| | | | Aharon Rabinowitz posted an interesting request earlier today on Twitter: "If anyone can demonstrate Red/yellow/blue (primary) color interaction in AE, I would love to see a comp. can't get it to work."
Here is the thought process I used to get the results. The solution is at the end.
RGB vs. CMY vs. RYB according to Sterling
As most After Effects users know, RGB is the standard color space within the software, but there is more than one method to manipulate the colors. I will be keeping this simple for the math involved. Using 8-bit color, the values range from 0 to 255. 0 is no color; 255 is maximum color. The color maps for RGB are three values, typically separated by a comma, which range from 0 to 255. Full RED is 255, 0, 0. Full GREEN is 0, 255, 0. Full BLUE is 0, 0, 255.
RGB is also an additive color space. 0, 0, 0 is black; 255, 255, 255 is white. If you were to add the full values of RED, GREEN, and BLUE together, you would get white.
255, 000, 000
000, 255, 000
+ 000, 000, 255
= 255, 255, 255
Print uses the CMYK color space (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) where a color is define by the amount of pigment is used. Simplified, as you add more colors together, you get closer to black. Typically in printing, 100% of CMY is a muddy gray color, which necessitates the need for black. Also, 100% black ink is cheaper to use than 100% each of the CMY inks.
CMYK is often referred to as a subtractive color space. 0% of each color will show nothing, such as a blank piece of paper. 100% of each color will show the maximum saturation of that color on that media. The more color you add, the darker final result will become. Dark + Dark + Dark = Really Dark.
Fact: cyan, magenta, and yellow are secondary colors to red, blue, and green. Being familiar with CMY and RGB colors is very helpful when trying to figure out why the actress's face looks blue.
The “primary” colors we were taught in school growing up are red, yellow and blue. When we add these colors together (50% of each one), we get new colors: red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green, and blue + red = purple (violet). These new colors are often referred to as secondary.
These primary colors are still used in painting and drawing. They are also considered subtractive. In practice, the combined color is usually a grayish-brown.
http://daleroose.com/web_design/color_chart/ has a couple great color charts: one for RGB/CMY colors and the other for RYB colors.
Primary and Secondary Colors in AE
This portion was easy after playing with the color picker in AE:
Red = (255, 0, 0)
Yellow = (255, 255, 0)
Blue = (0, 0, 255)
I played around a bit longer in the AE color picker to choose the following values the secondary colors (my goal was to keep the math simple so 255 = 100% and 128 = 50%):
Orange = (255, 128, 0)
Green = (0, 255, 0)
Purple = (128, 0, 255)
Primary Color Mixing
My first few attempts at mixing primary colors were not good. I went through just about every single combination of layer modes with all the RYB colors and transparency values in 5% increments from 0% to 100%. In short, not efficient.
Red + Yellow = Orange
Looking at the math, Red + Yellow does not equal Orange. Immediate flag is that the value for a color cannot exceed 255 in 8-bit color.
255, 000, 000 Red
+ 255, 255, 000 Yellow
= 255, 255, 000 Green?
First AHA! moment: I only need 50% of the yellow showing to get orange.
I created a quick comp with a few solid layers. I included a white layer at the background in case I had plans for crazy blending modes. The colored layers were offset to see the two primary colors and the blended/mixed secondary color. Layer order was: Red at 50% opacity, Normal blend; Yellow at 100% opacity, Normal blend; White at 100% opacity, Normal blend. The red looked pink at 50% opacity, so I duplicated the layer and placed it under the Yellow layer at 100% opacity.
Yellow + Blue = Green Part 1
I looked at values for Yellow (255, 255, 0) and Blue (0, 0, 255). Then, I looked at the value for Green (0, 255, 0). Using AE to add the values would give me white (255, 255, 255). Subtracting the values would give me black (0, 0, 0). I'll come back.
Blue + Red = Purple
I jumped the gun and saw that purple was similar in design to yellow with a half value for one of the RGB colors: (128, 0, 255). Using the same layer order as the orange comp, I substituted Blue for Yellow and got Purple.
