I have recently upgraded to CS3 on an Intel Mac. My copy of WalkerFX no longer works and the product has been discontinued.
I am looking for a plugin that will horizontally or vertically shift my channels. Walker had a great "channel offset", but I can't find anything that works quite like it. Ideally, I'd love to shift my channels based on their CMYK values, not their RBG.
I know it's quite possible to do this by hand (duplicate the layer, remove one of the channels from the first layer and then add it to the second and shift around), but I have a serious amount of work to do, and simplicity or automation will be key to the success of this project.
Re: Channel Offset by Ron Lindeboom on Apr 28, 2008 at 8:27:17 pm
If I remember correctly, there was a press release in the press release forum here in the COW wherein DigiEffects announced that they had bought Walker FX's intellectual property like the plug-ins, etc.
Check out the news forum and look there.
DigiEffects may be offering Walker FX users some hope for the future.
Re: Channel Offset by Chris Thomas on Apr 28, 2008 at 8:42:55 pm
Hi Ron,
Unfortunately Walker has been moved to the "legacy products" section of the website, which means it's being phased out. However, they don't seem to have included all of Walker's effects in their other product bundles.
Re: Channel Offset by Kevin Camp on Apr 28, 2008 at 9:20:53 pm
you can create a pretty simple (though not quite automated) method to produce the same effect over and over....
first, drag a clip into a comp and call the comp 'footage comp' (or something, just so you know this is where the original footage will go).
next, take the footage comp into another comp (call it something like 'offset comp') and apply the channel combiner effect to the footage comp. set from 'red' and to 'red only'.
duplicate the footage comp in the offset comp, and change the channel combiner settings to from 'blue' and to 'blue only' and set the blending mode to 'add'
duplicate that layer and change the channel combiner settings to from 'green' and to 'green only.'
make your offset adjustments as needed. then render. now if you drag a new clip into the footage comp, the offset comp will update with the new footage. make a tweak or two, then render the new one out...
Re: Channel Offset by Chris Thomas on Apr 28, 2008 at 9:27:41 pm
Hi Kevin,
I'm doing something similar now, and it works/looks great.
My only problem is that my shape is being created by a mask and animates throughout the piece. Having a one-layer solution allows me to just edit one mask and have the entire shape follow suit. Using two layers essentially doubles my workload, plus the hassle of making the two shapes match up each time. And the eventual buttload of edits to come? It'll just be a nightmare, seeing how I'm using hundreds of these shape layers.
Very good idea, though.. and, in another project, would be the perfect solution. :)
Re: Channel Offset by Kevin Camp on Apr 28, 2008 at 9:48:30 pm
yep, it's pretty limiting... and i can't think of a creative way to use channel combiner, offset (or transform) and cc composite to get it to work either.
what broke the walker fx...? if it was upgrading to cs3 on an intel mac, you may be able to gain access to those effects by forcing ae to run under rosetta (an option in the 'get info' panel for the ae app).
Re: Channel Offset by Chris Thomas on Apr 28, 2008 at 9:56:21 pm
Wow, Kevin!
That worked! I was able to use that plugin, plus several more. Granted, everything runs really, really slow. What exactly does opening doing Rosetta do?
Re: Channel Offset by Kevin Camp on Apr 29, 2008 at 3:00:05 pm
running an application under rosetta on an intel mac uses the powerpc version of the universal binary rather than the native intel version (that's right you actually have two versions of ae, with separate preferences and all).
since the older walker fx were powerpc, they needed the host application (ae) to also be powerpc. this works for codecs too, if you had an older codec that was not available as a universal binary, you could get access to it if you ran cs3 under rosetta.
you may be able to improve performance a bit by changing the preferences to match those in your intel version of ae. so, enable multiprocessing, set ram cache, disk cache, disable opengl, etc.
also, some of the old tips for working with ae7 on an intel mac may still apply... there had been a post here and in adobe's ae forum regarding cache settings if you want to try to find them...
