Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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The decimal values of colors can often be a little confusing at first, but it is more versatile (and correct) than thinking in terms of 0-255.
Just remember that 0 is black and 1 is white and everything should fall into place (;
When AE makes blending calculations it must use values in the range of 0 to 1 (for non-HDR) to give the results you’re accustomed to. For example, a solid layer with a color value of [0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1] under an identical solid layer set to ‘Multiply’ will result in a total color value of [0.25, 0.25, 0.25, 1].
Where as if you set the top layer to ‘Add’ it will result in a total color value of [1, 1, 1, 1].
If the color values ranged up to 255 these simple mathematical blending functions would behave very differently!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[atomicrabbit] “but how do I apply the expression to the image?”
You can add an expression to a property of the layer (i.e. position, rotation, orientation) by opt/alt clicking the stopwatch next to the property in the timeline (or selecting the property and pressing opt/alt-shift-=).
The important thing to know is what property to apply the expression to. I believe these expressions should be applied both to the position property and one (or more for 3D layers) of the rotation properties, usually people will tell you what property to apply them to in the post.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Already have my copy installed! =D
Thanks Ben.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[crea3552] “Maybe the best advice would be an explanation of how others are animating the camera in AE.”
I use a combination of techniques depending on what my goal is. Usually I turn Auto-Orient to Point of Interest off, then I will often use the Camera tools (C) for a quick and dirty move.
Then I will go into a 4-Up view and tweak my positional keyframes to taste, you can treat each keyframe as a mask vertex in this step and ignore the camera entirely. I like to use Default Spatial Interpolation to Linear and drag my own Bezier handles out of the keyframes. I also sometimes add keyframes at this stage with the pen tool (just like a mask). It automatically places them at the correct time in the motion path, then I can tweak the position and bezier handles of these keyframes.
Once I’m done with the spatial data I get into the temporal graph and smooth out my moves (if that’s the goal). Roving keyframes can often be helpful here.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Bark00] “It works fine except that the layers can cluster together.”
Isn’t that the nature of a Gaussian function?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_function
Overall, the information on this page goes a little over my head, but the graphs should be the telling parts.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I’ve had this same problem on a number of occasions. May I ask, are you creating your documents fresh in Photoshop CS3 and in AE CS3 or are you updating old 7.0/6.5/CS2/CS documents?
I think it has something to do with groups/folders in the layer structure and CS3 handling things differently. I haven’t run enough tests to be sure, in the meantime the workaround I’ve been using is counting up from the layer I want x number of times. It seems to be fairly consistent with the offset of the layer.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Colin Braley] “However, I don’t see why you would need to do this in most cases, because if you are using this value to drive a color control within another effect, it expects its values to range from 0-1, not from 0-255.”
Yes, generally you will be dealing with scenarios in which you want the user to enter values in the range 0-255 and end up with a value in the 0-1 range (which is how AE handles color internally).
Also, you can find the number of levels for each channel using:
Math.pow(2, colorDepth);
This is really only useful for 8bpc or 16bpc projects, in float the numbers would be huge and are represented in the 0-1 range (with numbers greater than 1 being superwhite) in effects such as levels anyway.
May I ask what you are trying to accomplish with your expression?
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[NellyM] “So we go to temporal editor and we want to edit that smooth curve – so we click on the keyframes and try to create bezier handles to have more precise control – but all you get a those stupid horizontal handles – not full bezier control :s”
Those handles change the influence of the keyframe, this is a scalar value, not a vector, in Adobe’s implementation so there is no direction available. If you want to accentuate the easy ease motion of the keyframes you would want to increase the influence of both keyframes (drag the handles out).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[artisanal television] “I get a 35-50 second delay every time I try to RAM preview. And I’m not talking about the first time you try it, when it has to set up the background processes. I’m saying every time I RAM preview, even after the background processes are in place.”
Are you sure that the background processes stay open after the RAM preview has completed? I’ve experienced the same delay when doing a render, but I haven’t played around with it enough to know for sure what’s going on with the processes. I haven’t done any RAM Previews with ‘Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously’ enabled.
I can tell you that if you plan on using all of your Cores to render that you should also plan on not doing anything else on your computer… I experienced massive slowdowns in other applications using all 4 Cores, this may be resolved by lowering the RAM Cache allowing for more RAM for the OS/other apps but I haven’t tried that yet either.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
The other plug in that you’d love for this sort of effect is Knoll Light Factory. If you’re on an Intel Mac I don’t believe there’s a Universal Binary version yet, but otherwise it’s a good buy.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA