parenting to green screen area

[Hig116]

O.K. Sorry if I didn’t supply enough info. Here is the whole situation.

I work at a news station. I have a monitor which was created in Cinema 4D which animates onto the screen and will be located beside a news anchor. We will use this daily and will need to be able to change out the video in the monitor. I am trying to find the easies way, outside of Cinema 4D. Many people will need to be able to do this and although everyone knows After Effects, not everyone knows Cinema 4D.

Hope that explains it.
Thanks,
Keith

[Mike Clasby]

So the monitor from Cinema 4D is it’s own layer? Sounds straightforward. Key or mask out the screen of the Cinema 4D_Monitor layer, then drop your ChangingVideo layer under it. You could precomp the Cinema 4D_Monitor and ChangingVideo layers and name it “Change Monitor Screen_HERE”, so people would know where to go to change it.

Alt-Dragging new video from the Project Window onto selected layers (select the “ChangingVideo layer”) will swap footage.

When they swap in new video they might have to scale to fit the screen, unless you make them use one standard size, a standard set by you.

No?

[Hig116]

The monitor animates onto the screen. It drops down and turns. So I need to parent the video into this screen location. Or something like that.

Keith

[Mike Clasby]

Can you get a track on the four corners of the screen? If so try these:

Keep motion in perspective

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=100241&xml=aft65cornerpin

Using the new Motion Tracker

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=487&xml=aft6ttmotiontracker

If you can’t track it all the way (before it turns enough) then pick it up when you can and hand animate the replacement before that with Scale (click the “Constrain Proportion” knot/InfinitySign to separately animate X and Y) and/or Distort>Transform for Skews and suck and/or Distort>Corner Pin.

Once you get it right ou can still Alt-Drag footage from Project to Timeline to Swap in new video for the screen (if you use one size).

[Hig116]

This sounds like the ticket. I will give it a try.

Thanks for your help.

Keith

[Graham Quince]

Instead of tracking the monitor, can you export the AE project using Maxon’s free plugin. You’ll get camera data which you’d be able to use to locate the video layer in 3D space. It would be a lot simpler than using corner pin.

Then rendered C4D footage will be as 2D, but if you retain the 3D camera and switch on the 3D properties of your swappable video layer, you should have an easy job.

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Mike Clasby]

I’m not a C4D guy, but it sounds straighforward and good to me.