[Mark Whitney]

While I agree with Dave for the most part, I think in your case here you might be able to simply dupe you layer and work on the screen right side separately. Plenty of vids out there on how to go about doing that certainly. Goal at this point is to just get a a clean matte, but you might have to build it up from several layers or precomps. Once you have that, then color & light timing the subjects should be relatively easy.

[Mark Whitney]

Have you considered this:

https://aescripts.com/paint-and-stick/

[Mark Whitney]

I can’t find my copy now for some reason to refer to, but search on YouTube or perhaps even Vimeo. I came across a good example of just this sort of thing there with Lightning Effects behind clouds. It didn’t use 3rd party plugins, just just clever use of lights w /envelopes, layer opacity & blurring. That’s what your effect looks like to me anyway.

[Mark Whitney]

Most of this is pretty basic stuff. However, I’d suggest spending some time watching tutorials at Video CoPilot

https://www.videocopilot.net/

and in particular with their SureTarget 2.

[Mark Whitney]

Hmmm. Are you trying to load it directly from the web site?

I saved it to a temp folder and it opened just fine in AECS6. Open with Photoshop & it comes in with 28 layers.

[Mark Whitney]

It’s pretty straight forward although you’ll want to search YouTube for add’l info for prep work that’ll save you a lot of time later with complex .AI files.

Import the .AI file into AE first. Add the file to your comp. Select the layer and RIGHT CLICK. About 1/4 of the way up from the bottom of the menu that pops up, you’ll see Create Shapes from Vector layer.

That’s it.

[Mark Whitney]

Easiest way to understand them is to simply make one of each and play around with the handles.

The X-splines will be easier to use in most cases. The handles will always mirror each other. Since one is most often just making a rough shape in Mocha, that sort of control is quicker to work with.

Bezier’s can “break” the curve with independent handle control. If you’re trying to make a crescent moon shape for example, then that’s what you’d use.

[Mark Whitney]

Does it track with poster correctly otherwise or is it simply offset?

If not, take a look at this tutorial. https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/missile_launch/

Pretty sure it’s this one but possibly the next. Anyway, in it Andrew discusses using the use of the Utilities TAB in Element 3D to generate the 2D & 3D positions for nulls used within the E3D co-ordinate system. I suspect that’s what you need to understand to get this to work with E3D items.

This one from Imagineer Systems may be of interest too.

https://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/mocha-v3-tutorial-using-3d-camera-solve-with-element-3d-after-effects-part1/?back=https://www.imagineersystems.com/video/page/2/?tagFilter=3D+Camera+Module&dd=dateNew&orderby=date&order=DESC

[Mark Whitney]

What you want to do is go to BlackMagic Design products page and get their FREE version of Resolve. There’s a conversion utility in there that will allow you to convert MXF to a usable format with AE that retains the high dynamic log info.

There are a number of sites that sell a converter, but what they don’t tell you ahead of time is that they remove RAW data, pretty much negating the purpose.

I also find it worth commenting on the fact that Adobe WON’T release a backward compatible utility to do this but instead tries to force users into their subscription scheme.

[Mark Whitney]

It might. I’ll give it a try and make a note of that anyway.

Thanks.