first post! thx man!

very useful tutorial Thank you!

Awesome mate!

I’ll try to get the footage up later today. Nobody had to get hurt needlessly in this one. But don’t think I didn’t want to…

I always look forward to the beginning of the week: Tutorial day!!

Great work!

wooohooohooohooooo!!!!!! im so happy
oh and there’s a new tutorial too… woooohooooooooooohoooooohooo!!!

Thx AK. I always try to be the first to post

Big thanks form Germay!!!
I love your work =D

You never know when I’ll post it. I’m sneaky like that…
Who knows, we may even see a middle of the week tutorial… But when?

Thank you!

When is day to night tutorial coming out?

Simply Amazing….. I’m speechless

“Day to Night…”
Be patient. It will come out when it is good and ready ; )

I’m going to have start keeping my mouth shut. But it’s so dang difficult.

nice one, definatly gonna use it

“Day to Night…”
Be patient. It will come out when it is good and ready ; )
-Andrew Kramer

Who knows, we may even see a middle of the week tutorial…
-Andrew Kramer

I’m going to have start keeping my mouth shut. But it’s so dang difficult.
-Andrew Kramer

Hmmm…

If I knew this a month ago…It would had save me 3 days of work !!!
Just to tell you how your work (tutorials) is usefull !
Thanks !

Ghis

clever. thanks again!

Thanks, looks great, and very useful .

Btw, what was in the ‘girl’ composition? New hidden tutorial ?

I say it’ll come out on Wednesday!

Wow, great stuff Andrew! That last thing in the command center will be real dang useful for creating artificial color light sources like those you simulated on the Blue Planet tut. Definately gonna increase the coolness of our films, thanks

Now, I just ended up wondering something… WHERE ARE THE JOKES? Oh well, great tut anyways

Maybe not Wednesday… Thursday?

thanks Andrew, that was nice tut

Wow Andrew!!!!

thnx 4da gr8 stuff, it helps a lot.
thnakyou once again

Warm Regards
Sandy

Do you post your films anywhere for us to see?

no funny jokes in this ones
But still a great work! thx

Really sweet tutorial!
Really insighfull!

You are a true After Effects master!

You are such a tease. Thanks for the new tutorial

great stuff.

Awesome. Great job. This is something that down in Florida we don’t see much, we usually got lots of clouds and such, but during the Winter, we get white white skies, so this will come in handy when we start filiming our short film in December.

Thank you Andrew! You made my day! I was so bored, but now I can watch something fun and productive at the same time. For everyone else,

VISIT http://WWW.FRESH-FILMS.COM AUGUST 2-8 AND VOTE TEAM PHILLY!

Andrew is there a chance to see more of your own work? I’ve seen your reel many times and would like to see some new work

Awesome new tutorial Andrew, I love this site, it keeps my AE knowledge keen. Thanks again!

Great superduper!! Not that hard, but great results!! Thanks thanks!!

Great Tutorial Andrew, Thanks for the sharing

What’s the film you was working on ? Not the first time we see cops in your footage :p

Hi Andrew

I always asking myself a question i hope you can answer it.
when and how Andrew handell all these stuff…. shooting… recordering …. family …. Baby
i think it’s too much organise.

thanx a lot Andrew for your great site.
i beleive in you never know when Andrew will post his new tutorial.

thanx

Hi Andrew ,
THanks man for this one , could really use it!!! )
MMM wednesday …. ??? wednesday …….new one

Great tutorial…..Question for you. This is off the topic but you have said before your true passion is film making. What have you made, and is there anywhere we can go to look at your work? I am sure it would be a great help to all of us seeing the master at work.

Great use of the colorama tool!

Great stuff..

I like the color correction dilly at the end.. will be a huge help… specially when my Professor hoards the XL2….

mmmm…

Nice. Very usefull stuff there. I like at the end how you showed the neat trick to hide the grain on dark shots.

Thanx Andrew… you kick ass!

I can’t belive you’re still alive??? I thought ALL science nerds were taken by aliens???

loving ya work Drew…

from Australia… ; )

No jokes or stories!!!! One of the best aspects about your tutorials are there entertaining, maybe you felt serious the day you made it or something o and what was that girl comp i dont think your wife would like that

Thanks men, great tutorial, just one question, what format (codec) is the footage for this tutorial ?

and last, do you know about the SheerVideo Codec? It’s useful?

thanks Again

New tutorial- YAHTZEE!

and just in time for my massive CC work that involves sky replacement. Thanks!

Also, random workflow question for anyone running a Mac: I’m trying to get my FCP sequences into AE wihout buying automatic duck. There’s a workflow hack that allows you to export an XML file, change it to a javascript and run it in AE, much like how auto duck works. However, my sequences never import right.

Does anyone have any suggestions/alternate methods of importing sequences? I’m on FCP 5.1.4/AE7. Thanks!

This is hands down the most useful tutorial you have done. I have been really struggling with advanced color correction in AE & this has opened a lot of mental doors for me. THANKS!

Any future color correction and compositing tips are always anticipated.

very nice!

Nice one again. And about the jokes. You guys aren’t taking origami too serious i hope But they looked proud idd.

Thank you again, Andrew!

[quote] Pat Norman Says:

July 16th, 2007 at 10:31 am
New tutorial- YAHTZEE!

and just in time for my massive CC work that involves sky replacement. Thanks!

Also, random workflow question for anyone running a Mac: I’m trying to get my FCP sequences into AE wihout buying automatic duck. There’s a workflow hack that allows you to export an XML file, change it to a javascript and run it in AE, much like how auto duck works. However, my sequences never import right.

Does anyone have any suggestions/alternate methods of importing sequences? I’m on FCP 5.1.4/AE7. Thanks! [/quote]
…

yes, FFS, get off the crappy MAC…

So, I take it the guy at the end for color correction is the one shot that “mall security” busted you for?

Awesome job! Thanks.

I liked it a lot, but I think the trees would not hold up if this were on the big screen – they might be too transparent.

Also the last colour/crushing shadows was my favourite .30 seconds of the entire tutorial!

Great tutorial. Between VFX and Motion Graphics, the ones I really prefer are those that teach how to take an average shot and make it look awesome. Once again, stellar teaching Andrew.

dude nice stuff. I dont know how you know all of this. LOL, maybe your the only guy here who read the manual. LOL, but dude seriously. Your so amazing. Hey if I sell any work having to do with after effects can I advertize your site by telling people who buy my stuff?

hey andrew are you going to do a 50th annivesary tut. Like your 50th tut right. Make it something crazy, all your stuff is crazy but make it like … super crazy.

i agree with Clinton …. the 50th must be super crazy

Once again it’s amazing!

Thanks Andrew, and the actors too!

or he could just get Riot Gear in download session:D

Thanks a lot.
you are the master

Gracias Amigo

I got your Joke’s..

and isn’t the other guy the driver in your cruise control tutorial?
are they in advanced origami 301 cause I just joined 101.

Have you done anything to the clip before you used in the tut? Never seen such a white sky before!

Other than that, kudos on yet another sweet tutorial!

Félicitations !!!! (From Ottawa, Ontarion, CANADA)

ffs?

WOW…

oh.. just got it.

geesh, will be using this knowledge very soon to enhance a upcoming project, thanks!

cery cery helpful..i think i will use it more on the last tip, color correction..and btw track matte arent boring at all Andrew, they are seriously useful to so much!! thx once again …alott!!

wow. you keep me on my toes. It blows my mind, how easily you blow my mind. I can’t get enough of your tutorials. thanks a lot!

Ok Andrew here’s the deal. What happens if you dont have 2 good points within your shot to set your tracker? Check this out. This is a single shot from a trailer I just did and I’d love to add a new sky but where do I place my tracker points? As you can see from the screen grabs, there is never a good spot to do it. He eventually closes the trunk of the car. not sure how this will effect the overall sky replacement either. Thoughts?

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g109/Bonesone4/AKQuestion.jpg

Is the camera moving that much? Mostly a shot from a trunk is nog the most shakiest thing.. If so, you could do it by hand..

But, maybe our AE guru can think of an other possibility, you never know .

Excellent work, and thanks for not going at a snail’s pace…some people who record tutorials are so slow…makes me feel like a retard (mentally challenged individual)!

p.s. I am very curious about the answer to the question above…

it does not shake very much but it is handheld. i played around with it for a while before the Guru himself posted his tutorial. The first thing I noticed though, were those 2 tracking points that I did not have in my shot. pissed….:)

Thanks.

But what was in the girl comp in this tutorial?

Wow, thank so much Andrew thats just toooooo dope!

this tutorial is great and also very usefull. and it is exactly what i was looking for. thnx andrew.

nice!!, thanks a lot AK!

Saludos desde Mexico!!

@Bones:
A sky replacement shot needs to be planed before you shoot it. I’ve seen the video on your website. I thought when somebody (like Quentin Tarantino) makes a trunk shot, the camera is static, so that there are no movement. Your shot has a slight movement, but even if it didn’t. It’s hard (maybe even impossible) to key out the sky, when the guy has a t-shirt, that has almost the same color as the sky. With my (limited) knowledge I would say you have to do it by hand: draw a mask around the guy and animate it frame by frame. I hope there is an easier way to do this.
I also noticed that your camera automatically adjust the brightness of your image (I believe it’s called “gain” in English but I’m not sure). Make sure that you switch it off (set it manually to 0), when you do a sky replacement shot. (I think when you do a movie it’s better to take full control of your camera and adjust everything manually. This way you can achieve the best result. Of course there are some exceptions though.)
If it’s only about this shot I would shoot it again with no camera movement and another t-shirt or with a greenscreen behind the actor.
Good luck!

Holy Lord! AWESOME! ABSOLUTELY AWESOME! The thing you did with the color correction at the end with the cops… THAT’S AWESOME! Thanks so much!

–
Paul Del Vecchio – Director
http://www.triple-e-productions.net

The 50th tutorial could be like 20-30 minutes:D Involing every step in a big tutorial. Ex. How to create those super cool superhero effects(lol:P)
Or whatever comes to your mind! Cus every tutorial you have made, is a special one! Thanks From Norway Film-Makers

@Some Guy

I think you’re talking about the exposure.. that is what it’s called in english…

Andrew, thanks for the post. I’ve been struggling with this very topic. I WAS HAND KEYFRMAING A MASK!!!!!!

Tell me, do you ever trip over your superhero cape?

Thanks Kramer \o
From Brazil

I have a question what if my sky is not white .can i still replace it.and forgive me if that sounds dum.

hey andrew did you see your gift for your hard work .let me know man i need your openion it sucks or not ,i maen the portrait.

I want to respond to a few of these, but by the time I’m done readding I forget…

Bones, you can possibly track the clouds in the BG. You don’t always have to track a sharp point. You can also add some heavy contrast to the shot then precompose it. Then double click the comp and track the precomp…

THe shot is raw footage shot around 6pm, the exposure is high because the foreground people get very dark.

As for feature film compositing, certainly you would want to clean it up. I had a lightwrap tip that I cut for time…

I’m the sure teh 50th can be a good one.

As for the jokes, you can’t try to funny it never works. I had a pretty killer headache when I recorded and my jokes would have been bad words…

“Dang freaking no good mother … … … CHEESE!”

The first person to tell me what this line is from and who says it gets something cool…
No google!

Bullseye andrew! Another useful tutorial Go on mate!

rookie of the year?

James Woods!! Simpsons.

Conor send me an email to info(at)videocopilot.net
Good work!

I hate it when you say you cut stuff out for time because everything you say is usefull!

Great tut. Looking forward to “THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK”

Is that the part of the movie from the 300 tut. It looks cool, i hope we get to see more.

raging bull.

never mind i dont watch the simpsons .they drive me crazy .

Excellent Andrew… Thanks man!

Andrew can you tell me how do you think about my showreel? you can find it on the site i got in the profile Thx!

I haven’t watch the simpsons since season 10 but there are just certain things that don’t leave you.

Lorenzo, nice site! I love the riot gear with the little blue particles. Looks like the whole shot is 3D.

Clancy, just looked at the indiana jones. WOW!

Thx for your appreciation Andrew, and thx a lot for the cool stuff you make for us!

…I’m looking for a job anyway…ahahah forget it

Love the reel Lorenzo!! Very well done!!

Awesome tutorial Andrew. I have to go shoot some footage now to mess around with!

andrew when you shoot with the xl2 what setting you shoot with .and soon you will get the portrait on your wall iam still working on the color blending and shades.

Thx a lot Mind Drop Studios, i’ve wathced your youtube video’s too and it’s a cool expample of good using of Adrew tutorials….

…it’s nice to chat live on a blog…too much off topic Andrew or we can go on?

here is the problem my sky is not white its blue so the pallet is making every thing black no white sky to work with.

clancy try to invert the matte or to use to invert the color in the ramp cycle….it should work

Good reel lorenzo. That thing for ied is awesome, everything 3d animated.

Wouldnt it be awesome to be andrew’s neighbour, he’d give you all his products for free and you could steal his dr.pepper and his tutorials. Not to mention you could borrow his JVC HD200 and his Sam loya and just beat the crap out of him.

but the problem iam not good as you guys i dont know how to do that.

Creative chat is always welcome here. I just don’t want to get off in negative way like comparing lawnmowers to weedwackers.

Clancy, i guess all you can do is key it,

when you use the “matted” shot to replace the sky try to play with the luma matte setting…try to use “inverted matte”. Or use the arrow in the cycle of the colorama settings, rotate them until the black part change to white…

(sorry for my bad english..)

what i like about this blog is it has good people and i hope it stays like that

Excellent job once again Andrew. However, I noticed in your project window you have a girl.mov file in there. It’s probably the dancing girls you mentioned in another tutorial. I’ll tell you what, if you send me the Designer Sound Effects dvd, I will not let your wife know about this!!

