Shawn Marshall
Forum Replies Created
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You might try turning off gamma correction in FL DOF. That’s worked for me in the past.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
Hi Dan:
Thanks for the quick reply. I’ll play around with this.
Take care.
Shawn
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One more thing to note is that the scale transform is not the best way to replicate a dolly-in type of camera move. Scale is good for making things bigger or smaller, but not for making it look like you’re getting closer to or farther away from an object. The resulting looks are entirely different.
I’d make both pre comps as big as they have to be to hold sharpness, bring those into your master comp as 3D layers at the same z-position, and use a 3D camera to push into your logo or whatever. The resulting move will look correct.
Read up on the “exponential scale” keyframe assistant to learn more.
Shawn
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Makes sense. I guess I’m still a newbie when it comes to how this site operates.
Thanks.
Shawn
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So your logo comp and CG comp are both 3D layers, parented to a 3D null and being scaled in a master comp?
Are all three layers at the same z-position in your master comp? Things could start offsetting if they aren’t at the same depth. All three layers (CG, logo, null) should be at the same z-position when you parent them to that null.
There could be an issue with anchor points and scaling. If the anchor point of your logo is offset from the position of your null that could cause your logo to drift off.
Could you not just create a huge precomp for your logo? If you have to, make an 8000×8000 (or whatever) precomp, scale your logo up to fill that (continuously rasterizing your vector art in that precomp), then bring that into your master comp WITHOUT activating collapse geometrics. You’d be moving the scaling from your master comp to your precomp.
Cheers;
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
Josh:
That little “sun” button does different things depending on what kind of layer it’s being applied to.
If it’s vector artwork it will continuously rasterize the artwork, so you can scale it up way beyond its original size, and it will still stay sharp. This button becomes inactive for bitmapped images, like a JPG or PSD.
Activating that “sun” button on a precomp does not, technically, continuously rasterize that comp. It collapses the geometrics, meaning the scale and transform functions are sort of passed through to your master comp. It can have the same sort of result as collapsing geometrics.
For instance, say you had an image that was 2000×2000, and you scaled it down to 10% in a 200×200 comp. If you bring that comp back as a layer into a 2000×2000 master comp it would look sharp as long as it wasn’t scaled more than 100%. If you tried to scale that 200×200 precomp up to fill your master comp (1000% scale) it would look very soft and crappy. Your 2000×2000 image is being scaled down to 10% in your precomp and then blown up 1000% in your master comp.
Activating collapse geometrics in your master comp allows your 2000×2000 image to pass through cleanly from your precomp to your master without those scaling artifacts. It will also ignore the boundaries of that 200×200 precomp, so if your image bled outside your comp those areas would now be visible in your master.
Getting to your problem, the kind of offset you’re seeing can manifest when you collapse the geometrics of a comp that has a 3D camera within a master comp that has its own 3D camera. By collapsing the geometrics the 3D camera in your precomp will be ignored. To keep everything sharp you’d have to scale everything up to its final full size in your precomp (you can do this by parenting everything to a null and scaling that up) and bring that into your final comp WITHOUT Collapse Geometrics activated.
Good luck.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
I didn’t notice the animated pen part. The Brush tool doesn’t appear to create positional data that can be used to drive your pen, but there might be a workaround using motion tracking.
You can set your paint Duration to Single Frame. What you draw will end up as a vector path that lives on a single frame in your timeline. You can stretch out the length of that brush layer, then animate the End keyframe to animate the stroke. So now you have an animated line to reveal your artwork via a track matte.
To track the head of the stroke you need to generate a dot or something that can be easily tracked. What you can do is duplicate the layer with your animated stroke and use a pick-whip expression linking the Start stroke to the End stroke, and then subtract .1. Like this (applied to Start):
effect(“Paint”).stroke(“Brush 2”).strokeOption.end-.1
The result is a moving dot at the head of your reveal that you can then motion track.
Shawn
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No, I just traced over the layer live in After Effects.
Bring your line drawing artwork into a comp in AE.
Select the Brush Tool.
Double-click on your artwork layer to open it up in its layer window. You can only paint on it in its layer window.
Adjust the diameter of your brush. Set your Brush Dynamics to use the Pen Pressure to adjust the size of the brush. That will let you vary the diameter of the brush. You’ll probably want to experiment a bit.
Set the Paint Channels to RGBA and the Duration to Write-on. This latter setting will record whatever you trace.
Trace over your artwork. A keyframe will be set when you start the trace, and a keyframe will be set when you pick up the pen. If possible, trace as much as possible without lifting up your pen.
When done, reveal the keyframes in your timeline. You’ll probably want to drag the ending keyframe to the left to dramatically speed up the reveal. If you have multiple starts and stops you’ll get separate Brush layers, each with starting and ending keyframes. Stagger those keyframes as necessary to get a full reveal of your artwork.
You’ll have to use this painted layer as a track matte for your artwork. You have to select “Paint on Transparent” in the Paint Effects menu. You now have your painted strokes drawing on, generating an alpha channel through which you can track matte your original artwork on the layer below.
Make sense?
All this rigamarole replaces the old Vector Paint effect, which had a somewhat more streamlined approach to doing this sort of thing.
Shawn
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We’ve done a fair amount of this kind of thing with illustrations of various complexity, and we’ve found the Brush tool with the write-on effect to be sufficient. Using a tablet you can control the thickness of your line with the pen pressure. Even if some bits of artwork that cross each other are accidentally revealed, the animated reveals are usually happening so quickly you don’t see those little extraneous bits. It might take you over a minute to trace over some illustration, but then you’d be adjusting the write-on keyframes to have that reveal happen in 5-10 seconds.
I’d try this first to see how it looks on playback before going down the road you’ve described, which sounds very laborious.
Here’s an Intel video we did that uses the write-on technique.
https://hadoop.intel.com/videos/integration-of-sap-hana-idh-how-it-works
In most cases we were able to trace an entire frame of artwork without lifting off the pen, creating just two keyframes for the reveal.
Good luck.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
This article states that there will only be one processor. I haven’t seen anything from Apple stating that explicitly. Their Mac Pro preview site says “With configurations offering up to 12 cores of processing power…” Does that exclude a dual processor configuration?
Also, I don’t know of any Xeon processors that have 12 cores. The highest I can see tops out at 8. Maybe the next generation of E5s have 12 core versions.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics