Andrew Somers
Forum Replies Created
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Think of “Physics Time Factor” as your “master speed control” – it affects the speed of everything except particles per second.
To freeze, keyframe particles per second down to 0, and physics time factor down to 0.
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As the others mentioned, the “technique” is traditionally known as “Rotoscoping” (stemming back from the days of film, and animation stands, etc.) which was a process of creating a hand drawn matte that followed the action.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping
The means to achieving a roto matte today will use either animated masks, or animated matte layers, or other tools.
While you could animate masks to roto the people in the above ad, it is much more efficient to use an automated tool like MOCHA to create a number of tracking masks, which will (to a degree) auto track the motion of the people.
After Effects CS5 and above also has a new tool called the “Roto brush” that works similarly to the “QUick Selection Tool” in photoshop, except of course you can adjust it over time.
Since this was a high end commercial, there are other high end workstations such as Inferno that have some good tools for this kind of work as well.
Note that even when using a tool like Mocha, it is a good idea to use a number of separate masks for the various body parts – it is easier to move and adjust several independent masks, than a single mask and just moving the points around. So you may setup a tracking mask for each arm, and each arm may use several masks – forearm, upper arm, hand – etc.
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Nice first effort!! I especially like the “Letters on a string” effect you did at 1:15 – that’s worth making a tutorial about!
🙂
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While this thread is a little old, I’d like to add my two cents as it seems to come up in a lot of google searches.
RANT:
First off, I’d like to mention that there is no such thing as aRGB. There is s RGB, and there is AdobeRGB, but Adobe RGB should never be written as aRGB.Among other things there is obvious potential confusion (not to mention typos) relative to sRGB, not even mentioning that “Adobe” is a proper brand name and should be capitalized.
“ARGB” is ALSO wrong, as it could lead to confusion with RGBA (red/green/blue/alpha), but WORSE, Windows uses ARGB as the method for storing colors in windows (alpha/red/green/blue), but Windows uses sRGB as the target COLORSPACE. ARGB in Windows is NOT a color space.
So you see, when you use aRGB, you are ambiguous and will create confusion.
Adobe RGB can be referred to as “Adobe 98” or “Adobe RGB”. I suppose if you really must desperately conserve characters because your fingers are too tired to type out all 9 characters, you could type “AdbRGB”. But never aRGB. End of my rant.
ADVICE:
I’m not sure what AE for, but for compositing and most effects I prefer working in 32 bit mode with a linearized color space. When you do, additive operations act like light int he real world, and come across as more natural.
When you are using 32 bit mode in AE, you can use pretty much any colorspace you want to as a working space. 8 bit mode is *not* recommended.
As for camera and export colorspaces:
With dSLRs you are going to be creating 8 bit compressed camera originals. 8 Bits means that you will have 256 levels of red, 256 levels of green and 256 levels of blue. This is regardless of if you are in Adobe RGB or sRGB.
The difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB is the *distance between colors*. If you increase the distance between colors, you are actually increasing the potential errors (i.e. delta E errors). Since Adobe RGB is larger than sRGB, the distance between colors is greater.
The reason for using a larger colorspace is when the smaller colorspace is clipping colors. But when you are in 8 Bit, the larger color space will as a consequence be more prone to *banding*.
The standard for HDTV is Rec709, and Rec 709 and sRGB share the same primaries, and thus have very close to the same gamut size (the difference between Rec709 and sRGB is in the gamma curve).
If your final output is for HD, at Rec709, then you may not derive any real benefit from shooting in a larger space like AdobeRGB – in fact you may find additional *problems* due to delta E types of errors.
Instead of using AdobeRGB to shoot, consider using sRGB, and set the contrast LOW and also possibly reduce the saturation slightly so that you get no clipping of colors, but then you will have an image that can be “expanded” back to a higher contrast one, retaining more detail in blacks, and with less clipping on highlights and saturated colors.
Obv., tests should be done with your intended subject matter to find the right workflow along these lines. Note that if you are going out to actual FILM, or DCI, then Adobe RGB *may* be a better choice (but not necessarily).
As a “rule”, use the smallest colorspace that does not result in clipping, i.e. “out of gamut” errors. If you do not get out of gamut errors (clipping) in sRGB, then you will gain no benefit from using Adobe RGB.
*Also* if you are using a Canon dSLR, go to the Technicolor website and look at the CineStyle picture profile:
https://www.technicolor.com/en/hi/theatrical/visual-post-production/digital-printer-lights/cinestyle
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While this thread is a little old, I’d like to add my two cents as it seems to come up in a lot of google searches.
Phil Huizen wrote:
Final question: which would give the best colors? the first or second example (shooting aRGB or sRGB)?
RANT:
First off, I’d like to mention that there is no such thing as aRGB. There is sRGB, and there is Adobe RGB (among others), but Adobe RGB should never be written as aRGB.For one thing there is obvious potential confusion (not to mention typos) relative to sRGB, not even mentioning that “Adobe” is a proper brand name and should be capitalized.
“ARGB” is ALSO wrong, as it could lead to confusion with RGBA (red/green/blue/alpha), but WORSE, Windows uses ARGB as the method for storing colors in windows (alpha/red/green/blue), but Windows uses sRGB as the target COLORSPACE. ARGB in Windows is NOT a color space.
So you see, when you use aRGB, you are ambiguous and will create confusion.
Adobe RGB can be referred to as “Adobe 98” or “Adobe RGB”. But never aRGB.
ADVICE:
I’m not sure what you are going to be using AE for specifically, but for compositing and most effects I prefer working in 32 bit mode with a linearized color space. When you do, additive operations act like light int he real world, and come across as more natural.
