David Franklin
Forum Replies Created
-
Nothing better to add, but I have several questions for Kristan.
How did this turn out? I’m actually thinking of doing the same thing with a 13 minute HDV project I’m working on.
I just got to the color correct phase and am very unhappy with the results I’m getting inside FCP. I can’t afford to update to the new FCP Studio that comes with “Color”, and after exporting a test clip into AfterEffects I like the results I’m getting using the “curves” effect very much.
My question is this: when you finished color correcting and rendered your pieces back out, how big were the files? I’m guessing they must have been enormous! Maybe this doesn’t matter anymore since there’s no longer that 2Gig maximum file size thing to deal with. But still…
And if you rendered out sections of your project from AE, did you then reassemble them in FCP? Or do one giant render?
For the final finish, did you go back to a deck? How did you get the piece out of the machine?
I hope this isn’t too many questions, but I guess I’m trying to decide if this workflow, which seemed utterly surprising to me when I first read your post, might work for me, too.
Anyway, any thoughts would be appreciated.
Made With Care In Brooklyn, NY
-
And if you have $3,000 lying around, there’s always Mocha, the planar tracker from Imagineer. From what I’ve seen, that would stick like glue, even though it isn’t true 3D…
-
As with a lot of recent ad work, this looks like it is most likely not a single technique, but a seamless combination of several.
To start, if you haven’t already, you should look at the Cow tutorial on using strokes to reveal pre-drawn artwork:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/850040
Beyond that technique — which could easily handle the vine-like ends of the 3D strokes we’re seeing here, you could use Trapcode’s 3D Stroke to handle the heavy lifting of all those many 3D strokes, most of which do not end in specific shapes. Also keep in mind that it is possible to vary the thickness of a stroke over its length — which might also account for some of what you’re referring to as having “the actual shape be solid.”
It’s hard to know for sure what they used here (anyone from Stardust out there and want to weigh in??).
But the free download of 3D stroke and the tutorial above would be good places to start thinking about it.
-
Your greenscreen setup doesn’t have to be very large, only big enough to provide a keyable color on all sides of your hero object.
It’s stop motion, so you could animate the object in place in front of the green screen, then once you’ve keyed it, move it across your background plate in AfterEffects.
Does that make sense?
-
Well, I’m relatively new at this myself. But my understanding is that what you’re describing is a kind of 3D environment that AfterEffects won’t do seamlessly.
(I’m about 95% certain, having played with the effect myself, that it isn’t possible to put the camera inside a CC Sphere. Of course, I could be wrong, and please, someone correct me if I am.)
But I have an idea for a “cheat” that might work out to the same idea.
The basic concept is that instead of a sphere, you would build a 3D room, like the one Andrew Kramer did for this tutorial:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/911038
You would make the room quite large, and use star fields for each of the six walls. Rotation in 360 degrees would then be possible, though I’d experiment with masks and blending modes on the wall layers to de-emphasize the corners.
Then you would put “hero” stars randomly throughout the space of the room. You could use simple random expressions to pick x,y, and z coordinates that fit within the perameters of the room. (The manual covers this, or someone could help you in the after effects expressions forum.)
100 or so of such randomly placed stars should be enough to sell the effect. Each could be a small, white solid with a circular mask and a “stylize > glow” applied. And each layer could be “auto-oriented” towards the camera to sell the illusion of three dimensionality.
If you then put your titles into the middle of this environment, you could animate the camera all around them.
Not sure if it will work as I’m envisioning — but it’s a suggestion for how to get around the whole 2.5D vs 3D thing.
Oh, and if you want the titles to have 3D volume, there’s a way to fake that using the shatter effect.
But if you’d rather not take this approach, or if it seems needlessly complex to the group, please won’t someone else feel free to suggest a simpler, more rational solution!
-
Tracing frame by frame could be very time consuming.
I might suggest tracking the rotation and position of the glasses, and applying that data to a cutout solid, THEN applying the cutout as a track matte to your digital still layer.
In Andrew Kramer’s demon face warp tutorial (https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/913298), he sticks a fake pair of sunglasses onto his actor.
You could use the same techniques for your track matte layer.
And one final idea — you will want to apply some kind of optical distortion to the image being reflected — probably a bulge would do, but you might even consider CC Sphere if you flip the image upside down and backwards first.
The point is that mirrored shades are not perfectly flat, and they tend to distort any image they reflect.
-
When you right click on a piece of footage and choose “Interpret Footage” there’s a box at the bottom called “Other Options” that has a pixel aspect ratio popup menu. The second from the bottom option on this menu is HDV 1080/DVCPRO HD 720 (1.33). This is the one you want. (So the quick answer to your question is that the PAR is 1.33.)
As for your comp, I’d set it up using the DVCPRO HD 720 preset, and make sure you have the toggle for Pixel Aspect Ratio correction toggled correctly in the viewer.
However, don’t take my word for this being correct. Test it with some footage — take a shot through your intended workflow and see if you are happy with the results.
I’d love to hear how it turns out.
-
Part of the problem is that your description is somewhat vague. Do you want the camera to move from being positioned in front of one object to being positioned in front of another, and another, and another?
That’s kind of what it sounds like. So, here goes: The first thing to check is do you know how to use the camera tool? It’s by far the easiest way to manipulate a camera in AE.
The problem is that if you move the camera’s position manually by changing values of the “position” property, the “point of interest” doesn’t change — leaving you with a wildly swinging camera that can’t see what’s in front of it.
To use the camera tool, set an initial key frame for both “position” AND “point of interest” in the camera properties, then hit “c” on your keyboard and move your cursor over the active camera window. (That’s also very important — you have to be looking at the comp through the “active camera”). Pressing “c” again will toggle you through the three possible adjustments to the camera: x-y control, z control, and an orbiting tool at adjusts the angle that the camera is facing.
If you can’t find your objects, use the “front” or “top” views instead of the “active camera” view, then shrink the display until you can see everything — keeping in mind that the camera is represented by a pink rectangle.
In this view you can manually position the camera in front of an object using the main cursor tool (not the camera tool), then switch back to “active camera” hit the “c” key and adjust your angle ’till you get what you want.
Then for each object, move a second or so forward in the timeline, and move the camera. Keyframes for this new position will automatically pop up in the timeline.
Hopefully this answered the question you were asking!
-
Hi Ben,
Any wisdom from the AE team on our Multiprocessing RAM preview lags? Is it really necessary to 8 or 16GB of RAM before these lags go away?
And why DOES it lag both at the start and end of the RAM preview? Standard processing doesn’t have this problem at all…
Also, is it possible to disable the function of auto-saving before each RAM preview? That adds an interminable amount of time to how long it takes to look at anything.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
-
A second key usually won’t work because it takes out portions of the subject with it (this is why chroma key screens aren’t white). So you have to draw garbage mattes around your foreground elements that keep the green around the subject but mask out the white reference points.
However, even that doesn’t work when the subject crosses over one of those points.
My solution in my own work when that happens has been the aforementioned “good old rotoscoping.” Any one have a better, faster, bolder solution?