Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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use a channel combiner sandwich…
add the channel combiner effect to a layer. by default it’s set to cover the footage from RGB to HLS (hue, lightness, saturation) and the image looks crazy… duplicate that effect and set the ‘from’ value to hls to rgb. this converts it back to RGB and everything should look normal.
so what’s the point….
now you can add any effect that can separate RGb channels in-between the channel combiner effects and instead of effecting RGB, the controls will effect HLS. any control that effect ‘red’ will now effect hue, ‘green’ controls are now lightness (or luminance) and ‘blue’ controls are now saturation.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
removing white or black backgrounds is quite easy in Ae without using blending modes. it’s so easy i wish i could do it in photoshop too.
to remove black, add the channel combiner effect and set the ‘from’ property to ‘max rgb’ and the ‘to’ property to ‘alpha’. then add the remove color matting effect with the background set to black (default setting).
to remove white, do the same, but in the channel combiner effect, click the ‘invert’ option and then set the remove color matting color to white.
you can also save each of the setting off as animation presents to quickly recall as needed.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
yes, you should be able to add markers as you play through the timeline by hitting the asterisk key on the numbers pad.
if you have a layer selected, it will add markers to the layer, if you don’t have a layer selected, it will be added to the comp timeline.
if you are using a keyboard without the numbers pad (like a laptop, etc) you may need to look that up….
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
try the circle effect and set the edge property to ‘thickness’ to make a ring. then add the radial wipe effect.
make sure the both effects have the same center position value, and then scrub the radial wipe completion property a bit and increase the feather property so see if that can do what you need.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
you can use ae for the video grid. it sounds like you have a pretty good start on that… creating separate comps that will hold the video and then arranging those in a grid in another comp. you can do that manually, or search the expressions forum for a layer to grid expression. you can likely find a script out there too.
once you have that grid comp worked out, you could render that and take it to a 3d app and use it as a texture for plane or mesh that you will wrap into the joint.
if you just needed a simple cylinder, you can use cc cylinder in ae to wrap that grid comp into a cylinder, but the unwrapped to wrapped transition would be tricky (cc cylinder simple wraps a layer into a cylinder, but doesn’t unwrap it…). cc page turn can ‘curl’ flat layer, and might be of some use, but won’t actually wrap a layer into a cylinder. using both might allow you to create several shots that could be edited together to make something believable…
cinema 4d lite ships with ae, and it can probably accomplish this. if you have element 3d, it too can probably do this. if you are familiar with 3d apps and 3d modeling, either might be a better way to go, especially for a final, joint-shaped video mosaic….
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
you mentioned having the animate along the x-axis but varying the timings. so what you could do is select all the dots, type ‘p’ to reveal the position properties, then slide the time indicator to a point where you want the animation to stop (or where all the dots should be in their final position) and click the stop watch for one of the position properties to add a key frame. if all the dots are selected, that should add a key frame for all of them.
then move the time indicator to the beginning of the animation and, with all the dots still selected, drag the x-value of on of the position properties to a point where you want them to start. each dot should now have two keyframes, and if you scrub the time indicator, they should all move along the x-axis to the final position.
now you can manually slide individual layers in the timeline to stagger the timings. it may seem tedious, but it really won’t take very long.
one thing you might consider before re-timeing the layers… if the dots don’t move completely off screen, you might want to also add an animation to the opacities of all those dots so they fade up from 0 to 100 as they move to their final position. you’d do that exactly as described above for position, but for the opacity properties. typing ‘t’ will bring up the opacity properties, typing shift-t while the position properties are visible will show both position and opacity.
staggering the timings after that will have each dot fading in and sliding into position.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
to make that easier in illustrator, you can select all the dots, then from the menu in the layers palette, choose ‘release to layers (sequence)’. that will put each on it;s own layer.
alternately, in after effects, if you bring the illustrator file into a comp, right-click it and choose ‘create shapes from vector layer’ you will get all the vectors as separate shapes… the shapes are all on the same shape layer, but you can animate the individual shape paths (each has it’s own set of properties).
personally, I think i’d do it in illustrator, but the shapes-from-vectors is an option.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
it a lot like print… if you add is a full page ad, then you have dimensions and resolution for that specific ad. If you have a billboard, the same applies.
so which preset you choose is based on what you are producing video for. if its for an HDTV, then you’ll want to choose one of the HD presets, if it’s for DVD, then choose one of the NTSC (or PAL if you are in Europe) presets… need 4K (or ultra hd), well there a preset for that too…
it really comes down to what you need in the end, or what we call the destination.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
you can also edit the keyframe velocity… right-click the keyframe and choose keyframe velocity. if the key frame was an easy-ease keyfrmare, in the window that opens, you’ll see the speed coming in and out of the keyframe is 0 and the influences are 33.333%.
increasing the speed coming in and out of the keyframe will make it so the camera (or any layer) won’t come to a complete stop.
increasing the influences will smooth the transition from full speed to slower speed.
to get an idea of how much speed you want to maintain thru the ease keyframe, you might look at the keyframe velocity of one of the other keyframes… say the first key frame has a velocity of 800 px/sec, slowing that to 1/10 would be 80 px/sec….
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
the venetian blind effect is goo at making stripes… set the transition completion to around 50% and adjust the angle and width properties as needed.
you can add that effect to either a shape layer or a layer suing the stroke effect.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW