Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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So you want to matte the woman out from her background and place her on top of a circular object? Or do you want the full video of the woman (including background) to appear in a circular object? I’m not clear on the assets you have and your desired result =/
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Aaron Aphasia] “The only problem with apply the stroke path effect is that you can’t use a drop shadow on it thus the need for the Illustrator Path. Yeah, click on the Rasterize button and you should be fine. A”
Sure you can! You just need to apply the Stroke to a different layer and use ‘on transparent’ or ‘reveal original image’ so that the effect defines the alpha, then apply the Drop Shadow effect. Same as the Write-On effect, which will not allow you to use a drop shadow either if you’re using the ‘on original image’ paint style.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I cringe when I hear people pasting a path into position keyframes for Write-On… It’s the virtual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Why don’t you apply the path as a mask on the layer you’re trying to reveal and use the Generate>Stroke effect instead? Stroke strokes along a mask to reveal instead of using position keyframes, eliminate the middleman!
In your case you probably don’t even need to use ‘Reveal Source’ if you’re animating a route, a colored line should probably work fine.
Copy the route path directly out of Illustrator, paste it as a mask onto your map AI layer, make sure that it lines up properly (it should, but if it doesn’t select the mask shape and hit cmd-t/ctrl-t to free transform the mask) and then apply your Stroke effect. If the mask is on the same layer it should scale and move with your map, otherwise if you have it on another layer you should try parenting that layer to the map.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I never use OpenGL in AE… Despite the fact that AE says all of the OpenGL features are ‘supported’ on my graphics card (OpenGL 2.0 I guess), the OpenGL previews never look like they should. I just turn OpenGL off and forget about it, I like to see what I’m actually going to see when I render!
If you’re like me and don’t like using OpenGL, then a better graphics card (no matter how beefy) will not give you a performance boost in After Effects. If you do like using OpenGL in AE… then god help you =)
That said I haven’t used CS3 much, so I don’t know if OpenGL support is improved.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Ganer13] “Also if someone has done this before, I’d like the scrip that also return the number of pixels moved between two points”
This one is fairly simple if you only want the distance between the two points:
p1 = thisComp.layer("Layer One").transform.position;
p2 = thisComp.layer("Layer Two").transform.position;length(p1, p2); //Returns the distance from p1 to p2
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Check out:
https://www.nextlimit.com/realflow/
I’m not entirely familiar with it, but I’d like to be =)
As far as I know it’s a stand-alone application that can export to a variety of standard 3D packages. Check out the website for more information.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Rick Friedberg] “In Photoshop 7.0, I could make an adjustment layer and then group it to the layer below it by clicking on “Layer” then “Group with Previous” so that it only affects that layer and no others.”
That sounds like a ‘Clipping Mask’ to me. Try moving your cursor in between the two layers and opt-clicking (alt-click on PC), or select the top layer and press cmd-opt-g (ctrl-alt-g on PC) or go to Layer > Create Clipping Mask.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I would recommend looking at a few books as well. After Effects 7.0 (or CS3 now) Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen is a great one, focused mainly on compositing and developing proper techniques for different workflows (color correcting, linear blending, 32bpc).
I also recommend becoming more familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator. I myself had never used Illustrator before I started working with AE professionally, and now I can’t live without it!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Dave LaRonde] “You’ll need to select a codec that supports alpha channels”
You can just render your composition out using Composition>Pre-Render. This will give you a lossless AVI with an alpha. However, you may want to check in the Render Queue before you render for the correct Alpha mode for your NLE (you probably want Straight unless your NLE has an option for removing premultiplication).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
If you’re working with masks then I would recommend applying the masks to the same layer that you are trying to reveal, and using the Generate>Stroke effect (set to reveal original) instead of the Write-On effect.
As you know, the Write-On effect uses position keyframes/motion paths (which is great if you’re using Motion Sketch), the Stroke effect uses masks instead of position keyframes so you can skip copying and pasting the masks into motion paths, thereby eliminating what can be a costly middle-man.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA