Register | Login | Search | Help | New Boards | Harassment Policy | Rules of the JC | TOS | Markup Codes
Locked Topic | Read Only Topic | Previous Active Topic | Next Active Topic
« 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 - Previous | Next | Reload
Author Topic: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
krnbanguboi  1442 posts
Registered: Mar '05
22366_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 8/23/05 2:22pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
Plus I rather like the glows on Ryans tutorials. Now to get back on topic, Did you use this style on any FX tests or anything?

 

-----signature-----
Plug-In Visuals (Forum) - http://www.pluginforums.tk
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
Ryan_W  3447 posts
Title: Fan Films: Emmy-Winning Lightsaber Geek
 Registered: Aug '01
44357_Fan Films - Ryan vs Dorkman
Date Posted: 8/23/05 2:26pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
Little tests, nothing big. The rotoscoping aspect of it isn't anything new, so haven't really felt the need to beta test it on a whole clip; mostly just been playing with images and frames, etc. Next time I do work on sabers, though, I'll definitely be using it.

 

-----signature-----
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
AidanOnasi  217 posts
Registered: Jul '05
41202_Scout Trooper
Date Posted: 8/23/05 2:30pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects

But most of the time it's not a line, it's a big ol' triangle.

It's not about the shape, it's about the painting. When one part of the sword disappears behind you, basicaly you need to creat new masc. If you paint that, you don't need to bother, you just paint the places you want.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, it's just my opinion

 

-----signature-----
aka Martin Klekner
Star Wars Shadows of the Past teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU-dJJGdUIk
Power of the Dark Side: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEsqPk4ipGw ... 100.000 hits!
Blog: http://mksvisualfx.blogspot.com/
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
Kaat  1461 posts
Registered: Apr '04
40078_Duel
Date Posted: 8/23/05 2:37pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects - Date Edited: 8/23/05 2:38pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Kaat
Cool. You just keep getting better results than me... (not that I ever doubted it, but I keep trying and hoping) tired



For my application, your tutorial is not working very well, of course. But I guess it will work fine in After Effects. That Adjustment Layers-thing is a very good idea I'd never have thought of... I would have done the whole core-rotoing in a special composition and the glow in a new one, using the first comp as footage... so I would be flexible concerning of blade changes. That Layer method is faster and easier, of course..
However, great tutorial (and compression) as ever. I don't have much *new* things to tell you... erh, did you know that I wear glasses?

 

-----signature-----
Check out my VFX-blog where you can find my fx tests and my video tutorials as well:
You'll find my tutorial for lightsaber wall cuts there, too.
.
http://petergerri.blogspot.com/
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
majormorgan  499 posts
Registered: Jan '04
24201_Anakin and Padme
Date Posted: 8/23/05 2:44pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
I don't see this taking up any more processor time than usual. As with the new and old process show you can turn off the effects layers at anytime and just work with the basic core shape layer.

What's great about the new way is that before we had 3-5 copies of the roto layer and if we made a change to the mask position of one we had to copy those changes and apply it to the other layers. So now we don't have to.

As pointed out it still takes time to render the frame so the interactive moving of hte fully realised effect is still in the domain of the fast machine, but who cares, either way old or new your machine was still slow or fast.

I can see the advantages of this new method straight off. Even if you take the fact that the effect is cumulative over the added effects layers this helps the layers to come together to make a more blended core than before.

Its all good. And remember if your machine is slow, just turn off the effects layers until you've finished roto-ing.

In the end the variation I will use is once I have finished roto-ing underneath, with the footage on screen mode, then I will take the screen mode off and then move the footage to below the lightsaber core footage as my comps have rather a lot of layers in terms of background bits, effects and other compositional elements.

This fits into my workflow rather nicely.

Thanks Ryan

 

-----signature-----
I Shoot. Edit. Move it around. Reshoot some more. Edit that.
In the end, why stick to what you have got from principle photography?
This is the digital realm, so every pixel is up for grabs
http://www.morganfilms.co.uk
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
DarthLowBudget  5320 posts
Registered: Jan '04
14382_Anakin Skywalkers
Date Posted: 8/23/05 2:52pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
AidanOnasi posted:

But most of the time it's not a line, it's a big ol' triangle.

