[Shane]

Thanks for the info. I created a quick static image using multipass and opened it in photoshop just to see which modes were used, and the only one that was different was specular. It was in linear dodge mode. I normally see it in add or screen.

Thanks for explaining it. I guess it all depends on what I am trying to create and how I want it to look.

Thanks

[Shane]

No, I havent. Where can I get it?

[Shane]

Ok, I tried both luma and color key, and I think color key worked best. At least from the results I was getting. The sky was pretty uniform in color, but the only problem was that around the trees, some areas were hard and pixelated, while other areas were too fuzzy and had some sky spill. I guess thats to be expected. I tried adjusting alot of parameters, and finally got a half way decent shot.

Are there any other keying plugins out there that do a better job?

Thanks for the help guys!

[Shane]

The camera transfers the footage thru a USB cable to my computer. I just copied them directly to a folder. Im guessing next time, I should use premiere to bring them in.

[Shane]

Sorry about that, I think I got the terminology confused. What I was trying to say, is that when I add effects, do compositing, etc, would it be ok to work with it in its original mpeg-4 format.

Adobe Premiere will not regognize it, so I will have to render it out as something else. I usualy use Premiere to do my final encoding with audio and whatever else needs to be done. What format should I render it out of AE as? Premiere wont import the mpeg-4, so should I render it out as uncompressed, mov, image sequence, etc?

It will be burned to a DVD, so I do not want to lose any quality.

Thanks for clearing that up.

[Shane]

Well, the shot was taken outside in the sunlight, so im not sure if a bright spotlight over the actor would show up like in the screenshots above. I do have particle illusion, but figured AE would do it better and would give me more control over the effect.

[Shane]

Its mainly for tv. I do not have a DVD burner, and my DVD player does not support SVCD, so my only option is VCD.

[Shane]

I set the AA to best, but the noise on the textures is still there. I tried setting the refractive value back to 1, but that didnt help either. If I set the refractive value any higher than 1.10, it distorts my background (sky) and doesnt look right.

[Shane]

Ok, I was able to create a transparent “liquidy” shield with some noise in the bump channel, and it looks really nice. I had to play around with the refractive alittle, in order for it to look right. (It was distorting my background way too much. But now ive got another problem.

I have some lights in the scene that are acting as a fake GI, and now, the textures on the city have a noisey dirty look to them. Im assuming the light passing thru the distorted shield is producing these marks on the objects inside the shield.

How can I fix this?

[Shane]

Thanks! I’ll play around with it some and see what I can come up with. One thing I noticed when I first started, was that everything was very big. (as in scaled to high) The lines going upward that has most of the glow was huge.

Basically, I just added a 3 color gradient in the alpha channel. I think I was just on the wrong track. These shaders can be tricky to a begginner.