Michael Szalapski
44
After Effects Coins
39
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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AE’s not the best thing in the world for doing 3d graphics. You really want a 3d program.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Make several different text block precomps and parent them to each other. That way you don’t have any huge single files.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Do you mean like a lens flare? If so allow me to suggest Knoll’s plug-in. It is amazing. You can even have your cloud layer (or text or whatever) block out the light when it goes across it. Very useful.
If you just want the beams of light there’s always Trapcode’s Shine. There’s an example of sunbeams on that page.
Alternatively (and more difficultly) some sort of radial blur color-corrected and set to add or screen.– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Your initial thought (to have a copy of the building on a separate layer) is a great way to start. How you reveal the new color on the other hand… There are literally thousands of different things that the people on this forum could suggest. What is supposed to be causing the building to change color? The motivation could suggest a solution.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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I agree with Trev; it would take a very long time to explain the whole thing.
Your question is a little too broad as well. Are you wanting an electrical-type explosion like those featured in District 9? Are you wanting a fiery explosion such as in X-Men 2? Is it supposed to be the car’s gasoline exploding or are you wanting a more realistic explosion where the car blows apart without so much fire? What’s causing the explosion? What kind of camera shot were you hoping to achieve?The simplest thing for almost every effect is to do it practically. Try to get your hands on a scale model to blow up. (If you have access to a camera that does over-cranking or “smooth slo-mo” than that’s perfect.)
If you don’t have the ability to fake it with a real explosion on a model here are a couple things off the top of my head:
It’s easier if you don’t move the camera or the car. Get pictures of the car from different angles.
Crumple the pieces as per Andrew Kramer’s tutorial and make them fly away composited with whatever type of explosion you’re using. You can use pieces of explosion (and added dust hits/debris/etc.) to hide problems.
Stock footage (like this) gets you the most realistic-looking explosions, however you can create them with ParticleIllusion (it has free emitters already built with tons of different types of explosions) or any After Effects particle plug-in. However, if you’re creating one from scratch in Particular or something be prepared to either spend a lot of time on it or have it look horribly fake.
In all actuality doing this digitally at all is going to look really fake unless you spend a lot of time on it.Don’t forget: if your explosion is the Hollywood fiery kind, to create light on the ground and in any reflective surface nearby. Andrew Kramer has a tutorial on that as well.
Actually, you should probably look through all of Andrew’s tutorials. You’ll probably be inspired to add some things to your film just from reading through his stuff.
If you have any further/more specific questions, feel free to post them.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Ick. I like the concept of the commercial, but ewwwww. I don’t like staring at the back of some actor’s head. When it cut to the close-up of the screen I’d like to have had his head gone from the shot. They could cut wider for him to change it and cut back or something.
I dunno, it just seemed weird. Maybe it’s just me.– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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If the footage isn’t square pixel aspect ratio, then in your preview window it’ll probably be compensating for it and stretching it out for the preview. There is a little button at the bottom of your comp window that you can toggle on or off. Try that and see if it looks better. IF it looks fine, but squashed, that’s okay. It’ll look fine when you render it out.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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How much control do you need over the actual shape? You can always link the expand mask propertie to a slider.
You could also put the masked thing in a precomp and control time remapping with an expression linked to a slider.– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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If the spiral isn’t too tight, you could use the puppet tool or a few of AE’s distort tools to bend the image, but you’re not going to get it wrapping around itself in 3d without purchasing additional plug-ins. (Zaxwerks and, I believe, Digital Anarchy have some that might help.)
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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This could easily be done as Simon suggested.
Or you could use AE’s built in lens flare effect somewhat colorized.
Or, ideally, you could use Knoll Light Factory Pro. The best lens flare effect out there. It is amazing.– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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