[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

A fast blur or gaussian blur .3 – .7 should help. Turn on motion blur as well. Another trick is to render interlaced to an uncompressed format before you compress for final delivery in Adobe Media Encoder (you compress either interlaced or progressive and the graphics should be smooth).

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

This is not an easy quick setup- it will take some playing with, but here’s some ideas:
Create the shape of your final text in AI. Work on the edges- in real life, edges of finger drawings on foggy windows are irregular and change shape- so you need to play in AE with your AI shape and get a way to affect the edges. Matte Chocker could be used for a subtle change in the edges.
Animate a mask to reveal the text. This will be your animated matte layer.
Duplicate the background and blur the top layer. You can reveal the un blurred background using the animated matte layer for your text.
These are the basic blocks, you should shoot a foggy window while you write something on for reference and tweak based on that.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

First you should convert the source files in PSD to 32 bit.
Then use 32 bit in AE- this will help you get rid of the artifacts.
When you render, do so to an uncompressed format (Animation should be fine) and make sure to specify that AE should not convert to linear for 32 bit. Then compress that from Adobe Media Encoder – MPEG2 or H264 (mahe sure to set to keyframe every frame for best result).

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

From what I understand, you have imported Uncompressed avi in AE for further work and then you are rendering out using Media Encoder. If that is correct here’s a few things to figure out:
Does the uncompressed footage look fine when compressed through Encoder? (do a few seconds test)
If you render uncompressed from AE and then run that through Encoder do you still get the same issue?
Check the pixel aspect ratio and the size of your comp and footage to make sure you have the same throughout the workflow.
These may help you find where exactly is the problem starting to show.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

The best thing you can do is to render uncompressed any footage that will go into post work in AE or any other app. The worst thing you can do is try to render a compressed delivery codec from AE. Open the AE composition in Adobe Media Encoder and render from there. Usually MPEG2 or H264 (keyframe every frame) will give you a good result.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

The settings you choose for your composition in the beginning of a project determine the size of the frame, the pixel aspect ratio, the frame rate, but not the final compression of the render. That is determined by the settings you choose from the render module.
It would help you to do a bit of reading on some basics for AE.
Importing file sequences.

Render settings.

As far as compositing stars behind the astronaut, I would just use a garbage mask with a slight feather to eliminate the stars over the character and comp the star layer on top using Add or Screen, or even Unmult.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Or you could create the elements in Illustrator and import them as vectors. This way your 1px lines may have a chance of looking better ( I agree with Dave, 1pixel will not look good on most monitors/Tvs)

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I was hoping at least that someone will try this…

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can go two different routes:
1- get stock footage of smoke or shoot that element yourself. All you need is a decent camera, a black cloth, a light on the side and a cigarette. Poke a hole through the cloth, get a straw (black if you can and set your camera straight on. Blow smoke through the straw from behind the cloth.
2- Use a particle system, Particular would be best.
Here are a few links for that:
https://www.videocopilot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6331
https://lesterbanks.com/2010/10/particular-volumetric-smoke-in-after-effects/
https://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-create-realistic-animated-smoke-after-effects-255544/

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

For capture you will be able to buy this pretty soon:
https://nanoflash.net/gemini_444

The short answer is no though. here’s a link to an article that explains things in more detail:
https://dslrhd.com/?p=1442

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist