[Mike Clasby]

Are you talking a second hand stopwatch (old school) or a digital stopwatch?

Dan has a universal timer here if you want a digital one:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/up-down-clock.html

[Mike Clasby]

For a two pixel thick card, if you sandwich 19 layers between the Front and the Back, you can get a very close to side on view without the thinning. I looks good until you get to between 89.6 and 90.4 degrees.

Put this expression on position of a duplicated layer:

position+[0,0,(index-1)*0.1]

It separates all succeeding layers by 1/10th of a pixel, so you need to dup the layer 19 times, then add your back (with the same expression), and parent them all to the Front. I think it looks better when the sandwiched layers (all those between the Front and Back are a different color than the back.

Anyway, like Steve said, don’t linger on 90 degrees and you’ll be good. This 21 layer sandwich lets you get much closer to 90 degrees than just two layers. Also the final card is two pixels thick, anything less can flicker if at an awkward angle.

If you want a thinner card, a one pixel setup isn’t so bad (just looked at one)depending on the compression of the final output, i think.

Also if you add bevel Alpha to the front and the back of the card, you get a nice little dark line around highlighting the edge of the card. I used 1 pixel as the Edge thickness.

[Mike Clasby]

Do you need to replace the sky? If so try this:

42. Advanced Sky Replacement July

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/advsky/index.htm

[Mike Clasby]

I think to get a really sharp shadow line, I’d just dup the layer, put it above the floor(less than 1 pixel) and then Fill it with your shadow color.

[Mike Clasby]

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

[Mike Clasby]

You can do it by applying an expression (wiggle) to mask the vertices.

I just tried a new (to me) Script, “maskPointsExpression.jsx”. It works a charm. You can get it here:

https://www.nabscripts.com/Downloads/downloads_en_2.php?id=5#maskPointsExpression

Demo on the page has little vid demo, I saw that after I typed the following walk-through, oh, well, details follow:

Add “maskPointsExpression.jsx” to your AE Scripts Folder, then fire up AE.

Run>Script>maskPointsExpression. Then select your mask,

Click on “Calculate” (it puts up a number equaling the vertices

Click on All (to apply expression to all vertices)

Click “Position”, write this expression in the box:

wiggle(15,20)

The 15 (frequency – how often) is your given example frame rate (since you want it to change every frame) and the 20 (amplitude) is how many pixels you want them to jump around (that’s really the max jump, I think). Change to taste.

Anyway, it creates a new mask, named “Animated mask” with the keyframes determined by the expression.

Pretty slick.

Be forewarned, trim footage to only as long as you needed, I had a 30 second clip in a 4 sec comp, yet it calculated the keyframes for all 30 sec, taking a long time (5 minutes plus). After trimming the clip, it knocked it right out.

There is an earlier script, written for Roto work, that attaches mask vertices to track point keyframes (and you can write expressions for the Track Points, then Convert to keyframes). It works but is a longer work around, an earlier post, here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=891545

It’s a great script for roto, but I think the new one is easier for putting expressions on a mask.

[Mike Clasby]

OK, I just saw your clip.

Widen those tracking point boxes out, The Feature and the Search Regions, it takes longer but they have more to reference that way. If a point jumps outside them you’re a goner.

When your track Points move off screen (just before they do) hold down ALT and move the track Point to a new feature, this keeps the attach point in the same place, essentially extending the same track. Alternatively Andrew uses two tracks on Nulls for when track points move off the page, one track is the extension of the other, here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/Set_Extensions.php

See AE help, lots of stuff there under Tracking, but it really is an art as much as a science.

Here is a tut on the Alt moving thing for track points that leave the screen:

Tracking obscured objects in video

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=399&xml=aft6tracking

Although Aharons method looks good..

[Mike Clasby]

Pick better points to track. Sounds weird but probably the best solution,

Aharon shows how to manually adjust a track point frame by frame when they get wonky, in part three (5 minutes in), of this three part tutorial. It’s a one point track, but the principal is the same:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/cartoon_look.php

Aharon also has a tut on high end tracker, here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/Mocha_Tut_1.php

Many folks like SynthEyes, its really designed for Matchmaking, (3D tracking), it relatively inexpensive ($400 range I think) ad uses a gazillion track points, everything look almost automatic, lots of tuts.

https://www.ssontech.com/

[Mike Clasby]

That works, sounds straightforward.

[Mike Clasby]

Yep… here’s a walk through and a few other tips:

Expressing the Camera: Animating Along a Path

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly1.php

And a second that uses expressions to look ahead:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly2.php