Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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As far as I know the only reason to render anamorphic is if the display device is expecting anamorphic (widescreen NTSC or an anamorphic projector). Otherwise square pixels make me happier all around.
Darby Edelen
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This happens because the “white hot” color is only a combination of red and green. When the red and green values get clipped to 1.0 they become an uninspiring orange/yellow color.
The best solution I’ve found for maintaining the 32bpc look in cases like these is to add an Adjustment Layer at the top of your composition with a Levels effect applied with something like the following values:
Input Black: 1.0
Input White: 50.0
Gamma: 0.5
Output Black: 0.0
Output White: 50.0
Clip To Output Black: On
Clip To Output White: OffThen apply the Tint effect and set the Adjustment Layer to the ‘Add’ blend mode.
What this essentially does is take all of the superwhite values in the composition, tints them and adds that tinted color back into the underlying values. This gives the “white hot” red/green areas some blue so that they stay “white hot” in the render. Changing the Input/Output White values and the Gamma value here have the biggest effect, just make sure that your Input and Output White values are always the same.
You could also add another Adjustment Layer at the top of your composition, apply the Levels effect, leave it at its defaults except change both ‘Clip To’ settings to ‘On’ and this will give you a preview of what your render will look like (you can set it to a ‘Guide’ layer if you don’t want it to be considered for the render).
Darby Edelen
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Are you using CS6? If so then make sure you’re not using the new ray-tracing feature. Go to Composition Settings > Advanced and check the Renderer field. Make sure it’s set to “Classic 3D” instead of “Ray-traced 3D.”
Darby Edelen
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[Colin O'Halloran] ” I’ve tried mocha and boujou and the foundry camera tracker but they all seem to be aimed towards 3d and dont work for me.”
Mocha is not necessarily a camera tracker, although they did add that feature recently. It’s a planar tracker and may work well for the track you’ve described. Are you familiar with using Mocha? If not then you should look into some tutorials/documentation.
The built-in point tracker in AE isn’t bad but it’s very out of date and limited in scope. It needs a good feature and it’s very picky about it staying pretty consistent.
If you can share the shot it should help people provide worthwhile suggestions.
Darby Edelen
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[Anthony Sipsas] “is there a “dictionary” so to speak for expressions in AE so I can at least make sure my syntax is written in a means that AE can understand?”
It’s JavaScript with included AE specific functions as defined here:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7a0ca.html
Darby Edelen
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If your camera is using a point of interest then it will only be able to orbit around that point. You might consider either manually animating the point of interest, or changing the camera to Auto Orient: Off and animating the orientation/rotation of the camera instead.
Parenting the camera to a Null also allows for a lot more flexibility (note: animate the null instead of the camera unless you need to do something fancy).
Darby Edelen
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[Will Eccleston] “The Set Matte effect seems very straightforward. Direct a layer or layers to use the alpha of another layer, so you can use the latter as a track matte for as many layers as you want without precomping, right?”
Since the Set Matte effect is an effect it sees the matte layer as it exists before taking effects on the matte layer into account. Another thing to consider is that any transformations of the matte layer will not affect the transparency on the layer that has the Set Matte effect applied. Which is different than the Track Matte.
Those are 2 big differences between a Track Matte and the Set Matte effect. They can both be overcome by pre-composing your matte layer (for the pre-effects problem) and your matted layer (for the transformations problem) and setting both pre-comps to collapse transformations. This is extremely useful, but can cause other shortfalls in the workflow.
Sometimes you have to use a Track Matte, but with the above collapse transformations technique you should get a little more flexibility in your tool belt. I use Set Matte on almost every project I work on 🙂
If you upload a sample project with the issue I can diagnose exactly what the problem is and possibly give you a ‘fixed’ file back.
Darby Edelen
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[Dale Paquette] “In its current state, this requires a laser scan along with the photography, but there are some statistical approaches showing promise”
While I’m sure a laser scan would be more accurate you can also achieve this with a stereo camera setup or specialized cameras that use infrared sensors. Software is of course required to generate the depth from the stereo image.
[Dale Paquette] “In the meanwhile, I am headed towards reverse engineering if you will the Keylight algorithms, at least close enough that I can conceive of variations and alternatives to help the process along when the going gets rough.”
There are lots of processes involved in Keylight, which I’m sure you’re aware of. The Keylight documentation should give you a good basis for what’s happening in general terms. It is, at its core, a color difference keyer so the basic keying algorithm involves generating the alpha based on the relative strength of the key color against the other color components. In the case of a green screen: more green than either red or blue = transparent or semi-transparent pixel.
Darby Edelen
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[Chris Vile] “I have collapsed the lightscreen-layer!”
When you collapse transformations AE will use the blend modes set inside the collapsed composition unless you have applied effects to the collapsed composition.
If you’ve applied effects to the collapsed composition then you will see an option to set a blend mode on the collapsed composition, but it will also break AE’s 3D ordering. It sounds like this is what has happened in your case.
If you can apply the effects inside the collapsed composition, do it there.
Darby Edelen
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[Brian McLaren] “Sure I could export each individual image but that would be a garganuan task — not practical.”
Is the exporting the gargantuan task? The set up in Photoshop would be simple with the Automate > Contact Sheet script. It takes a little while to run but requires very little “you” time.
Darby Edelen