Angie Taylor
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Hi there,
There are a few things that will help make this process easier for you. One is to use the Layer panel, anchor point and Write-On effect rather than Stroke. The nice thing about this technique is that there’s no need to animate the camera, it naturally follows the Anchor Point so it’s MUCH easier to set up. There’s a Quick tip outlining this technique here;
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk/animating-a-line-drawn-on-a-map-indiana-jones-style/
Hope this helps!
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
Hi there,
Have you tried using Keylight? I find that it offers a much higher level of control for this kind of job. The Luma key is pretty basic.
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
Hi there,
If you use Keylight to key out the Green, you can use the Outside Mask settings to create a Garbage mask for the Yellow marker. If there’s more than one you could perhaps just mask them and animate the masks, this may be easier than trying to key them. If you are animating masks, always start by creating start and end keyframes, then going half way between keyframes till you have it following the path. Michael linked to a great resource to help you with this rotoscoping technique in his last post, here it is again, https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS39e706a46ad531be1172e0812179ce5d44-8000.html
I also discovered a handy little trick for when the tracker goes off screen. One thing to make sure you have selected in the Motion Tracker options is the ‘Extrapolate Motion’ setting. With this setting selected, when the tracker’s ‘confidence’ goes below the set threshold, After Effects will look at the speed and direction it was moving in before it ‘lost it’ and will keep moving in that direction till the end. This sometimes works but may not if the tracker actually moves off screen as the Motion Tracker will not go outside the bounds of the comp. so, if you try that and it STILL doesn’t work, here’s another solution.
Track as much as you can and then apply the Tracking data. In the Timeline, scrub through to the point where the track goes wrong and delete all keyframes after that point. Then add an expression to the Position Value of the layer you are attaching (in the case of 4 point tracker this would be to each of the Corner Pin properties that are animated (Upper Left, Upper Right, Lover Left, Lower Right). Add the following expression to each property;
loopOut(“continue”)
This will have a similar effect to Extrapolating but will also work outside the frame. Basically, all it does is continue the animation of the selected property at the speed and direction that was being followed when the kayframes stopped. A mightily handy expression!
Hope this helps, ping me with any questions.
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
Hi there,
Todd’s right, here in Europe you want to work in a PAL D1/DV composition for SD work.May I suggest a good workflow for you to create your project? as David says, After Effects isn’t really designed as a video editing app so it will be tiresome editing footage there and waiting for previews. However, I understand your requirements to do FX work. This is a perfect situation to use the Dynamic Link features in CS5 as you’ll get the best of both worlds with Prem Pro and AE.
Premiere Pro IS excellent at editing and you can even set up keyframes and effects in real time, creating a rough cut of your finished piece. The idea is then to open this in AE to tweak and fine tune FX and keyframes.
So, here’s how! Create a project in Prem Pro using the PAL D1 SD preset. Capture or import all your source files. You can use the thumbnail view in the Project panel to create a rough storyboard for the piece before you bring footage down into the timeline, making sure that shot order and duration is roughly correct. This will save time later. Once you’ve done that, place your audio in the Timeline and then add the footage in the order it is sorted by using “Automate to Sequence’ button. So that’s the rough cut done.
Still in Prem Pro, make any edit adjustments required. Keyframe any basic transformations, add effects if necessary. Oce you are happy with the rough edit, and ready to jump to AE, either select the Sequence in the Project panel, or make a selection of clips that you want to finesse in the Timeline, Right-click and choose ‘Dynamic Link’ to open the selected clips in a translated AE timeline. Here you can do whatever you need to do in AE.
The beauty of this technique is that the link between the apps remains live so any changes made in AE automatically update in PremPro and visa versa, no need for rendering either way till the project is finally finished.
I used this technique on the last project I worked on and reckon it saved me about 40% of the time it would have taken me only using AE.
If you’re in the UK please pop along to Broadcast Video Expo later this month where I’ll be demo’ing this exact technique on the Adobe booth. Please say hello if you do. 🙂
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
Withered Plastic Protuberances? 😉
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
WIP?!?!?!?
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
Hi Dave,
Apologies for the delay in responding to your message. I didn’t have my preferences set up correctly to notify me of new messages so missed a few of them earlier this month.
Thank you so much for your congrats, that means a lot to me. I’m so happy to be back in the After Effects community again after a break trying out the software industry for size! 🙂
All the best,
Angie
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
LOL Walter! I’m not sure I’m ready to deep dive like that again! To be honest I’m not great at programming, more of a creative than a programmer sadly! Thanks or the tip though, and sorry for the delayed response, I missed a few messages in my inbox! 🙂
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
Hmmm, are you clicking on the Axes to move it? If you click in the centre of the Null it won’t select it, try clicking on the 3-way axes to move it. Also, if you need to you can select the Null, hit the P key to open the Position value, and scrub the Position value to get it back within your comp.
Hope this helps!
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002 -
Hi there,
There’s definitely a trick to getting this right but once you know the trick, it’s easy, so, here goes. BTW, a movie demonstrating this technique is available in my After Effects CS5 Learn by Video DVD if you are interested in that, let me know and I’ll send you a link. 🙂
1. Place the map in a new comp, it’s best if the Map is bigger than the comp if you want to pan around it.
In the Timeline, set a keyframe for the Anchor Point property as it’s this property you will animate to pan around the map. Don’t animate the Position property as you’ll just run into problems.2. Alt-double-click the layer to open up the Layer panel, this is where you’ll do the animation. It’s great as you’ll be able to see an overview of the whole image without having to faff around in the Comp panel. Make sure that the Target menu is set to Anchor Point Path.
3. In the timeline, move to where you want the next change in direction of the path to happen, and in the Layer panel, click and drag the anchor point to the landmark that you want to be central in the comp panel at that time. You’ll notice that, in the Comp panel, the point that the anchor point is on (in the Layer panel) is always central in the Comp panel, which is what we want exactly!
4. Keep repeating this till you have completed the journey you want the ‘camera’ to follow and so have completed the positional aspect of the animation.
5. If you want to smooth out the timing of the animation so that it maintains and even speed throughout, select all the keyframes except the first and last one, right-click on them and choose Rove Across Time. Once you’ve done that you can pull or push the first or last keyframes to speed up, or slow down the whole animation.
6. Now apply the Write On effect to the layer. Choose a color and style by adjusting the settings.
7. To make the Write on effect follow the path you can either use and expression to link the Brush Position property to the Anchor Point property of the layer (my preferred option) or, if you’re not keen on using expressions you can simply select all the keyframes from the Anchor Point property, copy them, then paste them into the Brush Position property.
8. In the Write On effect, make sure that the Paint Style property is set to On Original Image.
The nice thing about this technique is that it’s now easy to make it into a 3D map pan. All you need to do is add a camera and some lights, adjust the camera angle and animate the zoom property and that’s it! The camera and lights will automatically follow the anchor point so no further animation will be necessary unless you want to animate the angle, zoom, or depth of field.
I hope this helps, please let me know if you need any more detail on any of this.
cheers,
Angie
Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices
https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002