[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

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Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

These guys have some things you may be abe to use:

https://www.dropdrop.com/top-secret.php

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I did a test and there should be no issue in tracking the camera. You can then create the smoke several different ways – Particle Illusion, Stock footage, or Trapcode Form. You ca even use a 3d displacement plugin like FreeForm Pro. However the biggest issue will be the interaction of the actor with the smoke. As he walks through it, there should be swirls and the smoke should move.
The easiest way would be to use a 3d particle system in C4d and create turbulence by matching the position of the actor. This tutorial may be a starting point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcwNLxxoHHc

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

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[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

That would indeed make life easier – it’s possible now to work on a very large second screen with your layer properties revealed and select and move a bunch of keyframes at the same time, but if you have more than a dozen layers it’s not a good solution.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You need to convert to a DV codec or any other codec in a .mov container?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

More details will help, but the main problem I see is “rendering h264 from AE”. Render from Encoder, use a high bit rate and constant bit rate. YouTube will recompress whatever you upload, so the more info you give initially, the better.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Create a precomp of your images or videos and apply Free Form or FreeForm Pro to distort in 3d space. You can create a ribbon this way that is 3 dimensional and you can easily edit the images or videos inside.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Along the lines of Dave’s advice I would add- make the precomp full screen. If you want a real camera move then you’ll have to do a 3d track and position your precomp to match the screen in the live shot in 3d space. This way the virtual camera will match the real camera – of course you’ll have to adjust the end to have a perfect full frame of the desktop. If you want to do a quick zoom in post, the you need only worry about animating a quick scale up (add motion blur) and position/scale the precomp using corner pin.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

For a simple transition you can use Card Wipe, create a precomp with your initial images and one with the final 4. Apply Card Wipe to the first and assign as back layer the second.
Card Dance is similar.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

One way of doing it is to use the software from 360Heros to stitch 6 renders from AE, using a 6 camera rig each with 170 degree fov (mimic the GoPro camera setup from 360Heros). Software is expensive though.
For stills you can use Photomerge in Photoshop.

https://shop.360heros.com/category-s/1829.htm

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist