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General tips (use browser find for quick access)
* AE is not easy to master, but it is fun. AE users have a lot of support in online communities -- check the links in On-Line Resources. You can ask any sort of question that experienced forum or AE-list brains can answer, but remember to do your homework so you can frame questions clearly. * Answers to all common problems are in the searchable Adobe Technical Support Databases and Technical Top Issues for AE. * Learn how to search on a computer. On a Mac, Drag & Drop search criteria and locations into the customize area. * Read your Readmes, like the ones that come with AE! Don't forget the online HTML manual under AE's Help menu -- or the100 expert tips in Tip of the Day. * You must set keyframes and change values to animate. See the tutorial on the Adobe tips page for an introduction. * Learning keyboard shortcuts might seem dull but it could triple your productivity; see the AE and PS shortcuts guide (they're in the Help system). Think of the transform shortcuts as PARTS: (P)osition, (A)nchor point, (R)otation, opaci(T)y, (S)cale. You could also get a custom keyboard from Logic Keyboard or a compact placemat guide from KeyGuides. * Add keyframes automatically in the Effects window by clicking the the stopwatch. * Hit the "U" key ("uber key") to reveal all keyframes on the chosen layer(s). UU reveals properties changed from their defaults. * The RAM preview shortcut is "0" on the keypad; shift+0 renders half the frames for faster previews. * To open or close all nested twirly arrows, command (control on win) + click the twirly arrow next to the parameter you would like to expand. This works in all windows. * Most of the shortcuts can be found in the Quick Shortcut Card (now defunct) or in Help (eg., cmd+opt+f = stretch layer to fit comp window). The best of them, and more, can be found in Trish Meyer's Hidden Gems PDF. * Organize your media locations before work starts; keeping projects within a master folder will help prevent oversights. The Collect feature helps here. * Adobe now has a strong web training presence for Photoshop and other products -- and for graphics issues in general. Check out the Expert Centers and Portal Resources. * Make regular visits to DV Magazine -- they post articles by leading application experts and monthly AE columns by Trish and Chris Meyer. Ask DV to improve access to articles! Archive any articles you want to keep because they may "get disappeared" (hmm, let me consult the style manual) by the conglomerate CMP-Carleton-BigBrother and/or Rupert Murdoch. Some of the good stuff might be found in CMP-branded books. Trish and Chris have rebuilt some of the archive at their Cybmotion site. * The definitive book in 2 volumes Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, by Trish and Chris Meyer, is also described at the Cybermotion site. Their follow up book is also great: After Effects in Production. * There are a few good affordable tapes/DVD of interest, but if you're really committed to learning AE, Brian Maffitt's video tutorials on AE, AE filters and other topics are available from Total Training. Total AE and the others are expensive, but they so good that they have been a training tool at ILM. Adobe often includes hours of Total Training in their shipping products.. * Also of interest is The Masters of Visual Effects (here too) video series, in which industry heavies explain the how of special effects, rather than a step by step how-to in a specific application. The one on Roto/paint is especially worthwile. Desktop Images sells the "money tape" (because you save money by not groping in the dark): "VideoSyncrasies: The Motion Graphics Problem Solver" by Trish & Chris Meyer. * Heavy use of computers can cause pain! Onsight has a good collection of articles and links to other ergonomics Internet sites. On the Mac you can set Date & Time to chime standard or custom sounds (like "stretch") every 15 minutes. getting carpel tunnel? What can I do to prevent major damage?" Dave Anselmi, a T'ai Ch'i Instructor for over 10 years and instructor at UC Berkeley also has advice. * Did I mention the definitive AE book(s) Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects? And check out Going Green without Wasting Green for "a large number of small things you can do in running your business that add to your loftier goals without subtracting from your bottom line - in fact, some practices enhance both."
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Illustrator for AE Basics * Illustrator is handy because files are small and can be scaled when continuos rasterizing is on (the star icon) without loss of resolution if no filters or masks are applied. Some AE users may need to download updaters if there are undue problems in AE; ask on a forum or get faster feedback by searching the Adobe support databases. * Illustrator files can be animated "as is" in AE. AE lets you import AI layers as a Comp, and lets you distribute those layers offset in time. * Illustrator upgrade-saved files may be a problem if that version was released after AE, so save using an older format type. * Easy kerning (letterspacing) is one reason for using Illustrator. Hit option-arrow [left or right] to kern text (the same in Photoshop). You can do this in the Path Text plug-in but it has an odd interface. * Text objects are editable. You no longer need to convert to outlined shapes with Create Oultines unless there's letter spacing problems in AE. Be sure to save the .ai file with the embedded fonts option ON, and you don't need the fonts installed when resuing the file. You also don't need to save as EPS or PDF for this to happen, but remember to note the font for archiving. With old software, it may be better to keep a copy in text and in outline. * AE will create an alpha channel at the boundary of the objects unless you make cropmarks from a larger object. To make cropmarks, draw a rectangle the size of the desired alpha then select Objects>Cropmarks>Make. You could also just add a stray point off to the side to enlarge the file dimensions. * To make type-on-a-path: draw an object with the pen, square or circle tools; click and hold on the text tool to reveal text options, choose type-on-a-path tool and type away. See online help for more information. * Illustrator information can be found at IllustratorWorld.com.
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Photoshop Tips * Photoshop files with layers can be animated "as is" in AE -- just import Photoshop as Comp. * You can kern text in PS. Hit option-arrow [left or right] to kern text. * JPEG stills do not support alpha channels; but JPEG2000 does. * Photoshop uses square pixels while 601 video systems like Avid and DV formats use rectangular pixel widths; see AE Help for more on this.. The common practice to prepare images for 601 video is to start at 720x540 and scale the final art to 720x486. For DV start at 720x534 and scale to 720x480. This will squish the image on the monitor but the export to video will rescale the image correctly. And as Chris Meyer notes, "AE is a great utility for PS <g>, converting layer transparency into straight alpha channels, doing the pixel aspect ratio correction, and allowing you save the result either flattened or as a layered .psd file." There's more on pixel aspect ratio around the web, but especially in editions of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, and in several articles at Ken Stone's FCP site. Photoshop CS introduced new features for aspect ratios and other video needs. * AE can correct the comp window preview to display rectangular pixels as square. The control for this display toggle is in AE 5.5 Composition settings. * Layer Splitter 2.0 for the Macintosh is a drag-and-drop application that takes a layered Photshop or Illustrator file and separates each layer to its own file. (AE 4.1 lets you import AI layers as a comp, and lets you distribute those layers offset in time, but you'll have to experiment with timing without Layer Splitter.) * These books are excellent sources of information on Photoshop and RGB graphics: Photoshop Artistry (New Riders, 1999; great CD tutorials on color corection and masking); Real World Photoshop, Photoshop Color Correction by Michael Kieran, and Photoshop Channel Chops (New Riders), by Biedney, Monroy and Moody. The latter group have also released a video tapes on Photoshop; Total Training.com also put out a series with Deke McClelland. * For quality photoshop news, tips & techniques check out Adobe's tips section and tech guides, as well as the * For info on the application Painter, see Jeremy Sutton's pages. * Check out the GIMP variant CinePaint, "a free open source painting and image retouching program designed to work best with 35mm film and other high resolution high dynamic range images [HDR]. It is the most popular open source tool in the motion picture industry -- used in Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little and other feature films. CinePaint is used for painting of background mattes and for frame-by-frame retouching of movies. CinePaint is available for Linux, Macintosh OS X, Windows, and other popular operating systems...CinePaint supports many file formats, both conventional formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and TGA images -- and more exotic cinema formats such as Cineon and OpenEXR." * Run Photoshop on Linux? Try Wine, "an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix...Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely alternative implementation consisting of 100% Microsoft-free code...allowing many unmodified Windows binaries to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris."
