3d animation with aftereffects...

[geestring]

ok my plan is to make an animation with some robots dancing... in the background however I want a crowd of people.. A silohoutte of a crowd if you know what I mean...

ok I guess I'm going to get a green screen a record a bunch of friend etc and then edit it in after effects.

my question is whats the best way of putting that crowd into the animation. I don't think doing post-production on the animation and adding them in after will be easy or look good.

So I guess putting the crowd into 3dsmax and rendering it as one animation will be better... as I've never done this before, how would I import a video with the alpha and just the crowd into a 3d scene. Have a plane in the background and have the video as a texture?

[.soulty]

You will need to compose the video clip of the crowd in after effects, you just need to be smart about the way you use the camera and the keep the clip in frame. You should be able to have a placeholder for the video in 3dmax so you can review it with the animation while you create but you should not render out the video, would be just a waste of render time, After you create the 'image sequence' of your robots fighting in max just import that into ae or a post production app and throw the crowd in a layer undernear, apply some filters to get your silouette look and tweak tweak tweak your settings (i wasnt making a bird noise);)

[geestring]

hmm but i want the environment to be 3d... like they're dancing a whiteroom camera will move around... I dont want the crowd to be a 2d background...

what you are saying I think, is to just have the robots on a layer on top of the video of the crowd?

[.soulty]

^ well im not sure how your going to pull off a 3d crowd from film, you can't really project a video on 3d geometry and think its going to show up with z values.

What iam saying is you can film the people in a white room/blue rooom/green room (try to eliminate shadow in that room) then compose that film into a post production application to key out the room and fix in with your animation of the robots. There is no advantage of putting the video in with the animation in a 3d program other than seeing it while you work (which is what i explained earlier). You look in any 3d forum, if the element is not made up of a 3d geometry it is then most probably added in post production time, one exception here is 3d crowds in a game (since they need to be there at runtime.)

You may need to ask at a specialised 3d forum they might give you some better ideas on how to work out what you want to do.

[geestring]

hey soulty you say eliminate shadow... use a 3 point light setup?

you know where I can get cheap sutdio type lights?

[.soulty]

sorry dude im not sure of the procedure, I would just put in a request the filmers to eliminate shadow for ease of keying out for my side later on.

[geestring]

we need a video, camera section heh.

[DDD]

Soulty is correct comp in AE. It is going to require some camera matching to be precise. In some instances you can get away with project video in 3d (with camera matching) and some you cant. I would hang around at creativecow.com and ask over there. That is a heavy project and will require you to wear many hats if you catch my drift.

Good luck...

[geestring]

ok i have never done any complicated things in AE before... but what I think I want to do.. since i want to edit the crowd in behind the robots but still within the scene...

whats it called when you "mask" certain areas to make things look like they're behind an object... what tools would you use...

[DDD]

rotoscope

[geestring]

im I basically painting a mask for every frame? to cover the area where the robots should be?

[DDD]

nope you dont have to do it that way. Look up tutorials on rotoscoping and masking. Go to creativecow and ask around there as well.