Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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if your dots are separate from the green background, i think fractal noise and mosaic could work as a track matte for the dots.
the trick is getting the mosaic grid to match the dot grid. then you can animate the fractal noise properties to animate the opacities of the dots.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
i think you can do most of this with an animation preset…
create a new solid (solid should be the same size as the bg layer), add the compound arithmetic effect and set the second source layer to your bg layer (that should put a copy of the bg layer onto the solid)
to create the freeze frame, add the posterize time effect after the compound arithmetic effect and then add this expression to hold on the first frame:
thisComp.frameDuration/thisComp.duration
now add the difference matte effect, leaving the difference layer as the solid (which is now a freeze frame of the bg).
last, duplicate the compound arithmetic effect and move it to last in the effect stack (this will put the keyed objects back onto the solid).
now you can tweak the difference matte settings to refine the key.
if that works for you, you can save it as a preset to apply when needed. to do that, select the solid and type ‘uu’ to reveal modified properties. select the effects and also the frame rate property of the posterize time effect (with the expression) and maybe some of the difference matte settings that you want to keep, and then choose animation>save animation preset and save it in the after effects presets folder.
when you need it again, make sure now layers are selected in a comp, then find the preset in the effects & presets panel and apply it (double-click) and it will create a new solid and add those effects. all you’ll need to do is select the bg layer in the 2 compound arithmetic effects.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Since you are using keylight, you can also try the ‘inside mask’ feature. Create a mask on your clip around the items you don’t want to key. Set the mask mode to none. Then in the keylight inside mask setting select the mask.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Have you tried edit>purge>all or rebooting?
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
I haven’t used this before, but these guys have posted their recipe for a lowes paint:
https://www.detonationfilms.com/low_budget_chroma_green_paint.htm
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
you can also fake it with a blur effect.
if the movement of the jaws is simply vertical or horizontal and since you only want to blur the alpha channel (the jaws reveal), i’d use channel blur, setting the blur dimensions to horizontal or vertical and enabling the repeat edge pixels option.
if it’s any other direction then you’ll want directional blur. since directional blur blurs all channels you’ll need to add an effect called cc composite with default settings, which will put the original (non-blurred) rgb image back in place while maintaining the blurred ‘jaws’ alpha.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
[Todd Kopriva] “One thing that often speeds things up is to disable cache markings, since this prevents a tremendous number of unnecessary reevaluations of the cache;”
great tip, i’m surprised i haven’t heard of that before.
thanks Todd
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
since the move is probably pretty fast, if you can get a shot of the actor jumping backwards on a green screen, that may be all you need (that and a clean shot to composite him/her on). you’d just need the feet and arms all in the frame when they jump back.
here’s a tutorial that has a similar effect:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/advanced_car_hit/Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
I run both CS4 and CS5 versions of After Effects on Mavericks and haven’t experienced any problems (as Brian mentioned, I’ve noticed some projects with expression seem to render faster).
However, since the old versions are not supported in Mavericks, I would recommend creating a partition on your main drive and duplicating your current OSX to the 2nd partition before upgrading to Mavericks on the 1st partition.
This way, you keep a fully functioning older OSX with all the software that you know works, and can easily reboot to that OS if needed (either using system>startup disk, or holding the option key while booting).
By installing install Mavericks on the 1st partition, whenever you feel confident in Mavericks, you can simply remove the 2nd partition and expand the 1st partition to use the full drive space — note, you can’t expand the 2nd partition to use the full drive space even if you remove the 1st partition, so if you went that route, you’d need to duplicate the Mavericks partition to the 1st partition, then remove the 2nd partition and expand the first.
If all that seems daunting, you can check out YouTube videos that show you how to easily create partitions in OSX (it’s quite easy with the Disk Utility), and using SuperDuper is equally as easy.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
and another…
layer>layer styles>stroke.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW