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Drop shadow causing image to quiver
I have a 3D animation out of AE (Invigorator) Animation with a straight alpha channel. It keys beautifully and is solid as a rock. Then I added a drop shadow and keyframed the opacity, softness and distance of it, and now the image quivers up and down but only between the two keyframes. Right after the last keyframe it stops quivering. Nesting and applying the shadow to the nest did not help. Removing the keyframes so that the shadow is constant or removing the shadow altogether stops the quivering.
Project is NTSC D1 720×486 8 bit.
I also tried re-rendering the file out of AE with fields, no help there either, and yes, it is lower field first. Same behavior as a file with no fields.
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7 Replies
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Render the drop shadow in AE. And try rendering premultiplied and then make sure you tell FCP whether your alpha is straight or premultiplied.
Jeremy
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Hey Jeremy,
I suppose if I did that I would have to import a still of my FCP background to get the geometry right, no? I’m trying to get the shadow to look natural as the letters move closer to the background.
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Yeah, that’s easy. You can even export a reference movie from FCP, bring it in to AE, build your movie, then turn off that bg layer and render your alpha movie.
Jeremy
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Hey Jeremy,
Yeah, as long as I had to do the type in AE to start with, I guess that makes sense. Just frustrating that FCP can’t handle an animated dropshadow, would just make it faster and more easily adjustable. KnowwhatImean?
BTW thanks again for the Kona LH monitoring tip, awesome!
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No problem at all. Glad it’s working for you.
Okay, so you are doing a type movie in AE? The drop shaow in AE is much better anyway and it’s all keyframable just like FCP.
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It’s not just keyframed shadows. When nesting a clip the other day and then adding a drop shadow to the nest it quivered. It had a couple white lines at the edge at top and bottom, and adding the drop shadow made them quiver. Turn off the drop shadow, no quiver. It’s happened this way for years. Can’t figure out just what circumstance makes it happen, but with alpha channel graphics, they’ve always been softer when you nest them and add a shadow. There’s just something wrong with the underlying code.
In your instance you might just use your graphic to matte a slug on lower tracks. Then blur the slug and simply keyframe it’s motion as the drop shadow. That’s what I had to do in the above example. A little more work, but gets the job done. I’ve given up on Apple fixing most bugs like this. Learn the workaround and move on is about all you can do.
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Hey Bret,
The slug idea sounds good, I’ll try that sometime. For now I just did the shadow in AE and it works well.
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