[Shane]

Ok, I used Premiere to export the audio track as a uncompressed wav at 48khz. I still encountered the same problem. It almost sounds like all the low tones are gone, and there is a lot of digital noise.

[Shane]

Eric, I’ll try and convert to 48khz before using TMPGEnc and see what happens.

Noah, all the original audio that I used was in wav and mp3 format at 44.1khz stereo. It sounded great, but after encoding to mpeg2, it sounds horrible.

I’ll reply back later after I encode the audio over to 48khz. Perhaps thats all I needed to do before encoding to mpeg2.

[Shane]

I currently have premiere 6.5, which doesnt look like it has dynamic link. Im on an old machine that doesnt support the SSE that required for Premiere Pro. Looks like ill just render the comp as a tiff sequence.

Thanks

[Shane]

That actually doesnt look all that bad, but like you said, its a long exhausting process, one that no one wants to do repeatedly. I wonder if there are any plugins out there that would do this, cause im out of ideas, unless I e-mail the studio that does this effect, and bluntly ask them, although I really dont want to do that and come across as though im trying to steal their effects.

How exactly did you get the distortion to work like that? Last time I tried, I was having some problems, and I think it was because I was using an alpha channel for the map, and I think the black needed to be a 50% grey, because the entire image was being distorted. Im assuming you probably did something similar, but had some animated noise behind the alpha, correct?

[Shane]

The object is a person running. Here are a couple screencaps showing what I am trying to recreate.

https://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l104/Vilandra06/bscap0003.jpg
https://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l104/Vilandra06/bscap0005.jpg

You can see that the trails behind him are not exactly a duplicate of him (like echo). They are more like a rough outline of his figure. They do slowly expand, and fade, but also give a slight distortion.

I talked to Aharon Rabinowitz, and he recommended watching his displacement mapping tutorial, which was very helpful, but my problem is producing these trails.

[Shane]

Ok, im understanding it better now.

Now what about “air distortions” following a character? Can that be done using an alpha channel as the disp map? I’ll explain….

Lets say that I have a character running and I want to add some distortion behind him so that it looks like one of those bullet trails from the matrix.

If I render everything out in passes, couldnt I apply some distortion to the characters alpha channel, then use it as a disp map?

To show you want im talking about, check out this vid. https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5099018035894142914&q=smallville+football Clark is running, and you can see the distortion he’s leaving behind. Im sure they used a disp map for this, but how did they get the distortion to stay behind him? Its almost as if they created a matte just for him, and added something to it, to delay it, so it would stay behind him, like multiple copies. I hope im explaining this correctly.

Thanks for taking the time to help.

[Shane]

Ok, ive got my scene rendered out (along with an alpha channel for the 3D character). I noticed in the video that the distortion that builds up around Clark (as the camera orbits around him) is moving downward, and as it approaches his legs and feet, it looks like it slows down, as if it were pooling on the ground.

Is there a way in AE to make the disp. map act like that? Fast moving at the top, and as the lines for the disp. come down, they slow down and start to collect at the bottom?

I hope that made sense. Its kind of hard to describe.

[Shane]

Ok. I see what you are saying. Im guessing I can create an animated disp map in 3D using black and white noise on a particular object, then render it out as a seperate pass and use it as the disp map in AE right?

I can see where this might get a little confusing to someone with little knowledge of how this works.

Thanks for the help!

[Shane]

Well it looks like im running into some problems here with this type of effect. Aharon, I watched those disp. tutorials, (which were very helpful), but I think what im wanting to do involves going further then just using a disp. map.

The footage I am working with will be 3D. There is no live action, just a 3D animation ive rendered out.

In the video I posted, you can see the distorted waves following around Tom Welling as he takes off. Almost as if the air behind him is being displaced.

Will I need multiple copies of the original animation to get that kind of effect, or is there a better way to do this in 3D?

I consider myself to be an intermediate when it comes to 2D/3D, but this has left me boggled.

Any ideas would be helpful. Im hoping I can pull this off.

Thanks

[Shane]

Ok, thanks Aharon. I’ll check out those tutorials. I do have access to boujou, so tracking will not be an issue.

I’ll see what I can come up with.