Travelling through space effect....

[charlie1970]

Can anyone please help me, i'm fairly new to AS Pro, i think i'm addicted to it!

I've been trying to create the effect of flying through outer space(with the feeling of stars rushing towards the camera, like warp speed but much slower) , i've tried all kinds of stuff, like using camera zoom & drawing new stars as the frames progress, then say after 24 frames reset the camera zoom back to 60, set up a new layer, use onion skin from frame 23 as a good template for keeping the illusion that the new layer has the same stars as say layer 1.

Any ideas would be warmly appreciated.

Love this site, a great resource for meeting like minded people.

Ray

[chucky]

try particles

[charlie1970]

thanks works brillantly

[chucky]

Great, looks like you got the idea and ran with it. Have fun.

[slowtiger]

This can be done in several ways. The tricky part is always to loop it seamlessly. Usually one would produce a video file of the zoom, then import it in a video editing program, duplicate it, put it on top of each other and shift it in time, with fade-in and out, then render the result. I tried a little test to complete the task entirely in AS, here's the result:

http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/stars.html (1.7 MB))

Here's how I did it:
1. new document, settings black background and enable 3D camera. Set default interpolation to linear.
2. import some images with stars (that's what I did) or create some layers with stars. Stay in frame zero for the following:
3. set each layer to screen so any white pixel will always override anything else.
4. duplicate all layers and name them. Put them in this order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a.
5. choose layer translate tool (1), and in each layer set a different z value. You can use the orbit tool (9) to control the result: all layers should be separate from each other. Use always the same increment, like 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2 ...
6. choose camera track tool (4). Go to frame one, set a key, set z value to 4. Go to frame 72, set z value to 1. Go to frame 144, set z value to -2.

What we have so far is a camera which travels through the same stars twice. We now want to get a seamless transition between the two sets of layers.

7. in the first group of layers set opacity to 0% at #0 and #72 and to 100% at #96.
8. in the second group of layers do it the opposite way, starting with 100% and fade to 0% from #72 to #96.
9. export animation from #18 to #107! Why this? Because tracking one layer set takes 72 frames, and the first and last frames of that are identical, so I skip one frame.

You'll notice the fades in my result. Experiment with different settings for sequence length and fade length. Also take care to not position a star in the center of each layer (like I did) because the camera will fly through it and melt.

The project file with images is here: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/stars.zip

[charlie1970]

thanks slowtiger, gonna give that a try too, thats a really nice effect, thanks for sharing that

ray

[synthsin75]

Nice effect ST. I really like the variety of star densities, and I actually like the camera moving through stars in the dense fields.

[slowtiger]

Actually I put much more work into it than necessary. Since star pictures are so easy to get nowadays (Nasaimages!) one could easily set up two dozens of it, enough to create two minutes of tracking. Of course you would still have to fade in and out each of it, at different moments.

Some nifty production trick: first I import one image and create all 3 fade keys. Then I duplicate this layer as often as needed. Double-click each layer, go to "image/source" and import a different bitmap. Set Z depth for each, shift keys in time, done.

[chucky]

With the layer method you might want to be careful to 'zoom into images' that are already 100% size within frame, so as not to see the edges and maybe keep the speed ramping up from almost indistinguishable to full speed, with as few stars and as many layers as possible. Using slowtigers suggestion in concert with a minimal use of particles as well , (you could do a particle/ image nebula for creating depth ) I think you could get a really great effect.
Also try to use colour images with a transparency channel, or just try to get as much colour in as possible,

[slowtiger]

Uhm, the nice surprise was that transparency is actually not necessary. Setting the layer blend mode to screen was all. And it works with colour images as well because of the underlying black.

I was also surprised by AS' processing speed while rendering this. The same task in AfterEffects would have taken much longer.

[chucky]

Yes AS does do the screen nicely, some other packages can look a little bleachy.

or just try to get as much colour in as possible,

Another good touch for this is the depth of field, give it a go.

[Mikdog]

Ooh, nice! You never cease to amaze me slow

Doh. Just posted about the depth of field but I see I'm not the first to check that out

That star field is awesome!