Fast Help please. Ball bouncing on subtitles.
by Scotty
on
Jul 20, 2006 at 1:26:52 am
Hi
I posted yesterday about bouncing a ball...well it was a bit difficult looking at expressions and i'm really under the gun....CLIENT IS GETTING ANGRY!
Anyway, I'm trying to take a ball (pict file format) and bounce it up & down on top of type as the words are said on screen...it's a commercial.
I'm doing ok but I can't get the ball to curve and loop. ...it flies into frame and is suppose to loop around a word before it bounces. Problem is, I can't get a good curve. I've even tried to use text pre set moves (taking the paths) but it didn't work ...also tried path text but I think it won't allow me to use imported graphics...right?
So my question: what is the best and fastest was to make a ball curve in a loop?
thanks a lot! I really appreciate the fast help.....
Scott
PS--The client is on a 10 min cig break and he's in a very bad mood.
Re: Fast Help please. Ball bouncing on subtitles. by Mrs Longstocking on Jul 20, 2006 at 8:10:55 am
ok, I'm not sure I exactly grasped how it's supposed to look like with the looping auround the words and stuff. But as you say you can't get the Motion of it right I thought it could help to use two instances of that ball in question and have them follow paths. Use one path for looping, that would be an ellipse then (draw a path/Shape with the mask tool, set keyframes if necessary and copy and paste the maskshape property to the position property of your ball) and your bouncing ball and try to combine them by changing their opacity in turns when they overlap.
Hope that helps and good luck,
Az
Re: Fast Help please. Ball bouncing on subtitles. by Dave LaRonde on Jul 20, 2006 at 4:42:31 pm
[Scotty]"I'm doing ok but I can't get the ball to curve and loop."
This is a job for keyframes. Expressions ain't gonna cut it. And it's tougher than the client thinks it is... you too, apparently.
You need to find the beat in the song. You'll either have to scrub the audio or play the audio ("." on numeric keypad) and hit the asterisk on the numeric keypad when there's a beat. Then you have a visual guide for keyframe placement.
Move the ball to each word in time with the beat. Don't forget to make the ball bounce twice on the same word if the word lasts two beats. If you need to, you may have to change the color of the text for syllables, too; duplicate the text, change the color, and reveal it with a wipe using hold keyframes.
In the comp window, modify the the ball's motion path by using the bezier handles at each keyframe; you can get the motion path rounded that way.
Time consuming? You bet... but you're committed to seeing it through now.
Keyframe sequence by Rhett Robinson on Jul 20, 2006 at 5:52:28 pm
Dave's right, it's all about keyframing, and he described a relatively easy technique, by creating markers. I did a couple of karaoke type songs like this before, and I found it fastest to go through and put a keyframe with the ball above the word when it should hit, then went back and put in the "bounce", by adding a bezier keyframe for the upswing. I also made the keyframes with the ball above the word into easy-ease keyframes... that made more pleasing motion to me... but don't forget to make the timing work as he described, by keeping the ball bouncing above a word when it's necessary to fill the tempo.
You might be able to put markers by using one of the audio effects to see where it "hits".
I started slow, the first song took more than an hour and a half... the 3rd took about 20 minutes.
Re: Fast Help please. Ball bouncing on subtitles. by Scott Frizzle on Jul 20, 2006 at 6:04:26 pm
Yes, this is the type of thing clients think there is a button for, but in reality it's a pain. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "loop," but one thing that I found that really helps this sort of animation is to, as Dave said, find the beat if the song. In a separate comp, get your ball bouncing in place to the beat of the song. Once you have the ball bouncing in place to the beat of the song, bring this comp into the comp where you're doing your type (you can also render out a short loopable sequence of the ball bounce and use this.) Since your ball is already bouncing perfectly to the beat, all you have to do is to animate the bouncing ball comp along the x axis, which eliminates the need to have a bunch of motion paths to perfect every time you move the ball.
Another thing you can try if the client wants the ball to bounce on every syllable is to use time remapping to speed up and slow down the ball bounce comp so that the ball is bouncing off the words as they are spoken. You have to be sure to keep the keyframe intervals in order so you can return to the correct rhythm over and over again, but once you get the hang of it it works pretty well. I once did an entire sing-along music video for Clifford The Big Red Dog this way, and the ball was actually a spinning dog bone. I still wanted to kill myself when it was done, but it was the easiest way I could imagine.
Re: Fast Help please. Ball bouncing on subtitles. by pixeldustfilms on Jan 3, 2007 at 4:42:13 am
Hey Dave , et al...
What is the difference between playing back the audio by hitting the "period" on the numeric keypad vs. doing a RAM Audio Preview (shift + 0 on the Mac)?
Just curious as I was reading this thread, and, being still somewhat new to AE Keyboard shortcuts, hadn't found that one just yet...
