[Kevin Dearing]

Hi Eric,
Dan Ebberts has an article on rigging cutout character rigged with inverse kinematics expressions.. Not sure if your stick figures will ever face the camera or just stay sideways, but I’m guessing that this way will save a LOT of work and will probably result in fairly decent / realistic movements..

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/ik.html

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

Hi Ed,
I’m new to AE so I don’t know all the shortcuts yet (and I’m sure the other suggestions are the defaults) but if you click & hold on the pen tool it’ll open up and give you a couple options like add vertex, remove vertex and the last one is the convert vertex tool.. Looks like an upside down V.. Select that, then select the handle of one of the vertex points who’s handles are tied together – click on one of the handles and drag it to convert the handles. Clicking again will change the handles again…

–KTFA

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

Here it is: https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=86

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

Like Jeremy said, but you could also use 32 bit color and the glow effect to get that sparky look..

Andrew Kramer has a tutorial which creates sparks – I forget which particle system he used for that but the net effect is the same (the tutorial is titled ‘3d sparks title’ but the sparks can be applied to your bullet hits instead of text..

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=107

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

Try posting on the Expressions forum – I’m not familiar enough with AE’s exposed object model to know whether this is easy to get at via code or not, surely Dan Ebberts (or one of the other guru’s) will know!

Good luck

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

Hi Twann,
Thanks for your input. If I find a $150 lying in the sstreet one day I’ll certainly buy Audition – but I think I’ll see if I can load SB CS4 beta alongside my CS3 load that came with Creative Suite. If so, I’ll just do that until Creative Suite CS4 comes out which will presumably include SB CS4..

BTW, do you have both loaded on the same machine? (windows? I don’t recall if SB is available on Mac’s..)

Thanks again!

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

As I understand what you are asking I believe that you can apply the Generate -> Ramp effect to a solid then apply Color Correction -> colorama and tweak the output color cycle (and various other settings) to get your desired effect..

There’s a bunch of other ways to go about this as well.. Just depends on more specifically what you want..

Hope this helps

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

Hi Sean,
Like Simon mentioned, AE can’t separate a 2D image without you telling it what to separate as foreground, subject and background.. And, in a fight scene I’m guessing that would be a fair bit of work to rotoscope….

I know you said that your camera has poor focus capability but if you can reshoot go get yourself a ND (Neutral Density) filter so that the camera’s iris opens up to properly expose the subjects. This causes the camera’s depth of field to be smaller.. Also, zoom in on the subject as much as possible without introducing bad camera shake (hopefully you have a tripod). The longer the lens the smaller the depth of field as well.

If you can’t shoot again, well, it sounds like a lot of work doing it the way Simon mentioned – draw masks around your subject and animate them (ie, rotoscoping them)..

Good luck

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

[Ah…yes. The public betas are something I’m still not used to…]

I hear that..

Thanks Tim! Have a great day!

–KTFA

[Kevin Dearing]

I don’t know why I said, “shareware” I meant to say opensource.. It’s been a long day..

–KTFA