Trying to create slime. Please Help!

[6timmyturner]

I am still a beginner in After Effects! I am self taught so far because community college is only "useful" for learning liberal arts.

I produce music videos (direct, shoot, & edit) and I have an idea where I want the artist to be sitting on a recliner and slowly "try" and lift their arms off of the arm rests. I want to animate "glue" or "slime" between their arms and the rests! It seems so simple, but I feel like there are many ways to accomplish this that maybe I am simply not aware of.

Id prefer to use animations or plug-ins because I do not typically draw.

Thank you!

[P.M.B]

trobinson15  wrote

because community college is only "useful" for learning liberal arts.

You're probably too smart for community college anyway. 

[Rick Gerard]

There is probably going to be some artwork involved if you want to create slime. There are distortion effects that can look pretty slimy. You are also going to have to do some rotoscoping to separate foreground and middle ground elements so you can put the slime in between. Without a screenshot of the footage you are trying to work with, it is pretty hard to give you some meaningful advice.                              

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Do the slime during production. If you want to do it in post and use AE then you're only going to be doing stylized looks and not the real thing. For more realistic slime, you'll need a 3D app.

[6timmyturner]

I’m going for a stylized look. It isn’t supposed to look real.

Inthought after effects was for 3D modeling.

i have the entire adobe suite! Which app could I use?

[Dave Merchant]

trobinson15  wrote

i have the entire adobe suite! Which app could I use?

Nothing in Creative Cloud can build or simulate a 3D fluid. The usual way to do this in CG (if it can't be filmed live) is to recreate the relevant parts of the actor's body using a keyframed rigged figure in a 3D application such as 3DS Max, then add the fluid through a third-party plugin (e.g. PhoenixFD or Realflow). In the most recent edition Max has inbuilt liquid simulations, but they're not as feature-rich as the plugins. Blender has a fluid engine too, same caveat applies. Once the various passes have been rendered they are composed and roto-masked onto the live footage, which can take a huge amount of work if there are any closeups as the various drips and drops have to be depth-mapped behind other body parts. The composition can be done in After Effects for basic scenes, but for the important stuff most people will use Fusion, because it understands the critical 3D passes (such as world-space) that After Effects doesn't.

It's much easier with fire; nobody notices the masking and gravity isn't right so you can just paste in a bunch of stock footage flames and distort them to fit. Lots of 'tube videos on how to do that. Slime, on the other hand, only looks like slime if it behaves exactly as your brain expects it to.

In videos where you see an entire 'liquid human' dancing about, we'd start with 3D motion capture of the performance then rig a matching figure and simulate everything; no live action layers in the final sequence. These days it's much easier and cheaper to make a 3D scan of an actor and create a visually-exact model to animate than it is to roto thousands of frames of live action.

[P.M.B]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Dave+Merchant  wrote

Fusion understands the critical 3D passes (such as world-space) that After Effects doesn't.

???????

[Dave Merchant]

World-space is a render pass where each pixel's RGB value encodes the XYZ position of the pixel in the 3D scene (there's also a matching velocity pass where the RGB value encodes XYZ speed, which we use to add realistic motion blur). Usually all the render passes (typically 8 to 10 per frame) are stored in EXRs. The XYZ data is then used to composite the rendered frames with other layers in the timeline so that individual pixels can move in front or behind one another, for example when replacing skylines or adding atmospherics. In software that understands world-space (Fusion, Nuke, etc.) any lights and cameras created in the compositing timeline will interact properly, so you can cast shadows from one layer onto the next, or pan two layers through one another. It's a standard feature of deep image compositing, but After Effects doesn't work in true 3D and can only do Z-depth masking - it can fake something like depth of focus for a locked-off shot, but even if you hit the "3D" switch AE always sees a layer as a flat rectangle.

[P.M.B]

Thanks for that explanation.

[BartonGarrett256]

Glycerin, tight shots and editing. Use editing, speed,  shot selection and facial expressions to tell stories.  Watch the 2018 Academy live action nominated shorts, ask yourself what got them nominated.  Don't forget we are in the storytelling business.

And be nice to community colleges, they do a lot of good.  If you think that's their role run for the board that oversees them.

[Mathias Moehl]

I would also try to do this during production and not in post. Will definitely be easier and probably look better.

If you really want to do it in post, this tutorial could give you a starting point:

Tutorial Cyborg Arm - the Effect for your next Action Film

In the wound I create there, the blood at the boundaries of the hole is kind of dripping into the hole in long, thin strings. Maybe you can create slime in a similar way

(see the video at about 18:02 so see what I am talking about).

[P.M.B]

trobinson15  wrote

I thought after effects was for 3D modeling.

Shoot it. Find someplace that sells those old novelty "slime" toys.   A toy store or sometimes they have them in those quarter vending machines at supermarkets.  They used to have them in the campus bookstore at the community college I went to.

Heck, maybe some clever person even uploaded a video to Youtube about how to make your own slime in any color you want.

Another method that might work:

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Since it's a stylized look that you are after, it is best that you post a reference image; one for each of the look you are after and another, ideally a video or animation of the movement. From here, folks will be better able to provide with better guidance. Otherwise, we'll be running around in circles, chasing not only our tails but each others' tails. 😉

[6timmyturner]

Good idea! Lol.

It doesn’t need to be nearly as detailed or as realistic looking.

Google Image Result for https://previews.123rf.com/images/alexpokusay/alexpokusay1708/alexpokusay170...