DataLife Engine - Softnews Media Group

As many of us often do, we get into the situation that we need to implement photos into a video (documentary, image film, reportage,... you name it) The easy way of doing this is to simply zoom into the photo or pan over it. If you want to give your photos more “life” you begin to draw masks and animate single parts of the picture to give the illusion of some camera movement. This can be very time consuming. So I started to build a tool wich helps me do this and cuts the time doing so tremendously. I have been using and improving it for over half a year now and it has already saved me so much time. This is what you can do:

define a mask (often a simple & quick rough mask will work perfectly)
8 layers will be generated from this mask
define the layer size
you can pull the layers in two different ways at the same time: 1) The weighting is more defined at the outside layers 2) The weighting is more defined on the inside layers
push camera or object in & out
Pull focus (between innermost and outermost layer)
define edge blur of layers (feathering)
Activate “Visual Help Mode” to make adjustments easily visible
two resolutions: 1920×1080, 3840×2160

Place object within scenery (since V2):

Second Mask can be made of two separate masks
6 Layers will be generated of this/these mask/s
Move Object
Move with weighting on inner layers to give impression of turning the object
Expansion/Contraction with weighting on inner layers
Scaling Object
Bluring Object
Layer Edge Blur
Parent Object to first Mask (movement and blurriness)

Add wind and waves to your composition (since V3):

draw two masks for wind area and wave area
set horizon, wave base and camera angle to blend wave area with photo
define number of waves
define speed of waves
define height of waves
define size of wind turbulence
define amount of wind turbulence
define speed of wind turbulence
Warning: longer render times on wind and waves. (On an i7 4×2,4Ghz with AE CS4 (32bit, so only 4GB RAM) a 4 second clip took me about 10 minutes to render)

Tags: Photo, Animator, V3, After Effects, Projects