[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

What’s happening in the expression is that when you have a animatable element that can take more that one value, you must express it in the form [x,y]; specifically the final values must be enclosed in [] and separated by a ,

So what is happening in Dan’s expression is he is telling the first (X) value to remain the same while applying a wiggle expression to the second (Y) value.

If you needed to return three values from the expression, it might be in the form of [x,y,z]

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

In Illustrator, select the paths you want to put into AE. Switch to AE and, in a comp with a solid in it, paste the illustrator paths. They should show up as mask paths in AE.

You should then be able to apply a stroke or write on effet to them.

If this doesn’t work, let us know what versions of software you are running and if it is under windows or Mac.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

I frequently render files out for use in an Avid. I use the Avid Meridian codec which requires the files to be 720×486. (The codec can be downloaded from Avid’s site.) Our Avid Symphony bays are Mac based and we have had no problems with picture quality with this work flow.

If your comps are 720×480 there may be artifacting when the Avid converts the file to a 720×486 Meridian file.

Also make sure that the editor isn’t compressing the animation as it is brought into the Avid as that will definitly cause artifacts.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

You can’t use one image to directly mask the other without doing a few things first, but since the painted out car seems to have been painted out with a single discrete color of red, you can fairly easily use a keying program to select only that color of red.

I tested the following in AE 7 and it worked adequately. If you are using another version of AE, the effects may be in different catagories.

Place your footage with the car painted out in a comp. Apply the following effects to the layer with the painted out car… Keying>Color Key or Keylight if you’ve got it. Select the solid red color to create an alpha. You will have to tweak the edge thining and feathering to your tastes.

The problem here is that your alpha gets rid of the car but not the background. Apply the Channels>Invert effect to this layer and set it to “Alpha”

Create a new comp and drop both the unmasked car footage and the masked car COMP into the new comp. Make sure the masked car comp is in the layer directly above the unmasked car footage.
Set the unmasked layer to use the masked layer as an “Alpha Matte”

This should mask out the car so you have no background.

I hope this does what you need.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Here’s my 2 cents…

Don’t show much of it. What you can’t see can be a lot more frightening than what you can. When the mechanical shark looked too stupid to show in Jaws, it helped the film quite a lot.

Add a glistening sheen to it. Ridley Scott knew the value of wet and slimy in “Alien” I imagine you could use a glass effect with some evolution to give an undulating quality to the wet look.

Give it a sickly green cast. Perhaps even a bit of a glow. Unless it’s a tree, green doesn’t look too healthy.

These are the obvious things that come to mind immediately. You can probably think of more original ones. Anyway, my feeling is things that seem subtly unnatural tend to be more creepy than big “gross out” effects.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Thanks,

I feel slightly more knowledgeable today, thanks to you guys. Of course now I have to forget some other piece of information to make room for it in my brain.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi Again,

Whenever I have imported Illustrator files, they were created in version 11 (CS1) and used in AE 6, 6.5 and 7 When saving the Illustrator file, Illustrator 11 asks if you want the file to be PDF compatible. I have found that it is necessary to check this box, making sure the file is PDF compatible for AE to read it properly.

I have always used the default .ai document format and have rarely run into problems. This has always been on Apple Macs.

I suppose you could try saving it as a PDF or exporting the file as a legacy EPS or .ai file.

What versions of Illustrator and AE are you running and is this on a Mac or Windows system? Any information you can provide about your system and work flow might reveal issues that could be causing the problem.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

[yikesmikes] “In the “Import As”: check “Composition”.”

Hmmm… Well, I feel like an idiot. I never tried importing “as a composition” before. Would have saved me a lot of time and frustration…

What scares me is that I’m sure there are a lot of other things that would make my life easier if only I just knew what I was doing.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

When you import the file, AE should pop up with a dialog box that lets you either accept the file as a whole, or you can import a single layer at a time by clicking on the “select individual layer” radio button.

As far as I know, if you have 27 layers (as I did in a recent project) you will have to import and select each individual layer one at a time. Kind of annoying, but that seems to be how it works. If anyone has a script or knows some easy short cut to importing all Illustrator layers as separate layers, I’d sure like to hear about it.

One thing to watch out for, if you set up your comp with the separate illustrator layers and then at some later point add or otherwise change layers in the illustrator file, AE is likely to get confused. Maybe it was an weird, isolated case with what I was doing, but I found that AE would jumble up the order of the layers in the comp unless I was careful, when working in Illustrator, to add the new layers only at the bottom of the layer pallet.

Anyway, it’s a bit tedious, but there is no problem with importing the separate layers (at least with the last few versions of Illustrator and AE)

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

If you have the option to stop traffic so there is no movement behind your actor, then you can shoot a clean plate of the background (no actor, no cars, just static scenery) which may help in extracting your actor. Then if you shoot the traffic with no actor, you can then drop it in behind him.

Lars