[Sean Mullen]

Try restarting After Effects while holding down the Command + Option + Shift keys (Mac) or Control + Alt + Shift (PC). This should give you an option to delete the preferences.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

Brian,

Try duplicating your video layer. On the bottom layer adjust the red levels or the saturation to the desired effect. On the top layer, use a keyer (I suggest color range) and key out your soup. Adjust your matte (fuzziness if you use color range) Providing that there aren’t any other objects in your shot that are the same or a similar color as your soup, this should give you the desired color effect you are looking for.

You could also track a matte and on a second layer adjust the saturation and color values. This will also give you the look you are wanting.

Hope this helps.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

What version of AE are you using? I suggest trashing the preferences to see if you can avoid a re-install.

To Create new AE Prefs in MAC/OS

1. Quit After Effects.
2. Drag the Adobe After Effects 9.0 Preferences file from the Users/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/9.0 folder to the Trash.
3. Restart After Effects.

Create new AE Prefs in Windows Vista

1. Quit After Effects.
2. Rename the Adobe After Effects 9.0 Prefs.txt (ex Adobe After Effects 9.0 Prefs.old) in the C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\9.0 folder.
3. Start After Effects. After Effects creates a new preferences file.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

Hi there William,

If you are talking about the disk cache, you can find that under preferences, Media & Disk Cache. From there you can dictate the size and location of the cache.

If you are on a mac, I believe the disk cache defaults to users/username/library/caches/temporaryitems

and the media cache should be in
users/username/library/application support/adobe/common

I’m not certain of the PC file path, but all of this is declared in your AE preferences.

And of course you can set the location of your actual render to any drive you like from the Render Queue window.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

I agree completely, I rarely hand track. It’s easier to remove keyframes from a Mocha track for a looser feel than it is to refine a hand track, in my opinion. Mocha should be able to attack this fairly easily.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

Ok I see. I’d recommend feathering your mattes and if you are hand tracking them, to do at least every 3-5 frames (if not every frame, depending on the move) I’d also lower the opacity of the reflection a bit, blending in the goggles more. Try also putting a slight blur on the elements you are compositing.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

Have you tried blending the bg of the goggles back over the explosion element? You could also track in a light reflection over the explosion as well. Like Ben said, it would be easier to identify with a still or clip.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

Ravi,

You can very easily achieve this effect using an After Effects plug-in called RE:Flex from RE:Vision Effects.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

Jerry,

Can you try importing the project instead of opening it?

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools

[Sean Mullen]

Hi there Tyler,

Cool shot! I’ve had wire removals like this on shows like Charmed and Xena. I’ve found that in a situation like this you have a few options. You can track a clean plate in through the entire shot and roto any actors that cross it back on top (lots of work but there is zero trace of any wires). You can use portions of frames from before and after your actor flies out of the frame to help build your clean plate. You can probably grab everything you need for a clean plate between :03 and :04. Be mindful of any parallax issues.

You could also take your moving clean plate and stabilize it and attempt to take tracking data from your original action plate and apply it to your clean plate.

Another option would be to hand paint the wires out frame by frame, either by actually painting the background back in or using your paint brush as a matte and slipping in a clean plate just behind where the wires used to be.

Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools