Toon Iris transition to black effect

[higginsdj]

Hi all,

 

Remember those toons where the fade to black was an iris? How would you recommend achieving that in AM? My only idea is to use an unlit black flat piece of geometry with a circle in it and I move and scale the circle to suit.

 

Cheers

[robcat2075]

My only idea is to use an unlit black flat piece of geometry with a circle in it and I move and scale the circle to suit.

 

I thin that is the best solution, you could rig it with a pose slider to control the size of the opening.

 

If you want a soft edge to the iris, a spherical gradient combiner could be applied to it.

[higginsdj]

Not depth of field? I am doing the iris as a separate layer that I will composite over the original frames in post.

[robcat2075]

Not depth of field? I am doing the iris as a separate layer that I will composite over the original frames in post.

 

A gradient will get you the same look and will be quicker to preview, IMO.

[robcat2075]

Scratch the spherical gradient for the moment. Getting the transparency gradient to fade right is a problem.

 

I suggest a transparency bit map instead.

[largento]

Presumably this effect (at least in film) was created by closing/opening an aperture like on a camera. I don't know if there was a way they did it in camera or during printing, but you could very easily make a model of one.

 

See this flash diagram. It's a series of blades that are all exactly the same, rotating on their pivot points.

[robcat2075]

Here, i got the fuzzy Iris to work with a spherical gradient. For a gradient to have a uniform fade the two rings need to be the same size, so the gradient is applied only to the two rings in the center of the Iris object and the rest outside of those circles is solid black.

 

IrisOut.mov

 

 

FuzzyIris.prj

[Rodney]

My only idea is to use an unlit black flat piece of geometry with a circle in it and I move and scale the circle to suit.

 

There may be several good reasons for creating the iris effect with simple geometry but then rendering that out as a image sequence first before applying it for the effect.

 

One reason is that then you have that effect available for use in other projects.

Another is that you don't have to keep reanimating that same effect.

Yet another (or several) is that you can retime/alter that effect.

 

It can help to think of these camera transitions devices in terms of black and white and/or grayscale.

One reason for this is that you can then apply that transition to the original image and have it literally fade the original image as opposed to obscuring it in some way (i.e. the shot could transition to a different scene in the background if the image itself fades)

 

Sweeps and swipes an be accomplished in a similar way.

Whatever you want to disappear color as black (transparent) and whatever you want to remain color white (opaque).

Apply this as Transparency on a single patch that has the patch image of the sequence you are trying to transition out of then animate the frames of that patch image to adjust the speed of the effect. As I said though the cool part of this is that when rendering you'll get access to the transparency so that you can then place this fading sequence over another background, scene or sequence.

 

I like Robert's approach but the downside is that it is a bit more complicated to make the basic template and then to create other templates whereas with using simple shapes/geometry and patch imagery we can quickly adjust any effect to taste and even layer the effects. What I would do with Robert's technique is use those materials to create really high rez transitions (in grayscale) and then apply those as patch images on a single patch to create the final effect. For more complicated effects simply stack a few more (independent) patches over the top of one another and then render that out.

 

Where geometry often works best for transitions is where something (or some character) is interacting with the effect (i.e. Porky Pig grabbing the closing iris to suggest 'Tha... tha... tha...tha...tha...that's not all Folks!' yet.