How can I mask this image on better so it looks more NATURAL?

[Barend Onneweer]

Have a look at the scribbler plug-in that comes with AE. (I think that’s what it’s called, not near my workstation right now).

It’ll create the scribbly line and you can animate it to appear.

Bar3nd

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[Justin Productions]

Well, I did not watch your videos (I have Quicktime 6.0) but for the pen thing, you could go here, on Mylenium’s website 🙂

Maybe that will help. If yes, don’t thank me, thank Mylenium 🙂

Justin Productions
Tangerin01@hotmail.com
Adobe After Effects 6.0 Professional

[Daniel Haskett]

Thanks guys am gonna give it a go now!

Dan

[Mike.holmes]

it looks like they used a ‘Trapcode’ plug-in ‘particular’ i’m only just learning myself so the way i’d do it would be to create a mask and use particular to fill up the space??? if that makes sence?? the plug in can be purchased at http://www.trapecode.com and the company who did the video is http://www.blind.com that should lead you in the right direction.

[Mike Smith]

For the future, you might want to take a look at the animation effects available with Painter …

[Daniel Haskett]

Hey Mike

Do you mean the program Painter? If so do you mean that you can use the brushes in it in conjunction with after effects. Or is Painter a plugin for after effects? Is it possible to bring in custom brushes into after effects?

cheers
dan

[Mike Smith]

The program Painter, yes. It’s a free-standing program, not any kind of plug-in, and sfaik there’s no way to use it inside AE. https://store.corel.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10102&mpe_id=11368&jspStoreDir=CorelUK&intv_id=13061&partNumber=OL_PF09&evtype=CpgnClick&langId=-11&catalogId=10805&ddkey=ClickInfo&trkid=ukgrgopa2

BUT the brushes are fabulously powerful, there are superb liquid and distortion effects, and Painter has a couple of reaally good animation tools for short effects scenes.

It allows for frame by frame animation with onion skinning and output to mov / avi files at whatever size / scale / compression the host system allows. So you can make effects you won’t often see anywhere else.

And its scripting feature allows you to create a “painting” or graphic (using most of the Painter tools available, though you may have to be careful and what Paitner plug-ins you choose and use) and then “play back the whole creation process, ending up with the image creation as a recordable animation…

Worth exploring the demo, if you have time to get used to the quirky interface and want to be able to make distinctive work.

[Daniel Haskett]

Hey mike

Thanks for the info, ive actually got painter, just not used it in a while. Having a play around now and its got some great brushes and features, but I have one question. When im creating an animation, i do make movie and say 24 frames with 2 layers of onion skin, which works fine when on the background layer, but as soon as you craete a new layer and start painting on that it goes weird. Basically all the brush strokes previous are left on the screen so you cant tell what the animation is gonna look like. But for some reason when you render it out it looks ok, but until then its hard to tell what itll look like…. Do you have any ideas?

Cheers!

Dan

[Mike Smith]

Layer handling is very different in Painter, isn’t it. And with Painter movies how it works when you change from frame to frame seems to vary according to chosen brush, and its type of coverage.

I haven’t worked out how to make it predictable (though I guess there must be a way!), and try to keep everything on one layer, or at worst flatten each frame to a single layer before leaving – not really too big a limitation.

I find it sometimes helps to have an open, multiple layer image / composition to copy and paste out of, as a source to stick things into the frame stack.