IntroductionWelcome| 00:05 | Hi! I'm Chris Meyer of Chris Design, and
welcome to the After Effects Apprentice
| | 00:09 | lesson on shape layers.
| | 00:11 | Shape layers are a form what's known
as vector art, similar to what you might
| | 00:15 | create in Adobe Illustrator or Flash.
| | 00:17 | With it you can create something as
simple as a map path or a lower third bar or
| | 00:21 | something as complex as a full cartoon.
| | 00:24 | What makes shape layers particularly
powerful in After Effects is their modular nature.
| | 00:28 | The Shape group contains a series of operators.
| | 00:31 | They can be animated, edited, or
rearranged to create a wide variety of looks.
| | 00:35 | There's two different ways of
creating shape paths in After Effects.
| | 00:39 | You can use the Pen tool, which allows
you to draw free-form paths, and parametric
| | 00:44 | shapes, which allow you to create
rectangles, ellipses, and stars, and push them
| | 00:48 | to the extremes by editing their live
parameters in the After Effects Timeline.
| | 00:52 | Multiple Shape paths may be combined
to create complex compound shapes as well.
| | 00:55 | You have control over how these shapes
are filled and stroked, including a very
| | 00:59 | nice gradient editor, plus the
ability to divide strokes into a customized
| | 01:03 | series of dashes and gaps.
| | 01:05 | There are also a wide variety of shape
effects, which can bend shape paths in a
| | 01:08 | variety of interesting ways.
| | 01:10 | Some can even self-animate, such as
Wiggle Paths and Wiggle Transform.
| | 01:14 | There is also a repeater, which can
take a path or paths and multiply them to
| | 01:18 | fill the screen if so desired.
| | 01:20 | The vectors that make up the shape
are then rasterized into pixels, which
| | 01:23 | can then in turn be treated with
normal effects and layer styles to create
| | 01:27 | more stylized looks.
| | 01:28 | Of course, you can also animate and
even brainstorm virtually every one of these
| | 01:33 | shape layers parameters.
| | 01:34 | Adobe also makes available to you hundreds
of additional shape layer animation presets.
| | 01:39 | Shape layers are one of my absolute
favorite features inside After Effects, but I
| | 01:43 | also realize that it can be a bit
complex and confusing. Well, don't worry;
| | 01:46 | I'm going to lead you to
using them step by step.
| | 01:49 | We're going to start with what are the
different tools you use to make shapes,
| | 01:53 | and what are the differences
between making a mask and making a shape?
| | 01:55 | So let's dive in!
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| Using the exercise files| 00:02 | Throughout these After Effects Apprentice
courses, you'll find that Trish and I focus
| | 00:06 | on core concepts of using
and learning After Effects.
| | 00:09 | Not specific tricks that only work
with certain pieces of footage.
| | 00:12 | Therefore, if you don't have any exercise
files, or if you want to use your own footage,
| | 00:16 | you'll still get a lot out of
just watching these videos.
| | 00:19 | That said, studies have shown that the best
way to learn something is to actually do it.
| | 00:24 | Therefore for the optimal learning experience
we suggest you do get access to the exercise files.
| | 00:28 | There are two ways to do that.
| | 00:31 | One is to get a lynda.com premium membership.
| | 00:34 | That will allow you to download the files
for After Effects CS4, CS5, CS5.5 or CS6.
| | 00:41 | These are the same files we're
using when we record these videos.
| | 00:44 | The other approach is to get a copy
of our book After Effects Apprentice.
| | 00:48 | The third edition covers CS5, CS5.5 and CS6.
| | 00:51 | If you're still using After Effects CS4,
then get the second edition of the book.
| | 00:55 | Those files are pretty close to the
ones we use throughout this video course.
| | 00:59 | Whenever there are differences
we'll note them as we teach.
| | 01:02 | Now either way we think it's a good value.
| | 01:04 | If you get the premium membership to lynda,
you could access to exercise files for hundreds
| | 01:08 | of other courses.
| | 01:10 | If you get one of our books, you've got some
additional text explanation for each of the
| | 01:13 | features we discuss and you've got a
desk reference next to you all the time.
| | 01:17 | Now throughout these lessons we're going
to be using a combination of After Effects
| | 01:20 | CS5, CS5.5 and CS6. Don't be thrown off by
any minor differences in the user interface,
| | 01:27 | most of the functionality of After Effects
is identical across all of these versions.
| | 01:32 | If there are differences from version to
version, we'll note it in the little caption that
| | 01:35 | runs along the bottom of the screen.
| | 01:37 | But all that said, we really hope you have a
lot of fun with these courses learning After Effects.
| | 01:42 | It's the application we've been using for
ages now, we have a great time with it, and
| | 01:46 | we hope you get the same
enjoyment out of it that we do.
| | 01:49 |
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1. Drawing ShapesShape tool overview| 00:07 | If you have access to the exercise
files that came with this lesson, open up the
| | 00:11 | project AEA Shape layers.aep.
| | 00:15 | If instead you're working with project
file that came from a book After Effects
| | 00:18 | Apprentice II Edition, open
up the project file Lesson 11.
| | 00:23 | In this movie we're going to
discuss the tools and options involved in
| | 00:26 | making shape layers.
| | 00:27 | I'm going to open up a blank composition
to begin with. If you have the exercise
| | 00:31 | files, 01-Shape Play*
starter is a good starting point.
| | 00:35 | The same tools you've previously used
to create mass shapes can also be used to
| | 00:40 | create shape layers. Which they do
depends on what you have selected.
| | 00:45 | For example, let's create a layer.
| | 00:47 | I'll do Layer > New > Solid.
| | 00:49 | I'll make it a comp size, and
I'll give it a color so we can see it.
| | 00:55 | Okay. If you have a layer selected,
these tools will mask that layer.
| | 01:02 | For example, I'll select
the Rounded Rectangle tool.
| | 01:06 | With this layer selected, clicking and
dragging masks out that solid layer.
| | 01:12 | I'll turn it off for now.
| | 01:13 | However, if there is no layer
selected, these same tools instead create a
| | 01:19 | brand-new layer referred to as a shape layer.
| | 01:23 | And you'll see it down here in the timeline.
If you have a shape layer selected, using
| | 01:28 | these tools will create more shapes.
| | 01:31 | If you want to mask a shape layer,
there are two new buttons that will appear
| | 01:37 | along top of your tool panel,
| | 01:39 | either Tool Create Shape or Tool Creates Mask.
| | 01:44 | In this particular case where I want
to mask a shape layer, I need to change
| | 01:47 | its context to Tool Creates Mask, and now I'll
mask out a portion of my selected shape layer.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to select all and
delete these layers for now.
| | 01:59 | Once you have one of these tools
selected--be it the Parametric tool that
| | 02:04 | creates predefined shapes, which is
Rectangles, Rounded Rects, Ellipses,
| | 02:07 | Polygons, and Stars, or the Pen tool--
you have additional parameters which
| | 02:13 | appear along your toolbar.
| | 02:14 | You have Fill Options, Fill Color, Stroke
Options, Stroke Color, and Stroke Width.
| | 02:23 | Click on the word Fill to
open up the Fill Options.
| | 02:26 | You have a choice of whether not you
have a no fill at all, a nice solid
| | 02:30 | color for your fill, or gradients:
linear which goes from one point to another,
| | 02:35 | or radial which starts as a center point
and changes color right to get further way.
| | 02:41 | Your fill can indeed have blending modes.
| | 02:44 | This is a shortened version of
the list you see from normal layers.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to leave it at a Normal mode for now.
| | 02:49 | Finally, you can set the opacity for fill.
| | 02:52 | I'm going to temporarily set it to
50% so I can tell the difference between
| | 02:56 | my fill and stroke.
| | 02:58 | You can change opacity, mode, and even
gradient later on, but it's good to start
| | 03:03 | with what you intend.
| | 03:05 | Once you set your Fill Options,
clicking the color swatch next to it brings up
| | 03:09 | the standard color picker to go head and
choose a color. And I'll pick something a
| | 03:13 | little more saturated red for now. Click OK.
| | 03:15 | You have some more settings for Stroke.
Again, click on the word Stroke to
| | 03:21 | bring up its options.
| | 03:22 | You have the same choices of None, Solid,
Linear Gradient, and Radial Gradient.
| | 03:28 | By the way, Gradient is of less use for
strokes, since these do not follow a long stroke;
| | 03:34 | they're basically colors
that are revealed by the stroke.
| | 03:36 | Again, you have Modes and Opacity;
| | 03:40 | I'll leave it at Normal and 100% for now.
| | 03:44 | And just as with Fill, for Stroke the
swatch to its right is its color. And I'll
| | 03:49 | just pick a nice obvious white stroke for now.
| | 03:52 | You then scrub the Stroke
Width or set it numerically.
| | 03:55 | I'll set it to fairly large, 6 pixels for
now, just to make it clear what's going on.
| | 04:00 | There's one more menu item, an Add
Feature, which is currently grayed out.
| | 04:04 | This duplicates a function you will see
in the Timeline panel, and which we'll
| | 04:07 | explain more in the next few movies.
| | 04:09 | But for now I'll select my Rounded
Rectangle tool again and in the next movie,
| | 04:12 | we'll actually start making some shapes.
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| Drawing parametric shapes| 00:07 | We have a blank
composition with no layers selected.
| | 00:10 | We've selected a Rounded Rectangle tool.
| | 00:12 | We'll set up our initial fill and stroke colors.
| | 00:14 | It's time to draw a shape.
| | 00:16 | I'm going to start by clicking and
dragging in the Composition panel, but
| | 00:20 | before you let go of the mouse button, there
are some great shortcut keys I want to show you.
| | 00:25 | While your mouse is still down, if you
hold the spacebar down, you can reposition
| | 00:30 | your shape. So if you find you've been
drawing in the wrong place, this is a way
| | 00:33 | to quickly move it into the right location.
| | 00:36 | Another great shortcut is if you hold
Command on Mac or Ctrl in Windows, it will
| | 00:40 | change where you're drawing the shape from.
| | 00:42 | Normally, you start drawing from one
corner outward, but if you hold Command or
| | 00:48 | Ctrl, instead you will be drawing
centered around your initial click.
| | 00:54 | That's particularly handy when
you are trying to draw circles.
| | 00:56 | I'll release Command or Ctrl, and
I'll just drag out from the corner.
| | 01:00 | Before I release my mouse button, there
are other parameters I can change as well.
| | 01:04 | For example, the up and down cursors allow
you to change the rounding of the corners.
| | 01:11 | You can also hold the cursor down and you'll
get automatic increment of that rounding.
| | 01:16 | You can also use the left and
right cursors to toggle between an
| | 01:20 | un-rounded rectangle, rounding set
to 0, and a fully rounded rectangle,
| | 01:25 | rounding set to 100%.
| | 01:26 | I'm going to press the left cursor to
get back to my un-rounded rectangle, then
| | 01:32 | press my up arrow to add a
little bit of rounding to those edges.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to hold the spacebar
just to center up my shape for now.
| | 01:39 | As soon as I release the mouse button,
this position and rounding has been set;
| | 01:44 | however, I can change those
settings down in the Timeline panel.
| | 01:49 | You'll see down here that we now have a
new layer called shape layer 1, and just
| | 01:53 | like any layer, you can rename it.
| | 01:55 | I'll rename this rounded rectangle.
| | 02:00 | Underneath its main twirly called
Contents, you will find something
| | 02:03 | called Rectangle 1.
| | 02:05 | That is the name of the shape group you
have created. And again, you can rename
| | 02:10 | those, rounded rect.
| | 02:12 | I'll twirl that open, and you'll
see what makes up the shape group.
| | 02:16 | I have my path, in this case my
rectangle, my stroke, the color I set at the
| | 02:21 | top, my fill, and I have individual
set of transform properties: Anchor,
| | 02:28 | Position, Scale, Skew--a new
parameter--Rotation, and Opacity, which is
| | 02:33 | separate from the
transform for the entire layer.
| | 02:38 | This is where shape layers can be very
powerful and very confusing, because you
| | 02:42 | need to manage all these different settings.
| | 02:45 | It's best to focus on editing the
shape group and then later on if you want,
| | 02:49 | move the entire layer.
| | 02:50 | Let's explore some of these
components of my shape group.
| | 02:53 | I'll twirl open Rectangle Path 1, and
again you can rename that if you wanted
| | 02:57 | to. And here I have its size. Initially
its Aspect Ratio is maintained, but if I
| | 03:02 | want to change it, I can unclick the
Constrain Proportions lock and now edit its
| | 03:07 | dimensions independently.
| | 03:10 | The position of its path starts off
centered in this group, but this group is
| | 03:16 | not necessarily centered in my
composition. I'll show you that in a second.
| | 03:20 | And of course, we have the Roundness parameter
we were editing earlier using the cursor keys.
| | 03:25 | Notice that all these have animation
stop watches, by the way. Shape layers have
| | 03:28 | a lot of animation possibilities.
| | 03:30 | I'll twirl that up.
| | 03:32 | With Stroke and Fill you can
reorder objects inside a shape group.
| | 03:39 | Right now Stroke is over the Fill, but
if I drag Fill above the Stroke, you can
| | 03:46 | see what's going on here in the Comp panel.
| | 03:48 | Now that red fill is going out to the
center line of the stroke, and you can
| | 03:52 | see it's being drawn on top of the stroke.
