[Mike Clasby]

For the Venetian blinds, I’d do this:

Add a new Black Solid. Then turn the black solid’s eyeball off so you can see what you’re doing, and draw a mask with the Pen Tool (still have the solid selected) the shape of the shadow you want for the Venetian blinds. Turn the eyeball back on. Add this effect Transition>Venetian Blinds.

Venetian Blinds: Tweak all the parameters to get the look you want. You can also reduce opacity for the solid (T) is you want the shadows lighter. Feather the Mask (MM) as needed.

Now adding the shadow (Soild) to the footage is done by tracking and parenting, methinks. Andrew has a tut where he adds effects to a Demon Face, and Sun Glasses. Your Venetian Blinds will be to the Bed, what the Sunglasses are to the Demon’s Face. So you’ll do some tracking, the art is in choosing good track points (and having footage that’s trackable) to Stabilize the footage. Then you’ll precompose, and add the movement back with expressions and pickwhipping. Fear not, Andrew walks you thru this. Sounds crazy, but now you can just parent your shadow to the original footage and your shadow will stick like glue to the video. Andrew’s tut here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/Demon_Face_Warp/demon_face_warp.htm

You can download the project, here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=11

This is Advanced stuff, but if you take it step by step, you can do it.

As an alternative to Transition Venetian Blinds you can do similar stuff with Grid.

[Mike Clasby]

Sounds exciting, will test it tomorrow.

[Mike Clasby]

I dunno what to do about the 10 sec, 15 sec thing. Maybe a time remap or simple Time Stretch, I don’t fully under stand the problem, but I think I have the Camera Delay solved.

This for delay.

Just curious what your pickwhipped expression for the Camera’s POI looked like? Did you pickwhip to the “Particular>Emitter>Position XY”? to get this:

temp = thisComp.layer(“Black Solid 2”).effect(“Particular”)(“Position XY”);
[temp[0], temp[1], temp[1]]

Then highlight the last “temp[1]” in line two, pickwhip that to “Particular>Emitter>Position Z” to get:

temp = thisComp.layer(“Black Solid 2”).effect(“Particular”)(“Position XY”);
[temp[0], temp[1], thisComp.layer(“Black Solid 2”).effect(“Particular”)(“Position Z”)]

This puts the POI on the Emitter, taking the XY from “Particular>Emitter>Position XY”and the Z from “Particular>Emitter>Position Z” .

To get the Camera to follow the Emitter, I just modified a Dan Ebberts delay expression for trails (reference below) to follow 10 frames behind you Camera POI (since the POI is now the same as the Particle’s Emitter due to the earlier expression). This goes on the Camera’s Position Stopwatch:

delay = 10; //number of frames to delay
d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration;
pointOfInterest.valueAtTime(time – d)

It seems to work fine, the Camera’s position is exactly 10 frames behind the emitter. Change the delay to what you want.

Dan’s trails expressions, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/mastering-expressions/follow-the-leader.html

[Mike Clasby]

Overview:

Render an Image Sequence in AE. Batch Process in PhotoShop with an Action and File>Automate>Batch

or

Render a Filmstrip in AE, Photoshop the Filmstrip, re-import into AE

or

Get PhotoShop CS3 Extended

1)Batch Processing in PhotoShop

Details:

Render and Image Sequence form AE.

First in Photoshop,you need to make an Action.

Action Palette, Click the “Create A New Action” button at the bottom, name it, hit Record, then do whatever you want to the footage, then hit the stop button.

Test your action to see if it really does what you want.

Then to do the Batch, File>Automate>Batch, and in the palette that pops up, choose your action from the top.

Choose the Source Folder, your Image Sequence, and a Destination Folder, then, hit OK, and it will crank them all out.

Again it’s best to try it on a small batch to make sure things end up where you want and that the source files aren’t deleted.

2) As an alternative you can convert your footage to a filmstrip, then do your PhotoShop to the filmstrip, it’s one long strip with frames stacked on atop the next… like a film strip, and PhotoShop just sees one file and does it’s thing to it, no Batch needed.

In AE, drag the footage from the comp window to the”Create a New Composition” Button. Then in the comp (Make it as long as it needs to be for later use) Ctrl M, brings up the Render Que. In the Render Queue, click the Output Module,
Then in the Output Module that pops up, in the top Dropdown, choose Filmstrip (.flm). Render it out, Import into Photoshop, Do your PhotoShop thing, Close and Save, re-import into AE, and your good to go.

3) Get the new PhotoShop CS3 Extended, it works directly with video.

[Mike Clasby]

Like John said, Reshape should do the trick, just draw 2 masks on the Fire layer(set to none); 1) source mask (around your original fire and 2) Destination Mask (The shape you want it to become (logo shape)), then Percent to 100%.

Here is a tut for the fine-tuning of Reshape. It was for a face morph, probably more than you need, but it’s great for tips on adding and adjusting “correspondence points”:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/zwar_chris/morph.php

[Mike Clasby]

Sounds like fun.

