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Creating a Reflection, HELP!!!
Hi, I’m trying to reflect a group of people who are on different planes. I know how to make an reflection by flipping the image on the Y axis, but this wont work since the people are on different planes. heres a link to what I’m talking about.
https://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q14/brianjaysimmons/Picture4.png
I’ve found no plug-ins or ways to achieve this, any thoughts?
Thanks!
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8 Replies
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If all of your layers have separate alphas, I’d put them into a 3D sequence that has a floor set to receive lights and shadows. Set them for light transmission and place lights behind them. The light will cast a stained glass-like effect onto the floor and, if you move the camera, the reflections will stay nailed in 3d, totally accurately.
bogiesan
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bogiesan’s suggestion will not look like a natural reflection, since it would be projected on the floor instead of being flipped on the x axis. But he is right about separate alphas. There is no plugin or program that will do what you want if all those people are on a single video layer. You will have to separate them out onto individual layers (probably with garbage masks/rotoscoping) and apply the reflection to each layer.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
if all of your figures are keyed separately, you could also fake the reflections like you had described, by flipping each image separately rather than the composite of all the figures.
videocopilot.net also has a preset that may be helpful for quick 3d reflections that may help you out if the figures are separate. it essentially uses cc repetile to flip the image, linear wipe to fade out the image and cc composite to put the original image back on top… since the preset placed the reflection at the bottom edge of the layer, you may need to add the cc transform effect prior to the composite effect to reposition the reflection.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
[Jon Geddes] “bogiesan’s suggestion will not look like a natural reflection, since it would be projected on the floor instead of being flipped on the x axis. “
Umm, of course it works. Looks exactly like a reflection. I think. You need to tweak the position of the light and the texture of the floor and maybe add a fade out mask (a gobo in front of the light works) but it’s the precise same visual effect as if the floor were a mirror.
Or I could be all wrong but I just held a mirror up the AE canvas and saw the same illusion, reversed text and everything.
bogiesan
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I’m sorry bogiesan but that image you displayed is not a natural reflection. It is true that the letters are mirrored just as they should be, but if you ever studied a reflection in real life, you would notice that its not distorted like your image’s reflection is (unless of course the reflective surface is curved/distorted). That distortion cannot be corrected by placing the light in a different place, since the image is being projected on the floor, thus causing it to get closer to the camera towards the bottom of the frame and distort. Any rotation in 3D space would cause it to look even more unnatural.
The closest way to get an accurate reflection in after effects is to duplicate & flip the image on the x-axis, and add an adjustment layer (with nothing applied to it) just above the floor layer, forcing the reflection to render on top of the floor, even though it is below it. Then you can apply a fast blur, linear wipe(feathered, 180 degrees), and adjust opacity of the reflection.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
[Jon Geddes] “I’m sorry bogiesan but that image you displayed is not a natural reflection. It is true that the letters are mirrored just as they should be, but if you ever studied a reflection in real life, you would notice that its not distorted like your image’s reflection is (unless of course the reflective surface is curved/distorted). That distortion cannot be corrected by placing the light in a different place, since the image is being projected on the floor, thus causing it to get closer to the camera towards the bottom of the frame and distort. Any rotation in 3D space would cause it to look even more unnatural.
“I’d say you’re being way too literal but I’m not going to argue with you. Of course I’ve studied real reflections, been in this business for decades, and I’m familiar with all of the conventional techniques in AE, been doing that for a decade, thanks. Creating any convincing visual simulation in AE is a trade off between the energy required to achieve real world behaviors and investing just enough to sell it to an audience.
The OP from Simms:
> Hi, I’m trying to reflect a group of people who are on different planes. I know how to make an reflection by flipping the image on the Y axis, but this wont work since the people are on different planes. heres a link to what I’m talking about. <This does not sound to me like a plea for realism so much as “How can I get this out the door?” A single light will do the job quickly. Is it a real reflection? Of course not. Is CC Light Rays a true volumetric light filter? No, but the illusion of applying it to a 3D layer with an alpha is a simple way to avoid being forced to buy another plug or say to your client, “Can’t be done.”
bogiesan
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[david bogie] “This does not sound to me like a plea for realism so much as “How can I get this out the door?” A single light will do the job quickly. Is it a real reflection? Of course not. Is CC Light Rays a true volumetric light filter? No, but the illusion of applying it to a 3D layer with an alpha is a simple way to avoid being forced to buy another plug or say to your client, “Can’t be done.””
Not to drag this discussion deeper into the mucky muck, but the only way that either method will work is if each person is a separate 3D layer.
And if that is the case then it would be much easier/faster to duplicate them and flip them, not to mention faster to render and more physically accurate than the 3D light method.
It’s still not a real reflection in the same way that Light Rays (or radial blur, which I prefer) is not ‘real’ volumetric lighting. Of course, none of this is ‘real’ if we get right down to it 🙂 Still, some methods are much easier to accept as ‘real’ than others.
Darby Edelen
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bogiesan,
If you feel I have belittled you, I am sorry. I had no intentions of doing so. I was only pointing out that there was an equally simple way to achieve a more realistic reflection.
I have recently done a green screen project where I was in the exact same predicament (group of people dancing at different depths). Budget was extremely small for the post-production, so I ended up flipping the image on the x-axis, positioning it a little high so there weren’t huge gaps between the people further back in z-space, and blurring it a lot so you couldn’t really notice the problem. Rotoscoping was out of the question for the budget we were on.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com
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