[Graham Quince]

Have you considered keying out the individual colours you want to keep. Then using that layer as an inverted track matte on a copy of your original footage before apply hue/saturation. If you do this for each colour you should be able to build up a uv look.

Alternatively, have you tried colorama or shine to achieve the UV feel?

Graham

https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

I guess the campaign starts here then 🙂

[Graham Quince]

Thanks for the sensible answer to my over-the-top rant, I just think it’s a good practice issue.

The reason we switch manually is that we use a PS2 for DVDs and many of the digital TV channels in the UK still broadcast only in 4:3. Heroes was first shown on Sci-Fi UK, and they are 4:3 only. A near criminal act if you ask me.

We’ve had two widescreen TVs and both struggled on certain channels to display 4:3 signals properly when the digi-box was set up for 16:9. The fact it isn’t every channel suggests to me a lack of common standard more than anything.

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Have you considered trying to do this practically? Get some black card/painted wood and milk. You’d probably be able to do a number of takes even with the card and would end up with a natural luma matte. ALternatively, black background and well lit water and use an animated mask, that way you’d be able to keep the reflections of the water.

Just a thought

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Have you just installed AE? I made the mistake of not noticing the default language is set to Japanese. The only workaround I could find was to uninstall it then reinstall properly. Even now it looks like some of the Adobe Bridge functions are still in Japanese.

Looking back through, there was a little yellow insert card talking about checking the install language, but seeing as I’d already chosen the english option for the installer I wasn’t looking. I’m not bitter, just midly peeved. 🙂

Graham

[Graham Quince]

I remember at the time the first movie came out, an interview with the FX guys talking about wanting the eye blast to look like a jet of water. I’d ake a look at Particle Illusion (or the After Effects particles system at a pinch) and try to simulate the movement that way. Once there, you just need to figure out the colouring, shape and transfer mode.

Hope the helps

Graham

[Graham Quince]

You could create an image map for CC Sphere which matches the hexagonal look. Once you have your sphere you’d have to mask out the section which passes through the ground.

Whatever’s inside would need to hide the back of the sphere, so you might want to cut your subject out and have them and the sphere in 3D. Alternatively, you could make the backhalf of the sphere texture transparent, so you only see the shield which faces the camera.

You have to play around with displacement mapping, but you could probably get away with a simple spherical one behind the shield texture.

hope that helps

Graham

[Graham Quince]

It sound like the sort of thing Particular/particle illusion could do. I don’t have Particular so can’t say for definite, and I’m not sure if PI can do this.

Failing that, if you can get stock footage of bacterial growth then use it as a matte?

Or make a pre-comp of one bacteria splitting into two, then use Particle Playground or expressions to multiply it up. Or you could simply manually build dozens of pre-comps into the correct shape.

I don’t have CS3 (yet – although finally persuaded the higher ups to order it on Friday – yay!) so can’t say for certain there’s not something there you can use.

Graham

[Graham Quince]

I’ve used CC Ball action in the past to create DNA molecules. And I’ve had different colours for each ball by setting up a grid from photoshop and then matching the grid size to the Ball Action parameters. You might be able to achieve the same with videos in a grid pre-comp

Graham

[Graham Quince]

Hi Heather

I think I understand – you have a rendered animation and want video to appear within it. You’ve already cut a mask and dropped the video behind the animation, but the mask is circular and there’s a part of the animation you want visible in front of the video.

You could either:

– add a second mask using the pen tool and draw around the animation element, set the mask to intersect (i think)

– or if there’s a lot of movement, duplicate the background layer, reverse the mask and then use a key or some description to isolate the element you want to keep

Hope that helps

Graham