Lars Bunch
Forum Replies Created
-
Hi,
Yeah, it looks like the “splatter” might have been done with a cloud tank. That said, if you don’t have a suitable camera for shooting cloud footage, Particular should be able to do the job, albeit with a somewhat different look. The advantage of shooting a cloud tank is it’s a lot less processor intensive.
It might be a good idea to experiment in Particular anyway and my guess is using some basic large smokelet particles for the main body of the “splatter” and then some small auxilary particles with some higher velocity and rotation to give some finer detail at the edges of the “splatter” might be a good way to start. (I haven’t actually tried this, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but that’s where I would start.)
It looks like the buildings and bus were done in a 3D animation system and output in spearate passes so that their alpha channels could be used to mask the color bleeds.
Hope this helps,
Lars
-
Hi,
I ran into a problem like this on a recent project where I had over 20 layers of vector artwork scaled up to 4500×3030 pixels. While I was outputting a SD video animation, the size and number of layers seemed to cause AE to choke and gag. I didn’t exactly find the solution, but it ended up working after I enabled the disk cache in Preferences>Memory and Cache and I reduced the size of the artwork slightly.
This was on a Dual 2GigHZ G5 with 3 Gigs Ram.
Re-booting the computer and making sure no unnecessary programs are running in the background before you start your render might also help.
Also, I think AE will only use up to 3 gigs of RAM. Anyway, I borrowed a couple of Gigs of RAM from another computer for this render for a total of 5 gigs, and AE reported that it was still only using 3 Gigs of RAM.
If anyone else has better knowledge on how to optimize rendering speed, I’d love to hear your suggestions as I’m running into this kind of problem more and more lately.
Lars
-
Hi,
AE does not natively handle 3D objects so you would, at the very minimum, need something like Invigorator to handle the 3D object. In your case, I assume you’d need to get the pro version as this can open .obj files from 3D modeling programs whereas the classic version can only open Illustrator path files.
That said, as Spaceman writes, you are probably better off working in a full 3D environment if you are going to do anything really sophisticated. Of course 3D programs are a bit more mindbendingly difficult than AE. If you’ve never used one, I recommend Blender (www.blender.org) It’s available for all major platforms and can do some fairly sophisticated work. And it’s free. The user interface is a bit whacky, but for the price, you can’t beat it.
If you’d like to spend a lot of money, Maya is very good, but the learning curve is quite steep. Once you learn it, it’s a lot easier to use than blender, but until then, it’s a huge headache.
But if all you are going to do is have the rocket pass overhead and move around the screen a bit, then Invigorator might be just the ticket. It too can get fairly complex, but for a lot of basic 3D tasks, it gives you the control you need without cluttering up your life with details you don’t need to worry about. If this is a project you need to work on soon, Invigorator will get you up and running quickly.
Hope this helps more than it confuses.
Lars
-
Hi,
Instead of highlighting all the comp names in the render queue to change all the render settings, you have to highlight all instances of the phrase, “Output Module” (Just shift-click on each “Output Module”) and then you can change one and they will all change. At least this works in AE 7.0
Counter intuitive, I know, but I think this is Adobe’s way of encouraging people to create user forums.
Lars
-
Hi,
As Mylenium says, make everything 3D. To be more specific, you need two layers, one for the base newspaper and one for the headline. Clean the headline off the newspaper layer in photoshop. Either create your headline only layer in photoshop or use the text tool in AE.
In AE, create a comp with the newspaper layer with the headline layer on top. Make them both 3D. Parent the headline layer to the newspaper layer and animate the spin on the newspaper layer. When it comes to a stop, animate the headline layer so that it lifts off the page.
Add drop shadows and motion blur to taste.
Lars
-
Dave,
Animating the “depth” under force 1 from a positive to a negative value does the trick.
Thanks for you help.
Lars
-
Hi,
Joseph speaks truth. Your problem is almost certainly the pixel dimensions of your comp.
I render Avid Meridian codec files for a client very frequently. These must be 720×486 – no exceptions – or else the render will fail. Usually when I have a failed render for this client, it’s because I have set up the comp improperly. Usually I will render both an uncompressed version and a compressed version. These import very quickly into the Avid whereas the editor has often complained of non-meridian codec files taking a long time to import.
As mentioned above, this may not be right for all Avid codecs so check with your client.
Hope this helps,
Lars
-
Hi,
After you’ve stretched out your layer, marquee select all the keyframes in your timeline and then, holding down the option key (on a mac) (I guess it’s the alt key on windows) click and drag one of the last keyframes and pull it out to the end of your layer.
All the keyframes should expand out proportionately.
Hope this helps,
Lars
-
Hi,
My understanding of the situation is that in video and digital imaging (as opposed to film) the blue channel tends to be a good deal noisier so if there isn’t a foreground color issue, green is the better choice.
Lars
-
Hi,
One of the things you can do that helps reduce flicker on a high res shot is to add a median filter to the image and set it to something really low. It’s not a perfect solution, but it goes a long way to reducing the flicker.
I suppose you could fine tune it with the above expression to adjust it’s value based on the rate of change.
Anyway, the median filter gives you less of a performance hit during rendering.
Lars