After Effects tips
From Mographwiki.net
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Simulate hand held camera moves in AE
Trick #1: DOUBLE PARENT the camera
NULL1------NULL2 (sketch this one)-----------CAMERA
First sketch NULL2, then parent it to NULL1. Make them 3D, move NULL1 to camera position. Now parent camera to NULL2.
By scaling NULL1, you can control amplitude of motion!
I particularly like that double parenting technique with two nulls.
Trick #2: Use a real hand-held shot
Using your DV camera, or whatever, make a hand held shot of a distinct object, like a piece of black tape on a white wall, shot hand held. Using telephoto will exaggeratete the uneveness of the handheld motion. Motion track the object, and apply the motion to the subject to which you wish to give the hand held look.
Adding a stroke around a layer
Add the Fill effect and select the color you like, then add Simple Choker and set a negative choke to select the length of the line. Then add CC Composite, set to composite in front. Works great, with a quick setup, and renders really fast--and can be saved as a favorite.
Reduce DV blockyness
DV captured with Quicktime can look quilted or blocky. A quick way to reduce the quilting is to use SmoothKit Gaussian set to Process Mode:Chroma. Use a filter size of 16. This will allow you to get better ChromaKeys from DV captures. More information is available at Adam Wilt's FAQ.
Reducing Shine on Face
An example of reducing shine on a face caused by persperation and lack of makeup (screen shot below):
1 - Duplicate the layer
2 - Garbage matte the top layer around the face
3 - Instead of using Luma Key, use Extract on the Green channel only to
isolate the shiny, bright parts. (Adjust Black point to around 151,
with a Black softness of 10 or so)
4 - decrease brightness and contrast by around -29 and -15.
5 - gaussian blur of 6 or so
... You still get the highlights from the side-lighting, but they don't look wet and shiny. I think the key to this is using Extract on the Green channel, because it works better than the Luma Key.
These values apply specifically to the image below, but the general technique can be used with different values for a variety of different situations.
(From AE-List)
Roll credits
Roll credits at an even multiple of the field rate to get the most pleasing results.
Thus for 525/59.94 (or 525/60, more or less)
video, good roll rates are 120, 240, 360, etc.
(via AE-List)
Dustbusting
Removing dust/dropouts/flaws is called "Dustbusting," and has been done frame by frame using programs like Photoshop and Commotion
Solution using Vector Paint in AE:
1. Make a black Solid,
2. Apply VP, use it as inverse Luma track matte for the main color layer.
3. Duplicate color layer, set below main layer, and offset it in time.
4. Paint onto solid.
Why the solid? It's much easier to find your paint marks later than if you paint into the color layer itself, and it renders very quickly in either case
(From Tim Sassoon via AE-List)
Versioning with scripting
One of the simplest and most useful functions of scripting in AE is Boredom Removal. Scripting allows the computer to handle the grunt work it lives for, freeing you up to make that extra Starbucks run. This example shows how to render a separate movie for each line in a text file. In this case, we're going to pander to each of the 50 states. This would be a tedious prospect without scripting.
Download the project zip file here. In it, you'll find three files:
- states.txt - a text file containing each of the 50 states on a separate line
- versions.jsx - the script file that makes it all happen
- states.aep
If you're feeling brave, open "versions.jsx" in a text editor. Every line that begins with // is a comment, and it helps explain how things work.
Open the aep file in After Effects. Note the layer called "North Carolina." This is the layer we'll be changing out. I picked North Carolina because it's the longest state name, so I know everything else will fit.
This is a very simple script with no error checking, so it's important to follow these steps:
- As soon as you've opened the project, set your default Render Settings and Output Module to something your system can handle. For example, Best Setting/Lossless will yield 34Mb movies--totalling nearly 2Gb of hard drive space. Using draft settings will knock that down to 8.5Mb, for a total of around 450Mb.
- Render out the composition called "Comp." Make sure you render to a folder, not on the root level of the hard drive. The purpose of this first render is simply to establish the directory the 50 movies will render to. There are ways to control this in the script--or even ask for a location before beginning--but that would make the script a lot more complicated, so we'll save that for another time.
- Once "Comp" is done rendering successfully, you can run the "versions.jsx" script. (File > Run Script > Choose file...). Your computer will begin chirping like a cricket, as each movie takes very little time to render. This process has a couple of quirks:
- You can't interrupt it without closing AE. Just let it run its course, even if it's not working correctly.
- The comp name will change with each new render, and the Render Queue will leave the impression that it's rendering the same thing over and over again. It's not--look at the file names.
- After a minute or two, the rendering will be done, and there will be 50 shiny new movies in the directory you specified in Step 2.
Of course, this example is laughably simple, but this kind of script works just as well for a more complicated project. It just takes longer to render. All that matters is that the type layer to be changed is done in After Effects.
