Animation/Special Effects in VV3?

alanek wrote on 5/18/2002, 2:58 PM

Is there any way (plug-in or otherwise) to create the effect of live action transforming into animation? Even if I could just add an effect to posterize or "watercolor" or "color pencil" all of the video I would be okay. All suggestions are appreciated! Thanks.

Comments

Luxo wrote on 5/18/2002, 4:11 PM

It's not going to be easy -- there's no plug-in that will do it quickly within Vegas.

You're talking about applying photoshop filters to video. You can accomplish this by first exporting the clip you want to convert to an AVI. Then, use virtualdub to export that clip as a BMP sequence. Then record an "action" in photoshop by converting a single frame to the desired look (watercolor, color pencil, etc.). Then go to FILE -> AUTOMATE -> BATCH within photoshop, choose the action you just made, the source and destination folders, hit OK, and let the computer process each frame.

Then all you have to do is import the series of processed frames into Vegas. Goto FILE -> IMPORT MEDIA -> SELECT THE FIRST FILE IN THE SEQUENCE -> CHECK "OPEN STILL IMAGE SEQUENCE".

You can expiriment with the framerate to get an animation look. Most animation is produced at half film, 12fps. Decide this first, when you're exporting the initial clip for use in virtualdub, so that you don't process more frames than you need. Then, once you bring the image sequence into Vegas, right click on the clip in the media pool and select the proper frame rate.

Hope this is helpful. Told you it wasn't easy. It's probably worth a full fledged tutorial, but I don't have the time. Good luck! Show us what you end up with.

Luxo

P.S. In case you don't have it, Virtualdub is an excellent freeware editor: http://www.virtualdub.org/. Hopefully the ability to export an image sequence will be included in a Vegas update.

FadeToBlack wrote on 5/18/2002, 6:05 PM

FadeToBlack wrote on 5/18/2002, 6:53 PM

Cheesehole wrote on 5/19/2002, 1:51 AM

hey good tips GG.

I used them in combination with Pixelan Chromawarp to come up with an interesting cartoonish look. it could be tweaked to look more cartoonish but I really like the way it came out. the sample here loses a bit in the compression but it gets the point across:

http://ben.orona.com/video/samples/roller-cartoon.wmv

loop it on the vegas timeline for best results. it's kind of hypnotic I think.

I used Quickblur - Threshold (.4) - Pixelan Chromawarp - Invert
and composited that track using Overlay on top of an un-effected track.

to transition between cartoon and normal, I just use an opacity envelope on the top track.

alanek wrote on 5/19/2002, 12:39 PM

Thanks to all for your ideas. I've been playing around with them. Produced some interesting effects using the "median" filter. In differing combinations with the sharpen, brightness, and HSL filters, I got some pretty cool results. Also, the convolution kernal filter at its "sharp" and "sharp edges" presets does some interesting things. Still, none of this really gets me the animation look I was hoping for, but I'll keep playing.

theigloo wrote on 5/29/2002, 12:11 AM

I can't get clips captured by vegas to open in virtualdub. Any advice?

Looks like a neat program though.

Thanks in advance.

Matt

theigloo wrote on 5/29/2002, 12:17 AM

I can't get clips captured by vegas to open in virtualdub. Any advice?

Looks like a neat program though.

Thanks in advance.

Matt

Luxo wrote on 5/29/2002, 3:40 AM

Sorry, virtualdub requires a Video for Windows codec, which aparently the Sonic Foundry DV codec is not. Try exporting the clip from Vegas as a non-compressed AVI. Either that or some other file format / codec.

Luxo

theigloo wrote on 5/29/2002, 4:06 PM

That worked like a champ (uncompressed AVI).

Thanks.

theigloo wrote on 6/1/2002, 6:13 PM

I've been playing around with photoshop... I'm no expert.

What filter, or combination of filters, gives the best cartoon look?

theigloo wrote on 6/1/2002, 6:13 PM

I've been playing around with photoshop... I'm no expert.

What filter, or combination of filters, gives the best cartoon look?

FuTz wrote on 6/3/2002, 10:20 PM

Another way if you got Photoshop 6 and Premiere: Import a whole clip you select in Premiere into photoshop and retouch it frame by frame.
It's something like : File- Import clip / then a series of selections in different (2 or 3 more) windows then you're in Photoshop with the clip as a whole "frame by frame " set-up: you just scroll down the frames.
I don't remember the details but I did it once and it worked. I re-imported the clip back in VV3 after the miodifications. Just check your file extensions during the whole process.