Kirk Tabalotny
Forum Replies Created
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Hey Stan – some things don’t come easy!
After some consideration, it looks like the best way to do that effect would involve 3D modelling, using shaders to create a roughly Amelie-shaped human character that’s textured to look like water. Then animate the model’s texture so it uses water physics to collapse & flow. A bit of roto in the original film of Amelie standing in the cafe to separate her from the background would then allow the 3D render to be composited into the scene with a dissolve between the ‘film’ Amelie’ & the CG water girl.
Pretty time-consuming/expensive effect for such a tiny part of the film. Must be nice to be an established director with decent budgets… -
I’ve noticed the same problem (After Effects CS4 Vista) – linear temporal keyframing of numerous variables on an adjustment layer (eg master saturation) yields a fixed change in video appearance that is the same as the LAST keyframe on the timeline. Scrubbing the CTI to any time doesn’t change the video appearance, even though numerical values of the keyframes variable/s can be seen to be changing during scrubbing. I don’t really want to use multiple instances of CF on separate, masked adjustment layers just to get around this glitch. Any useful suggestions?
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Onya Kelly,
nope – in AI it’s a single layer tiled image (ie constructed from a vector pattern) with no clipping paths, and it’s a straight placement into inDesign. When I tried republishing the PDF out of inDesign, the pattern of missing pixels resolved to what appeared to be boundary areas here the pattern tiles might be meeting each other in AI. I got around this by exporting from AI to a TIFF, then relinked the AI file with the TIFF in inDesign.
Just yet another reason to wonder why anyone would spend their life getting familiar with the arbitrary, unruly running dog that is AI…. -
… this article is even more useful (step-by-step guide)
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you’ll probably find your solution in this article:
https://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1428025&page=3
Keep in mind the very last point – talk to your printer to find out what sort of duplexing technology they have. Printing a ‘rough’ version of your book at home, and taping the individual pages together to create a mock-up book is also a great idea – it helps ensure your printer understands exactly how the book is supposed to look when printed and bound (that way you can ensure they’re on the same page as you. Get it?…) -
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things have changed, thankfully. Start here – https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/958740#958740 for an update on this
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“You can do this in AE by creating your lens flare on a black solid, pre-composing the lens flare, then applying the ‘Set Matte’ effect to the pre-comp and changing its blend mode to Luminescent Premultiply.
If you don’t change the blend mode to Luminescent Premultiply then your black background will be incorrectly multiplied into your image.”
Darby – is this going to be the only option available as an alternative to Knoll Unmult, for Vista/XP 64bit users? (apart from dual-boot 32 bit+64 bit OS set-ups). Pity Unmult got archived before 64 bit systems became viable.
Kirk -
found my solution – put an adjustment layer over my video & dump my desired effect/s into it. Put a solid above all this and apply some form of greyscale masking image (eg ramp, fractal noise, a feathered mask, whatever, possibly then tweaked via levels/curves effect). Then simply switch the adjustment layer’s transfer mode to “Luma Inverse matte” – it works just like a luminance mask in photoshop, selectively filtering the passage of filters/adjustments to an underlying layer. I can even alter the adjustment layer’s opacity to fine tune the intensity of the effects’ application, etc. This is exactly what I was seeking. woohoo
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this may help, Ian – can’t remember where I recently found this solution but it is essentially the After Effects version of using a luminance-based layer mask in Photoshop. I just tried it out applying Turb Displacement selectively, and it seems to obey white, black & grey areas of the ‘masking’ layer. Try this:
1. in a new comp, place the video layer that will be receiving the turb. displace effect.
2. create an adjustment layer above the video layer & apply your effect to it (ie turb. displacement)
3. create a black solid & put it above the adjustment layer
4. apply some form of mask to the solid – a gradient, a feather mask, fractal noise, whatever. If desired, use a curves or levels effect next to tweak the appearance of this ‘mask’
5. set the transfer mode of the adjustment layer to “Luma Inverted matte” and woohoo! – turbulent displace is applied selectively to your video layer.
I tried adjusting the curves effect (+ turned this effect on & off) in the ‘mask’ layer to determine whether shades of grey do in fact influence the degree to which the turb displacement effect was applied to my video layer. It seemed to – I used a radial ramp and watched the turb displacement effect shrink & grow as I manipulated the End Position of the Ramp. Everything in the video layer that lay in the zone between Start & End points of the Ramp was affected, which means that grey levels in the mask definitely influence the effect. Try it for yourself & see if this is doing what you need.
And of course, you can then also alter the opacity of the adjustment layer itself to further fine-tune the amount of turb. displacement that reaches your video layer. Keep in mind that you’re using an adjustment layer which will pass the effect to all layers beneath it – if you only want to affect a limited number of layers, you’ll have to quarantine them by precomping them with the ‘mask’ and adjustment layers.