[Mike Gottschalk]

Thanks, Walter!

I knew about Frischluft as a great depth of field option, but I hadn’t known about its refraction capabilities

I will try it out

—Mike

[Mike Gottschalk]

The original DXF was exported at a higher AutoCAD version than v12

So I had the artist export a v12 DXF, which appears to contain the complete model as spline objects, but only a few corners are visible in the viewport.

I am also trying an FBX export from Bunkspeed. I’ll post notes on progress for future generations.

[Mike Gottschalk]

Thank you, Adam

I’ll try to troubleshoot with my Bunkspeed artist

So far, opening this way has yielded a single face for a complex model, so I will confirm his AutoCAD version#, and perhaps try via FBX or DAE (Collada) in the meantime

I appreciate your help!

Mike

[Mike Gottschalk]

Well, I just got to another sequence with the same duplicate fifth frame issue—but this time with a different cadence. I added one frame to the expression, and it worked. I think I lucked out again, but I’m guessing you can add one, two, three, four, or five frames until the pattern works when you step through the footage. Here’s the one that worked for me:

f = timeToFrames();
n = Math.floor(f/5);
framesToTime(n+f+1);

Note the added frame at the last line ( “+1” ) to get the cadence right, in this case.

—Mike

[Mike Gottschalk]

Chris Wright, you and your expression are my hero. This saved me such a hassle with some 5th frame duplicate footage. I just changed the 12 to a 5 here:

f = timeToFrames();
n = Math.floor(f/5);
framesToTime(n+f);

But did I simply luck out that it removed the correct frame each time? What if my footage was 1-2-2-3-4-5 etc. ? Can I offset which of the n frames gets removed?

Huge thanks again,
Mike Gottschalk

[Mike Gottschalk]

Dan,

That’s great! Thanks!

-Mike

[Mike Gottschalk]

Hi Bob-

Personally I like to keep a lot of my adjustments on separate layers – this makes them easier to keep track of and easier to knock back through opacity adjustments. You can start by making a comp-size solid above your footage, checking ON the Adjustment Layer switch in the Switches Column, and then applying the effect to that layer, effectively applying the same effect to everything below it in the list. (My apologies if this is already familiar to you.) An advantage of this is that you can adjust the Opacity of the Adjustment Layer to control its strength. To start to get the look in your clip, I would probably apply Levels to everything – raising the Input Black and increasing the Gamma (that’s actually Gamma to the LEFT, counterintuitively).

Also, you can use a color solid above everything else in Color Mode to give it a warm or cool color. Again, Opacity at 100% gives you a monochrome, but try lower opacities to let some of the original colors come through.

I also sometimes duplicate my source footage and put the duplicate layer in a Mode on top of itself. Try duplicating a footage layer, applying Hue/Saturation to only the duplicate layer and bringing the Saturation all the way down (black and white). Now put this layer in Overlay Mode. It now interacts with your original to give it this filmy ‘bleach bypass’ crushed black ‘300’ kind of look from your clip.

Also try out the Lens Blur with using a grayscale gradient image as your Depth Map Layer – that can give you a lot of that soft edge “tilt shift” kind of look.

Best of luck,
Mike

[Mike Gottschalk]

Hi Dino

Thanks! That is a really good idea! Until we get some more parameters in the next version of Particular I think this is the way to go. I’m surprised that more people haven’t run into this before. Your effect is similar to the contrail of an airplane – with a distinct, regular source and a gradually increasing turbulence – exactly what I was trying to do. I’ll pass the request along to Trapcode for the next development phase.

Thanks again!
Mike

[Mike Gottschalk]

Thanks Adam!

Although I could open the file, I’m running R10.5 so I may be missing some of the full functionality of the scene.

The overall look is very convincing, and I found the ‘green to blue’ gradient in the fresnel shader, but it seems that this gradient is a function of light and shadow rather than a function of water depth.

I’ll still mess around with it, though. And again, maybe I’m missing something viewing it in R10.5. Thanks for the help!

I spoke with a co-worker today and he suggested applying the color gradient to the ‘ground’ object itself (UV-mapped as a function of depth) rather than applying it to the ‘water’ object. So maybe this is a work-around solution to the issue.

I’ll keep trying. And thanks for the help!

-Mike

[Mike Gottschalk]

About a year late on the conversation, but while Apple’s reflective floor obsession is ten minutes away from being the new drop shadow, why not use another camera in the scene whose Y transform properties are inverted from the original camera – assuming a floor is your reflective surface. Then comp the view from your inverted camera underneath the original 3d view. Another possibility would be to duplicate the scene in a new comp, attach everything but the camera to a null object with scaleY at -%100 (assuming the reflective floor is at posY 0). Then comp behind the original – and apply levels, directional blur, etc. independently from the original.