Pandemic Film: Mastering the Shot

Posted on by Thor

The key to getting everything to line up in the camera view in After Effects was to create a master shot. That shot would be on top of the stack of layers I imported from Photoshop. In After Effects I could set the blend mode for the master shot to Difference. With that setting the frame would turn black whenever all the layers were perfectly lines up. With my drawings it became even more convenient since they would be visible as light lines.

In this shot, I believe I am trying to scale the foreground people into position. When a layer is pushed back in space it appears to get smaller in the camera view. It then has to be scaled back up to size and lined up with the master shot. Since several versions of the foreground characters are visible they haven’t quite lined up yet. When lined up everything turns a rich black with only lines faintly visible. I will probably be using this effect in all 162 shots.

Ideas for pandemic themed paintings keep popping into my head, but they will have to hold until I wrestle this film into submission.

Pandemic Film: Camera Set Up

Posted on by Thor

After three days of messing with this shot in After Effects, I managed to get the layers arranged in deep space and the camera set up. Once this critical set was working right, I could focus on just adding animation key frames for the beginning and end of this zoom in shot. Once I had this shot complete I could import the finished composition in to the Premiere Pro video editing program.

Once in the video editing program I could see how this shot compared to the other shots which zoom in at the start of the film. I decided that the zoom was too slow and not extreme enough, so I returned to After Effects and changed the camera position at the end of the scene. The great thing is that the footage then automatically updated in the video editing program and I could quickly view it in sequence again.

With this shot complete, I then worked on the other shots to perfect the camera moves for those as well. What had taken days because I couldn’t locate the tools, was now taking hours. Each day I continue to watch tutorials during lunch to learn new keyboard short cuts. I might now understand  maybe 20% of the interface and there is 80% left to learn before I really start cooking with gas.

The shots I am trying to complete are far more complex than the simplistic tutorials I am watching, so I am trying to find ways to push the limits of what can be done with what I know so far.

Pandemic Film: Broke After Effects

Posted on by Thor

I have been struggling to figure out After Affects for three days.I didn’t realize until recently that the real problem was that I was having difficulty navigating the interface. The camera view was usually too small for me to see what I was trying to accomplish.  To move in or change views I was going up to the top bar and digging deep into a series of files. For once I am having to learn keyboard shortcuts to navigate in the 3D space.

A mouse turns out to be critical. I was using my laptop’s touch pad. With a mouse I can simply press the scroll wheel to move around in the space. Rolling the mouse wheel zooms the interface in and out. I had been struggling to keep switching using a window that offers multiple percentages of the interface size. Shift > / resets the screen, and Shift and the upward arrow button resizes the window and makes it scale if I change the other windows on the interface. I can’t imagine why that wasn’t the standard way to use the interface.

Shown in this image is the active camera view. I was starting to figure out how to separate the individual layers of my scene. However the process of using a null to move layers ended up failing since some layers seemed to get stuck together. I abandoned this advance process and started moving layers individually and then scaling them up.

I realized that for every scene I would need a master that showed how everything should line up. When layers are moved back in space it appears like they shrink in the camera view. Each has to be scaled up until they line up with the master. In this shot I can tell that I hadn’t yet figured out how to move the camera.

After a day’s work, I decided to abandon the scene and start over the next morning. This repetition is what helps me to get in the flow of using the program. When I have a day off from work, the progress become exponential.

Pandemic Film: First Time Using After Effects

Posted on by Thor

This is the first time I started using After Effects. I managed to import all the layers from a Photoshop file with ease. I chose one of the first five shots from the film since I felt the way I had animated the layers by hand seemed a bit forced. I wanted a more natural feel to the movement by animating the camera as opposed to each layer individually.

I used this scene to work through several tutorials I found online. I understand the principle of what needs to be done, but every tool had to be located in the myriad of nested folders and windows. My biggest discovery was that the escape key toggles between this flat composition camera and a 3D camera of the scene. The breath layer imported lower than it should have so I needed to figure out how to move it up. In this image I hadn’t discovered how to do that yet.

I found a complicated tutorial that involved adding a null to the scene and parenting that null to the camera. The Z value was then set to zero and the null would have the same location as the camera. That parent was then turned off and all the other layers including the camera were parented to the null. The Z values of the null could then be used to transform each layer back in space.

That all sound like a foreign language, right? Well to me it is. I struggled with the steps three separate times and each time, the layers ended up moving a clump of layers rather than each individually. I kept problem solving but ultimately this first evening I never got that null to work. I tried just moving the camera using red, green and blue arrows. Green stands for the Y axis, red stands for the X axis and blue stands for the Z Axis. That is probably the most important thing I learned.

My first steps in this new world were not entirely a failure. By messing around I stated to learn how to navigate this 3D space.

Pandemic Film: Snatched up all the Chicks

Posted on by Thor

By day five I was getting close to finalizing the overall edit of the film in Premiere Pro. There were still two gaping holes in the timeline left to work on. I color coded all the clips so I could quickly identify each stanza and refrain. This makes it easier for me to go into any particular area when I decide to change out a shot. I also organized all the shots in the project window so I have a better idea which shots remain on the proverbial edit room floor.

I like the concept behind this painting because I realized that the hands of Jesus would make a horrible mask since he has those huge nail holes in them. This scene will be a good test of the 2.5D depth effect since it looks down a hallway.

Learning After Effects is proving to be a bone grinding process, so you may see me working on the same shot for multiple days until I work out a quick workflow. I know what I need to accomplish, the whole problem is finding the tools needed. The technical stuff doesn’t stick in my memory banks at first, so I have to write everything down.

Each day is filled with learning new tools and hot keys…

Layer > New > Camera

View > Switch 3D View

Layer > Blending Mode Menu

Escape – Switch Active View and other view

Pandemic Film: Depth Map

Posted on by Thor

I have made 3D images before that can be posted on Facebook. The process is pretty simple. You simply paint light grey over areas that are in the foreground and work your way back to progressively darker greys in the background. Since the sheep in my Procreate painting were already on separate layers, I just had to duplicate each layer and alpha lock them. I them painted each a different shade of grey. I names this file that exact same name as the color jpg of the same scene and added _Depth to the end of the file name.

In Facebook I loaded both images at the same time and then a cube appeared over the render area with 3D in the middle of it. Maybe a minute later the image appeared in my thread and when the phone of tablet is moved the sheep seem to be in deep space due to parallax. On my laptop, a mouse had to be positioned over the image to get the 3d effect.

This effect is perfect but the camera is stuck in place. I don’t think there is a comparable solution in Premiere Pro for achieving this 3d effect with a simple depth map. I am still researching to try and find the perfect solution. I suspect that I might need another program called After Effects to achieve a full 3D parallax look as I composite my many painted layers.