[Kevin Reiner]

I agree with Dave. Although it might be Trapcode Form for the beginning, with Trapcode Shine making the light effect, and then Trapcode Particular for the shiny crescents at the end. Check the Trapcode website – they have a lot of tutorials that might lead you in the right direction, and I also think you can download the plugins in demo mode. Good luck.

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[Kevin Reiner]

If I follow what you’re asking, maybe this will work. Instead of using the Physics Time Factor, create your entire animation at your desired slow-mo speed. Then precomp that effect and enable time remapping. Now you can speed up the beginning and end of the effect. Hope that helps.

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[Kevin Reiner]

Divide it into parts and work backwards. For each leaf move the anchor point to the base where the stem would attach and animate scale, maybe some rotation, and distort the path if it’s from an AI file. For the truck, I would just animate it growing from nothing up into a sapling with no roots, and then as the trunk expands have the roots grow outwards and thicker.

Work backwards and play with it until it looks right.

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[Kevin Reiner]

Thanks Ted,

I did almost exactly as you described and it came out well.

I’ve attached an initial test.

https://reels.creativecow.net/film/flying-box-test

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[Kevin Reiner]

Every greenscreen key is a little different, so there is no one answer, but I’ll throw a couple tips your way.

1. sometimes adding a “levels” effect prior to keylight helps. You’ll have to play with it and even go into the separate RGB channels and adjust. You’re trying to even out the green and make it true green, use the info tab to monitor.

2. When you choose the screen color you want to key out, place the eyedropper in a green area nearest the area you are having difficulty with. So if a hand is getting cut off, try selecting the green that is near that hand.

3. Move your cursor to a frame that has the worst key and change view to “screen matte”. Now adjust the settings for “screen gain”, “screen balance” and then in Screen Matte play with “Clip Black” and “Clip White”. You’re trying to get the image to be pure black and white with no noise of either. Then switch back to Final Result. Screen shrink and softness work together. Sometimes going -1 on screen shrink and then 1 on softness works well. Also, try changing the replace method from soft color to hard color.

4. You also might try using the AE matte choker in tandem with Keylight. You will probably have to dial back keylight and then use matte choker to clean the edge.

It involves a lot of trial and error, so it’s hard to help you out without seeing the footage. Just keep tweeking it. I don’t have any advice on how to shoot it as I just do the keying.

Good luck,
Kevin

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[Kevin Reiner]

We have a BRAVO II and we use it for any order under 200 usually. Works well enough if you’re not in a rush. The printing is the downfall. We get a lot of banding even after all calibration and print tests have been done. Another problem is that for our particular model, the color ink comes in one cartridge. So if you have a DVD that is all blue for example, you waste a lot of ink.

Not trying to be too critical on it though. It does a good job and most of our clients really don’t see any problems with the print job.

Rich, I was surprised to hear you print before you burn. I always have trouble with ink bleeding while being spun during the burn session. Maybe it’s my media.

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[Kevin Reiner]

I second the Primera Bravo motion. We bought one about 5 years ago and have made a good profit off of it. Any non-rush order less than 200 disks, we do in-house with minimal monitoring.

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[Kevin Reiner]

Hey Tim,

I don’t see a “quick” way of doing the effect. It looks to me like a lot of animated masks which would require a lot of diligent work. You could use some sort of blocky particle field as a luminance matte, but you’d be relying on randomness to look good. That MTV stuff looks like meticulous editing and not just random wipes.

For your sake, I would love to hear someone prove me wrong with a quicker solution.

On the bright side, quite often effects like that look overwhelming, but if you plan it well, break it down into pieces, and just start working on it, it might go faster than you expected. Just throw in some of your favorite music and have at it.

[Kevin Reiner]

Dave’s suggestion should work. If you have motion blur on and the text is on the same plane as the layer below it, the layering gets weird. Problem that AE has had since they went 2.5D.

If moving it in Z space doesn’t work, place an adjustment layer directly below the text layer in the timeline.

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[Kevin Reiner]

I would use after effects. First you’d have to create paths/outlines for all of your elements. Then copy and paste those paths into a shape layer. Add stroke and add the wiggle effect and presto chango, you got it.

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