Waou ! this tutorial is great !
Thx to have made a tutorial more … advanced !
Could that works with the contrast and the levels ?
May be it’s more complicated…
>> http://www.saprod.fr
I need an opinion for the logo at the top. please.
Bye

thank you lorenzo for your help very kind of you .

You’re welcome clancy

I like your logo Mael, a little big maybe but this are just tastes

Andrew,
The stuff about alpha mattes and tracking is NOT boring! that’s exacty the kind of thing I need every day. Thanks!

Awesome tutorial there Andrew. Nothing else to say; that matte technique blew me away.

Blew me away.

@Lorenzo Di Rienzo
Your work is amazing. Very unique.

Thank you roller….are you interested for a motiongrapher into your studio? :p

Hey Andrew,

I’m seriously looking into purchasing a camera (like you used to use “Canon XL2). I want o start shooting my own footage and was wondering if you might consider a tutorial on actually shooting DV and tips to capture decent footage – especially for someone who has never done it – like me.

Well I think that a weedwacker is- oh wait…..almost forgot.

Thanks Lorenzo. Do you have a youtube page? In the part where the designs get “painted” on the wall, did you matchmove it, or just eyeball it?

Pete,

I don’t want to post it here because I think it’s bad etiquette to plug someone else’s product on a tutorial site, but I can point you in the direction of a very basic but quite good how-to-shoot video if you’re interested. You can email me at grayhammond@yahoo.com.

Andrew, if you would rather we not discuss this sort of thing here, let me know and I’ll shut up forthwith. And let me chime in with the other to say ‘Great tutorial’. That’s a really clever way to generate a sky matte very quickly. Kudos as usual.

Jack

I don’t mind you sharing good info. Especially when it is relevant to the discussion.

@Lorenzo

I want to know how to do some of those messed up tv looks and some of those motion gfx..

I would love it if you could email me some kind of tips.. or something…

imaginepro(at)gmail.com

great tutor as usual very insight full and direct thanks again for taking the time out to help us and our path as a multimedia artist.

AWESOME ANDREW! Your the best.
You know… I sometimes use your tutorials as rewards in my break times to keep me working hard and fast in my work times. Believe it or not! =)
Thanks heaps!

@ Mind Drop – I just saw ur match move in 3d max good job..Im starting to pick up 3dmax now i have 8 and am upgrading to 9 and my boujou is version 3 does that matched?? anyways is it hard to use..im such a noob at this lolz…thx tho!!

Nice Tut as always , but man, Lorenzo. Impressive and very unique work. I can’t believe you have a hard time getting jobs or hired. I’ve seen alot lamer reels getting people jobs here in LA.

You are a god!

Hey Andy Candy.

(That’s copyrighted, so don’t even think of stealing it.)

I was wondering if you were interested in opening up a ‘forums’ section of Video CoPilot. I think it would be totally radical having an open where all your fans and other visual effects artists can chat and post away. I know you will probably just say ‘Well, Kenji, why not just click your little fingers over to the Creative Cow forums?’ and I will respond that I feel there is a special and concentrated breed of people that leave comments on this blog, that are interesting in more specific niches than creative cow’s forums. Also, those forums seem all boring and such. I just cant handle plain text with every reply dangling out after it in line.

Anyhow, I digress.

Just wondering if you were planning on forums, and also, what was the price on the new JVC camera that you got? And have you sold your XL2 or are you planning on selling it?

Love this practical tut sir. Also love the other one, but I can see myself using this one on a more day to day basis. Please don’t stop doing the gfx tuts, not that I would expect you to, but more of the vfx tuts are definitely welcome in my book. Using colorama was a real eye opener here. Thanks for that. I will be referencing this one many times in the future.

What is on the Girl timeline?

well you know i agree with Kenjamin.. i have been talking about forums since i got here..

BTW: nice tut.. this is very handy for lost of things..

@ John Paite:

Thanks! I am using Boujou 4, and 3ds max-9, although I would rather be importing my camera solves into aftereffects because I don’t know 3ds max well at all. the camera tracking and solving is actually fairly easy, it’s just using that data is more difficult. I am much more used to compositing, and I don’t know how to do a lot of the 3d modeling. I can matchmove the cg no problem, but I need a good 3d modeler to create a good shaded model that is reflectively mapped to the environment. Anyone want to help?

@ Andrew: Speaking of matchmoving, if you want to make me one of the happiest people in the world you could do a matchmoving tut.

Great work Andrew!

Thanks for taking it into great consideration!

Большое спасибо! У тебя суперские уроки!

