Tristan Nieto
Forum Replies Created
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Try this:
Turn off the BG layer (if there is one).
Duplicate your composition (without any shadows) and call it Matte.
Go back to the original comp and apply all the shadows.
Put both the Original and the Matte into a new comp, then copy the BG layer from the original and stick it under both of them (again, assuming there is one).
Set the original comp’s Track Matte to the Matte comp – Alpha.
All the shadows that fall on other layers will be preserved, but any that fall on the background will be masked by the shadowless Matte composition.
It might not be quicker, render wise, but it should give you what you need.
Tristan
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That sounds like a seriously complicated effect. Particles that subdivide and mapping them over complex shapes like moving actors sounds like a job for 3D, or possibly trapcode.
However, in Particle Playground you can use the Persistent Property Mapper to affect particles using another image as a map. You could probably generate a map by rotoscoping your actors, (unless they’re on a greenscreen or something), then using a combination of coloured ramps and maybe a bit of motion tracking to give you vaguely human blobs. That may give you something approximating a displacement matte that you can use as a map to offset the particles’ positions (and possibly even the scale, not sure), but it would be an awful lot of work to get an effect that might not work like you want it to. And you still wouldn’t get your raindrops to split into little ones.
Of course, there’s always hand animating every raindrop.
Not sure if it’s on here or another site, but look for a tutorial about using Particle Playground to generate snow particles that stick to things. Might be a good start.
Hope this helps.
Tristan
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Thanks Guys,
The CC filters fixed my problem, but it’s good to know about the colour depth thing.
Cheers,
Tristan
—https://tristannieto.blogspot.com
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Works like a charm.
Nice work Filip, thanks for helping out.
Tristan
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Thanks Mike,
The thing is, I don’t actually have access to the original project that created the animation. De-interlacing the whole thing would defeat the purpose because then I’d just have ugly, ropey graphics throughout.
What I’m probably going to do, (in lieu of a more elegant solution) is just to reinterpret the footage as progressive, export a TIFF still of the last frame, then change it back to interlaced and use the TIFF instead of freezing the video.
Thanks
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Thank-you Bogiesan,
I had a feeling it was going to be something like that.
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Found the solution recently and thought I’d post it and answer my own question.
It’s something to do with multiprocessing. It seems, for some ridiculous reason, that one of the two processors are unable to locate the file(s) in question, but the other one is fine. This causes the effect of every second frame being screwed. Disabling Multiprocessing seems to fix it.
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I’ve been experiencing this since upgrading as well. It’s one of the many irritating bugs I’ve encountered since moving to CS4.
Tristan
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A quick idea that might help…
Have you tried taking your luma matte and applying a shift channels filter? You could set it to take alpha from the Luma – in effect turning it into an alpha matte. You’d then be able to use the choker and other alpha-based effects, (you may need to precomp it, though).
Tristan
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Hard to say without seeing the project, but two possibilities come to mind, (which you may or may not have already thought of).
1) If you’re rendering one with an alpha and one without, and you’re comp has a black background, it could be that the black BG is mixing with the image when you drop the alpha channel. If you were to then put the alpha’ed one over a white BG, or maybe just disregard the alpha completely, it would appear brighter.
2) Going between an editor like FCP and AE can cause issues, because AE usually renders in RGB and most editors render in YUV. The shift in colour space can cause a drop in brightness. Also, some codecs use YUV and some use RGB. It could mean you need to check your source files, AE project, output codec or editor timeline to see if they’re all the same.
Hope this helps.
Tristan