[Matthew Chapman]

Never mind, I got it working!

Thanks guys!

Chapman

[Matthew Chapman]

Thanks Kevin, that was mostly helpful (it will certainly be helpful on other projects!). As you can see I now have a nice matt cut out from the auto trace function.

However, I now want to use that same matte (or an inverted version of it), to ONLY allow the psychedelic BG to show through the transparency. Now as it stands, the BG takes over the whole background, per below:

thanks much!

[Matthew Chapman]

Thanks Darby, I will use that method. I didn’t want to get any artifacting or aliasing since they are still PNG’s being animated over time with lights, etc. But it seems that will work.

best,
matt

[Matthew Chapman]

It is a nice looking feature, Walter. Unfortunately there might be too much movement in this scene or something because when I run the camera tracker it only gives me 2 points over the whole clip, and they are gone nearly immediately.

I tried it for the last hour without much luck. Maybe the 2D camera track points are better?

[Matthew Chapman]

Sorry I have been having trouble uploading the right project (the project with footage). I uploaded a ZIP file with the footage. The problem is that I don’t want the smoke to be moving just from the camera. There is a waterpipe (Bong) that the character moves in the shot. The footage is handheld, so the smoke should emit from the pipe (which I keyframed).

HOWEVER, once the smoke is out of the pipe, it should move with the camera, as it is technically in the air at that point. This is the problem. If I link the emitter to the motion track, then it only follows the motion of the camera. I want the smoke to follow the pipe, THEN behave as though it is in the air.

Tall order, I know. Here is the file with a small proxy version of the footage.

5191_proxysmoke.zip

Is there an easy way to save a file that includes the footage (the equivalent of a media managed file in FCP?)

Thanks guys!
Chap

[Matthew Chapman]

Here is the same project 4 revisions ago… track 8 is there:

[Matthew Chapman]

Yeah it is SUPER bizarre. Like I said I am a 12 year veteran of Vegas and have never seen this. This particular project is crashing a heckuva lot too, I am not sure they aren’t unrelated (triple negative on purpose)…

[Matthew Chapman]

Maybe I should be in beginner guys, BUT i tried applying echo to a pre-comped spinning Mushroom, and no luck. What the devil am I doing wrong?!

File here:

5155_shroomecho.aep.zip

I did watch the tutorial including nesting and precomposing. I did pre-compose the layer but the echo still shows no effect.

Argh

[Matthew Chapman]

I really like the echo + colorama Darby, it’s perfect.

Now I have done many things in AE, and maybe I am just not getting a basic concept, but How did you get the FX to apply to the layer without being a part of the comp itself.

Admittedly, AE is a hobby for me, not a full time job, but like I said I have made some pretty advanced comps in my time. Maybe I am missing something pretty basic?!

Chap

[Matthew Chapman]

Thanks Darby! I’ll check them out.