Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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There’s a lot to be said about CS3’s new color management workflow as well. Including the SDTV and HDTV color profiles that ship with AE CS3.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[yikesmikes] “One expression works fine for everthing… with a little Parenting applied… if the text moves.”
The one expression you provided is assuming that the composition has nothing but the text layers in it (or that they are at the top of the stack). Its just an old programming habit of mine not to make assumptions, which is the reason I suggested parenting the text as well. If assumptions are made then you should be sure to document them so any others accessing the code know what’s what.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[yikesmikes] “position+[0,0,(index-1)*1]”
Ahhh, if only it were so simple.
You need to have one of the text layers be the parent to the others so that they reside 1 pixel ‘farther back’ relative to the parent (instead of to world coordinates), otherwise when you rotate one layer, the others will not rotate with it. Then you want this expression applied to the layer under the parent layer:
fromWorld(thisComp.layer(index-1).position) + [0,0,1];
And this one on every layer under that:
thisComp.layer(index-1.position) + [0,0,1];
There are other expressions/methods that will work, but I guarantee you’ll want to parent the layers to one controller layer however you go about it.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[craigcow7] “Darby you are doing well selling a hurricane but I am more challenged when the fractal density is much more dispersed.”
If you look at images of the earth from space you’ll find that clouds obscure much of the earth and that, while there are some wispier clouds, there isn’t really much low density cloud cover visible.
https://akvis.com/img/examples/chameleon/earth-in-sky/image-earth.jpg
Looking at reference material I would recommend creating a series of cloud systems (pre-comps) that circle the globe slowly at slightly different rates. You could definitely use a subtle evolving distortion mesh (as has been suggested previously) to create the impression of currents.
I think it’s a fairly large undertaking, but that you can do a very good job of it if you put the time in.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
So it doesn’t look nearly as nice uploaded to Google Video, but you should be able to get an idea for the motion and what you try for yourself:
https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2337851367281373845
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[craigcow7] “Andrew animates the position of his atmosphere which is cool but I want it swirling and swooshing.”
Swooshing can be accomplished fairly easily and decently with Turbulent Displace or a Displacement Map. Swirling, as in a hurricane, would be more complicated. You can get a pretty good spiraling effect with Time Displace and a radial gradient. Then in order to make the interior of the hurricane move faster than the exterior you’d probably need to use Timewarp with a track matte (maybe the same radial gradient that you use for the time displacement).
I’ll work on this and see if I can get you a sample later today.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I believe there is a function in the Automate menu that will do this for you. Unfortunately I don’t recall what the name of it is right now =) I think it’s “Fit Image” or something similar. You can create an action that uses this feature then run a Batch using that action, I’d recommend not saving over your source files until you’re sure that you’re getting the desired results!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I should mention that I’m not sure how other NLEs handle this sort of thing.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Steve Roberts] “Apply levels (16-235) and hue/sat to it.”
Just to complicate things, I believe if you import footage in an RGB codec into a Final Cut Pro Y’CbCr sequence that Final Cut automatically scales the 0-255 range into the “16-235” range that Y’CbCr loves so much. So if you’re using Final Cut Pro to Print to Tape then you might not want to adjust your composition to the 16-235 range in AE as this could result in redundancy.
I’m not a broadcast engineer by any means, so if anyone has more information on this I’d love to learn =)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Steve Roberts] “If you want something numeric, you can make the in/out point columns visible in the timeline (R-click on the column header), select the layers, then type .. but that would line ’em all up at that in-point.”
I totally forgot about those columns! Can you select multiple layers and slide the values with the mouse? With other properties this will adjust them all relatively (+50 to the x value of each position) instead of absolutely (set the x value of each position to 50)… It would be a shame if Adobe didn’t provide this functionality there =/
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA