AutoDesk Smoke :: Dragging Embedded Alpha Image Into Action
Nov 28, 2012
I got single clip in desktop and it got an alpha embedded. If i drag that clip into the cfx , the clip will be interpreted correctly where alpha will be recognized. The problem in action is when i drag into action schematic, the alpha is ignored Smoke should know if there's alpha embedded then by default it should use it. ANother problem is when in media list , i add new media then click the clip twice (to grab F and M from the same clip), the result : i got blank alpha. Again it should load the alpha while there's alpha embedded . I think , this should become the dafault behaviour to deal with alpha. Although loading this clip in cfx schematic will solve the problem, i think the action still need to be fixed.
Also it should be cool feature if i can drag the clip from library and drop it in media list , and it will replace the media of the selected item in media list.
Is there a way to taper an image/surface in action?
To explain: for my project I am taking hi res stock photography, separating out the mid, fore and backgrounds saving as individual layers then bringing into action.
With my current image there is a sea and sky. To make the illusion of 3d scenes I am angling the surfaces down there natural line of perpective to add depth so that when I slowly track the camera from right to left there appears to be depth and parallax.
For this example I am tilting the sea from being perpendicular to the camera to being tilted right back. When I do this the top of the picture which is now further away from the camera eye appears smaller. To compensate for this I would like to 'taper' the object. I know I can set the surface to being bicubic but then I have to work with bezier handles as moving the vertices bends it all around.
Is there either a way to make the handles have no beziers or is there a simple taper tool I can use?
When I use Paint module with Graphics menu, I get bad edges randomly on the image in action. The default setting of Anti-aliasing in paint module is 4 now, and I have tried to change the value from 4 to 1, 1 to 4. the only differences are the amount of, position of bad edges.
I also tried to check the "Divide" function in the media-list, but it gets from specific colour to white. I only want to take the bad edges away from the image.
I am experimenting with Smoke 2013 pre-trial and I am having issues with importing images and video with alpha channels.
1. If I have a layered Photoshop file or png with an alpha channel (a still frame lower third), I see that I can import it as a multi layered clip, but what is the best way to have it in the sequence to show up properly?
2. If I have a QuickTime in animation format or Pro Res4444 format with an embedded alpha, how can I import that file to show and cut it on a top layer to animate above my video?
What happens when I drag a file directly from finder into smoke?What setting does smoke use? I don't see and option popup to interpret the footage or mp3.
what i like in fcp, i can easily doing cut very fast, because the clip is not 'sticky'. So i can grab the clip and move and i got a very 'light' drag. The timeline is more 'slippery' ... i don't know how to say it. The drawback is : it's sometime become too sensitive so i can easily by accident move the cut and mess up the edit. I become paranoid , so i have to hold my breath while clicking :-) . But again the pros : it's easy to do fast edit or to crumble cuts around.
In the other hand .. what i like in smoke , this will rarely happen that i accidentally move the clip while i intend to click it. It's more 'sticky' to the timeline. So there's like more friction while try to drag the clip (only when first click/drag the clip not when the clip is already floating). The drawback is sometime i feel , it's hard to do some fast cut just by moving the clip around. :-) well, as usual, if we have 2 options, option A and option B, then we will tend to ask : do i have option C ( somewhat between A and B) ?
I'm asking is there any sensitivity control while i drag the clip. So it's between FCP and SMOKE. Something like a 'treshold' parameter.
I have a multi layer in my timeline , full graphic motion and long render. The base layer (layer 1) is a SOLID LAYER.
1. i select all that segment (multi layer) that has been rendered (yes, it's rendered). Now i drag it into my desktop (thumbnail view), but what happen is new clip is unrendered. So i have to re-render that clip. Why ?
2. i select all that layer, and collapse it ( contain selected). It collapse into a single clip but also i lost my render in my container. why ?
3. i mark in/out and create subclip. again i got the subclip but it's unrendered.
4. i mark in/out and drag into other timeline (same setting). and the pasted segment has no render file.
1st issue: I deal with alot of still images. Mostly .png files with embedded alphas. When I import them sometimes they come in able to be put on the timeline and trimmed to any length. Other times Smoke thinks the still image is a clip and it has a set number frames. If I need to extend beyond that set number I have to freeze it. When I import, set the clip options to frames. That works - sometimes. I've tried different formats tga and tiff with no luck. I've also tried the repeat tool but that doesn't repeat the alpha. If I were to use the repeat tool for this, how do repeat both the fill and alpha?
Second Issue: When I put an image on the timeline that is larger or basically any resolution different than the timeline, Smoke automatically puts a resize on it. If I bypass the resize then (depending on the clip resolution) the clip becomes distorted. Is there a way to keep the clip's resolution independent from the timeline?
Third issue: What is Smokes preferred still image format? Today I had a jepg that was 500x350 (or something like that) and after a lot of trial and error I found that it was this relatively small image that was choking my system. After I deleted that file and tried a different file everything seemed to run fine. Is there a certain bit depth or color model etc that I should be using?
Is there any visual tool in smoke so i can view the alpha/matte and rgb at the same time (by overlaying alpha on top of the rgb) ? I can't find a way to do it. Did i miss something ? or does this tool exist ?
I have a caption strap as a matte and a fill. Then a matte to wipe the caption on to it.
Now say if I need three of these on the screen at one time and to be able to reposition them individually.
In batch/action I was trying to combine the alpha of the caption and the caption matte, using a matte source node and a blending mode on the top image, but it didn't seem to work. I thought multiply should have done the trick...
I think the thing I'm stuck on is getting the intersection of 2 mattes. So you only see where they are both white.
I did do it with 2 source mattes, kind of in a cascade... but it's a messy solution for such a simple thing.
I ended up combining them out of action using blend and comp node. But then if I needed to resize the strap and 2 mattes independently of the caption itself I ran into problems.
I'm trying to create CFX clip with alpha so that i can place it over another clip in timeline. CFX clip is build from source and then i generated mask with gMask node and brought together with Blend&Comp node. I created CFX clip from Blend&Comp node. There is option in CFX clip settings Generate Alpha, but it is greyed out. Does some one know why is this so or how can i achieve same result with CXF output?
I haven't tested every single combination yet in the publish menus. To save me trying them all, is there any option that works to publish all the shots in a sequence together with alpha channel?
I have a sequence of CFXa clips with matte output connected in CFX, I duplicate the sequence and commit cfx... every clip has a matte container. So far, so good. Now I want to output the whole sequence as individual shots with alpha.
Tried the EDL option, changing file type to OpenEXR... no alpha. Tried EDL, changing output type to movie and then selecting ProRes 4444. Alpha was solid black.
Is it possible to get publish to create individual movie files for each shot at all? Everytime I try this it writes one continuous quicktime file even though I select a shot number token. Writing individual shots seems only to work with image sequences, is that the case?
I created a comp with 30 image planes and an animated camera. Now we want to work with the result in Fusion so I need an FBX. Is there a way to output it directly from action? And how can I export the camera with the animation?
Smoke 2012 SAP2 SP4 and Smoke 2013 SP2 (Smoke Classic Keyboard Shortcuts) Mac Pro 4,1 OS X 10.6.7 12 GB RAM NVIDIA Quadro 4000 14 TB RAID (Areca)
I created a 3D text and a 3D path. Now I simply want the text to follow the path (the text should always look at me, so I can read it). But as soon as I connect the path to my axis of my text, the letters are being pushed together. No matter what path settings I try (Look at... etc) the letters don't extend back to their original "position"
Smoke 2012 SAP2 SP4 and Smoke 2013 SP2 (Smoke Classic Keyboard Shortcuts) Mac Pro 4,1 OS X 10.6.7 12 GB RAM NVIDIA Quadro 4000 14 TB RAID (Areca)
I have a 10 sec clip that I want to track. It's a girl driving on her bike a long a street. The camera is always parallel to her, so that the scene behind her keeps on changing. How can I track such a shot? I know, that if I want to track something going off screen, I have to jump to the last frame and adjust the tracker, but this clip is just too long, to just place the tracker at the very last frame (almost randomly).
Smoke 2012 SAP2 SP4 and Smoke 2013 SP2 (Smoke Classic Keyboard Shortcuts) Mac Pro 4,1 OS X 10.6.7 12 GB RAM NVIDIA Quadro 4000 14 TB RAID (Areca)
I have a camera move in action to move between a couple of still images. This is going into an interlaced programme so I'd like the move to be interlaced (50i). Currently the ouput is rendering progressive frames and I can't see how to change this within cfx/action.
I have a shot with a white background. There is some text that has to disappear somewhere into the white, so I figured, I'm just gonna load in a white color source, lay it on top, and put it in front of the text in z space. But nope, the white doesn't match the background white. It looks grey. I tried to apply a CC, but that doesn't change anything.... I already restarted smoke, but that didn't fix it either.
What else can I do?
Smoke 2012 SAP2 SP4 and Smoke 2013 SP2 (Smoke Classic Keyboard Shortcuts) Mac Pro 4,1 OS X 10.6.7 12 GB RAM NVIDIA Quadro 4000 14 TB RAID (Areca)
I have a shot where I added a lensflare to my light. Now, in the picture you see, I separated couple parts of the picture, so some can be affected by the light and some won't.
I always thought I would achieve that by hitting Space+L and drag a line from the light node to the image I want to affect and hold down ALT to connect the light node to the image that I want to exclude. But as you can see in the picture, the glow of the lensfalre is not only on my headlamps of the car, but it's also on the pillar next to it.
I also arranged everything in Z space, so the light would be behind the pillar, but it doesn't work the way I want it to....
Plus, I was wondering, is there a way to do a defocus on the lights, so they look like the ones in the upper left corner?
Smoke 2012 SAP2 SP4 and Smoke 2013 SP2 (Smoke Classic Keyboard Shortcuts) Mac Pro 4,1 OS X 10.6.7 12 GB RAM NVIDIA Quadro 4000 14 TB RAID (Areca)
How do you draw a shape in action. I select it from the tool menu, but when I click in the default camera view. It jumps back to the select tool. And the shortcut shift + c doesn't activate the tool either.
I have a project where I have a high res of an astronaut on the moon.
The elements are:
Foreground: Mid shot of Astronaut Mid: Moon (as in the ground he is standing on behind him) Background: Space
I've managed to separate out the elements, position them in actions' 3d space and even add a nice little lens flair in the reflection of his helmet as the camera slowly tracks from left to right. The effect (well we've all seen it before) is that it adds 3d depth via parallax scrolling to the photo.
What I can't achieve is a realistic reflection of the moon surface (i.e. the ground in front of him) reflecting in his helmets mirror-like visor.
In order to fake the reflection I essentially want the motion in the reflection of the moons surface to be opposite to that of the mid ground behind him.
My plan was to re-use the mid ground moon surface flipped horizontally and view it through a matte/alpha describing the visors shape and then animate it moving in the opposite direction with a couple of simple keyframes.
How I tried to achieve this was:
Prepare the layered file in photoshop including helmet visors alpha layer (a simple coloured layer with a hole in it)
Bring into action and separate out all the layers in 3d ensuring the helmet matte remains in the same position as the astronaut layer
Animate camera tracking
Come out in to connect fx
Dupe the action node twice and rename the new ones 'helmet alpha' and 'moon reflection'
Go into 'helmet alpha' and delete everything except the camera and the helmet alpha
Go into the 'moon reflection' and delete all except the camera and the moon surface
Go back into cfx and use some compositing node to flip the moon surface (and plug the moon surface action node into that..?)
Then create a new node which allows me to plug the helmet alpha into the alpha channel and the moon surface into the fill channel
Create another new node which allows me to combine the result of this previous node with the original node and layer it on top.
I load a front back and matte into action. And let's say, I want to add something to that matte, is there a way to do so? Obviously it doesn't work with the keyer, since, as soon as I enter the keyer, my matte is "gone".
My workaround so far, was to create the new matte in action, output it to the edit desk, and then blend them together within a container and then take that back into action....
Smoke 2012 SAP2 SP4 and Smoke 2013 SP2 (Smoke Classic Keyboard Shortcuts) Mac Pro 4,1 OS X 10.6.7 12 GB RAM NVIDIA Quadro 4000 14 TB RAID (Areca)
I'm doing an animation with simple camera moves. One of them is a camera moving slightly around an object. I want to make a "look at" or similar, so that the object is always in center no mater where i move the camera. This works untill i connect the camera to a 3D path - then the aim follows the path - not the camera :-|
How can i animate a camera on a path and make the aim stick to a certain location in my scene?An extra question: How can i make an object move at a steady speed on a path no matter how i drew my path (hope this makes sense)?
