Week 8: After Effects Compositing continues

Girl Composting:

Adding shadows and highlights:

This is the girl with her fill effects, with adjustments, as she was in the previous post. I will be crating shadows and highlights using two layers, one cropping the other to either create a light or dark rim around the girl. These layers will be taken form the original fill animation and altered to be white or black and the second cropping it. I then blurred them to feather the edge and layers them together.

Highlights:

Highlights comped in:

Shadow rim:

Shadow rim comped: 

A second Shadow rim: 

Second Shadow rim comped:

Outline added on top:

Shadows:

The next part is to add shadows making her interact and effect the environment. 

The girl stops in the shadow of a large object meaning that her shadow doesn't have to be harsh or a silhouette. Here the shadow is created form ambient light not direction light. 

The achieve the shadow when she is standing I used a camera tracked solid, masked and comped using soft light and a second with low opacity. The camera tracking process was very easy and worked really well on default settings. This may be because the camera move was very simple and constant in lighting but it provided the trackers I needed. 

These tracked solids were created in 3D along with a 3D camera. This meant that I could reposition them and not have to worry about running the track.

Shadows cast by Environment:

To create like the girl was moving into a section of shadow I created another tracked solid format the 3D camera track and masked it so as the girl moved she enter the shadow convincingly 

Girl moving into shadow (mask not active):

Girl moving into shadow (mask active):

As you can see there is a difference in her tonnage as she moves through the mask and into the shadow. This really makes her sit well inside the environment as she interacts and is effected by it.

The girl in shadow:

Girl casting shadows: 

This was a little tricker as the shadows the girl was to cast are interacting with 3D (looking) objects so need to act accordingly. This deduced to do using mask and 3D layers.

First I created a mask layer for the tree and tracked for as long as the girl would be casting a shadow. This masked the shadow which was created form the fill animation which was feathered so that it matched the other shadows on the plate.

I then made the shadow layer 3D so that I could animate it to make it look like it was curving around the tree.

These shadows, along with a shadow the tree is casting on the girl, makes her sit in the shot, integrating her very well.