Anim. photos given “3D” look (not wanted!)

[Jon Geddes]

Maybe a screenshot or short rendered video would be more helpful to us? Show us what you consider ‘ugly’ and we can go from there.

Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com

[Aaron Keast]

At this moment it’s rendering pretty much everything else I’ve changed, so I can get a photo before I hit the sack, sorry.
Let me see if I can describe it more clearly.

Basically it looks like the photos are there, clear and dandy, except three or more are laid on of them, their opacity turned down a bit. If there’s a pole in the photo, there’s now two pulls. Buildings have a “ghost” that poke out around them. And on either side (not top and bottom) the translucent photos lead and trail, like the photos’ sides were cut and pasted on with %50 opactity. I’ve tried using 2 samples per frame, no motion blur checked, speed, shutter angle, and every combination.

What really baffles me is that the first few photos in the line are about a good as I could hope for, and then these artifacts and phasing get worse and worse in a matter of 20 seconds through ~16 photos.
Also to note, the photos were all brought into Photoshop and made to have all the same size and color profile.

At this point, if I can’t figure it out, I’m going to shrink all the photos, and have them scroll by in an “exploded” line, all move straight horizontally, but spread out over the sequence. They would be small enough that graphical anomalies wouldn’t be serious, and everyone watching would just know their photos of buildings and take it at that.

This all appears to be linked to the simple act of moving the photos from out of frame, in a line, through and out the other side. Everything else I’ve down in AE has worked without issue.

Another idea I have is to have the frame rate extra high, like 120fps, then import that into the 24p timeline. Would that help clarity, then boost the speed of the clip up to the only 30 seconds I need it for? Any pitfalls to that?

Thanks again!
-Aaron

[David Bogie]

[Aaron Keast] “Hi, I’m back again. I’ve been playing with the various settings to try and get a clear scroll of pictures with minimum blur and chop.
I’ve come to the conclusion that to get 30 seconds of clear animation, I’ll set the time line to about 3 minutes, maybe more, then speed it up in Premiere. “

That’s a completely subjective judgement and I don’t understand how you could possibly arrive at that conclusion. We do photo animation in After Effects, FCP, and Motion almost daily and get wonderful results.

You haven’t clearly explained where these artifacts are being seen: in your output from After Effects or in your output from Premiere? There’s obviously something different about the settings or sources for your first 8 photos. Turn off all motion blur and render to frames without fields and then what happens?

[Aaron Keast] “I’m having an issue though, that doesn’t appear to be attached to motion blur, shutter angle, or samples per frame- the photos just seem to have 3-4 overlayed with varying opacity. The first 8 photos do not, then the rest scroll in, it’s incredibly ugly, and pausing it allows me to see why it’s headache inducing. “

bogiesan

[Jon Geddes]

2 samples per frame is most likely your problem. Try 20. Also, you probably disabled the motion blur switch at the top of the timeline panel, and not on the layer itself. This will only disable motion blur for the preview, but not for the render (depending on your output settings). For smoother motion and not choppy motion, you should have motion blur enabled. To reduce the amount of motion blur, you should reduce the shutter angle. If it is configured correctly, you should be seeing beautiful results.

Also, if you disable motion blur in the timeline panel, you wont see anything change when you adjust the shutter angle. So crank up those samples per frame, enable motion blur in the 2 spots that is required for it to work (on the layer itself, and at the top of the timeline panel), reduce the shutter angle to your desired amount, and let us know what results you get.

Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com