Replacing the lid of a chest

Hello all.

Well I've finally got on with another short after a 6 month hiatus.

Now we finished shooting yesterday night and there're scenes that I knew at the time I'd need to touch up , most likely with After Effects. There's really only two and I've added a link to one here. Basically there's this chest which at the moment looks like it's labelled with a piece of paper, duct taped on. Which is exactly right! Obviously I want to make it look better and seamless.

http://www.lostsheep.com/film/testruns/closebox.mov


I'm pretty skilled now with Vegas, PhotoShop and the DVX100, but though I have a copy of AE I have never used it! This is surely a walk in the park for you gurus!!

Any help/links/tutorials would be much appreciated. Presumably getting this effect nailed will open my eyes to many other 'improvements' I can make to this short. I have until the 18th January to finish it so there is tweaking time. It's time I got my head around AE.

PJ
www.lostsheep.com
 
Re: Replacing the lid of a chest

The best way I think that might make this look for better is to recreate the box top in a 3d app. I don't know if you acess to a 3D program so this might not help. What you can also do is created a better box cover in photoshop. The only difficult part would be trying to track the image over the original and getting the reflections right. Theres going to be some distorting, etc. I would go 3D If I were to pull this off. I don't know if any I said helps.
 
Re: Replacing the lid of a chest

Yeah, it'd be pretty easy to replace the top. You'll just need to create a 3D layer in AE, and match the movement of the top with keyframes. Might have to do it frame by frame to make it look natural, but the shot is short, so it wouldn't take too long. The only thing that might give you a little trouble are his hands, which, if you don't want being covered by said 3D layer, you'd need to stick a mask on the layer to incorporate his hands.

What I would do is just get into AE, without the footage, and just figure out working with 3D layers. You'll need to turn on the little 3D box to the left of the layer name, and play around with the rotation keyframes (hit the "r" key to bring them all up). It'll be a good introduction to AE for you. Simple stuff like this is usually a good place to start in order to get the basics down.
 
Back
Top