aescripts + aeplugins

Dominic Witherow said:

Is this plugin backwards compatible with earlier versions of AE? Most specifically, can it work in AE CC2018?

Thanks.

Dominic 

I just did a fast test, and it appears to work with Ae CC 2018 on Windows. That being said, we have done all of our testing with Ae 2019. I'd highly recommend upgrading to Ae 2019 to use Lockdown. I have no reason to expect you to have any issues in 2018, but simply the fact that we haven't done any testing in 2018 is reason enough to try to push you towards 2019, where we have thoroughly tested and ensured stability.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator

JiaYu Jin said:

I did install the script correctly though. But after reading other comments, I think the problem might be the version of ae. I am using 2018.

Can you please submit a help ticket? 

So far we've found a lot of users are trying to run the Lockdown.jsxbin script through file/scripts, that's where we keep getting issues. But that's now how it's supposed to be used. You have to install the jsxbin in the Script UI Panels, then open it through Window/Lockdown.jsxbin. From there you call the commands with buttons.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator

Jay Smith said:

Chris Vranos said:

Matthew Nayman said:

This script is extremely cool, and giving me lots to play with... HOWEVER... I am at a loss for how to implement motion blur? How is the locked down layer actually moving? Does it support motion blur?

Cheers

Lockdown is just like a corner pin. Each point moves from one position to another on each frame. The layer doesn't move, the vertices on the layer move.
Sorry to say we don't yet support motion blur in the Plug-in, but the effect CC Force Motion Blur WILL work. CC Force Motion Blur takes 8 samples from between your individual frames, and blends them together. The down side is, it will take at least 8x as long to render, because it's calling Lockdown 8 times on each frame, at sub-frame intervals. Real motion blur is on our to-do list. But CC Force Motion Blur can get you through for now.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator

I know with the MochaImportPlus plugin and Red Giant Corner Pin/Warp I've had the option to add motion blur when doing a Stabilized Precomp. Hopefully this can be an option in the future but I'm excited for Lockdown. I've never bought a plugin faster. 

We'll have to look into it for sure, we can make it run way faster if we build it in ourselves. I can't make any promises for the timeline, but I absolutely agree with you that it would be a great future addition.

Cheers,
Chris

Emilien Lazaron said:

Hi how can I get a demo liscence ? 

I have a black grid all over my shot and the drag and drop to make the tracking points appear doesn't work (probably because I dont have a demo liscence#)

Thanks 

There is no demo license, the only way to remove the grid is to buy the software. Other than the grid, the software is fully functional in demo mode. If you're having issues placing points, you probably just have to enable After Effects UI interactions Ctrl/command + shift + H. Please see this tutorial at 1:42, it explains issues with clicking and dragging: 


If you have further issues, please submit a help ticket.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator

James Grean said:

Hey Chris,
This is working great is some cases, but like Eric said, extending points is a bit of a killer. I need to do a logo replace and the track is 100% solid where Mocha was not - but I need to extend around the logo into a featureless area (imaging like a water bottle or something, around the logo is smooth, featureless, untrackable, and as well as replacing the logo it needs to be bigger of course). I tried to follow the tut from the Dropbox link: go to externalise, set keys on 6-8 new points around the logo, internalise, tick off/on "interpolate", auto triangulate, apply mesh... the added extra points don't move at all, but the points from the original track on the logo do. Followed your QT exactly 4 or 5 times now. This is a bit of a killer. Can you be more specific in the tut in the steps as it seems like a few people are needing this functionality but struggling a bit. To me it really looks like I am doing exactly what you are doing and yet interpolation on the new points is not happening.
Thanks
JG

Can you please submit a help ticket? If possible, I could really get to the bottom of it fast if you send a link (WeTransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc...) with the project and media. I can whip through it and try to find a solution.
Yes, I agree that extending the mesh totally sucks right now, it's a problem we didn't even think about until after we released, and our customers started mentioning it. We are currently building in a hotkey to place extension points, so this process is not so painful, copying and pasting from a null. You can expect that release within the next month.
If the new points aren't interpolating, make sure they only have a single keyframe, then internalize them, then toggle "interpolate partial tracks" on and off. Admittedly we just found and fixed a bug in Lockdown V1 where sometimes externalized points are dis-considered for re-interpolation, no matter how many times you click "interpolate partial tracks". As a workaround, you can try externalizing every single point, then copying and pasting them fresh to a new instance of Lockdown. (So copy points 1-100 or however many, then select point 1 on the new effect instance, and paste, then internalize). Then press the interpolation checkbox. So yeah, I'd be glad to find a workaround with Lockdown V1 with a copy of your project file, and the next build of Lockdown will be a free update with this specific issue targeted.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator

James Grean said:

I understand. Well from the previous shot that was already tracked, please try to select all points (including the extension points), then externalize all, then copy and paste them to a new instance of Lockdown, select all, internalize, and press "Interpolate partial tracks". That should bypass the bug which prevents those extension points from being interpolated. It could also help if those extended points are on the last frame of the sequence, instead of the first. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator

Eric McGilloway said:

Game changer. Worth the money. Quick question though...

How can I expand the mesh but not the tracking points? For example we need to keep the graphics within the mesh. BUT I am making a beard on my moving subject. The beard falls outside the mesh, hence the beard is cutoff in the master comp. Is there a way to expand the mesh without affecting the beard points?

Hope that makes sense. Thanks!

Added extension hotkey in Lockdown 1.1!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WSGYNT3X3I&feature=youtu.be

Matthew Nayman said:

Any idea how to track a single subject which runs off screen?

I.E. A shot panning down a twisting torso. Camera pans from chest to hips. Mocha tracks pasted in, but when you pick a frame to lock down to your mesh, it only grabs what is on screen at the time, when REALLY you want a superpose of the entire shot... let the warping areas run off screen... Not sure if the new EXPAND feature would cover this since the image is what is lacking, not the mesh. Would be extremely useful.

You're totally right about this, we need a feature to make that possible. My workaround has been to pre-compose the footage, then expand the composition and make it much larger, with black on all sides of the footage centered in the composition. Then track that. However this is obviously problematic because it increases the tracking buffer size, which slows things down a bit, and it also totally confuses the tracker on the edge borders where it sees a line of black. We just need a script to do this automatically based off of the original sized footage. Maybe if it notices tracking marks out of bounds, it just expands it all automatically in a boundary efficient way.
If you've already tracked it, as a workaround, you could probably do the pre-compose, and expand the comp downward, moving the footage to the top left. (Zero out anchor point and position to ensure it's pixel perfect). Then your points will still align without having any offsetting nonsense. That's far from ideal though. We need a fix for this problem.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator

Omid Pakbin said:

Chris, I'm happy with my purchase. The plugin is magic: https://www.instagram.com/p/B49RDgLBepF/

However, FYI, it gets insanely slow after the tracking is done / mesh is created. It was impossible for me to remove those mesh lines. Everytime I alt-click, it takes about 30secs to process, AE locks up, and sometimes that one mesh line goes away. However most of the times it doesn't even work. And you can't do a second Alt-Click. It just freezes. To remove more than 1 line or tracking point, you have to click away on a different layer first, then click back on Lockdown effect to be able to do anything.

During all this, ONE thread of my 16 threads is constantly at 100%. (CPU = 6900K)

I totally understand the issue, thanks for the feedback. This is high on our list to fix. We have a few other issues we may get to first, but we will address this soon. Sorry for the inconvenience with very dense meshes.

Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator