Chris Smith
Forum Replies Created
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Sure.
I only know Maya and C4D though. A bi-rail is the lines perpindicular to the loft lines. For example in C4D is create your loft curves to stretch the material from one line to another to create the ribbon. You also have the option to throw in other perpindicular lines to shape how it bends and twists to get there.
In Maya a birail is a separate function all together. You may want to try a sweep nurbs instead and use a bi-rail. As far as animating it, there are usually parameters to animate how complete the process is. Like in Maya you can animate the extrude amount so it looks like the ribbon is growing along the path.
Or if your ribbon is a constant length. You can create just a long skinny plane and animate and deform it along a curve.
However is MAX is like C4D, maybe play with the real time deformers forst before needing to create bi-rails. A clever use of bend or twist deformers can create so pretty cool stuff instead of needing the exactness of a bi-rail.
Here is a tutorial by Chad Briggs from the Maya Cow showing how to do Bi-rail ribbons in Maya for most control:
https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?forumid=2&page=/articles/briggs_chad/maya_ribbon/index.html
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
FE and CC should be identical. CC is the Final Effects plug-in suite now put out by Cyclore.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Since you are going through a DV format you have degraded the image quite a bit so you might as well capture it in a DV format since it was converted that way anyways. If you are going to convert that video between apps a lot then use an uncompressed codec like Animation as much as possible.
But more importantly, I wouldn’t destroy the image by converting to DV in the first place. Decklink cards are very cheap these days for great uncompressed 10 bit video.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
LIGHTEN mode.
Any time you have specs or dots or small things, Think about what makes them different from the part you do want. If the zit is darker than her light complexion than exploit that. I have done in one trick what would have taken a loooong time to vector paint out:
First open your tracker and get a good track on the zit. It does NOT have to be dead on. But get it to ride along with it. Apply the data to a null layer.
Create a solid. Make a small circle shaped mask in the middle of the solid (anywhere on the solid really). Now parent this solid layer to the null. Your little circle should track in sync with the zit. Now just grab the circle layer in the comp window and move it right over the zit. You may want to drop the transparency to half way to make sure it is right over it (but put the transparency back to 100%). Now the circle should track right over the zit the whole time.
Now, Create a duplicate of the girl layer. Add a gauss blur to it. Crank up the blur a lot till you can see the zit on her face wash out and the color of her skin around it bleeds over it. Obviously the whole image will blur out, but ignore it and just crank it till the zits wash out.
Now put your solid (the one with the circle mask) just above your duplicate footage with the blur. On the duped footage set the track matte to alpha.
This duped footage should be on top of your original girl layer. So now at this point you have a very visible blur circle tracking right on top of the zit. Now for the magic part. Set the transfer mode on the blur duplicate to LIGHTEN. Now only the darker zit pixels will let blurred pixels show through. Now just tweak your blur amount and the size of the circle (although this should not be too critical, only that it covers the problem areas) and the zit should almost just vanish.
I’ve used this on a window with splotches all over it and made it look like a perfectly clean piece of glass with out any painting what-so -ever.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Interestly enough I did this today. The best solution was (if you happen to own C4D) was to map the image onto a plane in C4D and add the wind deformer with the “Flag” setting on. This way it not only deforms very realistically, but you have all the material channels to play with to make it look as real as you like.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
If you happen to own invigerator, import a circle and extrude it. Then map your texture onto it.
Or better yet generate the cylinder in 3D and render out the images to comp in with the rest of your project.
I know this may not be what you want to hear, but the $99 upgrade to 6.5 is the best $99 you will ever spend in your entire life. You get a full set of CC plugs, Color FInesse (!!!!), more powerful AE. They gave well over a thousand dollars of goodies for you for a paltry price. I consider it incredibly generous on Adobe’s part and I recommend taking advantage of it.
my .02
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Haven’t tackled the MOCCA yet. It seems pretty powerful to me but I can’t compare it to Maya. I’m not a character rigger type person anyways, I use 3D for motion graphics and FX rather than character work so I’m not strong in that category.
But if it is like the rest of C4D, it is brilliantly designed and layed out far better than Maya.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
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Cool. That confirmed my assumption. The thing w/3D stroke is that it is not 3D. It is still 2D in a 3D world with the illusion of thickness. Yes, you could create a LOT of solids bunched together with 3D stroke to try and get this effect, But why? In 3D you have true 3D surfaces that can bend and twist so easily that you can map lines onto (like the Maya image). Plus since the buildings in the BG are clearly 3D (the cube/window flipping) they have already done all the work of matching the camera so it makes sense to create all the elements in 3D.
My Guess is the particles are in 3D as well, but they don’t seem to really track w/ the camera so I’m thinking that can be a simple 2D solution like Particular. Of course they could’ve just imported the Maya camera to get a track, but then that brings up the question again why not just use Maya’s 3D particles in the first place.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Yes, I’m sure with some deformers and forge freeform it is possible. But Clearly this piece was done the way most Effects pipelines are done. Start in 3D and do the composite in 2D.
There are many ways to do ribbons, but the best, most natural looking and most controllable ones are generated in 3D. In this case create a ribbon in the normal sense than apply a procederal shader that creates lines in the diffuse channel and the transparency channel. Then add glow in 2D (or in your 3D app albeit with far less control)
Ribbons are made different ways. You can create a path curve, do a simple extrude, then animate the extrude. Or use a loft nurbs along many path curves using Bi-rail curves to set the angle. So many delicious ways in 3D to make ribbons.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com