[Darby Edelen]

I’m almost positive I’ve used stencil and sillhouette on 3D layers before… Are the 3D layers you’re applying these blending modes to closer to the camera than the other layers in your composition?

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Is the light source coming from within AE or is it in source footage? If it’s within AE then you don’t need a Null as AE already has all the position data for the light. Let me know which case it is and I can further clarify.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Sheckmancometh] “Drag poolbottom.psd into comp. apply Caustics effect. from caustics effects menu, select “water”, then “water surface.” Select the name of the first layer that I applied wave world to.”

You have to pre-compose the layer that you applied Wave World to (move all attribues to the new pre-comp) or it won’t have an effect on the layer you’re applying Caustics to. As long as the solid is in the same comp as the Caustics layer, the Caustics effect will ‘see’ the solid as just a solid with no effects applied.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

When I answered your previous question I was not told that it was Particular you were dealing with. Particular works differently with 3D coordinates than AE normally does. You can still use the Null and parent and rotate if you use a Light as the emitter and parent it to the Null.

Basically, Particular doesn’t use a motion path the same way that Lights, Cameras and Layers do, it uses a 2D array for X & Y positions and a separate Z value while AE generally uses a 3D array for X, Y and Z positions.

I wouldn’t recommend using an expression in this case because it can get confusing if you start moving the keyframes around.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Generally, the limits for Luma are around 120 IRE and Chroma around 110 IRE… as far as I understand it =) But different people may tell you different things. You can limit your composition to these values by putting an Adjustment Layer at the top of the stack and applying Color Correction > Broadcast Safe. There are separate options for Luminance and Saturation.

I’m not a Broadcast Engineer, so I don’t have all the details or technical info, but that should serve as a starting point. You should look in to broadcast standards somewhere, you can start at http://www.wikipedia.org

If you want you can also apply a Blur > Reduce Interlace Flicker with a setting of around 0.5 or lower. This just blurs your footage vertically a bit to… well… reduce interlace flicker, you could accomplish the same thing with a number of other effects (Directional Blur, Box Blur Vertical, etc.)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

I think it will be a little difficult to pull this off properly. Tracking the Lens Flare to the light source is probably the easiest part, I would recommend using a Null object and applying an expression to the Lens Flare’s source that links it to the Null’s position:


thisComp.layer("Null").position


Then if you can get a good motion track you can apply that to the Null, if not you’ll have to keyframe the Null’s position to match the source yourself. You won’t have to do this frame by frame, I suggest a keyframe every second to start, then go back and see where the flare moves off the source and make a new keyframe there, rinse, repeat.

As for hiding the flare when the light has disappeared you will probably need to adjust the Opacity of the layer that the Lens Flare is on manually.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[mclarkson] “AE

[Darby Edelen]

I can’t be sure, but is there any possibility that this footage wasn’t shot interlaced?

Here’s the skinny:

When you set the first field in the Interpret Footage dialog you are giving AE the info it needs to de-interlace the footage (other options include Preserve Edges, which can result in better de-interlacing in some cases, and remove pulldown, which is a topic unto itself).

When you set field render order in the Render Settings dialog you are telling AE to render each frame out as two fields, meaning that if you had a 29.97 frames per second composition you will end up wih 59.94 fields per second.

If you’re at all worried about whether or not your footage should be interlaced or progressive on output, you should probably err to progressive.

If you’re not sure what your source footage should be interpreted as (AE usually does a fairly good job of this on its own) you can try opening the footage in QT Player and look at the video info.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Sometimes enabling ‘Preserve Edges’ in the Interpret Footage dialog can help the look of the footage in AE as well.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[mclarkson] “In AE, I have to grab the endpoint of the first bitmap and pull it out, or drag the whole thing to the right in the timeline and extend the start point. Then I have to slide all of the second bitmap to the right one second, making sure I keep they