HEY FLORIAN ….YOU ARE FROM ROMANIA?

Thanks alot Mind Drop, which one would u guys recommend? syntheyes or boujou for camera tracking?? Andrew any idea and opinion??

Hi Andrew,
I have always just used a luma key with perhaps a simple choker to replace blown-out skies. This is one more method of getting to similar results, but I like this because it provides a little more control. Thanks for the tutorial.

Alexander

I have Boujou, Realviz Matchmover, and syntheyes. Boujou is the best and most intuitive in my opinion. It also has the most online resources of the three. But it is expensive. ($9500) I think that you can download a trial though.

Cool blog Andrew! Wish i would’ve found it sooner. Also cool to see your in the Temecula area. I’m just south of you, in Escondido.

John Paite. I guess it would depend on your budget. As Boujou costs in the thousands and Syntheyes is a few hundred dollars. Boujou has a deeper tool set from what i’ve read, but Syntheyes can get the job done.

-George

ohh i dont want to sound like a snob but money is not really an issue( it wont come out from my pocket ) .. so I went and downloaded the trial, i played around with it, and everything went well until i did the camera smooth tracker, its seriously taking such a long time like for 200 frames it was abt to take like 5 hrs, tracking 8 points …did i do something wrong? is it normal? whats the system requirement that is required..I have opengl video card, RAM 1.5 Gb etc??
@Mind Drop – online resources like online tutorial? any video tuts??

sorry to repost this but i went to their site and downloaded the tutorial 1 with the project file and everything and when i track motion with the provided img sequence, the tracking finish in like no time …previously i was tracking an avi file…i dont know what is going on?? and also how do i use the tutorial when i load the second one it says no source image founded and then when i load the first one just the img sequences appeared once again im lost..lolz
@ Andrew – Sorry I have to discuss it here somethng not related to ur tutorial..dont know anywhere else to ask…my apologies!!

cool thanks

Andrew, great tuto…..
1-you use 1 point with the motion travker on your first tuto and 2 points in this tutorial, why?
2-where can i find the “MATTE choker” plugin ?

Thank you so much man!

He uses 2 tracking points because he also want to track rotation .
For the matte choker plugin, have you already try to search in in the little effects in presets box on the right by typing in ‘matte’ or something?

woops, post above is full of typos, what I meant to say:
He uses 2 tracking points because he also want to track rotation .
For the matte choker plugin, have you already tried to search in in the little effects and presets box on the right by typing in ‘matte’ or something like that?

@newlc – matte choker, isnt it a standard effect for ae? came with the standard effect for me as always from 6.5-7.0 to cs3!

Thx Andrew !!!

hi. wen i invert the second layer its ment to go opayic but on my one it gos black! do u no how to solve this ? im working on 6.5 it wud be gr8 if u cud get back to me thanks theo.

Andrew
Thanks again. Please keep up the great work. As usual I learnt extra things from the tuts, in this cae how to create an infra red look with colorama!

@John Paite, may be this standart effect doesn’t exist in French version
whatever, boris propose this effect in “BCC MATTE choker” is it the same effect???

thx all

@ Dustin James :

I’ll write down an email to you as soon as possible

@ wally :

I’ve just graduated and here in italy motiongraphics is not so followes as abroad is…so i’m lookin for a nice job around the world

Anyway, thx a lot all of you for the appreciations

@John Paite, yeeeeeeeeeeeah i find the effect, in french version!!! thx ya man!!

Hey andrew, i loved this tutorial, it was alot better and gave me some great ideas and theory of better ways to matte certain things, great tutorial man!

also this is a bit offtopic but i decided to try keying with keylight so i did the cruise control tutorial on your DVD and also threw in sam loya dancing in the middle of the street at the end, using only the videos included in the tutorial ofcourse, if you want to see it ill email you a link, personally i think it looks funny but its a subtle dancing effect cuz i couldnt track the background properly, so i just hand animated him in

@Lorenzo:
I had a look at your site, and I like your work Congrats

@ Marc.B

Thx a lot mate

Great things in this tutorial (I thought it was boring ^^) !
Very .. very good idea to crush black shadows; it looks to be a good deal to darken the light of a scene like that. Colorama is definitely a great effect ! This can’t be ….

Will – France

Thx Lorenzo for my logo. It used to be bigger but the 56k protested.

@ Mael

I intended that your logo is a little too big for my tastes, not viceversa

Go for adsl Mael

wow, what a huge videocopilot community.
andrew, you really need a videocopilot t-shirt section in your shop.

@ Lorenzo:

You should message me through my youtube account so we don’t cramp Andrew’s style with off-topic stuff.

Although if he were to make a matchmoving tutorial it wouldn’t be unrelated…. Hint….Hint…..

Sorry that last comment was supposed to be to John paite. i was watching Lorenzos video while I was typing. Very good work!

Excellent tutorial Andrew Kramer!!!!
Thanks.

For, Andrew Krame:
coming soon Tutorial realistic Rain????

Thanks. I’ve learned a lot from the site. Thank you Andrew. Hoping to see a lot more great tutorial from you.

Andrew, what a great tutorial, as always. Your tuts is most useful IMHO, i prefer it to Lynda’s and some others, because its all real world projects and techniques. I learning AE right now (Sela Youniversity, Israel) and i recommend your site to co-learners as the best AE resource over a whoole web, with plenty of great free tutorials and good priced stock footage (again, best stock i seen).
Thanks a million and keep up a good work!

That t-shirt idea peter is not so bad. If you had a gift shop i would so buy t-shirts and all that crap!

Ever since you got out DSFX the site is just going crazy!

PS: next time you get out a new product, have a countdown so i can stare at my screen all day without working

Sorry, Lorenzo ^^
I’m french, i don’t read english as well as french :p

Hi there, I have been following your tutorials on many websites, including this one and I have found them a great resource. What’s great about them, is that you explain your thinking, kind of showing how you have to program your self to think. This has allowed me to take your tutorials and really improve on them. Take for example this sky replacement. I remember you first version of this with a bike jumping over a hill. This way is much better and has a much better way of keying things.

I found a really great way to add even more control the sky….
not all of us have stock footage of they sky, especially if you editing in winter, and you cant go out an shoot any.
So I have often found my self resorting to finding still pictures to replace the sky, this was at first a bit of a pitfall but then I realized this actually gave me greater control….let me explain…..

I found that some times, in some scenes were I had problems were they were very windy and yet sunny. I found the still sky just didn’t work…why…the clouds weren’t moving. using a still I could animate it to suite the scene.

This is how….
Fist take your still of the clouds, and place them in there own comp (make sure this comp is as long as you final scene!! (Call it clouds if you like)

I find the pictures are often shot at the wrong perspective to the scene you want to place them in, I find that if you squish them vertically this solves the perspective problem.

The picture ideally needs to be bigger than your comp, but you can get away with a slightly smaller picture and enlarging.

Next apply effect- Distort- Transform

Set the anchor point to just below the comp, you may need to re position the sky to get it back in the centre

Change the Skew axis to 90 and hit the stop watch on ‘Skew’ while at the beginning of the time line.

Then move the skew to a value of -10 at the begging and + 10 at the end (you can change these fingers depending on how fast you want the sky to move)

Ok… so if you look at the sky the closest clouds will be moving faster and the clouds far away will be moving slower. were nearly there.

Now they still look like a still, so add color correction and change them to better suit your scene. (effect – color correction – color balance)

Pictures of clouds, are often sharp as the person taking them probably was focused on them. To get round this we add a blur, imitating the depth of focus of the scene.
(effect – blur – lens blur) tweak to your needs (remember you can lock the effects and control them in the main comp later for fine tuning.

One last step

Still look a little clean? that’s because there isn’t that inherent video noise. So you just need to add some noise to match it up with the source.

Your done, you have some animated clouds that you have full control over. Now you can use the comp just as the clouds layer in Andrews tutorial

Thanks again!!!

p.s i wrote this in a rush, sorry sorry for any errors

Nice. Very useful way to get some alpha channels

PPS

you can of as make the cloud layer a 3D layers and use real perspective, i’m still playing with this, i;m already thinking of lots of ways of doing this….for example you can make the clouds out of fractal noise, and duplicate the layer to act as the shadow of the clouds on the ground……i think I’m going to go home a play with this more… thats what i love about after effects so many ways of doing things…. thanks for inspiring me…..

the tut is very useful, but, can anyone tell me, how can i make the clouds move ?? like in this video, http://youtube.com/watch?v=zc4PEyRCkmw, tnx.

Lorenzo… i like very much your work, thats the kind of things i want to know to do, impresive. can u put a tut section in your page?

@ Charles

I’d like to open a tutorial section but nowaday i got not so much time to spend with it, but if you write me a mail i could answer, where possibile, to your questions. I got also some useful links to inspire yourself.

Let me know

Adrew, te felicito por tu trabajo, es excelente, te has vuelto uno de mis gurús, saludos desde México.

ChaRLeS x:

Use a video instead of a still image as your cloud layer.