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Color Graphics and Color Channels * Color channels are the key to everything in computer fraphics. In Photoshop you can see the color channels in the channel palette. You can view these channels seperately or in combination. In AE you can look at channels by clicking on the RGB swatches in the Composition window. * In Photoshop you can use the info palette to view pixel addresses (0,0 is at top left) and color values for the pixel where the cursor rests. In 24-bit RGB files, there are 3 color channels. Each 8-bit channel specifies a tonal value in the range of 0-255 (2 to the 8th power is 256) for each pixel location. The 3 color planes are combined in the composite RGB channel. A pixel with an R,G,B value of 255,0,0 is pure red. * Adobe support's Technical Guide on color is really great; be sure to see "Basic Color Theory for the Desktop" -- if you can find it! * Basic info on color, and great links can be found at EasyRGB, Color Matters, and Eni Oken’s ColorSchemes. EasyRGB has an applet that also can find complimentary colors for you if you can't buy Matt Silverman's ColorTheory (CT makes picking matching colors a snap). You can also use a less elegant app like Painter's Picker or ColorDesigner, in OSX, or Windows apps like Eni Oken's Color Schemes, ColorImpact or InnovaStudio Web Color Designer. Poyntor.org's Color Tool shows you color theory as it applies to news design. Advanced info is provided by Charles Poynton's Color and Gamma FAQs and work in digital video. The links at CreativePro are good too. * An alpha channel is an additional channel that contains transparency or opacity information. It can be used as a matte or stencil. 32-bit PICT, Tiff and Targa files support alpha channels in channel 4. See Chris Meyer's article about alphas in AE in the September 1997 issue of Interactivity. * File size is related to color depth. For more info, see this Portal's Digital Media File Sizes Simplified. * You may see banding in graphics with wide gradients; adding noise or film grain will help break up the banding. For more info, see "8-bit Versus 10-bit Color " by Fred Lewis on DV's July 1998 site, Puffin's OLD White Papers, or Quantel's "The Digital Fact Book." * The PS format supports many alpha channels but AE interprets only channel 4. The JPEG format does not support alpha channels, but JPEG2000 does. In standard QuickTime, the Animation and JPEG2000 codecs supports alphas; render settings should be million+ (32-bit). At 100% quality this codec is lossless. The Avid codecs now support alpha channels. * Whether inverted, pre-multiplied or straight, alphas can be managed in AE's Interpret Footage dialog. If there's an unexplained halo around a layer, check the Interpret Footage settings. To understand pre-multiplied and straight alphas see the technical appendix in the AE Classroom-in-a-Book. * For screen delivery use 72 dpi. If you want to pan around an image like a motion control camera would, be sure to scan the image greater than 100% of your comp size. * Color Cop is a Windows system color picker with info, complemetary colors, and variable magnifier controls that will allow the user to magnify any part of the display. See also the these Mac/Win AE 3rd party options: filter PowerPicker and the pallete Color Pal. * Color correction is an important skill. Photoshop Artistry (New Riders, 1999), by Haynes and Crumpler, has excellent CD tutorials for RGB color correction, as does Photoshop Color Correction by Michael Kieran. A new book from DV Media Group should be more applicable: Color Correction for Digital Video by Steve Hullfish and Jaime Fowler. Trish Meyer commented on a preview copy: “It's written by two knowledge colorists, and topics cover everything from understanding color and the telecine process, to how people perceive color, then moves onto using waveform monitors and vectorscopes, and tricks that colorists use. To top it off are some common color correction tutorials, and advanced corrections tutorials like day for night etc). A roundup of software and plugins follow, with demos on the CD. * * Color management, Photoshop style, is important but different when working for TV or film. The idea is to avoid ICC color profiles if you don't have a workflow (for example with images from a digital still camera). Especially avoid small colorspaces like sRGB and Apple RGB. If you must, try to use AdobeRGB, but you can expect some slight shifts in PS from AE images. You can of course still interpret profiles and convert the space to Monitor RGB to match AE's native mode -- but avoid unnecessary conversions and embeddings; otherwise you may see color differences working between programs or co-workers (assuming everyone's monitors are calibrated). See books by Bruce Fraser and Michael Kieran or their articles at CreativePro or the technical guide by Adobe Support (and Document 321349) for background. If you're using images from a digital camera in AE directly unprocessed (skipping PS for example), you can use the AE filter Übercolor to interpret the embedded sRGB profile. If you do use Ubercolor instead of Photoshop, Brendan Bolles has advice: "What I usually do when I'm using After Effects for print work (who needs Photoshop anymore?) is put an adjustment layer on top of the comp with Übercolor doing what Photoshop does - converting from the file's colorspace to your monitor's. So bring in sRGB images with an sRGB->Monitor adjustment layer on top. You see the result through the monitor calibration layer, but everything below is still in sRGB. Then (very important) you turn off the adjustment layer before rendering so that the output pixels do not have the conversion. Finally, use "Assign Profile" in Photoshop re-assign sRGB before converting to CMYK. Alternately, you could convert each layer from it's own space to your monitor's space or another one, but you risk losing information due to gamut differences. If all your source images are in the same space, the method above is best." * On computers color is in RGB, while for video it is a smaller subset of colors that were specified by the NTSC standard. Colorspace conversion on digitizing cards often clip or crush out of gamut colors. In general NTSC colors are 10-25% less saturated or bright than the full RGB range. What looks good on your computer can fade, bleed or crawl on video. Safe colors have luminance values between 16-235, but you also have to worry about saturation gamut, which pushing down 10% is often effective but perhaps unnecessary.. You can use filters like Levels, HLS, Broadcast Colors, or Color Finesse to adjust these values. Adam Wilt posted some good tidbits on problems in NTSC. John Jackman had an article in DV on creating NTSC legal stills, which includes interesting background information and solutions to ringing, artifacting, and buzzing. The most elaborate discussion of differences in approaches is Chris Meyer's DV article Luminance and IRE Levels for Motion Graphics Artists. To avoid many problems you'll need to preview in NTSC, so use AE's built-in feature for QuickTime and non-OHCI Firewire ports, plug-ins from your card dealer (like Matrox or Canopus), or the Mac/Win filter Echo Fire. There's another section below with more info on NTSC...for more information on NTSC color spaces, see the Video signals section of this Portal's Links. * *
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Transparency: Masks, Mattes, Keying and Layer Compositing Modes * Masks refer to AE's masking functions of the Comp and Layer windows. Masks can be drawn on Bezier paths which can be animated. Masks can be inverted. The mask's value subtracts or adds with the alpha channel. See the Portal page Real World Rotoscoping for a succinct explanation of the Pen tool in AE 3.1. These are changed a bit in later versions -- see the Help system. * AE's Track Matte feature is found in the Time Layout window under Transfer Controls, which are hidden under the Switches toggle (you can also click on the gray area next to the pop-up to toggle or hit F4). Track Mattes use a layer's alpha or luminance information to change layer transparency. 