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II. Effects Compositing Essentials
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II. Effects Compositing Essentials
by Mark Christiansen
Adobe® After Effects® 6.5: Studio Techniques
Copyright
Dedication
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Why This Book?
The Cult of Magic
Truly Challenging
The Keys
“That Looks Fake”
What Compositing Can (and Can't) Do
About This Book
Understanding Is Preferable to Knowledge
If You've Used Other Compositing Programs
What's On the CD
The Bottom Line
I. Working Foundations
1. The Effects Toolset
Preparing Your Workspace
Setting (and Resetting) Your Workspace
A Second Monitor Is Useful
Setting Preferences and Project Settings
Elegant UI Usage
Project Window Organization
Context-Clicking (and Keyboard Shortcuts)
Keeping Sources Linked
Collect Files
Reduce Project
Footage and Composition Settings
Interpreting Footage
Alpha
Frame Rate
Fields, Pulldown, PAR
Digital Source Formats
Adobe Formats
Composition Settings
Previewing Like a Pro
Resolution and Quality
Reducing Things Further
Maintaining Interactivity
Caching and Previewing
Setting the Preview Region
What's Your Background?
Changing the Channel
A Useful Effects Palette
Types of Effects
Animation Presets
Other Effects Tips
Render Queue: Flight Check
Placing an Item in the Queue
Render Settings: Your Manual Overrides
Output Modules: As Many as You Need
Optimizing Output Settings
Study Footage Like a Pro
2. The Timeline
Organization
Column Views
Comments and Color
Solo, Lock, and Shy
Navigation and Shortcuts
Time Navigation
Making Layers Behave
Timeline View Options
Replacing Layers
Transforms
Working with Keyframes
Temporal Data and Eases
Easy Ease
Holds
Spatial Data and Curves
Copying and Pasting Trickery
Velocity and Value Graphs
Über-mastery
Dissecting a Project
Keyframe Navigation and Selection
Keyframe Offsets
Animation Offsets
Editing the Anchor Point
Editing the Parent Hierarchy
Nulls and the Parenting Cure
Motion Blur
What the Settings Mean
Playing with Time Itself
Absolute (Not Relative) Time
Time Stretching
Frame Blending
Time Reversal
Time Stretching an Animated Composition
Time Remapping
In Conclusion
3. Selections: The Key to Compositing
The Many Ways to Create Selections
Pull a Matte
Use an Existing Alpha Channel
Create a Mask (or Several)
Use Blending Modes Instead
Use an Effect
Combine Techniques
So What's the Big Deal?
Compositing: Science and Nature
Bitmap Alpha
Feathered Alpha
Opacity
Alpha Channels and Premultiplication
Premultiplication Illustrated
Getting It Right on Import
Solving the Problem Internally
Masks
Typical Mask Workflow
Drawing Bezier Masks
Combining Multiple Masks
Managing Density
Managing Multiple Masks
Putting Masks in Motion
Interpolation Basics
Moving, Copying, Pasting, and Masks
First Vertex
Blending Modes: The Real Deal
Add and Screen
Multiply
Overlay and the Light Modes
Difference
HSB and Color Modes
Stencil and Silhouette
Alpha Add and Luminescent Premultiply
Track Mattes
Why They're Useful
Why They're Occasionally Tricky
Render Order
4. Optimizing the Pipeline
Navigating Multiple Compositions
Project Template Benefits
Working with Tabs
Where Am I?
Descriptive Names
Pre-Composing and Nesting
Why Do It?
Options and Gotchas
Layer Duration Confusion
The Missing Option
Data Pass Through
The Cool Way Time Is Nested
The Advanced Tab
Adjustment and Guide Layers
Adjustment Layers
Guide Layers
Understanding Rendering Order
Optimizing Projects
Post-Render Options
Proxies
Network Renders
Onward to Effects
II. Effects Compositing Essentials
5. Color And Light: Adjusting And Matching
Optimizing Plate Levels
Adjusting Brightness and Contrast with Levels
Reading the Histogram
Why Not Use Brightness & Contrast?
