A true glossy photo look

[Jonathan Miller]

Marc, if you’ve played with the material settings for your 3D layer, and it still isn’t looking right
it’s probably not what you have that looks wrong. It’s most likely what’s missing that’s wrong.

You’re not going to have any kind of refelction of your photo’s environment.

Look at a photo, and if it’s glossy you’ll see yourself staring back in reflection.

If you need to stay within AE to do this project, and you have access to Zaxwerks Invigorator, you could probably get things to look the way you want. You can use the photo as a texture map within Invig., and then use another still of the photo’s surrounding (or better yet, video) as a refelction map.

If you don’t already have the plugin, you can download a demo to see if it would be worth the investment for you (if you can afford it, it will be worth it.)

Good luck!

Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA

[Marc]

Thanks for your response. I do have Zaks Inv, and the reflective properties in it work great once I apply the photo to my a vector rectangle. Do you know of any other way I can create this same effect without going into a 3D app like Zaks Inv…It’s so darn RAM gobbling! The photo itself that is to be reflective does not need to be 3D, just 2 1/2D if you know what I mean.

[Jonathan Miller]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I can’t think of any way as straight forward as Zax to make it work. Have you tried setting your Invig. layer to draft mode while you create the animation? It should render very quickly in the Comp window. Then once you’ve got your motion the way you want, set the layer(s) back to full quality for your final render.

Good luck!

Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA

[Serge Hamad]

Hi,

I would also work with Invigorator for this as it gives the best results. Without Invigorator you may want to try the CC-Light Sweep effect.
Here is a way of using it:
https://www.nyc-visual.com/light_sweep.sit
looks like this:
https://www.nyc-visual.com/light_sweep.mov

The example was done quickly but it may give you an idea. Notice the transfer modes of the light sweep layers, their parenting and the two expressions that tie the light sweep Direction parameter to the X & Y Rotation axis of your picture.

I hope this may help.
Salut.
Serge

[Marc]

Is there a way to use video in Zaks inv classic…other than targa and jpg as a reflective source?

[Michael Szalapski]

Yes, have your video layer in your composition. (It can have the eyeball turned off.)
In the effects pallete set it as Layer map 1 (or two or three…)
In the Invig Options set Layer Map 1 (or whichever it is) as your reflective source.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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