'Do That Funky Matte Thing' with Trish Meyer in her DV article. See also this Portal's Clearcut Mattes, on using mattes to put video inside layers, or the some AE CD's PDF on using a Track Matte to animate a highlight on a logo. * Keying is the process of choosing a key color that becomes transparent, revealing the background layer. Keying is a tricky business that takes knowledge and planning for success. Keying is pretty basic in the regular version of AE but it is fun to play with. See this Portal's Real World Rotoscoping, and Bluescreen information links for more information, especially for Trish Meyer's and Alex Lindsay's explanations of the Color Difference Keyer. * Users without the Production Bundle can get a bit better key by using the Change Color filter, though the dvGarage explanation of how to simulate the Color Difference Keyer filter gives much better results (see next paragraph). You can simulate the Linear Color Key by using this filter on the top layer of duplicate layers. Set the View pop-up to Color Correction Mask instead of Corrected Layer and adjust the Tolerance and Softness sliders to produce a decent matte. Then hit Switches/Modes to to change the bottom layer's Track Matte to Luma Inverted Matte. * Keying tip from Tim Sassoon on AE-list: "When chroma-keying, don't be afraid to swing the source gamma as wildly as necessary to get the best distribution of values, especially avoiding white or black point clipping, regardless of what the RGB looks like. The point is to pull the best key - you can always assign the result as a track matte to an unmessed-with copy." Alex Lindsay shows you something similar in the Composite Toolkit discussed below. * DV footage has to be decent, but DV keying one is thing dvGarage.com set out to improve with the Composite Toolkit. You get tutorial for creating light sabers and the dvMatte filter for Mac AND Windows. Also, a movie on the disc (Color_Difference_Keyer.mov) shows how to simulate the Color Difference Keyer. You also get other tips, including how to manually create a Light Wrap without the Composite Wizard filter. The preview movies on the DVG site are worth seeing, especially sample tutorial 4. * DV Magazine was selling a DV Lighting video that would also be useful in getting good keys. The same author also wrote up some of the same stuff for the mag. You can search for John Jackman at "DV.com" domain at google or hotbot advanced search forms if you really want to find the articles. Jackman also discusses color keying DV-format footage at GreatDV.com. He doesn't mention this, but for some reason converting to uncompressed picture formats can help DV keying. * Here's another method posted by "Andi S. Boediman" on the AE list. "Video works in YUV instead of RGB. Y for luminance, U and V for color difference. If we have this color space for working, it's a better alternative for creating mattes. Since AE doesn't have a YUV color space, I use Lab in Photoshop instead. L for luminance, a keeps the Green and Magenta infomation, b keeps the Blue and Yellow information. First, save the video footage as sequential TIF and open one in PS. Convert it to Lab, duplicate the b channel as a new alpha channel for blue screen or use a for green screen, then use Levels function to see the histogram. You'll see the 2 peaks of information, the left for blue and the right for yellow. In the input Levels, slide the black point to the right side of the left peak and slide the white point to the left side of the right peak. You'll have a very clean alpha channel even if the screen doesn't have an uneven lighting. Convert again to RGB and use the alpha channel. You can use Action for processing the whole frames. DV footage (4:1:1) compress more on chroma than luminance. If you open you footage and convert it to Lab mode, there'll be a pixelated information on a and b channel. Before using Levels command, apply a bit of Gaussian Blur to get a smooth edge matte." * Using layer Transfer Modes is another way to composite using pixel values. AE uses all of the modes in PS, and a few other as well, so keep that in mind. Many AE artists apply Lens Flares to black solids and composite using screen or add modes. The Add mode simply adds flare's color values to blend pixels; since black is RGB 0,0,0 only the color information is composited. See the AE manual for explanations of the layer transfer modes, or any good Photoshop book. * Photoshop Channel Chops, by Biedney, Monroy and Moody, uncovers some of the mystery behind channels, masking, layer modes and other compositing issues. You may find the CD tutorials in Haynes and Crumpler's Photoshop Artistry more practical. * Using a transfer mode will not affect the alpha, so you'll have to borrow the alpha using the Shift Channels filter, or use free filters like FAN XMult or Knoll Unmult. * For a soft focus look (variously ProMist, Doris, "instant sex"), try duplicating a layer and putting a Blur filter on the top layer. Then try different transfer modes. I like Lighten, Soft Light, and Color Dodge. According to Stu Maschwitz, "diffusion filters behave quite differently based on lens size, lighting conditions, and a host of other factors," and filters like Mist or Magic Bullet. offer easier control. Background can be had at the Cinematography Mailing List -- see Glowing Angelic Look, diffusion and lenses.
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The Rendering Pipeline * The Rendering Pipeline, the order of how things happen, is at the heart of After Effects. For AE 5, see Trish and Chris Meyer's "2D and 3D Rendering Orders" in DV March 2002 -- or in their latest book. * Opening a Door in After Effects, uses the Basic 3D filter and anchor points to discuss the rendering pipeline in more detail. Except for Adjustment Layers and layer boundaries, this explanation applies to AE4 as well as AE3. For a quick rundown on AE4, see the Portal page, The Rendering Pipeline in After Effects. * The Render Que Stop button "stops to continue where you left off." Instead try ALT/option-clicking on the RQ Stop button.-- this "stops all renders and creates a full-length replacement with the same name as the stopped item." An alternative procedure is to save before hitting the render button, then revert on an aborted render. * If you don't want to wait or don't have enough RAM to update the Comp window, hit Caps Lock to stop the update. * You can use Edit>Purge to purge caches if you run into interface slowdowns. On the Mac, the shortcut to clear the cache is control-clear. * White frames and other render oddities may be a sign that you need more RAM. Try to turn off extra filters or pre-render some effect laden sections -- or add more RAM modules. * Holding the shift key BEFORE selecting File>Preferences adds an extra category in the pull down preference list called "Schecret." This is an extra setting for cache flushing timing, and the ideal number is the highest number that renders reliably. The beautiful CoSA 2.0 box is yours if I can post your explanation of the memory modes/cache preferences. Most of the info is in the Readme. On the Mac, keep this set to Favor Speed rather than Favor Memory to avoid the performance cost of re-packing the application heap. If you run into rendering errors, you'll have Favor Memory to flush the cache more often. * Various memory management and rasterizing problems may require patches or upgrades. Ask around or check Adobe's database (see this Portal's resources section). * AEBench had been maintaining "a database of AE Benchmark Scores across a multitude of Hardware/Software configurations and platforms using a Standard Suite of pre-selected tests." . * Many AE processes, including some core rendering stuff, can take advantage of multiprocessing. Hyperthreading appears as more processors to AE, which may or may not provide a significant advantage depending on the operation. Though it is not comprehensive (e.g. some operations are MP enabled but not listed , such as many 3rd party and other AE filters), a list of MP-aware operations can be found in Adobe's Multiprocessor support in After Effects. * You can run 2 copies of AE if you want to work while you render. In OSX, duplicate just the application (rename it for clarity) and launch it. On a PC, make a copy of the shortcut, edit the properties add -m in the "Target:" field (so it looks like "C:\Program Files\Adobe\After Effects 5.5\AfterFX.exe" -m; note the quotes), that'll launch a 2nd copy of AE. Processes should yield CPU cycles that get requested by another process without penalty. In Windows you can guarantee this by right clicking on each of the processes in Task Manager and lowering the priority. This will give foreground apps less contention with background apps for the CPU. You can even force each process to use a CPU of your choice via the Affinity setting in the Task Manager. * * Richard Lawler's The Renderfarmer's Almanac (for Windows) and Toolfarm had discussions of Network Rendering in AE 4. Network rendering is explained in an Adobe customer support document. If you designate the mounted output slaves by drive letter, file paths in multiplatform environments might break. One cure for this is may be in the set up of the Xserve via the Workgroup Manager of OS X. Another solution is to open the project on one of the Win2k machines, relink the source files if necessary -- and beware font and filter dependencies.