zooming and panning effect to fake animation from still images.

[chow choppe]

Hi everyone.

i want to ask a question from AE users doing architectural animations. lately i have seen some animations in which 2 - 3 shots are just panned images or zoomed in or zoomed out images which create a sense of animated when viewed with actual animations in the same video. so its like using 4- 5 seconds after real animation shots. it kind of looks cool and also saves time.

i want to ask how its done and i am concerned about what size still image should be rendered at. if my final composition is full HD i.e 1,920 X 1080 what should i render my still image at so that i am able to pan enough and similarly zoom out

i hope i am clear
for eg see first 33 seconds of this walkhrough. this is what i am talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnwpcoEQ48s&feature=fvsr

[Corey Beaulieu]

If you are going to zoom in on a still you definitely need to go larger with your render, but I don't think you need to go crazy with it. When I have done this I usually output a 1280 and render a 1920. for you maybe go 2560 or something so that your qualilty will stay the same.

Another cool trick, if the nature of the image allows, is to put a slight wiggle on it like its a hand held camera. On slow moving shots its gives a cool feel.

As to the how its done... you can just animate a scaling of the image and the wiggle is a plugin and/or a position animation. Pretty simple.

[chow choppe]

thanks for the tips.
will try it

thanks

[chow choppe]

i am trying to pan a still image from left to right . but its coming out jerky from after effects in final output. i am using Dv PAl widescreen output size and 30fps. added a little blur to it also

[John Dollus]

are you certain it isn't just your system lacking the ability to playback the compiled format smoothly?

[Fooch -]

i am trying to pan a still image from left to right . but its coming out jerky from after effects in final output. i am using Dv PAl widescreen output size and 30fps. added a little blur to it also

codec--> export to h264 mov.
plus add motionblur in AE , not just a regular blur

[chow choppe]

@john: no its not about the system lacking power as other things are playing fine in the same composition. when i change the fps to 60 in composition settings the motion is very smooth but that will disturb the whole frame rate of compositiond and speed the animation .

@Fooch u mean adding a motion blur to the whole image/layer?

[Fooch -]

--> layer.
There is a motionblur button. Use F1 for help.

Plus it sounds like your frame rate isnt keeping up on playback too. There might be dropframes
Test that by stepping through the frames.
What codec / res are you outputting too.