If you want to do it easy, Crazy Talk is the fastest way to lip sync stills to speech, either spoken or text (of the speedh), with lots of options/expressions.

https://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/default.asp

[Mike Clasby]

If you have Particular, I think you can get close to what you want real quickly. I just have the demo version, but I got it close, at least I think so, if I’m reading your post correctly.

On a new Solid (2D) I added Particular and used a shoe layer as a custom particle.

Particular
Particles per second: 10 (use what you want), 10 gives a new shoe every 3 frames, maybe you want more.
Position XY: I added Colin’s expression for a spiral (see below)
Position Z: Keyframe the depth change you want
Velocity: 0
Velocity Random: 0
Velocity from Motion: 0
Particle
Particle Life: 20 (whatever you want, default 3 makes them disappear too soon)
Particle Type: Custom
Layer: Choose your Shoe Layer
Size: 10 (to taste)

Colin expression for XY Spiral, applied to Position XY, (to apply, Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Position XY Stopwatch, then Paste):

//begin expression
//Expression by Colin Braley
//Modify these first few variables to change the effect

centerPoint = [360 , 270];
beginRadius = 25; //pixels
endRadius = 100; //pixels
startTime = 0; //seconds
endTime = 3; //seconds
howManyRings = 3;
clockwise = false;
//if you want the spiral to spin the other way make clockwise = false;

//–
t = time;
if( time < startTime ) t = startTime; if( time > endTime )
t = endTime;
radius = linear( time , startTime , endTime , beginRadius , endRadius );
theta = linear( time , startTime , endTime , 0 , (2 * Math.PI ) * howManyRings );
if( ! clockwise )
theta *= -1;
x = radius * Math.cos( theta );
y = radius * Math.sin( theta );
//–
[x , y] + centerPoint
//end expression

Now Add a camera and Add this modified version of Colin’s expression to the camera Position:

//begin expression
//Expression by Colin Braley
//Modify these first few variables to change the effect

centerPoint = [360 , 270];
beginRadius = 25; //pixels
endRadius = 100; //pixels
startTime = 0; //seconds
endTime = 3; //seconds
howManyRings = 3;
clockwise = false;
//if you want the spiral to spin the other way make clockwise = false;

//–
t = time;
if( time < startTime ) t = startTime; if( time > endTime )
t = endTime;
radius = linear( time , startTime , endTime , beginRadius , endRadius );
theta = linear( time , startTime , endTime , 0 , (2 * Math.PI ) * howManyRings );
if( ! clockwise )
theta *= -1;
x = radius * Math.cos( theta );
y = radius * Math.sin( theta );
z = position[2];
//–
[x, y, z] + centerPoint
//end expression

Then Key frame the Z movement of the camera and the expression will provide the spiraling, the keyframes the descent. Also you can keyframe inthe catching-up and falling behind… very cool>

OK, I forgot, you need to disconnect the camera’s auto Orient, Right Click the Camera>Transform>Auto Orient>Off (when it pops up).

OK, this is close, maybe you need to enlarge the beginRadius and endRadius on the camera expression so it follows the way you want… experiment. You can even set them up with sliders, ask if you don’t know how.

I think this is real close and as a bonus, quickly done.

You can get a trial version of Particular from Trapcode to test it out.

https://www.trapcode.com/download.html

Like I said, I don’t have this plugin, maybe they give it too me if I keep discovering this neat stuff… I hate it when I beg.

[Mike Clasby]

Distributing Layers Along Path

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/916917

Mine is a Dan Expression solution for making trails, I’d setup Dan’s trails, then spread them out along the path then set keyframes for position and disable the expressions (click the equal sign), freezing them in those spots along the path.

The other responses are mechanical, maybe easier.

SPIRAL

1) Here’s a Dan expression, “this expression will cause a layer to orbit its keyframed position”:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/886108

r = 50; //radius (in pixels)
f = 1; //orbits per second

angle = time*Math.PI*2*f;
value + [Math.sin(angle)*r, -Math.cos(angle)*r]

2) Dan has a keyframed solution here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/891763

With a Colin expression on the response below.

3) Another Colin Expression, here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/912900

4) There is also this tut:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/fang_xiang/spiral_path/index.html

I gotta go do another job, hope you’re not overloaded, I’ll check back later.

[Mike Clasby]

Window>Effects & Presets (Ctrl 2), brings up the Effects & Presets palette, then type in “Highlight” or “Shadow”, scroll down and it should show you where it’s at.

Maybe it’s on in the Pro version?

You can always take it into Photoshop, especially nice in the new PhotoShop, but you can get footage in the old, by, Rendering to a Filmstrip (.flm I think) or an Image Sequence, do you Photoshop magic,batch processing Action of sequences, then re-imoport into AE.

[Mike Clasby]

Aharon’s first tut, Creating An Old TV Screen , has a nice reflection on the screen (near the end of the tut), which really helps to sell the window/glass effect. That might help.

Really it’s just a white solid with a mask the shape of the reflection, feathered mucho.

Click on Aharon’s head, Main Page, then scroll down to the bottom for the tut.

You can even fog up the eddges of the window with a mask, oval or window shaped, Blur, adjust mask Expansion and feather, on a duplicate widow layer (what you see thru the window).