[Travis Turner]

Thank you for your advice – i had a glimmer of hope for a second and thought maybe the compressed quicktime would track better since there are less pixels so less room for the program to get confused and i could then in turn apply the tracked data from the compressed QT to the full res version – -but no luck – it loses the points almost immediately again – i’m still absolutely baffled that it’s giving me this much trouble

and I’m afraid i’m not following your steps completely – would it be possible to get an AE file from you so i could reverse engineer? if not its ok – ive already wasted about a day and a half trying to get this thing to work and i’m beginning to feel more and more like i should push this on an editor with superior tracking software because right now i’m feeling very let down by AE

[Travis Turner]

Hi Dave –
yea we tried all manner of combinations including those things you described – like you suggest , it’s a mystery why it won’t work as it should – our editor tried tracking a single point in the avid and it worked flawlessly so I’m still stumped – I think at this point we’re going to try and find another solution that doesnt involve after effects –
thanks again for the help –
t

[Travis Turner]

ok – maybe you could judge from a still –

https://travisrturner.com/Bill-1-(0;00;02;10).jpg

thats full size – and again thank you for all your help Dave

[Travis Turner]

no it isnt – ive tracked a couple things before so i’m kind of familiar with the way it works – but this is 4 black dots on a white card – its a complete mystery to me why it isnt working – maybe the dots are too big?

[Travis Turner]

Thanks for the reply Dave –
nope – it’s DVC Pro HD 720p uncompressed quicktimes – at least thats what it should be unless the guy upstream gave me something funky – a 5 sec clip is 80MB and looks fine to me – no signs of artifacting –

[Travis Turner]

Thanks for the feedback – I’m aware google earth is copyrighted , but I needed a way to test out the theory just to see how plausible it was – satellite imagery will be another cost passed on to the client – sounds like my approach was the right one although it will still be a bit of a nightmare and like you said Mylenium – very expensive for the client so I’ll try and sell the producers on a lower cost alternative – and out of curiosity – how is Curious Worldmaps more abstract? I was under the impression that they pulled satellite images on the fly – so that program would almost be a perfect solution for this problem, although a cost prohibitive one –
thanks guys

[Travis Turner]

great – thanks for the replies guys – this is still in the very beginning stages of production so I’ll take your advice and might bug you again if i hit any walls down the road –
thanks again –

[Travis Turner]

Yea – make your particle “customize fill” and then make “set color” set to “random from gradient” – at this point you can set the colors in the “color over life” palette to whichever you choose –

[Travis Turner]

maybe a more in-depth explanation would help in case particular isn’t the best tool to accomplish the look youre going for – but sounds like what you want to do is use a directional emitter with a medium wide directional spread – use custom particles for your multi-colored blobs – and make sure your gravity settings are appropriate so the particles fall soon after leaving the emitter – hope this helps

[Travis Turner]

great info guys – appreciate the help –