* See David Nagel's article at CreativeMac discussed the setup in a mixed Mac/Win environment. A later Nagel article is Digital Producer's "How To Double Your After Effects Render Speeds" if you have the AE Production Bundle and a dual-processor Macintosh G4. *Rush is distributed network render queuing software that might useful for 3D and other apps in the compositing chain, even if you can already script system level resources like AppleScript.. "The software manages distributed rendering, compositing, or other distributed execution of third party software (Houdini, renderman, maya, etc) over small and large networks...Rush will interest both intermediate and power users; the Graphic User Interface allows simple management of distributed rendering, while technically savvy power users can exploit the command line interface by creating 'wrapper scripts' or custom GUIs to dovetail rush into existing production pipelines." Rush supports Irix, Linux, WinNT, and Mac OSX. Muster * * Don't like AE's sound of a render completion? To change the render complete sound, see the Adobe doc to choose any sound you want. To return the "Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy", in the prefernce file, change "Play classic render chime" = "0". On the Mac OS9, replace 'snd ' resource 128 for good render, 129 for the bad render sound.. You might also reduce the volume of the replacement file so that too doesn't blast through your speakers or headphones. (Easter Egg: in AE 6+ if you shift-click in the colored tab area [on the "compname *layername" strip] in the ECW, you get a sound of sheep. Can you find the sheep graphic in the ECW?) * You can work in 8-bit per pixel mode most of the time, and then switch to 16bpc just before rendering. The real problem is using effects that do not support 16. In that case, the image is quantized down to 8 and you will lose all the inner color detail. But do not expect to directly 'see' the difference between 8 and 16. Since the computer monitor is only capable of displaying 8, you can only experience16 by shifting pixel levels around through transfer modes, effects, etc. You can stack two Levels effects over each other. With the first, set the input white and black to a narrow range that you want to inspect. Then look at the second levels histogram to see the data distribution. Switching the project between 8 and 16 will quickly tell you if you have more data in 16bpc mode. In 8bpc mode, you will see spaced spikes in the histogram. Then when you switch to 16, those spikes should fill in more. The more color resolution there is, the more full the histogram will be. If there is no change when switching, then the data is 8bpc. Knowing whether you will get banding in the output medium (film for example) is only an educated guess....to really know you have to test it. Tip: Create 16bpc output modules for rendering. Then if you forget to set the project to 16 before pressing 'render', AE will notify you that the color depth does not match. You may have to force a rerender when switching between 8 and 16. AE only rerenders the first time switching.” from Steven J. Walker on the AE-list. * NightFlight was a tutorial that used noise to simulate a night sky flyover and ended up being used by all sorts of people for PC and Mac benchtesting. Brian Maffitt then presented another portable benchmark test (AE6, AE5.5) that he “felt would better test all of the resources of a system, not just its ability to calculate fractal noise (although there is certainly some fractal noise involved in my project as well)...The project will require about 120 megs of disc space to run the test, and generate lots of files, so I'd recommend that you drop it in an easily-manageable folder before you start, and pay attention to your output... René Hedemyr, host of the AE-List, has posted the TotalBenchmark file for AE6 and AE 5.5, a form to report results, and tabulated results as a table or a graph! * If you haven't upgraded...this from Michael Natkin at Adobe Mon, 06 Oct 2003... "if you have been experiencing Abnormal Condition errors. As far as we know, almost all of them are resolvable with the following steps: (1) Update your OpenGl/display drivers - see http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/3164a.htm for detailed troubleshooting instructions. (2) If your crash is related to a third party plugin, check with the developer to see if an update is available. (3) If no update is available from the developer, try the steps at http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/3164e.htm to put that plugin into compatibility mode. (In order to track memory usage accurately, AE6 is less tolerant of plugins with certain types of bugs. This URL will show you how to make it more tolerant of either certain effects with problems, or all effects if you like. It can slow things down a bit though)."
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Platform and Project Tips * After Effects project files are binary compatible between the Macintosh and Windows versions of AE. For details, see the Windows Readme file, which is available on the Web through the Adobe Tech Support database. Use the 8.3 naming convention for best results. * Several filters are still Mac only, and some are PC only, so make sure the filter is available on the other platform. * On the Mac, the .AEP project file is interpreted as text, but you can use PC Exchange to associate it with AE/Mac if using floppies. Open PC Exchange and click Add. Add the DOS suffix for AE projects, select the AE application, then select EggP from the document type pop-up. The Windows Readme file has a complete list of file associations for AE and image formats that you may need to enter into PC Exchange. This can also be done by changing the file type and creator resources with certain renaming apps or with FileTyper (which batches lets to pick same file to copy the resources). * You may need to do batch renaming at times. Drop Rename for OS9 has a nice interface and great features for migrating files to the PC. On the PC, try Kjetil L. Nygård's Chgname 7.0. or a freeware utility called Renamer from Germany. Better Rename is for both Mac and PC. Check the AE list archives or a favorite shareware or software version tracking site for the latest opinions. * MacWindows and Mac2NT are resources for those working with both Macintosh and Windows 95/NT systems. They have a good collection of utility and reference files for downloading. There's also a collection of tips at MacDisk, and even more information at The Cross-Platform Page and at Cross Platform Multimedia Issues. PC emulation on the Mac is the focus of MacPC. * Apple IPShare 6.x, NT Server AppleTalk services, Dave and PC MacLan Connect are popular networking solutions. To use TCP/IP you just need to first set the TCP/IP Control Panel to give each machine an address. You can see how to do this at PracticallyNetworked. * Macintosh information can be found at MacSurfer, which summarizes headlines daily of important Mac sites like MacInTouch and MacFixIt. MacOS X Hints is also useful. If you're running OS X, you can't just clone the drive using the normal copy methods as you can in OS 9 and have it bootable -- there are too many permission and ownership bits get screwed up. You have to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the drive. * PC/Windows information can be found at Tom's PC Hardware Guide, Windows NT ® Tips & Registry Hacks, Windows95/98 Annoyances, Intel Secrets (for technical gossip and geek links), and of course at ZDNet (home of PC Magazine). Check out the Nets site for Technical notes in each HW area, which is especially good in Intel CPU/motherboard development. Newer entries of note include ExtremeTech and Maximum PC. * On a PC, you may need to consult Microsoft's How PCI Devices Are Detected and Why They May Fail. * If a file format is not importing as expected, you can often work around problems using AE's "Import Footage As..." feature. * SGI-based systems may require access to certain formats. A Softimage Photoshop plug-in (written by Jim Bumgardner) is available and works in AE. Knoll's Missing Link (MIA) is long-in-the-tooth (OS9) but can transfer TAR and Abekas YUV between Exebyte tape and DDRs (or use Debabelizer or a Scitex PS plug if needed). AE's Pro Bundle could at one time output to DDR's (see the DV review on DDRs), though that seems to have changed for the worse in AE5. * Online suites or systems not using QuickTime (like DVEs, Avid systems or Pinnacle's ReelTime) often need seperate matte clips since they don't use alphas; just the select menu Composition >Add Export Module to output the matte without duplicating renders. You can also use this feature to create movies of different sizes and codecs during the same render. * Missing codecs and gamma differences are common cross-platform problems; see: Why is my QT movie white? and Why does my movie look fine on the Macintosh but very dark on the PC? * Avid software codecs are available to read and write Avid files. You might go to an expert like Wes Plate of Automatic Duck before the Avid site. Frank Capria's pages also have useful information and tools, including a QuickTime to OMF conversion utility. For more information try Adobe's "Using Avid Systems with After Effects," the Avid Graphics FAQ, the WWUG articles, or search the Avid mailing list. (1, 2, 3 8.02 codec).