Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
-
[Hazestudios] “I have created a composition with an animation incorporating a light and camera and dropped that into another comp which contains the lower third I wish to use.
However my camera and lighting have disappeared!”
If you have ‘Collapse Transformations’ turned on for your pre-comp then any cameras or lights in that pre-comp will not apply when that pre-comp is viewed in another composition.
If you don’t need your pre-comp to maintain its 3D-ness in your final comp then don’t enable ‘Collapse Transformations’ (it will, of course, still ‘look’ 3D because it is made of 3D elements, but it will be displayed on a 2D plane).
If you still want to use ‘Collapse Transformations’ then you need to move your lights and your camera into the final composition and they will properly affect your pre-comped 3D elements (assuming that they are set to accept lights in the pre-comp).
The other thing to check is that you don’t have ‘Draft 3D’ enabled in the composition (I think it’s 2 buttons left of the ‘Motion Blur’ button above the timeline).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[craigcow7] “I long to be able to change the camera angle and work from the top with a pen tool and create my vertices across the Z axis. I think the short answer is: I can’t. Period.”
If you’re actually talking about motion paths then this is easy to do. Just change your view to top (or use a 4 up view) and use the pen tool to alter the vertices. Motion path vertices have bezier handles just like Mask vertices (only they can extend in three dimensions).
This is the workflow you’d use for anything that moves, hence my request for specifics about why it was Mask vertices in particular that you were concerned about being able to place in 3D…
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[duffbeer911] “this is a RAM preview…that’s how AE previews things … you can only preview as much as your RAM can hold.. get more RAM, or preview shorter sections….or render out the whole thing.”
From his description of the green bar disappearing at one end as it renders new frames it sounds like he wasn’t doing a RAM Preview but just pressing spacebar.
For all those new AE users out there: HANDS OFF THAT SPACEBAR!
You want to RAM preview. You do this by pressing the numpad’s 0 key. AE will then begin rendering the composition frame by frame and storing these rendered frames in your RAM. When your RAM is full AE cannot render any more frames and it will begin playing back what it has rendered.
You can extend the amount of a composition that can be rendered by reducing the RAM Preview resolution or setting it to skip frames (this is done in the RAM Preview/Time window pane).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[craigcow7] “I know of course you can rotate or moving an entire mask in the z-axis–but is there a way to *directly* position an individual vertex in z space?”
You can’t actually rotate masks in 3D space. You can rotate the layer that the mask is applied to though, a subtle distinction but worth making. The only thing similar to a mask that can exist in 3D space is a motion path.
Perhaps you could be more specific as to what you are trying to accomplish and we might be able to offer more helpful help =)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Algae998] “The snapshot picture follows the picture frame but does not rotate nor transform its dimentions to fit the picture frame.”
I believe the Corner Pin tracker does not apply rotation or scale keyframes to the target layer, instead it handles all of this through a Corner Pin effect that is applied to the target layer.
Your work arounds are either:
A) Use a different ‘simpler’ (i.e. better) kind of tracker.
B) Apply the tracker information directly to the freeze framed layer (I’d go with option A if I were you) =)Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[SSGGMM] “Turns out, the ugly aliasing I was seeing on my 1.2 PAR renders are more about display than anything else. The aliasing doesn’t show up on TV. TV makes them square. Looks fine.”
If you’re coming from Film then you should understand the concept of an anamorphic lens. This is similar to pixel aspect ratio. The lens condenses the captured footage horizontally so that it will fit on the 4:3 film strip. As you look at the footage on the film strip it will look strange, but when it is projected back out of a projector the reverse effect is applied: the footage is stretched horizontally back to its ‘proper’ aspect ratio by the projector’s lens.
The TV doesn’t make the pixels square. The pixels on the TV are not square, they’re stretched (in the case of widescreen) out horizontally. This needs to be taken into consideration when working with footage that will be displayed on the TV, the footage must be ‘squashed’ so that it looks correct when it’s ‘stretched.’
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[stevie003497] “Hello guys,
I have animations, with an object spinning on a black screen, and these were done in other programs that could NOT export as 32-bit alpha ( only 24-bit ).”
What program were you using? What file type are you exporting to? Exporting with alpha could save you here.
“So I bring them into AE and resave them as RGB+ALPHA STRAIGHT.
Upon bringing in the re-saved clip into a new project, I can’t see the clip ( overlayed over other layers ). Only if I use the BLEND function, does it finally become visible, but faded, as the term ” blend ” suggests. I need these clips to be strongly visible WITHOUT the Blend ( as all true 32-bit alpha’s should be ).”This is strange, if you re-save an animation that did not have an alpha channel as an animation with an alpha channel through AE it should give you a ‘full on’ Alpha (fully opaque). You can check the alpha of your composition by pressing opt-4 (alt-4 on PC). If your ‘animation’ (is it an image sequence?) is the only layer in the composition then opt-4 will show you the animation’s Alpha Channel. Unfortunately, there’s really no easy way to create an alpha after the fact.
“Is there some ” trickery ” to getting around this ??? Seems to me, once an original file did NOT have Alpha, then I always have this trouble.
Many thanks.”There are plug-ins that will remove a matte color from the RGB Channels and create an alpha based on that color. Unmult is one such plug-in and happens to be free, however it is limited to a Black matte. In addition, since it removes the Black from the RGB channels as part of the process you will likely lose some of the darker/’richer’ colors or shadows in your animation, these colors will become semi-transparent (as they were semi-black).
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/unmult.html
Another option is to try to key out your footage.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[muiisal] “BUT layer B is further back in z space than layer A.”
If layer B is farther back in Z space then layer A should appear on top of it. This is normal. However, since it sounds like you’re upset about something I assume you got your layer A’s and B’s crossed in this statement? =)
Are you using any track mattes in your project? Any adjustment layers? Viewing from the ‘Active Camera’?
If you include a screen grab of AE, focusing on the timeline with the shy switch off and the transform properties twirled down for these two layers then we should be able to get to the bottom of this!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Is there any particular reason you’re rendering out of AE in a DV codec?
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I don’t have CS3 yet, it’s en route, so I can’t tell you exactly how to do it. It’s an option in one of the Preferences. I’m sure that if you check the AE help you can find what you’re looking for. Search for ‘multiple processors’ or ‘multiple cores.’
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA