[Anders Larsen]

Hi Andy

Thanks a lot for your input.
I did not know that masked objects can not have reflections. However, if I clone this layer, my clone is invisible.
Another workaround to this would be to render out just the splash with an alpha channel, and then bring it back in to the project, so that one I’m sure I can figure out somehow.

The replicator issue, on the other hand, is a mystery to me.
I have used replicators with reflections before without problems, but this one has me puzzled.
I have attached my source file that you can have a look at if you feel so inclined.

1628_smartaftalegenereltspot0001.zip

[Anders Larsen]

I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but a G5 is, well, less than ideal for working with HD.

Get your hands on an Intel Mac, any Intel Mac. An old used one will still do a better job than a G5 and give you access to ProRes.

Hate to be a party-pooper here but I really suggest that you save yourself the hassle of keeping that old G5 alive.

[Anders Larsen]

Hi Colyn

I made this a while a ago in Motion:

Coverflip

Is that the effect you are looking for?

I don’t have a lot of time to make a tutorial right now, but if you’d like, i can send you my Motion files to look at.

Cutting up an image is really easy in Photoshop using slices/save for web.
If you need to cut up a video, I’m sure there must be a way Compressor.

Hope that helps

/Anders

[Anders Larsen]

Hi Tim

As I see it, the biggest challenge in recreating this in Motion is that Motion does not let you make particles of a light.

In the template you link to, the bouncing balls actually light up the floor, revealing the grungy texture.

In order to achieve this I think you would have to make a handful of lights that bounce off a floor, and then duplicate or clone them until you have the desired effect.
It will be time-consuming, but it’s not that difficult to do.

First create a floor and the lit-up ball (a feathered circle with a light in the middle will do the trick) then apply a gravity behavior and then an edge collision behavior.

This will make the ball fall to the bottom of the scene and bounce in place.
Add a throw behavior to make the light bounce off to the side.

When you have the timing just right, keyframe the intensity and falloff parameters of the light to give the light burst you need.

Duplicate the ball a handful of times to make different versions of it, and then clone these versions as needed and drag the clones down the timeline at random intevals. you will need to make quite a few clones, so this step will take a while to do.

Finally animate your camera, and upload your movie here, so we can all see your masterpiece.

Wow! That ended up being a long post. Hope it all make sense.

/Anders

[Anders Larsen]

Don’t forget that you can shoot the images in RAW, and use an application like Aperture og Lightroom to adjust colors before turning the images in to a sequence.
This way you will have MUCH more color information to work with.

[Anders Larsen]

If the image names end in numbers that are sequential (E.g. “timlapse0001.jpg, timelapse0002.jpg …”) then Motion will automatically recognize them as an image sequence and import them as such.

[Anders Larsen]

It’s not as elegant, but you might be able to get it to work by simply rendering out your foreground and importing it back into your project.

Turn off the background (and the green lights)
Export video to a format with an alpha-channel
In the export window you can choose to “import into project” after export
When the export is done, turn your background back on, and make the layer with the re-imported foreground 2D.

Let me know if that works.

[Anders Larsen]

As Mark said use a mask.
Motion doesn’t allow compound paths in quite the same way Illustrator does.
However you can achieve all the same effects by using multiple masks on the same object, and playing with the mask blend modes. It somewhat resembles the Pathfinder in Illustrator.

Happy masking

[Anders Larsen]

Try applying a Quantize behavior to the parameter of the mask that you are animating.

[Anders Larsen]

First of all, do you still have the 60p footage? that would fare much nicer when slowing down simply because it has twice as many frames.

It will be hard to avoid some weird blurring and bending/warping of the moving subject but you can avoid the background bending by using a frame from the begining or end of the shot as a clean plate to do a difference key.

I couldn’t download the video from your link, so I did an example from two screen shots.
The trick is to put the video over the clean plate, set the blend mode to difference, and then apply a bunch of filter to get a black and white silhouette of your moving subject.
This silhouette can then be used a a mask for a copy of the video.
Try taking this example file apart and see if that helps.

https://f1.creativecow.net/991/difference-key-example

When you have the moving subject isolated, slow that down, and keep the clean plate in the background, that should take care of the background bending.