Article Focus: Fix it in post? This article shows how to BUILD it in post. Here in April, as March Madness ends and the NBA Playoffs begin, the Cow's Bill O'Neill shows how he combined greenscreen, 2D graphics and 3D compositing in a remarkable promo for Big Ten basketball. This "Web Extra" from Bill's article in the Cow Magazine's "Commercials" issue shows you rough edits along the way, and shares some of the production secrets for building an entire world in post.
To give you a tour of Bill's article and its suppporting media, we first offer the finished promo for Big Ten basketball, compositing 2D Photoshop files and greenscreened video in AE's 3D space. Click the image below to play.
Read the full story of how Bill O'Neil put together this remarkable project, from pre-viz up, from the Creative Cow Magazine's "Commercials" issue.
Here's a closer look at the finished scene. Click image for larger.
Here's a much wider view, including AE's 3D scene lighting. Click image for larger.
In the article, Bill mentions a shooting technique combining a home-built turntable, a greenscreen shot, and a vertically-oriented camera to mimic a flying camera.
He discusses it more fully in an article from the Cow library, "Shooting for 3D Post."
Click the image below to see the rough cut of the greenscreen footage as the promo starts taking shape.
As the scene comes further together, one of the most critical elements for selling it is incorporating realistic depth of field.
This is another technique that Bill covers at greater length in a Cow article offering quick tips for the best assembly of 2D layers in 3D space with realistic depth of field.
Note that, even though there are dozens of TVs in the final promo, there weren't any at all for the actual shoot. Those too are 2D Photoshop elements that have been composited into 3D space using After Effects.
As the project nears completion, here's a version of one of the early rough cuts. Click the image to play the movie.
Looking for still more details on this project and its sequel? Bill covers that in an in-depth tutorial covering all of the above, entitled "Building a 3D World in After Effects."
Bill's article for the Cow Magazine is just one example of what you can get with your free subscription, available in both print and PDF editions. Sign up now!
When a project requires a photo-realistic 3D world, After Effects isnt usually the first program that comes to mind. Typically a 3D modeling/animation program is necessary to create virtual 3D worlds, but in this article CreativeCOW contributing editor Bill O'Neil demonstrates creating a 3D world for a TV spot he was hired to direct and post for the Big Ten Basketball Conference.
Building a Cube World: Part 1 Play Video In this video tutorial, Creative Cow leader Carl Larsen shows you how to create a 360 degree camera-aware environment in After Effects without the use of third-party plug-ins.
Advanced AECC Techniques: ONE - Extruding Text in CINEMA 4D Play Video In this lesson, Kevin P McAuliffe gets you up and running quickly inside of Cinema 4D lite by showing you how easy it is to not only extrude text, but texture it and give it a quick animation, and get it back into After Effects before your client even knows you left!
IK Character Animation: Walk to the Beat 2: The Walk Cycle Play Video In this second tutorial on animating an IK character Andrew Devis shows us how to create and refine a walk cycle with our IK controlled character such that it walks in time with the music we had set up in the previous tutorial.
Character Design and Animation in AE: Part Two Play Video In part 2, Rob Mize presents the After Effects work flow he uses to bring to life the character created in part 1. By keyframing shape paths, Rob demonstrates how we can not only animate the character's features, but her speech as well.
The Beauty of AE Shapes: Top 10 Features Countdown Play Video Rob Mize offers his Top 10 Countdown of the features that make AE shapes such a versatile compositing tool. Rob highlights the functionality of these features and demonstrates just how practical shapes can be in your production efforts.
Neat Video: Removing Noise and Grain from your Footage Play Video In this video tutorial you will learn how to use the Neat Video plug-in for multiple applications. Although demonstrated in After Effects, the work-flow is essentially the same for all these applications: After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Nuke, Fusion, Vegas Pro, etc. This powerful but simple to use plug-in can clean up noisy footage by applying a sophisticated and advanced algorithm to work out what's noise and what's details in your footage and then remove just the noise. This is done by profiling the noise properties in an area of a video frame without visible features. Once the noise has been profiled, Neat Video is guided by this profile to reduce and eliminate noise while not touching the video details. Although mostly automatic, Neat Video still leaves you with total control over the amount of filtering you apply and even offers optional sharpening (without sharpening the noise) should you wish it.
In this article from the Creative COW Magazine, Tim Wilson discusses nonlinear editing and our ability to create meaning from our experiences that changes everything.
An FX veteran's unexpected, non-linear career path, from puppetry to painting, to ILM and beyond, offers insights into the art and business of film creativity - and a killer reel.
The team at Psychic Bunny worked on whatever interested them - perfect preparation for a job that even the client couldn't describe. In this Creative COW Magazine article Rick Castañeda gives you a behind the scenes tour of how they made cine bingo and teaches a few tips on interactive game making.
Reply
Like