Andrew,

If you’re still reading this after 160+ comments, can I persuade you to have a 42.5 tutorial where you finish your thought on the light wrap? I think it would be super valuable to go along with the matte technique. Beggars can’t be choosers of course… but thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

rjf

p.s. ChaRLeS x, I once did that by applying the corner pin effect to the clouds, stretching the top pins out greatly from the center (giving perspective) and animating the top points right to left (to get the sensation that the clouds were moving right to left, again in perspective).

Thanks for the tutorial dude, it looks great.

@ChaRLeS x

The rjf technique could work but the best to archieve that effects sould be using a stock video footage of a sky (i’ve discovered the America ehehe)

I love this site so many helpful hints andkeep it up andrew i would be no where in ae without you. im only in high school and hopefully gonna open up a studio like alot of the guys in here. do you guys have any tips for me, cameras i should buy that kind of stuff. im working on a promo trailer now. if you guys have any tips let me know(includingyou andrew) lol
thx guys

Nice clips Lorenzo … really impressive ! Could you write down those “inspire links” that you´ve mentioned

@ Port

Write me down an email, i think it’s not correct to post’ em here

Great tut Andrew!
Now next tut is BULLET!!
i know i am boring

Lorenzo Di Rienzo – i impressed by your work. Tell me please if i also can email you.

Thats a rather ingenious way of creating your matte for the clip. I was wondering, when you are shooting the footage are you intentionally blowing out the sky to try and get it as even toned as possible? It seems like this wouldn’t work at well for matting the scene otherwise.

2 Lorenzo:
thats probably right
mail : PorT_99@centrum.cz – thx

Man this is an awesome tutorial.

It has usefull methods for pulling off many things!

Thanks,

Derrick

Very useful for enhancing footage!

MM.

It is getting nicer, better en also bigger the tuts of Andrew. Awesome Job. Its now the sfx time, thats great, can’t wait to see that! but next, maybe you can show us some tuts about dynamic/advanced animations? I know AE has some nice feature build in as velocity’s, decay’s etc..

Great work on your tutorials!! Easy to follow along and clearly spoken. I look forward to many more. Thanks

Is it me or does the main pic for the Advance Sky Replacement on the Tutorial page make you think of “Stand By Me”? And if so, is Sam playing the role of Corey Feldman?

Great tutorial, Andrew, like always. Love te different ways to make different skies, and the color correction was just great.

Savvy

(Singing) “Have gun, will travel reads the card of a man A knight without armor in a savage land.”

Hey, a quick question to Andy Candy (©2007 Kenjamin Industries).

About a job in the VFX field, as far as you know about the hiring practices in the field, would a company hire strictly based on education most of the time over a great portfolio, or would they rather see an awesome portfolio and just not worry about the degree?

@Andrew Kramer: “I had a lightwrap tip that I cut for time…”
Can you describe it here in the comments?
Why are you cutting stuff? For time? Do you say “Well, this one is gonna be 17 minutes, 24 seconds and 3 frames”? I can watch hours of your tutorials, because they really help me and other people in the world. I heard they even cure cancer. So, why cutting something that help people? Please don’t cut anymore. Or at least don’t say us that you did it… This knowledge cause headache.

Sam

Richard Boone played the man called “Paladin”
Have gun Will travel!
CBS 1957.

Yeah, I’m quite curious about said lightwrap tip as well

Could you please upload the project files, ive been checking every 2 minutes to see if ther up would be a big help

p.s thanks for giving us these great tutorials and taking time out of your daily routine for us

Hi!

Loove your tuts, Andrew! Every tutorial is just super! Higlight of the week!

btw, what do you guys think of this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fE3_ARYQSw

(ye, i know i forgot to make a fake shadow..)

@ some guy

we could all watch hours of andrews tutorials, even if he kept saying irrelevent things, but the thing is it takes him so much more longer, to render out the final results, to export the tutorial(it takes almost as long as it actually is), to upload the tutorial etc.

keeping tutorials short and to the point is the way to go, that way less time is wasted when it comes to getting it up on the site

THANK YOU SO MUCH Andrew!!!! great tutorial and reli helped me alot.

really needed the track motion thing! thankz

hahahaha surely they are very proud to know origami.

you rule men, wish i have time to do this stuff.

Question: can you obtain a “tighter” faked dof using the lense blur within an adjustment layer + colorama/luma matte trick as your depth matte instead of your handy-dandy ramp(I still use that lovely trick to fake people out)…haven’t tried it yet but was wondering if this is possible. BTW, would love more dvd tutorials on anything, especially some advanced 3d! Keep up the killer work!

it is awsome work. keep it up.
please show the tutorial how to clone one person to many
thanks

Nice Tut ! I was expecting something like this for ages i was dreaming about it, Andrew did it !

hey what ’s up everybody!
where can i find thd “keying plugin” for realise the tuto number 10

Thx guys!

i prepare a videoclip ….

oops a mmean “keylight” exactly!!!

