Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by Andrew Kramer on Oct 17, 2006 at 9:49:26 am
Thanks guys, Yeah true Mylenium... Anytime you're doing random artistic stuff, it's really hard to have a definite sequence of steps because everything changes. It's all about tweaking this and moving that, til you can get it just right. It's kinda like having a client sitting over your shoulder while trying to design a logo or something, it's hard to be inspired.
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by Betty Boop2 on Oct 17, 2006 at 6:17:43 pm
What if you wanted to parent the "emitter" to another layer, say a soda bottle. So it looked like the bottle was flying around and being trailed by the light streaks. Any problems with parenting in your porcess?
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by Andrew Kramer on Oct 17, 2006 at 10:19:40 pm
Thank you thank you,
I received a couple of emails about, animating paths with this effects and yeah, just attach the light to a 3d null object or just animate the path, if you want to make it write something or wrap around something, just create a mask in the shape of text and copy the mask shape parameter and paste it the the light's position. Then set the particles to emit longer. Also when going from one letter to another letter turn the particles per second to zero, and have a one frame change from say 2000 to 0 and then 0 to 2000 this will shut the emitting off whil the light gets into position to write the next charachter.
I mentioned this briefly in the originally recorded tutorial but I cut it out to keep it short (somewhat) I also had to cut out some pretty funny jokes too.
I took the easy way like as Mylenium pointed out and used an expression to make motion rather that linkin the light to tracking data from live action sources. But You can just as easily link and object in 3d space to the lights position, like perhaps a bottle of coke and someone nice enough can explain how to set an expression so the coke bottle "faces" the camera on it's travels.
The bottom line is because it's emitting from the light, you can do anything you want with animating the position and linking it to paths or nulls for doing graphics etc.
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by JeremyG on Oct 18, 2006 at 2:46:31 am
Sweet tutorial, but for some odd reason I cannot get www.trapcode.com off of mind. i want to go out and buy more www.trapcode.com. Do they sell that at the concession stand?
Do you know what is causing this Mr Kramer or is it the videocopilot.net voodoo you do?
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by Steve Roberts on Oct 18, 2006 at 4:10:58 am
You know, Andrew, you may have found one solution to the AE twisty ribbon problem. Use a custom particle which is a wide but short solid (maybe 50x1) or a stroked 2-point mask, use your tutorial to create the ribbon, then animate the particle's rotation at the appropriate path points to provide the twists and turns. If you give the comp a high frame rate, it smooths out the bumps, as you surmised.
Whaddayathink?
(Or did you mention that idea in your tut ...? Gotta watch it again)
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by RZeemering on Oct 19, 2006 at 12:27:27 pm
thank you so much for this (and most of your other tutorials!)
i went along and made a handwritten logo so i can use it while vj-ing in a club.
For this purpose (and others ofcourse) it would be nice to give it an alpha channel. If i 'un-ey' the BG layer i can export it with an alpha channel. But no colour can be seen. Applaying the color to the partical layer works but looks not as good as applaying to both the partical and BG layer.I tried several things but couldnt export with an alpha and with colour at the same time. Is there a handy way it can be done?
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by stevem1928 on Oct 22, 2006 at 10:53:57 pm
I was trying to put a person in behind the light streaks. I could not find a way to get the person to not be affected by the adjustment layer. I tried every possible way with pre-composing and many others ways.
I really just need one frame of video. I am using the streaks in a poster (made the comp 3,000 x 3,000). I thought I would be able to export an alpha rendered frame if I dropped out the background. When I dropped the background, I lost the color and glow. I got only white streaks. I want just the streaks and glow on an alpha channel to put into Photoshop.
How do I render out the streaks and glow as a single frame with alpha channel?
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by stevem1928 on Oct 22, 2006 at 11:02:14 pm
I as able to export the white streaks and add the hue and saturation in Photoshop. The glow part does not look as good as it did in AE. I am still open to ways to export it properly from AE.
Re: COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating Light Streaks by morpher2k4 on Oct 20, 2006 at 1:14:43 pm
Nice tutorial. I tried to recreate this effect in a very simillar way. I animated the pathway with keyframes and added also shine for more glowing. Tomorrow I will try the first tests with dancing people:
http://www.morpher.de/clients/works --> scroll all the way down to see what I got so far :)
