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Slow motion with compositions
Hi, I have a question about applying a slow-mo effect to an animated scene that includes many compositions. Here’s the scene: It’s about a dozen people riding horses riding across the frame, and each horse is a composition made up of about 40 individual pieces that’s been placed into the scene.
I would like a way to play the scene at regular speed and then snap into slow-mo for a few seconds. So, the motion of the scene itself would have to slow down, and the motion of all of the compositions contained in the scene would have to slow down too. Any suggestions?
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14 Replies
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Thanks for your quick response, Dave. Each “equestrian” consists of hand-drawn pieces cut into about 40 different layers and animated into a running cycle using the parent tool.
Here is a (slightly unfinished) view of the “equestrian” (as you can see, it’s not quite a horse, but I thought that would be the best way to describe it as far as getting help):
I plan on having about 40 of these guys running through a scene at one.
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You can time-remap the composition that contains the whole scene.
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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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It is quite simple. To elaborate on what the Adobe guy said, you take all of those and stick them in comp A. Then put comp A into comp B (precompose it, in other words). Inside comp B you animate the time-remap values.
Andrew Kramer (videocopilot.net) has a few tutorials on this. Check them out, you can always learn a few things from him.
– Spencer
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Thank you, Todd. Will that remap all of the compositions nested in that scene?
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> Will that remap all of the compositions nested in that scene?
Yes.
Regarding the frame-rate concerns that Dave is alluding to: Keep in mind that slowing something down means that the software has to interpolate (make up) image data for the frames in between the original frames. You have frame blending controls to determine how this is done, but even the highes-quality frame blending mode (pixel motion) can’t work magic, so if you slow something down too much, you may get lousy results.
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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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Sorry, to clarify, all of the material used in the piece is hand-drawn. There’s no video footage at all. It’s entirely hand-drawn and then animated in AfterFX. The frame rate I’m using for the animation is 29.97, though.
If I precompose and then time remap, won’t it give me a somewhat sub-par result? I mean, since I’m working at 29.97, if I want to slow it down 300% won’t the remapping process be taking 29.97 footage and then just blending individual frames?
Here’s another frame:
I guess what I’m asking is, is there a way to make the remapping process remap all of the nested compositions at the same time?
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Ok, thanks very much for the help. I’ll run some tests and see if I can work it out. Regards,
Paxson. -
Why don’t you just increase the frame rate of your nested component compositions?
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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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if all your animations are keyframed within the comps (ie. nothing pre-rendered) then you shouldn’t have to change any frame rates. time remapping will interpolate the new keyframed data just fine. it won’t look jerky or have artifacts or have any problems that frame/pixel interpolation can have when you try to slow down actual footage.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Hey Dave,
Sorry to throw this back at you, but what does any of that matter? Interlaced or progressive doesn’t make a difference as long as he is interpolating it correctly because After Effects just builds whole frames out of the fields anyway. Frame rate shouldn’t change anything unless he is working with something crazy (as far as I know, anyway. Correct me if I’m wrong). Other than that the only thing I can think of that would throw off the pixel blending is a 3:2 pulldown, which I haven’t tried before but I would hope that After Effects could handle this in a similar way that it deals with fields.
Progressive segmented frames don’t apply because the only time you would see this in After Effects is during rendering; in other words after the time remap has been calculated.
All that said, you are right – it would be easier if we knew the exact situation and footage involved.
– Spencer
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