It's not about the shape, it's about the painting. When one part of the sword disappears behind you, basicaly you need to creat new masc. If you paint that, you don't need to bother, you just paint the places you want.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, it's just my opinion


Subtraction masks don't really take much time or effort and if you mess up the blade on a frame you have to repaint it instead of just moving a point. Now where's tha advantage again?

Zap I agree with you about the adjustment layers affecting all the glows and everything is cool and better, but is their a technical reason you'd care to enlighten us with?

*waits for long reply to learn some cool new studd from*

 

-----signature-----
"We Will Spread Rational Inquiry By The Sword!"
I may be wrong but I am NEVER in doubt.
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
Dako  638 posts
Registered: Jun '05
40047_Gandalf
Date Posted: 8/23/05 2:55pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
I really like your new method Ryan. It slows the render time, but it's worth it. Although, I actually found when you apply the linear opacity thing, I just do the last two adjustment layers, with the Fast Blur of 40 and 80. 40 gets 75%, and 80 gets 50%. I find it looks better, but that's just me talking.

 

-----signature-----
Working on rotoscoping my LCC4 Entry 3. A couple more
fight scenes to do, then the closeups and wide shots.
Lightsaber Sound FX Uber Addict!
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
Ryan_W  3447 posts
Title: Fan Films: Emmy-Winning Lightsaber Geek
 Registered: Aug '01
44357_Fan Films - Ryan vs Dorkman
Date Posted: 8/23/05 3:27pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
Whatever works for you.

 

-----signature-----
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
DMPjedi  4393 posts
Registered: Mar '03
14724_Keira Knightley
Date Posted: 8/23/05 3:57pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
I'm really enjoying this workflow Ryan peace

 

-----signature-----
Nate Caauwe - VFX Supervisor, Movie Spoof 2 & 3
http://PixelCorps.com
DMPjedi is not here right now, please leave a message with NateCaauwe after the beep.
Beep.
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
Vi3tBoi53  246 posts
Registered: Jul '05
40094_Anakin
Date Posted: 8/23/05 5:13pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
laugh Nice pic DMP. He's burning is legs off before Obi - wan can.

 

-----signature-----
I feel sorry for the people that takes hours and hours
to fall asleep. It's so easy for me to fall asleep.
In fact, I could fall asleep right now on my keybo-kajdfiuwakjnskafnjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
Shawn PTH  1247 posts
Registered: Apr '00
6058_Dexter Jettster
Date Posted: 8/23/05 8:11pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
MasterZap posted:
My what deep voice you've got, Ryan.

Our Ryan, all grown... (sniff sob sob) wink

/Z


ROFLMAO

Glad to see your still perfecting your methods ryan happy

 

-----signature-----
Shawn Sagady
Director - Soldier's Memoirs: 103rd Infantry Division WWII
Assoc. Producer: Prelude 2 Hope
VFX Team - Prelude To Hope, Sins of the Jedi
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
fireresq7  2679 posts
Registered: Oct '02
6229_R4-P17
Date Posted: 8/23/05 8:17pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
you know hwen I switch the project setting to 16 bps I get an exclamation mark on each effect I had to my layers. The excalamtion says that the effect works better at 8bps.

??????

~Rory

 

-----signature-----
Click here to view
The Jedi Saga Website
http://www.solid-roc.com
Right Click here to see film
http://www.solid-roc.com/movie/TheJediSaga.mov
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
Serpent  169 posts
Registered: May '04
19667_Imperial Guard
Date Posted: 8/23/05 9:44pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
Nice results. Best I have seen, counting ILM in my honest opinion. I really don't notice blades that often, unless they are bad. But these are obviously an exception. They just look high quality and "realistic." Do you have a link to the image you used? I want to try and replicate your results and that is the best way to compare.

 

-----signature-----
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
MasterZap  4495 posts
Registered: Aug '02
6098_Clone
Date Posted: 8/23/05 11:33pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects - Date Edited: 8/23/05 11:38pm (1 edits total) Edited By: MasterZap
Ryan posted:

What capture utility are you using, Zap? Sounds like it's not working so great for you. I recommend HyperCam


CamStudio.