So you can reorder those elements as desired.
| | 03:57 | Here's the Blending mode pop-up you saw
earlier when we were playing with the
| | 04:01 | Fill and Stroke options, and if you
twirl these open, you'll find lots of
| | 04:05 | additional options, which we'll
go into more detail with later on.
| | 04:08 | Finally, as I mentioned, each shape
group has its own transform properties.
| | 04:13 | We'll twirl that open for now.
| | 04:15 | This particular position value is the
offset from the center of the entire layer.
| | 04:21 | If I want to make sure that a shape
group is centered inside its layer, I need
| | 04:28 | to zero these out, and I'll do that now.
| | 04:31 | This is something you'll find you need
to do quite often if you want to center
| | 04:33 | up a circle, a star,
et cetera, in your composition.
| | 04:36 | Go into the Transform for that
group and 0 out its position.
| | 04:39 | We also have Rotation, Skew,
and the expected Scale and Opacity values.
| | 04:50 | Notice that this Scale value is
different from the rectangle's Size property.
| | 04:56 | That's important because you can have
multiple paths inside one shape group,
| | 05:01 | and we'll show that later on.
| | 05:02 | Also, Opacity is for the final
composite of everything in the shape group.
| | 05:06 | Yes, Stroke and Fill have their own
opacities, but this is the master opacity
| | 05:10 | for the shape group, not to be confused
with the layer's own opacity, which also
| | 05:17 | fades out the entire layer.
| | 05:19 | Lots of flexibility, lots of power,
lots of room for confusion, so be very
| | 05:23 | mindful down in the Timeline panel,
exactly what it is you're editing.
| | 05:27 | Are you inside a shape group
or editing an overall layer?
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| Drawing pen paths| 00:07 | In the previous movie, we created
what's referred to as a parametric shape.
| | 00:12 | We chose from the menu a particular
type of shape such as rectangle, rounded
| | 00:16 | rec, ellipse, polygon, and star, and
then in the Timeline panel, we can alter
| | 00:22 | parameters of that shape that we dragged out,
| | 00:24 | for example the roundness of the
corners and the relative size of this rectangle.
| | 00:29 | I am going to turn this
layer off for now, twirl it up, and
| | 00:34 | we are going to experiment with
using the Pen tool to create shapes.
| | 00:38 | Since I want to create a brand new
shape, I'm going to make sure that this
| | 00:43 | current shape layer is not selected.
| | 00:45 | So you can either press F2 to deselect
or just click anywhere in the Timeline
| | 00:49 | panel and that will deselect
your currently selected shape.
| | 00:52 | I will go up, choose my Pen tool.
| | 00:54 | I have my same options for Fill
options, Fill color, Stroke options, Stroke
| | 01:00 | color, and Stroke Outline Width. And now
I can just start clicking and dragging
| | 01:05 | on my shape in the Comp panel,
just like you would, say, a mask shape.
| | 01:10 | I can go ahead and alter these Bezier
handles while I am working with my shape
| | 01:13 | layer. And to close my path, I will
bring my cursor over my first vertex point,
| | 01:20 | until I see this little
circle appear at the bottom of it.
| | 01:23 | That closed circle indicates
I am about to close my shape.
| | 01:27 | I'll click and now I have
a pen-created shape layer.
| | 01:30 | I will twirl it open in the Timeline panel.
| | 01:32 | You notice again it has Contents and
Transform. Twirl open Contents and here is
| | 01:37 | my shape group, shape1.
| | 01:38 | I will twirl that open.
| | 01:40 | I have my transform, fill, and stroke, as
before, but now instead of the parametric
| | 01:45 | shape, I just have a parameter called Path.
| | 01:48 | And this is my pen path that I drew
out, just like you might a mask path, and
| | 01:53 | just like mask paths,
you can animate this pen path.
| | 01:56 | Now since you don't have parameters
with a Pen Path shape, how you edit it is
| | 02:00 | a little bit different.
| | 02:01 | I am going to press V to
return to my Selection tool.
| | 02:05 | If I want to edit the existing Bezier
handles, there are some shortcut keys I
| | 02:09 | can use. Adobe does change these
shortcuts every now and then, but as of After
| | 02:13 | Effects 5.5, the best one is to use the G key.
| | 02:16 | That will allow you to remove points.
| | 02:19 | I will undo, press G, and I
get symbol to add points.
| | 02:24 | I'll add another one there, and
then move it once it is selected.
| | 02:27 | I can alter the Bezier handles
| | 02:30 | or press G to get the Convert
Vertex tool and make this a discontinuous
| | 02:35 | Bezier path through this vertex.
| | 02:39 | In addition to editing individual
points, I can transform the overall shape.
| | 02:44 | And there are two different ways of doing that.
| | 02:46 | If I double-click on the path, this
outline--and if you are not seeing this
| | 02:51 | outline, you could turn it on with this
little switch down here at the bottom of
| | 02:54 | the Comp panel, off/on--double-
clicking the path allows me to transform the
| | 03:03 | entire path outline.
| | 03:06 | And you notice that Path1 is
selected down here in the Timeline panel.
| | 03:09 | This is essentially the same as the
Free Transform tool you use in mask shapes.
| | 03:13 | You can rotate, even change the anchor
point that you rotate around, resize, and
| | 03:21 | drag out as you desire.
| | 03:22 | Now this solid outline indicates you are
transforming the actual pen path that you drew.
| | 03:32 | However, there is an alternate way
that you can edit the Transform Properties
| | 03:36 | for this shape group.
| | 03:37 | I am going to twirl this
open so you can see what's going on.
| | 03:39 | Scroll up a little bit.
| | 03:41 | If you double-click not on the path, but
the shape layer itself--and I did that twice,
| | 03:47 | the first time deselected free
transform, the second time brought this new
| | 03:51 | outline--you will see that I have dotted lines
rather than solid lines around my shape group.
| | 03:59 | Now as I drag on these handles, you
will see I am changing this Scale parameter
| | 04:03 | down in the Timeline panel.
| | 04:04 | You will see that I am now rotating it,
and you can see that I am moving its
| | 04:10 | overall position inside this layer.
| | 04:13 | So here is the reminder: double-
clicking the shape, dotted line, you're editing
| | 04:20 | the Transform Properties.
| | 04:22 | Double-click the path, solid line,
| | 04:26 | you're editing the pen path, not the
Transform Properties for the shape group.
| | 04:31 | Now the nice thing about this pen path
is that it is very much like paths you
| | 04:36 | have used for motion
paths, mask paths, et cetera.
| | 04:40 | Indeed, you can copy and paste
this Path property to match shapes or
| | 04:46 | position paths, and you can even use
expressions to link these different
| | 04:49 | types of paths together.
| | 04:50 | I am going to use parametric shapes
for most of this lesson, so I am going to
| | 04:55 | turn off this pen path shape and
turn back on my rectangle, because many
| | 05:00 | components of the shape group, such as
Stroke, Fill and Transform are the same,
| | 05:05 | but keep that in mind that you have
two different ways of creating shapes.
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2. Multiple Shape PathsCreating multiple shape groups| 00:07 | A shape layer can have multiple shapes
on it, and I am going to demonstrate a
| | 00:12 | couple of ways of doing
this in the next two movies.
| | 00:15 | First off, I am going to select that
that pen shape layer I created in the
| | 00:17 | previous movie and delete it, so we just
have our rounded rectangle that we started with.
| | 00:22 | With the layer selected, I want to
go up to my tools, select a different
| | 00:27 | tool, such as Ellipse, make sure that I
have set to Tool Creates Shape rather
| | 00:33 | than masking my shape.
| | 00:35 | This is the default. Click and drag.
| | 00:38 | And again as before, I can hold down
the spacebar and reposition my shape, hold
| | 00:43 | Command or Ctrl to draw it from the
center rather than from a corner, and get
| | 00:47 | this where I want it to be, say there.
| | 00:50 | Once I have done that, you will see now I have
two shape groups as part of this shape layer.
| | 00:57 | As a matter of fact, I will go ahead
and rename this back to shape layer1.
| | 00:59 | I will press Return to select it,
Delete to delete the name I gave it, press
| | 01:03 | Return again, and I am back to its original name.
| | 01:06 | These two shape groups have their own
individual shapes, stroke, fill, and
| | 01:13 | Transform Properties.
| | 01:15 | Indeed, I can give them different colors.
| | 01:17 | With this ellipse selected, I will go
up to the fill color, move this to the
| | 01:21 | side so you can see what I am doing,
and change its hue, maybe something in this
| | 01:26 | purple or pink region. Click OK.
| | 01:27 | Now I'll also change its stroke color,
one more saturation, a little different sue,
| | 01:34 | something down in the blues there.
| | 01:35 | You will notice as I select the
different shape groups, the colors in my
| | 01:41 | toolbar change to reflect which
group I have selected and what its current
| | 01:45 | stroke and fill are.
| | 01:47 | I can reorder shape groups within a shape layer.
| | 01:51 | Now the rectangle is on top
the ellipse and vice versa.
| | 01:55 | Each shape group has its own internal
blending mode that allows it to mix with
| | 02:01 | other shape groups inside the same layer.
| | 02:03 | For example, I will select the
ellipse and choose Linear Dodge.
| | 02:07 | This is equivalent of Add mode.
| | 02:09 | Now you see I will end up with the
brighter area where the two intersect. Or I
| | 02:12 | can choose something like
Multiply and darken the overlapping area.
| | 02:16 | I will go to Overlay, which
is one of my favorite modes.
| | 02:20 | Since each shape group has its own
Transform Properties, you can also animate
| | 02:27 | the position of each of
these groups inside the layer,
| | 02:32 | in addition to animating the fill and
stroke properties or animating the shape
| | 02:36 | path itself, editing its size or
editing or animating its position.
| | 02:43 | So this is one approach, having a shape group
dedicated to each shape in your shape layer.
| | 02:52 | But sometimes it's useful to have
multiple shapes inside one shape group, and I
| | 02:58 | will demonstrate that in the next movie.
| | 02:59 | For now, I am going to
delete my ellipse shape group.
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| Creating multiple paths in the same group| 00:07 | In a previous movie I had multiple
shape groups as part of the same shape layer.
| | 00:12 | Now, I'll just quickly undo to restore
that ellipse, just remind you what I
| | 00:16 | had here, but I'll delete that for now.
| | 00:18 | However, there are times when it's
useful to have multiple paths as part of the
| | 00:22 | same group so that they get the same
stroke and same fill, and that allows you to do
| | 00:27 | some other things, which we'll show you later.
| | 00:29 | Now, when you use the shape tools, you
will always create a brand-new shape group.
| | 00:36 | If you want to create a new path
inside an existing shape group, you need to
| | 00:40 | select that group, then use this Add
function. It exists down here in the Timeline
| | 00:46 | panel, as well as up here in the toolbar.
| | 00:49 | I prefer to use one in the Timeline
panel, because this is where I'm working.
| | 00:53 | I'll select Add and in
this case I'll add a polystar.
| | 00:57 | It is a type of parametric shape;
| | 00:59 | it can be either a polygon or a star.
| | 01:02 | Once I've done that, you'll see that I now
have these two paths inside of my same group.
| | 01:07 | If I change the fill color, it will
change the fill for both of those paths.
| | 01:13 | I'll click OK. I can turn
individual paths on and off.
| | 01:18 | I can reorder them, although that
does not do a lot in this context.
| | 01:22 | However, if I twirl open things like
Polystar, you'll see that each shape path
| | 01:26 | has its own position.
| | 01:28 | This is how I can modify the position
of these paths relative to each other
| | 01:34 | without modifying the position of the entire
group relative to the layer. I'll undo that.
| | 01:40 | Now, polystars are a lot of fun.
| | 01:44 | You can either have a
polygon shape or a star shape.
| | 01:48 | You can choose how many points that you have.
| | 01:51 | You can change the size of both the outer radius
and the inner radius. Maybe I'll create something like that.
| | 01:59 | And you know I'm going to go ahead and
zero out these positions so that these two
| | 02:02 | paths are centered up on top
of each other. There we go.
| | 02:05 | I'll choose something like 8 Points, and
I'll play with this additional parameter
| | 02:11 | that I really love with
polystars, Inner and Outer Roundness.
| | 02:15 | Rather than having sharp corners like
a normal star, you can create some very
| | 02:20 | interesting flower-like patterns or
interesting looping-like patterns.
| | 02:25 | As I start to create these looped shapes,
you'll see some holes start to appear
| | 02:31 | inside my model, like these holes here.
| | 02:35 | Where these holes are created is
controlled actually down inside the Fill parameter.
| | 02:41 | I'll twirl open Fill.
| | 02:43 | By the way, Fill has its own
composite rule of whether or not it's below
| | 02:48 | previous, in other words below the
stroke or inside the Fill you can go ahead
| | 02:52 | and make Above Stroke.
| | 02:54 | I tend to keep this as default Below,
so I can just reorder Fill and Stroke
| | 02:58 | to get my desired outcomes.
| | 03:00 | And then there's a second pop-up
called Fill Rule. It basically controls
| | 03:05 | whether overlaps in the shapes
create these holes or if you get this
| | 03:08 | really fun even-odd pattern depending
on how the different shapes inside the
| | 03:13 | shape group intersect.
| | 03:14 | As a matter of fact, I'm going to go to my
Rectangle and increase its size a little bit
| | 03:18 | so you can get a better idea of how
these interactions are taking place.
| | 03:22 | I'll twirl up the Rectangular Path for now,
| | 03:26 | play more with the Roundness of my
shape, and you'll see that the even-odd rule
| | 03:33 | gave you some very nice complex of fills when
you have multiple paths inside the same shape.
| | 03:39 | The default of Non-Zero Winding
tends to be controlled more just by the
| | 03:42 | intersections of the shape itself.
| | 03:44 | Now again, these two shape paths are
part of the same shape group, and the way I
| | 03:51 | did that is I had to use the Add control.
| | 03:54 | I cannot use the shape tools themselves
to create this particular arrangement.
| | 03:58 | However, you can copy and paste shape paths
between different groups inside the same layer.
| | 04:03 | Now that we've seen a couple of
different ways of having multiple paths on the
| | 04:07 | same shape layer, let's take it to
the next level and start combining those
| | 04:11 | paths in different ways.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating compound paths| 00:07 | We've been playing around with
different ways of creating multiple paths within
| | 00:11 | the same shape layer.
| | 00:14 | Once you have that, there is different
ways of combining those paths together to
| | 00:17 | create what are called compound paths.
| | 00:19 | To do that, let's work through a
little exercise of creating a gear.
| | 00:23 | I am going to go ahead and open up a
new blank composition, in this case
| | 00:26 | 03-Gear*starter, and let's build
up our gear a piece at a time.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to start off with creating a star.
| | 00:34 | The points on that star are going to
be the starting point for our teeth.
| | 00:37 | Once I've selected the tool, I'm
going to make sure that I'm filling with a
| | 00:41 | solid color. That's good.
| | 00:43 | I think I want to go with a 100% fill for this
particular shape since gears tend to be solid.
| | 00:49 | Pick any color you like. As you may
have noticed by now with multiple lessons,
| | 00:53 | I'm partial to gold.
| | 00:55 | Stroke, again I'm going to
make a solid color. 100% Opacity.
| | 00:59 | I want to go back to a white stroke
like I had before, and maybe something a
| | 01:04 | little bit more subtle for a stroke,
maybe four pixels in this case.
| | 01:08 | I want my gear to be
centered inside this composition.
| | 01:11 | It's kind of hard to me just to drag
the cursor around and figure out where the
| | 01:14 | center is, but there is a
couple of ways of cheating.
| | 01:17 | One, the Info panel will give me a
numeric readout of where I am in the comp.
| | 01:20 | So if I press Command+K on Mac or
Ctrl+K on Windows to open up the composition
| | 01:26 | settings, I see it's a 500x500 comp, so
I can position this at 250x250, and then
| | 01:32 | I'll know that I'm in the
center of my composition.
| | 01:35 | Another great way of cheating is just
pressing the apostrophe key to temporarily
| | 01:39 | bring up the action Title Safe,
which includes a center crosshair.
| | 01:43 | That gives you something to line up to.
| | 01:44 | I'll press apostrophe again to turn it off.
| | 01:48 | Stars draw out from their center, unlike the
rectangle or ellipse which draw out from a corner.
| | 01:54 | As I move the mouse around,
you'll see it rotates.
| | 01:55 | If I find that rotation
distracting, pressing the Shift key locks the
| | 01:59 | rotation so it stays in an upright
orientation, but this is something I can change later.
| | 02:04 | To change the number of points in my
star, before I release the mouse, I can use
| | 02:09 | the up and down arrows to pick how many
points I have 5, 6, 7, 8. I'll use that
| | 02:15 | as a starting point. And by the way,
you can also use the left and right arrows
| | 02:22 | to the change the rounding of your shape.
| | 02:24 | Now the problem is once you start
doing that it maybe hard to get back to a
| | 02:28 | pointy start. Like what
is exactly a sharp point?
| | 02:32 | It's hard to tell sometimes.
You can always undo; it deletes your shape.
| | 02:36 | Select the shape you want, double-click
instead of click and drag, and now you'll
| | 02:40 | get the default shape again.
| | 02:42 | I'll undo and now I'll drag out my shape again.
| | 02:45 | Apostrophe, cener up, drag out, up
arrow 6, 7, 8, Shift to orient, then let go
| | 02:54 | over the mouse, and I'll press
apostrophe again to get rid of my guides.
| | 02:57 | So I have my shape layer. I have the
beginnings of my shape group call Polystar.
| | 03:03 | I am actually going to rename this gear
group. And as before, you can twirl open
| | 03:09 | and numerically edit these
parameter if you want to.
| | 03:11 | You could edit out your position here if
you needed to, to make sure it centered.
| | 03:16 | And if you were not happy with how
your star looks, you can go ahead and edit
| | 03:20 | the number of points here, et cetera.
| | 03:21 | But I'll go back to the eight points that I
had, zeroed-out rotation. You can do Inner
| | 03:26 | and Outer Radius to taste.
| | 03:28 | In general, as a starting point for
gears, I tend to put the Inner Radius at
| | 03:33 | about half of the Outer Radius,
and I'll have my Roundness set to 0.
| | 03:37 | So there is my star.
| | 03:40 | Now I want to trim off the top pointy bits
of that star to create my nice round gear.
| | 03:47 | To do that, I need to create an
ellipse shape inside this same group.
| | 03:51 | How do you do that?
| | 03:52 | Make sure your gear group is selected
and use the Add button instead of the
| | 03:57 | tools and choose Ellipse.
| | 03:59 | Now that I have my ellipse, I'll twirl
it open and increase its size to about
| | 04:05 | the point where I want to
chop off the points of that star.
| | 04:08 | Now by default After Effects will take
my multiple shape paths and stroke and
| | 04:13 | fill everything that it finds.
| | 04:15 | However I want After Effects to treat
this as one complex shape rather then two
| | 04:20 | individual shapes and to do
that, I need to use a shape effect.
| | 04:24 | I'll make sure my group is still
selected, or some parameter is selected, go back
| | 04:28 | to Add, and there is this
whole list of shape effects.
| | 04:33 | We're going to explore these more later in
the lesson, but right now I want Merge Paths.
| | 04:38 | That's how I can create one
complex path with multiple paths.
| | 04:42 | I'll select Merge Paths, make sure
it's after my two shapes, and you see I now
| | 04:47 | have one complex path that is
getting one stroke and one fill.
| | 04:52 | Rendering in After Effects'
shape layers goes from the top down.
| | 04:56 | So taking in my first path, my
second path, and merging them.
| | 05:00 | I'll twirl open Merge Paths
and I have a few different modes.
| | 05:04 | The shapes can be added together;
merged, which gets back to our two individual
| | 05:08 | shapes; subtract one from the other,
subtract the ellipse from the polystar;
| | 05:14 | or intersect the two.
| | 05:16 | Now we have those chopped-off
points that we were hoping for.
| | 05:19 | There is also the option of Excluding
Intersections, which gives us interesting
| | 05:24 | shape, but not what we
wanted. Go back to Intersect.
| | 05:27 | Now I have the start of my gear.
| | 05:30 | For this particular gear, now I want
to fill in the bottom parts of those
| | 05:33 | teeth to create a nice rounded edge just like
we have rounding on the very top of my points.
| | 05:38 | To do that, I'll make sure gear group
is selected and I'll add another ellipse.
| | 05:41 | There is another ellipse shape.
| | 05:44 | It did not go in the
rendering order where I wanted to.
| | 05:47 | But I just click and drag and I'll
put it after the merge paths. Twirl it
| | 05:52 | open, adjust it's size.
| | 05:54 | I fill in the valleys at bottom of those teeth.
| | 05:56 | Okay that's the look that I want, but
I'm getting multiple paths stroked, my
| | 06:03 | merged path plus my new ellipse.
| | 06:05 | No problem. Let's add another Merge Paths.
| | 06:09 | Drag that down below, and now this new ellipse
will get merged in with the previous merge.
| | 06:16 | The default of adding the
shapes together works just fine.
| | 06:20 | Okay, the last thing I'd like to do is
cut out my centrer hole in the gear so
| | 06:23 | I've got something I put on an
axle or the otherwise rotate around.
| | 06:27 | How would you do that?
| | 06:27 | Well, you're right--just keep
going the way we've been going.
| | 06:29 | Select gear group, add another ellipse
for my hole. And the nice thing about using
| | 06:36 | this add, by the way, is this things end
up centered inside your shape group.
| | 06:39 | Drag it back to Merge Paths. There is my hole.
| | 06:43 | Let's make it a little bit smaller.
| | 06:44 | I will twirl it open, reduce its size,
| | 06:48 | and then finally one more Merge Paths
to subtract that hole from this previous
| | 06:53 | combination. Add > Merge, drag it out
to my hole shape, and set it to Subtract.
| | 07:00 | And if you're having a hard time
keeping track of things, you can go ahead and
| | 07:03 | rename these paths, like teeth, this
was trim tops. That merged them together.
| | 07:11 | Fill in the bottom of the gears,
merge that together. Center hole.
| | 07:18 | Now that I have all of these paths
merged together, they're still getting one
| | 07:22 | stroke, one fill, just change one
color, and everyone will change at the same
| | 07:27 | time, and I have one
transform for the entire group.
| | 07:33 | So if I want to rotate this gear, I have
just one rotation property to deal with
| | 07:37 | instead of worrying about
rotating someone further up the chain.
| | 07:40 | If you got lost somewhere along the line,
just go into Comps finished. This is
| | 07:44 | that you rounded bottom to the
teeth we showed you earlier, and here's a
| | 07:47 | variation where I actually squared off
the teeth rather than rounded them by
| | 07:52 | using--open up my gear group--different
shapes, polystars rather than ellipses to go
| | 08:00 | ahead and cut off the
teeth and fill in the valleys.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Shape EffectsExploring shape effects| 00:07 | In the previous chapter, we experimented
with the Merge Path shape effect to go
| | 00:12 | ahead and create a complex
compound shape for multiple paths.
| | 00:15 | We used those to create
variation on this gear look.
| | 00:19 | However, there is a whole group of
different shapes effects that are worth
| | 00:23 | exploring, and that's what
we'll do in this chapter.
| | 00:25 | Now if you like, you can go back to
your original rounded rectangle, turn off
| | 00:29 | the polystar so you have the simple shape.
| | 00:31 | Or let's get some more practice in.
| | 00:33 | Select the comps folder, make a new
composition. Size isn't so important.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to choose the NTSC Square
Pixel size just for starters, click OK,
| | 00:44 | solid-color fill, solid-color stroke,
whatever color you like. How about back to the
| | 00:51 | red we were working with earlier?
| | 00:52 | And now change your shape selection to Star.
| | 00:57 | Star is the most complex of the
parametric shapes, so this will give you more
| | 01:02 | options to play with later on.
| | 01:03 | Go to my Comp panel, toggle apostrophe,
just to make sure I'm more or less centered.
| | 01:08 | It's not critical, but it'll just give
us room to play with. Apostrophe again to
| | 01:11 | make it go away and drag out my polystar.
| | 01:15 | I'm now actually going to knock it
down to a fairly simple four-point star.
| | 01:19 | Press Shift to center out the rotation.
| | 01:22 | But this is a more
interesting shape than just a rectangle.
| | 01:24 | Now I'll release the mouse.
| | 01:24 | And as before, we have a shape layer
with a shape group called Polystar.
| | 01:32 | There's this particular parameters, such
as a number of Points, Inner and Outer
| | 01:36 | Radius, rounding, et cetera. I'll twirl that up.
| | 01:39 | Most of the shape effects can
be applied after a shape group.
| | 01:43 | However, I like to keep things inside
the shape group just for organization.
| | 01:47 | So I'm going to make sure I have by
group selected before I use the Add button.
| | 01:50 | The first one we're going to
play around with is Trim Paths.
| | 01:55 | This is a way you can make a shape layer
draw on or draw off by animating the
| | 02:00 | Start or End properties.
| | 02:04 | If we turn off our fill for a second
and did Trim Paths, you'll see we'd be
| | 02:11 | trimming just our stroke.
| | 02:13 | Now I'll turn that fill back on.
| | 02:18 | If you have multiple shapes inside your
shape group, you can go ahead and draw them
| | 02:24 | all on simultaneously or one after the other.
| | 02:27 | This is very similar to what the
Stroke effect could do with mask shapes.
| | 02:33 | One other thing that's kind of
interesting about Trim Paths is if you want to
| | 02:35 | have a partial path, like say that much,
you can use the Offset parameter to
| | 02:41 | chase around your shape.
| | 02:43 | Again, that's particularly useful if you
happen to set your fill off and all you
| | 02:48 | have is a stroke, because now you'll
chase around the outline of your shape.
| | 02:52 | I can turn off my Outlines, so
you can see that more in isolation.
| | 03:00 | I'll turn this back on so
you can see the original shape.
| | 03:04 | Like all other elements of a shape
group, you do have a visibility eyeball
| | 03:07 | right next to your shape effects.
And I'll just turn off Trim Paths for now.
| | 03:12 | I'll select my shape group again and
this time pick something a little bit
| | 03:16 | more fun, like Twist.
| | 03:19 | What Twist does is very simply
twist your shape around a center point.
| | 03:23 | And you can see you can quickly
create really cool things like saw blades,
| | 03:28 | tribal tattoo forms, et cetera.
| | 03:31 | Since twist is happening after your
shape path, any change to your shape path
| | 03:38 | will then get twisted.
| | 03:39 | For example, if you were to animate
the radius, you'll get some interesting
| | 03:44 | effects. Same with things such as the
Roundness; those will get twisted as well. And I'll undo.
| | 03:51 | Twirl that up, twirl up Twist, and turn that off.
| | 03:55 | Select my group, and we'll
keep getting more complex.
| | 03:58 | Beyond Twist is one of my
favorite shape effects, Pucker & Bloat.
| | 04:03 | Not only does it have great name, it
creates some very fun distortions to your shapes.
| | 04:09 | Basically it decides if the segments
between vertices of the shape get bowed
| | 04:15 | outward or pulled inward.
| | 04:17 | Outward is bloating, inward is
puckering, and you'll see some interesting things
| | 04:24 | happen at the vertices.
| | 04:25 | As you pucker in, the overshoot back out again.
| | 04:28 | So this is a way of quickly
creating some very complex shapes.
| | 04:34 | So as you can see how things fill in,
I'll turn on that solid color again.
| | 04:39 | This, like virtually any other primary
shape layers, can be animated, so you can
| | 04:43 | create some really fun graphical animations
| | 04:47 | with frankly a minimum
amount of work on your part.
| | 04:49 | For example, this shape would have
taken quite a while to draw by hand, but
| | 04:53 | instead, it's just a four-
point star and a shape affect.
| | 04:57 | I'll knock this down a little bit so
you can see what's going on, and again any
| | 05:01 | changes to say the Radius of
your shapes affect the final result.
| | 05:07 | Twirl this up and turn
off Pucker & Bloat for now.
| | 05:12 | If a Pucker & Bloat is a bit too organic
for you, it's hard-edge brother is Zig Zag.
| | 05:18 | Once I turn that on, you'll see we get
these serrated teeth along the segments
| | 05:24 | of our particular shape.
| | 05:25 | I'll twirl that open, and you have
a couple of different parameters.
| | 05:28 | You have the number of ridges per
segment between vertices, so I can knock
| | 05:33 | that down, just get big
teeth, increase their size.
| | 05:36 | Again the more you push, the more
you overlap and the more interesting
| | 05:39 | shapes that you get.
| | 05:40 | I'll knock this down to something
more sensible, like around there, and you
| | 05:44 | can also choose whether or not you get hard-edged
zigzags or rounded corners to your zigzag.
| | 05:50 | Now hopefully you're seeing
already how fun shape layers can be.
| | 05:54 | I mean even you create all sorts of
complex graphical elements relatively easily.
| | 05:59 | I'll turn off Zig Zag and try another one.
| | 06:03 | Rounded Corners is obviously a very simple one.
| | 06:06 | In this case where I have this star,
you can go ahead and round of those edges.
| | 06:09 | Now since there are rounding parameters
in parametric shapes, you don't need to
| | 06:14 | use Round Corners to achieve that effect.
| | 06:16 | But if you've drawn something with
the Pen tool and you have sharp edges,
| | 06:19 | rounding gives you a way of softening
those edges or to animate the amount of
| | 06:23 | rounding in the path that you've drawn.
| | 06:24 | I'll turn that one off.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Wiggle Paths| 00:07 | There are a few self-animating shape effects.
| | 00:11 | There's Wiggle Transform, which
we'll deal with later, and Wiggle Paths.
| | 00:15 | What Wiggle Paths does is again
break up your shape to the line segments in
| | 00:19 | between the vertices.
| | 00:21 | It gives you Size and Detail kind of like zigzags,
so I'll knock it down
| | 00:24 | to fewer wiggles in between my
segments and increase their Offset, choose
| | 00:31 | whether or not they are smooth or
sharp, but most fun of all, I'll press the
| | 00:36 | spacebar to start a playback.
| | 00:38 | You'll see that it
automatically animates all on its own.
| | 00:43 | The default speed is 2 wiggles a second.
| | 00:46 | If you want to make it a little more
dreamlike, you can slow it down to say half
| | 00:49 | a wiggle a second, and now you
have a much more slow movement.
| | 00:54 | The Correlation decides whether or not
the movement is completely random between
| | 00:58 | segments, where you'll get all
sorts of craziness going on here,
| | 01:02 | or as you get very high, like up into
the 90s, whether or not the shape keeps its
| | 01:07 | general outline in a more
solid way but still wiggles.
| | 01:15 | In addition to auto-animating by
using the Wiggles/Second parameter you can
| | 01:19 | knock that speed down to 0 and then
animate the wiggling my hand, by using the
| | 01:24 | Temporal Phase parameter.
| | 01:26 | You can enable the stopwatch for that.
| | 01:28 | Go between poses, hold on something for
a while, or even accelerate or decelerate,
| | 01:34 | and go to a different pose.
| | 01:36 | Related to but different then Temporal
Phase is also Spatial Phase, which is
| | 01:41 | basically the pattern of the wiggles.
| | 01:43 | This gives you one way of just
tweaking the look of your wiggle paths, and you
| | 01:48 | see this high correlation
| | 01:50 | has given me a more symmetrical shape
than you might imagine from something that's
| | 01:53 | this random. Or again, you can knock it
down to be something completely random.
| | 01:58 | And finally you have Random Seed. Zero
it says generate your own seed based on
| | 02:04 | the layer number, your order inside
the shape group, etc., or you can go ahead
| | 02:08 | and scrub this to get very specific
looks to your wiggling regardless of where
| | 02:12 | this wiggle appears in a group or where it is
in the composition, and I'll
| | 02:15 | go back to 0 for now.
| | 02:17 | Hit the spacebar, no automatic wiggling
because Wiggles/Second has been set to 0.
| | 02:22 | Set it up to 1, spacebar again, and
there's my automated animated shape.
| | 02:26 | In the next movie we'll tackle the Repeater.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Repeater| 00:07 | Most shape effects control what
happens during line segments of your original
| | 00:13 | shape, for example, Zig Zag, Rounded
Corners, Wiggle Paths, et cetera. However, an
| | 00:22 | exception to this is the Repeater,
| | 00:24 | so let's play around
with that for a little bit.
| | 00:26 | If you have access to the exercise files,
open up the Comps 02-Repeater*starter.
| | 00:30 | What I did here is I just used the Pen
tool to create something that looks a bit
| | 00:34 | like a flame, a bit like a
flower petal, something organic.
| | 00:38 | You can go ahead and create your own shape.
| | 00:40 | You'll see in this case I used the
gradient fill instead of a solid-color fill.
| | 00:44 | We'll play with the
gradients just a little bit later on.
| | 00:46 | Now effects like the Repeater are
indeed sensitive to the rendering order
| | 00:52 | of your shape layer.
| | 00:53 | I personally find that quite often I
like to repeat the result of the entire
| | 00:58 | group, including its transformations.
| | 01:01 | So rather than selecting a group,
I'll just select the whole layer, Add >
| | 01:05 | Repeater, and Repeater will now
appear after the entire group.
| | 01:10 | Let's twirl open Repeater, and
we see we do have a Copies parameter.
| | 01:14 | You can scrub this to as many as you
like. I'm going to set 5 for starters. And
| | 01:20 | I can change the Offset, whether or
not my repeats are happening before or
| | 01:25 | after my original shape.
| | 01:27 | I'm going to set my Offset down to
-2 so I'm centered on my original.
| | 01:33 | These two repeats are before.
These two repeats are after.
| | 01:36 | Exactly what's happening with these
repeats is controlled down here in
| | 01:40 | the Transform section.
| | 01:41 | I'll twirl that open, and you'll see
that Repeater defaults to offsetting by a
| | 01:45 | 100 pixels in the x-direction.
| | 01:47 | That means every repeat is another 100
x pixels away from my original shape.
| | 01:54 | Scrub it down to bring them close together;
scrub it up to push them further apart.
| | 01:59 | Notice that my copies that happen
before the original shape are going off the
| | 02:02 | -negative x rather than going off to
the right in positive x. I'm going to
| | 02:07 | bring them a little bit closer together here.
| | 02:08 | And next I'm going to play with Rotation.
| | 02:12 | Again, Transform properties
are added to every repeat.
| | 02:17 | So in this case, my first
positive repeat is rotated 27 degrees,
| | 02:22 | the next one another 27, which is 54, or my
copies before the repeat are going off
| | 02:28 | in a negative rotation.
| | 02:30 | Same thing with Scale.
| | 02:31 | If I increase the Scale, my positive repeats
get larger, my negative repeats get smaller.
| | 02:38 | Again, if you're confused about this
idea of a positive or negative repeat, if I set
| | 02:42 | my Offset just to 0,
| | 02:43 | here's my original shape, and
here are my subsequent repeats.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to hold down Command on Mac
or Ctrl on Windows and slowly scrub down
| | 02:52 | Offset, and you'll see I can tumble my
shapes to all happen before my original,
| | 02:59 | so they rotate negatively and get scaled down.
| | 03:02 | I'm back to -2 and now we're
centered around my original shape again.
| | 03:05 | And for now I'm going to go ahead
and set Scale back to its default 100%.
| | 03:09 | You do have the ability to fade in and
fade out during the course of your repeats.
| | 03:15 | And interestingly, you also
have this Anchor Point parameter.
| | 03:18 | Let' scrub the Anchor Point a little
bit in y, and initially it may not be
| | 03:23 | clear what's going on.
| | 03:24 | Well, remember that we have Position
Offset and Rotation Offset as well.
| | 03:28 | So this is basically affecting the center
around which these offset shapes are being rotated.
| | 03:33 | I'll put that down to 0.
| | 03:35 | Now what's happening makes a lot more sense.
| | 03:37 | I can rotate around the center
part of these shapes or offset to create
| | 03:44 | something that's more circular in pattern.
| | 03:48 | I now return my Anchor Point back to zero.
| | 03:49 | So now I have a bunch of rotated shapes.
| | 03:53 | What's important to remember is that
the Repeater is working on whatever's
| | 03:58 | happening before it in your Timeline's stack.
| | 04:01 | So, any changes you make to the
path or to transformations for that path
| | 04:08 | will then b repeated.
| | 04:10 | For example, if I scale here, all the
repeats are scaled up because it's taking
| | 04:14 | the output of this transform
and repeating those shapes.
| | 04:19 | If I scrub the Anchor Point,
we get a very interesting effect.
| | 04:22 | If I have my one source petal offset
above this center point, now each of these
| | 04:30 | rotations will be in reference to
the one seed shape's anchor point.
| | 04:35 | If you want to create something
symmetrical like a flower, it's a good idea to
| | 04:40 | have one shape offset the way that
you want and then create more repeats.
| | 04:46 | I'm holding Command again to scrub.
| | 04:48 | Maybe I'll go up to 12 a nice, and even number,
and bring Rotation down to nice and even 30.
| | 04:55 | Now we have something that
resembles like a sunburst or a flower.
| | 04:57 | I'm going to go ahead and create a few
more copies and play with the Rotation and
| | 05:03 | then play with my Anchor Points Offset till
I have a nice overlapping shape like this.
| | 05:09 | And again, this is one shape with
Repeater turned off, and this is with
| | 05:13 | Repeater turned on.
| | 05:15 | If you want to rotate the final result,
you don't necessarily want to animate
| | 05:20 | rotation down on Repeater, because
that's just an offset added to each petal.
| | 05:23 | That's doesn't work at all.
| | 05:25 | You can either rotate one petal and that
rotated petal will then be repeated for
| | 05:31 | your final shape, or you can go down
to Transforms for the entire shape layer
| | 05:37 | and rotate your entire layer around. I'll undo.
| | 05:41 | So the Repeater is really handy for
quickly creating geometric shapes out of
| | 05:47 | the one seed shape.
| | 05:48 | And again, if I was to go back to my
path, select it, press V to return to my
| | 05:54 | selection tool, and carefully select one
point, editing the outline of one shape
| | 06:00 | will be repeated for the rest of the petals.
| | 06:03 | I can see, by the way, that one
petal is darker than the others, so
| | 06:06 | I think I have an extra petal here.
| | 06:07 | So I can say either take 360 degrees
and divide it by 24 degrees rotation and
| | 06:17 | that says I should have 15 copies--
| | 06:20 | now I've get a nice copy there--or I
could have gone the other way and said no
| | 06:25 | really I want 16 petals to my flower,
bring out my calculator again and say 360
| | 06:32 | degrees divided by 16 petals equals
22.5 degrees per petal, 22.5. There we go.
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| Wiggle Transform| 00:07 | I've twirled up some of the components
of my shape group, just to clean up my
| | 00:10 | Timeline panel, and we're going to
explore one more shape effect, one called
| | 00:15 | Wiggle Transform. So that you can
understand exactly what's going on underneath
| | 00:19 | the hood, we're going to start with a simpler
shape than this repeated flower petal.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to go back to our original
shape play. I've turned off the polystar
| | 00:27 | because it was very complex, and I've
actually reduced the size of my rectangle,
| | 00:33 | just to make it a little
easier to follow what's going on.
| | 00:35 | You can go ahead and create your own
ellipse, rectangle, just some shape where you
| | 00:39 | can easily tell how it's
rotating and how it's scaling.
| | 00:42 | Let's say that I want this shape to
automatically move around, scale, and rotate.
| | 00:46 | Well, as you may remember from earlier
After Effects lessons, there are some
| | 00:49 | animation presets in the Behaviors
categories that could wiggle the scale,
| | 00:56 | rotation, position, et cetera, of shapes.
| | 00:59 | However, this takes an entire layer
after it's been rendered as pixels and then
| | 01:04 | does these transformations to it.
| | 01:05 | If you scale it up, it's going to get soft
because pixels don't like to be scaled up.
| | 01:10 | The nice thing about shape layers is
that they're vector artwork at this point.
| | 01:14 | As long as you're inside this shape group,
all the shape effects are working on
| | 01:19 | the original vectors, and they're
going to render clean at any size.
| | 01:22 | So let's go ahead and apply Wiggle
Transform to this little rounded rectangle.
| | 01:28 | Now unlike Wiggle Paths, if I
press the spacebar, nothing happens.
| | 01:33 | I'm not getting any automated animation.
| | 01:35 | Well, that's no fault of Wiggle Transform.
| | 01:38 | It does indeed have its Wiggles/Second
defaulting to 2.0, as well as these other
| | 01:41 | parameters, which you're maybe familiar
with now from Wiggle Paths, the Wiggle
| | 01:44 | you selected for text, et cetera.
| | 01:46 | But you have a separate Transform
section that starts off with no offset.
| | 01:51 | Let's start off by giving it
an Offset in the X direction.
| | 01:55 | Even though I'm scrubbing positive X,
you might notice it's moving a little bit
| | 02:00 | in the negative direction.
| | 02:01 | That's because this is not an absolute value.
| | 02:04 | It's a range plus or minus
that you're going to wiggle.
| | 02:07 | I'll press 0 to RAM-preview, and now
you see that I have my rectangle moving
| | 02:13 | randomly back and forth along this X dimension.
| | 02:18 | I can slow this down a little bit
to make it a little bit easier to
| | 02:22 | follow what's going on. Okay.
| | 02:26 | Let's say in addition to moving back
and forth in X, we would also like this
| | 02:30 | rectangle to rotate randomly.
| | 02:33 | So enter a value of 180 degrees, RAM-Preview
again, and now you see it's moving left and
| | 02:39 | right as well as rotating.
| | 02:42 | But if you look at it closely, you might
notice an interesting thing is happening.
| | 02:45 | When it moves to the left, it's
also rotating counterclockwise.
| | 02:50 | When it's moving to the right,
it's also rotating clockwise.
| | 02:55 | Just for fun, let's add a little bit
of scale here so you can see that too.
| | 03:01 | Now, as it moves to the
right and rotates clockwise,
| | 03:04 | it also gets bigger, and as it
moves to the left and rotates
| | 03:07 | counterclockwise, it gets smaller.
| | 03:10 | In other words, all of these
wiggle transformations are coordinated.
| | 03:15 | But what's going on here?
| | 03:16 | Well, what's happening underneath the
hood is the Wiggle Transform itself is
| | 03:21 | creating a stream of one value that's
randomly moving back and forth between -1 and +1.
| | 03:29 | That internal value is then
multiplied by your transform settings and
| | 03:36 | those results are applied to all of
your shape group transformations that
| | 03:40 | are happening above it.
| | 03:43 | Therefore, all your wiggles are coordinated.
| | 03:46 | Just to simplify things, I'm
going to go back to a Scale of 0.
| | 03:50 | Let's say we want the rotation to
not move in the same way that the
| | 03:54 | X-position is moving.
