[Yussef Cole]

If you have a particle system, obviously fog is going to be one of their presets. Like Trapcode particular for example would have great fog – and then you can use the inverse mask of your character for an obscuration layer (so that the fog only fills up the space he’s supposed to take up).

If you don’t, try fractal noise with some creative masking and blurring. Once again you can use an inverse mask so that only the character is cloudy and then have the ‘fog’/fractal noise layer by slowly revealed by an animated mask. If done right I think that would look pretty good, if not entirely 3 dimensionally photorealistic.

[Yussef Cole]

Once again you should really use wave world and caustics. It’s the most realistic looking simulation of this effect without going into 3rd party plug in realm. Look up some tutorials on those effects here and try it out. It will definitely pay off!

Yussef

[Yussef Cole]

Seriously yes, thank you everyone. After Effects would have been a distant dream for me without yout help.

Yussef

[Yussef Cole]

What’s a reasonable price to pay for a green screen? What’s the cheapest you’d pay?

(To add on, in my own way, to this thread…)

[Yussef Cole]

Thanks, that definitely helps.

I think it’s really a matter of paying attention to how you organize your comps. So I’ll work on that, but the explanation helps.

Thanks,
Yussef

[Yussef Cole]

Hey,
I’m working on a 16:9 movie.

Originally in AE I was working at 720 480, widescreen, but found that the ratio was sort of incorrect. When I brought it into FCP and set the clip to “anamorphic” the video stretched more than it had in AE when Widescreen aspect ratio simulation was turned on. So this is what I do now:

I start and put everything together in a square pixels comp of: 864×486. (you’ll see that AE switches it’s “lock aspect ratio” button to 16:9 instead of 3:2 or whatver it was with DV widescreen.)

Then I create a non-square DV NTSC comp, bring the 864 by 486 comp in and command option f to scale it to 720 by 480. Then I export bring it into FCP and select Anamorphic under clip settings. When it scales back out it looks exactly correct.

Try it out, you can apparently use other comp sizes beside 864 by 486 but I haven’t experimented.

Also: apparently this isn’t necessary according to a tutorial by rick gerard about aspect ratios, you can do a search for that on cow but I didn’t really get what he was putting down so I find my way easier.

-Yussef

[Yussef Cole]

No problem if you don’t know expressions. Wiggle is quite possibly the easiest expression around. Especially if you’re just wiggling a 2d comp.

Option click the stopwatch on the layer position (or ratation or whatever you want to shake) and enter:

wigfreq = 3;
wigamt = 30;
wigdetail = 3;
wiggle(wigfreq, wigamt, wigdetail)

Then change the values as you see fit. Or attach them to expression sliders by making a new invisible (turn eye off) layer and applying expression slider effects for every value you want to be keyframeable (like 2 expression sliders, one for wiggle frequency, and one for amount) then pickwip where there should be a value to that expression slider effect in the invisible laer.

-Yussef
P.S. I took that expression from Maffit’s total training pdf. A great expression resource for anyone who has the TT package who hasn’t used it.

[Yussef Cole]

No problem if you don’t know expressions. Wiggle is quite possibly the easiest expression around. Especially if you’re just wiggling a 2d comp.

Option click the stopwatch on the layer position (or ratation or whatever you want to shake) and enter:

wigfreq = 3;
wigamt = 30;
wigdetail = 3;
wiggle(wigfreq, wigamt, wigdetail)

Then change the values as you see fit. Or attach them to expression sliders by making a new invisible (turn eye off) layer and applying expression slider effects for every value you want to be keyframeable (like 2 expression sliders, one for wiggle frequency, and one for amount) then pickwip where there should be a value to that expression slider effect in the invisible laer.

-Yussef
P.S. I took that expression from Maffit’s total training pdf. A great expression resource for anyone who has the TT package who hasn’t used it.

[Yussef Cole]

Also Trapcode Particular makes great clouds for flythroughs in my opinion. Check out their website for examples of this.

[Yussef Cole]

Thanks that definitely helped out. There’s still a tiny sliver of shadow even at 4000 resolution but I believe that a small fast blur will even that out. I appreciate the help.

Yussef