Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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[DVX100Shooter] “When the transparent screen comes up (the one with the small grey and white squares), should I be doing all my work in that box (workspace)? If so, how do I import an image there because I tried and it kept opening in a seperate box (workspace).”
When you “Open” or “Import” a file Photoshop will open it in a new window, you can “Place” a file which will put that file in your currently open project.
If you see the gray and white checkered background in the file and save it as a PSD most programs should preserve the transparency. Note that JPEGs don’t allow for transparency. If you’re working with any level of transparency and you don’t want to work with PSDs then you’ll want to use a TIF, PNG or TGA (make sure you save the alpha channel).
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[bill875] “can you give me the basic keystrokes ?”
Well, you’ll probably be using your mouse some as well (; As with most processes in AE there are a few different ways to get the results you’re looking for.
The first step is unzipping your zipped sequences (it sounded like they were in .zip files from your first post, if they’re not ignore this step), this is done with a program like StuffIt or WinRAR or… there are about a hundred different options.
Then when you have your sequences make sure that they’re numbered in frame order. Place all the images in the sequence that you want to import at one time into a folder (these files need to be sequentially numbered… i.e. 0-100 or 50-75 with no numbers missing between the beginning and ending frame). Then just drag that folder into your AE project pane (where the footage is kept) and it will automatically recognize the images in the folder as an image sequence.
I highly recommend you spend more time with the AE Manual and the AE Help files as well. This is pretty basic stuff.
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[rendernyc] “if you are typing in a value to the anchor point, just type the opopsite value in to the position.”
You actually want to type the same value into the position. The anchor point is the point in the layer that will be at the position you type in the position field.
The defaults for a 720×480 layer in a 720×480 comp are 360, 240 for each meaning that the center of the layer (360, 240 anchor point) is in the center of the comp (360, 240 position).
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[bill875] “My question what is the procedure for bringing these zipped files into Ae sO THERE ARE 14 ZIP FILES OF TGA FILES”
If the files are .zip-ed you need to unzip them first. I’m guessing that when he rendered these out he rendered them as an image sequence, so they should be numbered in ascending frame order. AE should automatically recognize this pattern when you drag the files in and create a single image sequence (if you want 14 sequences keep them in separate folders and drag them in separately).
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I would recommend using the Levels effect on an adjustment layer and animating the white input down (this make the light parts of your image become even lighter), you can also animate the black output up (making the dark parts of the image lighter).
A Blur is a good effect to add, but I wouldn’t use a Gaussian Blur, go ahead and use a Fast Blur or a Box Blur (set iterations to 2 or 3 and play with the radius) as these render much much faster and give you good results. Box Blur is almost identical to Fast Blur at 3 iterations, and you can fine tune the iterations for more a boxy (lower number) or a more smooth (higher number) blur. Keeping in mind that more iterations = more render time you should never really have to go above 5.
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[richard bachman] “are there any issues with this?”
Only if you’re using an Intel Mac as I don’t think Trapcode has updated their plugs to Universal Binary yet.
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What was the process you used for this? It sounds like you generated the look frame by frame in Illustrator and imported a sequence. If that’s the case did you use auto-trace to generate the look? I’m not as familiar with Illustrator as Photoshop and AE but I think that a certain amount of inconsistency from frame to frame is inevitable unless you tweak your results really well. You could also try smoothing the vectors you get, but I don’t know how much that will help.
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[Dave LaRonde] “if the values in the expressions rely on a 720×576 screen size rather than your 720×480 screen size, then yeah, you’ve got some modifying to do.”
The expression might (should) be written to take different comp sizes into account. I’ll have to see if I can find that tutorial in order to know what your problem might be.
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That’s your OpenGL kicking in =) I recommend changing your Fast Previews preference to ‘Adaptive Resolution.’ The switch for this is under the comp window and looks like… a comp window with a lightning bolt running through it (as I recall, I don’t have a copy of AE to check right now).
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[TiffaniB] “and then hit the delete key on your keyboard.”
I think it would be better to do this in a non-destructive way. Use Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All. Then select the gradient tool (tool shortcut is G) and use a linear gradient from black to white. Select the mask on the layer (click on the little white thumbnail to the right of the layer thumbnail) then drag from the bottom of the layer to where you want your image to be 100% non-transparent (opaque).
The beauty of Layer Masks is that you can edit the mask independently of the layer and you never use the delete key (which discards image data that you might want back later).
Just remember: white in a layer mask is 100% opaque and black is 100% transparent.