Dave Johnson
Forum Replies Created
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You don’t really need a matte, unless the editor requires or prefers it that way. All you really need is to find out their specs requirements (codec, aspect ratio, etc.) and render your comp accordingly using a codec that supports alpha channels (i.e., Animation, PNG, etc. … the lossless PNG video codec, not a PNG image sequence).
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It’s hard to say without seeing the image … might be best to upload a sample image with your post. In any case, perhaps you could just zoom way in and use a combination of the clone stamp and feathered copy/paste from the other eye to fill the glare with the correct surrounding colors. That’ll be far more complicated if the person’s eye is visible through the sunglasses and/or it’s an extreme close-up.
To avoid the same issue in the future, you might consider using a reflector to bounce light onto the subject instead of having the flash point directly into the person’s eyes.
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Couldn’t you just merge the layers, change its color profile to greyscale, lower the opacity to make it semi-transparent and save it in a file format that supports alpha channnels?
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Although that is quite an offer from Blair to do it for you, I hope this helps …
I had to recreate the Universal Globe once and it turned out pretty nice using just two Photoshop layers and a few AE plugins.
It was quite a while ago so I don’t recall every detail, but basically make a flat and wrapable map of the globe in Photoshop (wrapable meaning the left and right edges fit seamlessly). In fact, you might even be able to download one from a NASA or USGS website.
Make a new Photoshop layer with small white stars over the areas you want to highlight and leave the rest of that layer transparent.
Bring the PSD into AE as a comp and, while I don’t recall exactly which plugin I used, there are several AE plugins that can bend a flat layer into a 3D sphere and rotate the sphere accordingly (BCC Sphere, various displacement map or mesh warp type plugins, etc.).
Apply to the stars layer any one of the plugins that emit light rays … Trapcode Shine is probably ideal, but several others do similar (i.e., I think the CycoreFX plugins included with AE have one called something like Light Rays, one of the small AE plugin companies has one called Volumetric Lighting, etc.).
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I was using FF 3.5.5 on an XP machine … almost identical in every way to the one I’m using now, which I’m able to get to the second survey with. I guess it was a fluke … although I love FF, it’s open nature sometimes causes strange conflicts (i.e., caused by extensions, etc. rather than the browser itself).
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I misunderstood your question since you never mentioned that you’re rendering 14 identical comps and I thought ‘why would someone render the same exact comp 14 times?’ so I figured they must be different.
Yes, MP4 is one of the file extensions used for MPEG-4 encoded video so my guess is that the issues result from using MPEG encoded video as source material (see Dave LaRonde’s stock answer #1).
BTW, just to clarify what I meant by this part …
“Similarly, two comps could have all of the same exact things listed above applied with the same exact settings, but if the images they are applied to are significantly different, the two comps could take drastically different amounts of time to render.”
I wasn’t talking about video with different codecs or other tech specs … I was reminding that even two videos with exactly the same codecs/specs won’t necessarily render in the same amount of time since the images are different at every frame throughout and, therefore, the amount of time those images take to render will vary even with the same effects, etc. An extreme to make the point is applying all the same exact effects, masks, etc. to two source videos of identical lengths, codecs and all other specs with the only difference being that one video is of a colorful nature scene with lots of movement and the other is a static shot of a grey wall.
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Perhaps I misunderstood the issue … I thought you were just referring to why a 10-second audio file will often show as slightly longer than 10 seconds in AE. Someone more versed with Flash than I can help more … this is all I can gather about what you describe…
[James Baker] I have been working between flash 8 and After Effects. The wav audio that I described comes out at different lengths in the two different programs.
AE is frame-accurate, but I don’t know that Flash is (or how it could be if it doesn’t use timecode in the strict sense), but that should only result in a few extra frames at the end of an audio file in the AE timeline, which shouldn’t affect synch.
[James Baker] Also when I import the wav file into AE; before it is placed in the timeline the timecode reads differently to when it is placed in the timeline.
Sorry, but I don’t know about this one … the only way I’d expect AE to possibly show slightly different times for the same audio file is if there were something unusual about the project settings or comp settings the imported file is in or if there were something wrong with the way the file was interpreted upon import.
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My two cents …
Although there’s nothing there AE can’t do, my guess is that was done by one of the many automated photo montage applications on the consumer software market these days since it would be relatively time-consuming to do in AE, which wouldn’t make much sense considering the likely non-profit purpose … in my humble opinion, using AE for a personal-use photo montage seems like using a sledgehammer to drive a nail … unless one is doing it as a means to practice AE or just has way too much free time.
Some photo montage software has bunches of pre-made transitions that you just drop a bunch of photos into and press go, so to speak … depending on your needs, you might Google to find one.
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Just as an alternative to eyeballing or using opacity to line up the two logo versions, you could use the Difference blending mode on the top one … when the screen goes black, they’re exactly lined up.
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You could also apply Colorama to the whole line and adjust the settings accordingly or apply to different segments of the line any of the effects like Tint, Change To Color, Change Color, HSL Colorize.