[Mike Clasby]

AE Camera

Camera Parenting – Read this entire thread, then download the aep, it’s was for an Aussie promo, camera parenting explained!

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=872881

This post by Chris Smith on how he uses Nulls with camera movements:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=878237

Here are some other tuts for camera work in AE:

Animating The Camera: A Five Minute Tutorial by Rick Gerard
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly1/index.html

Expressing the Camera: A Five Minute Tutorial by Rick Gerard
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly2/index.html

Taking a Wild 3D Ride
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/sjostrom_bjorn/3d_ride/index.html

Building a 3D World in After Effects by Bill O’Neil
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/oneil_bill/3d_world.php

Using Depth of Field to Create Flythroughs by Bill O’Neil
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/oneil_bill/DOF/index.html

Shooting for 3D post by Bill O’Neil
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/oneil_bill/shooting_3d/index.html

For expressions and the camera
Building the World’s Greatest Cameraman

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/expression_cont/index.html

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-focus.html

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-orient-y-only.html

Andrew Kramer does some basic camera moves, here:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/3dcompositing/index.html

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/3droom/index.htm

SHADOWS – These are cool for shadows

Dressing Up a Scene With Shadows
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/oneil_bill/shadows/index.html

More Lighting and Shadows
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/oneil_bill/shadows2/index.html

VOLUMETRIC LIGHT – Here is a nice Volumetric Light Script, that uses AE

[Mike Clasby]

https://homepage.mac.com/komaruyama/public/Fake_Frost_sm.mov

[Mike Clasby]

You want the points of the jester hat to respond to the head bounce?

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially since I’m a slow typist and easily confused by words.

Of the top of my head, I’m thinking an expression on CC Bender, or if you have CS3 maybe an expression controlling a Puppet Pin (correct terminology??) of the Puppet Tool. But after a quick test, and I think Dan’s Squash and Stretch looks pretty good. Move the anchor point of the hat layer to the bottom of the hat.

https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/squash-and-stretch.html

maxDev = 33; // max deviation in pixels
spd = 30; //speed of oscillation
decay = 1.0; //how fast it slows down

t = time – inPoint;
x = scale[0] + maxDev*Math.sin(spd*t)/Math.exp(decay*t);
y = scale[0]*scale[1]/x;
[x,y]

Keep the “spd “of Squash and Stretch the same as the “veloc” of Jack In the Box, and keep the decay the same for both.

In fact Squash and Stretch might be nice on jack too, and if the hat is parented to the Jack body, no Squash and Stretch would be needed on the hat, just an option.

[Mike Clasby]

Thanks for the compliment, that one was a challenge for me. It’s fun to get them to work.

“…but it only got rid of the green screen, did not make them transparent like it normally would.”

What did it replace it with? Just curious.

I don’t keyout stuff much, so you might be better off asking a new question above.

[Mike Clasby]

Excellent.

[Mike Clasby]

Here’s a reply to an earlier post, two ways.

Name: yikesmikes
Date: Aug 25, 2007 at 12:42:35 pm
Subject: Re: pictures on both ide of a jpeg

You don’t really need a solid. Here are two ways, first with an expression and parenting, the second with position separation of Z-depth.

1) Expression, oh boy!

Add you pics to the comp, make them 3D. They should be the same size.

Add this nifty Dan expression to the Opacity of the front (will be on top in the stack) layer (Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Opacity Stopwatch, then Paste, hit Enter):

if (toCompVec([0, 0, 1])[2] > 0 ) value else 0

Make the front (top) layer the Parent of the back (bottom) by pickwhipping from the bottom to the top in the Parent Column.

Rotate the parent pic and you see the backside when it revolves.

Add a camera and the same expression works, so fly-arounds will see the backside of the card.

The expression comes from here:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/invisible-facing-away.html

2) By Z-Depth, back side 1/10 pixel behind

Place the two pics in a camp, make them 3D, P reveals the position, add 0.1 to the Back’s Z,

so the Back would be:

320 , 240 , 0.1

and the Front would remain

320, 240 , 0.0

Now parent the make the Front the Parent of the Back, and animate the Front to control both. The camera works for this too.

If things get a little wonky make sure you’re using the Advanced 3D settings, (Ctrl K>Advanced Setting>Advanced>Rendering Plugin>Advanced 3D).

If you’re using CC Page Turn on a 2D layer (sound like you are not) just choose another layer from the Backside dropdown.

[Mike Clasby]

Yep, the expression gives you every “n”th frame.

[Mike Clasby]

This Dan Ebberts expression on Time Remapping plays ever 3rd frame, but it does it at the frame rate of the clip. Put this on time remapping (Enable Time Remapping, Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Time Remapping Stopwatch, Paste):

n = 3;
n*time

But if you exported an image sequence you should get every 3rd frame in the sequence.

[Mike Clasby]

Can you right click the slider number and reset the Max on the slider?

[Mike Clasby]

This seems to do what you want.

Put this expression on Position (Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Position Stopwatch, then Paste):

n = index % 18;
if (n==0) n = 18;
x = thisComp.layer(n).position[0];
y = thisComp.layer(n).position[1];
z = position[2];
[x,y,z]

Put the expression on one layer, then Edit>Copy Expression Only, then select all the other layers and Paste.

This expression works off layer order, so your camera and lights, everything else, needs to be below the 150 layers you have (or was it 140?) that have this expression. Anyway, layer 19 will assume the x and y or layer 1 but retain it’s on z. Later 20 will use layer 2’s x and y, but retain it’s own z., etc. So every 18th layer will have the same x and y but their own (whatever you set it to) z. This expression works for me even on the first 18 layers (didn’t know % (modulus operator or remainder) would do that). They need to be 3D layers and on top of the stack, or it won’t work. I tested it on 180 layers, and it seems fine.

If it doesn’t do what you want get back to me, this is my first foray combining index (layer order), % (modulus operator) and if.