how do i create an effect like Profreeze (pixel film studios).. possible?

how do i create an effect like Profreeze (pixel film studios).. possible?

When I first tried something like this about ten years ago, I exported the frame I wanted to freeze and imported it into Photoshop. I duplicated the layer, cut out the foreground element ( a person in this case ) and then exported that as a png with alpha. Then i could do a little camera move by layering the background and foreground separately along the Z axis in After effects or Motion. Depending on the sort of camera move, sometimes a bit of cleaning up to the background layer was required if the original 2d version of the foreground element started to show from behind. Something else I remember doing is blurring the background layer so as to declutter the space to make a text overlay more visible.
Later I learned about masks and realised that I usually didn't need the roundtrip to Photoshop at all.

Steve.

After reading about the plug-in on this thread I actually went and bought it (there is a St Patricks Sale on at the moment too, so it worked out less than $30). I went ahead with it as I have a project that it would work well for on the credit sequence. It actually works pretty well for an inexpensive plug-in, its pretty intuitive, and has a number of variable parameters. I got some good results with it straight away just messing around.

Have you considered just buying it? $30 is pretty cheap...

Hi Simonpwood

Yep I noticed it in the sale too and bought it

Ah ok, cool.

One thing I didn't like was that the posterisation on the character (the Cut Out controls) was too extreme. I find that clicking the Remap Colours box with a posterisation of around 22, and selecting a colour in the cutout somewhat opposite to the background gives more pleasing results.

Its actually saved me a bunch of time (and money) on a opening credit sequence I had planned to outsource to an After Effects guy.

Good catch!

Can you post an example of what you mean?

Ah I don't have my computer in front of me now, but what I meant was that on the person I was cutting out; on the standard settings the posterisation tried to capture all the various tones and colours of his skin - it looked very messy. By clicking the Remap option in the cut-out control panel it just reduces his colours to the 2 colours on the band below (like yellow and black). This looks a lot cleaner, less messy, and lets him stand out in front of the background more. I thought he was blending in with the background too much without the remap setting.

I'm still playing around with it though, lots of options to look at...

Just FYI, Pixel Film Studios have been known to steal other people's plugins and sell them as their own.

www.motionvfx.com/mblog/how_to_make_mone...opyrights,p2217.html