[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Dave: He used a shape layer in CS3.

William: As far as I can tell, this is how shape layers work. But if you create a solid and draw a mask, then when you adjust the mask borders, they will resize only in the direction you pull them in.

Create a solid (Command-Y) and make it the comp size.

Use the same button you used to create the shape layer, but with the solid selected in the time line. This will draw a mask onto the solid.

With the mask visible in the comp window, double click on the mask border. This will bring up a resize border.

If you then pull on the corners, they will resize only in one direction (unless you hold down Command-Shift as you resize.)

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Sounds like Andrew Kramer’s tutorial is exactly what you are looking for…

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=19

and

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=13

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

I tried duplicating your problem in CS3, but the only thing I found odd was a brief drop out from a solid layer after adding the Box Blur effect. This occurred only on scrubbing through the animation and not during RAM preview or final render. If you delete the box blur effect, does anything change?

What is the source graphic? If it is a PDF or Illustrator file, you might try opening it in Photoshop and saving it as a PSD or Tiff file. Alternatively, if it is a Photoshop file, you might try saving it as a Targa or a Pict. The idea here is that if there is something weird in the source graphic file, you might be able to get around it by creating a new file and using that instead.

As a test, you might try temporarily replacing the Jazz-fest graphic with some pre-comped text just to see what happens.

This sort of problem can be really hard to isolate. I’m only marginally proficient at expressions so I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think it is the expression causing your problem.

You might try reducing the project down to just that animation, saving it as its own project, and then start removing or replacing elements until the problem either goes away or changes. This may be the only way to isolate where the problem is coming from.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Create a comp with a white solid. Create a circular mask and duplicate the mask. Resize the second mask so it’s a bit smaller and set it to subtract. This should give you a ring.

You can then animate the scale of the ring solid to whatever size you need your emitter to be.

Drop this Ring comp into your Particle comp and set it to 3D mode. In the Particular effect panel, set the emitter type to layer and its layer source to the ring comp. This should make the particles emit from only the area where the ring comp is white.

Obviously you could use a mask and a stroke to create your ring, but I think the critical thing is that it needs to be precomposed otherwise the effect stack confuses AE.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

When you say you are using VOB files, are you taking them directly off a playable DVD? If so, you might be able to find shareware that can extract the video and create a Quicktime file. “Handbrake” under OS-X is a good one. I’m not sure if there is anything under windows, but my guess is there is some shareware out there that would work for you.

If you can open the VOB/AVI file in quicktime or Windows Media Encoder, you might be able to export a file sequence and then import that into AE. Quicktime Pro can export a file sequence and it make be better able to read an Mpeg2 than AE.

The nature of Mpeg2 files makes them really difficult to work with in a program that expects to see whole discrete frames. Whole frames are only stored approximately every 12 frames and the frames in between are calculated from motion delta data. So what may be happening is that AE looks at a section of video, sees a whole frame and loads that up, but when it sees the next frame it can’t make sense of it so it uses the nearest full frame it can find. (I don’t know much about what is actually happening here so take my explanation with a bit of salt.)

Anyway, the best approach is to turn the VOB/AVI file into something else before inflicting it on poor, defenseless after effects.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Is it possible that the problem may stem from a corrupted source file?

When I have problems like this, I often render the offending material to a tiff file sequence and then re-import that, using the file sequence instead of the potentially corrupt video. If there is a problem in the original source, turning it into a sequence of images is a good way of getting rid of embedded errors.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

It sounds like a job for blending modes.

If you have the shots of your reflection images masked or keyed out or even shot against black, you should be able to layer them over the water and change the blending mode to something like “Overlay” or “Screen” or “Lighten” and get a much better effect. You might also want to add a displacement map effect to the reflected image, using the water as the displacement map layer. If these don’t give you the look you want, try all the others ones. Blending modes are great for creating realistic reflections.

Then all you have to do is dissolve between the first person and the second and you have your effect.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

This works in AE 7 and CS3.

I’m not sure if this does what you need, but if the mask doesn’t animate, this seems to work. To test it out, I did a simple comp…

Create a solid and draw a mask in in. It can be open or closed. Select the mask shape and turn on it’s animating property. Copy that data to the clipboard (Command-C) Add a null and hit “P” to bring up it’s position property. Turn on the Position animation property. Paste (Command-V) the data into it.

The Null’s position animates over a two second range (at least in my case.) You can modify this by Option pulling on the last keyframe.

If you try this on an animated mask, the movement gets pretty wacky and I’m not sure it would be useful, but it might be worth experimenting with.

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to provide a way to dynamically modify the Null’s movement depending on the shape of the mask. I suppose it might be possible with a bit of expression code, but I’m not sure if it could be done.

Hope this helps.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

If I understand what you are doing correctly, I think what you have to do is create two layers of your original footage and put your CG bug layer in between those two layers. Then, shutting off the visibility of the bottom shot and the bugs, you need to do your masking on the top layer.

When you have masked off the top “foreground” layer, you can turn on the bugs and “background” layer for rendering. You may want to drop in a temporary green background behind your rotoscoped foreground layer. This can help make the edges a little easier to see. It can also give you a lot of eyestrain, so make sure to take breaks. Obviously turn off or delete the green layer before rendering.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

https://motionographer.com/ is a good start. Under “Cream of the Crop” are links to a lot of graphics companies with demo reels and what not.

Also, don’t discount print graphics as sources of inspiration. Communication Arts magazine is a great resource for very well done graphics. I often browse the magazine for visual treatments that I can adapt into a motion graphic.

And then there is the real world. Look at the patterns of rain on the side of a building, shadows through a tree, car lights at night etc. Think about how you would change something you see in the real world to something more idealized or stylized for use in a graphic.

Getting inspiration is difficult. It can be exhausting to try to stay in a mental state where you are constantly seeing visual possibilities all around you. One way to help improve your “seeing” is to carry around a sketch book and to get in the habit of drawing things that look interesting. Photography is also a good “sketching” technique. By developing habits such as these you keep you mind open and on the look out for interesting visuals in the world around you.

Hope this helps,

Lars