Doyle Rockwell
Forum Replies Created
-
After drawing the mask, you can also use the Channel Blur filter (Alpha only) for a smoother feather than the mask-shape’s feather.
-
Heya,
The last line (the super-smooth one) was done using a large number of small replicator points. Remember, it’s like you’re drawing a line using Legos: to make the line smoother, you need to use smaller Legos and a lot more of ’em. The source image for the replicator was the same small rectangle, only I scaled it down in X until it was taller than wide, and then cranked up the number of points. To smooth out the drawing (a more fade-in look), increase the Spread in the Sequence Replicator behavior.
The tighter the turns in your line, the more points you need to keep it smooth, but if your line is fairly straight, you won’t need as many points. Just keep in mind that the more points you use, the slower things will go, so play with it until it’s just right.
As for the shading, I just used the replicator controls to colorize it with a gradient.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
-
Hey Brian,
The DV format is HIGHLY compre…just kidding 🙂 The Primatte and color keyers that come with Motion are fabulous for uncompressed formats, but they suffer when used on DV and the like. There is hope, though. The folks at DV Garage have released a Motion-native version of DVMatte. It keys DV very nicely and it’s lickety-split quick. It’s also quite cheap.
Check it out at https://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=dvmatteb
Good luck!
-
Heya Joachim,
I think you can get pretty darned close to what you’re asking for, using a replicator and a few behaviors. Check out this movie and see what you think:
https://homepage.mac.com/specialcase/movies/spermers.mov
Nary a keyframe in sight. The sperm cell source image has an Oscillate on its Rotation, to make it wiggle. The wiggling sperm cell is then replicated. A Random Motion behavior is put on the replicator, to move the cells around, and an Align to Motion (Simulation) behavior orients them in the direction of movement. The egg has a Repel behavior on it to keep the sperm out until it’s ready for fertilization, and it transitions to an Attractor to call the little guys in.
Project is here:
homepage.mac.com/specialcase/projects/spermers.motn
This is a great example of how quickly and easily this stuff can be done in Motion, using behaviors. It runs pretty fast, too, so you can play with the settings to get different movements, etc, without having to render. The only recommendation I’d make might be to pre-render the wiggling sperm cell as a movie, that way the replicator can spawn them with different source start frames, so they don’t all wiggle in sync.
Good luck!
-
Good idea! The Extrude filter could do the trick nicely. You could use a custom gradient for the shading, instead of just repeating the edge pixel color. With the custom gradient, you could easily do a banded wood-color look. Good enough for a quick fake 😉
-
Just to explain the exponential scaling down: as objects start to fall, they accelerate, so a linear scaling from 100% to 0% makes an object look as though it’s shrinking, not moving further away. You’ll want an animation curve that gets steeper as it goes.
-
Hey Bensne,
Seems pretty straightforward: just isolate the cut-out area as a separate element, then animate it falling away (scaling down, exponentially). The key is to make it look as if the hole has depth, otherwise the effect will look very 2D. You’ll want to comp on some cross-section-looking material (could be made in Photoshop) for the edges of the floor, and you’ll want the edges of the hole to cast a shadow on the cut-out section, as it falls.
Good luck!
-
C’mon, Walter, you can do better than that 😉
Using an optical flow-based retimer can help smooth this stuff out a little, as well as letting you add motion blur to stuff that’s supposed to be moving fast. RE:Vision Twixtor and Realviz Retimer are a couple, as well as the new time-warping stuff in Shake 4.
To use that method, though, you’ll need to go into your clip and separate it out into unique frames, reducing the duplicates. i.e. if frames 1-6, 7-12, 13-18, 19-24, and 25-30 are all groups of six-frame dupes, that, together, form one second (30fps), then you make a new image sequence of just 5 unique frames: 1,7,13,19,25. You can then use the above-mentioned tools to stretch that 5-frame dealie back out into 30. Extrapolating 25 new frames from 5 will be fairly heinous, though, so you might want to just reduce your sequence down to 15 frames to keep the extrapolation smoother (only doubling to get back to 30).
Off-topic: Walter, if you’re editing GE in HD, when do I get to watch it? I’m dying, having to watch AB do his thing in SD, tell those FN people to upgrade ASAP! (mmmm…acronyms).
-
Heya Ben,
This doesn’t sound like a bug; it may just be a matter of selection. If you select an object that has animated position, caused by keyframes or behaviors, you will see a red line that indicates the path of movement of the object, over time. If you select the Motion Path behavior object directly (via the Timeline, Layers List or Inspector), you will see the on-screen controls for the behavior, which includes the editable path and bezier points.
-
Heya Pol,
The Scrub filter, which allows you to play with time on an object, allows for speed ramping and variable retiming.