[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

[Greg Neumayer]

In general, when I’ve needed to convert day to night, I make sure I don’t shoot anything with strong lighting. Most night light is reflected light.
One of the most convincing things has been the color of the light. Usually night light, although less intense, also has more blue in it, less yellow and orange like daytime.
Contrast is also affected. I lower the contrast, as most light in a night scene is reflected and shadows don’t have a whole lot less light than foreground objects.
I also reduce saturation. Look around you at night. Except for colored lights, most things look very de-saturated, and practically black and white. This happens to be an effect of our eyes, where our color-gathering cones can’t hack the low-levels, so our black-and-white gathering rods gather most of the info.

Hope it helps.
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

I think you’ve got it. Here are some ideas to keep the creative juices flowing:
–try turning on your motion blur to see if you like getting a little bit of blur when they move.
–try going into your graph editor and making your curve more extreme. Maybe you even ease into the transition, and then slow waaaay down as you end.
–What if your second image actually starts early, slightly obscuring the first? might be cool
–What if you do something with color treating the imagery while it moves, as if it warms up a bit moving. Maybe a bit of glow or something.
–What if the second image just comes on and doesn’t even stop, revealing a third image which is the one you really want?
–Maybe they don’t follow each other left to right. Maybe they’re random. maybe center outward.
–We see a bit of your black background as they slide. What if that background was a color, or another image? Or a cool wallpaper pattern?

Here’s a bit of a similar one I’m doing. It’s quick, but it’s the same idea as the wood floor comes in:
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com/clients/ae/

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

I think you’ve got it. Here are some ideas to keep the creative juices flowing:
–try turning on your motion blur to see if you like getting a little bit of blur when they move.
–try going into your graph editor and making your curve more extreme. Maybe you even ease into the transition, and then slow waaaay down as you end.
–What if your second image actually starts early, slightly obscuring the first? might be cool
–What if you do something with color treating the imagery while it moves, as if it warms up a bit moving. Maybe a bit of glow or something.
–What if the second image just comes on and doesn’t even stop, revealing a third image which is the one you really want?
–Maybe they don’t follow each other left to right. Maybe they’re random. maybe center outward.
–We see a bit of your black background as they slide. What if that background was a color, or another image? Or a cool wallpaper pattern?

Here’s a bit of a similar one I’m doing. It’s quick, but it’s the same idea as the wood floor comes in:
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com/clients/ae/

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

CoverBee, if you want to keep your effect, try changing your premultiply color from black to white. You’re probably not liking your effect because AE is adding black to your edges. In premultiply mode, AE has to add SOME color to the semi-transparent edges. It defaults to black, but you can change it. Depending on what it’s going on top of, this may not fix the problem completely. But hey, that’s why they invented the straight alpha.
-Greg.

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Try playing with Effects–Color Correction–Colorama. You can toggle off the default “interpolate colors” to create posterized effects if you like, although I prefer to just add markers close together so I get nice hard colors with anti-aliasing. I do almost all my stylizing with Colorama because it lets you specify the opacity on a per-color basis, or what other effects call “blend with original”.

If I were stranded on a desert island with only two plug-ins,
it’d be Colorama and Fractal Noise.

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Thanks, Dave.
I just finished installing Flip4Mac’s trial version, but I can’t for the life of me distill wether or not it supports an alpha. I tried exporting a 32bit qt to wmv in standard settings, but AE won’t even import it, and I didn’t see any settings that suggest it has an alpha channel. This seems surprisingly difficult to simply get a wmv or avi with an alpha to my PC-based client. Any clues? I’m just trying to create a simple lower third for them.

