[Jeremy Fabiano]

Actually that should be rather easy.

First off – if you dont have a black and white picture, throw the tint effect on it to make it black and white. If it doesn’t matter (or its already B&W) then skip this step.

Next duplicate the layer.

Then select the upper of the two layers, and Scale it down a little (you’ll have to play with this till it looks the right size).

Then draw a diamond (or whatever) shaped mask around the scaled layer.

And finally move it to where it looks like it should be (also will have to play with it).

At this point you’re done, UNLESS!

1. you can feather the mask or leave it sharp edged.

2. You *COULD* put a glow effect on it, switch it to alpha and overlay on top, this will give the diamond shard a back glow.

These could make the shot look better..
Or ruin it completely hehehe

Stuff to play around with. I hope this helps!

Show us the final if it works out. 🙂

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Fabiano]

I’m in the same boat (camera wise).

I use a pair of early 1990’s VHS cameras. I chose these because of some of the settings I wanted to use plus they were CHEAP!! $20 for the pair + a 640×480 capable usb Video capture box.

While this works fine for screwing around and learning the program, it’s only slightly better than a camera phone.

The question comes down to this:

Do you need to do production work (as in get paid?) or are you just learning the program because you love compositing and effects (or perhaps want to mess around with your friends).

For production work, I’d get a serious camera. For hobby usage, I’d get something nice, but not overly expensive. I’ve been using my crappy cameras w/ afterfx for over a year and only now am I really concidering spending any money on one. This is mainly due to wanting to change it from a hobby to something I can do freelance work on.

Panasonic and Cannon have some nice cameras (I can’t give model #’s as I don’t remember). I’d go with something that has FIREWIRE (1392?) on it as well as the USB.

For myself I was looking at one camera that did DV tapes for video and digital for the pictures. It was about $1,200 but could be found online for $800-$1000. It’s a really nice camera but unfortunately I can’t remember who made it.

Good luck to ya, I know this doesn’t help too much but hopefully it’ll give you something to at least point you in the right direction.

[Jeremy Fabiano]

Are you motion tracking a video clip that was brought in and having track problems?

Or is this vortex made *IN* Ae?

If the second one, then you need to make a null object, parent the camera to it, (make the null 3d of course) then pickwhip the nulls positions to the vortex’s positions.

If its the first one, you’ll have to find motion tracking tutorials, there are several all over the cow that might be of help.

Good luck!

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Fabiano]

Time remapping as well as ‘echo effect’ were used extensively in that video.

I’m actually learning this myself as I want to do a fan-film with time remapping like in the movie “300”. I don’t know why but I think the work done during the fight scene at the end is just mind blowing.

Good luck, and if you figure out any tricks along the way make sure you post them as many of us I’m sure are after the same look.

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Fabiano]

Hmm.. looks to me like someone put a colored solid over top and switch the transfer mode to add? (maybe played w/ the opacity a bit?)

Other than that, PLUG IN wise, theres “Film Magic Pro” from videocopilot.net

https://www.videocopilot.net/products/fmp/

I don’t know of any others. (Sry I’m a bit of a noob 😛 ).

[Jeremy Fabiano]

Hmm.. Thinking about this a certain tutorial comes to mind.

Jerzy Drozda Jr. did a very nice tutorial on making a radar (that actually does things) but the techniques in it could be used to make an oscilloscope. It’s a very well put together tutorial and it was quite easy for me to complete when I was just learning afterfx.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/drozda_jerzy/Radar.php

Good luck!

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Fabiano]

It could be something w/ your media player codecs; When my quicktime was screwed up AE did the same thing to me when I tried to export .mov’s.

You could try reinstalling windows media player (and upgrading if you haven’t). Hope it helps.

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Fabiano]

I don’t know much about the conversion process, but as far as your ram/cpu setup, from what I’m aware, its 1 GB PER CPU. That means if you have 4 cores and 4 gigs, (with multiprocessing enabled) what’s left for the operating system?

I find myself in the same dilema… Core2Duo, 2 gigs of ram 🙁

I foresee an upgrade in the very near future.

For you I’m guessing you’re on a 32bit architecture, if you want to fully utilize your CPU’s max potential it might be in your best interest to go to 64bit. As for overclocking, CPU speed is awesome, just make sure you have adequate cooling or you’ll be shopping for CPUs as well as a new OS :S

Good luck, I hope this is of some help to you.

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Fabiano]

I’m not entirely sure exactly what you’re after, but you can link the lensflare position & centerpoint to the dot’s position & centerpoint.

Or you can set the flares position somewhere (center perhaps?) and have the centerpoint follow the dot..

I hope this helps, if not, post more details and we’ll try to help.

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Fabiano]

take a normal distance shot.
and a closeup of the eye.

use the pan-behind tool, set it to the desired eye.

zoom about half way and fade out the opacity as you transition to the closeup. then cut straight to the next clip (or do a tiny 5-15 sec fade).

Sorry if it’s confusing.. lack of sleep and no Mt. Dew 😀
Hope it helps.

-Jeremy