tattoos and displacement maps

[Grant Swanson]

Hi Corey,

There’s no easy way to do this in AE. Of course using tracking, blending modes and various distort effects, you can come up with something decent…

Check out a program called Monet by Imagineer Systems, the same company that makes Mocha. It’s come in useful many times and is made for just this sort of thing.

Grant Swanson
Visual Effects Supervisor
Video Apex – Minneapolis, MN
videoapex.net

[David Bogie]

Corey, if you haven’t shot the footage yet, you must not depend upon an application liike After Effects to handle makeup for you. Full-on CGI might be your only hope but you will need mo-cap to make the work practical.

You could use CC Sphere to wrap your tattoo thingy around a spherical shape and place it into a nested comp upstream but it’s not a true 3D object relative to your bald head. There’s no way to attach CC Sphere’s upstream xyz rotation parameters to the movement of your head for many reasons not the least of which the head is only 2D.

bogiesan

[Rhett Robinson]

I’ve used this, and depending on the level you’re trying to get to, this may be it:

https://www.artbeats.com/assets/articles/pdf/projected_text.pdf

which is similar to the “Sons of Anarchy” effects. The 2 photo examples don’t really convey the power available here, mapping (not just text) to the bumps of an object. You don’t “wrap” anything, so as stated by others (in fact, the TV show probably does use something more powerful, as some are pretty complex, but most would have tattoo animation in addition to this technique).

There are some other good things on their site too, and Chris & Trish Meyer have some GREAT books!