[Greg Neumayer]

Thanks, Filip.
It sounds like you’re saying that if I’m just interested in the value of an expression or variable, I should just plug it into another expression slider and either monitor or further utilize the value there, yes?
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Just for the archives, here’s the actual place I’m going to be getting images. It’s great because I can specify a lat and lon and all the images will line up from that center point.

https://imageatlas.globexplorer.com/ImageAtlas/view.do?group=digitalglobe

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

That’s really creepy that you posted this question only about 4 hours after I posted mine. For me, the AE zoom ended up being the easy part. (the hard part is becoming coordinating the transition to the maya sequence). For the zoom, I’m just buying 3 images from digital globe of the same location, from different altitudes. Then, in AE, I just put them all in a comp, turn on their 3D, and stack them barely different on the z axis so that they are in the correct order. (i.e. don’t leave them all at 0.) I’ve scaled the top one (closest to the ground) to something like .05% (this happens to actually be a live footage plate, but could easily be an overhead shot of your client’s building) and the largest view to a gazillion percent. Then, I just took a camera and pulled back on the z axis (I’m pulling away in my shot). Viola. No need for fancy expressions.

oh, p.s. It sounds like it would be copyright infringement for you to use the Google images that way. I called them. Don’t loose professional cred or your shirt trying to play the “everybody’s doing it” game. You’ll need to go to their provider and buy them from them for $105 apiece. Try this url:
https://imageatlas.globexplorer.com/ImageAtlas/view.do?group=digitalglobe&lat=39.5276&lon=-97.142&zoom_level=1

Post a sample when done if you can.
-Greg Neumayer

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Thanks, Arson. There’s some good ideas there.

My most specific issue is with how to coordinate the transition between AE and Maya in a professional (i.e. systematic) way, without just resorting to tweaking until it looks correct. Any ideas?
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Could be lots of things, but start by choosing a new name, and a new location. You may be trying to write over a file name that’s in use, or a location that AE doesn’t have access to.

By now, you may have solved it. Please post your results (hopefully success) to this thread for the archive and the next panicked artist!

Regards,
-Greg Neumayer

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Try a shorter section of your work area. When you ram preview, it starts by mixing the audio, then moves on to the video. So, if it seems like it’s taking forever just to start evaluating the video, you may want to try a shorter work area.
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Hey, thanks for the kudos. I use Flash for my reel because:
1. flv format is now very good quality at a very small size (although mine is not yet because my site is currently v.7 compatible)
2. using flv in flash gives you access to all the control you need like duration, current time, errors, onComplete signals, etc. allowing you to add any controls you’d like based on the current status of the movie.
3. I don’t have to know or use HTML to try to get flash and quicktime to play together nicely. At best, using both, you have a “quicktime in a box” but with Flash, you can overlay art, use transparency, and even use the alpha channel of a mov file. In short, movies can now be source artwork in Flash, instead of “imported media”. I can do all my coding from within flash, then simply export the default built-in HTML shell when I publish from Flash. Web development is such a broad career in of itself, I like not having to learn more than one application/discipline to get a great web page or web app going.

Here’s a link to a qt version of the reel (albeit pretty compressed):
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com/antifreeze06reel.mov

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

It doesn’t look like AE will let you reload a comp or a folder, which is what you end up with when you load Illustrator layers as a comp. However, you can multiple-select all the items in a folder (if they’re valid source items, not folders or comps) and reload them. If that still doesn’t work, close your comp and re-open it. If THAT doesn’t work, you may be accidentally linked to a file you have since abandoned. Did you re-name your new artwork, but forget that you renamed it?

I don’t even have to re-load usually. AE becomes aware of changes I’ve made in Illustrator before I even get a chance to reload.

-Greg Neumayer

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Often if I have two projects that both need to render that night, I’ll create a third AE project and just import my other two into it. When you import an AE project, it brings everything, including the render queue, which makes it handy for creating a batch render of multiple projects.

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

(Anyone reading this: the reel is at https://www.antifreezedesign.com. Thoughts or improvements appreciated.)

Hey los,
Thanks for the props. Yeah, the shot across the courtyard into the painting (“Behold the Man”) was all done in Maya. I started by disassembling the painting and re-painting the backgrounds of everything that would show when the camera started to move, like the columns on the background building. That took a lot of photoshop work. Then, I set up my camera in the exact spot where everything lines up like the original painting. From there, I projected the images from the camera’s point of view on to some simple geometry. The people are all individual cards with the illustrator’s drawings projected on them. There are about 10 different characters duplicated to be about 300 people. After getting my official end point made, I pushed the camera back through the scene and flew it in reverse to get the flyover. Although there is volumetric dust in the maya scene, a lot of the extra lighting is done in AE with trapcode’s shine, and Knoll’s lens flare. The transition to the live-action shot is also composited in AE.

On wiggle, yeah, I add that in a lot of places. For the basketball shot I showed you, I added wiggle to a null layer, then added that wiggle amount to each of the text layers. You may notice that they all wiggle the same, but with decreasing intensity. After adding the null’s wiggle amount to my position, I multiplied the whole thing by .8, .6, and .4, respectively for each layer, to get the decreasing yet synchronized amounts. Gives it a fun “tugging in the wind” sort of look. If expressions are new to you, I can walk you through that.

My favorite use of expressions has probably been in the “Taco Mayo” commerical with the fake puppet theater look. I used it on almost everything to simulate objects on strings and propped up by sticks. Some of the text also uses Zaxworks’ Invigorator to get true depth.

For camera panning, and specific to the “Abstinence first” logo, there is no camera, which simplifies the whole process. It’s just a large comp that I slid around under the comp window.

The “greek temple” was built and rendered in Maya.

-Greg

p.s. go ahead and shoot me your IM, and I’ll send you mine. I’m often turned off unless I’m specifically trading images with someone, because I get sooooooo distracted by it!
greg@antifreezemotiongraphics.com

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com