Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
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Well, recompressing or re-rendering something that’s already rendered goes pretty quickly. 🙂
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Fractal Noise + levels + glow + colorama + turbulent displace?
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Can you use AE 7 or QT to convert the file to maybe a TGA sequence, then import that?
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MPEG-2 is for DVD, and it can only be one of two sizes: 720×480 or 720×576.
What type of machine will you use to play back your final movie? Computer? DVD player?
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I’d cut in Vegas first to nail down the timing. Then I’d only render/export the shots that need effects, rendering with no recompression, however Vegas does that. In FCP I’d be working in a sequence with the same settings as the footage, so I’d export the footage with “current settings” i.e. with no change or recompression. Then I’d add the effects to those shots in AE, and render those to the codec of the Vegas sequence, and color-correct in Vegas.
Because of the color shift between FCP and AE, if I were exporting the final out of FCP, I’d do the color correction there or in Color.
I wouldn’t affect all the footage before cutting, because it could be a big waste of rendering time. However … if the AE effects affect the timing, and you expect to tweak the cut once you see the AE effects … you might want to use AE on footage with significant handles on them.
My 2 cents.
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You open the precomp in the project window, and render that.
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It looks like two applications of a particle effect to me: one for the smoke trail and one for the smoke explosion. I don’t think anything included with AE will do it, so you’ll need a third-party plugin. You could try Trapcode’s Particular or Wondertouch’s Particle Illusion.
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It exists as a new composition, seen in the project window. You just need to open it from the project window.
Unless you meant something else …?
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Yep. Just to add or paraphrase:
1. draw in rotobezier mode.
2. the goal is to optimize your masks by having as few vertices as possible.
3. when in rotobezier mode, place points where the curve of the shape changes (bigger to smaller, concave to convex) and place points closer together where curves are tighter.
4. the stopwatch will make sure you have keyframes for your mask shape.
5. your object (person, whatever) will change shape in a particular direction, then that direction will usually change. It’s best to only set keys at those direction changes. For instance, the shape will get bigger, then smaller. Make the key where it changes from getting bigger to getting smaller. The same goes for moving to the right, then moving to the left. This way you let AE do the interpolation, and you don’t have to set keyframes on every frame. Hopefully — it depends on how the object changes shape.Oh, and if you didn’t already know this, the point of keying is to use a background whose colour is not present in the foreground. White background and white dress — bad idea.
And to the camera (and AE), it’s not a white dress or background: they’re both in shades of gray. This is why greenscreens are lit well and evenly, to present pure green (not grayish, or brownish green due to shade and shadows) to the camera and keying software. If the background is not lit to show a pure colour (such as RGB 0,255,0), it will have shades of gray, just like the foreground will. You want to remove or minimize those shades of gray in the background, since you can’t control the gray (just the green, through wardrobe and distance from the greenscreen) in the foreground talent. So: no gray in the background, just pure, well-lit green.
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Check the Vista question in the CS3 FAQ, which makes sense in light of Erik’s last sentence:
https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/faq/Which version of AE do you have?