After Effects Newbie- Need help

[gusthebus3250]

I have had AE for a while but never got around to understanding everything about it. I know how to do alot from the help of the famous, Andrew Kramer. But theres one thing I really need to know. In many threads i see users talking about compositing. I know that its combining to videos to make one but can someone give me a method to do it in AE 6.5. I want to know how to composite so i can do scenes like being hit with dangerous objects, cars bats hammers, and ext. And make it look realistic. Thank You

[Matt Grunau]

The type of compositing you are talking about would be more of a Masked based composite, where the vehicle is surrounded by a mask, and introduced into the scene that way.

Of course, proper lighting is a given.

What you would want to do is pretty straight forward. You would use the pen tool to isolate the bus, car, or whatever impact vehical. Then you would place that layer above your main background plate and SMACKO, you get someone hit by a bus.

But, since the bus or car is going to be traveling quickly, if you used just a mask, you may cut off some of the motion blur needed to pull off the effect. The Mask's feather tools will help with that.

If you shot smartly, and basically had you main actor as his own video, and had the car as its own, odds are lighting will be ok. If you were trying to introduce say a 3D element, then you would have a whole list of things to make it match.

Lastly, once they get hit, you need to get them out of frame very very quickly. That will mean yet another mask to seperate the subject form the background.

But once he is cut out, motion blur is your best friend, and will really sell the shot.


I hope I could help, and if you want, post your clips and you can have the experts among us give you more of a step by step.


Good luck with your project.




M.

[gusthebus3250]

The type of compositing you are talking about would be more of a Masked based composite, where the vehicle is surrounded by a mask, and introduced into the scene that way.

Of course, proper lighting is a given.

What you would want to do is pretty straight forward. You would use the pen tool to isolate the bus, car, or whatever impact vehical. Then you would place that layer above your main background plate and SMACKO, you get someone hit by a bus.

But, since the bus or car is going to be traveling quickly, if you used just a mask, you may cut off some of the motion blur needed to pull off the effect. The Mask's feather tools will help with that.

If you shot smartly, and basically had you main actor as his own video, and had the car as its own, odds are lighting will be ok. If you were trying to introduce say a 3D element, then you would have a whole list of things to make it match.

Lastly, once they get hit, you need to get them out of frame very very quickly. That will mean yet another mask to seperate the subject form the background.

But once he is cut out, motion blur is your best friend, and will really sell the shot.


I hope I could help, and if you want, post your clips and you can have the experts among us give you more of a step by step.


Good luck with your project.




M.

Hey Thank You So much for the help. I wil give that a try.