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AE blending modes into Avid?
Not being a very savvy or frequent user of After Effects, I’m finding myself scratching my head over something that may be quite simple… or perhaps impossible, but I don’t know that it is because I’m looking for that moment when it all clicks together…
Anyway, I have a graphic element comprised of two main parts. An orange horizontal bar (w/text inside it) and a vertical semi-transparant blue bar. In the graphic, the blue bar moves onto screen from the right and comes to rest on the left side of the screen, as the blue bar is making it’s way across the screen the orange text bar also comes in from the right and rests long enough to read the text.
Then the orange bar moves off to the left as the vertical bar moves off-screen downward. This element was created by a gfx house used for this production, but the client is now asking for an extra title to be added and so they’ve asked me to “re-create” the gfx for this added item.
No problem, it’s simple enough and I had it all but finished in a few hours. My one stumbling block is the semi-transparant vertical blue bar…
What I did was create it in PS at full opacity, then figured I’d bring it into AE and create the moves there then apply the transparancy, when I did it worked great. Except it doesn’t look exactly like the previous graphics.
So, I started playing with Blending Modes and found that Hue is exactly what I’m going for at 100% opacity. Doing that is an exact match… but whenever I render out the comp and import into Avid, the blending mode seems to be ignored. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I can see the blending mode in the comp, but as soon as I render it, I either get a solid vertical blue bar or a non-existent vertical blue bar.
Am I misunderstanding the purpose of blending modes or just rendering incorrectly?
Thanks for any help…
Kenton VanNatten
Avid Editor (for hire) -
2 Replies
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Have you checked your comp with the Checkerboard preview? Sounds to me like you have no real pixels to work with. Blending modes only work on footage items. The comp background is considered transparent even though it is displayed as black or any other color you choose. So unless you add a solid at the bottom of your comp, it won’t carry over. This also would explain the differences in the look. You should however see the effect on the orange base regardless of this. To get the transparency, you probably have to unmultiply your stuff (create transparency based on brightness). This can be done most easily by using XMult(free), Knoll Unmult(free) or Walker Effects Alpha Tool(commercial)or its predecessor WE Premultiply (comes with one of the Meyer books).
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Thanks… I’ll toy with those suggestions and get back to you.
What I may end up doing is bringing in the video section that the title is going to run over and make a single comp of the whole thing. That way, I’m dealing with footage under the graphic. (which is what I was thinking could’ve been the problem)
Thanks for the reply.
Kenton VanNatten
Avid Editor (for hire)
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