Butterfly?

[Hans Moleman]

I'm wondering if anyone knows a way to 'artificially' have a butterfly land on the finger tip of an actor looking at the sky? (ala Irvine from Final Fantasy 8)

Maybe a way in AfterEffects? I really dont feel like going through dozens of real butterflies.

 

[Barry_Green]

Hold his little butterfly feet in place, and film him while he's flying away, and then reverse the footage?

 

[Scottdvx100]

Barry's suggestion is best.

if that won't work then a 3D CG butterfly would have to be created and animated in addition to tracking the finger.

If you had clean footage of a butterfly against a solid backgroudn you coudl try to track it and animate it's basic motion but end result may be less than pleasing.

 

[twocik23]

In motion 2 it has a computer generated butterfly. That you can do anything with it.

hope that will help

 

[Derrick_SA]

Hi there,

This will help you, and explain in detail how you can animate a realistic butterfly.

http://www.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/...s/doszla_marek/butterfly/index.html&forumid=2


Thanks,
Derrick

 

[Derrick_SA]

Here is a different AE Sample project, It's 3.4MB.

Not my work, credit goes to who ever did it, but I can't remember who it was !?

www.malagold.co.za/Butterfly.zip

- Derrick

 

[Joe_Kras]

Butterflies can be damaged fairly easily if improperly handled.

So short of hiring a "butterfly wrangler" for the shoot, you'd probably be better off using one of the computer generated ones above.

 

[filmmaker58]

No butterflies were harmed during the making of this film.

 

[GenJerDan]

Yeah, right. So how come we've had so many hurricanes this year?

 

[Vidiphile]

Motion 2 Butterfly

Motion 2 Butterfly

I have been working with FCP Studio for a few weeks now and just used the animated butterfly that twocik23 mentioned is in Motion 2. In the final credits of the video, I have the butterfly land on the steering wheel of a car (still backplate), flap its wings a few times and then fly away again. I brought the animated butterfly clip into FCP to grab a still frame shot of the butterfly which is used when he lands. Adding keyframed scaling and motion path (with jitter ) is easy and adds more realism. Although, you can't see any legs or feet on this little guy (for my purpose it worked) and his wing speed is a bit slow. I tried applying a speed effect to this clip but found anytime I added an effect or filter or rendered it and then exported with Quicktime, I lost the transparency around the butterfly. Can anyone help me preserve the transparency of a clip exported with Quicktime after rendering is required ?

Thanks and hope my application description helps.

 

[skettalee]

Export regular clip with transparency from motion and then speed the clip with alpha channels up while in FCP or whatever NLE!