@ Sassy if u shoot ur actors infrnt of greenscreen, maybe around 10 actors, u can easily increase their number to how many u want 200-2000 u call it..using particular..I can sent u a brief tutorial write me and email johnpaite@gmail[dot]com

Andrew, please solve the mystery of the “GIRL” compostion in your tutorial

Check out the Deleted Scenes for that answer…

Hi,Andrew.I have a little question that,If I add a wiggle expression for a camera,how could I take control the value? Seems camera can’t get a Experession control.

You know just do like the slider control or somthing similar.

Sky Replacement is not that big of a deal, but nice use of colorama!
especially for advanced color correction!

Excuse me,but I already work that out.The dang Null object.Thanks what ever…………..

cool men, many thanks

Wow!! I loved your first sky replacement tutorial but always had trouble fixing the edges. This tutorial was awesome and now i am able to use your cool “real cloud” footage and have it look great.

I also enjoyed the extra tutorials on color correction, very useful!!

Thank you!

andrew no matter what i do even am doing exactly what you doing i cant get to make the sky white and the rest black and on the 2 footage i cant find the luma matte thing to change it .whats going on ami a butthead or what.

any one here

Another great tutorial, thanks from Portugal.

VEry Very Great Man…I am a big Fan from Brazil…..=)

[]s

Okay! definitly great tutorial and perfect result

But own me delete the sky on the original video? we do that frame by frame? :s

Okay i’m a noob.

Great’s job again
Thanks from the belgium

thank you Andrew… good stuff

nice color effects wow

keep it up more turtorials

cool CS3

hey Andrew can you show us the basics of the green screen effects …i want to get a green screen but not sure how to use it

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/colorkey/index.htm
Basic Keying

Да, классная работа. Жаль что скачать нельзя, приходится каждый раз смотреть заново, а это дополнительные затраты интернет трафика

hey andrew, great tutorial, thanks from Italy
I was wondering how it could works on footage with a movement of the camera from left to right, and to add a reflection of the new sky on the windows of a building in the background of the footage.

Thanks again

Hello all
i just have a little question, do anyone of you guys know if this camera is totally useless for playing around with AE n’ suff? http://www.pixmania.com/dk/dk/544201/art/jvc/videokamera-minidv-gr-d76.html?itag=5891#

Cuz i dont have alot of money, but i really wanna get started with creating something.

And the reason im asking here, is that i dont know anything a abou camera specs

Cheers guys

I would reccomend the Canon HV20… $1000

No Camera is totally useless, Andrews right in saying a 3ccd camera is better. (3ccd pick up better colors, less blocky edges) but if that’s all you can afford then thats fine.

My suggestion is find some prosumer cameras and do some research on some older models. DVX 100A is a good example of an older one with some problems but is fairly cheap on Ebay. Try researching a few and checking ebay. Make sure you pick from a great buyer when buying camera.

good luck!

Great tut man, thanx from Mexico. However I’ve got a problem, for some reason AE won’t let me apply the track info to the null object it’s there in the drop down list but won’t let me select it (its grey). Help… anybody?

When is the footage coming ???

It’s in the blog entry.

there it is, dident notice it

me parece un tutorial fantastico, como siempre asombrando a la gente, gracias por enseñar tus conocimientos andrew… really awesome, thanks

Awesome. Been trying to work out how to do this (mostly with keying) with no great luck.

Thanks man! Keep up the good work.

andrew’s tuts don’t cure cancer… only chuck norris can do that. but, AK’s tutorials do clear chuck norris’ sinuses. that’s how badass they are.

hey andrew….i used your sky prelacement tutorial for these halloween prop videos that i was doing for this costume shop…

and a problem that i ran into when creating the matte from using the colorama plugin was bringing back in some of the highlights in the subject. essentially, there will be some bright spots on the actual subject, and when the subjects are stationary, it’s not a problem i just use masks to bring back the highlights, but when the subjects are moving, I don’t want to have to rotoscope highlights back in if i don’t have to.

i’m not sure how clear or unclear i’m being, so if you need more clarification, let me know.

all the best,

bE

What sould I do if the sky isn’t completely white in my shot?

Pretty cool trick to do sky replacement. Do you have a project file, because I can’t get lucky enough to have a day with a nice solid color sky.

I love Andrew Kramer

hey andrew, is it possible to save your tutorial to my computer? just wondering cuz i use my laptop for editing sometimes and its not hooked to the internet. wanted to download some of them and put them on it.

Nice work. I am amazed time and again at the weird uses of Colorama and how it is used in such unexpected ways. I would have used levels to create the matte, but your method is so much more elegant.