[Joseph W. bourke]

Welcome our pasture!

It’s always good to have another method/opinion/idea in the mix.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Abie –

One of the most important things you can know about 3D lighting is to make sure you turn “falloff” on for all of your lights. I’m pretty sure that should be available in Maya. In 3D Studio, there are a couple of choices for falloff. What it does, in a nutshell, is to make the light behave the way lighting does in the real world. Your models will no longer have the flat looking lighting that they generally have with straight lights, and the overall effect is much more subtle. Another thing you can do is with shiny objects, to have lights that are there purely to create specular highlights on the objects – in other words you turn OFF the ambient part of the light. This then allows you to animate the lights, and control the movement of highlights without messing up your ambient light setup (which might well be 3-point lighting).

And don’t worry about getting too old – I’ve been working in broadcast graphics and 3D for over 15 years, and I’ll be 60 next year. You’re never too old to learn something new.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

I am a 3D Studio Max Version 8 user – I’ve been working with Max and various other 3D packages (including Invigorator – although it’s not quite 3D) for about the last ten years. I find that getting 3D to look “real” involves studying what the real stuff looks like. I’ve spent a lot of time on Neil Blevins’ site:

https://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/cg_education.htm

What he’s teaching is Max oriented, but the shaders and renderers can pretty much do the same thing in any package. In my use of Invigorator, I find that the most important part of making it look right is never using the reflection maps that come with the package. I’m Art Director at a broadcast TV station, and most of what I do is special opens, full graphics packages for our News, and other elements for Promotions and a daily magazine-format half-hour News show. If you can get the texture-mapping and lighting nailed, you will find that everything else will be kicked up a couple of notches in production values. Look at what looks the best on the air – most of the time you won’t find much more than a slow camera tilt, or a “mother ship” flyover. There’s not much time to get to the hero shot, so you have to put everything into the model, be it text, logo, or a construct of some sort.

I would say spend a couple of weeks with Neil Blevins, and become a student of reality – your lighting, materials, and reflection maps will thank you for it.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Jason –

This looks to be one of the basic text animation presets within After Effects, with a soft drop shadow applied to it. I think the preset is under Animation Presets/Text/Animate In, and then it’s something like “Decode” for the name of the preset.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Peter –

Are you sure that it is a corrupted image that is causing the problem? Single image sequences are one of the most bullet-proof ways to get an animation into AE. Is it possible that your memory settings are causing the crash?

There is a “secret setting” in AE’s preferences which allows you to purge memory after a certain number of frames. When you’re in AE, hold down the SHIFT key and select Preferences. You will see a new menu that allows you to purge memory after “x” frames. I set mine to every 5 frames, and haven’t had a crash since.

Another thing to check is the size of the actual .png files. Are they 720 x 480 or another video standard size? If not, the conversion in AE may be hogging memory as well. You could do a batch size in Photoshop and run it on the folder that holds your .png files.

If it really is corrupt frames, just what you have been doing is the correct process. You will have to isolate which frames are causing the problem, then have your client (maybe ex-client after this nightmare!) re-output them. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Peter –

Are you sure that it is a corrupted image that is causing the problem? Single image sequences are one of the most bullet-proof ways to get an animation into AE. Is it possible that your memory settings are causing the crash?

There is a “secret setting” in AE’s preferences which allows you to purge memory after a certain number of frames. When you’re in AE, hold down the SHIFT key and select Preferences. You will see a new menu that allows you to purge memory after “x” frames. I set mine to every 5 frames, and haven’t had a crash since.

Another thing to check is the size of the actual .png files. Are they 720 x 480 or another video standard size? If not, the conversion in AE may be hogging memory as well. You could do a batch size in Photoshop and run it on the folder that holds your .png files.

If neither of these is the culprit, check here:

https://generalspecialist.com/2007/02/troubleshooting-after-effects-7.asp

If it really is corrupt frames, just what you have been doing is the correct process. You will have to isolate which frames are causing the problem, then have your client (maybe ex-client after this nightmare!) re-output them. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

You would have to read over the feature set on the link I sent you -generally you can access the manual on the website. I know that I have an old version of a similar program (I think it’s called Landscape Pro or something like that) which allows me to scan in photographs, crop them in Photoshop, then place them within the scene. It’s not 3D, but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper. If you shoot various angles of your site, you can mock up a pretty good idea of what you’ll have.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Jerome –
While CAD and higher-end 3D applications will do the job, the learning curves on both are pretty steep. I suggest something cheap and easy:

https://www.individualsoftware.com/products/home_garden_design/total3d_home_landscape/

Total 3D Home Landscape will let you scan in photos, then place libraries of plants, trees, and even buildings, to give you a quick visualization of your plans. I believe it’s about 40 bucks. There are a couple of others that might do the trick – just do a Google search on “3D Landscape”.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Eric –

I would suggest you use Xmult, a free plugin that you can find here:

https://www.fandev.com/xmult.html

Apply your flare effect over black, the apply Xmult. It will create an alpha for you where the black was. Works like a charm. You may need to stack a couple of copies of the final flare to give you the intensity necessary to make the flare convincing. That’s why you normally would composite the flare with black in Additive mode. It adds the values of the brighter pixels, making the effect more convincing.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Ray –

I’m afraid I don’t have one, but there are some relative cheapies on Turbosquid:

https://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Index.cfm?FuseAction=ProcessSearch&intStartRow=1&istSearchKey=football+helmet&intMediaType=2

Obviously the quality varies with the price, but the two buck helmet is pretty good, as long as you keep it moving. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV