Chris Smith
Forum Replies Created
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Here is a page that has formulas for the more popular ones. You should be able to create some Xpresso/TP groups to express these fairly easily, especially with particle positions.
But I would program in a limit for the iterations so It doesn’t get out of control.
https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Also for future ref, it sometimes helps when doing green/blue screen to softly back light your subject with slightly warmer light. Also use longer lenses and get your subject a good bit away from the screen itself.
So say instead of shooting your subject standing 5 feet in front of the key and your camera another 5 feet with a wider lens, stretch the whole thing out. Have your subject 15 feet away and your cam another 15 and shoot on a longer lens. This will help twofold: Your subject is likely to get less spill and putting your screen more out of focus smooths any irregularities.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Also consider doing the key in a few layers. Not every key is going to work for your entire image. You may need to isolate parts of the image with rough masks and key them with different values.
And just to make sure, you are garbage masking out most of the image except your subject, yes?
I know it’s simple, but some ppl make the key try to work for the entire image when all you need it for are the very edges of your subject.
It is also not uncommon to do garbage masks on the inside of the subject. If you happen to be having problems say on the front of someone’s shirt, keyframe a quick mask over it to keep it out of the equation.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
heh, answered my own question. For anyone actually following this thread, my last thought worked well.
Create text in AI save as eps, import to C4D, connect the splines, drop in a loft nurbs to get flat text.
copy and paste the text from ai into AE so it’s a mask on a solid. Use STroke on the masks set to ‘sequential’ then animate the ‘end’ parameter from 0 to 100. Make the stroke nice and fat.So you should have a white fat stroke drawing the text over a black solid.
Drop a gauss blur on the text and blur it up a bit.
Render the clip and import into C4D. Map it to the alpha channel of a material mapped to your text object. It was a bit of a bear to line it up with the geometry, but not too bad. One day if I learn how to do UVs I won’t have this problem.
But in the end, it looked like the link I posted, 3D text that ‘writes’ itself on.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Did you email Kathlyn or Ron about it? Click ‘contact us’ on the left bar.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
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Strange the Avid wouldn’t do it. When you adjust the clip speed in FCP it adjusts the audio accordingly.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I haven’t used Boujou, but I have used Icarus (now PF Track).
Do the track. Then after the software found hundreds of tracking points, you right click on one of them that is on the area in 3D space where you want to put your AE layer to give that tracking dot a name for reference. For example, a dot that tracked on a fire hydrant. Right click it and call it hydrant. Then name other tracking dots specific things to help you understand the depth.
Save as a .ma file (Maya file). Load into Maya. All the tracking points will be converted to Maya nulls. Erase them all except the ones you named. Change their names to fit the AE convention which is:
null_Hydrant
null_Sign
null_WhateverThen save as a new .ma
Bring this into AE. The nulls will become AE nulls. You can then place your AE layers at the same position as the nulls so they are at the right place in 3D space.
You may have to shrink the layers from 100% down to about 1% because of the differences in scale from Maya to AE.
That’s how I do it and I get a perfect conversion everytime with a dead on track (assuming it tracked well in the 3D tracking software in the first place).
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Lightsabers are best done in a compositor using roto. It’s possible you can make a green stick that is well lit to try and get a mask without roto, but where it motion blurs may be a tricky key. See the post me that Filip and I wrote you in the AE cow.
C4D and other 3D software are not built to do greenscreen. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it is not what you want. It’s like cutting meat with a spoon.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com