Christopher R. green
Forum Replies Created
-
Well then, thank you and you’re welcome!
-crg
-
or PFHoe Pro, which is the most affordable, but still extremely powerful.
-
Hi. There are a few ways to do this.
One way to do this is to use my “Separate_Masks_in_Layers” script. It has a feature which calculates centers based on the masks you give it. So you could theoretically put a mask which matches the circle on the image, then run the script on the layer and let it calculate the center based on the mask. One caveat, though: It won’t run if there is only one mask on a layer, so you could do [Layer>Mask>New Mask] first, making a mask for the whole thing, then make your circular mask (using the Ellipse Tool, perhaps) and run the script, afterward deleting both the “main mask layer”, and the circular mask in the remaining layer.
My ReAnchor_Selected_Layers script is for placing single-vertex-masks quickly on layers on which it is easy or perhaps not-so-crucial as far as where the new anchor points go. “Eyeballing” this kind of thing can be frustrating, because you cannot, for example, free-transform a mask and move guides to the center of the mask (which becomes visible when free-transforming); the two things — free transforming a mask, and dragging a guide to where you want — cannot happen at the same time. You can zoom way the heck in, though, and try to find the exact pixel on which to pop a singe-vertex-mask, then run the ReAnchor script.https://www.crgreen.com/aescripts/
-
[sorry; this was in error, and i cannot delete the post]
-
[Maxime Marquis] “The only way to arrange this is to erase all the keyframes of the problematic section, and the one following, and keyframing again.”
There is another issue with keyframes that I feel should be mentioned (and may or may not have anything to do with what you’re describing).
Linear keyframes used to behave differently (sorry, I won’t be able to give you exact version-specificity here). In the old days, when you made a linear (default) keyframe, you could rely on the motion to be perfectly, well, linear. Nowadays, you may find that sometimes there is some floating going on close to the keyframes, and that the motion has curves to it. This graphic shows you what linear keyframes look like when applied to a solid position:
This can be seen only when you have “Motion Paths” selected in the View Options. The solution below requires this also. When dealing with camera animation, you need to switch from “Active Camera” view to another view, like “Front” (or another camera).
My favorite way of dealing with this, when I want to be sure I have true linear movement (no curving, easing, etc.) is to do the following (Windows users, please excuse the mac-specific key command here; I’m sure you can work out the equivalent): Float your cursor over the keyframe in the Composition window, hold down Command-Option and notice the cursor changes to the bezier control/break tool. If you click on the keyframe, the bezier curves will ‘break’ and become perfectly linear. -
With a little work-around-planar-3D work, you could build it using my Selected_as_Spine script, available at crgreen.com/aescripts. Also, the rd_Slicer script will help.
You’ll need to slice the spine image into sections first. I’ve done this and it works well, especially if you take a little extra time to clean up the faux 3D weirdness in AE.
To do it as quickly as possible, I would:
1) make a comp from the image.
2) Us this script:<https://www.redefinery.com/ae/view.php?item=rd_Slicer> to slice the layer into mmmmm, let’s say 15-20 layers. The more slices, the smoother the spine, but you shouldn’t have to get too tiny with the slices. I think you’ll probably have to save a new version of the image FIRST that is rotated 90 degrees and work with THAT, split it into ROWS, NOT COLUMNS, because my script (the spine script) doesn’t work horizontally. I know … I should update it. Maybe I’ll do that today. The slicer script keeps a whole, original version of the layer, so DELETE THAT before doing the following.
3) IMPORTANT: you must save this comp with the sliced layers as photoshop layers (Composition>Save frame as>Photoshop layers) and re-import.
4) hmm. you may have to re-order the layers after importing (quick trick to re-order: select from bottom layer UP, copy, delete all layers paste).
5) run my spine script with overlap set to 2 (depending on resolution of image — experiment). You’ll need a little overlap for it to look right. Switch to Layer name and use the layer named “base vertebra” to curl the whole thing into a curve using the x rotation. you can move the ‘spine’ by moving the base vertebra, and/or do whatever parenting to move/turn, scale, etc, but don’t mess with the parenting of the other layers.
If there are lines showing up, you could try matte-spreading to help this (opposite matte choke).
hope this helps. i know this seems complicated, but it goes pretty quickly if you get all the settings right.-crg
-
Maybe this is a camera orienting issue? Perhaps, with the camera selected, you want to hit command-option-o, or contro-alt-o on windows, to turn auto-orienting OFF. Then the camera will act like a real-world camera, that is, without a brain.
Is that the problem? -
🙂
-
Brian, this is a very interesting thread, and I ask that you please post a follow-up with solutions or any additional info. I hope you have solved, or are on your way to solving your problem.
-crg
-
Hi Joe.
This is Chris Green, maker of the ill-fated pfhoe tutorial that you saw evidence of on the Adobe forum (and maybe here). I realized after my first attempt at that tutorial (and becoming extremely, distractedly busy) that, really, two tutorials would be good: one for beginners, and one for those who have experience with working with the finer points of 3D, whether that be AE “planar 3D”, or some full 3D package. As for your post, it would be very difficult to assess which category you fit into, though one could simply assume that you would need the more ‘beginner’ tutorial. However, let me also explain why something like this is very difficult to even comment on in a helpful way.
First of all, doing 3D camera tracking involves (perhaps obviously, but one never can tell) some very advanced techniques and knowledge.
Secondly, any particular shot/project may involve any combination of a large group of problems and issues. One shot may be simply a matter of running something like PFHoe almost on automatic and spitting out the .ma file for AE (or whatever), then getting into the various complexities of AE to make it work. But this is unlikely. So we have two phases which have a large set of problems to solve.
Thirdly, in order to determine which problems you need to solve, information is needed. Which is why, when you post something like you did, you are met with: “go look at a tutorial. good luck”. This is a completely fair response, considering that those who ‘populate’ this kind of forum have busy paying and non-paying jobs/projects. Without data, ‘we’ (I am irresponsibly lumping myself into the cow world here) are unable to determine both the set of problems needed for your particular project, and your particular skill-set and knowledge level.
Today, for a change, I find myself with a little time to type. But I really spread myself thin enough as it is, so this doesn’t happen very often. I like being helpful, though, so I will ask you to email me directly (use my email link on crgreen dot com) and I will address your issues directly if I can. When I have typed up a nice long-winded assessment of your stuff, I will post some of that info here, so that others may benefit. But let me ask you to either:
post a very small movie showing your shot;
or
describe, with some detail, the nature of your shot and what problems, if any, you had doing the first (PFHoe) phase of the work.Then, hopefully I can give you some useful info.
In closing, let me say that the basic idea is that the animated camera should work as is (but please see my script that is supposed to work with 3D camera-tracked .ma files), and that you are looking for the positions and rotations of the static nulls that represent the tracking points (a.k.a. tracking features, a.k.a. ticks, a.k.a. locators) that best represent the planes and points in the scene where you intend to add stuff (or remove stuff, if that is what you’re doing). So, in other words, never mess with the data that the tracker (PFHoe) give you; use the positions of specific trackers to give added 3D layers appropriate positions (copy/paste positions). Navigating hundreds of tracker layers can be daunting, but there are techniques for this that make it quite easy (for example, if you click on a tracker in the AE comp window and want to immediately scroll to that layer in the timeline/layer window, simple do a quick (on the Mac) “command-up arrow”|”command-down arrow” combination and you will instantly scroll to that layer). This is just one of many useful tips available on my non-existent tutorial :-).
Anyway, hope to hear from you, and if not, I hope you found what you were looking for!
Best of luck
Chris G