Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Bruce Breidbart] “But even after I followed you co-ordinace for the camera it just doesn’t work for me. It looks fine
as a still but when I go back to the group and rotate, it’s very clear there is something I’m missing.”Two things:
You need to mask off the right hand side of the licence plate so it disappears into the cavity.
And you need a much darker solid behind so it looks more like a dark hole.
If you’d like to upload your project I could take a look at your camera but I think you’ve got it more or less right.
But you could always have a good look at Gareth’s project (above) – he seems to have done a great job with the camera and animation.
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
Looking very good, nice work!
[Bruce Breidbart] “1) I’ve created my rectangle and added a outline so I could create rounded edges. Did you just edit the points of the rectangle/ smooth and round the edges that way ?”
You don’t need to ad an outline to achieve the corner roundness – simply go into the Geometry tab for the shape and use the roundness control that you’ll find there.
[Bruce Breidbart] “You mentioned that you added a feathered dark solid to give the top a bit of shading. I ended up using the rectangle tool and feathered it out. When I first tried the color solid I didn’t see controls to feather it out unless I did a little mask, but then when I added the layer mask it didn’t work correctly. Yours looks great, mine not so great.”
What I did – and it’s by no means the only way to do it – was to create a new 3D group in which I created a new black filled rectangle which I feathered quite heavily (about 300), and then I used the original licence plate rectangle to mask this. I then slid the rectangle up and down on the Y axis till I got the degree of shading that I wanted.
Does that make sense?
[Bruce Breidbart] “Obviously my camera alignment/camera view is nowhere close.”
If it helps, I’m using these values for the camera position and rotation:
… but I really did just eyeball it very quickly as in the demo video. As I mentioned above, I used a value of 35 degrees for the camera’s angle of view.
To be honest, I think your version looks pretty darn good – I like the way you’ve done the screw heads, very nice detail 🙂
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
[Bruce Breidbart] “Simon you created my name on the license
plate with just a texture, maybe an emboss or extrude and a light, i think ? “Yes, kind of –
I used a rectangle shape and rounded the edges, added some circles for the rivets, a text layer, then I used the rectangle to mask a texture from my image library and adjusted the blend mode and opacity to give just a hint of it (a bit corny and not the right texture, but you get the idea!).
I made a group of all that and applied the incredibly useful Indent filter to it and adjusted the lighting angle to get the faux 3D bevelled effect. The key thing with Indent is to adjust the relative brightness of your separate components to tell the filter which was is out and which way is in …
I added a light source for a bit more realism and I also added a feathered dark solid to top the of the numberplate which I masked using the original rectangle just to give a bit of shading to the top, as Gareth did very nicely.
Good luck with your version – I look forward to seeing it 😉
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
[Bruce Breidbart] “I’m trying to follow along, after using the camera and grid to help align my rectangle/outline (to round the edges) I still need to use the distort tool to make things look right.”
You shouldn’t need to use Distort and in fact if you do you won’t b able to get the rotation to look right.
You need to make sure you adjust the Camera Angle of View precisely as it’s this that gives you the final result – I went for a value of 35 degrees which seemed about right to me but I could be wrong.
[Bruce Breidbart] ” Would you say that Gareth used a Photoshop file to fill in the license plate ?”
As Gareth says, Photoshop is the easiest place to do a great-looking job, but I did knock this up for you entirely in Motion just to show you that it’s possible to do something OK:
I’ll try and do a proper tutorial on this shortly if I can find a moment.
Thanks for your interest.
All the best,
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
[Andrew Kimery] “Exactly, if Walter Murch didn’t have Sean Cullen (his longtime AE) and the guys at Digital FilmTree crafting custom solutions FCP 3 would have never been used on “Cold Mountain”.”
Quite so.
Which is why I’m not necessarily impressed to hear that any particular NLE is being used to cut a studio feature, whatever it’s budget may or may not be.
What’s significant is who has made the decision to use it – if it’s Walter Murch or David Fincher, that counts for a great deal, cos these are guys who make the weather and change the landscape.
On that basis, this is surely a very big deal.
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
Thanks – all really helpful info.
I guess the advantage you always have with major studio features is an invisible army of tech-savvy drones who can work miracles for you.
Which means that nothing is impossible.
Not like the real world so much.
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
[Andrew Kimery] “If PPro gets through “Gone Girl” rather unscathed then I might have to reconsider it for big projects.”
What specific reservations do you have, if you don’t mind me asking?
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
[Josh Bass] “Still not sure how to increase spacing between the lines without keyframes.”
If you don’t want to keyframe the Line Spacing parameter then simply apply a Ramp behavior to it. (You need to have your text selected.)
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
That looks great – nice job!
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co -
[Mark Suszko] “Simon, what about a different method, using the tracker and parenting the replacement logo plate to a null with the tracker?”
My understanding was that this was a locked off shot with just the licence plate flipping over, so there’s nothing to track except the plate and there’s nothing you could track off that.
Unless I’m missing something.
The actual rotation animation part of this is surely really simple though, isn’t it?
Simon Ubsdell
hawaiki.co
