Tudor "ted" jelescu
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One more thought on this- you can use motion tile to mirror the image on the left and the right and just apply an adjustment layer on top with a mask that you can feather to your hearts desire and a blur effect applied on it. This way you get a mirrored image on each side that smoothly continues the video and can be blurred.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
AE is definitely up to the task. It’s more a matter of budget and how much time you want to spend on this. The easy way is to have a lock down camera that shoots both the scene with the actor and without. If you can get your hands on a motion control rig that would enable you to have camera moves. If you want to try to shoot the actor on chroma and then composite him/her in a shot, you can do that as well. You will need to carefully match the lighting and if you want camera moves, you may want to design the moves so that they can be tracked in 2d ( so that you can easily comp the chroma actor in the moving shot without the need for perspective change).
You can also do more complex camera moves in 3d space, shoot the actor on chroma, track the camera move with Boujou/Voodoo/Syntheyes and build a virtual set in AE that uses the tracked camera data.
As I said, it’s all a matter of budget and your involvement in the project.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
Besides watching those tutorials and learning from them, here’s a quick way of doing a morph in AE:
Use Mesh Warp.
Set 2 layers in a AE comp- the “morph from” layer on top of the “morph to” layer.
Start on the layer you want to morph from- apply Mesh Warp and set keyframe. Move 8 to 15 frames (or as many as you need your morph to be) and change transparency to 50% so that you can see the layer under. Use the mesh warp to distort the features of the top layer to match those of the bottom layer ( eyes to match the eyes, mouth to mouth and so on..).
Apply Mesh Warp to bottom layer and set keyframe at the end of the transition. Go back to the beginning of the transition and use the Mesh Warp to distort the bottom layer to match the top one’s features.
Set transparency keyframes to animate the top layers opacity from 100% to 0 for the length of the morph.
That’s basically it.
For a good effect either shoot both characters on chroma or have a lock down camera and a positioning grid to make sure the background does not change.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
for better answers post a still- not all of us live in the US.
From what you describe though, a mask that feathers the vertical edges of the 4:3 frame and a stretched and blurred same clip composited under the feathered layer should do the trick.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
I think the best way is to shoot the dancer on chroma and composite that in the environments of each frame. You will need a killer storyboard and a lot of preparation to do it though. Another way is to use well choreographed movements and roto and morphing, but that’s even harder than the first method.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
It looks like a combination of toon it or even find edge and masking.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
google zaxwerks- you’ll get all the answers you need.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
Of the top of my head, this is what I would try ( I’m sure there’s a better way but I can’t think of one now):
Link a light to the path
Animate light so that it matches the timing of the front end of the line as it animates on the path.
Link to the light a disk (layer with a disk made in AE or PSD or AI) that is a gradient from 100% white in the center to 100% black on the edge, with a radius that matches the length of the fade you want for your line.
Render that on a black background (just the disk- light and all other layers turned off). What you get is a matte for the front end of the line. Use that to composite the line on top of the background. Use a Matte chocker to adjust the dimension of the fade.
Anyone else got a more complicated way of doing this???Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
AE definitely has the tools to do what you’re looking for. Keylight is a really great keyer. My suggestion is to use AE all the way. A few useful tips:
Use light wraps for compositing – the cow and https://maltaannon.com great resource for that and other AE stuff.
Search for Dave’s stock answer #1 on this forum – great insights about compression and file formats.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist -
Also, I discovered that if you have heads to the clip ( frames before the actual first keyframe of the time remap) that weird interpolation of the background can be avoided. Time remapping looks for info even before the first keyframe and if there is non then it freaks out a bit.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist