Any suggestions on accomplishing this effect.

[Topher Welsh]

The first thing that comes to my mind would be keying out the footage and then looking at the comp from the TOP view, arrange them in a circle (in 3D space of course) and then use a null to control the rotation with an expression.

This is probably the part where I would post what the expression would look like to animate it… haha I don’t know expressions for s**t. There might be an expression slider control to help you with it.

Then to make the actors play at the right time you could time remap to make them stay still until they pop up in the front.

thats my two cents… theres probably a better way, but that is how I would set it up.

Topher Welsh
Head Editor & Motion Graphics
http://www.scout.com

[Lutz Dieckmann]

Hi,

I guess Topher is right. I would create the presentation and fix the frame until the film is started. I have no idea how the CLICK is accomplished in Flash but I know it is possible. Obviously. Rotate the persons in 3D is a good idea.
But, bear in mind, it´s the whole presentation that makes the effect so worthy. The blue screen, the graphics. It´s never an effect alone.

Best

Lutz Dieckmann

Thank you for reading this

[Jason Milligan]

Set all your layers to “orient towards camera” and you shouldn’t need an expression.
You should be able to just rotate the null in that case.

[Darby Edelen]

Create 3D Nulls to control the layout of your people. For my example, let’s say you have 6 people already keyed on 3D layers at the center of the comp ([360,240,0] for NTSC folk like myself). For these 6 people you will need one 3D Null each (6 3D Nulls), leave these at the center of the comp [360,240,0].

Parent each person to a different 3D Null, so Person A is parented to Null A, Person B is parented to Null B, etc.

Now move ALL of the people layers toward the camera by some amount, this will be the radius of your circle, so if you move them all forward 300 pixels (to [360,240,-300]) your circle will have a radius of 300 pixels.

Now rotate each of the 3D Nulls 60º (if we want them evenly spaced in our case, because 360º / 6 people = 60º per person) from the previous:

Null A = 0º
Null B = 60º
Null C = 120º
Null D = 180º

etc.

Now create a new 3D Null and parent the other 3D Nulls to it. This Null will be used to control the rotation of all of the other 3D Nulls (and therefore the people). Rotate this Null on the Y axis to rotate your people.

If you want the people to always face the camera you can use Dan Ebberts’ Auto-Orient Y Only expression:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-orient-y-only.html

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Steve Roberts]

Now if you needed to do this in Flash, I’d say you could use Actionscript to scale and position the images nicely. Shouldn’t be too hard … a bit of trig … (cough, choke)

My point being, if you need to do this for the web, with this level of interaction, the best way would be to skip AE and use Flash, for small file size and interactivity.

Yeah, like using Flash once every three years makes me an expert. 🙂

[Aaron Keeny]

Just wanted to thank you all the suggestions i will try them out and let you guys and gals know how it works. Thanks again for the help.

[Aaron Keeny]

Thanks Darby your suggestions worked great.