[Kevin Camin]

Thanks for the detailed tut, John, I really appreciate it.

I did get stuck though:

I created the Cloner Object, attached a Random Effector to it, and disabled Position Transform parameter.

I created a new material and selected MoGraph->Multi-Shader in the drop down menu of Color. I then clicked on it and loaded the first picture from the Finder into Shader 1.

I clicked on the picture. Here is where I had a problem. I could only find the Calculate button under the Animation tab so I clicked it there.

I then hit the up arrow and selected ‘to layers’. I applied the material to my object within the Cloner. I enabled the Position parameter in the Random Effector.

The only image that appeared was the one that I selected from the finder and half the postcards are a blank, bright white.

Any additional guidance would be much appreciated. I’m using R11.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

This is off topic. But what about fastening a mini bulb on the side of the coin facing away from the camera? I think what is going to sell the shot is that the coin is an actual light source illuminating her hand in a realistic way, in addition to just glowing. You can remove the cord running to the bulb in post or find a way to hide it on the actor.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

Animation codec is completely uncompressed. No compression. No loss in quality. It’s not just for animation and I don’t know why it’s called that. A lot of people prefer to render out of AE in the Animation codec and then make their compressions from that. Two reasons: 1. AE isn’t very good at trying to render and transcode/compress at the same time (for instance making an h.264 directly from AE). 2. The situation often requires making different types of compressions, e.g. HD version, web version, etc. When you have a full resolution, uncompressed master from AE, you can easily make different versions from a 3rd party app, rather than rendering out from AE each version (which takes a lot of time since it’s rendering too).

Yes, if you use FCP, you have Compressor. Or you can import the Animation codec render that AE made into FCP and export an h.264 from there. I would think it’s the same basic engine driving FCP, Compressor and Quicktime Pro; all made by Apple.

Ted might have better luck with Media Encoder, but personally I’ve been very disappointed making h.264’s from there and I’ve also had bad luck trying to render AE comps from there too.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

My personal workflow of choice is to export from AE either uncompressed with the ‘animation’ codec or with a Prores 422 codec (Prores 422 if storage space is an issue, it makes files about 1/10 the size). Then I use Quicktime 7 Pro to make my h.264s. I personally think QT7 does a really good job doing this, and I imagine Compressor would be the same.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

Why don’t you just shoot with a RED?

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

Lynda.com has an AE course where Chad Perkins goes through every effect in CS4.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

Sounds like a losing dilemma. Even if they didn’t want to do green screen work, I’m worried about their mind set in regards to production tools.

Anyways, a consumer camcorder will probably give you an unusable result. Even HDSLRs struggle due to their highly compressed color channels. I understand they are going to the web with this stuff, but that doesn’t mean things should look like the Tim and Eric show without the irony.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

Thanks, guys. It’s good to confirm this is how the program operates.

@David: Yeah, I’m on version 11 and I can’t even move in Z space sometimes regardless if I move my cursor up/down or left/right. I think you are right that it has to do with being too straight on to the camera. When I upgrade it sounds like it will be less annoying. Thanks.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

Thanks Brian. We were typing at the same time. 😉

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Camin]

Someone helped me figure it out. If anyone else is curious I just dragged in the Cloner Object into Xpresso and created an ‘Object’ output for it, and connected it to the Data Node’s Object input.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin