Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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I actually have experienced that problem on a quad core mac pro, I asked a Nucleo Pro guy about it at NAB and he said that they were running it on several Mac Pros using boot camp at the show so it’s not an entirely pervasive issue… I haven’t had the guts to try to figure out what’s wrong with my setup.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
It sounds to me like your shadow darkness value is at something below 100%.
Logically in the natural world if no light is able to get around the front layer then no light should hit the layers behind it, but this isn’t the way AE handles things.
The reason the layers in the rear dim when you enable ‘Accepts Shadows’ is that they are accepting shadows, but those shadows are much lighter than you are expecting them to be.
Try offsetting the light to the left side of the layers so half of the beam hits the rear layers unobstructed and half is obstructed by the front layer, you’ll immediately see the issue. If you increase the Shadow Darkness property of the light to 100% then no light will ‘shine through.’
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[fresconero] “I bought the book of Christiansen but i cant figure out how he composite fire at figures 14.19a&b , any clue?”
Read the chapter on 32bpc Linear Compositing, then sit and let that sink in, then read it again, then read the chapter on Pyrotechnics, let that sink in and you’re almost ready. Then look at the chapter on motion tracking, specifically the section on 3D tracking (there’s a demo version of SynthEyes on the disc that comes with the book). Now as long as you feel comfortable with all of that, you know pretty much everything that Mark needed to know to composite those forest fires.
If you’re not comfortable doing it in 32bpc linear then you can get away with using multiple layers of fire with different additive blending modes (Add, Screen, etc) and a plug-in like UnMult (https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/unmult.html), assuming that your fire has a black matte behind it.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
This sounds like the sort of thing that would best be handled by a particle generator like Trapcode’s Particular.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Steve Roberts] “Yep, get 4 GB of RAM.”
I agree with pretty much everything that Steve said, only I’d point out that if you’re getting a Quad core processor (for use with Nucleo as Steve said or CS3… otherwise AE won’t benefit from multiple cores at all) you will probably want more RAM than this.
On Windows AE can use 2GB of RAM per process (Nucleo and CS3 operate by creating background instances of AE) so with a possible 4 instances running (1 per core) you would need 8GB of RAM to really shine. Or if you have the 3GB switch thrown in your boot.ini you might want 12GB to maximize your fun. This isn’t to say that a quad core with 4GB of RAM will be slow, but it could be faster (;
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[moldyboot] “a co-worker of mine has experienced a stange issue with the shift key getting stuck in windows, where it would get locked after typing with the shift key down for long periods of time”
There is a Windows feature called Sticky Keys that can get in the way sometimes. If the feature is enabled and you press a modifier key 5 times rapidly Windows will ‘hold’ the key down for you… It’s supposed to tell you before it enables this feature the first time, but it may not always work that way.
[Aaron Aphasia] “I thought it was the Caps Lock key….but no shift key isn’t stuck. Thanks A”
Caps Lock disables rendering/updates to the composition window. The shift key causes keyframes and layers to snap to one another when dragging them. I’d be surprised if your Shift key being stuck (or sticky keys) were the issue as this would result in other obvious problems as well (multiple layers becoming selected accidentally, key commands being wrong).
I looked through the preferences briefly and couldn’t find what might be causing this… I think a reboot is in order =/
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You can opt/alt click the visibility (eyeball) icon next to the layer you want to solo. It’s not quite as elegant as the system for soloing layers in After Effects, but it works.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Well, you could try to roll your own with a stroke effect, maybe a turbulent displace and some other detailing effects. Or you could try using CC Glue Gun, which is similar to write on only it has a naturally liquified look to it and you can animate properties to make the stream wiggle.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
How about masking the pre-comp, then pre-comping it and applying the Timewarp? (; Not the most elegant solution but I can’t think of any reason why it shouldn’t work.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[ronaldo] “just wondering, why even remove and add back the 3;2 pulldown.”
You know, I’m not really sure if it’s necessary. But because the pulldown adds an extra frame every four frames I thought that it might be more technically correct to remove the extra split frames for effects/compositing and then add the pulldown back in so that they are properly interlaced in the extra split frames generated.
From Adobe’s LiveDocs:
“When importing interlaced video that was originally transferred from film, you can remove the 3:2 pulldown that was applied during the transfer from film to video as you separate fields so that effects you apply in After Effects don