| | 03:55 | Well, to do that, we just
need two Wiggle Transforms.
| | 04:00 | I'll take this one and duplicate it.
| | 04:03 | In my first one, I'll keep my X-
position but zero out my rotation, and in my
| | 04:10 | second one, hit Transform, I'll zero out
its position but keep its rotation.
| | 04:18 | Now, when I RAM-preview, you'll see
the two movements are completely random.
| | 04:23 | The rotation is different from the X movement.
| | 04:27 | So if you want truly random behavior
from Wiggle Transform, you do indeed need
| | 04:32 | to use one Wiggle Transform effect for
every transform that you want randomized.
| | 04:38 | On the other hand, if you want things
coordinated, put them all inside one
| | 04:41 | Wiggle Transform effect.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining Wiggle Transform with the Repeater| 00:07 | Now that we know how Wiggle Transform is
working underneath the hood, let's apply
| | 00:10 | it to our shape group that has a repeater
and look at some render-order issues that
| | 00:14 | also pop up with Wiggle Transform.
| | 00:17 | I'll select my shape layer,
apply Wiggle Transform.
| | 00:21 | It's defaulting to being before the repeater.
| | 00:23 | I'll twirl it open, and say let's
randomize a little bit of rotation, something
| | 00:29 | subtle like 30 degrees, and a
little bit of scale, like maybe 40%.
| | 00:35 | I'll RAM-preview, and I'll see that
basically all that petals are doing the
| | 00:42 | same thing together.
| | 00:43 | Well, this is not Wiggle Transform's fault.
| | 00:46 | This is a rendering order issue.
| | 00:49 | Over here in the Timeline panel we'll
see that Wiggle is happening after the
| | 00:54 | shape group but before the Repeater.
| | 00:57 | That means we have our single shape,
we're wiggling that single shape--which
| | 01:03 | looks like this--and then that
wiggled shape is being repeated.
| | 01:11 | That's why all the petals
are doing the same thing.
| | 01:15 | One wiggled petal is getting repeated.
| | 01:18 | Well, what if we want each of those
pedals to do something different?
| | 01:23 | No problem. Just drag a
Repeater before Wiggle Transform.
| | 01:29 | Now, we have a shape that's being
repeated, and now all of those individual
| | 01:36 | shapes are going to get a
separate wiggle. And here's the result.
| | 01:40 | Now, if this is too chaotic for you, no
problem. Twirl open Wiggle Transform and
| | 01:49 | remember this handy Correlation parameter.
| | 01:51 | That decides whether or not things are
completely random, like this, or whether or not
| | 01:57 | they're correlated, or
coordinated with each other.
| | 01:59 | 100% means everything moves together,
but something a little bit off in the
| | 02:04 | 90s just gives this nice sort of wave motion
throughout the entire shape with more coordination.
| | 02:12 | I'll slow this down to something far
more organic, like 0.3 wiggles a second, RAM-
| | 02:20 | preview, and let that play back, and
there's something a little more dreamlike.
| | 02:28 | So hopefully you can see now that
shape effects make it very easy to take one
| | 02:34 | or multiple shape paths and quickly create
complex, even self-animating final shape results.
| | 02:42 | I personally find this to be a huge time
saver whether I'm just trying to create
| | 02:46 | a flower or fill my background with
lots of interesting graphical elements.
| | 02:50 | When you're done, go up to the top of
the Composition panel and select Close
| | 02:54 | All to clean up your display, and in
the next few chapters, we'll focus on some
| | 02:58 | exercises to show off other
things you can do with shape layers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Crosshair ExerciseEditing gradients| 00:07 | In this chapter, we're going to
create a little crosshair display element.
| | 00:12 | And doing so, we're going to learn how
to create gradient fills and also work a
| | 00:15 | little bit more with the Pen tool.
| | 00:18 | If you have the exercise files,
open up the comp 04-Display*starter.
| | 00:22 | Since we intend to use this as an
element in another composition later on,
| | 00:26 | we've just gone ahead and created a
relatively small 400x400 pixel composition.
| | 00:31 | And we've created a rounded rectangle
or more accurately, a rounded square, as
| | 00:34 | our starting point.
| | 00:35 | I'll select that shape layer, and we'll see
the fill and stroke reappear on my toolbar.
| | 00:40 | If I click on Fill, what we see it currently
is a solid color with an opacity of 100%.
| | 00:47 | I can confirm that by
turning on the transparency grid.
| | 00:50 | Obviously, we can't see through this, which
doesn't make it all that great of a crosshair.
| | 00:54 | You need to be able to see through those things
to see what you're aiming at. Well, that's okay.
| | 00:57 | You can change the fill color
and fill type after the fact.
| | 01:01 | One way is just to click on the Fill
options and change it right here along the
| | 01:06 | top, or if you're the type of person who
likes to learn keyboard shortcuts, hold
| | 01:10 | Option on Mac or Alt on Windows and
click on the color swatch until it cycles
| | 01:14 | through to the type of fill that you want.
| | 01:16 | This is a linear gradient fill.
| | 01:19 | But for a bull's eye, I think we want a
radial one that radiates out from a center point,
| | 01:23 | so I'll Option+Click or Alt+Click one
more time and now I have a radial fill.
| | 01:28 | When you have a gradient and you
have the shape group with that gradient
| | 01:33 | selected, you will see an additional set
of user interface elements that define
| | 01:37 | where the center of that gradient is--
I'll undo--and how far it extends.
| | 01:43 | In this case, I want to extend out
to the edges of my rectangular shape,
| | 01:47 | so I'm going to drop off
that dot right around here.
| | 01:51 | Notice you will not see that user
interface if you just have the shape layer
| | 01:54 | selected, because at this point,
After Effects does not know what fill you
| | 01:58 | might be talking about.
| | 01:59 | So make sure you select at least the
group that has that gradient fill, or
| | 02:03 | even the effect itself.
| | 02:05 | Next, let's edit the
colors used in that gradient.
| | 02:10 | I'll go back and just normally
click on my fill color--no Option or Alt
| | 02:13 | has held down now--and instead of our
normal color picker, we get this Gradient Editor.
| | 02:19 | Now, this Gradient Editor is very powerful.
| | 02:21 | Not only does it allow us to edit the
colors used, it also allows us to edit the
| | 02:26 | opacities across this gradient.
| | 02:28 | This always remembers the last gradient
you created, and it looks like the last
| | 02:31 | one I made was rather complex.
| | 02:33 | Let's simplify things.
| | 02:35 | I'm going to remove a couple of these
stops by merely pulling them away from the
| | 02:40 | gradient bar and take the remaining
opacity stops and drag them out so they go
| | 02:46 | over the full extent of my
gradient, from my start to my stop.
| | 02:51 | Now, I mentioned earlier the crosshairs are a
lot more useful if the middle is transparent.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to select this left-hand
opacity stop, which is for the center
| | 03:00 | point, and reduce the Opacity down to a
very low value, so you still see mostly
| | 03:06 | through my gradient but just have this
little bit of color tint left. And then I'll
| | 03:10 | select my ending stop and bring it down as well.
| | 03:16 | So overall, I have a translucent
piece of, say, glass for my crosshair site.
| | 03:21 | But most importantly, I am very
transparent in the middle, so I can see through it.
| | 03:26 | By the way, in between any pair of
gradient stops, you're going to get this
| | 03:30 | midpoint, which allows you to edit the
curve of how colors or opacities fall off
| | 03:36 | between these stops.
| | 03:37 | For example, I can keep it transparent
for much longer and just have tint in the
| | 03:41 | corners, or I can bring the tint in
much faster and just have a center spot
| | 03:45 | that's more transparent.
| | 03:46 | I'm going to put it around here for now,
so I have a nice vignetting on the corners.
| | 03:50 | Now, let's change the colors.
| | 03:52 | Actually, this turquoise to black
range isn't so bad, but just to get some
| | 03:55 | exercise, I am going to drag these out
to the ends again, make the center some
| | 04:01 | variation on red, maybe a little bit
of a darker tint of red off to that
| | 04:06 | direction, and then leave my far corners black.
| | 04:12 | Again, I can edit these later if I
want to. I put in my fall off, so I can have
| | 04:16 | red for most of the shape.
| | 04:17 | We're just tinting the
center a little bit like that.
| | 04:20 | Click OK and now I have my
gradient-filled rounded rectangle.
| | 04:25 | I'll turn off the transparency grid.
| | 04:27 | Now, I can see it against my gray background.
| | 04:30 | And again, you could always edit
where the gradient starts and stops.
| | 04:34 | You can drag these points to do so.
| | 04:37 | Again, you need to have the Selection
tool active and have the gradient or
| | 04:41 | shape group selected. Or frankly, you
can just twirl open the gradient fill
| | 04:46 | and manually edit the start and end points,
as well as other parameters of this gradient.
| | 04:50 | For example, you can change the
Highlight Length to create something that's more
| | 04:54 | of an angled spotlight or hotspot sort of look.
| | 04:57 | But I'll keep it centered
for this particular purpose.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating open paths| 00:07 | Now that I've created the lens of my
crosshair, I need to create my crosshair lines.
| | 00:12 | There is a couple of ways I can do that.
| | 00:14 | One, I could create just very skinny
rectangles and put them in position for
| | 00:19 | those lines. Or I could use the Pen
tool to create what's referred to as open
| | 00:24 | paths or open shapes--just use them to create
a line without having to close it and fill it.
| | 00:29 | So I'm going to select the Pen tool.
| | 00:31 | Since I want these pen paths to be part
of the same shape, I want to make sure
| | 00:35 | that this is set to Tool Creates
Shape, as opposed to Tool Creates Mask.
| | 00:40 | So I'll click that and by default, I'm
going to be using the current fill and stroke.
| | 00:45 | However, just adding a new shape with
the Pen tool will create a new shape group,
| | 00:51 | which gives me a brand new stroke and
a brand new fill, so I can change these
| | 00:54 | colors later if I want to.
| | 00:56 | Okay, when I'm drawing with the Pen tool,
I'm pretty much drawing free-form.
| | 01:00 | If I want to draw something very
precise, like a precisely vertical line, I'm
| | 01:04 | going to need some help.
| | 01:06 | I can open up the Info panel, which will
give me numeric feedback of where my cursor is.
| | 01:10 | I can also take advantage of guides.
| | 01:13 | For example, I like to use the Title/
Action Safe Guide, because in addition to
| | 01:18 | showing me those safe areas, it gives
me a little crosshair in the middle and
| | 01:21 | it shows me little lines for where
the center of my composition is.
| | 01:25 | Now, this composition happens
to be 400 pixels wide and tall.
| | 01:30 | So I want to start it at 200 pixels
across to make sure it's perfectly vertical,
| | 01:35 | and let's see where we want that height to be.
| | 01:37 | So I'd say--I will press
apostrophe to turn off the grid--
| | 01:41 | maybe I want to be about here
in relationship with this shape.
| | 01:44 | I see Y = 18, X = 200, which is
perfectly halfway. That's fantastic.
| | 01:51 | I'll click once and there is my first point.
| | 01:54 | Now I need to draw my second point.
| | 01:56 | Again, I want to make sure
my X is exactly 200 pixels.
| | 01:59 | I'm looking in the Info panel. And now
I need to do a little math in my head:
| | 02:02 | 400 pixels minus the 18
that I had earlier will be 382.
| | 02:07 | So let's carefully move my cursor up
to 382, make sure X is correct, and
| | 02:13 | click one more time.
| | 02:15 | There is my line, and you see it got a stroke.
| | 02:18 | At this point, there's no need to keep
clicking because I might accidentally
| | 02:21 | create a closed-path shape.
| | 02:23 | So instead, I'll return to the Selection tool.
And here's my shape as its own shape group.
| | 02:31 | Again, that means it has its own stroke.
| | 02:34 | So if I want the crosshair lines to be
a little wider, I can just go ahead and
| | 02:38 | increase it like that.
| | 02:39 | I don't need a fill for a line, so I
can turn it off so I'm not distracted by
| | 02:44 | its user interface.
| | 02:45 | I can even delete it if I wanted to.
| | 02:48 | Okay, I need to create one
more line going this direction.
| | 02:51 | I can either repeat the same
exercise with the Pen tool or I can cheat.
| | 02:56 | I am going to select this path and
use Command+D or Ctrl+D to duplicate it.
| | 03:00 | So I have two pen paths
inside this one shape group.
| | 03:06 | I'm going to double-click one of the
vertices of my path to bring up the Free
| | 03:10 | Transform controls, rotate it, hold down the
Shift key, and that will lock me to 45-degree angles.
| | 03:17 | I'll rotate it up to 90 degrees, and
now I have my second crosshair.
| | 03:22 | So there's my crosshairs, and there's my lens.
| | 03:26 | If you're curious how we put this in
action and you have the exercise files,
| | 03:30 | open up Comps_Finished > 04-Display_final2.
| | 03:34 | Here's our final animation.
| | 03:36 | I've hit 0 to RAM-preview.
| | 03:41 | What I did was create my
display in its own composition.
| | 03:45 | I'll tap the Shift key, navigate back
to that crosshair--it looks very similar to
| | 03:49 | what you just made--tap Shift again, go
back to my final comp, and I've animated
| | 03:54 | that entire shape group.
| | 03:55 | I'll put this in its own composition
to make it easy for you to study in
| | 03:58 | isolation, but you could have done
this all in one composition as well.
| | 04:02 | When you're done, go up to the Comp
panel, select Close All, and we'll try our
| | 04:06 | hand at another exercise, this time
creating abstract imagery rather than a very
| | 04:10 | specific glyph like this crosshair.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Abstract Texture ExerciseAutomatic animation| 00:07 | Our goal in this exercise is to create
a random abstract animating shape akin to
| | 00:13 | into this animated bar that I created earlier.
| | 00:17 | Now you're probably use to looking at
shape layers and thinking, Well, they are
| | 00:20 | hard-edged vector art. How do
you create something like this?
| | 00:23 | Well it's done really that hard. If you have the
exercise files, open up the comp 05-Abstract*starter.
| | 00:30 | If you don't have the files, it's pretty simple.
| | 00:31 | You just go ahead and make a rounded
rectangle, give it a separate fill and stroke.
| | 00:36 | I'll select the layer, and in this
case I've made the fill 50%, just so I get
| | 00:40 | some more interesting color variations when
copies of the shape overlap. I'll click OK.
| | 00:46 | The first thing I want to do is create
some automatic movement in this layer.
| | 00:48 | Now as I mentioned earlier, underneath
the Effects & Presets, inside Animation/
| | 00:54 | Presets/Behaviors, you do have
effects such as Wiggle - position.
| | 01:00 | The problem is this moves the entire
layer, but what we want are a bunch of
| | 01:05 | individual shapes on the same layer
all moving independent from each other.
| | 01:10 | So rather than use normal effects,
we're going to use shape effects.
| | 01:14 | I will make sure my layer is
selected and add Wiggle Transform.
| | 01:19 | Again, nothing happens initially
because the transforms default to zero.
| | 01:24 | So I will twirl open Wiggles Transforms.
