AE Experts, please HELP !!

[Michael Szalapski]

Dude, this is, like, the third time you’ve posted this in two days.

If you’re looking for how the footage blends in a transparent manner over the footage underneath (ie. the footage blending on the guy) it’s done by lowering the layer’s opacity and/or using different blend modes.

Select your layer, press “t” on your keyboard. And then lower that number from 100 to something less. If that’s not exactly what you were hoping for then do that in conjuction with a different blending mode like multiply, screen, darken, or lighten.

It’s just a matter of experimenting with different recipes for different pieces of footage.

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

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Marc Bauwens]

Yes indeed, this is the third time because I’m not getting the desired results.
Is this bothering you that I’m posting because I’m STUCK ?

And if I’m not wrong, this is a forum that’s made for this sort of things no ?

I tried the techniques before posting here and its not working out, so maybe someone else
has a different idea or approach.

Thanks for your reply anyway and sorry if I have bothered you with my repeated postings.

[Tony Kloiber]

I obviously have some spare time right now so…

Maybe if you showed us what you have and tried to tell us what is wrong with it and then what you would like it to look like we could offer more help. I know the picture is suppose to be worth a thousand words – but if your seeing some part of it that we’re not paying attention to we might not lead you down the correct path.

The other thing is if you kept the same thread going it might get clearer what you wanted.

TonyTony

[Michael Szalapski]

Sorry Marc, I didn’t mean to come across as upset or annoyed or anything. I meant more along the lines of what Tony said. If you reply in the same thread that you’re not getting what you want it helps everyone know what’s been tried and what’s not working. It helps us get a clearer idea of what you mean; basically it keeps us from reinventing the wheel.

Like Tony said, perhaps if you posted a still of what you were working on and explained what was in it that you didn’t quite like we might be able to help more.

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

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Marc Bauwens]

Michael,

Thank for not being upset about my somewhat nasty reply.
But I’m in deep sh*t right because I’m trying all kinds of thing for 3 days now and going slightly mad over it.

You and Tony are right, an image speaks for a thousand word (how could I be so stupid?)

Here is a frame from the animation and you can see that the transparency is not quite right.
If I change modes and play with the opacity, the video frames look dull

Any ideas ?

Thank you for your patience and understanding guys!

[Lessevolvedman]

dude i dont think ur pic is showing up..

or going to show up for that matter as its location is..
d:\CIAA 2005\main animation (0-00-03-28).jpg

try chucking it on some webspace 😉

[Michael Szalapski]

Er, yes… you will certainly need to upload it somewhere not on your computer for us to see it.

But until then based on what you said, (that the video appears dull), try using levels or curves to sharpen them up?

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

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Andrew Shanks]

Hey Marc,
I’m chiming in here a bit late, but looking at the aussie site, it looks like they’ve just used multiply mode (for the guy towards the right with his hand in the air, …multiply works well for making drak regions stay and lighter regions become transparent on a second layer), also adding mild displacement filter (note how the face towards the bottom of his arm is distorting) and mixed opacity levels with matte shapes to get the result. As the others say, if you post a still image online (do a quick net search for free image hosting sites if you need a place to upload it to, then link to it here), and tell us the look you want, we can step you through it.

Modes can be a hard things to get your head around, but they are sooooo handy, …most merging effects you see in print and motion graphics use them alot. The ones I use most often are ‘Multiply’ (for adding the dark features of an image to a background), ‘add’ (for adding the luma, or brightness, of two layers elements together, …gives you a really punchy, sometimes over exposed, look) and ‘screen’ (which is more subtle than add, in that it looks at the brightness of the two layers on a pixel by pixel basis, and whichever value is brighter, remains intact, ….screen is a handy mode for when things like smoke, fire, etc have been shot against black, …although often in those cases I might use a couple of duplicated layers, with add mode on one, screen on another, and rock the transparency levels on the add until I’m happy).

Post an image and we’ll do our best to help out.

Cheers,

andrew

[Andrew Shanks]

p.s. they have also used selective colour, pretty much just getting rid of the colour in the whole image of the guy to the right, leaving his blue shirt. Many different ways of doing this (from having two layers,top colour one keyed (with key inverted) over a desaturated bottom layer (I’ve used that), …to just using the colour range selectors in hue/saturation and destaurating regions of colour that way, …those are just two off the top of my head), just look up Sin City discussions on this forum and you’ll get some ideas (its a cool look but unfortunately its a look being thrashed at the moment).

Oh, and as one of the others suggested, let ‘levels’ or ‘curves’ be your friend. I love ‘levels’, with it you can really crunch blacks and pump whites, using your grey point to affect the tonal regions in the best way to retain the mid-levels you want. Again in the image (guy to the right) it looks like they’ve tweaked the levels to beef up the highlight regions (to give it a more dramatic punchy look).

🙂