"inter-frames" with Apple Motion?

[floh]

Hey guys!

I am currently experimenting with Apple Motion 5 to create and composite kind of a torch (it's actually supposed to be a chunk of the sun...) into some material. I have found some pretty decent library presets that I will be able to adapt to my liking, but I am running into the following problem:

For example at the very beginning of this particular clip, the tracked torch is moving very fast and there is plenty of track space between two frames. In animation, this creates ugly seperated dots for the particle emitter, not a smooth trace. Here is a rough idea of what it looks like now (don't hate on it, there is plenty more work to be done, I know...):
8 second youtube clip of the scene

Does anyone know if there is a way to make Motion render at a higher frame rate than the underlying material has? That would be my first idea to render out "in-between-frames" for the torch flame and make a continuous track. Or does anyone have another idea how to produce a fast-moving flame that doesn't look spotty...?

Any suggestion is appreciated. Oh: I don't own After Effects and don't have the money to buy it, so this is not an option. Amongst others, I tried Blender 3D (awesome open source software), but had similar problems (plus some additional ones).

 

[cgbier]

No need for intermediate frames. Read up on motion path, motion tracking and (maybe) write on effect.

 

[AppLCII]

Pump up the birth rate for the flames in the cell control tab. You might have to fine tune other settings, but it will do most of what you are looking for. Adding a bit of a motion blur to all your moving things might help too. Hope that helps.

 

[floh]

Pump up the birth rate for the flames in the cell control tab. You might have to fine tune other settings, but it will do most of what you are looking for. Adding a bit of a motion blur to all your moving things might help too. Hope that helps.

Sadly, that doesn't work. The birth rate is nothing but the amount of particles created per frame. Creating more particles will produce a smoothing flame if it isn't moving, but if it moves a long way between two frames, there will still be zero particles created between those two points. Motion blur is always a good idea though. I will have to mask myself out though and add some blur to that layer too, otherwise it will look unnatural.

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No need for intermediate frames. Read up on motion path, motion tracking and (maybe) write on effect.

Maybe I don't understand what you are saying, but this sounds like nonsense. Motion path and motion tracking? How do you think I am moving the flame right now? Of course I motion tracked it, but it still only produces particles once per frame...

And the write on effect, nice as it is, has nothing to do with my problem at hand, but only examines the problem of motion along a path a bit further.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't get your point.

By the way: What worked for me as a workaround: Slow down my original footage, motion track and animate, discard the slowed down background, speed up the animation sequence by the same amount, put the original movie in the background and composite. This does produce some intermediate frames, but doesn't write them out, exactly how I wanted, and looks as expected. But there has to be a more elegant solution to this.

 

[cgbier]

You can use the write-on feature also with particle emitters. You just have to follow the motion path. It should do the trick.

I had a link to a tutorial somewhere, but, as usual, can't find it.

 

[floh]

You can use the write-on feature also with particle emitters. You just have to follow the motion path. It should do the trick.

I had a link to a tutorial somewhere, but, as usual, can't find it.

I'm gonna have to look into this further, but have to go to work now. I'll be back reporting. Thanks.

 

[cgbier]

If you want you can send me the Motion project per Dropbox. Send me a PM and I'll give you my email addie.