This composition is 720 pixels across.
| | 01:33 | Let's see I want this to go across
entire with my comp, so I'm going to set up
| | 01:37 | the X wiggle to at least 360 or so, so I
have the full range of this composition,
| | 01:42 | and there's some movement.
| | 01:43 | I like to have some size variation as
well so things seems to grow and recede.
| | 01:50 | So I'll go ahead and add a scale to 100%.
| | 01:51 | A 100% larger, which doubles its size, or
100% smaller, which takes it down to invisible.
| | 01:57 | I'll RAM-preview, and I have my wiggle
movement, but you probably remember what
| | 02:05 | we discussed earlier, that
unfortunately if you try to do everything with one
| | 02:08 | Wiggle Transform all these
transforms are going to be coordinated.
| | 02:13 | I'd prefer these to be separate
from each other, and frankly, I would like
| | 02:15 | them to be slower as well.
| | 02:17 | So I will slow this down to half.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to leave this guy
just for wiggling position.
| | 02:22 | I'm going to zero out Scale on
this one so I just have movement.
| | 02:28 | Take that Wiggle Transform. Duplicate it.
| | 02:32 | I'll twirl it open, open up its
transformations, zero out the X, increase
| | 02:39 | its Scale back to 100.
| | 02:42 | And now I've got movement
decoupled from the scaling.
| | 02:48 | The dreamy movement is okay.
| | 02:50 | I wish it would scale it a little bit faster.
| | 02:51 | So let's go ahead and up that
up to little faster of a wiggle.
| | 02:54 | There's more of a pulsing action. And
notice that my movement is mostly off
| | 03:01 | to the right side, even though it should be
going back and forth by the same measurement.
| | 03:05 | I'll turn it off. My shape is indeed centered.
| | 03:09 | Well, there is this parameter in
Wiggle Transform called Random Seed,
| | 03:12 | where you can go ahead and try out
different random values and see if one gives
| | 03:17 | you a more desirable pattern than another.
| | 03:18 | I'm preferring this, because I'm
getting a little bit more movement across.
| | 03:25 | I might try a couple more, like five here.
| | 03:30 | That's an even better variation.
I'll stick with this one for now.
| | 03:36 | So we have one shape wiggling.
| | 03:38 | In the next movie, we're going
to create a swarm of shapes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a swarm| 00:08 | In the previous movie, I created
this one randomly moving shape.
| | 00:12 | I used the one wiggle for its scale
and another wiggle for its position.
| | 00:17 | Now let's create a whole bunch of
these shapes. To do so, we want to use the
| | 00:21 | Repeater to take this one shape and repeat it
multiple times. So I'll select Add > Repeater.
| | 00:28 | Initially, Repeater creates three copies.
| | 00:30 | Let's create a bunch more, like 18 or so.
| | 00:33 | Now the Repeater by default pushes
things off in the X dimension, but even more
| | 00:38 | important, if I just RAM-preview, you'll see
that all these shapes are moving in unison.
| | 00:44 | Well, that's a rendering-order issue.
| | 00:46 | We're wiggling our shape. Then we're
repeating that wiggle. Instead, we want to
| | 00:52 | repeat our shape, then wiggle all
those repeats. I'll RAM-preview.
| | 00:59 | This is more what I wanted and while I'm
at it, I'm going to cut down my
| | 01:03 | offset to zero because I can go ahead
and repeat them on top of each other and
| | 01:07 | let them all wiggle independently.
| | 01:10 | This is a lot more fun. I like this.
| | 01:12 | I'm going to show you a
couple of more tricks here.
| | 01:16 | For one, copies do not
need to be integer values.
| | 01:21 | For examples, let's go down to the 2 copies.
| | 01:23 | If I was to scrub this by holding
Command or Ctrl, I'll go in smaller intervals,
| | 01:28 | and any partial copy will
be partially transparent.
| | 01:32 | So if was to set this to a value, say,
2 1/2, I have two whole copies and one, in
| | 01:38 | this case, 60% opaque copy.
| | 01:40 | So that's one way of creating some variation.
| | 01:44 | Another way is to take advantage of
the Start and End opacity, so they can go
| | 01:48 | ahead and fade up from zero to full
opacity, and in that case I do want to
| | 01:52 | make this an integer, like 15.
| | 01:55 | So now I have a lot of
independent opacities fading in and out.
| | 01:58 | If I don't want that much variation, I
might go ahead and set this to something a
| | 02:04 | little less extreme, like say 50%,
and now I go from 15 to 100% opacity.
| | 02:13 | So now I have a nice swarming shape.
| | 02:16 | The problem is that it's still very
distinct, and my goal here was to create
| | 02:19 | something very amorphous.
| | 02:20 | Well, in the next movie, let's add a
few effects and treatments to it to
| | 02:24 | get that desired look.
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| Blending multiple shapes into a texture| 00:08 | Here we have our swarm of rectangles.
| | 00:11 | Let's make it a little bit more mysterious.
| | 00:15 | The easiest way to do that is to use a
glow and blur effects, and one blur effect
| | 00:19 | you should be familiar with if you
are not already using it is Box Blur.
| | 00:22 | I will select my shape layer and
apply Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Box Blur.
| | 00:30 | At its default of 1 iterations, Box
Blur performs a very rough blur rather than
| | 00:37 | something that's very
smooth like a Gaussian blur.
| | 00:40 | As a result, you get something
it's a bit more geometric shaped.
| | 00:44 | If you increase the iterations to
like 3 or 4, which gets you in a range of
| | 00:47 | Gaussian blur, you get a much softer,
more ghostly shape, and you keep increasing
| | 00:52 | it till you just get a
cloud of pixels like that.
| | 00:55 | So this one blur effect
has lots of different looks.
| | 01:00 | I am going to go down to one, just to
create something interesting and geometric,
| | 01:04 | and I can always add
another blur later on if I want to.
| | 01:07 | I want to tweak the Blur
Radius to get the look that I like.
| | 01:10 | Let's cut it down a little bit and
create this interesting, nice, central core
| | 01:14 | and then a glow going out from there.
| | 01:17 | Once you have applied a blur, there is
a lots of things you can do with shapes
| | 01:21 | that normally would create something as
very sharp and geometric, but which would now be
| | 01:25 | obscured by the fact that you've
applied a blur to the whole thing.
| | 01:28 | For example, if I add to the shape
group something like Pucker & Bloat, I
| | 01:33 | can have a much more complex shape as my
underlying seed then just a simple rectangle.
| | 01:40 | I will RAM-preview that quickly, and now
we have something that's little bit more
| | 01:44 | like an alien insect moving
around, than just a simple rectangle.
| | 01:49 | To remind you again what this
looks like, I will turn off the blur.
| | 01:52 | I have all these interesting bloated
shapes. I will turn off the Repeater,
| | 01:56 | create something more complex, or less,
and turn Repeater back on. Going negative
| | 02:02 | is also interesting.
| | 02:04 | I can also animate this distorted shape.
| | 02:07 | If you remember from the lesson on
expressions, there is this wonderful
| | 02:10 | universal tool called the Wiggle expression.
| | 02:13 | I will hold Option on Mac, Alt on
Windows, click on the stopwatch next to the
| | 02:18 | Pucker & Bloat > Amount and enter Wiggle.
| | 02:21 | Open parenthesis, how fast I want to wiggle.
| | 02:26 | I like something pretty slow, so I am
going to say maybe just 0.6 times a
| | 02:30 | second, and by how much.
| | 02:32 | I think wiggling by is much as a 100,
plus and minus and Pucker & Bloat, might
| | 02:37 | be very interesting.
| | 02:38 | So I will enter that, zero out my
initial value, so I will go plus and minus,
| | 02:44 | Enter, RAM-preview, so now I have a
shape that's changing over time, in addition
| | 02:50 | to moving around, turn my blur
back on, and now I have something far more
| | 02:57 | interesting and more amorphous.
| | 02:58 | You can see bits of my blue stroke and
bits of my purple fill both appearing here.
| | 03:05 | You can play around with things such
as the opacity of that purple fill. Knock
| | 03:09 | it all the way down.
| | 03:11 | That's kind of interesting right there.
| | 03:12 | I will create just hint of color, play
around the stroke width to make it very
| | 03:18 | prominent or very thin. I could apply
other randomized shapes, such as Wiggle
| | 03:25 | Paths, which will make this little
bit more loose and organic in its animation.
| | 03:30 | And I can continue to apply more effects.
| | 03:32 | I can apply another blur to this,
| | 03:35 | I can apply a glow, or I could use layer
styles, which is something I really like
| | 03:39 | for this purpose as well. I'm going to
apply a layer style, Outer Glow.
| | 03:45 | Now I have an interesting glowing shape.
I will go down into my options for Outer Glow.
| | 03:49 | And I can change things like the color. I
have a feeling of something that's more harmonious
| | 03:56 | is going to work better for that.
A little more saturation here, and play around
| | 04:02 | with things such as the size of that glow.
| | 04:04 | Make it a larger, softer shape, such as that.
| | 04:09 | RAM-preview, and there is my abstract
animating background. And this all started
| | 04:19 | from one simple shape.
| | 04:21 | I will turn off the effect.
| | 04:22 | I will turn off the layer style. I will
turn off the Wiggling, the Repeater, the
| | 04:29 | effects, and that's where we started.
| | 04:32 | More interesting with the wiggling
pucker, self-animating wiggle path just to
| | 04:37 | make it more organic, repeated it,
wiggled it, blurred it, glowed it.
| | 04:45 | And it gives you an interesting
alternative to using stock footage or spending
| | 04:50 | times using particle systems
to create looks like these.
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|
|
6. Map Path ExerciseCreating a RotoBezier path| 00:07 | One of the strengths of shape layers
is to create very interesting stroked
| | 00:10 | paths and outlines.
| | 00:12 | If you have access to the exercise files,
open up the comp 06-Map Path*starter.
| | 00:18 | If you don't have the files, go ahead and
create anything you'd like to draw a map path across.
| | 00:21 | Now, the first thing I want to do is
create a path, but I don't want to make it
| | 00:25 | a mask shape on this path; instead, I'm
going to create a brand new shape layer
| | 00:31 | that's going to lay on top of this map.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to make sure
that layer is not selected.
| | 00:36 | I've locked it just to make sure you
can't either; otherwise, we'd be masking it.
| | 00:41 | Second, I'm going to select the Pen tool,
because I want to make this free-form
| | 00:45 | rather than a parametric shape like a square.
| | 00:46 | Let's go ahead and set up
our parameters before we draw.
| | 00:49 | I don't need a fill, since it's just
going to be a stroked path, so I'm going
| | 00:53 | to hold Option or Alt and click on the color
swatch till I get red line, which means no fill.
| | 00:59 | However, I do want the
stroke to be a solid color.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to pick a color for that.
| | 01:04 | For color I want something that's going to
lay down nicely on this map, to contrast it.
| | 01:07 | Maybe I am going to eyedropper this
yellow to start with, and pick a hue that's
| | 01:13 | 180 degrees out of phase with that,
to create maximum contrast.
| | 01:18 | 180 and 42 would be 222.
| | 01:19 | Make it a little bit darker, a little
bit beefier, and I can always alter it
| | 01:26 | after the fact if I want to. Click OK.
| | 01:30 | I want a fairly thick path, so I can
increase this to a larger number, but again,
| | 01:34 | I could always change this after the fact.
| | 01:36 | I just like to have a good starting
point so things feel good when I draw that
| | 01:39 | first line. And in this case I am going
to enable the RotoBezier option for the
| | 01:44 | pen. That means rather than having to
drag out individual Bezier handles for
| | 01:48 | every point, instead I just need to
click in my main points I want to hit and
| | 01:52 | After Effects will draw a
smooth path through those points.
| | 01:56 | So there is RotoBezier.
| | 01:57 | I am going to pick a
path traveling through here.
| | 02:00 | Let's say I am going to start up north,
come down through here, and work my way
| | 02:04 | back up again. I'll click my first
point outside my map. Notice it's already
| | 02:10 | created a brand new shape layer for me.
I want to enter in this corner, come down
| | 02:16 | to this territory, follow this river,
cross this river, go down through here, and
| | 02:23 | cut back up through this area,
and come off the map this way.
| | 02:27 | I can see already this color is going
to be too bright, but I can change that
| | 02:31 | later. And I am done.
Return to my Selection tool.
| | 02:34 | I now have my path on a
shape layer, and I'll twirl it open.
| | 02:37 | There is my contents of my shape path:
stroke, fill turned off since I turn it
| | 02:44 | off up here when I created my shape.
| | 02:46 | And you know that color is annoying me,
so let's go ahead and change it now to
| | 02:50 | something that looks a little bit
nicer, something down in this region.
| | 02:57 | And you can of course change
this to your personal taste.
| | 03:00 | So by default we have a nice solid stroke.
| | 03:04 | I am going to zoom up just a little bit
so I can see this with less aliasing,
| | 03:08 | and in the next movie we are going to
make this stroke much more interesting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dashes and gaps| 00:07 | The default for shape layers is a solid
stroked line, but the Stroke module
| | 00:14 | in your shape group has a
lot of interesting options.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to twirl it open, and I am going to
look at this section called Dashes.
| | 00:22 | This is a way of breaking up that line.
| | 00:24 | Initially, there's nothing underneath it;
| | 00:27 | however, as soon as you click the plus
icon, you will see that your solid line
| | 00:31 | has broken up into a series of dashes.
| | 00:34 | Let us zoom up to 100% so that
you can see that even better.
| | 00:37 | The length of that dash and also the
spacing in between the dash is controlled
| | 00:42 | by scrubbing the Dash parameter.
| | 00:44 | Let's go up to 50 just
for something nice and even.
| | 00:49 | Once we have a longer dash to work
with, you can start thinking about the
| | 00:52 | character of that dash. Namely, how do
we want the ends of that dash to be drawn?
| | 00:58 | That's controlled by the Line Cap parameter.
| | 01:01 | The default is what's called a
Butt Cap because it's straight off.
| | 01:05 | If you would prefer to
round it, choose Round Cap,
| | 01:07 | and now you have something more like sausages,
| | 01:10 | a little bit softer.
| | 01:12 | Projecting Cap is again cut straight
off, but it's longer as opposed to the
| | 01:17 | straight cutoff Butt Cap.
| | 01:18 | We are going to use Round Cap,
because it has a more interesting, more
| | 01:23 | organic, more old-timey feel.
| | 01:25 | Now by default, the dash length and the
space between those dashes is the same.
| | 01:31 | The Rounded Cap is added on
to the length of that dash.
| | 01:34 | That's why right now the dashes
appear a little bit longer than these gaps.
| | 01:37 | But if you want a lot of control,
go to Dashes and hit plus again.
| | 01:42 | This will now give you an
individual gap to go along with your dash.
| | 01:47 | So I'll increase the Gap to where I
have just these slightly segmented line
| | 01:52 | like that, or we can reduce Dash all
the way down to 0 and create a dotted
| | 01:59 | line along this path.
| | 02:00 | Now you are starting to see
the power here, aren't you?
| | 02:03 | Okay, let's add another dash.
| | 02:06 | So I have a long dash, followed by dots.
| | 02:10 | I currently only have one gap. It doesn't look
isn't quite right, so let's round that
| | 02:14 | off to 20, just because I like even
numbers, add another gap, set it to the same
| | 02:20 | value, and now we have evenly spaced dash, dot,
dash, dot, dash, dot. Pretty cool, huh?
| | 02:27 | I will zoom back down.
| | 02:30 | Now we can see that it
extends all the way across our map.
| | 02:33 | And once we see it in context, we may
say, You know, the sausages are looking
| | 02:37 | a little bit large.
| | 02:39 | Let's reduce it down a little bit to fit
the scale of this map a little bit better,
| | 02:44 | or go larger to have very
long curve segments like that.
| | 02:48 | But I will go short for now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a line| 00:07 | Now that we have our stroked path
that goes along the course of this map,
| | 00:12 | we'd like to animate this map path in some way.
| | 00:14 | There's a couple of ways of doing that.
| | 00:16 | One, the Dashes parameter inside
Stroke has a parameter called Offset.
| | 00:24 | Scrubbing or animating this parameter
will move your dashes along your line.
| | 00:29 | Notice that scrubbing towards the right
makes my line go towards the right.
| | 00:34 | If I want to reverse the direction
of my path, I go up to Path, click the
| | 00:39 | Reverse Direction, and now scrubbing a
positive Offset will cause it to animate
| | 00:46 | in the opposite direction.
| | 00:47 | And you can do that with any shapes.
| | 00:50 | All paths do have this Reverse Direction switch.
| | 00:53 | The second approach is to use a shape
effect that we saw earlier, Trim Path, to
| | 00:58 | actually animate entire
length of the path on and off.
| | 01:02 | So I will turn on Trim Paths, twirl it
open, set my End down to 0, then animate
| | 01:08 | it to bring on my dashed line,
and let it travel across my map.
| | 01:14 | I can even set up an animation doing that.
| | 01:17 | So you can draw it on
| | 01:19 | or leave it in place and cause
it to travel along your path.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to zoom back up to 100% and add just a
little bit more polish to this dashed line.
| | 01:30 | Shape layers are vectors, but once you
apply effects to them, they are converted
| | 01:34 | into pixels, and you can
use any pixel-based effect.
| | 01:37 | For example, if I want to add a little
bit of bump to these things, I can add
| | 01:41 | something like Perspective > Bevel Alpha,
increase my Edge Thickness to you get
| | 01:48 | a nice dot like that.
| | 01:49 | Then I can add Effect > Perspective >
Drop Shadow and help lift them off the map that
| | 01:58 | way as well and create something very
dimensional for my path or my stroke.
| | 02:04 | In addition to these effects, there are
also corresponding layer styles for bevel
| | 02:11 | and also drop shadow.
| | 02:13 | And these are even more flexible than
the effects that you find underneath
| | 02:16 | the Perspective menu.
| | 02:18 | If you want to see a finished version
of this and you have the exercise files,
| | 02:21 | go to Project > Comps_Finished, and either
go to Map path which shows my animating
| | 02:27 | path going across my map or for
something a little bit extra, open up 06_Map
| | 02:32 | xtra, where we have taken that large
map composition and performed a little bit
| | 02:37 | of pan and scan, a movement
and a scale across this map.
| | 02:40 | I will hit 0 to RAM-preview.
| | 02:44 | And you see we started zoomed in
on our path, then pull back to see the
| | 02:48 | path across our map.
| | 02:52 | And that's the point I keep stressing
and keep wanting to hit home on: with
| | 02:55 | After Effects, you have a box full with tools.
| | 02:59 | Learn and master these individual tools and
then combine them the way that you want
| | 03:03 | to create more complex animations.
| | 03:05 | When you are done, select Close All,
and we will talk about what to do if you
| | 03:12 | run out of ideas and have trouble
coming up with a nice shape layer animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Animated Logo ExerciseUsing the Repeater to create an end pose| 00:07 | Let's say you are supposed to create an
animated logo for a client, but you are
| | 00:10 | just having trouble getting inspired.
| | 00:12 | Let's explore a couple of different
ways you can use shape layers and other
| | 00:15 | parts of After Effects to help you out.
| | 00:16 | If you have the exercise files,
open up the comp 07-Brainstorm*starter.
| | 00:22 | Let's say you have already gotten this far.
| | 00:24 | You start off with a simple rectangle,
you give it a nice gradient fill--and
| | 00:30 | again, you can edit the
gradient and the opacity as required--
| | 00:34 | and you even used shape effects to
give it a more interesting geometric look.
| | 00:37 | I will twirl this open and you see
Zig Zag has control over how much you push
| | 00:43 | out the side segments, as well
as how complex the final shape is.
| | 00:48 | That's a little crazy.
| | 00:49 | Let's go back to 1. Sometimes
simplicity works very nicely.
| | 00:52 | Well, this is nice, but it's just one shape.
| | 00:57 | You want to have something more to it
and you want to have some movement.
| | 01:00 | Well, what can you do?
| | 01:01 | Well, here's one idea,
| | 01:02 | and that's to fall back on a
shape effect called Repeater.
| | 01:07 | This is a way to quickly take your
one shape and create a more interesting
| | 01:10 | geometric arrangement with it.
| | 01:12 | The default has it going off to the
right, which is okay. And I will add a
| | 01:17 | couple of more repeats to it here.
| | 01:19 | Let's try a few different arrangements.
| | 01:22 | I personally like things to twirl
upon themselves, so I am going to set the
| | 01:25 | position Offset down to 0 for now.
| | 01:27 | You are getting this blown-out center
because I've already used some blending
| | 01:30 | modes to make a more
interesting overlap between the layers.
| | 01:33 | This is what it looks like in Normal
mode, but I will undo, because I do
| | 01:38 | like this interaction.
| | 01:39 | Then I will start playing
with things like Rotation--
| | 01:43 | that's more interesting already--and Scale,
so this repetition gets smaller or larger.
| | 01:50 | And already we're getting a more
interesting geometric form to this shape.
| | 01:55 | Now another thing I like to do with
shape layers is to create spiraling shapes,
| | 01:59 | not just ones that are simply
repeated on top themselves.
| | 02:02 | In an earlier movie, we played around
with using the Transform for a shape group,
| | 02:07 | to go ahead and offset a layer
and create variations like that.
| | 02:13 | You can also use the Anchor
Point inside the Repeater.
| | 02:16 | And the Anchor Point down here is
interesting because it actually is an added
| | 02:20 | effect per copy of your shape layer.
| | 02:22 | So rather than being stacked up neatly, you
now have something that's traveling a bit more.
| | 02:27 | So you can create variations like that.
| | 02:32 | These are interesting looks,
| | 02:33 | but I am going to go ahead and use the
Transform property Anchor Point so I can
| | 02:38 | get all these copies to
touch their end points like that.
| | 02:42 | I will increase Rotation inside the
Repeater so I have got more separation and
| | 02:49 | something little bit more
interesting going on inside my spiral shapes.
| | 02:53 | I adjusted my Rotation so these additional
repeats lined up inside these earlier repeats.
| | 02:59 | And I can play with the Opacity
to have this whole coil fade away.
| | 03:05 | Okay, now we have got a more
interesting shape going on here.
| | 03:07 | This is a bit vertical. Normally video
is very horizontal, especially if you are
| | 03:11 | doing widescreen or high-def video, so
let's make this whole thing sit down in a
| | 03:16 | more horizontal orientation.
| | 03:17 | I can use the Transform properties
for the layer to lay it down, or I can just
| | 03:22 | go ahead and rotate the one with seed shape
and all of the repeated shapes will follow.
| | 03:27 | I will put it to -90 like that.
| | 03:31 | Okay, so Repeater has now taken our shape
and made it a far more interesting logo.
| | 03:36 | In the next movie, let's try
our hand at animating this.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Brainstorm to create an animation| 00:07 | I have an end pose I like. Now I would
like to animate into this end pose.
| | 00:12 | You might remember from earlier After Effects
lessons, such as the previous one on
| | 00:15 | Paint, Puppet, and More, that the
Brainstorm module type After Effects is a
| | 00:20 | good way of creating different "what if?"
scenarios, or different variations on a theme.
| | 00:24 | Well, Brainstorm can also work on keyframes.
| | 00:28 | This is our final end pose, so let's
go to where we want our animation to
| | 00:31 | stop, maybe two seconds, and enable keyframing
for all the parameters we might want to animate.
| | 00:38 | I definitely want to animate these
different Repeater Properties, because that's
| | 00:42 | what created my interesting
geometric shape in the first place.
| | 00:46 | Let's go ahead and do Copies and Offset as well.
| | 00:48 | Zig Zag's size may be fun, but I don't
think I want to animate Ridges per segment.
| | 00:55 | Any parameter that calls for a sudden
jump in my shape when I scrub it will
| | 00:59 | create sudden jumps if I animate that parameter.
| | 01:01 | So in this case I am going to
leave that alone and not animate it.
| | 01:05 | However, for the rectangle itself,
animating its Size might be interesting.
| | 01:10 | So I undo and enable the
animation stopwatch for that.
| | 01:14 | I am going to select my keyframes. I am
going to copy them, go back to home, and paste.
| | 01:21 | So now I have the same
keyframes for my ending and my start.
| | 01:24 | I am going to use Brainstorm to
randomize these starting keyframes.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to make sure I don't
accidentally select parameters
| | 01:32 | I don't want to Brainstorm.
| | 01:34 | This golden box around the I-beam
indicates Brainstorm is going to play
| | 01:38 | with that parameter.
| | 01:39 | So I'll Command+Click or Ctrl+Click to
selectively deselect those properties
| | 01:47 | and make sure just my keyframes
are what's currently selected. Good!
| | 01:52 | The last thing I want to do is set up
a work area. There's no point in
| | 01:56 | previewing a five-second composition,
when my animation finishes at two seconds.
| | 02:00 | So I will go a little bit later in time,
| | 02:02 | press N to end my work area, and Brainstorm.
| | 02:07 | And what I get is my original keyframe,
which is the same as my end pose, plus
| | 02:12 | eight variations on that theme.
| | 02:14 | To see these in motion, I click the play
button and let Brainstorm queue up a preview.
| | 02:20 | It will take a little while to crunch.
| | 02:22 | I am already starting to see some very interesting
possibilities, like this one. That's okay.
| | 02:30 | This is nice, the way it unfolds.
| | 02:33 | That's kind of nice too.
| | 02:34 | So I am going to pick my favorites,
like that one, that one, and that one, and
| | 02:41 | say Brainstorm from those variations.
| | 02:44 | You can click this while you are
still previewing, and it will just go
| | 02:46 | about recalculating it.
| | 02:48 | Oh now that's a very interesting pattern there.
| | 02:50 | I am going to keep an eye on that guy.
| | 02:51 | And the other ones are just kind of
falling into place as before.
| | 02:55 | I don't know if this is going to be
appropriate for the client, so I am just
| | 03:00 | going to save it as a composition
instead of committing to using it right now,
| | 03:06 | but otherwise, this is nice. I still like this.
| | 03:12 | I still like this, maybe a little
bit more variation. Brainstorm again.
| | 03:16 | Oh, that's beautiful.
| | 03:19 | Oh, that's got a lot of possibilities there.
| | 03:24 | What else is going on?
| | 03:25 | Kind of a sudden swoop is nice.
| | 03:32 | I think I am going to use this one,
| | 03:34 | so let's go ahead and say
Apply to my composition.
| | 03:39 | Now I have that animation
that Brainstorm just did for me.
| | 03:43 | If I want to smooth out this animation,
there's a couple of ways of doing it.
| | 03:48 | One, I think I will ease into these
final keyframes values, so I will select
| | 03:51 | them all, right-click on
any one, and choose Easy Ease In.
| | 03:58 | Motion blur is usually nice on things
like this, so I will select my shape
| | 04:02 | layer, enable Motion Blur for the
layer and enable it for the composition, and I
| | 04:07 | might want to play with opacities here,
because this is a bit bright early on.
| | 04:11 | So what was my End and Start Opacity here?
| | 04:16 | And I have a different number of copies as well.
| | 04:18 | Let's start with the whole
thing a bit more mysterious
| | 04:21 | and a bit more transparent like that.
