Jon Geddes
Forum Replies Created
-
There is a creative cow tutorial that does exactly what you want:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/larsen_carl/cube_world4.php
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
Well there are several ways to go about doing it. You can create the button highlights in photoshop by selecting the blank menu in encore, then go to ‘Edit > Edit Menu in Photoshop’. This will launch photoshop and you can create the button highlight by following the directions in the help documentation.
You will need to create a Layer Group and name it with a (+) prefix. You then create a new layer and give it a (=1) prefix. On this layer you can create the highlight graphic (can only be 1 color, and no feathering).
Another option is to create a menu using the templates in Encore, then while selecting the menu, go to ‘Menu > Create After Effects Composition’. Once it creates the composition, you can modify it and animate it as you like.
Much of this information is found in the help documentation and tutorials are provided on adobe’s website.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
Ok, so if you want there to be a 5 second intro to your menu, and you aren’t animating back and forth between other submenus, then you would create a 15 second composition in after effects.
The first 5 seconds would be the animation into the menu (such as the text for your buttons moving in, etc.). Then you have the 10 second loop after that. Once you export this, bring it into encore (or use the dynamic link) and set it as the motion background of a blank menu. Set the “Loop Point” of the menu to the 5 second mark. This will cause the button highlights to not appear until after the 5 second intro animation of the menu, and it will also be the point to which the menu loops back to after it reaches the end.
Make sure you create some button highlights for those buttons using photoshop or encore.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
This is a known problem with the preview function of encore. It will not occur on the final build of the disc.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
I believe CS3 will transcode your blu-ray motion menus to MPEG2 regardless of which format you specify (if I recall correctly). CS4 will create h264 menus while in H264 authoring mode, however it will most likely spit out an error message during the build process.
You should specify MPEG2 as the authoring mode regardless of what you want your video to be. You can then set the transcode settings of your main video to H.264 for better quality. If you have already created the h264 file using the CompressHD in Premiere, just import that into Encore and it won’t need any transcoding (even if your authoring mode is MPEG2). Encore does support burning h264 to blu-ray and it works well (I’ve done it many times).
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
My brother was actually one of the compositors on those movies. It was done in After Effects using motion tracking of the thumb, and applying the tracking data to still footage of the mouth talking. Masks were used on the mouth to blend the footage into the thumb. There might have been more steps involved for many of the scenes but I’d have to ask him to find out.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
It is well known that the downscaling algorithms used by Adobe and Apple software are extremely poor. I’m not as familiar with solutions on macs, but for pc’s there are additional programs you can download (for free) that do extremely high quality downscaling. There might be a program for the mac that will do this, but I’m not aware of it.
With the Adobe products, a way of achieving slightly better downscaling results is to bring your HD video into an SD sequence/timeline, and just scale it down, then export as an SD video. You can then transcode this SD file into mpeg2 with better results. This method may also work with fcp.
I will let other mac experts chime in with possibly better ideas as I am interested in hearing what they have to say.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
Not just instability (which I haven’t really had an issue with), but more importantly, inaccuracy. OpenGL mode often times doesn’t render colors properly.
Every time my comps have gotten really complex and I think to myself that maybe it would render faster if in OpenGL mode, I try enabling it and some of the colors change, particularly in the bright white areas like bright lens flares will turn yellow or something. I would advise against using it.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
I use the Lacie D2 Blu-ray external burner. It supports dual-layer blu-ray burning, connects via Firewire or USB, and is compatible with Mac and PC. I purchased mine from B&H but you might be able to find it cheaper elsewhere.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com -
If the animation is from Maya, I would think generating the shadows in Maya would look much more natural. Just a thought.
Jon Geddes
Motion Graphics Designer
http://www.precomposed.com