[Darby Edelen]

[MikeyforVFX] “try messing around with the levels effect as well with brightness/contrast and color balance. Make sure to click “preserve luminosity” in color balance.”

I recommend using Levels on a channel by channel basis, comparing the channels of the footage you want to ‘fix’ to the channels of the footage you want them to look like.

I do not recommend Brightness/Contrast (which can very easily destroy details in highlights and shadows) or Color Balance (which is entirely hit and miss and miss again). I also recommend Curves to add detail/contrast in areas where you’d like it. And Hue/Saturation can work as well, but I don’t recommend using global changes unless you want a stylized look, use sparingly =)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Darby Edelen] “Well, for one the particles stay in the same position after a cut, which is a little odd.”

I thought I’d expand on this. It would be simple with Particular to cut between two separate Camera layers when the cut occurs in the video. This way you would be using the exact same particle system, only it would be viewed from a more spatially correct perspective (low-angle looking up?) and you could ‘cut on action’ so that there is a slight delay after the particles leave the first shot’s frame at the top, and before they enter the 2nd shot’s frame at the bottom. I think this would build the best spatially cohesive effect.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

No San Francisco or San Jose? For shame…

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Well, for one the particles stay in the same position after a cut, which is a little odd. Other than that I would recommend changing their blending mode to Add (you may have already done this) and playing with their individual opacities/random opacity (some sparkle at the end of their life might be nice)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[floodjlc] “I am trying to simply make my text track out left and right.”

I don’t have AE near me right now, but I’m pretty sure all you need to do is Center align your text in the Paragraph tab.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

This should be easier than you think if the car is rotating at a constant speed (as objects on turntables usually do). I would recommend creating a 3D Null object and animating it’s Y rotation to match the car’s as closely as possible. Then I would create more Nulls in 3D space at the locations you want the line to ‘attach’ the car and yet more 3D Nulls where you want the line to meet the bracket =) Parent all of these Nulls to your original Null

Then I would use the following expression to create a beam from the ‘startNull’ to the ‘endNull’ for each line:

For the origin of the beam:

s = thisComp.layer('startNull').toComp(thisComp.layer('startNull').anchorPoint);


For the end of the beam:

e = thisComp.layer('endNull').toComp(thisComp.layer('endNull').anchorPoint);


Then I would import bracket graphics (with or without text) from Illustrator and parent each those to their respective Nulls and use Dan Ebberts's expression for Auto-Orienting to Y only on these layers:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-orient-y-only.html

Getting your original Null to rotate with the car at the correct speed and making sure that the beams and the brackets meet are going to be your biggest challenges with this technique, but the results should be pretty awesome.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

I can only recommend that you Edit > Purge > Purge All before you render, and maybe that you try rendering to an image sequence. Are you using any ‘exotic’ or time-based effects in the composition?

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[pixelmeister] “In my opinion this can definitely be done without a 3D app.”

I think it can be, but it’s a question of how you want the resulting image to look.

Illustrator will give you a very Graphic Art look while a 3D program can give you a much more realistic look that mimics the reflective nature of the plastic bag. So the technique will depend entirely on the goal! I agree that vector art is the best way to go, but I have a suspicion that 3D vectors would be preferable (;

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Also, a GIF is very limited in terms of transparency, I’m not even sure if AE supports GIF transparency (because I don’t use GIFs, kind of a catch 22), but I can tell you that any transparency in a GIF file is defined by a color in the RGB channels and is thus either on or off, 0 or 1.

Have you considered using a different format? TIF or TGA maybe?

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Eric Goldstein] “I’m baffled: I’ve tracked an animated screen into a cell phone (shot in DVCPRO HD 1080 i60). The tracking and positioning looks good in RAM preview, but when its rendered, it’s out of position and jumps all over.”

I’m baffled as well… Your RAM preview should show you exactly what your composition (color profiles aside) will look like when rendered using the Lossless profile out of AE.

Are you rendering to something other than Lossless? Have you tried Edit > Purge > Purge All recently? Is your source DVCPRO HD footage deinterlaced?

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA