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Scrolling notebook paper project woes
Considering this is essentially the first time I’ve ever used AE, I can’t complain about the results I’ve gotten so far.
Here is what I am ultimately after: A fast, horizontally scrolling sheet of notebook paper (with the blue lines), zoomed out initially, gradually slowing down and zooming in a bit, then coming to a stop.
To achieve this, the “sheet” of notebook paper will of course need to be effectively very long in the x dimension. To achieve a sense of horizontal scrolling on a practically featureless image, some sort of noise and/or other indicators are needed.
All I have done so far is: Generate a slightly off-white solid, add fractal noise, add a grid, and turn on two lights.. one ambient light of 100% intensity (to keep the paper layer as bright as it was in its 2d iteration) and one subtle spotlight which mostly drowns out the noise effect where it shines.
The main problem I have encountered is this. In order to force the fractal noise to exhibit appropriate noise detail (zoomed out so it looks like a rough surface, as opposed to its default scale which looks more like clouds), I needed to scale the noise down. What this does is scale the entire layer down, rather than simply “zoom out” to force the noise smaller. The only method I have discovered to compensate for this is the obvious: Make the paper layer proportionately larger. Ie, rather than the already large 1920×1080 I began with, I had to generate it as 7680×4320. Only then would my modification to the fractal noise’s scale (100 -> 25) give me the layer dimensions I actually wanted (1920×1080). The obvious downside – and it is VERY obvious when I’m working on the project – is that the computational time whenever I do anything with the project is immense.
This doesn’t even begin to address the real hurdle: I still have to figure out a way to scroll along a very wide “sheet” of paper, as per my goal. Does it mean I will have to generate a layer whose dimensions are, oh, 300,000×4320? Impossible. There must be a better way.
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7 Replies
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you may not have to make the sheet of paper as large as that, but it would either have to be long enough to do a continual scroll over the time you want it to be moving, or you can scroll it for say, 3 seconds, then duplicate and offset the layers so that it basically loops for the total amount of time needed.
as far as your fractal noise filter goes, why not run that filter on a photoshop document… make the paper itself an image in photoshop where you can control the look of it without it rendering over and over. Unless you are changing the fractal noise over time, you don’t need the filter rendering 30 times a second… render it once in photoshop.
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Good advice. As to why I didn’t simply create a bitmap of fractal noise, well, I had it in mind (assuming I could work out how) to use the fractal noise in some way to enhance the perception of depth. Right now, the paper layer is completely flat. It would be nice if I could subtly bump-map the layer, based perhaps on the fractal noise, and have this change be realized, visually, by the spotlight I have shining on it. It would be subtle but apparent, and would enhance the sense that the paper is scrolling by a fixed camera.
I’ll look into duplicating the layer I’ve got. With luck, it won’t be as cpu-intensive as having a layer of the needed width, and hopefully the repeat nature of the noise won’t be apparent.
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I remember your earlier post on this topic. I’m still not clear on why you didn’t just do a hi-res scan of a real sheet of notebook paper. You would get all the fiber and grain and natural “noise” that real paper has. And you could scan several of them. In Ae or photoshop you could join them into a wide sheet by cloning the edges. You could probably go pretty wide before maxing out AE’s RAM buffer, especially if you don’t need height.
Joey Foreman
Editor/Animator
Nowhere Productions, Athens, GA -
I really did try getting a scan of a sheet of paper. My results were always imprecise in ways that made them unusable. My biggest success looked a bit like this:
https://www.ondisplaymusic.com/images/notebook_paper_bkgrd.jpg
but even that was ultimately no better than what I was able to achieve artificially. The most likely culprit behind my failures was my digital camera, which exhibits limitations which would be anomalous in today’s Best Buy or wherever.
For what it’s worth, my poor pc has had much better luck dealing with multiple copies of a layer with smaller dimensions. I’ve decided to overcome other limitations by initially scrolling along the y axis and gradually transitioning to x.
Now to figure out how to tie the spotlight to the camera.
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What about using Motion Tile and animating the Tile Center property? I’ve used it before to scroll an image indefinitely and it worked great. Will it work in your situation?
Nate
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Hi Marc
Is this the kind of look you are after? – https://www.vertigo.co.uk/vertigoreel.html (click on ‘Teen Mum High’)
That was; a scan of an old envelope (more pronounced texture), very faint overlay of Fractal Noise, 2 instances of the Grid effect (one for the red line and one for the blue) tinted with Curves (individual channels). I know it doesn’t scan as you need it, but I think a combination of a managably large image and Offset should do it.
Good luck
A
Vertigo Productions
https://www.vertigo.co.uk -
I liked ur animation [teen mum high] but ur instructions is not clear. please, can you make a fast tutorial for me? I searched for it along time.
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