|
Episode 6: Holograms Page 10 of 14 Interference Jump back into Adobe After Effects and create a new composition that is the same size as your final output (720x 486). We are going to create a video scan line movie that loops so we can use over and over again. The duration of the movie can be of any length. For now choose 10 seconds. If you are not in the habit of naming your compositions, you need to. Name this composition something like Video Garbage Composition. Import and drag the thin_scan_lines.psd and video_hum_lines.psd into the composition. When After Effects asks which layer to import, chose layer 1, otherwise the file will be merged and you will lose all of your transparency information. Make sure the video_hum_lines.psd image is on top of the stack in the Timeline. The scan lines should move from top to bottom, so set beginning and ending key frames so the thin_scan_lines.psd moves slowly downward. This is definitely something you will want to do yourself for your own personal taste, but for those who want to follow along, the y-axis keyframes I used are 4.5 and 478. The video hum lines should roll downward faster than the thin scan lines. A good starting point might be to copy the Position keyframes from the thin scan lines and paste them in the video hum lines layer and adjust. [an error occurred while processing this directive] The video hum lines should also flicker as they move down. To do this we need to create opacity keyframes... lot’s of opacity keyframes. Start at the beginning of the timeline and create a keyframe at 0. Step frame by frame through the timeline until the lines have moved down one full length. I positioned the video hum lines so that one line was resting on the bottom of the frame. Then by stepping through, I only had to go until the line above was resting on the bottom of the frame. Set another keyframe here. In this example, the next alignment came at frame 10. Set the opacity for these keyframes at 100%. Now position the timeline marker between these two keyframes (frame 5) and set a third keyframe that has an opacity of 10%. This is a ten second animation; we only made keyframes for a small fraction of that. You could spend a few hours going to every tenth frame to set an opacity keyframe, but there is an easier way. Deselect all of the opacity keyframes and then drag a box around keyframes at frame 0 and frame 5. Copy these keyframes, then move to frame 10 and paste them in. It is okay that we copied over frame 10 since it has the same value as 0. Go to frame 20 and paste again. Select all the opacity keyframes for this layer, copy and paste them at frame 30. Go to 2 seconds and paste again and repeat at every full second. In less than 30 seconds you should have copied and pasted all of the opacity keyframes to fill the timeline. ![]() At this point you have the option of rendering this composition as an uncompressed movie. It will allow you to send the video garbage to any of the other members of your postproduction team. If, however, your fan film budget only allows for a laptop to do all of your work, you might be short on hard drive space. Adobe After Effects allows you to nest compositions inside one another. The advantage here is if you don’t like the speed of spacing of the video garbage, it is a simple matter of making a few changes in the Video Garbage Composition. The changes will automatically be made to any other composition that it is nested in. Let’s bring all of the elements together to create the final product. Source Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next |
||||