[Darby Edelen]

Looking at the limitations in the Broadcast module I think a good option might be using dynamics on a cloner to morph between the states of two other cloners (using the Inheritance effector). You get some free dynamic springiness in this case too. I played with this for a little while and came up with something I like.

Duct Animation

Dynamics can be a bit irritating to massage so here’s the c4d file as well.

5212_airduct.c4d.zip

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Seth Borne] “Is there anyway you could describe how you figured this out?”

Well, I knew that a straight alpha should technically maintain RGB values outside of the alpha channel. I wasn’t sure if it would only maintain those values within the range of non-zero values in the alpha channel.

I tested this set up in AE before rendering with the Straight Alpha preview and it seemed to work. I tried a render and everything came out as expected.

Then I decided to try a non-comp sized solid and the AE preview as well as the render failed to exhibit the expected behavior. Scaling the BG layer in AE led me to find that it has to be exactly the size of the comp for this to work or it will essentially be ignored.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

There are quite a few youtube tutorials on the tesseract. While I don’t love the workflow or the details of the techniques used there should be enough general information to get you started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EqcTI7c50

Personally I think most of this could’ve been achieved without 3rd party plug-ins, especially the outer surfaces of the cube. This should provide you with a starting point though.

Darby Edelen

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[Darby Edelen]

[Seth Borne] “The solid in this situation is a stand in for either a solid (which i can use the composition background, thanks for the suggestion) or most likely a gradient, or maybe an image backplate. In either of those cases, how do i get them to show in the RGB without showing in the alpha?”

This is possible, with two limitations:

1) your background image/gradient/video must be exactly the size of your composition

2) you must render with a straight alpha (not premultiplied)

Place your background image on the bottom of your comp, apply the Shift Channels effect and set Take Alpha From to “Full Off.” You can preview what your RGB channels will look like with the RGB Straight preview in the comp viewer. When you render make sure that you render with a Straight alpha.

Different viewers may support this in different ways but you can check your results by bringing the render back into AE and telling it to ignore the alpha.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Are the vector graphics jaggy no matter what color they are?

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

So let me see if I have the lay of the land now.

1) Motion tracked some background element to pick up the camera
2) Parented an AE camera to this Null.
3) Keyframed a light’s position to roughly match the bong’s position.
4) Applied Particular to a 2D composition sized solid and set it to emit from lights.

If that’s not working I don’t know what to say. There are some details that you might want to work into the shot (like matching the field of view/focal length of the camera you shot with) but overall that should work.

However, in your posted file I didn’t see a camera parented to the null (this is important) and your Particular effect was applied to a 3D solid (this is wrong, needs to be a 2D solid).

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Adam Trachtenberg] “I believe the problem is that you don’t have your step effector set to DO anything. ;-)”

I was thinking the same at first but then I noticed that it’s set to a 46F Time Offset.

If your goal is to use the Step effector to offset the clone’s transform animation you’ll have to disable “Fix Clone” on the Cloner.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Eddie Cantle] “No this is a new model a different problem. check out the video here”

So it looks like there are several issues here.

Before you start making the recommended changes i’d suggest that you reset the rotor to its default position, unfreeze transformations and remove any animation tracks (just to be safe).

The first problem is that your axis is not located at the center of the rotor. This is important. The axis is the point around which the rotor will rotate. If “Center Axis To” isn’t getting you to quite the right spot you may need to look in your front/side/top orthogonal views and try to manually align it or use the “Axis Center…” tool to align it.

Once the axis is center the rotor may animate fine, to be sure you can freeze transformations before applying any keyframes.

Then you should be set.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Is this the same as the previous problem? You’ll have to remove all keyframes on the rear rotor before you freeze the transformation, then re-do the animation.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

The comp you uploaded is missing its footage. There isn’t a camera in the comp (was there supposed to be?). Also Particular should almost always be applied to a 2D layer, that is unless you’re looking to bend spacetime 🙂

Darby Edelen