Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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[mikeyforVFX] “im talking about the camera parallel to the wall and panning through it.”
I think we’re confused about our terms here. Is the camera’s lens pointing parallel to the wall? If so, and in fact in all cases, you can’t ‘pan’ through a wall. Panning is turning the camera left to right just like turning your head left to right, it swivels on the same point in space. Do you want the camera to track to the right or left through the wall?
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[jbruso] “I still don’t understand how I can simply apply the etherial effect to an object (no matter what it is, AI, PS, vector, bitmap, etc.) versus the whole layer.”
The simple answer is that you need your ‘whole layer’ to be just the object you want to apply the effect to.
Often times a ‘whole layer’ in one of my projects will be a single falling leaf, for example, or a particle system.
So in your example you want the video as one layer, on top of that you want the blue box as one layer (which you apply your effect to), and on top of that you want your text layer.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[moldyboot] “just command-click on mac (alt-click maybe on pc)”
Command on a Mac is equivalent to Control on a PC in all key commands inside Adobe products. And Option = Alt.
=)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[tito jackson] “I know trapcode’s shine does this sort of effect but only in one color.”
Where did you get that impression? You can have up to a 5 color gradient with Shine or base the Shine on a layer’s RGB channels.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[artisanal television] “I might suggest tracking the rotation and position of the glasses, and applying that data to a cutout solid, THEN applying the cutout as a track matte to your digital still layer.”
I think (hope) there’s an even easier way. If the sunglasses were very reflective then they are probably much lighter than their surroundings. You might be able to make a rough hold out mask around the glasses, apply a black & white Tint filter and then use Levels to create a matte for the glasses!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[radarrhodes] “These are in the PSD-File as alpha-channels, but i don
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[jbruso] “In AE, I did file/export/QuickTime Movie … but then, in the settings for the compression, I didn’t see anything that let me choose straight alpha. I chose cinepak for the compression, millions of colors. Am I just doing this all wrong?”
Short answer: yes. You need to add your item to the render queue (cmd-shift-/ on a Mac or ctrl-shift-/ on a PC) and change your output module there (you can click on the text that says ‘Lossless’ to do this).
You should definitely read the help file on the render queue (search for ‘render queue’).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You’ll want to create a matte from your source video in which all of the areas you want to effect are white, and the areas you don’t are black. There are many ways to accomplish this.
Then you have a wide variety of options for adding color/limiting color in the matted areas. You could, for example, place your matte above a Red solid set to ‘Color’ blending mode and set to use the matte as a Luma Track Matte.
That’s just one possible approach to get you thinking, there are quite literally hundreds more you could take.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I’m not sure if this applies to what you’re asking directly, but the way to translate a point on a 3D layer from the world coordinate system to the composition coordinate system is:
l = thisComp.layer(“My 3D Layer”);
l.toComp(l.anchorPoint);
This would translate the anchor point of the 3D layer to 2D composition coordinates.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[cyprusx] “i used a dvd recorder to rip footage from a tape”
If you have footage on a tape you should probably try to digitize that using a deck. What kind of tape is it? If you still have access to the camera used to record the tape, and you’re desperate, then you should be able to use the camera as a deck.
[cyprusx] “are there divx settings that are not compatible with after effects.”
I don’t recommend using any variation of DivX, it uses MPEG-4 compression at best, and a load of unnecessary (for your purposes) metadata at worst. I recommend the QuickTime Photo JPEG codec for fast renders in AE and smaller file sizes than uncompressed or lossless video.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA