[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Not necessary for projection and not necessary for TV unless you have hot reds/oranges/maroon.

And use Levels. Curves doesn’t provide a numeric guide, Levels does.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi Dave
It’s fine to have multiple grayscale images within AE for Card Dance and ParticlePlayground, to name a few plugins that utilize grayscale images. In fact, all individual RGB channels are also grayscale. And for CD and PP, one would create distinct grayscale images and then use SetChannels to move these grayscale images, which are essentially RGB AE layers, into a seperate layer’s individual RGB+A channels.

But creating them in PS is not necessary, AFAICS. As AE doesn’t support it. And with video apps being able to support layered PSDs, I don’t see a need for stashing multiple Alpha Channels within PS.

Within PS, as long as a layer’s selection is outlined, AE will create an alpha, automatically, based on the outline – no need for an alpha channel.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Nice workflow there Glen. My personal fav would be as per Ricardo’s suggestion to precomp the frozen frame. Mask it to crop out what’s not needed and then to resize the comp to fit the new sized image.

As for nudging the points for perfection. Selecting all keyframes for a point and then scrubbing with realtime preview works well for me.

Having said that, an Expression using Layer Transformations should do the trick nicely. We’ll have to get the Expressionists in on the act for that.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi Aaron

Apologies, my bad. Nudging with the arrow keys does move the layer’s transform position property. Instead, use your mouse to scrub the values.

Depending on your setup for Live Update, you’ll get real-time to near real-time updates. Just remember to select all the keyframes for a corner pin’s corner property, plus, ensure that your Timeline Indicator is parked on any one of the keyframes as you scrub.

It should be relatively quick and painless to get it looking right. Remember to add the CTRL key as you scrub to advance the values in smaller increments.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You shouldn’t require a blue screen for this effect.

All you need are two shots. One of the backplate on its own and the other with the guy in the shot, with the backplate behind.

The roto shouldn’t be too difficult as the guy is in a static position. I would envision no longer than an hour with perhaps another 30 minutes for contingency. A good roto artist could do it in about 15 minutes.

You’ll need to warp his feet so that his toes ar epointing sort of downwards as he levitates.

For this shot there is a very noticeable ‘bad’ frame on his right shoe just as he lands. The shadow could have been done better.

Finally, shooting with a chroma will introduce issues such as perspective matching with the backplate. And if you don’t have the equipment to do this well on the shoot then it’s going to break during post, with little alternative other than to select a new backplate which is going to take a longer time than roto-ing.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Wouldn’t masking allow you to crop what you don’t need? To get it to work on all layers, Apply the mask to a black solid and then set its BlendingMode to StencilAlpha. This procedure will out/crop all underlying layers.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

I’m hopeful that I’ve understood your first Q correctly.

You’ll need two Animator properties, one to control Opacity and the other, Chracter Offset.

Select the Word Animator 1 and press the Return key. Change it’s name to AnimatorOpacity. While it is still selected, goto Edit->Duplicate. Select the duplicate Animator and hit the return key and rename it AnimatorCharacterOffset.

Upon duplication of the Animators, AE will only retain the last Animator prperty. In the case for the decoder, it will be Character Offset.

Select the AnimatorOpacity and delete CharacterOffset.

You should now have two Animators, one for Opacity and the other for Character Offset. Each Animator has its own Selector Range. The Selector Range will allow you to complete the Opacity animation independent of Character Offset, which has itw own Selector Range.

Drag the last keyframe for the RangeSelector for Opacity and drag it to the 10th frame on your timeline.

Hopefully, you’ll get th eresult you want.

As for the second Q pertaining to the number of changes Character Offset goes through, just change the default value of 19 to 50. Take note that the speed or the number of offsets are also dependent on the time it takes to go from points A – Z. If there are insufficient frames going from points A – Z, then AE will zip though and drop a few offsets while trying its best to adhere to the max and minimum ranges. Where 0 would be the minimum and 50 the maximum in your example.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

I’m not understanding your description of the boundaries bit.

But if you want to resize the layer, then apply Distort-.Transform and work on the Scale pproperty there. Then apply CC Tiler.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

If your comp is 16:9, then you shouldn’t export it as letterbox-ed. Just export as 16:9.

And is your 16:9 anamorphic or square pixels? If it’s square pixels, then it should look fine on your computer.

For a clearer answer, you’ll need to provide the eact comp settings that you have, from the screen size to the PAR.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Take note that having multiple clpha channels isn’t really necessary when importing multi-layered PSD files into AE. There was a time when it was impossible to import multi-layered files into AE. At that time, it was imperative to have multiple alpha channels when in Photoshop. And then to manually change the hierarchy of the alpha channels depending on which RGB layer was being saved.

So, the initial poster should rethink his/her workflow. A better workflow would be to create the selections and then perform a copy-paste routine onto a new layer, thereby precluding saving an alpha channel.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace