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Please Help w/ Special Effect
I don’t know much about creating special effects. I am more of a straight forward director/shooter/editor, but I have been experimenting. I shot a piece using green screen recently. The intended effect starts out with a pov looking down at a wooden floor and a circle being slowly drawn. Once the circle is complete it should give way and descend into black – leaving a hole in the floor. I am at a point now where I need to figure out how to get the cut circle to fall down. If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.
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8 Replies
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Put the “hole” on a second layer and move it away with a shrink and/or throw behavior. Not sure where the green screen comes in here- perhaps you can post a still or explain a little more detail.
Noah
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Hey Bensne,
Seems pretty straightforward: just isolate the cut-out area as a separate element, then animate it falling away (scaling down, exponentially). The key is to make it look as if the hole has depth, otherwise the effect will look very 2D. You’ll want to comp on some cross-section-looking material (could be made in Photoshop) for the edges of the floor, and you’ll want the edges of the hole to cast a shadow on the cut-out section, as it falls.
Good luck!
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Just to explain the exponential scaling down: as objects start to fall, they accelerate, so a linear scaling from 100% to 0% makes an object look as though it’s shrinking, not moving further away. You’ll want an animation curve that gets steeper as it goes.
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just a question: Do you suppose an extrude effect added to a O would give the impression of a deep hole?
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Some sort of perspective effect will help– lines converging to a vanishing point, alternating bands of light/dark or colors, etc.
Is the camera pointing straight down or at an angle? Can you post a frame grab?
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com -
Good idea! The Extrude filter could do the trick nicely. You could use a custom gradient for the shading, instead of just repeating the edge pixel color. With the custom gradient, you could easily do a banded wood-color look. Good enough for a quick fake 😉
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I don’t know if anyone is still looking at the post, but I still need help. I know very little about Motion. After spending several hours reading the manual and watching tutorials I still can’t figure out how to do the effect. I want the circle drawn on the floor to suddenly give way and fall into oblivion. I have all my layers down and have isolated the circle from the surrounding wood floor. But, when I try to scale down it shrinks the image while keeping it on the same plane. It doesn’t look like it’s falling at all, but rather just getting wiped from the floor. I need the dimensions to remain the same and have it scale down away from the rest of floor, so we see it going further and further down until it’s enveloped by the dark. Can anyone offer me a step by step process for this? I would greatly appreciate it. This one shot has been a nightmare for me.
Oh, the camera is angled down at the floor, but not looking directly down from above. Don’t know if them helps anyone to have a clearer perspective.
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Use a throw behavior to move it as it shrinks. You’re not going to get true perspective because Motion is not true 3D.
Noah
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