[Graham Macfarlane]

Thank you, Walter.

It’s great that these tools exist and hats off to Mekajiki and Autokroma for creating them.
The free trial for “AfterCodecs” is very generous too, unfortunately I normally need to run off H.264 previews at 1080p so that’s a non starter.

I can’t help but think that, when upgrading to CC 2018, we shouldn’t need more commercial tools to get back lost functionality.
Even though rendering H.264 via AE is inferior compared to ME, it’s still good enough for quick tests that need to be generated fast. Adobe ditching it in AE seems harsh.
Perhaps too many people were trying to use H.264 via AE as a final output, and Adobe wanted to put an end to it?! ☺

As far as a DIY H.264 method goes, guess I’ll just render out DnxHR or similar via instances of aerender.exe and convert these to H.264 in ME.
The proper work flow!

For situations with many “quick to render” comps there may not be a time saving though.
If the H.264 conversion (which must be done 1 video at a time) renders in a similar time to the AE comp then I might as well just send directly to ME instead.

Let’s hope Adobe get ME multi-threading, or ME multi-instance operational soon then all of this will be a moot point!!

Graham Macfarlane
3D | post production
http://www.elyarch.com

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Vid,

There is one small dark spot on the sun disk (top left) which would help early on in the track. Have you tried increasing the contrast to see if there are some other revealed details you could track?

If that doesn’t work it might be worth trying to use the dark spot top left as much as possible, and once it is occluded, start using the sharp intersection point that is created at the top left of the sun disk where the moon overlaps.

This intersection point does not represent a true tracking feature and normally you would never use it as its result will be a movement around the edge of the sun disk. Also note that when the moon gets close to covering the whole sun you may lose the track and have to go full manual until you can pick up the next sharp corner as the moon leaves the sun disk.

If you have no other option though, it will at least give you a smooth motion which you could then counter with manual keyframes (hopefully less than one per frame!!) to keep the sun position locked.

Tip: if you do go this route, when countering the movement, use a null aligned to that sharp corner you tracked. Animate the start and finish positions and then arrange your Bezier handles in the viewport to align the path visually along the edge of the sun disk. This should help create a nice circular path more quickly.
This will give you a null that follows your track which you can then negate with a second null. Just pick-whip the positions and negate with a *-1 at the end of the expression generated on the second null.

Hope that helps!

Graham Macfarlane
3D | VFX
http://www.elyarch.com

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Luke,

Try precomposing your 70 animated layers, then in the time line right click the precomp and chose time>enable time remapping

The remapping keys should allow you to control the playback timing of the 70 layers.

Graham Macfarlane
3D | VFX
http://www.elyarch.com

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Claude,

I never found a satisfactory solution to this in the end.
The Reactor plugin in 3D studio Max was rather unstable simulating a large castle wall and quite slow.
In recent years reactor has been replaced with the MassFX tool set. This would certainly do a better, faster job, but doesn’t correlate to the tools you’re are using.

I think your best bet would be to use Element 3D along with some crumble tutorials on YouTube and then mask the ground impact of the debris with dust plumes. If required add in heaps of rubble which can fade in under the dust that are revealed as it clears.

Hope that helps!

Graham Macfarlane
3D | VFX
http://www.elyarch.com

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Rob,

Seems to me that there are a few different things going on here. Stretching, offsetting, and general noisy blocks of pixels.

I would look into using Video Copilot’s Twitch and possibly use it to drive the timing of a variety of displacement and directional blur effects on an adjustment layer(s).
The displacement effect can be displaced by precomped subtle fractal noises (perhaps set to subscale, block, with low contrast)
The adjustment layer can be masked either by hand or with a combination of keyed footage layers to get some quick and interesting alphas.

I’m sure if you played around with these elements you could drum up something similar.

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Assuming your displacement map is a black and white gradient and your displacement effect is set to luminance or lightness:

The displacement effect will offset your cartoon face in one direction where the displacement map is above 127 Grey and the other direction where the map is below 127 grey.
Where the map is exactly 127 grey, you should get no displacement at all.

If you need the apparent pivot of your character to be where the neck is, then the neck is essentially not going to displace, so try to make the displacement map hit around 127 grey in the neck area.
Rather than painting this in Photoshop, you should be able to apply the levels effect to your displacement map to shift its brightness.

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Ben,

Try adding a levels effect to your displacement map (you will need to precomp the map first).
This should allow you to adjust the depth and range of the map’s effect on the displacement.

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Oliver,

You could hand write your titles with something that creates a thick scratched look, with good contrast and then photograph it.
On white paper a black pen with multiple strokes on each letter or perhaps some charcoal might work well.
Then you just need to invert the photographs to get the white on black look and add a little glitchy flickering with Video Copilot’s twitch effect.

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Julian,

You need to Precompose your timelapse video layer:
Go to Layer menu > Pre-compose,
then choose “Move all attributes into the new composition”, then click ok.

This will take your video layer (including any attributes applied to it such as masks or effects), put it inside a new composition, and then swap your original video layer with this new composition.
The result is that all your attributes are now being calculated inside that new comp, so that from outside of it, it will appear and function like a simple layer with no attributes. The Warp stabilizer effect can then be applied to this new comp.

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Have you tried a garbage matte, and then possibly some green or blue keying to remove trees/sky?

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK