Adding Transitions and Timewarp Effects - Autodesk Smoke Essentials: Autodesk Official Press (2014)

Autodesk Smoke Essentials: Autodesk Official Press (2014)

Chapter 6. Adding Transitions and Timewarp Effects

So far, you’ve done a variety of cuts-only edits using the various assembly and trimming tools found in Autodesk® Smoke® software. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to create transitions, such as dissolves, between two clips. Additionally, you’ll be introduced to some simple uses of the Timewarp effect, by using it to improve the timing of the opening sequence of edits in this movie.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

· Importing the opening scene

· Adding and editing dissolves

· Creating dissolve-to-color transitions

· Creating and customizing wipes

· Retiming a shot using Timewarp

Importing the Opening Scene

In this chapter, you’ll begin using effects to help refine your edit. In order to focus on effects rather than editing, you’ll begin with a previously edited rough cut of the opening scene of the movie.

1. Select the Library named Office in the Media Library, then Open the Conform tab, click the Conform Task pop-up menu (with the gear icon), and choose Load New EDL from the context menu. The File Browser panel appears.

2. Use the Bookmarks pop-up menu to navigate to the directory bookmarked in Chapter 2, which contains your downloaded book media. Select the Opening Scene.edl file, and click the Load button.

3. Click the Set Search Location button to open the Set Directory browser, and use the Local Devices list at the left to navigate to your media, double-clicking each volume and directory until you select the folder containing the tutorial media. Click the Set button at the bottom right of this window.

4. Open the Match Criteria pop-up menu, and choose Source Timecode to turn this option on.

5. Click the pop-up arrow at the right of the Link Selected button, and choose Link Matched Sources from the pop-up menu. Every clip in the imported EDL should now be linked to the downloaded project media (see Figure 6.1). Open the Timeline panel.

FIGURE 6.1 The imported Opening Scene timeline

image

6. Play through the sequence to see what you’ll be working with. Using this sequence as your starting point, you’ll now begin to refine this edit using effects inside of Smoke.

Adding and Editing Dissolves

The opening scene begins with a four-clip sequence of shots that visually establishes some key information that sets up (a) that our main character is a physicist studying a particular subject, and (b) that the technology throughout the movie depends on high-tech contact lenses. Since this is a visual montage, dissolves will help blend these clips together and smooth out the sequence.

1. Make sure that no clips are selected in the timeline (press image+Shift+A to deselect everything). Then use the up- or down-arrow key to jump the positioner from edit to edit until it’s on the first edit, between the first two clips.

2. Add a dissolve by doing one of the following:

· Click the FX tab to open the FX Ribbon, and then click the Transition button and click Dissolve (see Figure 6.2).

FIGURE 6.2 The Dissolve transition button in the FX Ribbon

image

· Right-click the edit point between the two clips on the timeline, and choose Add Dissolve from the context menu.

· Press image+T to add a dissolve to the edit at the focus point of the positioner or a selected edit point, or press Shift+image+T to add a dissolve to the edit of every clip in every track ending or beginning at the positioner or selected edit point.

A transition appears as a centered dissolve, with the default duration of 10 frames. The default transition duration, alignment, interpolation, and wipe type can be changed in the Timeline panel of the Preferences window. Notice also that when a transition in the timeline is selected, the FX Ribbon shows most of the parameters and controls that you can use to adjust the transition, as shown in Figure 6.3.

FIGURE 6.3 Transition controls in the FX Ribbon, excluding the Delete button

image

The focus point of the positioner is used to determine to which clips on which track a transition is applied. The Page Up and Page Down keys let you move the focus point up and down to different tracks of the timeline.

3. You can use the Duration field in the FX Ribbon (or any number fields in Smoke) as a virtual slider to extend or reduce the dissolve’s duration. Click in the Duration field of the FX Ribbon, and drag to the right until the duration is 00:00:02+00. The transition in the timeline widens to match.

If you know exactly how long you want a transition to last, you can change the duration numerically using the onscreen calculator.

4. Click the transition Duration field, and use the cursor to enter – 24 into the onscreen calculator (see Figure 6.4). The result is to subtract 24 frames from the current value of 48 frames (2 seconds), changing the duration to 24 frames, or 1 second of screen time. As you can see, the calculator can be used to add or subtract values from the current setting or to use calculations to update the value of a numeric field.

FIGURE 6.4 Using a subtract calculation to enter a number, rather than an absolute value

image

5. Use the JKL keys to play around with this transition. It’s still a fairly fast dissolve relative to the slow pan of the two clips, so turn off the Link button (if necessary), zoom into the timeline, press the R key to enable Trim mode, and position the trim cursor to the left of the transition object in the timeline and drag it farther left to make the transition longer (see Figure 6.5), until the Duration field shows 3 seconds. Notice that you’ve just created an asymmetrical dissolve, where one side of the transition is longer than the other.

FIGURE 6.5 Extending a transition in the timeline using the Trim tool

image

6. Move the positioner back to the center of the edit. Then move the pointer over the middle of the transition and you’ll see the Slide cursor; use it to drag the entire transition over to the right so that it’s more centered (see Figure 6.6). As you drag the transition, you can see the level of transparency in the dissolve that coincides with the edit point in the viewer. This is one way of fine-tuning the balance of a transition around an edit point. You should also notice that a dark line at the top of the left half of the transition object shows you the halfway point.

FIGURE 6.6 Sliding a transition in the timeline using the Trim tool

image

7. At this point, you decide that you want the audience to linger on the text of the Many-World Physics book on the wall, so click the Transition Alignment pop-up menu in the FX Ribbon (currently set to Custom) and choose From Cut to move the transition so that it starts on the edit point and extends into the second clip. The Transition Alignment menu is a fast way to realign an edit to a precise location.

If you play through the dissolve, you can see that it looks pretty good, but there’s an even finer degree of control you can exercise over the way this dissolve plays by using the dissolve editor.

8. Click the Editor button in the FX Ribbon, or double-click the dissolve object in the timeline to open the dissolve editor and expose its curve control.

By default, dissolves in Smoke have a nice, smooth acceleration ramp applied to them, resulting in a pleasing fade from the outgoing image to the incoming image. You can use the Bezier handles of the curve to customize the acceleration of this fade further to give more weight to the beginning or end of the transition.

9. Pull the top-right and bottom-left Bezier handles of the curve to the right so that the outgoing portion of the curve is a very gradual slope and the incoming portion of the curve is very steep (see Figure 6.7). A good goal is to try to have the book image linger until a sudden finish to the dissolve coincides with the rack focus shifting from the back wall to the woman’s face by using the transport controls to play through the dissolve (indicated by a blue-gray bar in the scrubber bar of the viewer).

Using the Add Points tool in the Tools pop-up menu, you can add more control points to a dissolve’s curve if you really want to fine-tune the fade. However, this can be overkill for speedy dissolves.

FIGURE 6.7 Adjusting the transition curve in the dissolve editor

image

10. When you’re finished adjusting the curve, click the EXIT button to return to the timeline.

Since this dissolve is so elaborate, it might be worth copying it to the second edit in the sequence, because you want to put a dissolve there too.

11. Right-click the dissolve, and choose Copy (or select the dissolve and press image+C). Then right-click the second edit and choose Paste Dissolve (or move the positioner to the second edit and choose Option+V). A duplicate of the dissolve you created appears.

Playing through this second dissolve shows that the effect is wildly inappropriate because it obscures the extreme close-up of the woman’s eye that’s meant to show the high-tech contact lenses (after you composite them in, of course). You could simply remove it by pressing image+Z to undo, but there are several easy ways to eliminate dissolves.

12. Do one of the following to eliminate the second dissolve:

· Select the dissolve in the timeline, and click the Delete button in the FX Ribbon.

· Right-click the dissolve and choose Delete.

· Select the dissolve and press the Delete key.

· Move the positioner to the edit with the dissolve, and press Control+V.

13. Deciding that you want a dissolve on this second edit after all, move the positioner back to the second edit, press image+Shift+A to deselect everything, press image +T to add a default dissolve, and change the duration to 00:00:01+12.

Keeping in mind that the curve you applied to the first transition might come in handy later, there’s an easy way to save a dissolve’s curve profile for easy application.

14. Select the first dissolve you added to the timeline, and click the Editor button in the FX Ribbon.

15. When the dissolve editor opens, click the Save button to open the Save Dissolve panel.

By default, each type of timeline effect can be saved for future recall into a subdirectory specific to that effect inside your project in the Smoke database.

16. Type Lingering Incoming Fade into the text field at the bottom, and click the Save button (see Figure 6.8). When the dissolve editor appears, click the EXIT button to return to the timeline.

FIGURE 6.8 Buttons to save and recall dissolve curves

image

17. Press the down-arrow key or click the Next Transition button in the viewer transport controls to move the positioner to the third edit in the sequence. Then add a default dissolve, and click the Editor button in the FX Ribbon.

18. Click the Load button; then click the Lingering Incoming Fade icon in the browser, and that curve profile is immediately applied. It even automatically fits itself to the new duration of this dissolve.

19. Play through the dissolve. The saved curve profile doesn’t really suit the short duration, so click the Reset Chn button at the bottom right of the dissolve editor to reset the curve.

Now that you’ve seen the most commonly used transition other than a cut, it’s time to take a look at some of the other transition options that Smoke provides.

In the previous exercise, the goal was to add motivated transitions to a naturalistic progression of coverage in a narrative scene. However, if your goal is to add more energetic or stylized transitions, Smoke has other options you can apply.

1. First, duplicate the Opening Scene sequence in the Media Library by right-clicking it and choosing Duplicate from the context menu (or selecting it and pressing image+D). Rename this sequence by clicking the name once and briefly pausing; when the text is highlighted, type Trailer Cut and press Return.

2. Open Trailer Cut, and delete all of the transitions from the timeline.

3. Now add a dissolve transition to the first edit, and set the duration to 2 seconds.

Now you’re back to having a plain- old dissolve. However, this time you want to build a more exciting sequence by shortening each clip and using dissolve-to-black transitions (eventually accompanied by grinding pulses of music, one would imagine).

4. With this new transition selected, click the To/From Colour button in the FX Ribbon.

5. A Colour Picker dialog appears, set to black by default (see Figure 6.9). You could elect to use the vertical red, green, and blue sliders to choose a color, or click the Pick button to use a color picker cursor to sample a color from an image in the viewer, but since you actually want black, simply click OK.

FIGURE 6.9 The Colour Picker dialog

image

The FX Ribbon updates to show additional controls for the dissolve-to-color transition, which is currently set to black. In the timeline, you can see that the previous single dissolve has changed to two dissolves — one for the outgoing clip and one for the incoming clip — each of which has individual durations (see Figure 6.10).

FIGURE 6.10 Dual dissolve transitions for a dissolve-to-color effect

image

6. Play through the transition. Right now it’s a bit slow, but there are some interesting things you can do to jazz it up.

7. Zoom into this transition in the timeline, press R to enter Trim mode, and turn on the Ripple and Link buttons (if necessary).

8. Double-click the edit point (not the transition) to open Trim view. Then shorten the outgoing clip by −34 frames (as indicated by the left trim frames indicator). Next, drag the left end of the transition to the right to shorten the outgoing portion of the transition to four frames. If snapping is getting in your way, you can press the Shift key to turn snapping off temporarily while you drag to trim.

If you play through this transition, you’ll have more of a crash to color, but the transition is still too gradual, so perhaps a dissolve to white would be more interestingly abrupt.

9. To change the color to which this effect is dissolving, click the narrow white color swatch in the FX Ribbon. The thin color swatches are presets, but you can click the larger color swatch to open the Colour Picker. Then click the Replace button to confirm the change, and the color swatch to the right of it changes to show that it’s updated. Play through the transition, and you’ll see that both sides have been updated to white.

10. To change the acceleration of the transition to make it more abrupt, you’ll want to edit its curve. Double-click the first half of the transition to open the curve editor, and edit the Bezier splines of the curve to resemble Figure 6.11, with a gradual slope in and an abrupt slope out. Click EXIT when you’re finished.

FIGURE 6.11 Dissolve curve with gradual in and abrupt out

image

11. To finish this effect, double-click the second half of the transition to open the curve editor and edit the Bezier splines of the curve to resemble Figure 6.12, with an abrupt slope in and a gradual slope out. Click EXIT when you’re finished, and play through the transition.

FIGURE 6.12 Dissolve curve with an abrupt in and a gradual out

image

Now you have a sudden flash to white with a slow burnout bridging the transition between the shortened first clip and the second clip.

Creating and Customizing Wipes

Another form of stylized transition that you can apply in Smoke is the wipe, which takes a wide variety of customizable forms.

1. Play through the second clip until you reach the point where the focus racks from the wall to the woman’s face, and press Control+M to place a segment mark at the first frame in which her face is in focus. Press R to get back into Trim mode, and trim the incoming frame of the second clip to shorten it, bringing the marked frame where her face is in focus to about nine frames before the end of the incoming transition.

2. Now use the trim cursor to ripple the outgoing frame of the second clip to omit the last half of that clip where the woman rolls her eye back.

At this point, you’ll add another transition, but it’s time for something different – it’s time to apply a wipe.

3. Move the positioner to the second edit, press Shift+image+A to deselect everything, and then click the Transition image Wipe buttons in the FX Ribbon.

By default, a horizontal wipe appears using the default transition duration specified in the preferences. This transition is not very exciting, so it’s time to customize the effect.

4. Select the wipe transition to reveal its controls in the FX Ribbon. Wipes share many of the same parameters as dissolves, but the Pattern button is unique. Click it to open the wipe browser.

Smoke comes equipped with 254 standard SMPTE wipe patterns. However, the default list showing each one by number isn’t particularly illuminating.

5. Click the Titles button in the upper-left corner to change the browser to Proxies mode. The list updates to show a set of numbered thumbnails corresponding to each available wipe pattern (see Figure 6.13). This includes, if you scroll down, the infamous heart wipe.

FIGURE 6.12 Wipe pattern proxies

image

6. Click pattern 062, and the timeline reopens with that pattern loaded into the wipe. The current pattern number appears to the right of the Pattern button you clicked.

This wipe pattern is certainly more interesting, but it’s still a clear wipe pattern that may or may not appeal to everyone. Fortunately, there’s more that you can do to bend this transition to your will. A pop-up menu to the right of the Invert button (which lets you reverse the wipe layers) reveals different editable attributes. These include the following:

· Position (currently visible) for changing the point at which the wipe is centered

· Motion, which lets you add animated spin to the wipe

· Softness, which lets you feather the wipe’s edges

· Options, which has scale and blending controls

7. Choose Softness from this pop-up menu, and set the Offset slider to 124. Playing through the wipe now shows that you’ve nearly created the equivalent of a directional dissolve.

The wipe is looking good, but you might wish for the hard V shape to be a gentler U sort of curve. Fortunately, every wipe pattern in Smoke is actually an editable shape, called a Gmask, which can be easily customized.

8. With the wipe transition selected, click the Editor button in the FX Ribbon (or double-click the wipe transition) to open the transition editor.

The transition editor has all of the controls for manipulating the shapes that make up each wipe pattern. There are a lot of controls in here, but in the following steps you’ll focus on adjusting the softness (using the Offset slider) and changing the Gmask using the spline controls in the viewer.

9. If necessary, choose Fit from the Zoom pop-up menu, so that you can see the entire image in the viewer. It’s going to be difficult to edit the Gmask at its current level of softness, so set the Offset parameter to 0.

10. Use the left- and right-arrow keys to move the positioner to the very center of the transition so that you can clearly see the shape being used for the wipe.

11. Click the Edit mode pop-up menu that’s currently set to Move, and choose Add to put the cursor into “add control points” mode (see Figure 6.14).

FIGURE 6.14 Adding two control points to the Gmask being used to create the wipe effect

image

12. Click on the surface edge of the shape (colored orange) to add control points at the top and bottom halfway points of the V of the shape. A plus sign on the cursor shows you that you’re about to add points to the Gmask.

13. Now choose Move from the Edit mode pop-up menu, and edit the two control points and Bezier handles that you’ve just created by dragging them in the viewer to look like the shape in Figure 6.15.

FIGURE 6.15 Altering the shape of the Gmask changes the shape of the wipe.

image

You need to change the shape of the Gmask only once. That change affects the entire wipe. So once you’ve finished step 13, you’re finished.

14. Change the Offset parameter to 124 again, and then click EXIT to go back to the timeline and play through the wipe to see how it looks.

As you can see, there are all kinds of interesting ways that you can customize wipes for creative effect. For now, that’s a sufficient tour of the creative possibilities of transitions in Smoke. It’s time to go back to the narrative edit of this scene and fix a shot using the Timewarp effect.

Retiming a Shot Using Timewarp

Another way of addressing the timing of your edit is to literally retime the clips that you’re using. In this next exercise, you’ll learn how easy it is to create high-quality slow motion in Smoke using the Timewarp effect.

1. Reopen the Opening Scene in the timeline, and play through the second clip. Halfway through the second clip, the actor blinks and rolls her eye back (waiting for the director to give a verbal cue that he’s completely forgotten about).

This defeats the purpose of the clip, which supposedly was to provide a lingering introduction to this character as she stares forward at a computer display. Fortunately, you can retime this clip to play in slow motion, extending the duration that the woman is looking forward. Since there’s so little motion, this effect shouldn’t give itself away.

2. Select the second shot in the timeline, and click the FX image Time Warp buttons (see Figure 6.16). If the FX Ribbon is closed, you can press Control+Tab to summon a floating FX Ribbon at the position of that clip in the timeline.

FIGURE 6.16 Adding a Timewarp effect using the FX Ribbon

image

This opens up the Timewarp controls in the FX Ribbon, as shown in Figure 6.17. It also adds a row of sprocket holes along the top of the clip, which indicate that an effect has been added that may require rendering to play. (This is covered in more detail in the following section.)

FIGURE 6.17 Timewarp controls in the FX Ribbon, excluding the Reset and Delete buttons

image

3. Move the positioner to the second edit, so that it’s sitting at the halfway-point dissolve transition that you added. Then drag the speed percentage control to the left, slowing the speed of the clip until the frame just before the woman blinks and turns her eye is aligned with the middle of the dissolve (around 54.00%).

You should notice that the Anchor Option pop-up menu is currently set to Anchor In, which means that as you make this adjustment, the in point of this clip is locked at its current position in the timeline, and your speed change is altering the frame at the out point. You could also change this setting to Anchor Out, which would lock the frame at the out point and readjust the frame appearing at the in point of this clip.

4. Play though the second clip again, and you can see that you’ve created a linear timewarp such that the entire clip plays at the same slow-motion speed. However, you might notice that the woman’s blinking eye in the third clip is now out of sync with the woman’s blinking eye in the slow-motion second clip.

5. Move the positioner forward through the second dissolve until it sits on top of a frame where the woman’s eyelids are almost closed in the outgoing clip. Then turn off the Ripple button, choose Slip mode, and slip the third clip to the right to position a frame of the woman’s eyelid almost closed in the incoming clip at the positioner, as shown in Figure 6.18. Lining up eye blinks for continuity

FIGURE 6.18 Altering the shape of the Gmask changes the shape of the wipe.

image

Rendering Slow-Motion Effects

The quality of the real-time slow motion you’ve just added to the clip is good, but there’s still an odd quality to the motion. This can be improved using the Timewarp Rendering Option pop-up menu. This, in turn, opens up the topic of rendering in Smoke, because advanced timewarp effects can be render-intensive. You can play render-intensive effects in real time to get a preview, but you won’t necessarily be seeing them at full quality.

The default Timewarp Rendering Option setting is Mix, which blends together a range of frames for each slow-motion frame in a timewarped clip in order to smooth out the potential jittering that can result. With the default value of 0, no mixing is taking place, but you can specify the number of frames before and after each frame of media that are mixed together to the optimal number that’s appropriate for the speed percentage you’ve applied and the media you’re working on.

1. Change the Mix parameter to 1.5, and then select the clip and click the Render button to the left of the FX Ribbon.

A progress dialog appears, showing you how quickly the render is proceeding and giving you the option to cancel. How fast this effect renders depends entirely on the speed of the machine you’re using and on the speed of your designated storage volume.

Rendering Effects in the Timeline

When you click the Render button, you cache a preprocessed version of that clip to the specified storage volume for that project. Smoke keeps track of all of the rendered media in a project when you save and quit, so that it reappears when you reopen the project. However, updating a rendered effect always flushes the previously cached render, requiring you to rerender the clip.

When the render is finished, play the second clip. The playback quality should be quite good. However, for the ultimate in high-quality slow-motion processing (for some clips), Smoke is also capable of optical flow processing, which essentially does automatic warping to generate brand-new frames.

2. Click the Timewarp Rendering Option pop-up menu, and choose Motion. Then choose Full Res from the Quality pop-up that appears to the left. If necessary, select this clip in the timeline again, and click the Render button again to render this effect.

This render takes quite a bit longer. When it’s done, however, playing through the second clip should reveal flawlessly smooth motion. Figure 6.19 shows the difference between using Mix and Motion to process slow motion on the woman’s blinking eye. While both effects smooth out the motion, the Mix option blends a bit of her eyelash into a frame where it shouldn’t be visible, whereas Motion generates sharp, correct-looking frames.

FIGURE 6.19 Mix (left) and Motion (right) slow-motion processing compared

image

Keep in mind that Motion processing isn’t always the best choice. Clips that have several moving subjects that cross one another in opposite directions can result in undesirable artifacts when the Motion option attempts to warp the frame. In cases where Motion processing doesn’t work optimally, you can switch to Mix processing to see if you can get a better result.

Later on, when you learn how to use Gmasks, you’ll superimpose two versions of the same clip processed with different slow-motion processing options and mask unwanted artifacts in a Motion-processed clip with corresponding parts of a Mix-processed clip.

The Essentials and Beyond

Transitions and timewarps are staples of editorial and are an easy way to dip into the wider world of timeline effects that are available in Smoke. These effects will be covered in more detail in the coming chapters.

Additional Exercises

· Open the Trailer Cut sequence, and continue the process of shortening each clip in this sequence to contain only the most active bits of performance. Use the Timewarp effect to add more urgency to some clips by speeding them up, or experiment with slow motion or even reverse speed to see if you can assemble a creative take on this scene that’s all your own.

· Use the Slip tool on the fourth clip to find the most active segment of the actor’s performance, and then apply a new Timewarp effect, set the Timewarp Type pop-up menu to Strobe, and play through the clip to see what the effect is with the default value. Next, try setting the Timewarp Type pop-up manu to Constant, and the Timewarp Rendering Option to Trail, experimenting with different Pre and Post frames to see what motion effects you can create.

· Return to Smoke, choose Smoke Help from the Help menu, and choose 2013 image Help image User Guide image Preferences imageFinally, try adding more creative versions of the dissolve-to-color and wipe transitions to the third, fourth, and fifth edits in this sequence, experimenting with different colors and adjustments to the wipe settings described earlier in this chapter.