[Darby Edelen]

That tutorial has some good suggestions for adding to the glassy look, I like the gaussian blur suggestion. I’d shy away from using 3D lights for specular highlights (they’ll look kind of flat) if you can develop a good height map for a CC Glass effect.

[Darby Edelen]

Time Warp is an effect, and as such cannot change the duration of your footage. Also, it sounds like you’re placing one keyframe at the beginning at 100%, another at 4 seconds at 10% and another at 6 seconds at 100%. Keyframes don’t work this way though, what you’re effectively doing is reducing the speed that the clip plays at from 100% to 10% from second 0 to second 4, then increasing it from 10% to 100% from second 4 to second 6. If you want the clip to play at 100% from second 0 to second 4 you need a 100% keyframe at second 0 AND second 4, then a 10% keyframe shortly after second 4 (depending on how fast you want it to slow down), another 10% keyframe at second 6, then another 100% keyframe shortly after that (a total of 5 keyframes). Alternatively, if you want the footage to immediately change speed at the keyframe, use hold keyframes (right click the keyframes and select toggle hold keyframe). If that’s your goal though, I would recommend using Time Remap:

Time Remap will create keyframes that correspond to your footage’s timecode, it is not an effect and extends the duration of your footage to the length of the composition. You would want to leave the default keyframes where they are when you do this, then add a keyframe at 4 seconds and one at 4 seconds 6 frames (if you want to stretch that .2 seconds into 2, which would be 10% normal speed). Then select the keyframe at 4 seconds 6 frames and the one at the end of the Time Remap and move them both 1 second 24 frames later (stretching that .2 seconds into 2 seconds). Make sure you turn frame blending on for your footage to try and make it look… less bad =)

Sorry if this was at all confusing!

[Darby Edelen]

[wuzelwazel] “All that remains is coming up with some cool lighting/reflection effects on the ‘glass’ text. I’ll see what I can come up with, but other suggestions would be awesome =)”

Here’s an example video of this technique a little more fleshed out, the background fades between simple fractal noise and a city scene just to give you an idea of how the text reacts with different backgrounds…

https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3419163529742265044

I was able to get pretty good lighting by duplicating the source text layer again, applying CC Glass to it and setting the source layer for the effect to the pre-comped text (the same one that’s used for the displacement map), then making this layer grayscale, adjusting the levels with a levels effect (white will be highlights, black won’t show up), changing the layer’s blending mode to add and reducing it’s opacity to around 10%.

This technique requires a source layer of text (for the base color, in my example it’s light blue), a pre-comped version of that text (for the displacement map and glass effects), a duplicated version of the text (for the lighting/highlights using CC Glass) and an adjustment layer with the displacement map effect.

[Darby Edelen]

Is there any chance I could get you to post a sample troublesome frame? =)

[Darby Edelen]

[sunriseseagull] “I shot my subject again an evenly lit green screen and used the magic wand tool to take out the background.”

As long as your subject isn’t wearing any green a good way to go would be to duplicate the Red channel (or whichever channel has the greatest contrast between your green background and your foreground) from your image (creating an alpha channel) then use level adjustments on the alpha channel to make the darker background entirely black. Cmd-click (ctrl-click) the alpha channel to make a selection from it, go back to your original image, duplicate it and add a layer mask (Reveal Selection). Then you can use level adjustments while you have the layer mask selected to get the right balance.

If the Green channel has the highest contrast between foreground and background you can still use this technique, only you’d want to move the background to pure white with levels and then invert the alpha channel.

[Darby Edelen]

[moldyboot] “however, i think i would probably work in the large square pixel comp, then drop that into a d1 comp and scale to fit.”

I concur, definitely the best option =)

[Darby Edelen]

[moldyboot] “not really… the only thin i can think of is to try and play with the shatter effect and define the shape as a custom layer (say text or logo), remove the forces and gravity (otherwise your text or logo will fly appart and fall off the screen). then play with the depth, camera position, lighting and material options. but i don’t think it will look really glassy.”

