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Can it be done in AE?
I’m currently conceptualizing a project that will involve dancers and martial artists. What I’d like to do is find some way to attach a light to certain points on the performers’ bodies in order to have, what will appear to be, dancing lights. I’m torn right now between adding the lights in post, or engineering some way to do it live. Is this something that can be done in AE? If not is there a plug-in that will let me accomplish this? A different program? Any help would be welcome. Thanks.
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9 Replies
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I think motion tracking could be a solution, but you’re best off doing a test first to see if the attach-points are going to be clear enough.
For instance if you have a long shot with 5 dancers and you want a light exactly on their right hands: I think that won’t be possible without a lot of keyframing and tweaking the trackpoint frame by frame.
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I was thinking about motion tracking as well. When some people use motion tracking for computer animation. they’ll sometimes put an actor in an all black body suit with white/refleftive dots to give the program something to track.
It seems you want your dancers to have the lights over them.. and still still see them. would it be possible to use small white/yellow sticker(circles) and then use AE to A) track them and b) cover the spots with light.
just my 2 bits.
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Good suggestions guys. Thanks a lot. I have thought about motion tracking but I’m not too sure that I would have the capital to do something and I’m not even sure that the one mocap lab that I know of in the area would be open to the idea. Would a mocap lab actually be necessary? Thanks again!
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AE tracks the points in the frame and calculates their X/Y positions. However, it does not have the capability of solving for the position of those markers in 3-D space.
If you wanted to do that, you’d need a mocap studio. I can’t see a matchmoving app’s being able to solve multiple moving tracking points without the multiple sensors of a mocap studio.
my 2 cents,
Steve -
Hi Caleb,
you don’t need a mocap studio, there is a (2d) motion-tracker built in to the pro-version of after effects.
Jeff’s suggestions was just an analogy, so if you can have white markers on the talent, it will be easier to track.Motion capture is most often used for mapping limb-motion on the skeleton of a 3d virtual character.
Not what you need I think. -
I would do it as a practical effect. Real lights would be substantially less work than the tracking issues. It would be as real as possible. Furthermore it will dynamically affect the scene (the light would play on real objects). Then if the lights are bright enough. With some levels work, in post you can possibly isolate them for interesting effects. Like trails (from echo) or highlight blurs of specific colors.
Look at the Making Of The Video out right now for the Foo Fighters’s video “Best of You”. They dressed guys up in suits with lights on them for a composite element.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Awesome! Thanks so much everyone!
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check out a sample of that on trapcode’s gallery page:
https://www.trapcode.com/gallery.html
look at the stuff by Jason Koxvold
Matt Hall
Director, Digital Post
CCG MetaMedia, Inc. -
Matt,
That is perfect. Thank you so much!
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