Michael Szalapski
44
After Effects Coins
39
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Welcome to After Effects. It is a very powerful program. Unfortunately it means there is a lot of learning involved. (Or fortunately, for those of us who attempt to make a living using this program.)
As Dave said, please read the manual. In fact, I would suggest reading the manual all the way through – with the program open so that you can try things out that you read in it. I know some programs have horrible help files, but not AE. Adobe did a great job.
If you find the manual difficult, there are always training resources out there. I doubt you can beat Total Training’s DVDs for receiving an all-around education, but there are tons of other great resources out there such as the Meyer’s books. And, once you’re familiar with the basics of the program, the COW, Andrew Kramer and others have fun tutorials with which to play.If you have any questions on basic things (such as this keyframe question) please remember there is a forum here at the COW – filled with experts just like this one is – but better equipped to help with beginner’s questions.
Again, welcome to the world of AE. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
– 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 just thought of another possibility. Again, this depends on the look you’re trying to achieve, but you could use auto tracing to get a mask of the person’s body and a mask around your words (which should be arranged to match the most common body shape) and use those masks wit the distort>reshape effect.
Here’s an old tutorial on morphing in AE 5.5 it might help you familiarize yourself with the effect.– 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 does the actor move? Do any of the actor’s limbs cross each other or the body?
If the actor doesn’t move much, it would be relatively easy, if time-consuming. All you’d have to do is create each word as a separate layer, then motion track them to a part of the body.
Or, better yet, parent them to a null that’s motion tracked to a part of the body.
You know, now that I think about it, you could possibly do this even if the limbs cross; it’ll just mean the motion tracking’s gonna be a little tricky.That or move the words by hand.
Either way you might consider using distortion effects to warp them somewhat as well.
– 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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Not a problem Riaan. I look forward to seeing your end product. If you have any further questions, we are here.
– 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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What version of AE are you using? And exactly what were your output settings?
If it’s CS3 I’ll quote Todd from a previous user’s question.
“Do you have the 8.0.2 update installed? It fixed some issues with QuickTime and gamma-related color shifts.
Here’s a Technical Support knowledgebase document that should help:
QuickTime movies exported from After Effects CS3 are darker or lighter tha… ”
– 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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It depends on how realistic you want it.
You can do it in AE using a particle effect such as Particular or a 3rd party program such as Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion, Maya, Cinema 4d, etc.
Or I suppose you could take a photo of a candle flame and with some clever distortion effects and scaling make it look animated.But it would be much easier to composite actual footage of a candle’s flame into your scene in AE.
– 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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The reason the major shows can do this, is that there are a LOT of graphics that show up in the shows and it’s less distracting for there to always be a background there waiting for a graphic to show up then to make it all appear and disappear. Also, their swirly thing is made to look beautiful with their set and lighting. It’s all built to work together.
You, on the other hand, do not have graphics coming in and out and you have your people in a wide variety of settings with different lighting and color for each one. That is going to make a random swirly background thing look really weird, odd, distracting, and out of place.However, if you still want to do it; yes these can be done in AE. Depending on what version you have it may already come shipped with some lovely animation presets for creating backgrounds. If not you can always make use of the ever powerful Fractal Noise effect. Put it on a solid layer and just go crazy! Multiple layers of fractal noise animated, colored and over top of each other with different blending modes, mixed with other effects, and tweaked can get you a very professional look. However, it will require some work.
Or you can buy some. Digital Juice, Artbeats, and pretty much any other stock place will have lovely backgrounds you can use.
– 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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What are the output settings you are using?
– 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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Sorry, I guess I misunderstood your question. What Dave said is right.
– 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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A composition in AE is not like a group of layers in PS or Illustrator. It’s treated by AE as footage. Just as if it were a video file. However, when you are using multiple layers in comp you can use the collapse transformations button (it’s near the layer blending modes and looks like a squashed bug).
It may solve your problem.
– 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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