When you are using 32 bit mode in AE, you can use pretty much any colorspace you want to as a working space. 8 bit mode is *not* recommended.
As for camera and export colorspaces:
With dSLRs you are going to be creating 8 bit compressed camera originals. 8 Bits means that you will have 256 levels of red, 256 levels of green and 256 levels of blue. This is regardless of if you are in Adobe RGB or sRGB.The difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB is the *distance between colors*. If you increase the distance between colors, you are actually increasing the potential errors (i.e. delta E errors). Since Adobe RGB is larger than sRGB, the distance between colors is greater.
The reason for using a larger colorspace is when the smaller colorspace is clipping colors. But when you are in 8 Bit, the larger color space will as a consequence be more prone to *banding*.
The standard for HDTV is Rec709, and Rec 709 and sRGB share the same primaries, and thus have very close to the same gamut size (the difference between Rec709 and sRGB is in the gamma curve).
If your final output is for HD, at Rec709, then you may not derive any real benefit from shooting in a larger space like AdobeRGB – in fact you may find additional *problems* due to delta E types of errors.
Instead of using AdobeRGB to shoot, consider using sRGB, and set the contrast LOW and also possibly reduce the saturation slightly so that you get no clipping of colors, but then you will have an image that can be “expanded” back to a higher contrast one, retaining more detail in blacks, and with less clipping on highlights and saturated colors.
Obv., tests should be done with your intended subject matter to find the right workflow along these lines.
*Also* if you are using a Canon dSLR, go to the Technicolor website and look at the CineStyle picture profile:
https://www.technicolor.com/en/hi/theatrical/visual-post-production/digital-printer-lights/cinestyle
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What version are you using?
Select the layer, then go under the LAYER menu to LAYER STYLES, and select STROKE
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In terms of system speed, you won’t notice that much of a difference between 2.2 and 2.4 GHz.
But RAM is the KEY.
AE is a RAM HOG, especially if you use multiprocessing for renders.
Do whatever you need to do to get 16 GB RAM into your machine. And it is important that you use “ACtivity Monitor” and make sure there is always at least *some* green – never let the “blue and yellow” eat all the green!
The Graphics RAM will affect you in terms of your OpenGL fast previews for certain things.
Hard drive speed will affect working and rendering speed too. I use eSATA raids for media – to add eSATA to your macbook, you’ll need an expressCard, and this is only possible on the MacBook Pro:
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/EXP34SATA2F1/?utm_source=diglloyd-mpg
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The example in that video looks pretty simple, and does not look like a “film flash” IMO
There are some plug ins that can emulate film damage pretty well.
But you can achieve this effect using the EXPOSURE plug in along with some masks and masked solids blended using ADD (work in 32 bit mode or at the least, select “blend using linear light” for best results).
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Your biggest problem will be the lens flare.
But otherwise, you need to make a synthetic plate (2D) that is basically an overhead view of the land that needs to be painted out, and paint out the tracks on this one static layer.
Then track the shot using a 3D or 2.5 D tracker
Orient the synthetic element to match the real ground.
Use a mask to reveal the synthetic element.
Put the main plate on a layer above, and use Multiply to add the shadows back in as necessary.
You can probably ADD in back the lens flares using a layer of the main plate, or use a plug in to add in a simulated flare to cover.
You can do this with Mocha AE for the 2.5D track, use Photoshop for the synthetic plate, and create the masks in Mocha or in AE. However, I think you’d be happier with a 3D track for the synthetic replacement element.
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In your system utilities folder, there is a program called “Activity Monitor”.
I leave it running at all times.
It will show you how RAM is being allocated, and processor utilization, etc.
KEY NOTES on Activity Monitor:
1) There should ALWAYS be SOME “GREEN” in the RAM indicator. ALWAYS. If you let yellow and blue take over all the green, then your system is forced to use paging (aka virtual memory) to the hard drive. this will drag your system to a virtual halt (pardon the pun).2) Don’t focus on trying to redline all your processors all the time – just because you have a quad core does not mean you necessarily want to have AE try and use all 4 (especially when you don’t have the RAM to do so).
KEY NOTES on your system:
1) You don’t have enough RAM. I have 24 GB on my Octocore, and sometimes I think that is not enough.
2) With only 8GB of RAM, turn multiprocessing OFF. Uncheck the “Render multiple frames simultaneously” in the “Memory and multiprocessing” preferences pane. Note that if you use too many CPUs, your total render time can actually increase due to system resource shortages. “Less is more” in many cases.
3) Also in your memory pane, make certain that there is enough RAM for other processes – I don’t think you can even set it below 3. I leave mine at 6. Obviously for you, you need to have all other applications quit, and set to 3 or 4.
4) If you *DO* use multi processing, only use 2 processors, so set 2 as reserved for other applications. Set RAM per core to 1 GB. This may not be enough if you are doing large comps in 32 bit mode.
5) You can expand RAM on your system to GB – if you think you would get benefit from multi-processing, then upgrade your RAM. Nevertheless, with 16 GB I’d suggest reserving 4 GB for other apps (provided you run no other apps except Activity Monitor), use no more than 3 CPUs, and when you allocate more than 1 GB of RAM per core, watch Activity Monitor, and take note how much free (green) RAM remains during and at the end of a render.
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For the record, I mainly use a MacPro Octocore with 24GB of RAM – “RAM reserved” is set to 6 GB, I use only 4 of my 8 processors under multiprocessing, and I set the RAM to 3 GB for each of them. Considering disk bandwidth, this seems to be a good compromise on responsiveness.
