[Wieger De leur]

hi Eddy,

is there any difference between your actors and the background? Because if everything is white… eh… well there is no way to tell AE which parts it should make transparent in an automated way.
It sounds really problematic.
Can you post an image of a frame, so we can see how bad it is?

[Wieger De leur]

And to reply to your second point; Dave is also right on the color correction.
But you can alsways try to use the curves effect and make a slight S-shape – darkening the dark parts and brightening the lighter parts. It might just add the contrast you need!

Post is expensive because it takes a lot of time. But when you have the time, why not use it?

[Wieger De leur]

Hi Steve,

A little more information would help.

As I understand it now, you have masked out something (like maybe a human figure?). And now you want this figure to be animated. If that’s the case than the puppet tool would be your weapon of choice.
Pre compose your masked figure and in the master comp add the puppet tool effect to the precomposed figure.

If this is really not what you intend, please give some more clues!

Cheers,
Wieger

[Wieger De leur]

Hi Romeo,

The answer to your question depends on how real you would like the effect to be.
The most straightforward option is to add both pictures – the window and the thing you want behind it – to a comp.
Put the window on top.
Draw a mask on the window picture and set it to subtract. If you want the window not completely transparent, you can change the opacity of the mask.

If you want advice for a more subtle effect, you can post the images. Options are for example to add a fall-of to the transparency and add some displacement for texture.

[Wieger De leur]

hi Julia,

The balance between organic shapes and control is always interesting.

Nevertheless Paint has more advantages. You can apply multiple brushes to one instance of the effect – a lot of them. Just make sure that you deselect a brush before drawing a new shape. Sometimes when I want to keep things really organised I use multiple instance of the effect. So you can have a lot of strokes in one single layer.

Another techique to make stuff look more organic is by copying the vector in the brush path of Paint and then pasting it in the position property of a null object. Every point of the path is now editable – by hand or if you like by using something like the wiggler.
When your done, select the whole position property of the null object, copy and paste into the path of the brush.
A lot of control and a lot of options for tweaking your lines.

Good luck with your deadline!

[Wieger De leur]

Hi Julia,

Do you have a reason for choosing vector-paint instead of the regular paint effect? You can key almost everything in paint. So the trouble you have with trying to find animated parts is no issue in paint.
And I really like copying and pasting vectors in the path of the brush in paint. It’s very flexible.

Good Luck!

[Wieger De leur]

Hi Timothy,

Is it an idea to change the depth in your project settings to 16 or 32 bits per channel?

cheers,
Wieger

[Wieger De leur]

Hi Jannik,

Could it be that you’ve selected a comp instead of footage?

[Wieger De leur]

Hi Raz,

This seems like codec trouble. You probably chose ‘Windows media’ or ‘Video for windows’ in the output module. But this only sets the container for the video – the box if you like. The codec determines how the video is organised inside the box.

You can set the codec by clicking ‘Format options’ in the output module.

When you choose ‘Windows media’ as the container, you get a popup menu with it’s own ‘Export audio’ checkbox.
When you choose ‘Video for windows’ ‘Microsoft Video1’ should work fine in the media player.

[Wieger De leur]

Hi Ady,

For revealing text or shapes as if they are drawn, I use Paint (the effect in AE, not the amazing MS app).
Select your text layer and open it in the layer viewer by double clicking it.
Select the eraser tool and use your wacom to trace the shape.
Now the whole shape is erased.
When you open the effect in the timeline (twirl down paint; twirl ‘eraser 1’; twirl stroke options) you see the start and end.
At the beginning of the animation put a keyframe for ‘start’ at 0%;
At the end of the animation, put a keyframe for ‘start’ at 100%

If you use an illustrator shape, with a little tweaking you can even copy the shape directly from illustrator and use it as the shape for the eraser.