Is this possible?

S

sagemaster

Active member
Hey everbody. I have a bit of an odd question but here goes. Is it possible to animate a face on a tree, within after effects? It would have to appear, talk, and disappear. Any suggestions? Thanks.
 
This sounds like a fun project. I would simply film an actor on a green screen first.
Then put his footage into the composition, line up where you want his face to be and then mask out everything but his face. Then feather the edges so his face appears to blend in with the tree. It would be a lot easier if both of your shots are still, but you might have to motion track the face layer and apply the data to the tree layer. that way it won't look ultra cheesy (like those conan o'brian bits when they have the mouth masked out and it's moving all over the place)

of course you'd change the hue/saturation to match up with the tree and I think that would end up looking pretty good.
 
Hey, thanks so much! I never thought of that! No duh. That makes so much sense now that you explained it. And best of all, it's a solution well within my skills. I have absolutely NO 3D experience (Maya, 3D Max, Houdini etc) and so I need an After Effects solution - and I think you just gave it to me. Thanks ever so much! This board is awesome,.. I love this place!
 
you might want to watch the original animated Disney version of 'Alice in Wonderland' specifically the Cheshire Cat in the tree sequence. Even though it is a full animation from scratch in water colors the blending and transitions are almost magical.
 
I am not sure if it works but if you are looking for something different, you can try to animate the face with the puppet tool.
 
one key thing you might want to try along with those suggestions is to use a displacement map.
 
6.5 does not have the puppet tool

Try the split effect, it splits it like a pair of lips, I just tried it. not bad and simple too.

Here it doesnt look too bad, and you can put a layer behind it to make some depth or even a tongue. Eyes and nose, I dont know, but this option popped into my head.
 
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Holy crap Kdawg! How did you do that? That would be great too! Can you give me a quick step by step? I've never used the split thing you're talking about.
 
you'll need a tripod shot, if you have interaction with the tree. Or green screen the talent, and use a picture for the backdrop. I just downloaded a pic of a treetrunk from http://www.sxc.hu/home. Lots of high rez photos there. Scaled it down to fit my composition. I went to my effects and presets tab on the right side of my workspace. It's in the box with the time controls tab, and searched for split. applied that to my layer with the tree trunk. There is split and split 2.
With split 2 you can control top and bottom lips separately. Split one is what I used for more simplicity. You also have control over the corners of the lips. Just start keyframing everything. The hard part would be to match lips to the voice over. Sounds like a cool project, it should be fun.
 
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