Yellow + Blue = Green Part 2
So, Yellow + Blue = White when using AE to add the colors. Green = (0, 255, 0). What I needed was a way to remove the 255 from Red and 255 from Blue in the final comp. I quickly created a new solid with a color of (255, 0, 255) and noticed it was magenta. I placed it over the staggered Yellow and Blue solids and set the blending mode to subtraction.
TADA! Green. It's cheating, but it's still green.
The Big Finale
Per Aharon's Twitter request, he would like to see an AE comp with RYB blending. Without any nesting, I copied over my sample comps to create a single composition showing "RYB blending" with a dash of magenta subtraction to help After Effects along with the complex math.
Here's a close-up of the layers and blending modes. I created a mask for the Magenta layer, and it is at 100% opacity.
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| | | | This portion of my three-part catch-up blogs focuses on the audio portion of my music video project. I have read many tutorials and seen just about every podcast on how to lip-sync animation to audio in After Effects. Alas, after much trial and error, none of those methods worked. It wasn't until I got a response on Adobe's Audition forums, that I was given a somewhat workable solution. What I wanted to do is have the main beat to the song be the rhythm to the video. And to be over-literal, have a clock ticking to the beat. As most After Effects users know, After Effects isn't the best audio tool. 
What I initially had for source material was a complete demo: room tone, snare drum rattle, and the song recorded in one sitting, including vocals. The band didn't have a click track to play along with, so setting up markers 1 every x frames wasn't feasible. It wasn't until I got back to getting newer/more versions of the track that I was able to get just a drum and bass version of the song, and I'm not refering to the electronic version of drum and bass. I ended up listening to this version of the track in Audition (Tim, no Audition blog topic?) and hitting the marker hot key every time there was a significant beat.  Original track with the whole band
 Drum and bass version of the song.
Next, I switched over to the spectral frequency view in Audition and adjusted each and every marker to where they should be. By the way, there are 368 of them.  With the spectral frequency view, you can actually see the drum beats.
I saved the file and opened it up in CueListTool. It read all the markers I had without a problem. I did have to change the settings so I could get a frame reference.  Time format was changed to "%h:%m:%s:%f" without the quotes.
Then, I noticed a problem: CLT is set up for 75 frames per second. The guy who wrote it is from Germany, so x/3 = PAL frames. But, here, in NTSC land, that's a problem. I exported the cue list to a txt file. Opened it in Excel. Set spaces and colons for tab delimiting .... Made a simple formula to have CLT frames / 2.5 and have no decimals. Then saved it as another txt file. 
Why the trouble? Well, when I manually enter the frame I want to go to in After Effects to set a marker, I want to be as exact as possible. Using the above image as a reference, when I click the Go to time thingy in After Effects (I'm still an AE noob), I just have to type 10201 to get to marker 46. Here's how close to the actual beat I can get with this method and stay within SMTPE time: 
Thanks to the wonderful work of podcasts and tutorials from Aharon Rabinowitz and Andrew Kramer and Stu Maschwitz's book, I'm not working in 29.97 fps anymore in NTSC DV. I'm now working 23.976 fps at 1280x720. So, I have to tweak the math in order to get proper marker locations ... AGAIN. But, it's all part of the fun. BTW, if Aharon, Andrew, or Stu actually read my blog, you don't know how much you continually inspire and push me way passed my breaking point. That's a positive comment. Next blog entry: One version of lots of research applied. It won't have any screenshots, but there will be a link to video. | | | | |
| | | | This is part one of a probable three part post. It's mainly a rant on hardware issues I've had the last couple of months.  The Lappy: I won't mention the manufacturer other than to say it's not a Dell or an Apple laptop. From what I've read on forums and review sites, this laptop is overall in the 85-90 out of 100 group for cost/performance, yadda yadda. My mobile beast of burden, and the first one I've ever owned. I prefer to build my own desktops, but building a laptop isn't quite accessible yet (they're working on it). Since I decided to buy a laptop, and they have a tendency to have a multitude of horrible things happen to them, I also bought the extended to three year warranty. The recurring problem I've had was graphical distortion on the LCD screen. I would take a screenshot, and everything would look fine when viewed on different computer. I would plug my 20" widescreen into the VGA, DVI, and S-video ports on the Lappy, and things would look fine. So, the dedicated video card is working fine. I send in the machine to get fixed; motherboard gets replaced. It's done the round trip from Madison, WI to Texas five times in a year and a half. But, the last couple times were the best. After putting off sending the Lappy away to get poked and prodded without me there to hold its hand once again, I finally gave up and shipped it off. I had to. The screen would only show bright white with an occasional splash of hot pink or neon green. In record time, two weeks including the FedEx Ground shipping, I get my little buddy back. It's working great; screen is back to it's gorgeous 1680x1050 greatness; but, there is a lot of garbage on my laptop I don't really care about. Like "flash cards" from my art history classes and really bad papers comparing Scandinavian folklore to contemporary urban legends. The kind of stuff you don't really need to keep. I did back up all the good stuff though. Turns out I backed up some of it up to 4 times because I kept forgeting where I saved the first couple backups (I'm not as organized as Aharon claims to be  ). As I'm double-checking for a sliver of a diamond amongst enough junk to rival the ash from Mount Vesuvius, the Lappy locks up. Not a little either. I can't move the mouse or type anything, so the three finger salute is out of the question. Oh well. Fresh install of Windows time. But, it hangs as Windows is initially booting. Hmmm. Could it be my slipstreamed disc I was using? I tried to use the system restore discs from the manufacturer, but it locked up in about the same spot as before. Next course of action was to do a thorough hard drive scan to check for bad bytes. I found some at the 88% point of the drive. Formatted the drive to 83% capacity; tried to reinstall Windows; still failed. Out of desparation, I went to Best Buy and left with a drive a) I couldn't afford at the time, b) that was smaller than the one the Lappy came with, and c) for the same price I could've purchased a 100GB 7200 rpm drive from Newegg. Before I actually purchased the new drive, I did confirm with the store management that I could return the drive within either 14 or 30 days (I forget which). Guess what? Same lock ups occured as before. The Lappy got placed in it's cardboard box waiting for FedEx to come. The inferior 80GB drive from BB got placed in its cardboard box and returned to it's orphanage of components. When I finally got the Lappy back and saw it was working, I reinstalled Windows with my slipstreamed disc (I don't like manufacturer default bloatware) without a single problem. What was funny was the list of components that were replace: the mainboard, graphics module (aka video card), CPU, battery charging cable, battery charging board (x2; I think they broke the battery charging cable on the board after replacing it and had to replace the board and cable), top half lower case, and bottom half lower case with speakers. What didn't they replace? The memory, DVD burner, battery, and LCD panel. I guess they really don't want to replace the LCD panel for cost reasons. But the CPU, which they did replace, still costs around $275. WTF?! Why do we care? I have almost too much free time at work and have self-diagnosed myself with ADDWNMT (attention deficit disorder when not multitasking). So, with no Lappy to try new ideas that pop into my head while at work, I put myself into a crazy, sad funk. Also, my main desktop at home is constantly tempting me to save and quit whatever I'm doing and play World of Warcraft. WoW on a touchpad is not too fun. But things are better now. I've had the Lappy back for almost 3 weeks now and am only 2 months behind schedule. | | | | |
| | | | [Verified for enough clarity] When does awesome become a nightmare? So, there I was. Just over a year left to graduate with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Most of my friends knew that I was really into the film classes and artist video classes I was/had taken. A friend and his bandmates asked me if I'd be willing make a music video for them. Quick background info: at the time, I just turned 29; the youngest guy in the band was in his mid-30s; and, none of them had ever seen my video projects. The lead singer/drummer said if I wanted to have a shot of a dead squirrel, like the one his 10 year old daughter pointed out to him, for the 4:17 long track (m:ss) would be really cool. I asked for other ideas. Here's the awesome part: I was told I could do whatever I want. And, whenever I get it done, they'd throw me a party. At first, I thought it was a good deal. I was perfecting my starving artist role in society, so a free party, in payment for something I'd like to do, was pretty cool. Being the silly person that I am, I forgot Murphy's Laws of Video: whenever you agree on a deadline, add a few more days to that, unless your computer crashes mid-render; then, you're hosed. I was offered the project in Sept, told the band I should have something polished by Feb. Definitely