Spencer Tweed
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After Effects Coins
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COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Those are just rings in 3D space, nothing too special. Check out videocopilot.net, and download “saber”. You can use that to create a similar looking ring on a card, then duplicate it a few times and offset it in z space.
– Spencer
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Never heard of it.
– Spencer
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Yes, but that’s the pro version. There is a free version with AE that does everything you need.
– Spencer
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That is one way of doing it, but not recommended for faces. You’ll notice a null only has position, rotation and scale. You’re missing skew and perspective, which are going to be essential. Check out my post below and do a bunch of Mocha tutorials – that’s the way to do this professionally!
If you dig around I’m certain there’s a mocha “beauty” tutorial out there which goes over this exact step. It’s done all the time in the industry with just Mocha and AE. The process is a bit confusing for a beginner, but there are certainly some pretty detailed videos out there.
– Spencer
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Guess it was a while ago that I watched that… Anyway the technique is the same.
1) grab a still frame in photoshop and paint it up!
2) save it out without the background (You just want the paint strokes)
3) import this into AE and put it over your footage.
4) track with mocha. It’s great at faces and skin!
5) apply the “corner pin” data to your paintstrokes layer from PS.Look up basic Mocha tutorials if you don’t know how to use it. It’s the best tracker out there, and I’ve used a ton of them. And it comes free with AE!
As a suggestion – if you use this technique break your track/paint layers up into as many patches as you need. You’re definitely not going to get it in one layer, particularly if the face is moving. And Mocha works on FLAT PLANES. Unfortunately faces are not generally flat, but if the motion isn’t too great it should still work – just break it down as much as you have to (right cheek, left cheek, nose, forehead, chin, upper lip, etc.)
– Spencer
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I went from a small production company (3 people in editing, me doing graphics, and a few audio staff) to a huge production facility and we’ve been using LTO the whole way through. It’s probably the safest bet you’ve got, and the tapes are big. It is slow, but then again you shouldn’t have to worry about that because it is archival.
I was never involved with purchasing but I think the read/write machines are a bit expensive, but tapes are cheap. However I do remember we got a single-tape drive once that wasn’t too expensive, and I think tapes are around 2 TB or more these days.
DEFINITELY DO NOT STAY ON HDD WHATEVER YOU DO! Seriously, I’ve seen enough drives die in my life to have lived through a war…
– Spencer
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If you do the gaussian blur technique make sure to add some grain back in or else it looks totally fake.
– Spencer
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There’s a tutorial on Imagineer’s website to use Mocha. If I remember correctly it is for the short film “UF Oh Yeah”. She touches up some prosthetics, but it’s the exact same technique.
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Not true ???? Before I had a render farm I did this all the time for free. It’s easy on Mac with the above mentioned plug-in, but I’m on PC so I made my own utility. I’m going to post it up when I have a minute, I just need to go through the code and make sure it’ll work for everyone on Windows and I don’t have the time right now.