Composite 3D storm clouds with Live footage in AE

[Young-H._Lee]

Hello AE expert dudes

I need to composite 3D generated storm clouds with live footage. I am totally new to AfterEffects and went through all 10 pages of this forum looking for info on how to composite, but didnt find anything, here is an example of what the storm clouds look like:

http://www.solarbeauty.com/3D/cloud_test1.html

Could someone give me a detailed primer (or tutorial link) on AE compositing? I know the general concept of masks and all - and keying - just need some help with AE itself.

Thanks in advanced
;D

[BLUESPIDER]

That looks really cool. Did you do that? Lee, I usually go to creativecow.net for AE tutorials. You can check there to see if theres clouds tutorials. What did you used to do that could anyway?..


Lee, another alternative is to use stock footage of clouds. I think they sell a ton of just cloud footages and cloud timelapse that you can composite in your scenes. Doing it the CG way will take hella long to render. I've done clouds before using particles and it took days to render. That's in you want to get it realistic looking. I think stock footage would be my best bet.

[Young-H._Lee]

thanks for the compliment bspidy - yea rendering particles is a real bitch...but im bent on making this composite work. so one way or another, I'm gonna get it with the cG stuff. I checked out creative cow tutorials and wow there are lots of tutorials - this is the closest one I found to compositing:

http://www.creativecow.net/show.php?...ill/index.html

I'll check it out in detail, thanks

btw everyone, i'm still open to hearing your excellent workflows for compositing cg+live action, or keying etc, thanks!

[Taylor Moore]

Was your clouds rendered with an Alpha? In AE use the various transfer modes to develop different effects....and also control opacity.

What is the live action shot, maybe post a still.

[Shooter]

Put live action on AE timeline
Create appropriate mask type on live action layer.
Put Clouds in AE timeline
Play with mask blending, opacity, feathering etc
Track & animate mask and keyframe if necessary.

Depends a bit on your live action material what you need to do from there on.

[Young-H._Lee]

thansk taylor and shooter, will try those out today...if I can get somethign worth seeing I'll post it

peace