doable. But, I had forgotten about the 14 credits I was enrolled in when I took the "job." Luckily for me, Adobe Production Studio was coming out. I told the band about it and how I could do this and that and blah blah blah. They bought it. I told them it would take me a while to learn Premiere and After Effects (I was using Vegas before), and I would have to figure out a way convert the stuff I had done from Vegas to Premiere or AE. They were fine with that. So, I get a pass for the Spring semester. I then enroll full-time for the summer and fall semesters so I can finally graduate. It was getting kinda creepy being 30 and hanging out with 18-20 year olds. The music video was definitely on the back burner, now. Fast forward (ooh! 3 months!) to a week ago. It turns out my friend in the band is opening up a street art inspired or themed gallery and have a cafe/bar reserved for two or three weeks during Madison's Art Fair on the Square while he still looks for a suitable gallery space. His band is also having a CD release party during this as well. Guess what question I was asked. "So, Sterling. How's that video coming along? What's it going to look like?" Here's my plan for the look and feel of the video: get a handful of A Scanner Darkly and a handful of Sin City. Toss them in a blender. Empty the contents onto an aluminum pie pan. Microwave the mixture on the pan for the maximum length of time before the microwave explodes. This is all possible to get done. I hope. I have from now till the beginning of July to get it done. July 13th at the very latest. But, I also work 3rd shift at a large format print production facility, and I'm still trying to figure out a good set of hours to sleep. Why can't the days be 29 hours long? I'd be set! If you couldn't tell from the title and rambling, I'm making a music video called "Clockwork". I have 3 months to get it done. I have no budget. I'm going to try to make it in HD (suicidal?). Luckily, I don't have to worry about actors. I'm going to animate a lot of it and use myself as the model, for now. This is just one of two or three blog series I'm starting here. I'll use this blog for a way to document my progress for myself and so others can learn from my mistakes. You should have caught the first one already: when you plate is over-full now, don't immediately ask for seconds and dessert ... you might just get it. I've re-read this after I've got some sleep to see if it makes more sense. | | | | |
| | | | ... at least for this project. While tweaking the markers I had set up in Audition of the demo version of the song, Audition crashed. Like a first-time user, I just glanced at the screen and thought that my changes before the crash were still there and saved the file instead of "Save As...". I was using the Spectral Display in Audition to see where the kick drum hit in the audio since I want to make my animation sync with the music. When I looked at the Spectral Display of the audio, nothing was there. So, I reinstalled Audition to hope that would fix my problem. It didn't. So, I opened the original WAV, and Spectral Display was working fine. I really didn't feel like redoing the marker process for this track (there are over 350 of them). I called up Victor, the bassist and sound engineer of the band, and asked if I'd be able to get a copy of just the bass guitar WAV and kick drum WAV files in addition to a finalized version of the track. It turns out they are still tweaking things and need to re-record the guitar track tomorrow night, but I'll be able to get everything I want on Saturday. Why make a video using a demo track? That's all I've had for the longest time. It wasn't until the last couple weeks that the band, in their infinite wisdom  , decided to fine tune a lot of their tracks and press their first CD. Once I get the new audio, I'll post screenshots of my process of setting everything up in Audition, exporting the markers to CueListTool, and getting the markers set up in After Effects. I'm hoping to have this stuff posted no later than Monday evening before I have to go to work (hooray for third shift!). Depending on whether the band will allow it or not, I will try to post samples of the track in order to give you an idea of the tone of the song. I might even get ambitious enough to post a video of storyboards and audio. In the meantime, I'm playing around with Google's SketchUp to storyboard the video. I was introduced to this cool little app by Stu Maschwitz's The DV Rebel's Guide. It's a neat book with lots of fun information. And, the cover is laminated, which makes it coffee-resistant. I accidentally tested this undocumented feature. I've also been playing with Adobe's kuler to help me decide on a color palette for my soon-to-be redesigned, business/client-friendly website. I'm hoping on having a mock-up done by Monday evening as well. *crosses fingers* | | | | |
| | | | | Posted by: Sterling Glass on Apr 18, 2007 at 5:11:20 pm | Comments (2) | after effects, editing, music, entertainment, web authoring, technology, adobe, websites, google, indie film | |
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| | | | Spotlight? What's that? For the non-Mac folks that don't know what Spotlight is, it's a search-all tool that Apple introduced in OS X 10.4. From what I understand, it'll search your computer for all files that include a word or phrase that you are searching for, including searching email and metadata included within the files. Sounds neat. Now only if there was a Windows version of something like that ... Windows Desktop Search I didn't know about this until I installed Office 2007, but from what I can find on the web, the technology has been around since the early days of the MSN Toolbar. And, it does all the cool things Spotlight does. The current version is 3.01, works with XP SP2 and Server 2003 (including the 64-bit versions) and is part of Vista. Windows 2000 users will have to use version 2.6.6, but that can be accessed from the same link. Version 3.01 perspective: How well does it work? Really well. After you do the initial indexing of your drive(s), which can take a while depending on the size of the drive, of course, it searches as you type. It even searches for words and phrases from within pdf files, email, and keywords that are "hidden" from Windows and any other file that may be indexed on your computer. "Hidden?" you ask. Yes, hidden. I added a keyword to a photo in Bridge and did a right-click => Properties => Summary => Advanced to see the keyword of the file and nothing was listed. But, WDS did find the keyword in the file. Pretty neat. Almost as cool as BBEdit... except you can't FTP from it, but it's $125 cheaper. Notepad++ As you can tell from the name of the program, it's a Notepad replacement. It has tabs for multiple documents does all the cool syntax coloring you would expect to be included in any standard, early 21st century text editor, including ActionScript for the Flash junkies. Like the BBEdit Lite successor TextWrangler (9.7 MB), there is a standard function list included in the 3.2 MB installed program. You can also download a spellchecker plugin (76 KB) from the site. Dictionaries for the spellchecker can be downloaded from here. [Edit: added dictionary link] | | | | |
| | | | Before I get any questioning looks or inquiries, yes, Sterling Glass is my real name. After getting carded at FedEx a billion times for being mistaken for a business, my first video-based website was titled RealNameFilms.com. I was, and still am, surprised that it wasn't snagged up already. I thought that a group of enterprising young filmmakers that wanted to show Hollywood up and not use stage names would've thought of it first. Anyhoo ... why did I beg and plead with the generous folks at "The 'Cow" for this blog? A multitude of reasons. - Laziness.
- What I mean by this is that I'm too lazy how to figure out how to set up the blogging software and have it match my site stylistically.
- Also, I'm planning on revamping my site and don't want to have to change the format too many times.
- Bandwidth.
- My friend, JJ, is hosting my site, and I don't want to use all his bandwidth.
- I'm hoping that once things get going with what I wanna use this blog for, I'll get more people visiting my site (in the future).
- Motivation.
- Turn that horse to glue!! If I tell enough people that I'm going to redo RealNameFilms.com, I might just do it.
- I've got a handful of projects that I keep putting on the back burner, because I have no real due date on them. Maybe the threat of people reading Ye Olde Blauggue (did I Old English blog correctly?) will get me going in a positive direction.
- Inspiration?
- This is tied into Motivation. But primarily, I'm hoping that some people will respond to my blog, and give me a good idea now and then to make my projects better.
- Being an art major, I'm well-versed in
ripping people off, uh, borrowing ideas from others. Just kidding. I just wanted a second bullet point. 
- Whining.
- The primary topic I will whine about will be about the Mac fanbois/girrrlllzzz whining about how their Macs are better than a PC box. I'm not a Windows fan, I just like building my own computers. There are a small handful of things that do make Macs inferior to PCs. Now that they're PC-based, it's not nearly as bad as it once was, but it's still bad.
- There's likely something else that'll deserve a good complaint or two.
How will those very vague reasons be organized? I intend on writing about some of my specific projects that I'm working on. Pretty much a "This is how I did. I hope you can learn from my mistakes." instructional/educational resource. These projects include, but are not limited to, a music video for a local rock band, a documentary for a friend about his glass blowing, a feature-length film script, redesigning my website, and jumping through the hoops to make RealNameFilms.com my full-time job. Wish me luck. | | | | |
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