[Rc Maples]

Slayton,
Got your call, forgiveness for the delay in response.

For the arrow itself, I used a flat map of the world that would look nicely when ‘orbed’ and took it into photoshop. Inside PS, I drew each element in layers. So there’s layer for each city’s name, a layer for the red line, and a layer for the red dots to mark waypoints.

Now, import the composite into AFX as it’s own composition. Animate the line layer, the dot layer, and the name layers to get the desired effect. I used a combination of transparency key framing and zoom keyframing to make the names and dots ‘pop’ as they were hit. (I think I did that on this animation, if not I should have lol.)

To animate the line, I believe I used a linear wipe transition or animated a mask via a path to wipe across the line in the order I needed. Get your timing set, then animate the dots and city names to match.

This leaves us with a nice flat map with an animated line. From there it’s to the tutorials! I found a tutorial, I thought on the Cow, detailing how to make a skybox(?) (check the CC podcasts from Mr. Aaron Rabinowitz). The tutorial walks you through creating a field of stars using fractal generator(I think), then wrapping the previous map comp into a sphere and setting the movement of that sphere to correspond with the movement of the star field, so if either change position the other changes as well, relative to the first movement. The end result is a field of stars that rotate with the map-globe and give the illusion of seeing it from space as you travel around the globe. This is much more realistic than just having a flat un-animated field of stars behind your moving globe.

That is the basic gist of how I did the map for the Aquarium. Forgive me for being so vague, but I did that animation a looong time ago. I’ve done another using a flat map of the state of Georgia to detail a particular route needed to get from point A to point B. That one was much simpler, as I just drew a path using the pin tool along the route taken. Once the path was drawn, I gave it a stroke and animated the stroke along the path with the timing needed. Add in a couple of pop-up waypoint markers and it was good to go.

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

Nevermind, I think…

Looks like the production house moved all the original MP4s from their sony clip buckets and put them into their own folder. Was able to import them using xdcam transfer. 😀

—
Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

Thanks for the feedback. The reason I was asking is b/c I have a client coming up who’s edit house works primarily with DVCAM. I was contemplating using an EX1/EX3 to shoot with, but I would need to be able to output to SD DVCam quickly afterwords. Trying to figure out what the best workflow would be in this situation. My reasoning for choosing the EX1/3 is due to another potential client that is always looking for and EX3 shooter.

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

[Mark Suszko] The other things to own rather than rent include mics, tripod and lights. You use those every time, while you may rent between three different camera models for different jobs. The tripods, mics and lights hold resale value well over time, cameras depreciate worse than cars do.”
With this, I own a single set of wireless lavs right now, they’re not the best. But they’re audio-technicas which sound good enough I think. As far as a tripod goes, at least one place I’ve gotten in touch with around here provides a tripod with the camera rental (pricing for a dvx100, 300/day 900/week … DSR-570 500/day 1500/week). With the cost of rental, I know to pass that on to the client, but should I be marking that up at all? Something like 10 – 15% or should I just pass it along as is, meaning my rate + exact rental costs. As far as Lights go, I need to check in with the would-be client. I wasn’t sure if they would also be bringing a guy with a boom-mic for audio, and possibly a guy with some sort of softbox light kit.

Anyway, thanks for the info, definitely something to chew on…. Now to figure out what sort of DVCAM camera to go with for rental, I’m sure this should vary from job to job. Any recommendations?

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

Alright, thanks Jeremy for the help. Now the PR department won’t be asking for my head 😀

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

Yes they did. It was a +1 Field Shift… But they still flickered when being previewed through our SD deck/monitor.

I just output a tape changing all the +1 shifts to -1 and that seems to have cleared it up… Does this make sense?

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

Yes, I did mean TV Stations outside of our building (CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, and one other one can’t remember). Anyway, I think they’re mixed, a couple are running FCP and a couple might be running Avid NewsCutter, I’ll try and find out. I’ll look into raylight, as I’m sure we won’t be upgrading to CS4 very soon, we did the CS3 update within the last 6 months… 🙁

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

So would something like the G-Raid Mini (https://www.g-technology.com/products/G-RAID-mini.cfm) be suitable then?

edit: Belay my last. Found the answer. Thanks for the response! 😀

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

John,

Thanks for your reply. The flat map and CCSphere effect did the trick.

I took it one step further and suspended my newly created globe in Space. Using the skybox tutorial on the AE Podcasts section, I took a fractal image and made the starmap, after rendering it on the inside of a sphere and taking it’s radius larger than the globe’s radius I had some fun.

In the tut he speaks of using a 3D enabled layer to move a camera around, and locking the star maps position to that of the camera in 3d space. This method was not working for me as when I turned my globe precomp into a 3D enabled layer, it was still just the flat version, not providing me with the rotation aronud the globe I needed. After reading up on expressions and thinking threw it for a moment I came up with the following…:
Simulate a 3D Camera move in space by using the CC Sphere’s rotation and radius properties to replace pan/tilt/zoom.

After getting the Globe to spin in the direction and speed desired, it was time to make the star map move appropriately.

I tied the starmap’s ccsphere rotation props to the rotation props on globe. The result was the desired “camera move” simulating an orbital view of the globe and traversing journey.

Link: https://www.rcmaples.net/files/globe.mov (h.264 qt7) The QT file is a little darker and you can’t see the stars, but the full res is fine.

Lemme know your thoughts 🙂

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Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins

[Rc Maples]

Anyone? Recommendations?

—
Doobie Doobie Doo
beware the penguins