[Erik Waluska]

As I’m sure you know, Invigorator isn’t a modeling application, but you might be able to find a hat model for free or for cheap on turbosquid.com or elsewhere on the web. You’ll probably need to find an .obj format model depending on what Invigorator is capable of importing.

Texturing the hat would be another issue that would likely be difficult in Invigorator, unless you just need basic colors and not a fully detailed fabric or something.

Your best bet, as Trevor mentioned, would be to go with a full featured 3D app. But most of them have a pretty steep learning curve, so it wouldn’t hurt to search for a free hat model and give it a try with Invigorator first.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

For the sections where the characters appear to be separated from the background giving the appearance of a 3D scene you have to cut the characters out by rotoscoping or other means, then put them on separate layers and either scale or move them in 3D.

[Erik Waluska]

Check to be sure that you have “Use high-quality video setting when available” checked in the Quicktime Preferences:

[Erik Waluska]

Joe, The reason only one end of my example is blurred is because that’s the end that’s farthest away from the camera. The distance of the objects in the scene is what determines how blurred they will appear based on the information in your depth pass.

If the 3D Text was facing the camera straight on and it was centered in the frame and there were other objects in the scene behind the text at various distances then the text would be in focus and all of the objects behind the text would be blurred according to how far away they are from the camera. Make sense?

Let me know how it goes.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Hey Tim,
I would probably put the original color video on top and rotoscope the areas that you want to show in color. Then either animate the masks to reveal the color in your actor as he/she drinks, and/or use something like an ink effect video clip as a track matte for your color layer in conjunction with your animated masks to give it more of an organic liquid effect.

You can find paint and ink effects at stock footage sites, etc. but here is Andrew Kramer’s awesome “Riot Gear” DVD with lots of ink and paint effects:
https://www.videocopilot.net/products/riotgear/

Here’s a really good training DVD on rotoscoping by Pete O’Connell, which I own and highly recommend: https://store.creativecow.net/p/74/advanced_rotoscoping_techniques_for_adobe_after_effects

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Compound blur renders much faster than Lens Blur.

Most of the time, unless you have a very large scene with lots of distance between the foreground and background objects, your z depth pass will not have much contrast and will probably look mostly white or grayish.

This doesn’t give the blur effect much to work with so when you crank up the blur level it just appears to blur everything.

One way to get the exaggerated DOF you are looking for is to apply a Levels adjustment to the z depth map layer to increase the contrast between the light and dark areas. Then pre-comp the layer and select “move all attributes”.

Now select the z depth pre-comp as your Blur Layer in the Compound Blur effect and turn up the blur level (you may need to check Invert Blur).

Hope that helps.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

You could create solid versions of your objects in photoshop (try using the paint bucket to fill in the outlined shapes) then use those solid shapes as track mattes for the other object(s).

[Erik Waluska]

Abby, I thought I might have that book but I don’t. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you but since this is a Meyers book, you could contact them directly through their website “cybermotion”. Here is the link to their training page. Click on “Contact” on the left and you can send them an email:

https://www.cybmotion.com/training/books.html

-E

[Erik Waluska]

It depends on what type of animation you have in mind. But if you just want the stars to explode outward from a center point then you could draw the stars with the streak in photoshop or illustrator. Then import them into after effects and in your comp move the anchor point for each star layer to the beginning of the trail (the end opposite the star shape). Then just animate the scale and they will appear to be flying outward from the center.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Hi Anita,
When you collapse transformations on your nested comp it becomes part of the 3D space of the main comp and uses the lights and shadows from the main comp.

If you do not have collapse transformations turned on, then the nested comp will just appear as a flat 2D layer in your main comp and will use its own lights, shadows and 3D space.

2D layers (including nested 3D comps without the collapse transformations switch on) act as a divider when placed between 3D layers, so the 3D layers above and below a 2D layer will not share the same 3D space.

Also, aside from turning on Cast Shadows in the layers you must also turn on Accepts Shadows on the layers you want the shadows to appear.

Hope that helps.

-E