Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
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Okay, they’re not too close. I thought they might both be in the same plane.
RGB 255/0/0 will give you fits on TV, so it will need to have its saturation knocked down before it leaves AE. Your client should be made aware of this.
If you don’t have access to a scope, try applying levels, hue/sat and broadcast safe to an adjustment layer over the comp. Levels & hue/sat should be above safe in the effects stack. Set the safe effect to “key out unsafe”. Set levels to output black to 16, white to 235. Make sure your comp’s background colour is something wild, something that you will notice when the effect keys out your hot reds. Scrub the timeline until you find something that the effect keys out. Tweak the saturation if it is too colourful. If you have a hot yellow, try turning the yellow layer towards orange a bit using the hue/sat on that layer alone.
The Hue/Sat might only need to be applied to hot layers such as red — no need to take down a dull blue in an adjustment layer.
Will knocking down the red fix the boogers? Maybe. Try adding 1 pixel of vertical blur to the red stuff.
Steve
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Hmm … this gets asked a lot. At the risk of offending users of other fine 3D apps, I’d say that Cinema 4D is best suited to motion graphics, due to its flexible workflow and integration with AE.
Don’t get me wrong — Maya, MAX and LW are fine for character work, complex modelling, effects, realism, cloth dynamics and so on, but to my mind, C4D gets the nod for motion graphics.
There are numerous threads on this. Search the COW on “Cinema4D”, just because it’s the quickest way to find the threads covering 3D apps in general.
Steve
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Hmm … this gets asked a lot. At the risk of offending users of other fine 3D apps, I’d say that Cinema 4D is best suited to motion graphics, due to its flexible workflow and integration with AE.
Don’t get me wrong — Maya, MAX and LW are fine for character work, complex modelling, effects, realism, cloth dynamics and so on, but to my mind, C4D gets the nod for motion graphics.
There are numerous threads on this. Search the COW on “Cinema4D”, just because it’s the quickest way to find the threads covering 3D apps in general.
Steve
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… do you have enough Z-axis separation between your red and blue solids? Just a thought — they might be too close.
Steve
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Looks like a codec issue. DV doesn’t like bright red. Heck, most codecs don’t, from what I’ve seen. Have you tested rendering to other codecs? Is there any chance you can render to another codec for delivery? If not, will those dots even be noticed when the thing is in motion?
Steve
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In AE, if you want text to follow a path, that path has to be a mask. A mask can only be created on a layer, and layers are only flat planes. So, unfortunately, masks cannot reside in more than one plane.
However, layers, nulls and cameras can move in more than one plane. If you want text to follow that kind of motion, you need to make a bunch of text layers, each with one character in it. Make a null move in 3 dimensions. Pickwhip the position of each text layer to match the null. To offset each letter, you’d need to add an expression to delay each layer. Sorry, but I can’t find one right now. There may be a “follow” expression on Dan Ebberts’ site https://www.motionscript.com/ or in a COW tutorial.
Or … time to get a 3D app. 🙂
Hope that helps,
Steve -
In AE, if you want text to follow a path, that path has to be a mask. A mask can only be created on a layer, and layers are only flat planes. So, unfortunately, masks cannot reside in more than one plane.
However, layers, nulls and cameras can move in more than one plane. If you want text to follow that kind of motion, you need to make a bunch of text layers, each with one character in it. Make a null move in 3 dimensions. Pickwhip the position of each text layer to match the null. To offset each letter, you’d need to add an expression to delay each layer. Sorry, but I can’t find one right now. There may be a “follow” expression on Dan Ebberts’ site https://www.motionscript.com/ or in a COW tutorial.
Or … time to get a 3D app. 🙂
Hope that helps,
Steve -
Sorenson 3 is a Quicktime codec, and so are Animation and Photo-JPEG.
You should do tests. Render the same movie with multiple output modules, different codecs (start with the three above). When done, note the file size and data rates. Play them back on your hard drive, burn to CD and play, and upload to the internet and play. Note any skips and problems.
An animation-compressed movie will probably not play back on your drive at D1 res (720×486 or so). Photo-JPEG probably will. Both of those codecs are useful for intermediate storage, when transferring between apps when high quality is needed, but nowadays Photo-JPEG can be played back on most hard drives. Sorenson is a delivery codec, only suitable for the end-of-the-process deliverable, but it looks nice for its small file size.
By the way, you should buy Sorenson 3 Pro, since it offers Variable Bitrate encoding (VBR) which makes all the difference.
Hope that helps,
Steve -
With the pen tool (G) selected, alt-click (opt-click on mac) on the point.
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It’s always a compromise between image quality and playability. You should do a number of tests when you’re not on deadline, burn them to CD, then test them on machines at school. Save the most useful settings to templates, then you don’t have to think about it again … until somebody comes out with a better codec, of course.
Steve