* Sending OMFI audio from Avid Media Composer is explained by Wes Plate (who hosts a WWUG * Media 100 files can be read through the Media 100 transcoder, but you'll have to use a QT codec (like Animation, or MJPEG-B if space is a problem) to send to a Media 100 system. *Information about an AVI movie in Windows can be found by open the file in Media Player, then, select File -> Properties. You can also right-click on the file icon and select the "Properties" option from the pop-up menu, then click the "Details" tab. * Info on playing & converting between QuickTime and Video for Windows can be found in the Adobe support database, this Portal's DV Basics or at the Intel Indeo site. MoviePlayerPro in QT4 can import and export AVI, though the number of codecs is small. Also, you can download the old conversion utilities for Macintosh from Microsoft or from here. BTW, CoSA co-developed the VfW Converter included in these MS extras. Recompressing to AVI is the least problematic route, and Movie Cleaner Pro (Mac/Win), Debabelizer, AE, and Premiere can do this easily especially on Windows. * To use AE in Classic mode in OS X, select the application's icon in the Finder and Get Info by pressing Command-I, then check the checkbox that says "Open in the Classic Environment." * DV Backup for OS X allows you to use your digital camcorder to backup hard disk data. The capacity is 5GB per hour of DV tape (10GB if no error recovery is needed) in SP mode, 1.5 times more in LP mode. |
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Video and Film * Digital video files are big. Uncompressed 24-bit video is about 28 megabytes per second ("legal" video is 29.97 fps & thus smaller; YUV color space can be 16-bit so those files would be smaller). Here's how you estimate file size:
* * QuickTimePlayer is a utility & demonstration application for QuickTime. Movie Player Information is a short guide to the old version of this top application for cut & paste audio/video. For the latest news from the QuickTime world, see The Little QuickTime Page. * The Premiere 4.2 Walkthrough, used the now defunct Premiere for Macintosh CD-ROM Movie Maker interface to compile a movie that can be shown on any platform. In Premiere for Windows 4.2 there was no seperate module, but the same elements are in the Compression dialog box. Media Cleaner Pro has grown into the standard for compression CD and Web movies, so use it instead if you can. * In standard QT, only certain codecs (Animation, JPEG, None) supports alphas; render settings should be million+ (32-bit). The Animation codec was the most useful codec for AE work; at 100% quality this codec is lossless. Since it is a form of RLE, flatter colors compress well, while video (which has more color complexity) does not compress well in lossless mode. It should be smaller than a Tiff or Targa sequence though. * Theory, LLC and Digital Anarchy have released Microcosm, the world's first lossless 64 bit Quicktime Codec. * If space is a problem and there's no hardware codec, try a JPEG codec at 94-98% (on the Mac use control key in QT dialog). File size savings are great and quality loss is barely noticeable, but there's no alpha channel. Quality problems will appear after repeated JPEG and DV compressions. * For information on compression technologies, see the Codecs section of this Portal's links. * Real-time digital video playback is possible with digital video compression hardware. Almost all of these cards use different proprietary forms of Motion-JPEG (all keyframes). Transcoding between codecs has been an annoyance but hopefully more vendors will enable compatibility with the QT JPEG codecs. * Real-time playback is sometimes possible with QT Player if you check the preload preference for the video track (com+J in QT5). There's also a flipbook for Windows called FrameCycler that has the ability to not only play back D1 resolution but also full 2K at 24fps. Newer versions of AE can play huge movies if you have the right graphics card. * Video recording formats lessens some of the "confusion about the huge number of different video recording formats and their specifications." * California Film lists video formats like PAL and NTSC by country, and Worldwide TV Standards - A Web Guide explains the formats and conversion difficulties. A backup resource is Jim Krause'e pages on video formats and international video standards. The BBC makes their standards and guidelines accessible here. * AE doesn't deal with EDLs directly, but if you need info check out the Guide to EDL Management: Cleaning, Tracing, and EDL Compatibilities. * See this Portal's Video signals and color Links for a good collection of video technical references. Chris and Trish Meyer have a good overview of IRE setups at the WWUG, which was discussed in depth on the Softmotion listserv in March 1999. Chris later gave a fuller treatment of luminance range issues in DV Magazine. * Get NTSC previews of your designs in AE via your FireWire connection by setting your Adobe video preview preferences, or with more features with the filter EchoFire. * If NTSC previews of gradients show banding, add a Noise filter at about 5% (maybe on an adjustment layer). * Video footage should be de-interlaced upon import, but remember in AE this is not effecting the file itself (as in apps like Commotion) but just tells AE how to interpret and handle the fields. Field dominance depends on the capture card. The DV formats are lower field, but if captured on an NT with DPS hardware, for example, the footage will be upper field first. See Trish Meyer's explanation of the use of fields in AE in "VideoSyncrasies," the technical appendix of Classroom in a Book, or in her DV article. * Pinnacle/Puffin Designs has several white papers including ones on fields, film color and 3:2 pulldown. * Information on film/video transfers and 3:2 pulldown can be found at How Film Is Transferred to Video. Also, Res Magazine had a tape/film transfer article by D.W. Leitner that should spur backissue orders. And, Chris Athanas, founder of DigiEffects, presents " How to Transfer Video To Film: A White Paper " at the DigiEffects site. And remember you can search the Adobe support database and the internet for the latest (hint: see HD for Indies for the latest in digital praxis). * Pixel aspect ratios are discussed by Adobe for AE 4 and AE 3. See Trish Meyer's explanation from DV at Cybermotion and Brian Maffit's video tutorial at Creative Mac. * A highly effective and low cost source of information on all sorts of video-related technical matters for AE is "VideoSyncrasies: The Motion Graphics Problem Solver" by Trish & Chris Meyer from Desktop Images. * You can convert between NTSC and PAL in AE but the footage will be scaled and interpolated; see Perry Mitchell's method here. Basically you just use the presets, and double check. The only secret is the Shrink To Fit command, Ctrl+Alt+F/Cmd+Opt+F to fit the movie to the comp size. I'm not sure what effect frame blending and best quality will have when the AE7 TimeWarp feature renders odd motion. Also, AE filters like Algolith, Magic Bullet, DA Rescaler, and ReelSmart Twixtor/FieldsKit might be useful for conversion with de-artifacting, field smoothing and frame timing features. On the Mac, you can use the Standards Converter FCP filter by Graeme Nattress, or advanced formats conversion in Compressor. You could also try DVFilm Atlantis -- it's based on DVFilm Maker. Since this conversion is very time-consuming to render, a hardware converter might prove more useful. See, for example, the Snell & Wilcox or Tenlab converters (available also from MarkerTek). * Information on film formats can be found at Mark R. Baldock's Guide to Film Formats, a comprehensive resource to film formats and aspect ratios. * Richard Patterson of Illusion Arts posted a presentation he made for motion graphics designers (at MGLA in 1999) of the myriad of film and file formats and their respective considerations. * Cineon Tools (a PB filter with a User Guide that was free at one time) deals with Cineon 10bpc film scans in After Effects. On the AE list, Tim Sassoon, a developer of Cineon Tools, says it "is critical for everyone working in film effects. The purpose is to handle transforms to and from log color space, and help you derive the best possible 8bpc usage from the 10bpc original..., and like all LUT manipulation filters, it's very fast, even with 2k or higher." The AE list occasionally has lively dialogs on 8-bit/10-bit/16-bit (see the Color section above) and film I/O issues, and are stored in a searchable database. There's also Johnathan Banta's article on Kodak's Cineon file format. * Kodak lets you download "Marcie" (12MB) in Cineon file format for monitor calibrations, along with info on LAD (Laboratory Aim Density) calibration and the Cineon file format. * A variety of technical issues, including compositing for film, are covered in notes from a course on Digital Compositing by Ron Brinkman. There's also smaller NT and SGI executable versions available from Shake (they install HTML files). See also the expanded version that became The Art and Science of Digital Compositing (by Ron Brinkman, Academic Press, 1999). Or better yet, try Digital Compositing for Film and Video, Steve Wright, Focal Press, 2001. * For simulating film look on video, try the Magic Bullet Editors filters from The Orphanage; this was discussed at MGLA in September 2002. You can also use DigiEffect filters Cinelook and CineMotion. Or try it by hand in AE; see "How to Create a Feature Film Effect Using After Effects" at Adobe Customer Support. "How to Transfer Video To Film: A White Paper ," by Chris Athanas, is also useful. It doesn't have to be overly complicated -- in a blind test at an MGLA meeting, the popular choice for the filmlook appearance was a render at half-size that was pixel-doubled to tape. * Magic Bullet Suite filters from The Orphanage includes features for better interlacing, antialiasing and retiming if you want best results, especially if you are actually transferring to film or projecting at film res. * Forged Images Productions' MakeFileLookComp (Mac/Win) is a free "plug-in" which uses the latest AE SDK features to simplify creating a particular film-look recipe that was first proposed by Kevin Dole at one of the earliest MGLA meetings. See "merge fields" comments by Stu Maschwitz and others on this plug from the AE-list. * Jonas Isegrim developed this work-in-progress filmlook treatment AE 5 project [super8(rev-Fa)aep.zip] using Expressions and filters. It does a decent job comparable to Cinelook, and is about as slow. It was shown by Mark Christiansen at the BAMG.com meeting of June 2002. * Older consumer DVD players don't support DVD-R. Meritline and taperesources.com sell blank DVD stock. Reports indicate success is with Maxell, Verbatim, Apple, and TDK discs burning at 1x speeds while keeping data rates below 8 mbps with AC-3 audio encoding at about 192 kbps. Keep in mind that the player compatibility isn't as important as recorder compliance -- that would explain why Apple bought Spruce and Adobe licensed the EncoreDVD engine from Sonic Solutions (from the AE-list). The DVD list is a good source for pro-level info. The DVD FAQ (with glossary) is located at author Jim Taylor's DVD Demystified. A more practical book than DVD Demystified is DVD Authoring & Production by Ralph LaBarge, who has an occasional column at DV.com. Chapters from the book and Ralph's valuable "Recordable DVD [disc] Compatibility Update" are at dvdtoday.com. For more on DVD, see DVDRHelp/VCDHelp.(for example the bitrate calculator) and TFDVD.com, especially for Apple's DVD Studio Pro. Designing Menus with Encore DVD by John Skidgel is a good book on Encore. * * * * Camera RAW images, perhaps used more than 16 bit or Cineon and other film scans by most AE users, have 12 or 14 bits per pixel recorded by the digital still cameras--which can be spread over a 16 bits in a Photoshop format or as an 8 bit JPEG with only 256 brightness levels. For more on camera raw and gamma, see the Adobe primers by Bruce Fraser. AE has long worked with Cineon scan files to simulate dynamic range, then added 16 bit linear color space, which has several benefits like reducing banding. 32 bit floating point preserves more detail, and recently the eLin plug-ins simulate the benefits of floating point in AE. Much of visual effects work involves trying to make effects look “real” by capturing the real-world lighting with high dynamic range (HDR) photography techniques, often with different exposures. A good example of how this can improve images is with combining multiple exposures of nebulas in PS CS2 with Merge to HDR, which had been done by compositing layers. Another example is the web movie for "Acquiring the Reflectance Field of a Human Face" by Paul Debevec, et al. This stuff has been kicked around for years but ILM pushed Open Source code OpenEXR in 2003 and now all serious apps are supporting high dynamic range imaging. As Trish and Chris Meyer in Motion Graphics: A Different Light: "motion graphics artists--with their pursuit of surrealism--may find that breaking the rules yields a more interesting result." Yet, ready or not, Trish and Chris do show off gamma tricks and nudge us into a larger headspace. Brendan Bolles introduces HDR in his discussion of his SuperTIFF format filter, FXGuide reviews HDR in Photoshop CS2, and Stu Maschwitz explains effectively in his demonstration movies to illustrate the power of HDR in the AE plug-in eLin (see eLin documentation too). But "float" has costs: 32 bit images, with a range of 4,294,967,296 colors per channel, requires much more memory and render times as 8-bit images with 256 colors per channel. Most production is done at 8 bit but higher range formats will become increasingly important. One wag on the AE-List (Mar 2005) added: "Of course, one can do this now in AE using Cineon/DPX out of a scanner or Spirit. The downside to comping in Log color space is that transparency and layer modes don't work properly, although they generally work good enough in most situations...my knock against working in linear float is that very few artists will look at the work at any other gamma, and high display gamma especially can hide quite large color errors near the black point. Working in log, using for instance the standard Cineon Linear Preview layer script, one tends to turn it on and off, and of course it renders off, so one typically sees the work in log before it goes to film. This is all my opinion, but doing DI [digital intermediates] we get to fix an awful lot of stuff that people screwed up in float because it looked fine on their 'calibrated' monitor [is that without Kodak Look and Display Manager? -ed.]. That said, it has taken the facilities by storm in the last couple of years. We're getting looked down on like backward hayseeds with an ox-team for not ploughing with air-conditioned diesel tractor of float, where all problems are magically solved. As someone who believes in the value of creative cinematography, I also find the whole 'scene-referred' thing quite offensive, but that's just an implementation of OpenEXR, not HDR as a whole." For more info on gamma, see Digital Video and HDTV by Charles Poynton (see his website for free stuff); log and linear is discussed by Stu's ProLost, Mark Christiansen's Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques, Steve Wright's Digital Compositing for Film and Video, Brinkmann's The Art and Science of Digital Compositing (Digital Compositing was once part of Shake docs). If you really want to know what float means, see What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic, by David Goldberg. For overviews of digital workflows for film, see “The Color-Space Conundrum” in American Cinematographer Magazine (Jan and May 2005) and Steve Shaw's The Quantel Guide to Digital Intermediate or his papers at Digital Praxis. |
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Sound * Before 4.0, AE had been weak in the audio features department but accurate if set up exactly. To avoid confusion you could mix in a dedicated sound program -- or check the manual or Help system. You can always add the sound track back in with QuickTimePlayer, SoundEdit or SoundForge. See Trish Meyer's September 1998 DV article on sound in AE for a good rundown, as well as Chris Meyer's audio mixing article. * Hit the "L" key to display audio level controls, and "LL" to display the waveform. * To animate to sound, add layer markers with the asterik key on the ~keypad~, even when previewing. Show the waveform in the timeline (hit Twirley Arrow© or LL) for visual adjustment of makers. * Be sure to enable the matching sound settings in the Output Options dialog if you want good sound included in your render. Turn off the sound icons in the Time Layout window for layers you don't want mixed in. * Don't forget that the Audio Waveform and Audio Spectrum filters give you Comp Window displays of the waveform amplitude of an audio layer. * Note that Time-Remapping has high-quality resampling of speed changes! * SoundHack "is a soundfile processing program for the Macintosh. It performs many utility and esoteric sound processing functions available nowhere else. These functions make SoundHack invaluable to computer musicians, sound effects designers, multimedia artists, webmasters and anyone else who enjoys working with sound." SoundHack really is the choice for resampling by many multimedia journeymen and audio geeks; Audition does a good job on the Windows side. * In a pinch, these are workable shareware waveform editors: Sound Studio (Mac), Goldwave (Win), Audacity (free open source software for recording and editing sounds). * A tip from Chris Meyer on the Fido list: "...use Levels in AE just to trim relative volumes of audio tracks - NOT to animate audio levels. For that, I apply the Stereo Mixer effect, and do my fades with it - it presents a more acceptable compromise for both fade ups and fade downs. To get even better curves, apply easy ease in to the second keyframe of a fade up or down. To make Stereo Mixer easier to use (as you have to manager left and right channels separately), use Expressions: enable expressions for the Right level, and pick-whip it to the Left level. Now you just have to animate the Left, and the Right will follow." * If you need free audio samples, go to SampleNet. The samples are copyright-free, but check their FAQ. See also www.ljudo.com. If you're in a bind use FindSounds to search the Web for lo-fi sounds raw off the net. * You can capture any audio playing on your Mac, like Flash or Real audio with Wiretap or Audio Hijack if you're on OS X. On OS 9 try MacAmp with Hijack plugins. There are numerous inexpensive utilities to do the job on the PC; search a library of downloadable software for "record streaming audio." Henry Norr of the SF Chronicle found that Streamripper32 seemed to a good job with Shoutcast and other streams. He also looked at Replay Radio, Power Record , and Total Recorder -- and liked Replay Radio best. Audio and video can be captured by Snapz Pro on the Mac and Camtasia on the PC. * ProRec has been cited as "the best professional audio website on the net, with tons of reviews and practical knowledge from serious recording engineers with a background in film/video." Adam Wilt concurs, and adds that "the other best professional audio website is Jay Rose's Digital Playroom. His tutorials [and books -ed.] should be required reading..." Pete.Yandell.com's OS X Audio Links is dead but still a decent summary of software, hardware, and information related to audio and MIDI on Mac OS X. PureMac * |
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Working with 3D * Some complex effects can be done within AE to avoid long render times in 3D. See the work done in AE for the movie "Spawn" in David Biedney's Macworld article on displacement mapping. Basically, the secret is to use particles as displacement sources for other layers, including other particles. * Use the Compound Blur filter with a "distance" map (most 3D applications can generate these or aproximate it with fog) to simulate depth-of-field and other effects. Red Giant Software has a faster filter that is similar to Compound Blur. * To see how AE's 3D space works, check out Brian Maffitt's AE guide movies on the Adobe site, books by Trish and Chris Meyer, and articles on CreativeCow. Zax Dow posted this useful info on the AE-list:
* AE has 3D features, but users may still have to rely on plug-ins. There are 3D-oriented filters in every 3rd party set; check this Portal Plug-ins page for links. In addtion to the basic AE perspective filters, there's Particle World for particles that use z-space, BorisAE, Forge Freeform, and Digieffects Tilt (which uses QD3D). Tilt can displace in 3D, has primitives, and can import QD3D models to animate with AE controls. Freeform doesn't do models yet, but you can assign a gradient for 3D displacement and animate layers in 3D with NURBS mesh controls. Zaxwerks' 3D Invigorator, Evolution, and Boris Effects 3D Text all do 3D text. Boris has some fun particles. Atomic Power's Evolution (by Brian Maffitt and company) is now part of AE and includes a variety of 3D effects, including powerful customizable 3D composite, explosion and displacement filters. Zaxwerks' 3D Invigorator (by Electric Image guru Zax Dow et al) works in real 3D space with swept EPS files; it includes good material and render controls. The new PRO version imports models! * See Trish and Chris Meyer's "Retro 3D," in DV February 2002, to see how to use expressions to make older fake 3D plug-ins (such as Final Effects Sphere) follow the 3D camera in AE5+. This workaround actually has some advantages over directly choosing the camera in newer plug-ins, as it does not force a break in the 2D/3D rendering pipeline. You might have to look in their book if DV has yanked the article. * After Effects, Electric Image, Commotion and other desktop tools are used at ILM on a variety of projects. Some of the work for the Star Wars refurbishment was done at on an 8100. Work on Episode I: The Phantom Menace was discussed in the June 1999 issue of CGW magazine. AE was also used in Star Trek First Contact; see Cinefex (vol. 69) for an article with a discussion. * Knoll Lens Flare Pro comes with AE project files by John Knoll of ILM (one of the originators of Photoshop). These files demonstrate compositing of multipass renders in Electric Image of a 3D project. Use AE to adjust specular and other values in near real-time, instead of re-rendering entire scenes. * Good info on depth, focus and blurs can be found in the manual for the AE filters from Red Giant Software called "Composite Wizard." These filters were big at ILM and other AE houses. * See Craig Lyn's tips for 3D and AE from DV Magazine from April to August 1997. See especially the depth/blur and reflection tips and the description of multipass rendering for compositing. 3dRender.com features a compositing section with a few tips on lighting and compositing multipass renders from Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting & Rendering. Maxon Computer's Cinema 4D XL 7.3 includes multipass rendering features and the ability to export composition files that can be imported straight into After Effects, via a free plugin. * Maya produces an alpha for glows that is weaker than in the RGB channels, so that neither Premultplied or Straight work correctly in AE. To adjust for this, Interpret Footage as Straight, then blend with the Luminescent Premultiply mode. For more info, see the PDF from the book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects. * AE 5.5 can import 3D camera data from 3D apps. You can import Maya data via the built-in filter. Helge Mathee posted a Softimage XSI camera export, AfterEffectsExport for XSI. And there was a web page (backup here) to help get camera data from ElectricImage into After Effects. It's not tested with Electric Image Universe (only 2.92/3DToolkit; look for the update method by Chris Meyer). Note from designer: "As an added bonus, you can use it to convert object motion & rotation data, too...so you can fix an AE comp to the side of a moving object in your scene with a moving camera!" * To get 3D camera data (position, FOV etc.) from 3DS Max into AE and apply same data to the AE 3D cam, Do this: * Alex Lindsay, founder of the useful dvGarage.com, has released various training CDs on 3D surfaces, lighting and camera mapping. The Surface Toolkit collection of grunge maps are good for adding realism in 3D and for texturing and highlights for AE. dvGarage has also release the 3D Toolkit tutorial CDs -- which includes an older version Electric Image (Mac/PC) for FREE. * Advanced 3D now allows you to set the shadow map resolution, which you'll need to increase if you see chunky shadows. To access this control, click on the Options button in the Advanced tab of the Composition Settings dialog when Advanced 3D is selected as the current renderer. |
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Paint/Roto * AE's Paint is now the preferred AE method, but you can also have the appearance of painting in AE by using the Vector Paint or Write-On filter, or by designing a gradient for the Gradient Wipe filter. There are tutorials on both of those on the Tutorials page. * This may not work in AE5+, but in AE4 you can get painterly looks by using Photoshop 3 era filters like the ones that ship with PS called (Gallery) "Effects" in the plug-in folder. * In days gone by you could also export a movie in Premiere to the Filmstrip format for editing in Photoshop, but that process is fraught with pitfalls, and only short sequences are recommended. You can also automate some sequences with Actions in PS. I've used Paint Alchemy, a Photoshop 3 filter, to good effect in Premiere 4 using brush properties that change by hue, but haven't checked newer versions. Painter has its own sequence format called stacks that is a good option in some cases. * Here are two desktop apps with better paint and rotoscoping tools than AE: Pinnacle Commotion and Discreet Logic Combustion, which both have tools like Photoshop. Commotion is fast, battle-tested at ILM, plays in realtime and has great masking, clone tools, and compositing -- but alas seems orphaned by Pinnacle/Avid. Combustion (switch) has vector-based options that can be keyframed, and includes good type features, cloning and realtime playback of continuous preview rendering. Both Combustion and AE lagged behind Commotion in features and usability, but Commotion is limited to 8-bit mode since development was frozen. * Studio Artist is an app with a funky interface but can do things no other paint application can do; see the demo movies to get the picture. * * Mokey can create mattes to roto picture elements reliably, but can be costly, $4-7K depending on the platform (Mac is cheapest, then Linux/Windows; IRIX is the pricey option), They also have rental packages if you want to use it for shorter project, as well as a learning edition. Mokey has more tools now, with stabilization, lens distortion and Grain Surgery grain management modules, and Primatte coming soon. Mokey now has tracking data export as AE 5 keyframe data -- not as good as full integration of the tracker but the next best thing. You might want to try it out since the tracker module and data come free. * Also look out for son-of-Matador Curious gFx, as well as for 2d3 Pixeldust "which will revolutionise traditional rotoscoping tasks in the same way that boujou has changed the work of matchmovers" (does not yet have a concrete shipping date). Apple's Motion is the beginning of a serious challenge to AE; its an impressive little app with a $6000 dongle; check out the tour. A quad processor and updated OpenGL card would make Motion behaviors scream, but Apple would still need vastly improved roto, paint, comping, and animation tools to lead the pack. * SynthEyes (Mac * |
