Doyle Rockwell
Forum Replies Created
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Howdy,
You can use the Matte Magic filter to choke and feather the edges of the key. You can also apply Spill Suppressor to help suppress green rim-lighting on the subject.
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Howdy,
Select the object, pick the mask tool and draw another mask. Each mask has settings that control how it interacts with other masks on the same object.
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Doyle Rockwell
February 13, 2008 at 2:48 am in reply to: Rectangular mask with rounded corners, and other odditiesHowdy,
There’s no automatic way to round rectangle shapes, but you have a few ways to make it work:
First, there’s a rounded rectangle shape preset in the Library which you can edit the size of, but changing the rounding will mean editing the bezier handles.
You can also use Ye Olde Photoshop Trick:
1. Draw a rectangular mask on your image.
2. Apply Gaussian Blur, set the Amount to 50.
3. Apply Threshold filter, set the Smoothness to 0.0.1 and the Threshold to 0.8-ish.
4. Apply Channel Swap and set the Alpha to come from the Red channel.This will give you a nice rounded edge, which you can adjust the size of by changing the Gaussian Blur amount.
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Howdy,
Go to the View dropdown menu in the project window toolbar and select Best from the Render Quality section. Amongst other things, this will try to rasterize text at screenspace resolution. Keep in mind two things, though:
1. Best mode can run like molasses, so it’s best reserved for export, not working in.
2. If you have a situation that forces a precomp, the text can be prevented from being rasterized at its onscreen resolution. For example, let’s say you put some text in a group, scale up the group, then apply a filter to the group. Since the order of operations goes image->filters->transforms->blending, the contents of the group would get rasterized at the filter and then scaled up, resulting in artifacts.
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Doyle Rockwell
February 5, 2008 at 3:30 am in reply to: Missing Helium Framework causing Motion to crashHowdy,
Did you recently install Leopard? If so, did you do an Archive & Install installation? Archive & Install isn’t supported by the Apple Pro Apps, which can cause frameworks to go missing. Most likely, you’ll need to reinstall the Studio. To do so (without wiping your hard drive) you’ll need to properly remove Compressor and Motion. You can find the instructions for removing/reinstallation Compressor here.
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Howdy,
They probably did this in a 3D app like Max, Maya or Cinema 4D, but you could do this in Motion. Regardless of which program you use, the process is pretty much the same.
First, you’d need to do a 3D track of the camera’s movement, which you’d do in an app like PFHoe. You’d import that camera path to Motion, which will allow you to place objects in the scene with them properly respecting the camera move.
For the text, you’ll need to do a few steps. First, you’d create the finished text and position it below the ground. Then, you’d add a black shape that is flat on the ground, obscuring the text. Next, you animate the text, it’ll rise through the black shape, appearing as it does so. Once you’ve done that, you can render out a black-and-white pass (background turned off) of the text appearing, then reimport that and use it as a mask for your original text.
All this will make the text appear as if it’s appearing out of the ground, as well as dealing with the moving camera.
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Howdy,
You can do this sort of animation in any application that has a 3D environment, including Motion, AE, Combustion, Cinema 4D or Maya. Each app, however, has its strengths and weaknesses for this type of animation work. Motion and AE are well-suited to a motion graphics process, but are limited to flat objects in 3D space. Motion does not support camera depth-of-field or shadows, so you’d have to manually create those effects. Cinema 4D can create or render just about anything, but the animation process will be a lot more time-consuming and manual.
Regardless of the app you use, this sort of cut-out animation derives most of its production value from the quality of the elements. Taking the time to scan in real paper images and other artifacts can give you more realistic texture and color, which is key to this style. In the end, it comes down to good design and layout skills first, with the particular app you use to do the animation coming in second.
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Howdy,
Sure, you can export stuff in your timeline. Just make a selection and choose Export Selection from the File menu. In the export dialog that appears, select ‘Import into project’ from the After Export popup.
There’s no particular reason you should be exporting an image sequence, though. You just need to make sure you export using a format that is high quality and supports an alpha channel. I would recommend a Quicktime (Animation codec) movie or TIFF or PNG image sequence.
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Howdy,
Motion works fine with Leopard, but you must properly install Leopard or it will break your Studio install.
Leopard offers three installation types:
- Upgrade: Doesn’t mess up the Studio, leaves everything in place.
- Archive & Install: This will break Motion, because this installation type doesn’t copy over all the required frameworks.
- Erase & Install: This gives you a squeaky-clean system, but you’ll need to reinstall everything, including backing up and restoring user data.
Again, the main things is to not do an Archive & Install, as it is guaranteed to break your Studio install, and you’ll end up having to do a wipe.
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Howdy Collin,
Here’s an example of a 3D emitter sandwiched between two video clips, first in Local 3D and then set to Global 3D:
As I mentioned before, there can be certain conditions in a project that will force an emitter