Jonathan Pitzer
Forum Replies Created
-
Putting a light behind it and moving it would only work if AE made volumetric lighting which it does not. You could possibly simulate it with the LUX plugin but since you don’t have the shine plugin, you probably don’t have lux either. There are several ways to simulate it that aren’t wuite as nice as the plugin. Probably the best way would be to make a simulated shine layer in photoshop and then animate it in after effects. Also, depending on how you need it to look, playing with final effects>lightburst on a pre-comp may be suitable.
-
YES!! This is commonly called rotoscoping. Creative cow has a couple of pretty good tutorials on it. But basically, just create a mask the shape of the object and keyframe it every few frames. You will not need to do every frame unless the object moves very fast. (Also another hint) Mask at the satrt, and then mask at the end. Then go half way between the two and adjust the points. Keep going half way between previous keyframes and there will be a lot less movement of points to do than if you start at the begginning of the timeline and work down the line. Also, don’t put too many points if you can help it. It just makes it harder on you.
-
My guess is that it is the video card that does not have enough memory. I know that at the office, we have problems with that all of the time (especially when using photoshop files of more that 1000px x 1000px). However, when I go home and work on the project with a better video card, everything works with no problem.
-
Good question! I am not sure if it is possible to do this one or not. You may have to change the windows color schemes. If someone else knows of another way, I would love to hear it. I know that you can change the colors of the tracks in the timeline but I have never heard of changing the actual timeline color.
-
I am not 100% sure that I am visualizing what you are trying to do correctly but you may want to look into some plugins for this which sill avtually bend the rectangle in a 3d world. There are numerous ones for this. If not, it can be done by changing the shape of the mask but this may take a lot of manipulation.
-
This is super simple. You can either render a single frame of the file or you can go to composition>save frame as>photoshop layers
-
or while you are in the timeline, you can just type =622{enter} and that will move you 6 seconds and 22 frames without having to see the little window
-
After Effects is so powerful that once you learn it, will hate to even look at premiere. Also, learning after effects will help you if you ever need to learn flash and most other programs used for multimedia. Premirer Pro is O.K. for basic editing but for special effects and even many “basic” video features, AE is your best bet.
-
This can be done several ways in AE. Twixtor is one way but it is not the only way. If you use the Layer>Time stretch feature, you can do something similar to what you are doing in premiere. However, a much more powerful tool is the time remapping feature that is right above it in your tools. With this, you can import a clip, then have it play at various speeds within that same clip.
I used this on a shot of a motorola phone that was hanging on a fishing line spinning slowly. I used it to have the phone spin fast at the beginning, then slow down to a stop, and then start turning the other way. It was very effective and I saw no loss in quality.
If you continue to have blurriness, try importing the footage as a sequence instead of a quicktime. It is easier to remap this way I think.
-
THis used to be a very complicated process in the early days of AVID but these days it is very simple. All that you have to do is import it as if it were a JPEG or some other still file. The catch is that you have to make sure that your import settings are correct. You should set the Alpha to invert existing alpha. THis should fix your problem. Also, in photoshop, make sure that you save the file with transparency on the layer. I usually make sure that the file is only one layer and save it as a PSD file but I am not sure that this is necessary.