Hey guys, how to achieve this effect?

[Cipa]

http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/ads

Any ideas? I do a similar trick with my Canon EOS 300D (as far as the light track), but how can we do that with DVX100?! I`m really interested in this one.

Thanks

[Steve_Arm]

Painting and masking would be one solution.

[Cipa]

can you go into more detail about that? Painting, like how? Thanks ;)

[Daniel Skubal]

I think you'd have to do some motion capture type stuff to get the depth of the point in there. I guess you could fake it by motion tracking the x/y movement and guess the z movement... you could then apply those data points to a particle generator, and then mask out the dancer.

[Cipa]

How about shooting with DVX in total dark, while making moves with flashlight? makes sense? i don`t know...then bring that footage into AE and make adjustments (masking and so on)
I`m new to this and my english ain`t THAT good, so if you guys could explain your ideas in more "easy to understand" english, it would be very appreciated, haha.

[pmgmedia]

The iPodlight trails effect (lightpainting) can be done in After Effects using Trapecode plug-in Particular 1.5: see Trapcode.com - actually here is a clip of it:

http://trapcode.com/movies/mpath_lightpaint.mov

The Trapcode website even has an After Effects project you can download that has all of the plug-in settings for duplicating that exact effect from the iPod Spot. Motion tracking the light trail effect to the video of the people is a whole nother story. That part stumps me.

Trapcode plug-ins are cheap and super fast too. I dig them lots.

[Cipa]

great stuff pmgmedia!
I`ll try some tricks with the demo version, see where it takes me :P
Any other suggestions?

[mattmatheson]

you could use Blender and make a plan with a texture of the light and just animate it.

[Matt Grunau]

The closest to that would be 3D stroke from Trapcode,

http://www.trapcode.com/products_3dstroke.html

However, that gives nice solid trails, not very much like the ones in that commercial.

I'll bet if that wasn't done with something like multiple instances of 3D Stroke, or if you can apply an alpha channel or custom shape to the stroke to break it up, 3D program was used.

They would film the actor from multiple angles, and plot the movement of his hand, either with som mo-cap software, or by hand. Then you make a spline from the data, and move a 3D object along it.

Then you take your main footatge, compost in the animation, darken the subject and get the video to look that way, and then animate the final video to scale and move.

Any conventional 3D app would do that, and it would not be that hard to animate, because you are simply following a spline. But I don't think you can get that degree of 3D in AE alone, or even with trapcode. Those trails are solid, don't look much like Particular, and I don't think you can get shapes like that with 3D Stroke.


Besides, being Apple, they probably did it in Shake, which may have something like that built in.

[kai]

The style has been around for awhile, but this is a nice execution of it. Exopolis did the Apple spot. Here's a few older versions of light trail spots:

http://media.revver.com/broadcast/43782/video.mov
http://www.cauchemars.com/Movies/fortune.mov
http://www.bubble-squeak.com/site03/mo_citizens.html

This version was most likely done by mapping a paint texture along a spline in 3D, as Matt mentioned above. Exopolis most likely did this in Maya.

[Cipa]

Hi Kai!
can you please explain a bit in detail on how to do that, i think we all here are interested :) you don`t have to explain how to get the Apple ad effect, but light trail spots in general :)
Thank you

[Cipa]

Well i just tried Trapcode`s 3D Stroke and it work pretty cool :)

[Matt Grunau]

Exopolis most likely did this in Maya.


I'll bet Cinema 4D or Lightwave would pull of that kind of thing nicely as well. If I had the time, I'de try it with LW. That would be funner than hell to composit though. Maybe I'll try something very basic.

[Heroic]

Cipa,

I'm actually attempting to replicate it now. I've got it pretty close to being there. I'm using Particular but it's a little more complex than I originally thought. Particular doesn't generally go 3d with it's normal emitter settings. I first tried using the light, but the particles were too hard to control and get the look I wanted. So now I've got it emitting from a white solid turned AE 3d. It works really well actually. The effect is very similar, but not the same. I know I can get it there though. I'm going to re-shoot it on green screen and actually replicate the whole feel.

I do agree with kai and Matt, chances are it was done in 3d, with a 3d tracker like matchmover or something better. But I do think I can get a good result in just AE. You can even do the movements using a standard AE camera. Cool parallax on the glowing lines that way too.

-Heroic-

[slinks]

I was wondering about this, I want to try replicating it too sometime. Heroic let us know how it turns out man!

[Cipa]

Yep Heroic, we`re all waiting for the results and detailed explanation on how you did it :P