[Gareth Randall]

Sorry Zak, you misunderstood. If you do that, then that object will not be affected by ANY lights at all. I want EVERY object to be affected by lights, but I also want specific objects to only be affected by specific lights.

To reiterate my example, I have a background that is lit with a green light and a foreground text layer that is lit with a white light. I do not want any of the white light to spill onto the background, because that will cause colour mixing and also may light sections of the background that I do not want to be lit. Is there any way of achieving this other than trial and error with the positioning of the lights?

[Gareth Randall]

Do you mean something like this?

Hinge swing demo

I did that in about three minutes using keyframes. The trick is to move the anchor point of the “lower” text layer to the top edge of the word, and then animate the X rotation. You could obviously spend much more time getting it looking more realistic, and you could use behaviours rather than keyframes too.

[Gareth Randall]

There are various ways of achieving the effect, it all depends on exactly what you want it to look like, and only you know that.

[Gareth Randall]

Assuming you’ve got the string and sign in the same group, you could try applying a Spring behaviour to the group, or an Oscillate parameter behaviour to the Y axis of the group. If you keyframe the speed of the oscillation you can achieve the effect of the bounce and settle.

[Gareth Randall]

I’m guessing that Robert is referring to something a bit like the ad for Adobe CS5 that you can see in the right-hand column of this forum (it’s the ad that starts with the words “EXT. DEEP SPACE” being written onto paper). Near the end some clouds drop in on strings.

[Gareth Randall]

Two possible approaches:

Create an animation of a colour solid transitioning into glitter and then apply the text to it as an image mask.

Create a solid-colour text layer, duplicate it and fill the duplicate with a glittery texture, then just transition from one to the other.

[Gareth Randall]

If you use the official installer, then no, you can’t install Motion separately. But a perfectly legitimate app like Pacifist can be used to do it.

I’ve used it myself to reinstall Motion on its own, and I’ve also used it to reinstall Mail after my daughter managed to delete it (Apple tells you to reinstall OS X from scratch if any OS X apps are deleted or corrupted).

All Pacifist does is allow you to inspect the contents of .pkg and .dmg files. Use it on the FCS install disc and you’ll see the separate install packages for all the individual apps. Ditto the OS X install disc; I just drilled down, found the specific installer for Mail, and had it reinstalled in a few minutes.

[Gareth Randall]

OK, here’s a basic run-through in Motion.

Import your image, and then press Apple-D to duplicate it:

Create a second group (I called it “Repair Matte”) and use the shape tool to draw two shapes over the dirt blobs:

Add an image mask to the duplicate of your image, and drag the Repair Matte group into the source well:

Select the “testframe copy” image and move it in either X or Y, just enough for the blobs to be covered up with adjacent picture information. I only needed to move it -24 pixels in X. Hey presto, blobbo disappearo:

Inevitably, with actual moving video you’ll probably have to tweak and refine and adjust feathering to get a truly invisible repair, and maybe keyframe the position of the “testframe copy” layer, but the basic procedure is the same. The dirt blobs obviously don’t move at all so you never have to touch the position of the image mask, but depending on the image content you may discover that you have to do separate passes on each blob because you can’t find a position for the “testframe copy” layer that works for both the blobs at the same time.

You can also achieve the same result in FCP, using a simple 3-layer luma travel matte and the built-in oval shape resized appropriately:

…but you’ll have much more precise control and flexibility in Motion.

Hope this helps 🙂

[Gareth Randall]

Without the red circles please 😉

[Gareth Randall]

There are several tutorials available that demonstrate how to create a video wall (which can just as easily be a wall of still frames).

Our very own Andy Neil has an excellent one on his Timesaver Tutorials site – check it out here:

Timesaver Tutorials