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Zombieland Intro (Animating individual letters of text)
Hey, so I have my zombie footage, I have my text as a 3D object in place, i’ve got the keyframes down in the exact moment I want it to appear that the zombie moves through the text, now, how can I convert that text from a word to individual letters.
Basically, I want to make it so that when the zombie crashes through a word, like,
CHRIS WOOD
He knocks the letters aside.
Basically you can see EXACTLY what I want to do here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE4Zj9s48XQ
If there’s some plugins that can make me do this easier, let me know please. And if the only option is to do it all by hand, that’s fine. I have 5 days to do this, and all week off 🙂 And only 4 or 5 words to do.
Anyway.
Please, someone help.
Thank you very much.
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5 Replies
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You’re probably going to have to do it by hand.
My guess as to how they did the (awesome) Zombieland titles was to track the shot, do all the text in 3d, and then create an “invisible” object of the same size and movement as whatever is interacting with the text, and then do a physics sim using the collision of the invisible object.
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Hey, how can I make the text track the background? So as the camera moves, the text appears to be on the actual background in a video?
They do it a hell of alot in Heroes, so there’s definately a way to do it.
Thanks
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i think you’ll be able to get something close if you try the shatter effect setting the text layer as the custom shatter map.
to get started, created your text layer and add the shatter effect and set the view property to rendered. in the shape properties set the pattern to custom and choose the text layer as the custom shatter map. you’ll notice that the text edges get a little crunchy, so ultimately you’ll need to use masks, split layers and motion blur to help overcome that. also, you can define the color/textures for the front, sides and back of the letters in the textures properties.
if you were to ram preview now, the layers will just explode outward and tumble off screen. to get control of the exploding, you’ll need to adjust the force properties. there are two, and from the looks of most of those titles, that’s all you’ll need. you’ll want to make the forces smaller and then animate the depth to get the forces to burst through the letters timed with the footage you are matching to.
you can further refine the movement of the letter in the physics properties, and you can use the camera properties to set the viewing angle of the text, or set it to use a comp camera and adjsut the comp camera accordingly.
if you footage is slow motion like the title sequence, then you can use time stretch on the shatter/text layer to give it the same slow-mo look.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
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hey! i’m dealing with the “crunchy edges” on text described above. How would I use masks and split layers to do that? my project is a little difference and i need to spiral inwards towards smaller and smaller text and it’s bitmapping or something on me?
-f
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