[Michael Zoppo]

This is very achievable with just using AE and some nifty expressions. This tutorial is the basic concept behind how you would pull it off. You just have to adapt it a bit to account for the 3D space in the animation you’re referencing.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/armstrong_trent/swinging_chain.php

[Michael Zoppo]

Try exporting your comp to frames, then open those frames up in a professional image editing application like MS Paint and then add the outlines in frame by frame. This is probably the fastest and most efficient way to achieve this effect.

[Michael Zoppo]

I don’t do too much 3D/lighting in AE but I know it can be tricky to get the lighting right. For some reason AE just seems to have trouble with light falloff where two planes meet. I tried seeing if the raytrace engine would help add some ambient occlusion but it doesn’t really.

My advice would be to try and fake it like this guy does https://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/quick-tip-easily-fake-an-ambient-occlusion-look/

[Michael Zoppo]

I guess I should have included this in my main post but I’ve used this technique before with the plain effector and it’s worked just fine. And my setup was pretty much exactly the same, I had a bunch of server clones rise up from below a surface at a staggered rate. I’m just trying to make these objects rise at a staggered rate. The Step effector does not yield the result I want. I want everything to start off at a low height at the SAME level then as I animate the plain effectors falloff bounding box I should see the different pieces start to rise to their resting position at a staggered rate. But for some reason they all rise as one piece.

[Michael Zoppo]

You will need to create a perspective free texture/image of the bed without the blanket on it. Then you’ll need to make it a 3d layer and line it up with the top of the bed till it looks correct, then play through the video and see how well it matches up with the pan. If you tracking data is good then you should be good to go.

A few issues may arise though. One of the biggest is that you when you line it up on the first frame or whatever frame you choose and then start playing it back you may start to see the top of the bed (the texture you created) start to slide or not “stick” to the top of the bed. This is usually not because your tracking data is bad, you may have just pushed it too far back in z-space or too forward. A parallax effect basically. It’s going to take some trial and error to nail it down. If you’re still having a lot of issues you may want to think about actually selecting a few of your track points that are on the bed and then use them to create a null and parent the bed texture to the null to make sure it sticks and even then you may still encounter sliding issues.

The back wall may be a little easier to get done. If you’re trying to remove that whiteboard it should be fairly easy, just recreate the wall texture, feather the edges, line it up in the shot and 3D space and then play it back to see how it looks. You may have to do a tiny bit of rotoscoping on that medical device that is in front of the whiteboard though.

I’m not an expert compositor or tracker, these are just the issues I usually encounter when doing this sort of stuff.

Good luck!

[Michael Zoppo]

Regardless of the resolution of your project you should be able to grab any stock footage and conform it to the resolution of your comp without it getting stretched or deformed. And I would agree that this would be the best way to achieve a realistic look.

Particular can do some pretty amazing things when used right and sometimes in many iterations. There a lof of waterfall tutorials out there for particular that are just terrible. But there are ways to get convincing looks from it but like I said, it’s a lot of trial and error, duplicated layers using the same effect, applying other effects to the particle layer like distort > wave warp, using 3D lights and shading can help too, but this is the sort of thing that can bring about migraines which is why I think stock footage would be the best approach.

Psunami is not bad but it’s a render hog if you want good results,

Also there is realflow, but that’s an actual high end 3D production tool that requires a lot of work to get right.

[Michael Zoppo]

Hey Dave,

I think he was talking about the bug in the lower right that pops in at 12 seconds.

And yes it is possible to re-create that inside of After Effects if that’s what you were asking. It seems like a pretty simple effect using some sort of shimmer or shine effect over the logo to emulate a glossy feel.

[Michael Zoppo]

In my opinion, which shouldn’t be held in the highest regard, I’d say no.

AE is a great package and I believe it is much more robust than Boris Red. While Boris Red does seem to have some of the same features AE includes, I don’t believe you will get as good results as you would with AE. I will say that it seems Boris Red would be a suitable switch over if your main line of work is video editing with the occasional need of transitions or subtle effects here and there.

After checking out their site and the gallery it seems like Boris is much more based around using presets and kitchy effects than actually creating nice motion graphics.

So in terms of actual motion graphics/animation and even compositing I’d go with AE over Boris any day of the week. But that’s just me, other people might be more comfortable with Boris and they might be able to achieve the same results I would with AE. Boris Red is a more intuitive program if you are coming from a filmmaking/editing background and it’s included in the Avid production suites.

So in the end I think it all depends on what line of work you’re coming from. If you’re not looking to be heavily involved in motion graphics / custom animation / or compositing then Boris might be a little more user friendly.

Hope this helped a little.

[Michael Zoppo]

I think I know the type of effect you’re shooting for and it’s not going to be that easy to pull off if you want the line to actually look like it’s being projected onto the building scapes. Using the displacement effect is only really going to conform your line to the subtle details of the shots, for example, if you use the displacement effect it will help conform the line to the subtle insets (bricks, windows, ledges) and facades of the buildings but it’s not going to give you that scanner effect because it’s not actually being projected onto 3D geometry.

You can either rotoscope it out by hand in PS or AE. (Not Fun)

You can try creating 3D geometry to match the buildings in the shot and then actually project a real line onto them using a 3D program. Or you can create some simple 3D boxes in AE that match the size and shape of your buildings, then use an After Effects light with projection enabled and project a line onto the 3D planes which you can then either turn into shadow catchers or make them black and make the line white and set them to screen so they blend in. But you need some sort of actual 3D geometry to project the line onto to actually get it to conform to the surfaces much like a scanner does.

[Michael Zoppo]

It’s really simple. All you have to do is just make a realistic animation of an object breaking your camera glass.

Got it?