[David Bogie]

Be sure to hit NASA and NOAA sites for movies of many different aspects of aurorae. Caustics will not, unfortunately, provide the three dimensionality required to create convincing aurorae. If all you need is an illusion or stylization, that might work. But the phenomenon, if you have ever seen it more than once, has a flowing and sweeping majesty of scale caused by the skyscape and the nature of the excitation of electrons and consequent production of photons.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Sheesh.

Okie dokie, set up a 3D environment that simulates your set. Program a camera that emulates your camera.
Set ten or fifty layers of snow at strategic locations.

Good luck.

The thing that will kill the illusion is there’s snow accumulating on the actors’ clothing.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I never use reference movies anymore. Export self contained.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

> not even close to self-explanatory. “in-focus” ?????

He’s just a kid. the correct terminology would be “keep the focus.” It is a neologism for user interfaces that have multiple concurrent modes or multiple concurrent windows but Elijah has used it inappropriately here.

Whew, good thing some of us can read his mind.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You just need two or more layers of the snow using different parameters. Move them at different rates.

You can do this as a 3d comp and get a stunning paralax simulation.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

UNMULT totally rocks. Why it’s never been incorporated into AE is beyond me.
I’ve never tried this but I’m sure there must be a simple way to use Set Channel or Set Matte to pull the luma information form one layer and use it to create an alpha.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Then do it by brute force–which is how we used to do everything in the Olden Days.
Use the preset on two separate layers, one for each of your text objects.
Then just time reverse on of the layers.
You will need to use some kind of transition between the clips and that could lead you to exploring the finer aspects of setting the text animator controls which are about as confusing as expressions.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

However, you CAN stack up muliple copies of your lousy key footage and apply lots of different effects to each layer until the final has a good solid matte.
Almost every good chromakey requires at least four fitlers:
The keyer
Spill suppression
One or more garbage or holdback masks
Some color correction or contrast adjustments

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

do you have After Effects?
See this:
https://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/create-an-ethereal-morphing-letter-canvas/#more-855

If not, let us know how you pull this off in Motion.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Everyone who uses Media manager on any version of FCP has had it do something terrible, inexplicable, unrecoverable, and totally disastrous. It’s junk. And yet it works for tens of thousands of houses that absolutely rely on it for everything. go figure. It’s still junk.

Freezing is usually associated with a bad media file or a media file that has gone offline. The workaround is to break your project down into smaller, more manageable chunks. It’s lame and it’s confusing but it gets you backed up.

bogiesan