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Animation * AE has powerful timing controls for each animating property. Lynda Weinman has a fun tutorial that introduces these controls by animating cats on pogo sticks in Adobe's AE Classroom in a Book. This tutorial also shows how to duplicate and offset layers and keyframes to speed the process. * Strobing or flickering of titles may be due to video field scanning of single pixel lines or at certain speeds. Avoid thin lines when designing for video; another thing to avoid is moving the type an odd number of pixels per field. Try applying a single pixel vertical motion blur in AE (or in Photoshop to save repetition) to stop the flicker. You can also render your titles without fields. See the Meyer's book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects for details. * Because of TV screen curvature, the video signal is overscanned on consumer monitors, so not all of the signal appears on screen. If going out to video, don't forget to check the title-safe and video-safe areas. Click on the 2nd button from the left in the Comp window to enable Safe Areas. You could easily take a screenshot of the Comp window to use as a guide in Photoshop or Illustrator, build your own with rect outlines at 10% and 20% of your destination frame size, or download a few from "learn dynamic media." * Simulating a motion control camera on large pictures is easy in AE if you know how to work with anchor points. Peter Jay Gould discusses this in depth in a DV article "Scanning & Panning: Add photographs to video with After Effects." * The ever popular "magnifying glass distort letters or layer effect" is detailed in a tutorial at Adobe called "Animation Using Motion Math." * To get that in focus and out of focus, "jittery kind" animation, use a blur filter and animate in value curves or more easily with the layer assistant "The Wiggler." * To get a typewriter effect use the Visible Characters control in the Path Text filter, or use the filter ISFX Typewriter for even more control. * Time Stretching still layers may cause rendering errors; change the In & Out points instead. * For guidance on making animated backgrounds, see Total Training, and Trish & Chris Meyer's column in the March 2000 issue of DV Magazine (temp here). You can also e-mail Nils of the Cult Effects Team at <nils@private.cycore.com> for a couple of sample projects. * To adjust the speed of a clip up and down, a popular effect in TV commercials, just select Layer>Enable Time Remapping. The layer must be video or animating already, so Pre-Compose if necessary. You also might use Frame Blending if going to slow motion. Speed is controlled by the Value and Velocity graphs of the added Time Remap property, under the Twirly Arrow©. For more information, see Trish Meyer's tutorial, "Let's Do the Time Warp." * There are 2 main ways to use gradient images in AE to build complex effects -- gradient wipes (reveals) and displacement effects:
* Here is this Portal's simple method to animate the writing of fancy text using the Write-on filter and a Track Matte -- and there's even links to other ways to animate writing. Trish Meyer has another nice example of this at DV. Brian Maffitt's Total AE training tapes show you how to use Keyframe Assistants to add particle and lighting effects to the mix. In the AE5 Production Bundle, animated writing is best done with the Vector Paint filter. Note that the best method changes with AE features! * For Particles in AE there are plenty of filter options: try the obvious ones like Particle World and Particle Playground (complicated but slow), Shatter, Foam -- and 3rd party filters in Boris, and other packages. Trapcode Particular is the current crowd favorite. Many of these filter support custom maps for unique particles. Another option is particleIllusion, a standalone particle effects application that is easy to use, fast, and powerful (it is internal to Combustion, and an AE version is coming). * When you need to motion track a large frame, consider doing it as a stabilization first, then moving the data from anchor to position. It's much easier to judge whether an object is sitting still, to see if the track is accurate (from Tim Sassoon on the AE-List). * * To add camera shake to a layer, try some real camera instability: motion-track footage zoomed-in to a crosshair shot from the other side of the room. * Want to make a dancing man made of fruit? See "Motion Capture Animation with AE", by David Rauch, at the DV site. There's downloadable project of this tutorial, which uses Motion Tracking and Motion Math to do character animation. I've seen the commercial -- it's good. * Todd Fuller posted some Macintosh TrueType format fonts that are designed to automate some otherwise time-consuming chores. Each font contains a small instruction manual explaining how to use it. Most of the fonts are for constructing instant random textures with the "Numbers" filter. There are two other fonts made for use with the "Path Text" filter so you can have some repeating shapes that move along a path.
* You can view then save a QuickTime movie in ASCII in the OS X Terminal. Get the binary "ASCII Movie Player" from Apple's Developer Pages. After downloading, just make sure the file is either in a directory on your path, or run it from the download directory with a "./" in front, and type "ASCIIMoviePlayer movie_name.mov." * Other applications offer better scaling quality (but for screenshots use the lower quality of the nearest neighbor pref). AE uses bilinear interpolation even at Best Quality, so you might also want to try an application which uses bicubic interpolation like Photoshop, Commotion, Shake, or Combustion.
Scripting and Expressions * Expressions have basically pushed Motion Math into oblivion (default disabled in AE 6), except perhaps for certain audio functions. MM was AE's scripting module (available in the Production Bundle). AE's Expressions are an implementation of the ECMAScript standard. To use MM in AE6, quit AE, and remove the parentheses around the (Motion Math) folder in the Plug-ins> Professional> Keyframe Assistants folder, then restart AE. * Scripting can be daunting, but Adobe's Pickwhip is a great aid for those starting out--you won't regret trying it. Basic expressions help can be found at JJ Gifford's site which covers much of the expressions material he presented in his talk on expressions at AE West. The archives of the AE-list and the Adobe forum also have gems of free code fragments, but see the websites below for better luck. Total AE covered Motion Math, and covers Expressions in the latest versions. There's also several good tutorials in the book After Effects Magic, and look out too for the Expressions section in Trich &Chris's CMG Volume 2. * Since expressions are Javascript, you might find useful info at JavaScript.com, JavaScript Source, and Netscape's DevEdge. You could leverage Flash communities as well. Both Dan Ebberts and the AE team have recommended the O'Reilly book JavaScript the Definitive Guide by David Flanagan (sample chapter here). * * The new power of scripting in AE 6.5 is explored in AE Enhancers, a new forum for discussing and sharing AE Expressions, Scripts, and Animaion Presets. The hacker-wise organizers explain: "Up to now (and this is what scripting seemed to be limited to), scripting was only really used to automate things you did at the final stage of your workflow: rendering. Today scripting allows you to do much more than that. It can act on various elements of the application (Project Window, Comps, Layers, Lights, Cameras, Guide Layers) and can even create some of these elements in a certain order, position, etc... " * * * |