Gamma Adjustments: Levels and Curves
The Subtlety of Curves
Just for Color: Hue/Saturation
Alternative Color Tools and Techniques
Color Matching
The Fundamental Technique
Depth Cueing
Gamma Slamming
Extra Credit
6. Color Keying
Good Habits and Best Practices
Linear Keyers and Hi-Con Mattes
Linear Color Key and Extract
Difference Mattes
Blue-Screen and Green-Screen Keying
General Methodology: Keying
Using Keylight
Understanding and Optimizing Keylight
The Inner Workings of Keylight
Focusing In: Clean-Up Tools
Holes and Edges
Noise Suppression
Fringing and Choking
Spill Suppression
Fixing Typical Problems
On Set
Matte Problems
Edge Selection
Matte Holes
Matte Fringing
Color Spill
Conclusion
7. Rotoscoping and Paint
Articulated Mattes
RotoBeziers
Strategies for Complex Shapes
Working Around Limitations
Tracking and Translating
Auto-trace
Masking Motion Blur
Morphing
Using Reshape to Morph
First Vertex
Paint and Cloning
Paint Fundamentals
Cloning Fundamentals
Tricks and Gotchas
Tracking Strokes
Wire Removal
Plate Restoration via Cloning
Conclusion
8. Effective Motion Tracking
The Essentials
Choosing a Good Reference Point
No Good Reference Point in Sight
Optimizing Tracker Options
Typology
Rotation and Scale
Confidence
Other Options
Fixing Tracks That Go Wrong
Using the Timeline
Matching Motion Blur
Using Nulls to Solve Transform Problems
Optimizing Tracking via 3D
The 3D Camera: The One-Stop Solution
Fake 3D Tracking
Smoothing a Moving Camera
Continuing a Track with Expressions
Tracking for Rotoscoping
Using 3D Tracking Data
Working with 3D Tracking Data
Importing a Maya Scene
Try It Out for Yourself
Conclusion
9. Virtual Cinematography
2.5D: Using the Camera
Understanding the After Effects Camera
Lens Settings
Real-World Camera Settings
Making Your Adjustments
Emulating a Real Camera
Making Use of a Camera Report
Lens Distortion
Mixing 2D and 3D
Storytelling and the Camera
Moving the Camera
Camera Orientation
Push versus Zoom
Push it Good
Camera Projection
Camera Blur
Image Planes and Rack Focus
Boke Blur
Go for Boke
The Role of Grain
Grain Management Strategies
Grain Removal
When to Employ Grain Strategies
Film and Video Looks
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Frame Rate Matters
Format Matters
Color Affects Story
Conclusion
10. Expressions
Logic and Grammar, in that Order
Okay, What Can't Expressions Do?
Muting Keyframes
Linking Animation Data
Tracking Brushes and Effects
Offsetting an Element
One Channel Only
Building Your Own Controls
Looping Animations
Smoothing and Destabilizing
Steadicam and Camera Shake
Offsetting Layers and Time
Grain Averaging
Conditionals
Triggering a Filmic Dissolve
Emulating 3D Tracking
Tell Me More
III. Creative Explorations
13. Air, Water, Smoke, and Clouds
Particulate Matter
Matching an Existing Shot
Creating a New Shot
Sky Replacement
The Sky Is Not (Quite) a Blue Screen
Infinite Depth
The Fog, Smoke, or Mist Rolls In
Masking and Adjusting
Moving Through the Mist
Billowing Smoke
Mesh Warp
Liquify
Combining Techniques
Smoke Trails
Wind
Adding and Articulating Elements
Indirect Effects
Water
Precipitation
Creating the Element
Compositing the Element
Conclusion
14. Fire and Explosions
Firearms
Firing the Gun
Muzzle Flash and Smoke
Shells and Interactive Light
Bullet Hits
Sci-Fi Weaponry
Full Control
Full Dimensionality
Heat Distortion
What Is Actually Happening
How to Re-create It
Variations on the Theme
Fire
Creating and Using Fire Elements
Comping Fire
The Need for Interactive Light
Into the Third Dimension
Explosions
Light and Chunky
Fiery Conclusion
15. Learning to See
Why Doesn't This Shot Look Real?
Seeing the Shot
Analyzing What You See
Knowing What You Know
All Hail Reference
Putting Reference to Use
Integration
Emotional Truth
Rolling Thine Own
Not a Conclusion
Search in book...
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4. Optimizing the Pipeline
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5. Color And Light: Adjusting And Matching
Part II. Effects Compositing Essentials
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