[David Franklin]

Thank you. That is indeed exactly what I wanted!

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[David Franklin]

I mean what you say in the first sentence. If there was a car in my scene and the light was pointed at its front, it would stay pointed at the front of the car. The camera moves around the scene without affecting the position of the light.

Which brings me back to my previous question. How are you animating the camera?

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[David Franklin]

That’s really odd. I just tried a version of this, making a solid layer masked into a “post” and another acting as a ground plane. I put up a light and cast a shadow. I just tried adding a camera and animating it to rotate around the ground plane and the light stays right where I left it, and the shadow moves around the post.

How are you animating the camera?

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[David Franklin]

Oh, and you have to make sure the light’s “Light Options” setting for “Casts Shadows” is also set to “on”.

Re-reading your post I see that you say the blueprint is in 2D. This won’t work with a light. You can still have it look 2D, but in order for it to interact with a light or have shadows cast upon it, it has to be a 3D layer.

Hope this helps.

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[David Franklin]

Unless there’s something I missed in your post, this should be relatively easy.

First, make sure that all your “house” layers (the ones you want to cast the shadows) have their material options for “casts shadows” and “accepts lights” are set to “on.”

Then make sure that the blueprint background is also a 3D layer, and that its material options for “accepts shadows” and “accepts lights” are set to “on”.

Then in the Layer menu, choose New > Light and position it to cast the shadows you want.

Finally, in the Layer menu choose New > Camera and set key frames head and tail to animate the camera to rotate around the scene.

But is there something I missed? It seems like maybe you were asking something more than this?

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[David Franklin]

Do you have a copy of trapcode particular or particular 2.0?

If there’s any 3D aspect to your scene, it’s going to be difficult to key in a single layer of fire and have it look like anything.

In the poster: https://imagecache.allposters.com/images/pic/PYREU/PP0830~Back-To-The-Future-Posters.jpg , the fire is at a 3/4 angle to the camera.

In this situation, breaking your fire layer into multiple planes of flames which light up one after the next might get closer to what you’re thinking of. And if you could animate a particle generator in Z space to link between them, it might get better yet.

These are just thoughts. Without seeing the shot you’re trying to work with it would be hard to be any more specific.

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[David Franklin]

Dave is, again, correct. 🙂 And a faster typist than me.

What I’ll say is that SynthEyes is great. But having worked with it for about 9 months now off and on without fully mastering it, I can say from experience that it’s quirky. It’s also probably not worth spending $399 on for a single shot.

Mocha AE is actually slightly cheaper, but at approx. $320, it’s also somewhat pricey for a single use.

However, if you were to upgrade to CS4 (for $299) you’d get Mocha AE as part of the deal. Then you’d have the latest version of your main software AND a tool for tackling these kinds of shots. For the money, that seems like your best option.

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[David Franklin]

It really depends on the angle of the camera move to the countertop.

If you have a relatively flat move (i.e. side-to-side relative to the picture plane) then AE’s tracker could probably help you.

I suggest Andrew Kramer’s demon face tutorial, as it’s a good basic intro to how to use after effects’ built-in tracking tools:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/Demon_Face_Warp/video-tutorial.php

However, if there’s more of a 3D move involved, you may need to expand your tools a little outside of AE. If you have CS4, then I think it came with Mocha for AE, which is a planar tracker from Imagineer which might be able to handle the shot by tracking the plane of the counter top.

A good tutorial on using Mocha is here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/Mocha_Tut_1.php

Hope this is helpful.

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[David Franklin]

While Dave is (as usual) entirely correct, I have found that you can enlarge footage up to about 115 percent before anyone but you (and fellow AE enthusiasts) will notice.

Thus, if you would like to add some small movement, such as to simulate a hand-held camera, or a subtle zoom-in during the shot, you can do so without it looking terrible.

However, this isn’t enough to really make “moves” in the frame, as you would do on a high-resolution still, or to simulate dolly or pan-like effects.

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[David Franklin]

In general, and I’m speaking generally here, it’s not a great idea to render your AE comp using specific flavors of quicktime compression. Much better to render uncompressed in the Animation codec (if you have the drive space) at the correct resolution, then use Squeeze, Quicktime Pro or Compressor to make the conversion to the format you would like.

AE is a terrific graphics program, but not as good a compressor. You’ll get better results and have more control if you use an application that is usage specific for compressing.

Also, it’s likely that your friend with the extra codecs also has FCP Studio installed, or else bought Quicktime Pro.

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