Hi there. This is my first time on this forum, first of all. Secondly, I am wanting to create a JibJab animation with After Effects using an existing video with some pictures of other people's faces pasted on the existing people in said video and I have a couple of questions regarding specific actions that I want to take. I also want to add examples for each question so as for you to better understand what I'm talking about.
1) How does one go about putting two or more faces on two or more existing bodies for an animation of this type??? I am somewhat familiar with the Motion Track feature and I pretty much know the basics of it. So do I have to set multiple track points to do this or is there another way??? Example: ://youtu.be/2x-xThwA3mo -- at 0:01 mark
2) The original video source I am using has multiple shots in it and wherein only one person may be in one shot and two people may be in another. Do I need to split each shot from frame to frame and insert separate track points for each separate shot or do I just put in multiple track points all the way through without splitting anything??? Example: https://youtu.be/2x-xThwA3mo -- from 0:05 mark to 0:08 mark
3) In a couple of shots, a person does not come into frame until a couple of seconds. My plan is to paste a new face on this person's body as soon as it comes into frame. Do I have to track the object out of frame first before it comes into frame just like I would the opposite - track motioning an object going out of frame??? Example: https://youtu.be/2x-xThwA3mo -- from 0:00 to 0:01 mark
4) I want to paste different faces on certain bodies for different "facial expressions," so to speak. Do I use different track points for that as well??? Example: https://youtu.be/2UywVLZjSqA
5) In one shot, two bodies have their faces obscure for a few seconds, but then their faces are shown. The second their faces show, I want the new pasted faces on them to come into frame. And then when the real faces go back into obscurity, I want the pasted faces to go out of frame as well. Do I split from frame to frame and insert different track points for this also??? Example: https://giphy.com/gifs/maker-jibjab-tdi6tN2V73YMU
6) One body in which I will have a pasted face walks by another body with a pasted face, obscuring this for a second then coming back into frame. How do I go about achieving this??? Example: https://youtu.be/2x-xThwA3mo -- from 0:18 mark to 0:22 mark
7) And finally, after one shot has pasted faces on two bodies, the next shot will not have any bodies in it at all, meaning no faces will be pasted. Do I split this shot from frame to frame and just leave that alone???
If any of these questions can be answered, that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a heap! 🙂
First, everything you are talking about is layers.
Second, if there is more than one shot in your video where you are replacing faces then each shot should be a separate composition. You edit the shot together by rendering the comps and editing in Premiere pro, or if the video is only a few shots and a few seconds long, you an do a very simple edit in After Effects by bringing each of the comps you made into a new comp and doing the sequencing there.
Third, Every head you want to track is a separate tracking job. You use motion tracking, not camera tracking. If you have five people in the shot then you have five motion trackers.
You only work on the frames that you need to work on. If you have one person in a shot and they enter at frame 20 then you start tracking that person at frame 20. If you have another person enter that shot at frame 40 and leave at frame 90 then you track that person from frame 40 to frame 90. If you have a shot that is 300 frames long but you only want to replace the face in that shot from frame 200 to frame 260 it might be better to trim the shot first, do the tracking, replace the face, then render the result and insert it back in the original shot in your NLE.
You'll go nuts if you try and create a single comp, add 40 shots to make the video 5 minutes long, then try and replace the faces in part of all 40 shots using a single comp in AE. While that sounds like the most efficient workflow it will actually take longer, be way more susceptible to errors, and be nearly impossible to fix if something goes wrong or you want to change the timing of anything as you are working.
When you have one body walk past another then you need to do some Rotoscoping. You can create track mattes to do this if you are doing the roto by hand, or you can use AE's RotoBrush (you'll have to spend about an hour figuring out how to properly use rotobrush by finding some good tutorials first or you'll fail - use the Search Help field at the top right corner of AE to get started there), but here again, you'll only want to work on the frames that you actually need to modify. I had a student roto one of the actors in a scene by hand for a 9 second shot. It took the student about 7 hours to do so, but the total time that the actor needed to be separated from the background so they could be placed in front of an added element to the scene (your added faces) was 12 frames and the only part of the actor that actually needed to be separated from the background was part of their shoulder and their right arm. My student wasted about six hours and fifty minutes on frames that never needed any work.
Here's a short video showing you how to quickly do roto by hand. From your description of the project that's probably the easiest way to separate elements in the frame from one another.
Let us know if you have any other questions. What your doing requires a lot of planning and a bunch of tracking, but it's not difficult to do unless you are trying to make the face replacement look realistic. Then a whole bunch of other factors come into play like accurate 3D Tracking (something AE cannot do automatically with the tools included), motion capture, and 3D modeling. That kind of a project can take several days to just a couple of seconds of video.
First of all, the video in question is only about 37 seconds long, so I assume this isn't too complicated to make an effort in making a JibJab animation??? I can always take some extra time, if I have to, to work on some spots here to get it perfect, or close enough to it.
I do have another question I want to add on, as well as another query I want to have clarified. First, when I mentioned having different "facial expressions," in a single shot like the Obama example in which I referred, do I have to create a different composition for that as well just like I would have to create a comp for any other separate shot???
Also, there is one shot where a body walks from a far-field distance to a near-field distance, for lack of a better term. In other words, the new layered face on this original body is basically going from small to large as it is moving towards the camera. How easy or difficult would it be to make this work??? Will I be able to do this in a simple AE edit or do I need to use Premiere Pro???
First of all, the video in question is only about 37 seconds long, so I assume this isn't too complicated to make an effort in making a JibJab animation???
That depends on the content, but I would expect that should be doable.
when I mentioned having different "facial expressions," in a single shot like the Obama example in which I referred, do I have to create a different composition for that as well just like I would have to create a comp for any other separate shot???
Each shot would be its own composition. You would likely be tracking the face and applying that tracking information to a null object. Then you can parent different facial expressions to the same null and either animate their opacity, or just trim the layers to show one face and then the other.
Also, there is one shot where a body walks from a far-field distance to a near-field distance, for lack of a better term. In other words, the new layered face on this original body is basically going from small to large as it is moving towards the camera. How easy or difficult would it be to make this work??? Will I be able to do this in a simple AE edit or do I need to use Premiere Pro???
Basically the scale of the new face would have to change to match the face in your video, right? A decent track can get scale as well as rotation and position in After Effects.
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