[Joseph W. bourke]

I’m sure AE is up to the challenge; its’ masking has improved over the last few revs, but I would jump to Combustion in a second when presented with this type of project. Maybe you can get them to shell out for a seat of Combustion 4. While it’s different enough from AE, you’ll get an “aha” moment when it all sinks in, and the masking is much better than After Effects, being based on the Inferno feature set.

If you have to use AE, I would start immediately logging the best shots in which there is high contrast between the player and the background. Also plan to use the best, shortest shots that tell your story. If you happened to watch the recent NBA playoffs, you would have seen a HUGE rotoscoping project, with footage going back to the fifties. No green screen here, but notice that none of the dozens of shots in the open is much more than a second long, other than the few “hero” shots which tie it all together. There’s one long Michael Jordan shot in there that must have been a nightmare to rotoscope.

The key is to pick your cleanest point in the clip, start your mask there, and then work backwards and forwards, making your first several masks rough, and working towards a final, frame by frame tweak. It’s not fun, but it’s a learning experience; and take care of your wrists and hands – heavy roto work will give you tennis elbow and carpal tunnel if you’re not careful. Good luck.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

The tutorial looks pretty straightforward to me, but you do have to have the Forge Freeform plugin to achieve it Ayato’s way. A simpler way, but not as good looking, is to simply use a Fractal Noise map in which the phase is moving from left to right (the way wind ripples do in a real flag). Play around with the settings, and then apply the rendered noise file as a bump map in AE. The best way to do it, in my opinion, is to do it in 3D Studio Max using a cloth modifier and wind. There’s also a Zaxwerks plugin called 3D Flag for $129. that does the work for you:

https://zaxwerks.com/3dflag/index.shtml

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Ray –
Scott is right – while it is one of your “basic” transitions, the element used for the “flash” part can make a huge difference. You generally want the color and luminance levels of the flash to be quite a bit brighter than the underlying cuts. You can put the flash layer in Additive mode, so that the overlaying pixels add their values to the underlying video, enhancing the glow of the effect, and hiding the cut better.

If I were to guess, the clip you were referring to is using a piece of classic film “noise” as the overlay. It looks like the effect you would get when shooting 8mm color film just after the leader, or between shots. It’s that noisy, overexposed look that makes for a great transition. Actually, I do believe that it’s FC127 clip on the Artbeats Film Clutter reel. If you go to:

https://www.artbeats.com/collections/160?page=3

You can judge for yourself. These are pretty easy to make from scratch using some of AE’s Noise settings and the Tint plugin, with the addition of a little glow. Noise is a very deep-featured module, and if you spend a couple of hours playing around and saving presets, you’ll have a toolkit that no one else out there can buy. Good luck.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Scott –

Sorry it took me a week to notice a new moderator, AND that the name of the forum had changed (and that’s with me using it!). Things will be getting a bit more lively now that we have a new name. Welcome aboard!

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

James –

Although not quite as good as the practical approach with real paint, you can use AE’s CC Mr. Mercury in combination with Roughen Edges to achieve something close. If you spread the width of the particle generator horizontally and put the generation point at the top of your frame, then play around with the various settings, you can get very close. If you want separate drips going along with the smooth flow, you can add the Glue Gun plugin, which when animated, will give you the running drips you get with real paint.

The Mr. Mercury part of the equation will give you something like the Pepto Bismol ad type of viscous spread. Play around, and good luck!

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hey Grinner!

I use my AVID as an overpriced capture station to send clips to After Effects and 3D Studio Max. Our corporate switch from EDIT machines to AVID Newscutters has cut our production capability by more than 2/3. They are slow, crash often (and often with non-reproduceable crashes), capture slowly, when they do at all, and are slow as molasses. I can see why AVID canned the Adrenaline line, but I can’t see why any company with a conscience sold it in the first place (I think I know the answer to that). Our PCI bus EDIT boxes ran circles around the Newscutters, even though they were of a vintage which was 7 years earlier. I just don’t get it. Our parent company has bought into AVID technology in a big way (ISIS storage, playback servers, etc.) so I don’t see any way out of the mess, other than buying the Adobe Creative Suite, and just capturing on the Newscutters, which is just what we are doing.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Jose –

If you go into the After Effects templates through your browser (Bridge – Files>Browse Templates) you will see a couple of previews which include oversized comps in which the camera flies around. Open one of them (monolith.aet is a particularly good example) and deconstruct the project. I am relatively new to the “large layout with flying camera” concept, so I’m not sure the best way to approach it, but this template will point you in the right direction.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Mike –

I’m waiting on AE CS3 to arrive, so I will tell you how I’d do it in V7.0. I’d make a black solid the same size as your front graphic and move it one to two pixels back in z space. When your objects do their flip, no one should be the wiser. Are you using motion blur?

You might want to do the flip with the two objects set as 3D objects, and the black one parented to the front one. It should achieve the same result.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi John –

I’d say you’re right on the money calling them flares. They are generally created in After Effects using various combinations of plugins, depending on whether you want them in 2D or 3D (really 2.5D).

The 2.5D version would use Trapcode’s 3D Stroke plugin, combined with Trapcode Shine, Starglow, or AE’s native Glow plugin (although shine works better, looking more like actual light). The 3D Stroke plugin allows you to create a tapered swash that follows a path, and can then be manipulated to look as if it’s working in 3D space.

The 2D version can be accomplished just using the After Effects Noise filter, stretched either in the x or y axis (depending on whether you want a horizontal or vertical streak). The resulting noise can then be animated as you like, and tinted to whatever color you like. I generally leave the black in, and composite the resulting “flare” in additive mode over my source; the additive mode gives a much more real look of light. There are many tutorials on this all over the web – Ayato has many of these, among other killer effects (some of which require plugins – some don’t):

https://www.ayatoweb.com/ae_tips_e.html

Good luck, and don’t be afraid to experiment – there are many “mistakes” that result from trying to achieve a certain look, and missing.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Joseph W. bourke]

Adam –
I’ve run into essentially the same problem, but it had to do with mixing 720 x 486 files with 720 x 480, which is what our AVID Newscutter and our Thunder playback system require. When you put a 720 x 486 file into a 720 x 480 project, you cut three pixels from top and bottom. This essentially inverts the field order and causes nasty jitter/field hash.

I’m under the impression that the DVD mpeg-2 standard requires 720 x 480, not 720 x 486. There may be a problem somewhere in there that’s causing your field issues. Since I don’t know what AVID you’re working with, I don’t know what its’ native output is, but I do believe that there must still be an interim codec rendered (maybe using Squeeze? That’s what we use.) to get a DVD friendly format. Uncompressed will not give you a DVD that will play back, as far as I know. Good luck.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV