[Chris Zwar]

I used to read Cinefex religiously, because I loved knowing how they did all the effects like this before you could do everything on a desktop computer. If you can find a library somewhere with an archive of Cinefex then you should be able to find articles from when the film came out with details on how they did it.
From memory, all background plates in Predator were shot twice, with the second plate about 30% wider. The matte of the Predator character was used to determine whether you saw the original background or the wide version. I don’t think it was much more than that.
In AE, Displacement Maps are possibly a better and “too slick” method of getting the same effect. You could try just scaling up your background plate, or using the Optics Compensation Plugin to generate a warped BG plate, then just use your character’s matte for that.

But go and look for Predator in old copies of Cinefex, it will be worth the effort,

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

Hi,

This really is a complicated issue so it’s not easy to sum up quickly.

Firstly, I re-read your first post and saw that you supply files to be software encoded via Cinemacraft. This is something I do a lot too. In the “advanced” tab of Cinemacraft you can specify whether your source file is 0-255 or 16-235. If you make sure this is set correctly you probably don’t have to worry about anything else. I think it defaults to 16-235, so I always make sure the guys encoding my stuff set it to 0-255.

However, to clarify my previous post, I was referring to both PAL and NTSC and the point I was making is that at some point along the line the animations you are producing are output as video, and the hardware which does that will determine how your levels are output. My point is that everyone quotes the figures of 16-235 as “broadcast safe” but that’s not always necessary, depedning on what video output device is being used. If you are using a NLE like Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro to lay-off animations to tape then different video cards will output the same animation file differently. If you are supplying animation files to be software converted to MPEG2 (as you mention above) then your software needs to be told if you’re using 0-255 or 16-235.

So it isn’t as simple as just saying PAL and NTSC are both 16-235. Anyone who tells you that is grossly simplifying a horrifically complicated issue.

The final – and potentially more confusing – issue is that video treats the luminance seperately from the chrominance. Firstly, I’ll assume you’re using levels of 16-235. Your luminance levels may be legal (ie. 16-235) but the chrominance may be too high. An RGB value of 235,16,16 will be too red, even though it’s less than 235. Unless you’re some type of savant mathematician, you can’t precisely tell from an RGB value how “saturated” the colour is. You need a scope or some other plug-in to do this for you. In extreme cases- like the red example I just gave – it’s pretty obvious, but when you’re close to the limits (I think NTSC is more picky about yellows than PAL) you’ll need a scope to tell you, because you simply cannot look at an RGB value and know how that equates to saturation.

As I suggested before, try looking at articles (and books) written by Chris & Trish Meyer. They deal with it in great detail and hopefully will clarify the issue for you.

-Chris

PS. I haven’t checked, but AE comes with the Synthetic Aperture colour correction plug-in. The docs for this may cover the issue in the detail you require.

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

To add complexity to a very difficult topic, it really depends on your output hardware.

If you have a TIFF file with whites as 255 and blacks as 0, it will be output “legally” by a Cinewave card but “illegally” by a Media 100 card. While it’s common to find people mentioning the 16-235 range as being broadcast safe, it seems that many (most?) video cards these days treat 0 as black and 255 as white – which certainly makes life in AE much easier, although it may be bending the rules a little.

In the Meyer’s second book (I think it was the second) there is a table which lists different video hardware, and what outputs the 16-235 range and what uses the 0-255 range.

In fact the Meyer’s books probably discuss this issue in greater depth so if you don’t have them perhaps jump over to Amazon and buy yourself an early Christmas present 🙂

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

Try this:

Create a Pre-composition with animating fractal noise. Perhaps try using the “dynamic twist” setting and make it so it animates fairly quickly.

In your main composition, type out your text and import the fractal-noise pre-composition. Apply the displacement map, CC vector blur, and compound blur effects to your text. Turn off the fractal noise precomp so you can’t see it.

All 3 effects need a source layer (a “displacement map”, a “vector map” and a “blur layer” respectively)- specify your fractal noise precomp as the source layer.

With the CC vector blur plug-in, set the amount to about 30, the number of revolutions to 2 or 3, and the type to “direction fading”. Change the softness to about 5 and the property to luminance. If you want, animate the angle offset slowly.

With the compount blur, set the “invert control”.

You should get something fairly wispy and cloudy, which you can then composite into footage of real clouds (perhaps with a gradient wipe, again using your fractal noise precomp as the gradient).

With all 3 effects you can animate their amount parameters over time, starting with high settings to make the text cloudy and animating it to 0 to reveal your text.

Tweak from there. Hope this gets you started,

-Chris

[Chris Zwar]

Great tutorial Aharon, I really enjoyed it… I’ve never used CC Force Motion Blur before and hadn’t paid any attention to it so thanks for opening my eyes to a very powerful effect!

-Chris

[Chris Zwar]

Hi,

Just thought I’d add that with Mylenium’s solution (separate your footage into 3 comps: Red, Green & Blue, then re-combine them) you can use a range of effects on your individual colour comps to get interesting results, including offset and optics compensation.

In fact you can use this technique with the optics compensation plug-in to correct chromatic aberation from cheap lenses, as well as to introduce it.

-Chris

[Chris Zwar]

If you don’t get a response here, try going to the Media-Motion.tv site and sign up for the IMUG list. It used to be the Media 100 users group (hence the M.U.G.) and still has heaps of Media 100 and former Media 100 editors on it. I’m sure you’ll have some luck there.

Be aware- if you haven’t signed up for an email based list before you may be a bit overwhelmed by the traffic. In Your email app, set up a folder and an email rule to sort them out for you, and you can always un-subscribe once you’ve got your mounts.

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

On the CD which came with the first of the Meyer’s books was a tutorial by Richard Lainhart on how to achieve the effect with Particle Playground (which is not a 3rd party plug-in, so it doesn’t cost you anything).

While it’s a long process, it got me interested in Particle Playground and solely because of that tutorial I began to see the power of PP and use it to its full potential. So I recommend tracking down Richard’s tutorial (do yourself a favour and buy the book) and not just achieving the result you want, but also learning about a great plug-in too.

But I also have the Digital Anarchy plug-in that Steve mentioned and it’s great and much quicker.

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

An easy way to give something a texture is simply to use a photo. You can try doing a Google-search for free textures and downloading different images – mayang’s site is one that comes to mind. Then just use your text as a matte for your texture image.

Also, the “texturise” effect is very useful too, have a look at it and try different source layers. It can help to stop your text from look too flat, and can be used with the “bevel alpha” effect to make your text look like it has thickness.

Hope this gets you started on the right track,

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

Hi,

The problem with “how do I do this effect” questions is that it’s difficult to know your expectations… are you looking to spend weeks aiming for photo-realism, or do you want a 5-minute fix which is vaguely right? There are many ways to get a lava-lamp look with various degress of complexity involved.

I would start by experimenting with fractal noise and go from there, maybe playing with several layers that are different colours and composited together with transfer modes. You could get more complicated and use your fractal noise as shapes for projected 3D lights…

If you need something more realistic, then perhaps playing around with foam may help- you can design a shape for your lamp and have the blobs bounce around inside it and interact with each other.

Click on the After Effects icon at the top of the page and look at all the tutorials availble… I’m sure you can pick and choose from the myriad of techniques demonstrated to find those which will help you come up with a lava lamp look.

-Chris