Using Photomotion Portrait for "off label" artwork creates complications

nickgartner

Hi all!

I have gotten myself in a bit of a jam. I have attempted to kind of push the boundaries of Photomotion’s very ample constraints, and I am a little lost trying to figure out where I’m going wrong trying to create what I want to accomplish.

I had originally created this composition with Depth, which I felt had a nice dimensional element to the 2d artwork.

But the creative director felt that the movement was too subtle and wanted a more dramatic effect.

To accomplish this, I separated the painting into multiple layers, recreated each element in the background so that it contained a complete image, and have made efforts to manipulate these layers in Depth and Portrait, but I am struggling with the nuance and have gotten results like this:

I fully recognize that this is user error, and my knowledge of the program, as well-designed and easy to use as it is, is lacking, but if there is anyone with the expertise to help me solve these issues, I am more than happy to compensate you fairly for your assistance.

nickgartner

I suppose, in addition, I should clarify that, the reason I went down the road of creating separate layers is that simply working from the single layer, even with the most intricate maskings, produced slightly less than ideal results when I amplified the movement to the degree to which the creative director desired. Example below:

Tom

Hey Nick, is the problem with the colors being brighter than the original (on those two examples above) or the motion of the layers?

nickgartner

Hey Tom, sorry I didn’t see your note. So the colors are that big of an issue, that was just from the color profile…I guess I’m not illustrating the issue but maybe this helps:

I’m adding the additional layers as custom objects (the two heads are on the “add photo” layer), and it just seems that the custom objects are moving opposite of what I would expect them to from a perspective standpoint. The parallax doesn’t look right. I realize it’s a 2d painting but it’s not moving in an intuitive way for some reason. based on where these layers are laid out and where the camera is moving, the background objects should be moving to the right in varying degrees, not the left.

I also can’t seem to place an object in front of the “add photo” layer, and i can’t adjust movement on the z-axis (the zoom control just zooms into the “add photo” layer without affecting any of the other objects.

nickgartner

Hey Tom, sorry I didn’t see your note. So the colors are that big of an issue, that was just from the color profile…

Let me actually just simplify my question completely. If I’m using Depth, how do I make the Elements 1-4 layers appear BEHIND the “add photo” layer? That’s really the root of my problem. They only will appear in front…and the only way I can seem to arrange this properly is to put the clean background plate on the “add photo” layer, but then the parallax effect obviously doesn’t respond well to the foreground elements.

nickgartner

Update: I was able to get it to do what I wanted, but I kinda had to break the project, moving some hidden layers underneath the photo layer in the render precomps.

Obviously if there’s a better way I would love to know but yeah.

Tom

I think the easiest way for this style of animation might be the new Portrait that supports 3D space (so you can add and move additional layers behind the faces). You would add 2 faces + layer behind them + custom bg.

nickgartner

Tom does portrait support z-axis movement? I was having issues where the zoom control was only zooming on the single layer

nickgartner

Either way I’ll spend some time learning it, I appreciate your insight!

Tom

In Portrait you can move the layers on z-axis, you can choose if the layer shows in front or behind the layers. In this video it would be the setup on those balloons (from 1min):

I think something like that might work for those additional elements you have behind your two characters.