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Re:Vision Effects RE:Flex
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The Stats
- Developer: Re:Vision Effects
- Version: 3.1.6
- Platform: Mac OSX, Windows
- Compatibility with After Effects 7, Compatibility with After Effects CS3, Mac Universal Binary, Mac OSX Leopard Compatibility
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Description
RE:Flex brings intuitive morphing and warping to combustion, After Effects, Shake, Autodesk Systems (IFFFS) and Fusion!
Superior results are achieved using RE:Vision Effects' proprietary and sophisticated technology. RE:Flex is especially easy to learn because it uses the host program's own drawing and masking tools (when available) to direct the warping and morphing; as such, there is no need to learn a whole new user interface.
With RE:Flex warps are made easy.
Just specify "from" geometry (in red) and "to" geometry (in yellow). No meshes. No new user interface to learn. Masks can be open or closed and need not be connected in any particular way.
RE:Flex's automatic alignment feature works in conjunction with hand-specified correspondences.
After first aligning hand-matched correspondences, RE:Flex then uses the tracking found in RE:Vision's acclaimed Twixtor product to automatically align the non-handmatched parts of the image. The automatic alignment feature can greatly improve morphs without having to specify all features by hand!
Features
Features of RE:Flex
- Warping is directed through the host program's roto tools (splines and polylines), not through a grid of mesh points!
- Geometries need not be closed shapes
- Smooth non-polygonal warping
- Interactive warping: view the warp as you drag the control shapes
- Option to match vertices of corresponding geometries for fine control
- 8 and 16 bits per channel support. Floating point supported in AE 70 or later (Professional Edition), Shake and Fusion.
- Anti-aliasing subsampling
- MipMap filtering
RE:Flex Warping Features
- Warping is directed using sets of "from" geometries and "to" geometries at each frame.
- The amount of warping can be specified and animated.
- Variable amount of shape transition between "from" and "to" geometries can be specified per-shape.
RE:Flex Morphing Features
- When morphing from stil-to-still morphing occurs by creating a set of geometry on the "source" image, then moving the set to corresponding places on the "destination" image.
- Automatic alignment feature that can be used alone or in conjunction with hand-specified correspondences. This feature can greatly improve morphs without having to specify all features by hand.
- Morph from one moving sequence to another.
- By default, the two images are linearly cross-dissolved. For finer control, the amount of cross-dissolve can be specified for each piece of matching geometries individually.
- Variable amount of shape transition between "from" and "to" geometries can be specified per-shape.
Examples
Crystal Light
RE:Flex was used to warp water to appear as if it was coming off clothing.
Orell Füssli Billboard
The swiss production company Absolutturnus created this tv billboard for the biggest book seller in switzerland. It was shot in front of greenscreen in HD, then every actor was rescaled and color corrected individually for best match in SD. The morphing was done with RE:Flex directly in After Effects. It was easy for Dany Bittel to acquire the necessary knowledge for the morphing, because RE:Flex integrates as an effect easily into AE and uses the standard masking. There was no need to change the workflow.
Stipple Guy
The whole idea of the job was that it had to look like the [the Journal's] very classic and precious illustrative style," Clark expalins. "It means you had to have all these little tiny dots, and they had to move with the character. It was about the scariest idea possible for animation. [...] We must have tried about eight or ten different things, and none of them worked," reports Clark. "We even tried making a 3-D model head [on the computer] and roto-ing that." Finally, they found a solution. "It was a program called RE:Flex.
Footage Playing Though Warp
A warp is set up then some footage is played "through" the warp. In this example, "from" and "to" geometry sets are set up and the same warp is used for all frames of some footage. Note that the geometries are not closed or connected.
Simple Warp
In this case, the "from" geometry is animated in addition to the "to" geometry, so that a warp can follow moving action.
Warp Following Moving Action
A simple warp is animated (the "from" geometry is kept still, but the "to" geometry is gradually grown big), causing the eyes to "bulge."
Morph Between Two Images
A morph is created between two images. Note that with RE:Flex more than one morph can be set up on the timeline, so that a sequence of images can morph successivley one to another.
Morph Between Two Images II
By animating the dissolve at each shape individually, we can make the hair transition faster and the facial features (eyes, nose and mouth) linger longer. Compare this animation to the one in the previous example.
Smart Blend
In most morph programs, when features of one image match to something out of frame in the other image it's very hard to get a satisfactory morph. Either you have to squash and stretch objects at the edge of the frame to get complete pixel coverage, or you have to live with areas fading in and out. RE:Flex provides a "smart blend" feature that allows you create a morph without having to squash and stretch, nor have fading areas during the morph.
Moving Morph
A moving morph is demonstrated.
System Requirements
- Mac OS X 10.2.8 and up
- Windows 2000 or XP and up
Host Compatibility
- Adobe After Effects 5.0 and up, including native Intel Mac support for AE CS3 and up.
