After Effects help

Sup guys. Anyone on here experienced in After Effects?
I've been experimenting with various 80's retro neon/outrun kinda vfx for use in some fake skate and fingerboard parts and there is this particular effect in this counter strike edit which would be perfect. Problem is, I have no clue how to do it.

I'm not a newbie or anything with after effects but I just can't for the life me figure this out.

The effect is at 00:16, the cyan+pink trail on the weapon as it's swaying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5mC4k_rGcU

He links the aep files in the description but I don't have the plugins they use.


Oh and the clip I'm editing has a completely static background.

Any help is appreciated, even if it's just a search term that would lead me in the right direction.

to me that looks like two possibilities

1. some very skilled masking and keyframing

2. he just green screened the gun from a demo within the game using console (easily done if you have counter strike) , used fill and displaced it slightly

Ill take a gander

If he were to green screen the gun, fill it pink/blue and then displace it, would he then of had to mask it around the original wep so it appears behind it? - assuming the pink and blue layers are above the original.
Or would he of cut the original gun out so it's just the gun surrounded by transparency and had that layer above the 2 displaced ones, above another original unedited layer to serve as the background?
Sorry if that's confusing, having a hard time wording it ^^

Also, are the coloured layers displaced in position or duration? I was messing around frame my
frame masking out the board(which took forever) and I couldn't figure which looked more similar(the overall effect still came out terrible either way).

Is there any possible solution using layer blending?
I had imagined it'd work because of the static background but I can't get it too look right, I basically just dupe the original twice, make one more pink and one more blue and then shift them backward a couple of frames. But of course changing the opacity doesn't work because of the background and so far all the blending techniques have altered the background aswell, any work around for this that doesn't involve masking frame by frame?

Thanks so far though pal, I think I've gotten an idea of how I'll do it as a last resort but it'll take a hell of a lot of key framing.

Edit - Thanks emerica

I have a good idea how he did it, I will make a quick video explaining it
peep back here in maybe a hour, I dont have a mic so I have to Voice to Text that shit (but its worth it and better than reading)

so.. come back soon(ish)

I will actually explain it first as you might not even need me to make a video showing it.... but if you do let me know, cause Im gonna wait and see if this helps first
I couldn't find the Gun one but I did find the Guy one and I'm sure its the same Effect (mostly)


Step by Step:

1. Tracked Camera Motion

2. he masked out the gun/guy frame by frame (by hand)... I'm not sure if he used the motion tracking to his advantage (he should of) but if he did he saved himself some time, its very possible that he did all masking before he tracked the footage

3. after he had the whole gun or guy keyframed with a mask (frame by frame)

4. he then copied that twice for the 2 Colors, Scaled them up a tiny bit (Original=100, Pink=108, Cyan=118), then moved the Position of the Colored ones around (Pink one is a bit above and to the right of the Original, and the Cyan one was above and to the right of the Pink one, by the way this is on the Guy Effect I couldn't find the Gun one but I'm sure its the same effect)

5. added a "Fill" effect to give it the color (like Pink), then added a "Mosaic" effect to make the colored ones pixelated looking (again this is the Guy Effect the Gun one didn't have the "Mosaic")

6. added a Black "Stroke" (3 Point Stroke) to the Colored ones (this only is the Guy Effect not the Gun Effect, the Gun one doesn't have a stroke)

7. added a Wiggle Expression to the "Rotation" of the Colored Ones - Expression= wiggle(0.7,10).... (again I'm am not sure he had a wiggle on the Gun one, shrugs)

8. added a Magic Bullet Look with mostly just a "Green Diffuse and Chromatic Aberration Effect" (if you have Magic Bullet you would probably know those effects)

9. how he got the gun to shine and sparkle, could of been a Find Edges Effect mixed with a Glow... this part I truly don't know what he did as I can only find the Guy Effect




dammit I think I covered it all, let me know!!

That sounds spot on mate. I didn't think to look at the effect on the guy but I can see where he's masked him out now.
Right okay I'll give it a test on a couple frames and see how it comes out.

Just to make sure I definitely understood:

- Mask out object so the layer is just the object with no background (frame by frame)
- duplicate layer twice and place both under the original and the alter the size, position and maybe shift it back a frame or two
- Fill one pink, one blue
- get the raw original clip and place underneath all layers

That's the basic idea right?

Thanks a tonne man! I'll try it out in the morning and tell you how it goes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ephyr

That sounds spot on mate. I didn't think to look at the effect on the guy but I can see where he's masked him out now.
Right okay I'll give it a test on a couple frames and see how it comes out.

Just to make sure I definitely understood:

- Mask out object so the layer is just the object with no background (frame by frame)
- duplicate layer twice and place both under the original and the alter the size, position and maybe shift it back a frame or two
- Fill one pink, one blue
- get the raw original clip and place underneath all layers

That's the basic idea right?

Thanks a tonne man! I'll try it out in the morning and tell you how it goes.

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yup
he has some Blur on his gun one too... but there is some Depth of Field Plugin missing as well, so maybe that was how he added the slight blur on the bottom of the gun (I did see a DOF Matte on one of the Project Files as well, maybe that was the gun one IDK)

probably took that dude a decent amount of time for that edit, was a slick ass edit

Yeah it's a super slick edit. I'm not even into CS and I can't stop watching it.

I've done like 30-40 frames but just displacing the layers a little doesn't appear like a trail as you can imagine so I tried moving them back a frame but that doesn't look quite right either. I'll post it here tomorrow because it's got me stumped.
Other than that though it's worked fine and was rather easy, just time consuming.

Thanks a bunch for the help mate ^^

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ephyr

Yeah it's a super slick edit. I'm not even into CS and I can't stop watching it.

I've done like 30-40 frames but just displacing the layers a little doesn't appear like a trail as you can imagine so I tried moving them back a frame but that doesn't look quite right either. I'll post it here tomorrow because it's got me stumped.
Other than that though it's worked fine and was rather easy, just time consuming.

Thanks a bunch for the help mate ^^

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wordlife

you know what now that Im thinking about it, the trail look might very well come from the Magic Bullet Diffuse & Chromatic Aberration Layer other wise it might just look flat as a fiddle... but thats just a quick thought