Hello, does anyone know some good tools for compositing animations together with video for example over a product blank screen? or indeed for animating interfaces? I have a product to communicate with a dual touch screen that folds in on itself - I would like to make a video with the screen working as the user manipulates the product.
- I’ve heard of Mocha for After Effects being good for 4 point tracking - pasting a screen to a model for example.
- I have some limited experience of Flash animation.
I know I wont be creating a masterpiece like this but this is the feel of what I’d like to go for (hopefully): Cool products that will crash on us in ten years - Core77
What programs/methods do you guys use?
I think you might get more replys if you move this to the Software and Technology forum. This isn’t so much an interaction design question but I’ll try and help.
For product animations I always use 3ds max and After Effects.
I will typically save the animation as images and import this into AE as a compiled set of PNGs.
Note, it will help you in the long run if you have the screen in your animation in high contrast to the device (make the screen white and the bezel or whatever black). This will allow the motion tracker in AE to work much better.
Once you have the movie in AE run the motion tracker on the four points of the screen.
Then Build your Interface designs in Illustrator (or AE if you’d like) and map that image to your motion tracker of the screen. Within this you can have the interface run through different screens or have different interactions take place as the user interacts with it.
If you want to make a video and not a 3D animation. I usually just take the model and put a high contrats (black and White) image over the screen area and film it. I will then use the high contrast area as before.
Check out this site for some good tutorials on AE. The Link Below goes to a motion tracking example video.
Just checked out the video you put up again. They barely seem to motion track at all actually. Most of the times an interface shows up the area it is on is not moving. Just check out video copilot and you should be able to work it out.