Is there a way to force motion blur to be calculated AFTER a layer effect?

[Christian Wheel]

Rather than using normal motion blur, have you tried adding the “CC Force Motion Blur” effect, either underneath your zaxwerks & glow effects, or in an adjustment layer above the zaxwerks/glow layer? It will slow your render down but might solve this problem.

—– Christian Wheel —–
Radio Host, Los Angeles/San Diego/Nationally Syndicated
Audio Production & Imaging
MS Visual Studio Developer
After Effects Enthusiast

[Walter Soyka]

Christian suggested a great workaround for you — I’ll explain why you’re not getting the results you want with native motion blur.

[anna greve] “But after effects seems to calculate the motion blur first, then add the glow halo around the outside edge of the motion blurred shape, which looks weird and is not what i want. Really i’d like the glow to be blurred as well.”

After Effects calculates motion blur after it renders effects — but After Effects cannot calculate motion blur for Invigorator directly.

AE calculates motion blur by identifying moving layers (not moving pixels), then sampling them at points in time in between one frame and the next. Then it blends those samples together. In other words, AE breaks a moving object in frame into a number of subframes, renders each subframe, then combines the result to simulate motion blur.

From AE’s perspective, the Invigorator layer is not a moving layer — it’s a 2D layer with static position and anchor points. Invigorator does its calculations, then passes a flat image back to AE. All the movement with in an Invigorator layer happens within the Invigorator effect itself. AE doesn’t consider moving pixels for motion blur, only moving layers, so AE’s native motion blur will not affect Invigorator.

When you turn the Motion Blur switch for an Invigorator layer on, Invigorator itself does the motion blur sampling I just described, then passes the result on to AE as a flat image. Then AE applies your next effect, Glow, which glows the mo-blurred Invigorator layer, but is not actually motion-blurred itself, (again because the layer is not moving).

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Todd Kopriva]

Here’s a trick that I like for forcing motion blur:

Apply the Timewarp effect, set Speed to 100, enable motion blur within the effect, and use the manual shutter control features to adjust the motion blur.

(That tip is at the bottom of this page in After Effects Help.)

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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[Jens Enqvist]

CC Force Motionblur also works after applying the Timewarp effect. As long as you pre-compose the footage.
The HD version is soon to be float compatible as well. Cycore FX HD

-jens

[Anna Greve]

thanks everybody and especially Walter for your detailed and helpful replies!! Yeah I suspected the only workaround would be externalizing the blur as a separate effect somehow, so now I know!

thanks!!

🙂 Anna