Tudor "ted" jelescu
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Free Form (comes with CS5) can do 3d distortion. You can easily animate a layer that has the side of the bridge (or strips of paint or whatever)using the distortion controls.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Best if you ask the tv station what format they need it.
There are a variety of standards that the tv stations use today. Some still use SD while others are HD. Some broadcast widescreen while some still use the 4:3 format. Be as specific in your questions to the tv station as you can.
A few things to ask:
system: NTSC (US, Japan..) or PAL (Europe…)
aspect ratio- 4:3 or 16:9
codec and containerTudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
To add to what Walter said, I would recommend spending some time with a colorist and “stealing” the art. It does not matter really what software/hardware he or she is using, but more the reasoning behind what they do. I know that it did me a lot of good to loose some nights working with a colorist and learning through seeing a master at work.
I remember that after the first 4 hour session I started color grading my dreams…Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Zooming in at 1080 will degrade the image – it depends though how much you zoom in, up to 120% you should be ok, more than that you will get softer edges and eventually pixelation. Resizing the image to 720 will make it look better but you will still notice a difference.
I’m not sure about YouTube and flv since I always use f4v, but the quality is great for f4v.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
First set your layer to which you can apply FF Pro. A high file as wide as your comp maybe ( for HD let’s say 1920 wide by 3000 high) textured with the desert. You will need to paint a trench and a pile of rocks and dust ( as it looks from above) and animate the pile growing and moving as the trench grows. Of course that would have to match the timing of the ship falling and sliding. One more thing- precomp the layer – make sure the precomp is the same size as the layer- and put a mask that will feather the edges. This way you can place this on top of a motion tiled layer with the desert texture on it and blend it in.
Then you need to create the animated displacement map. Use another layer the same size with the texture described above. Start with a 50% grey image. Draw the trench shape and paint it with a darker grey- the darker it is the deeper the trench will be. On the edges you may want to have a gradient from the darkest to a little over 50% and then back to 50%. Then animate the pile – a shape the grows in intensity from 50% to a lighter gray ( the closer to white the taller the pile) with a gradient on the edges that goes from the lighter gray to 50%.
That’s the basic idea. You will obviously have to tweak the animated texture and displacement map. You can add a lot more detail in both- rocks rolling, ground cracking and so on.
Hope this gives you a starting point.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
I would recommend trying FreeForm Pro for this one. You can animate a displacement map to create the impression of dirt gathering up in front of the spaceship as it slides in and leaving the trench behind it. Apply that to a nice desert texture that has a feathered edge and you can match the perspective and camera move in AE’s 3d space. Particular should help in adding bits and pieces flying in the air and dust.
This tutorial will help:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/blast_wave/Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
You can also use a 3D plugin lige FreeForm Pro to create a 3d extrudet text that can take lights and cast shadows. Zaxwerks Invigorator Pro is another good tool for this job.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
If you use Invigorator Pro from Zaxwerks, you could link 3d text to a 3d layer in AE that can be positioned at the end of the beam and parented to the main Null. This way you will have 3d text animated by the Null.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
For the cartoon effect I would recommend looking into ToonIt from Red Giant.
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/toonit/Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Just to clarify one aspect: I was thinking of finishing everything in 1080 and then compress the final for delivery using Encoder to a 720 format.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist