Tudor "ted" jelescu
Forum Replies Created
-
If I understand correctly your issue, you could create a precomp with a colored solid for each of the 8 cameras to match in 3d the position of your background. Once you’re done, you can just replace the solid with any new background plate you need or open the precomp and animate inside a change between multiple background plates.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Got it- I would then definitely work with shape layers. They are easy to adjust and tweak and you can animate the opacity (you can even sync animation with a soundtrack either using AE’s convert audio to keyframes or Red Giant Sound Keys). You can then apply other fx on the shape layers ( textures, glowing edges…).
For an elegant animation you may want to put in a bit more work at the beginning: create an Adjustment Layer with sliders (one for each shape layer), re-name them to easy recognize each shape(you may want to draw a diagram of the combined shapes and name your shapes) and then you can link the opacity from each of your shape layers to the corresponding sliders using expressions (pickwhip the value). This way you have one control layer that you can use to animate the opacity of all shapes.
Hope this gives you a start.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Beauty Box is what I use, but for a quick and dirty fix you can always try AE’s own Remove Grain filter on a duplicate of your video (needs a bit of tweaking) with feathered masks… I think you will be pleasantly surprised and with more cash in your pocket.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Are you using color management? Is the profile you use the same in all instances?
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS61A9D13D-919A-4010-A3A2-00477A81FDB0a.htmlTudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Not knowing exactly what you’re trying to achieve makes it hard to recommend “the best” solution, but here’s what comes to mind: create your masks using animated shapes on individual shape layers. You can then duplicate each layer (to keep the originals untouched) and use them as track mattes for your images. You can either combine the mattes in one precomp and then use as track matte or use them individually with the image layers (if it’s just one image layer you can duplicate and pair the duplicates up with each matte/shape layer). If you want to re use the mattes, you can duplicate the original shape layers, slide them down in the place where you need the new animation to start and combine them at will.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
If you use a Shadow plugin like Wrap/Shadow, you need to animate the shadow end to change perspective with the scene. If you use a 3d duplicate of the 2d actor layer, once it’s positioned correctly it will move with the floor as the camera moves.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
There are several ways of getting a shadow:
one is to actually get it from your chroma, the actual shadow of your talent- but that involves some good keying skills and patience.The second is to fake it using a third party plugin (Shadow from RedGiant Wrap, Boris…) or by duplicating your layer, making it 3d, changing the anchor point to the bottom, crushing all grey values to black, blurring the image, cutting a mask at the top with a feathered edge to create the illusion of the shadow losing intensity as it goes away from the subject and then positioning the layer in 3d to match the perspective of the floor and the bottom edge of the subject.
The third would be to make the actual layer of the actor 3d, position it correctly in 3d space inside the virtual set and shining a light on it to have it cast a shadow. In this situation though there should be no camera move to match – the only move should be the virtual one.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
After reading the whole thread it seems to me that there is one major issue- why are you making the actor layer 3d?! You have a Camera moving in the “real world” shooting the actor- right? You are trying to match a virtual camera to “shoot” a virtual set with the same move and that is why you track with the 3d tracker and apply data to the virtual camera – this way the virtual move in the virtual set matches the one in the real world. So you do not need to make the actor layer 3d, parent that to the camera or anything else- it just needs to stay put as a 2d layer with a matte. If the track is good and the virtual set is correctly positioned in front of the camera, then your actor should “stick” to the floor.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
My workflow is to storyboard, split the shots that involve lots of similar elements in groups and then create a project for each group with Comps for each shot. I then render each shot and put everything back together in Premiere.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Free Form- free with AE or FreeForm Pro can do true 3d distortion. Check out the mettle website for tutorials on using FreeForm Pro in animation.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist