Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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Well you’ll want to use an additive blending mode. Add works very well in linear gamma but can look a little too bright in gamma encoded (the default) workspace, Screen also works well.
Then make sure to look at what the flash will (momentarily) brighten in the scene and mask a white/yellow/orange solid there with an additive blending mode.
Usually a muzzle flash is only a frame or two.
The other thing that will really sell it is sound.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Welcome to the wonderful world of motion tracking! =)
You might be able to get away with a corner pin track using AE Pro’s standard Motion Tracker, but if your camera move involves any moves more complicated than a simple push or dolly then you might need to use a 3D tracker such as Syntheyes (there are several others as well).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You should consider doing your text in Illustrator or directly in After Effects, you can then Continuously Rasterize the text layer and it will use the vector data and shouldn’t become blurry when zoomed in.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Another option you can use is placing a 2D layer (a null works well) in between the 3D layers. This will effectively put the 3D layers in separate (but simultaneously visible!) universes =)
This can have strange results if you’re using lights.
In the future you should just line up your layers by the numbers in 3D space, the floor should be at the bottom of the wall.
A good way to line 3D layers up is by changing their anchor points to something like [0,0,0], then you know that the lower edge is thisLayer.height units away on the Y-axis in layer space.
So, for example create 3 800×600 solids, make their anchor points [0,0,0]. Parent two of these solids to the other solid. Notice that the positions of these children solids will be [0,0,0], if you change the position of one of them to [800,0,0] it will move to the very right edge of the parent solid. Change the other’s position to [0,600,0] and it will move to the bottom edge of the parent solid.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Steve Roberts] “When I said “as well”, didn’t I say that? :)”
Yes, and I apologize if I came off a little biased towards theoretical writings, but I was trying to counter balance what I felt was an unfair bias toward primary sources… what with ‘regurgitation’ involved and everything =O
It’s easy to weight the term ‘as well’ when there’s mention of vomiting in the same paragraph =)
Bottom line is I agree, you need primary and secondary sources!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Steve Roberts] “Doing research for literature isn’t enough. You need to go to the source material as well. Why regurgitate somebody else’s opinion? :)”
Well, I hate to say it, but regurgitating source material doesn’t help either. You need both, and I think it helps immensely to know what theories there are out there not so that you can repeat them, but present them critically and expand on them.
I took Digital New Media courses less than three years ago during college, and I can promise you that it’s important to understand the theories/explanations/metaphors that are out there and how they apply to your topic.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You might want to look at theoretical writings on New Media, which often discuss the evolution of media (I recall one such paper on Z-space, but I don’t have specifics). I would also recommend looking at typography books. There are some interesting historical anectdotes about typography as it relates to computers (remember the days when there was no such thing as a ‘different’ font?)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You can’t upload one directly to the forum, you have to upload it to an image service like Flickr or Imageshack and then link or embed it here at the COW.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I thought I should also mention that your use of the very specifically camera related terms ‘pan’ and ‘zoom’ confused me at first, and probably confused a few other people who thought the question was going to be about Cameras in AE.
Panning left to right definitely isn’t the same thing as moving a layer right to left. Nor is scaling a layer the same thing as zooming a camera (although it can have an identical effect in certain circumstances). It helps to keep terms as accurate and specific as possible since we can’t actually see what you’re talking about!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
If these are all 2D layers then you just need to parent the waterfall and the tree to the landscape layer. It’s advisable to remove any keyframes you had set on the layers before you parent them, as these keyframes will become relative to the Landscape layer space as opposed to the composition space.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA