Andrew Kramer
Forum Replies Created
-
One of my favorite ways to preserve alpha is a PNG sequence, uncompressed decent file sizes and the great thing about an image sequence, (maybe not in your case) but if you rework something in one part you can rerender out the part that is changed and not have to render out and entire sequence again.
Just be sure to make a separate folder for each render and then set the RGB+Alpha from the setting thing in render queue.
you can import this into Final cut as a seuqence and your all set.
be sure to check your alpha by clicking on the little checkerboard in the monitor window of AE, also for Matte-wise, use a background color from the composition setting to represent the footage you are compositing. for blending purposes.
Cheers,
Andrew Kramer -
Couple ways…
1. select the interpret footage setting (riht click on sound) and choose loop and type a number in, the file must loop seamlessly because it just puts it end to end.2. another way, make many instances of your sound in the timeline. Duplicate it a bunch of times and then select the top one, hold down shift, select the bottom one, then once they’re all selected, choose Animation-keyframe assistance-sequence layers, don’t let them overlap, although this is a good way to make slide shows that have dissolve transitions.
the second way might work because you can delete an instance at anytime to eliminate the sound for a “loop”, the first way will work but you may need to use the volume effect to turn it down temporarily, you can also chop the layer by pressing ctrl+SHIFT=D just make sure you layer is selected and the cursure is at the point of Cutting.
Good Luck,
Andrew Kramer -
Well this is the Cow, so you’ve come to the right place.
Well There are several things you need to think about.
-Is the cow going to be facing you, Profile or quarter profile?
-Are you using locked down footage?Well 1 way you could do it is to buy a fake cow head and film the mouth moving via puppet and get the look of a realistic mouth. You could then track the live action cow and composite the new mouth over it.
Another way might be, stablizing the cows mouth, track the nose or something so that it’s staionary, even a slight movement will mess you up. then you may want to take a still frame of the cows mouth both the uppen and lower part and then using the bezier corner pin warp effect you can key frame the shape of the mouth to “speak”, it would be helpful to have a practical mouth saying the lines so you can see what a mouth is doing, what the upper lip does, what the bottom part does, what the eyes are doing etc. A mirror is also helpful for this. once you make the movement you can untrack your footage by pasting the anchor point keyframes into the position parameter and it will inverse.
I hope this can get u started, sounds ambitious
Andrew Kramer
-
Is the footage interpret setting correct?
Certain file formats don’t maintain the proper aspect ratio info, so you need to tell AE what it is.
Right click on footage and choose interpret footage and then change to proper aspect ratio, Ae should make a comp that is the same settings as your footage. You can do this quickly by selecting remember interpretation once you’ve set it for one and then select all of them and choose apply interpretation.
Good luck.
Andrew
-
Rotoscoping is basically removing any unwanted elements from a shot. This includes masking and even painting out and sometimes in elements.
A good roto Artist needs to know how to motion track in order to perform better concealing.good luck
Andrew -
Depends on how the video was converted to 29.97.
Was it sped up to 24 frames per second and then telecined?
Can’t undo what you don’t know was done.
Andrew
-
good news,
the solution is quite simple,select the pan behind tool or the “anchor poing tool” and then drag your layer left to right in the comp window. Your keyframes will stay put and the in and out points will be adjusted. you can also just drag the faded out area to left and right of your clip in the comp to and this will slide the edit. if you select keyframes and do this they will move too, just for future ref.good luck,
Andrew -
Its probably a fields problem, Is the footage interlaced, if it is, you may need to set the fields up in the render dialogue. set the field order to lower first and then you should be able to get all your data in the face.
Andrew
-
Check your screen matte in keylight, (I’m assuming your using this plugin) make sure the face is totally white. Sometimes the key looks right on single frames but crawls later.
good luck,
Andrew -
Pre-composing,
One way to think about precomposing is to “temporarily flatten” a group of layers. By flattening this group you now can apply effects to these layer as one. Another way to think about it is like rendering out a sequence with a group of layers then importing this back in, the benifit of pre-composing is you can make changes dynamically.Another important aspect is the continuous rasterazion button or the “collaps transformations” switch. If you have text for example, by switching on the continous rasterazing switch you can scale up the precomp and the text wont get blurry. antoher thing that happens is the effect parameters re-render around the parameters of the precomp in the new composition. (like if the scale is larger, a glow wont get bigger but instead be as large as it was in the previous comp)Also global settering must be set inside the pre-comp like motion blur and layer switches to be rendered insed of a new comp when set to continously rasterize.
Important things to note:
1. In the preferences you can shut off “synchronize time of all related items” and this each precomp can have it own time indicator, instead of dynamically changing, I prefer it to dynamically change for most things, but the option is nice.2. Keyframe interpolation for effects inside a comp. For example if I use trapcodes, particular and I have some smoke rising, If I pre-compose this and then slow it down to 200 percent with the continuous rasterize switch on, the plug-in with render intermediate frames, sometimes this is the only way to achieve certain effects.
3. 3d layers can be pre-composed and then moved in 3d space from another comp. Example: say I create a box out of 6 layers then precompose this box (with the 3d layer switch on) I can add a new camera to the apparent frozen 3d element, but then turn on the continuous rasterization, and now you camera can move around the box, and by changeing the position you move it in 3d space as well instead just a “flattend box” you can also turn on the 3d switch and then move the layer around better in 3d space. the cool thing about this is for somet things it makes managein many layer easier when using repiticious elements.
4. Preserving transfer modes when pre-composing, Exapmle, when you use transfer modes to interact with layers below a pre-comp will disrupt this synergy, by continuously rasterizing the transfer mode will now interact with layer below.
5. Certain effects need to be pre-comped inorder to add other effects like masking. When using and effects that sources the actual original clip instead of the order it sits in the effects controls window. This method of rendering for the effect is essential in some cases but limiting as well. for example, If I have a clip and then I apply an instance of “levels” to color correct and then I add a revisionfx fielsdkit deinterlacer, this plu-in samples from the original source and disregards the levels adjustment, the solution here would be to apply the levels after the deinterlacer but this doesn’t solve every solution, If you have ever tried to apply a mask to a layer with one of these original source sampling effects you know what I mean. the mask will apply itself but nothing will happen. In this case it’s best to add the effect, then pre-compose then add you mask.
6. Do not over pre-compose, use it when necessary, don’t just pre-comp a pre-comp and another pre-comp, be wise. It can waste a lot more cpu power if overused. Optimize the need.
7. The leave attributes option is handy, just think about what your doing and this method will come in handy
8. “alt” + double clicking on a pre-comp name will open that pre-comp, you can also click on the layer itself but you may rist accidently shifting layers,
9. Understand that a pre-comp isn’t always the best solution, sometimes it might be better to render out the layers then re-import, after effects render out the pre-comps then you secondary effects so you might waste valuable processes.
10. Pre-comps can also be necessary for effects that sample layers image data, For example, If I’m using a compound blur and I want it to use a black to white gradient, First i need to make a new layer, add a ramp effects and then tell the compound blur to use that layer as it’s “blur layer”, however the effect will only sample the layer itself, I need to pre-compose the effects so the compound blur sees, A “flattend Layer”.
There is more to this important technique perhaps other can add to this list.
good luck
Andrew Kramer