Spencer Tweed
2
After Effects Coins
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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I think Josh’s solution is going to be the best you’ve got, but don’t use a “bright” red shirt because that will probably clip out the red channel. Also red is too close to skin tones. Probably a soft green would be the best because it isn’t blue (sky) or red (skin) and you can always run a spill suppressor on your footage to clean up any spill. You can also key it with keylight to create the matte for your color correction.
And for the record a difference matte isn’t going to work for you, particularly in AE. I’ve gotten them to work in Nuke but only under extremely controlled conditions (like shooting a miniature in a studio with a camera control rig).
– Spencer
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You can probably use some black flags to block out the green screen from the reflections. You only need a small patch of green to cover what the camera is seeing, probably a bunch of this spill can be cut down with flags just outside the frame.
Stills is also a great idea!
– Spencer
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Your life will be hell if you do not go out and get a bunch of little stands to place all over the place. Trust me… If you only have 1 plane to track your solve will either fail or suck, no matter what software you use (I’ve professionally used AE’s tracker, syntheyes, boujou, 3D Equalizer, PF Matchit and Nuke’s cameratracker…). Granted I’m not the world’s expert on matchmoving but I’ve done my fair share, and I’ve supe’d on set plenty of times.
What I’ve done in the past for a shot like this is get a few of these guys from one of the gaffers (or grip or whomever is your friend): https://static.bhphoto.com/images/images500x500/Matthews_B756040_Hollywood_Century_C_Stand_1294412430000_320208.jpg.
Extend the arm out at whatever angle you want and tape 2-3 of these suckers on there: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alba/2505310839/.
Now just make sure of 2 things: A) you have the c-stands at different depths from the camera (a few feet, a few yards, etc depending on the size of your set), B) they don’t go behind your actor unless you like roto.– Spencer
PS I actually like another type of stand that is much smaller and light-weight but I forget what they’re called. They look like a thinner c-stand and are usually black instead of the traditional silver. I think the stills guys use them for umbrellas and flashes and the like.
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Wow, impressive! I just tried these settings out on a file that I had with a lot of flickering (HDRI in sky and self-illuminated materials) and it’s totally buttery smooth. I’ve never seen GI not flicker without pre-calculations at render times like this! And I normally work in 3DS Max and Vray. Cinema 4D continues to impress!
– Spencer
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There are some tools on aescripts.com that might help you out. I’ve never done this before but I think there are some things in there that could be helpful.
– Spencer
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It’s trapcode Form plus Soundkeys (soundkeys is not an actual effect – it just generates keyframes based on audio. Form is the actual effect that creates the line).
If you don’t have those two plugins there is probably a way to do this by hand. You can use “Audio Waveform” to generate the line and tweak it until it looks like that. Otherwise there is a free version of soundkeys that I found many years ago called “Spectrum Analysis” – it’s an animation preset with some genius expressions. I just googled around and found this page which presumably has what you need: https://bootstrapstudio.com/spectrum-analyser-in-after-effects/
– Spencer
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Dude, he said he already looked at Andrew’s tutorial and is still having trouble…
– Spencer
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A screenshot would be nice but I think I get the idea of what you’re trying to do. I’d duplicate your layers and make them all black, then add a 3D light source behind everything (such as a white layer with a feathered circular mask and some fractal noise). Precomp all of that and then add either trapcode shine or cc radial fast blur to the precomp. If you’re using shine you can just use the built-in 3D capabilities to put your lightsource in the right 3D spot. If you’re going the cc radial fast blur route then you need this expression in the “center” parameter and a 3D null layer where your light should come from:
thisComp.layer(“3D_NULL_LAYER_NAME”).toComp([0,0,0]);
You can check “collapse transformations” on your precomp so that it is aware of your camera and you don’t have to duplicate it all over the place.
Hope that’s clear!
– Spencer
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I did notice that it was missing when I upgraded to CC 🙁 I’d just do it with curves, that should get you a close enough look.
The main difference from what I can tell is that misfire vignette adds a bit more contrast in the shadows, so maybe you can combine a soft CC vignette and a tighter curves layer around the edges.If you get something good looking send me a project file and I’ll make you a script to automatically add it to your comp so you don’t need to make it by hand ever time. I’ll need it anyway for when I fully upgrade to CC 🙂 I’ve been wanting to make a tool that has, among other things, a custom vignette. I did it for Nuke and ever since I’ve wanted something similar for After Effects…
– Spencer
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I just did a sort of new version for this. It’s still a bit raw in that I haven’t put many features and catches into it yet, but so far it’s working for me! The main difference obviously is that it actually has a UI now.
To use it just browse the root folder that you want to import from and hit “Refresh”. Now you’ll get a tree of all sub-folders and image sequences (collapsed to the first image). Double-click a sequence to pop it into the bottom panel, which is a list of items that are going to get imported. If you want to remove something double-click it. Now hit import!
Right now it is super basic so you could potentially run into some bugs, if you do let me know. I’m already aware that it assumes anything you’re importing is an image sequence – so don’t try video files (if anyone needs that I guess I can fix it, I’m just feeling lazy right now).
– Spencer