Alas, it’s always the “quick little request” that kills ya. 🙂

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

I’m not real sure what you’re asking, but here’s how I’d do it:
0. Nothing needs to be in 3d, or use any cameras or lights.
1. Make a comp, I’ll call it “movementComp”. Import your footage, duplicate it 5 times, and create or import your masks so that you have your 5 strips all there, assembling one complete comp.
2. Put a keyframe for each position at 0:00. This is your start point.
3. Move to 1:00 on your timeline, or wherever you want to have the comp slice off screen. Subtract 486 from the y position value, so the hint below works out perfectly. (if your pos was (360×243) it now becomes (360, -243 ) AE should automatically make a keyframe there for you, and your slice should be sitting just off the top of the screen.
4. Right click on the second keyframe (at 1:00) and choose “ease in”. This will make it ease to a stop.
5. Test your movie. You should have one slice that glides off the top of the screen over 1 second.
6. Copy the two keyframes, put your time marker at 0:00, select all the other slices, and paste. The exact keyframes should show up in all the slices. Now, the whole comp should slide off the screen as if it were one unit.
7. Grab the two keyframes in slice #2 and move them forward in time, maybe 2 to 5 frames. Now, slice #2 should lag behind the rest of the slices. Do the same for the rest of the slices, making them delay however much you want. Be sure to move both keyframes together if you want all the slices to be delayed but still move at the same speed as the others.
8. You should now have a comp that slides off the screen in slices. Repeat this process with slices of the new footage to create the oncoming images…

Hint: To keep everything exact, and make it easy, here’s a good way to modify your oncoming footage:
9. Duplicate your original 5 slices. Select your 5 duped source slices and option-drag your new footage onto your 5 new slices. (on a mac). This should replace your new slices with your incoming source. Lock your 5 original slices so you don’t accidentally grab them.
11. Adjust the y value of the anchor point of your new slices so that the image starts off screen. (Subtract 486 from the y value of your anchor point, so if your anchor was (360,243) it now becomes (360,-243).) The reason I’d do it this way is so that you don’t have to mess with your keyframes. This should put your new slices off the bottom of the comp.
12. If all went well (and I told you correctly), you should have 5 slices that slide off the top of the screen, and 5 that slide from the bottom up.

Let me know if it works, or better, post a sample we can see!
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

I’m not real sure what you’re asking, but here’s how I’d do it:
0. Nothing needs to be in 3d, or use any cameras or lights.
1. Make a comp, I’ll call it “movementComp”. Import your footage, duplicate it 5 times, and create or import your masks so that you have your 5 strips all there, assembling one complete comp.
2. Put a keyframe for each position at 0:00. This is your start point.
3. Move to 1:00 on your timeline, or wherever you want to have the comp slice off screen. Subtract 486 from the y position value, so the hint below works out perfectly. (if your pos was (360×243) it now becomes (360, -243 ) AE should automatically make a keyframe there for you, and your slice should be sitting just off the top of the screen.
4. Right click on the second keyframe (at 1:00) and choose “ease in”. This will make it ease to a stop.
5. Test your movie. You should have one slice that glides off the top of the screen over 1 second.
6. Copy the two keyframes, put your time marker at 0:00, select all the other slices, and paste. The exact keyframes should show up in all the slices. Now, the whole comp should slide off the screen as if it were one unit.
7. Grab the two keyframes in slice #2 and move them forward in time, maybe 2 to 5 frames. Now, slice #2 should lag behind the rest of the slices. Do the same for the rest of the slices, making them delay however much you want. Be sure to move both keyframes together if you want all the slices to be delayed but still move at the same speed as the others.
8. You should now have a comp that slides off the screen in slices. Repeat this process with slices of the new footage to create the oncoming images…

Hint: To keep everything exact, and make it easy, here’s a good way to modify your oncoming footage:
9. Duplicate your original 5 slices. Select your 5 duped source slices and option-drag your new footage onto your 5 new slices. (on a mac). This should replace your new slices with your incoming source. Lock your 5 original slices so you don’t accidentally grab them.
11. Adjust the y value of the anchor point of your new slices so that the image starts off screen. (Subtract 486 from the y value of your anchor point, so if your anchor was (360,243) it now becomes (360,-243).) The reason I’d do it this way is so that you don’t have to mess with your keyframes. This should put your new slices off the bottom of the comp.
12. If all went well (and I told you correctly), you should have 5 slices that slide off the top of the screen, and 5 that slide from the bottom up.

Let me know if it works, or better, post a sample we can see!
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Greg Neumayer]

I’ve had good results by simply extending the mask as earlier suggested. Don’t modify your mask. Let them be dead-on perfect, but then in your mask settings, add maybe .5 pixel to the “mask extension” and see if that cleans up your edges without adding any visual overlapping when viewed.
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com