[Filip Vandueren]

I think the trick would be to ease the value of t.

Without any more complex coding (writing your own ease-function), you can only achieve an easy-ease though.
You can change the ease() function to easeIn or easeOut, but you can’t specify the strength of the ease in frames or percentage.

For Dan’s code that would be:


if (numKeys > 1){
v1 = key(1).value;
v2 = key(2).value;
t1 = key(1).time;
t2 = key(2).time;
if (time > t1 && time < t2){ t = time - t1; T = t2 - t1; k = Math.log(v2/v1)/T; easy_t=ease(t, 0, T, 0, T); v1*Math.exp(k*easy_t) }else{ value } }else{ value }

[Filip Vandueren]

I think the trick would be to ease the value of t.

Without any more complex coding (writing your own ease-function), you can only achieve an easy-ease though.
You can change the ease() function to easeIn or easeOut, but you can’t specify the strength of the ease in frames or percentage.

For Dan’s code that would be:


if (numKeys > 1){
v1 = key(1).value;
v2 = key(2).value;
t1 = key(1).time;
t2 = key(2).time;
if (time > t1 && time < t2){ t = time - t1; T = t2 - t1; k = Math.log(v2/v1)/T; easy_t=ease(t, 0, T, 0, T); v1*Math.exp(k*easy_t) }else{ value } }else{ value }

[Filip Vandueren]

[mcvideo] ” tried the first option with no luck.”

Can you describe what’s happening ?
No shadow on the floor? Does the object still look normal coloured, not black (or dark depending on the ambiance setting) ?

Make sure your Draft 3D button is off, otherwise you’ll see no shadows or shading at all.

Lux will not create any shadows, it needs to be applied to another layer on top of your comp and renders only the lightbeams and glows of your lights to make them visible.

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Justin,

it’s very nice of you to open up a ‘direct channel’ to you 😉

However, one of the cool things of keeping most of the advice and problemsolving _on_ the cow is that it will end up in the archive, where it can help everyone, generations to come etc. 😎

[Filip Vandueren]

Export it as a Quicktime (if there is no scripting to drive the animation),

you can use a higher resolution perhaps so you can still do some scaling.

Or do a frame by frame export still to illustratoer (yikes !), Maybe someone wrote a script or a plugin that can do that ? Well, I certainly hope someone did.
That way you can create a illustrator sequence, but I think not all flash effects and features will export perfectly.

Haven’t tested it though.

[Filip Vandueren]

[jason levy] “de-emphasizing products for the mac”

Yes and No:

True: you can’t buy the package because the other apps are no longer created for the mac,

But why aren’t they?

This is my view of the matter:

Apple bought Final Cut from macromedia when it was still in alpha in 1998, there was a PC version too.
Apple released FCP as mac only.
As a result “middle-end” Video production migrated to the G4 platform.

Adobe pulled Premiere off the mac because they felt the heat of Final Cut, and their market was shrinking untill they prob. couldn’t justify the cost of developing it.

Apple bought emagic, then scrapped Logic on the PC to get pro Audio users to migrate.

Apple created DVDSP, arguably the first comprehensive off-the-shelf app out there in which you could make full-featured DVDs, again wanting to be first on the market so as to get people to switch.

Adobe responded with encoreDVD, PC only.

Soundtrack Pro – Audition, kind of logical since they’re both kinda tied in to their respective video-editing cousins.

In my view, Adobe just had a sane business-model: if it’s too late to try and break the marketshare of their direct competitor in what up untill recently were not key-markets for Adobe, why waste more R&D dollars on it ?
Adobe needs to keep releasing Print-apps for the Mac, because that’s a substantial market for them: they can’t afoord to loose that.
Thank god the same is true for After Effects.
But Premiere ?

Aperture – Lightroom ?

So the way I see it, Apple still tries to beat Adobe by releasing new products first out of the gate, but with lightroom they’re a bit closer on Apple’s heels.

It’ll be interesting to see who wins that race 😉

[Filip Vandueren]

Short answer:

double the comp’s framerate, then animate the mask.

Long answer:

You’re animating the mask in 25 (or 30) fps but the footage is interlaced.
So you’re seeing only half of the motion that’s happening in the clip.

But, when you render to fields: all the interlaced motion is re-introduced in the clip: this is the normal way to work, because it saves you the head-ache of seeing all those damn interlace comb-y lines in the comp.

Now for the tricky part:

You’ve been animating your mask probably every Frame or so, but when you’re rendering to fields, there’s a step in time inbetween those two keyframes: the 2nd field. You defined no mask there, and since your mask keyframes don’t have “Hold Keyframe” toggled on: you’ll see an interpolated mask inbetween.

Your reflex to render out without frames solves this, but introduces what you called the film look: less definition in the motion, because of no interlacing.

how do you get the best of both worlds ?

Interpret the footage with the correct Field-order
Open up the comp settings and double the framerate. Do 50 for Pal, or 59,94 for NTSC, or 48 for Cinema you get the picture.
Now check you mask every frame, or at least inbetween those keyframes you allready created.
When you go to an even-numbered frame, you’ll actually see the second field.

When you render, switch the comp’s framerate back to normal, or override the framerate in the rendersettings, and enable fields.

[Filip Vandueren]

I Think Ice FX used to have a Stroke effect.

BTW, YikesMike that Vegas trick is super-handy.
I’ve never ever opened Vegas before.

Some more tricks to get it more Photoshoppy:

if you want the stroke to be “outside”: Double the width & set Rendering Blend-mode to Under.
if you want the stroke to be “inside”: Double the width, and add a CC Composite-effect set to “Stencil Alpha”

As a side note, Photoshop’s stroke does realy ugly stuff to semitransparant layers, so I don’t think anyone would want to replicate that behaviour.

[Filip Vandueren]

I Think Ice FX used to have a Stroke effect.

BTW, YikesMike that Vegas trick is super-handy.
I’ve never ever opened Vegas before.

Some more tricks to get it more Photoshoppy:

if you want the stroke to be “outside”: Double the width & set Rendering Blend-mode to Under.
if you want the stroke to be “inside”: Double the width, and add a CC Composite-effect set to “Stencil Alpha”

As a side note, Photoshop’s stroke does realy ugly stuff to semitransparant layers, so I don’t think anyone would want to replicate that behaviour.

[Filip Vandueren]

Maybe Zaxwerks Flag plugin can do it, not entirely sure though