But It's not the capturing per se that is/was the problem. It's basically operator error. First time I forgot that I had made an earlier quick project with it, and it was set in "convert to flash without asking" and "throw away original" mode. Duh.

Second pass, I forgot that it uses mp3 encoding for the audio, that for some reason neither AE nor Premiere recognizes (beats me why, Adobe and mp3 encodings is a big phat mess) so when I went to make it to a .mov from the 130 Mb AVI.... first AE screwed up, then my try with Premiere made one audio-less file, and when exporting the audio separately and re-merging it, I got a half file.

Actually all my blame here lies on Adobe and not CamStudio in any way.

But I'll take a look at HyperCAM.

Of course, all this woul have been avoided had I set the audio encoding to PCM instead of mp3 ... again, operator error. wink

AidanOnasi posted:

It's not about the shape, it's about the painting. When one part of the sword disappears behind you, basicaly you need to creat new masc. If you paint that, you don't need to bother, you just paint the places you want.


Of course you may use the hybrid method of using a mask for the saber, and then the paint tool (or "vector paint" effect in older AE's) in alpha subtract mode to paint out the blockeroo, matching the motion blur on the blocking geometries with brush feathering.

REGARDLESS of which method, I urge[/i] you all, for your own sanity; whichever method you use to make the glows, please for the love of Lucas, pre comp your actual roto layer and add effects to that. Do [b]not[/i] I repeat do [b]not do anything which actually duplicates the roto data itself into multiple independent copies of the original. That is baaad.

The day will come when you want to fix that little sloppy roto, and you will yell when you find that you have to go in to 15 layers and fix them all in the same way, instead of just touching one.

DarthLow posted:
Zap I agree with you about the adjustment layers affecting all the glows and everything is cool and better, but is their a technical reason you'd care to enlighten us with?

*waits for long reply to learn some cool new studd from*


Uhm, no real physics lessons here... just that if you just blur the original roto "stick", you get a really wimpy blur since all pixel data it has to work on is the original stick.

With this new method, it has the previous blurs to work with.

I think there is potential in this method to use *fewer* blurs to get the same, similar, or better result.

I advice Ryan (and everyone) NOT to be locked up in the old "double each blur layer" thinking, just BECAUSE of this "blurring of blurs" feature. Play with different steppings of the various blurs. Perhaps even consecutive applications of the *same* blur amount (since each new blur applies to the result of the previous, there will be a result).

The math part of me tells me the old way was a method to simulate an exponential falloff (which, due to the fact that nobody here is bothering about gamma, isn't really true, but that's a side discussion).

Now one way to do that is to sum up a set of separate gaussians (i.e. old method).

But my math-hunch gene tells me it is more efficient to do it by cascading gaussians, such as is being done here (i.e. each blur operation applies to the totality of the previous steps). I cannot prove this mathematically because I'm not a mathematician - I'm a magician, and I do all my math by intuition. My intuition tells me this is good.

/Z

 

-----signature-----
mental ray Tips blog - http://www.mentalraytips.com
ZapTroNic Visuals - http://www.ZapTroNic.com
Oldschool Homepage - http://www.Master-Zap.com
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER - http://twitter.com/masterzap
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
HTS_HetH  700 posts
Registered: Jun '02
8072_Rise of the Sith
Date Posted: 8/23/05 11:43pm Subject: RE: New lightsaber video-tutorial for After Effects
I was just thinking, if you now want to apply the wiggler to get the sabers pulsating, you´d just put the white solid above all the adjustment layers (so directly beneath the footage layer) and use the wiggler as always on this solid to make it flicker, right?

 

-----signature-----
Regards
HetH
Star Wars - Invasion II
*Now In Post-Production*
http://invasion2.hethfilms.de
Locked Topic | Active Topic Notification | Private Message | Post History
« 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 - Previous | Next | Reload
© 2009 IGN Entertainment, Inc (9.02.17.2300, IGNPRDAPPW64211) 3.438