So I finished writing a rather lengthy response to this and for some reason the page disappeared instead of posting =/

So here’s a concise version:

Create your text. Then duplicate that text and give it a white fill and a black border, use Channel Blur to blur everything but the alpha (so you have a gradient in the text from white at the center to black at the edge). Pre-comp this layer. In your original Comp turn Continously Rasterize on and visibility off for the pre-comped text and parent it to your original text. Create an Adjustment Layer and apply a Displacement Map to it, use the Pre-comped text as the displacement’s source, put this Adjustment Layer below your original text layer. Change your original text layer’s blending mode to overlay (or another mode depending on what you’re happy with) and reduce opacity until you’re satisfied with the result. Everything below the adjustment layer should have a displaced ‘through glass’ look to it.

All that remains is coming up with some cool lighting/reflection effects on the ‘glass’ text. I’ll see what I can come up with, but other suggestions would be awesome =)

[Darby Edelen]

I’m immediately tempted to suggest keying/matting the background out of the shot and placing her in a new environment… but that would depend on how clean the key could be with a white background (was she wearing any white?).

You could alternatively use a clean plate of the background she was dancing on, key her out of the video footage, place her back on the clean plate (this might not work well if you don’t have a method of tracking camera position and applying it to the clean plate or if you didn’t use a tripod) and then animate some cool 3D Stroke effects around her as she swirls and twirls, flowers popping up in the background and spinning around… whatever she’s into =)

[Darby Edelen]

You should be able to set the feather on your masks to soften the edges.

And in response to your query about black/white layer (alpha mask) yes you can use a Luma Track Matte or you can use a few of the Channel effects (Effects > Channel) to set the layer’s alpha channel to another layer’s luminance. An example:

Apply the Set Matte effect (Effects > Channel > Set Matte) to the layer you want masked, change the ‘Take Matte From Layer’ setting to the layer you want to use for Matte and select Luminance for ‘Use For Matte.’ This has a different effect than the Luma Track Matte as when you move the track matte’s position it reflects in the matted layer, but when you use the Set Matte effect it changes the alpha channel of the matted layer so that moving the matte layer has no effect on the matted layer (I hope that’s not too complicated).

I’d recommend using a Luma Track Matte unless you have a lot of different layers that will be masked (as the Luma Track Matte will need to be applied to all of them).

[Darby Edelen]

I don’t have a ton of experience working in weird Pixel Aspect Ratios (although I do regularly work in the normal 0.9 and widescreen 1.2 NTSC ratios). But it seems that if this display scales up from a 720×486 resolution as you state then it would require one hell of a stretched pixel aspect ratio!

My calculations are as follows:

720 22
Pixel Aspect Ratio x ___ = ___

486 4.5

Pixel Aspect Ratio x 720 = 22 / 4.5 * 486

Pixel Aspect Ratio x 720 = 2376

Pixel Aspect Ratio = 2376 / 720

Pixel Aspect Ratio = 3.3

Which is well over twice the Pixel Aspect Ratio of widescreen 16×9 NTSC footage and even greater than the Anamorphic 2.0 pixel aspect ratio (which I believe is the largest AE supports, unless someone knows how to cheat the Composition settings?). So in short: I don’t know an easy way to work in the correct pixel aspect ratio and achieve the results you’re looking for.

That said you could preview your results via a pre-comp scaled to 330% width x 100% height to make sure that your renders won’t look distorted on the final display. If you wanted a circle to look like a circle on the final display (instead of an oval) and my Pixel Aspect Ratio is correct then you’d want to scale the circle to 100/3.3% wide (about 30.303%) x 100% high.

Note: When you stated 4.5ft x 22ft I assumed we were discussing 4.5ft high x 22ft wide although aspect ratios are normally expressed in width:height… I hope this is correct?

Here’s an example I made using a circle:

Source Circle Footage:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/7532704@N08/431618310/

Circle ‘Displayed’:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/7532704@N08/431618312/