[Graham Quince]

Sounds like you could do with a program to trigger a hair dryer, or perhaps, a fan heater. Or perhaps just a shunt to switch said fan heater to blow into the booth.

I’d go to your local university and suggest it to the electronics department as a project. The Electronics students in my dorm were always building this sort of thing.

As for synching it up to video, you’d probably be best looking at flash video. Make the movie in After effects, export it into Flash and use actions to trigger this other program (that the electronics students would have put together). It’ll still take some guess work for the timing, but all should be possible.

Alternatively, you could pay a kid to stand there all day and switch on the heater on cue 🙂

Actually, just found this: https://www.pontech.com/products/sv200/

It’s a PC controlled servo. So you could have your fan heater running, have Flash activate the program, which throws the switch, which redirects the air flow into the booth and then switches the air back.

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Hi

I think the best way to to prepare a custom gradient map in Photoshop. I presume you’re using shatter? In which case there is an option for creating custom pieces in the options:

Twirl down the shape option and change the pattern to custom. You’ll have to have dropped your jigsaw pieces into the comp (they can be turned off though) and choose the layer in the custom option.

Hope that makes sense, i’ve never done a jigsaw so can’t advise on how to actually created the custom image, (i think – a black background with white outlines)

Good luck

Graham

[Graham Quince]

A big chunk of Craig David’s stuff was done using actors holding frozen poses. For the other stuff, i think it was well set up bluescreen and some roto probably.

If your actors are always in the foreground, then shoot live, and shoot them after using bluescreen. If the shot you’re attempting is a still, the shoot the main actors live without anyone crossing in front, while in the background have other actors hold their poses. Once that shot is done, shoot other people moving around in.

Take the still of that foreground into Photoshop and cutout the objects, then drop them on top of your live footage.

Hope that helps

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Very nice tutorial. You have an excellent teaching mannor Aharon.

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Lo-tech? Wow, looks good.

Oh well, i’ve got Particle Illusion but must admit i’ve not been able to reproduce it. I’m not making a film or anything, but shows like Stargate are always giving me ideas to see if i can reproduce.

Thanks Aharon

[Graham Quince]

I did stretch the layer, but found that the time remap keyframes also extended. I’d be more than happy for the time-remapped layer to be the length of the comp, but unfortunately it falls short.

It’s just strange because 6.0 didn’t do this 🙁

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Could you use 3d layer to reproduce the Stargate gate effects, where a cg water splash opens the wormhole? Obviously the stargate crew used a high-end program, but i’d be curious to know if it could be reproduced

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Seeing as you’ve already shot the footage. Couldn’t you fake it?

Use the whole body without flipping it, so now you only have to worry about the face. Is the subject speaking? If not, if they’re holding their head still, could you use a still prepared in Photoshop of the perfect face which you then track onto the head of the subject??? If there’s an aspect change, then you could morph between a number of stills?????

From what you’re saying, it sounds like the effect you’re going for is to create a slightly disconcerting look:
“Something’s not right here but i can’t put my finger on it” – a bit like the PS2 launch ads where a girl was in a room with a slightly too big head.

Graham

[Graham Quince]

i presume you mean simulate a chat window in video right?

if that’s the case, it’s really very easy. Create a black solid, and use a square mask to set the size and position to the where you want it. Open up the layer opacity, the ‘t’ key and set it to 10% or whatever.

Now click on the test tool, and draw a box to match the size of your mask. you can now add type and the text will wrap itself within the confines of the text box.

Graham

[Graham Quince]

i presume you mean simulate a chat window in video right?

if that’s the case, it’s really very easy. Create a black solid, and use a square mask to set the size and position to the where you want it. Open up the layer opacity, the ‘t’ key and set it to 10% or whatever.

Now click on the test tool, and draw a box to match the size of your mask. you can now add type and the text will wrap itself within the confines of the text box.

Graham