[Mmhmichael]

if you want to play around with making animated shapes using the text animators – try making a block of text that is just the | symbol (shift+back-slash key) in a big thick font. kern them extremely close together and you get a nice banner shape. i’ve animated this along a wavey path to get some nice ‘flying banner’ type effects. and rolling the scale animator up and down the range of text gives you nice effects as well.

[Mmhmichael]

the texture has spherical projection, and the shader anisotrophy has auto planar projection.

here is a link where you should be able to download the scene. its c4d 9.6.

https://client.montgomerycreative.com/aplequest/media/quicktimes/0328_logo.c4d

[Mmhmichael]

its the danel shader. i started off using one of the ‘radial’ presets and tweaked the projection mode to auto planar and some other settings to get a flat brushed metal look. here’s a clip illustrating the problem i’m having. once the logo setttles at the end, the shader radically changes every frame…due to the ‘scratches’ and lighting? i’m assuming? i got some reasonably better results by raising the attenuation setting to about 1000%, but lost most of the scratches. i then raised the scale to about 200% and got some of the look back, but not the same.

https://client.montgomerycreative.com/aplequest/media/quicktimes/preview_render01_0328.mov

thanks,

-mike

[Mmhmichael]

sorry — i meant the MoGraph module, NOT the MOCCA module

[Mmhmichael]

some things to do on set:

-have a fan blowing actors’ hair and clothes, then slow down footage in post to normal speed. (creates smooth and slow underwater movement; if you have dialogue/lyrics, have actors perform them at slightly fast speed, then slow down to normal speed in post)

-create light refractions on actors by shining/reflecting light off a ripplng surface of water. also – if you’re adventurous – try shining a light through a water tank filled with pieces of foil, glass, or mirrors.

some things to do in post:

-desaturation/hue
-add light refractions/shadows on foreground and background elements
-darken/blur objects further in the background
-add a diffused glow to highlights (with plug-ins; or duplicate a layer, blur it, and screen it over itself)

decide early on what kind of look you’re going for – if you want to truly convince the viewer that the footage is underwater, or if you just want to invoke the feeling of being ‘under the sea’

here’s a video i recently finished the VFX for that i tried to work some of these things into: https://www.lowellnorthrop.com/musicvideos/early_dolphin/

[Mmhmichael]

yes – you’re going to have to paint on a layer above, and then use it to matte (alpha or luma) the layer below.

your problem sounds like you want a way where you can paint on an above layer while being able to see what you’re painting on below. try painting on a layer while having ‘paint on transparent’ checked.

also try using the stroke effect to stroke a path, then using that stroked path as an alpha or luma matte. then you can draw a path on a solid which can be invisible, allowing you to see the layer below. then you can keyframe the stroke start and end controls to ‘draw’ in the stroke.

-mike

[Mmhmichael]

photoshop layer styles have always been a pain to import correctly into after effects, and i still don’t understand why they don’t consistantly. layer styles like glow especially look very different once brought into after effects.

even when you merge an empty layer with the styled layer in photoshop like franktatu said, i sometimes have had issues with it looking differently. try right clicking the style in the layer window in photoshop, and selecting ‘break style into layers’ option (i think thats what its called), and then merging those individual style layers with your original layer, and then that with an empty layer.

that’s whats worked for me.

-mike h

[Mmhmichael]

make sure that if you have two keyframes in between which you DON’T want to have any movement/animation, you set the first (incoming) keyframe interpolation to ‘hold keyframe’. you can do this by right-clicking and selecting the keyframe interpolation.

i didn’t learn this until about a year into after effects and it always helps me a lot.

[Mmhmichael]

MM – keyboard shortcut for mask properties

TT – mask opacity

a few others? i think so