Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry Anne, but you’ll have to check the Help on general graph-adjusting. It’d probably be under “fine-tuning animation”. Or you could search for “value graph”.
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With regard to the graph, the horizontal axis represents the comp time, and the vertical axis represents the frame of the layer being displayed at that point in comp time.
Normally, the graph moves up and to the right. The first frame displayed is frame 0 of the layer, and the last frame displayed is the last frame of the layer. The normal slope of the graph represents an rate of one frame displayed per frame of comp time. This is normal speed.
If you want the layer to go faster (but at a constant rate), you drag the right-most keyframe (showing the last frame of the layer) to the left. This means that the last frame will be shown sooner in the comp, and the slope of the graph becomes steeper, and the layer appears to play faster.
However, if you want the footage to speed up gradually, you still want the last frame to appear sooner in the comp (so perform the above step), but you want the slope of the graph to begin at its original slope, then gradually become steeper as you move to the right. To do this, R-click on the left keyframe and choose Easy-Ease-Out. You’ll have to adjust the handles of the graph to get the effect you want.
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Drag the comp into another comp, then apply Time Remapping to it? (check the help for more)
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I’m assuming you’re rotoscoping, that is, you’re drawing masks that match the shape of things seen in footage.
You want as few keyframes as possible. To that end:
– only change the mask’s shape, rotation or position at points of inflection, which are the points where a movement changes direction. Set keys at those points, then let AE interpolate between. There’s no need to set keys at every frame, or every 10th frame, or some other arbitrary timeframe. Set keys at the points of inflection.
– if a mask doesn’t need to actually change shape, draw it, key the shape, then drag it around to set shape keys by changing the mask’s position.
– consider using multiple masks for a task. If somebody’s standing in place and moving his arm, consider using one mask for the static body, and one for the moving arm.
– remember that mask points move in straight lines between keys. So rotating masks change shape. Try it, if you haven’t already. If you need something to rotate, consider making a shape on a solid, rotating the solid, and using it as a track matte over the thing you want to mask.Anybody else?
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Sorry Scott, I left a step out of the process: once you render the TGAs, you reimport them into AE as a sequence, drag them onto the new comp button, and render the comp to a Quicktime movie. The QT render is very fast, since you’re just compressing the TGAs, and no animation or effects are involved.
This is a common way of rendering from a dodgy machine.
I wish I could offer more than a workaround, though.
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Strange. Have you tried rendering to a TGA sequence, and restarting the render at the stopping point if it dies? That way, you woouldn’t have to re-render the already rendered frames.
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One way is to:
1. stack all the layers in the main timeline so they start and end at the same time.
2. select the two keyframes you’ve already made and copy them.
3. select the rest of the layers and paste. They should all now have the same keyframes.
4. Select all layers and select animation>keyframe assistant>sequence layers, choosing an overlap if desired.… or you could use expressions. Anybody?
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I got by nicely on a dual 2GB with 4 .5 GB of RAM with similar apps.
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Draw the masks in the layer window, not the comp window. After you draw the first one, set the “target” to “mask 1”, and make sure the first mask keyframe is a hold keyframe. Then as you draw on subsequent frames, the keyframes will automatically become hold keyframes.
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In older versions of AE it was appropriate to interpret that material as 1280×720 square pixels. Try either.