Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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I would recommend getting a clean key on the button and then using this as an Alpha Inverted Track Matte for your source footage. There are other ways to accomplish this as well. I imagine the Channel > Invert applied to the Alpha Channel would work for example.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[dirkdiggler83] “I have 5 bedrooms in which i would like to include this concept. + I have a candy store where I would probably have to fit the same visual concept in to make the film a whole.”
I’d like to help give some advice, but I’m not sure I understand the concept entirely.
Are you saying that you already have footage of 5 bedrooms and a candy store in which you’d like to place your actors? What else do you want to do with those spaces?
It’s hard to know what kind of creative advice to give without knowing more about the characters and the goal of the scenes you have left to shoot. Where will these shots fit into the finished project?
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Dave LaRonde] “Or you can simply turn the text layer back into a 2D layer and use the Drop Shadow effect.”
You can also use Drop Shadow on a 3D layer if you’re so inclined.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[LGABoarder] “Anyway anyone can think of to correct that?”
Pre-comping the Particular layer is the only way I know of to prevent it from reacting to the camera in the final comp. This is not ideal, however. The individual particles will no longer react to your comp’s camera, which could be obvious depending on the particle system.
I suggest that you stick to using a 2D layer for Particular. I agree that it’s unfortunate that you are generally only able to use one layer as an obscuration layer but it’s better than nothing, and you will get better results from Particular on a 2D layer.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
As far as I can tell the problem is two fold.
1) The colors of the composited 3D elements do not look correct. It sounds like you’ve already found your way around this.
2) The edges should be slightly blurred. I would recommend trying a Matte > Simple Choker on the layer and choking it down just a bit (1 or 2), then applying Blur & Sharpen > Channel Blur and blur the Alpha Channel just a bit (1 or 2). There are other methods for getting the edges to fit better, but this is the first one that jumps to mind.
All that said, I think problem number 1 is much more important to resolve effectively than problem number 2 for the best results.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Unit_9] “Thanks John! 🙂 Figuring out how they work in AE will be a little more complicated, but I’ll give it a go.”
If you’re at all familiar with shape layers in Photoshop, or Illustrator, then you should already feel at home with AE masks. You can draw your own with the Pen Tool (g), or use simple preset shapes (q) and change them by dragging the vertices and bezier handles around.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You can also copy and paste the effects. Make sure you’re aware of your playhead however, as it will automatically place the first keyframe at your current playhead location.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[spritelyjim] “I want the object to match the change in angle (ie stay on that imaginary line), while remaining a fixed distance from the anchor point.”
By anchor point are you referring to the camera’s point of interest or its location?
It sounds like parenting the layer to the camera should solve your problem.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You could go about this using expressions, that would probably be the high road. Ask on the expressions board for more information.
Personally, I would just pre-compose all of the logos in a composition, make them all 3D layers and arrange them around the center point of the composition. Set them to Auto-Orient to camera and put a camera at the center of the comp. You can then drag this pre-comp into another composition and turn the 3D switch and Collapse Transformations layer switches on. As long as the layers are distributed around the center point of the pre-comp where the camera they are orienting to is located, you will end up with a perfectly oriented circle (or other arrangement) of logos.
The pre-composing and Auto-Orient to camera is just a clever way of getting the layers to all face a particular point. You could also do this with the lookAt() function. There are other expressions that could be used to define a circle/oval arrangement for the layers, but I’ll leave that for the expressions forum =)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[bogiesan] “Also, if you’re setting both camera rotations AND point of interest keyframes, your camera will point all over the place. Use one or the other or parent the camera to a null.”
I usually turn Auto-Orient off and rotate my camera by hand. You can do this by right clicking the camera layer and selecting Transform > Auto-Orient… and setting it to ‘Off.’ It’s an option =)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA