on accomplishing this effect.

  • Any suggestions on accomplishing this effect.

    Posted by Aaron Keeny on February 6, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    Wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to go about accomplishing this look/effect.

    Here is the website:
    https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/

    I need to do something like this effect with the rotating people in space around a central pivot point. I have an above average understanding of AE, I am sure this is possible in AE, just not sure how to tackle it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am running a Mac Pro G5, equipped with AE CS3 as well as PS CS3 and Final Cut. Not sure if this would be easier in PS (havent really explored the new animation capabilities in PS) or AE. Like I said any suggestions would be super sweet and much appreciated.

    Thanks

    Aaron.

    Aaron Keeny replied 18 years, 3 months ago 6 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Topher Welsh

    February 6, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    The first thing that comes to my mind would be keying out the footage and then looking at the comp from the TOP view, arrange them in a circle (in 3D space of course) and then use a null to control the rotation with an expression.

    This is probably the part where I would post what the expression would look like to animate it… haha I don’t know expressions for s**t. There might be an expression slider control to help you with it.

    Then to make the actors play at the right time you could time remap to make them stay still until they pop up in the front.

    thats my two cents… theres probably a better way, but that is how I would set it up.

    Topher Welsh
    Head Editor & Motion Graphics
    http://www.scout.com

  • Lutz Dieckmann

    February 6, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Hi,

    I guess Topher is right. I would create the presentation and fix the frame until the film is started. I have no idea how the CLICK is accomplished in Flash but I know it is possible. Obviously. Rotate the persons in 3D is a good idea.
    But, bear in mind, it´s the whole presentation that makes the effect so worthy. The blue screen, the graphics. It´s never an effect alone.

    Best

    Lutz Dieckmann

    Thank you for reading this

  • Jason Milligan

    February 7, 2008 at 12:31 am

    Set all your layers to “orient towards camera” and you shouldn’t need an expression.
    You should be able to just rotate the null in that case.

  • Darby Edelen

    February 7, 2008 at 12:55 am

    Create 3D Nulls to control the layout of your people. For my example, let’s say you have 6 people already keyed on 3D layers at the center of the comp ([360,240,0] for NTSC folk like myself). For these 6 people you will need one 3D Null each (6 3D Nulls), leave these at the center of the comp [360,240,0].

    Parent each person to a different 3D Null, so Person A is parented to Null A, Person B is parented to Null B, etc.

    Now move ALL of the people layers toward the camera by some amount, this will be the radius of your circle, so if you move them all forward 300 pixels (to [360,240,-300]) your circle will have a radius of 300 pixels.

    Now rotate each of the 3D Nulls 60º (if we want them evenly spaced in our case, because 360º / 6 people = 60º per person) from the previous:

    Null A = 0º
    Null B = 60º
    Null C = 120º
    Null D = 180º

    etc.

    Now create a new 3D Null and parent the other 3D Nulls to it. This Null will be used to control the rotation of all of the other 3D Nulls (and therefore the people). Rotate this Null on the Y axis to rotate your people.

    If you want the people to always face the camera you can use Dan Ebberts’ Auto-Orient Y Only expression:

    https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-orient-y-only.html

    Darby Edelen
    Designer
    Left Coast Digital
    Santa Cruz, CA

  • Steve Roberts

    February 7, 2008 at 3:25 am

    Now if you needed to do this in Flash, I’d say you could use Actionscript to scale and position the images nicely. Shouldn’t be too hard … a bit of trig … (cough, choke)

    My point being, if you need to do this for the web, with this level of interaction, the best way would be to skip AE and use Flash, for small file size and interactivity.

    Yeah, like using Flash once every three years makes me an expert. 🙂

  • Aaron Keeny

    February 7, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Just wanted to thank you all the suggestions i will try them out and let you guys and gals know how it works. Thanks again for the help.

  • Aaron Keeny

    February 8, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    Thanks Darby your suggestions worked great.

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