Gareth Randall
Forum Replies Created
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[John Nelson] “See, I’m just using 3d without a camera. So if I used one is it just a matter of flying the camera through all those images?”
Yes, exactly. You position all the various objects in 3D space, and then animate the camera rather than the objects (although you can of course animate the objects as well as the camera).
Animating a 3D camera can take a bit of getting used to, although Motion’s camera framing behaviours do help a lot. I can highly recommend the tutorial package Mastering Motion’s Camera by our very own Mark Spencer.
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[Mark Suszko] “I think it would be quicker than playing with replciators or emitters”
TBH, I’d have to say the opposite. Replicators with stencils would be by far the fastest way to achieve this effect. Yes, you could do it with an emitter, but that would be overkill given that the rigs just have to pop on and aren’t animated in any other way (AFAIK).
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I also suspect it’s going to be a long boring roto job, but if you lose the trees by covering them up with a layer of clean sky, it *might* just be possible to key the guy’s head back in over the top with a motion-tracked mask. I’d certainly give it a try.
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[Rob Davis] “Or, I might create several stencils that could be filled in one after the other to at least give it some chronological accuracy”
If a reasonable level of accuracy is important, then yes, that sounds like the best approach. Obviously you can specify the precise number of replicated objects, so you can be 100% accurate with the number of rigs.
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An alternative approach would be to use a replicator rather than a particle emitter. I think what I would probably do is start off slowly by plotting the first 10 or so rigs individually in specific, accurate places (so use 10 individual layers), and then, having established the idea, bring in the replicator to fill the screen rapidly and randomly.
If you do need the rigs to cluster in specific places, you could create a rough “cluster map” in Photoshop – just use a white brush on a black background to quickly draw in the areas where you need the rigs to appear, export it as a single frame with alpha channel, and then use it as a stencil for the replicator. It’s the same basic technique as is used in this tutorial to make a replicator build the word “PAIN”, but instead of using a Motion text object as the stencil you’d be using a Photoshop image with alpha channel.
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A starting point could be to draw a solid white rectangle shape that fills the space in the doorway, add a glow and/or light rays filter to it, and then start playing with the parameters, including the softness of the shape.
You might also find some useful ideas in this Light Wrap tutorial for Motion.
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AFAIK you can’t backlight with Motion’s built-in lights. You can position a light so that it is illuminating an object from behind, but you will only see that object if you move the camera to look at the part that is actually facing the light (i.e. the back of it). You won’t get any light spilling over the edges of the object to make it visible from the front.
Maybe the light rays filter or a volumetric light plugin would give you the effect you want?
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Two possible approaches to this:
Trim the match move behaviour so that it ends on the last good tracking frame, then manually keyframe the position of the object to move it completely off the screen.
If the content of your source shot is suitable, you can use the “offset track” function to give the impression of tracking something that’s out of frame. For example, you’re tracking a logo on the side of a bus which drives out of the shot. The part of the bus that has the logo on it disappears out of frame, but the back of the bus is still visible for a few more frames before it disappears as well, so at the point where the tracker loses the logo and gives up, you can select the “offset track” checkbox and pick a new tracking point on the part of the bus that is still visible.
The tracker will pick up where it left off, and you’ll get what looks like a continuous track on the logo even though it’s gone offscreen.
You can see a tutorial (by our own Stephen Smith) that involves using the offset track function here.
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You didn’t check the minimum system specs before installing, did you? 😉
Motion will not run on your MacBook because you have integrated Intel graphics. There’s no way around it.
Motion will run on all MacBook Pros from 2006 onwards, but it will only work on MacBooks made from January 2009 onwards (when Apple started using Nvidia GeForce graphics cards rather than integrated Intel graphics).
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Glad to help 🙂