When we get to the end pose, if we
| | 04:27 | wanted to, we could even then fade off the
number of copies and end up with our original icon.
| | 04:32 | So I have got a keyframe there.
| | 04:33 | I think I will revert it to linear by
holding Command or Ctrl and clicking on
| | 04:37 | it, once makes it auto-Bezier,
second time it makes it linear, go to three
| | 04:42 | seconds, and put the Copies down to 1.
| | 04:46 | Extend my work area and RAM-preview.
| | 04:49 | This will take a little bit
longer because we have so many shapes.
| | 04:51 | But it does look like it is
going to be an interesting animation.
| | 05:00 | And fade back to my original.
| | 05:05 | So that's how we use the Repeater and
Brainstorm to take one starting shape and
| | 05:11 | make a more interesting final animation.
| | 05:13 | If you want to see how we took this
further and you have the exercise files, go
| | 05:17 | down into Comps_Finished
and look at Brainstorm-final.
| | 05:22 | We added some layer styles to add some
additional bevel into this. We added some
| | 05:25 | text, layered up some backgrounds.
| | 05:27 | I'll queue up a RAM-preview, and you see we
chose a variation on the animation that had a lot
| | 05:33 | of movement, enabled Motion Blur, and used
Brainstorm to help us to create a really
| | 05:39 | interesting repeated and echoed animation.
| | 05:43 | Almost done with the preview here.
And then this is a simple cascade-type
| | 05:49 | animation you saw in an earlier
After Effect Apprentice lesson.
| | 05:53 | And there is the final animation.
| | 05:55 | Imagine how long it would have taken you
to animate each of those pieces by hand.
| | 05:59 | This is where I love the Repeater, and I love
Brainstorm and in general, I love shape layers.
| | 06:05 | I think they're one of the best
additions to After Effects for a motion
| | 06:08 | graphics artist like me.
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|
|
8. Ray-Traced 3D and Shapes (CS6 only)Geometry options (new in CS6)| 00:07 | After Effects CS6 saw the addition
of a ray-traced 3D rendering engine.
| | 00:13 | With that came the ability to extrude
and bevel text layers and shape layers,
| | 00:19 | plus the ability to make 3D objects
transparent, reflective, and a whole bunch
| | 00:23 | of other capabilities.
| | 00:24 | We demonstrated these capabilities back
in the lesson on 3D space, but we showed
| | 00:28 | them off using text layers.
| | 00:30 | I want to end the exercises in this
lesson by showing you how to apply the same
| | 00:35 | techniques to shape layers.
| | 00:37 | If you have access to the CS6 version
of the project files, open up the comp
| | 00:41 | 08-Extruding Shapes* starter.
And I've done a bit a work setting up this
| | 00:46 | composition for you ahead of time.
| | 00:47 | Most important is that it has been
set to use the ray-traced 3D renderer.
| | 00:53 | Again, this was not
available prior to After Effects CS6.
| | 00:57 | If I was to click on this and go back
to the old classic 3D renderer, referred
| | 01:01 | to as Advanced 3D in 5.5 and earlier,
you'll notice several things changed, such
| | 01:06 | as these layers are intersecting, et cetera.
| | 01:08 | That's because in this composition,
with the ray-traced renderer I've taken
| | 01:13 | advantage of making our background an
Environment Layer, so it wraps completely
| | 01:19 | around the world. This layer
is actually a large panorama.
| | 01:22 | I've also already set up a camera, a
couple of lights, and a simple shape layer
| | 01:28 | for you, just to save you time.
| | 01:29 | It's a poly star with a bit
of roundness added to it.
| | 01:32 | I'll twirl it close for now and
focus on the Geometry options.
| | 01:37 | This again is new as of After Effects
CS6, and in CS6 only available for text
| | 01:42 | layers and shape layers if you're
using the ray-traced 3D renderer.
| | 01:47 | I'll twirl this down and
I'll extrude my shape layer.
| | 01:50 | In other words, give it some depth.
| | 01:51 | When you add depth to any layer,
you do need lighting to be able to see the
| | 01:56 | effects of that depth.
| | 01:57 | Without lightning, it's just a solid
blob, because the sides and faces are
| | 02:02 | being shaded the same.
| | 02:03 | You need at least one light to show the
differences in these shadings, depending
| | 02:08 | on how the light is hitting those layers,
and I'd like to add some form of fill
| | 02:12 | light, just to fill in the areas
otherwise not hit by my one main light.
| | 02:17 | Once you've extruded a layer, you can
also bevel it, a straight angular bevel.
| | 02:22 | It's just a nice chiseled edge.
| | 02:23 | I'm going to fatten this up a little
bit so you can see what's going on.
| | 02:26 | For text, I personally tend to like very
elegant, thin extrusions and bevels, but
| | 02:31 | for shape layers, well, you're creating
3D geometry, you could have whatever fun
| | 02:35 | you want with these things.
| | 02:37 | Angular is the most common bevel.
| | 02:39 | Convex provides that rounded rubbery sort
of look. And my personal favorite, Concave.
| | 02:45 | I like this scooped-out bevel because
it allows more possibilities for light to
| | 02:51 | reflect differently along the curve of
that bevel, for shadows to be cast from
| | 02:55 | the layer onto itself, and also for specular
highlights to be kicked back at the viewer.
| | 02:59 | Now, it's important to note
this is still a live shape layer.
| | 03:03 | I can go ahead and change its fill
color, and it indeed is interactive.
| | 03:08 | I can even change some of its
poly star parameters, such as the amount of
| | 03:12 | roundness on the edges.
| | 03:13 | And that's one of the fun things
about After Effects in general.
| | 03:16 | It tends to keep as many parameters as
it can live so you can edit interactively
| | 03:21 | and so you can animate them.
| | 03:23 | Anyway, that's basic extrusions and beveling.
| | 03:25 | In the next movie, let's dive into some
of the new material options, including
| | 03:32 | Transparency and Reflectivity.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Material options (new in CS6)| 00:07 | In the previous movie we
extruded and beveled our shape layer.
| | 00:11 | In this movie we're going to make it far
more interesting by playing around with
| | 00:14 | its transparency and reflectivity.
| | 00:17 | Transparency is how you make an object
appear to be made out of, say, acrylic or glass.
| | 00:21 | As I increase Transparency, you will see
through the faces of the shape layer to
| | 00:27 | the back surfaces, the back bevels, and
the environment layer behind everything.
| | 00:32 | When you make something transparent,
it can be hard to make out the shape,
| | 00:37 | because the more transparent you go,
the less diffuse color you can see.
| | 00:41 | All I have here are the specular
highlights to make out the shape of the layer.
| | 00:45 | So I tend to balance these off by having
a little bit less transparency, just to
| | 00:50 | have a little bit of body there, but
also by increasing Transparency Rolloff.
| | 00:54 | This parameter affects how transparent
the object is based on what angle you're
| | 00:59 | viewing that particular surface.
| | 01:01 | As I increase it, you'll see the
surfaces that are at angles, like some of the
| | 01:06 | bevels in the sides, take on
more definition. Before and after.
| | 01:09 | Now, the real fun with transparency is
playing around with the Index of Refraction.
| | 01:14 | Although this object is transparent,
it's not really acting like an object made
| | 01:18 | of a solid substance, such as
glass, acrylic, diamond, et cetera.
| | 01:23 | By playing with the Index of Refraction,
I'm playing with the way light rays
| | 01:27 | bend going through my shape layer.
| | 01:29 | When I increase it above 1, when a
light ray hits one surface of the layer,
| | 01:35 | basically transitions from air to
whatever this is made out of, the light is
| | 01:38 | bent off at an angle.
| | 01:40 | Then when it comes through another
surface, such as from glass back out into air
| | 01:43 | again, it's bent back again.
| | 01:45 | In between, the apparent position of
those pixels have been offset in space, and
| | 01:49 | you can see some of the offsetting
going on here, particularly in the sides of
| | 01:53 | the image that are at more of an angle.
| | 01:55 | You can go ahead and do searches on
the Internet and come with all sorts of
| | 01:57 | tables for Index of Refraction.
| | 02:01 | Roughly 1.5 or so is in the
area of a glass-like look.
| | 02:04 | Since my Transparency is not quite
100%, I am still getting a little bit of
| | 02:08 | the fill color of the layer blended in as
light rays pass through this particular object.
| | 02:12 | Okay. Next, let's play with reflections.
| | 02:17 | I've already set up an environment
layer wrapped all the way around my world to
| | 02:22 | create a great source of reflections.
| | 02:25 | Great environment layers have lots of pixels--
| | 02:27 | I mean, we're talking about 6, 7, 8,
10, 12K across--and an aspect ratio of
| | 02:33 | 2:1, twice as wide as they are tall,
360 degrees around versus 180 degrees from the North
| | 02:40 | Pole to the South Pole.
| | 02:42 | They should also be seamless on the ends.
| | 02:43 | Once we have a layer that is at a good
angle to your object, you can start to
| | 02:48 | increase Reflection Intensity.
| | 02:51 | Doing so dials back the diffuse color
of the layer in exchange for seeing the
| | 02:58 | pixels of the reflection.
| | 02:59 | At 100%, I am seeing the blue sky off
into space here and the portion of this
| | 03:05 | environment layer, which is
basically behind the camera at this point.
| | 03:07 | I can go ahead and rotate my
environment layer and have some fun with how these
| | 03:14 | patterns fall, both as a background
and against the faces of my object.
| | 03:20 | So this is a completely reflective
chrome type of object, sort of like a Jeff
| | 03:25 | Koons sort of creation.
| | 03:27 | One thing you can do is reduce the
Sharpness to create soft diffuse reflections
| | 03:31 | as opposed to mirror-sharp reflections.
| | 03:33 | But just for fun, I'm going
to leave it at 100% for now.
| | 03:36 | Another thing I can do is target
which surfaces of this object get
| | 03:41 | specific properties.
| | 03:44 | Initially, your Material options apply
to all surfaces of your extruded and
| | 03:49 | beveled object. But I'm going to turn
Reflection Intensity down to 0 for the
| | 03:53 | whole object, so I'm back
to my translucent object.
| | 03:58 | Make sure my Polystar group is selected.
| | 04:01 | You always want to make sure of this
step, to make sure what you're about to do
| | 04:04 | gets added to the right shape group.
| | 04:06 | Then use the Add button--the same thing
you've used to add shape operators--to
| | 04:10 | add properties to specific surfaces.
| | 04:13 | In this case, maybe I decide that I
want the bevels to look like they're nice
| | 04:18 | chrome rims around my glass object, so
I'll choose Bevel > Reflection Intensity.
| | 04:23 | You'll see it's been added to my Polystar group.
| | 04:26 | And I can increase that Intensity to, say, 100%.
| | 04:32 | So now I have a reflective
bevel and a transparent object.
| | 04:36 | That bit of brightness you're seeing
is actually the specular highlight.
| | 04:40 | I can turn down the Specular Intensity
or tighten up the size of the hotspot
| | 04:45 | by increasing Specular Shininess, if I
want it to be not quite so glary and dramatic.
| | 04:49 | Now, the reflection is picking up
some of the color of my shape layer fill.
| | 04:55 | If I want to, I can target
just the color of the bevel.
| | 04:59 | Again, I'm going to make sure my
group is selected. Add > Bevel > Color.
| | 05:06 | It defaults to red, but I can change
it to something like white to make it a
| | 05:10 | very simple chrome, or I can even
eyedropper color, such as this pale beige
| | 05:15 | in the bricks behind. I'll click OK.
| | 05:18 | Now, I want to stress, all of these
parameters are still live. You can go ahead
| | 05:23 | and edit these on the fly, or even better,
animate some of them, and that's what
| | 05:27 | we'll do in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a 3D shape (new in CS6)| 00:07 | In the previous movies we've beveled
and extruded our shape layer and played
| | 00:10 | around with the reflectivity
and transparency of this object.
| | 00:14 | However, it's just kind
of sitting there in space.
| | 00:16 | I mean, yes, I could select my Camera
tool and orbit around my world if I wanted
| | 00:21 | to, but let's remember that shape layers
can be animated, including all of their
| | 00:27 | individual properties.
| | 00:28 | So let's have some fun with that.
| | 00:29 | Press V to return to my Selection tool,
clean up my Timeline a little bit here,
| | 00:35 | make sure my Shape group is selected,
and let's add a couple of parameters.
| | 00:38 | For example, you can add Twist.
| | 00:42 | This will twist the vectors of your
shape layer, which are then extruded,
| | 00:47 | beveled, and rendered.
| | 00:48 | You'll see the default is
a slight amount of twist.
| | 00:51 | I can go ahead and create something a
bit more severe, a bit more fun, like
| | 00:55 | about that, and if I like, keyframe it.
| | 00:58 | I'll press End and rotate it back in
the opposite direction. There we go.
| | 01:03 | And now that twist will animate and be
rendered for each frame of my composition.
| | 01:14 | Cool! Some other things I can play with are the
Polystar Path parameters for this layer.
| | 01:19 | For example, I have a lot of fun
with the roundness of polystars.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to go ahead and start with
this shape, and I'll maybe play around with
| | 01:27 | the Inner Roundness a little bit.
| | 01:29 | I can start with something that's a
lot thinner, or actually maybe a bit
| | 01:33 | fatter to start out.
| | 01:35 | Yeah, I think I like that better.
| | 01:36 | And press the End key and change it to
be a much tighter-wound thinner profile
| | 01:43 | by increasing the Inner Roundness parameter.
| | 01:45 | I can also play around with Outer
Roundness as well to make it fatter or even
| | 01:50 | funner, have the shape loop back upon itself.
| | 01:54 | And again, these parameters are animated
throughout the length of my composition.
| | 02:01 | While these intersections
are kind of interesting,
| | 02:04 | you know what would be fun is if I can
make those detach and pop off from each other.
| | 02:10 | Well, it so happens that I can.
| | 02:11 | I pressed Home to go back to the start,
select my Shape Group. Add > Offset Paths.
| | 02:18 | That says draw the actual line
inside or outside the original path.
| | 02:23 | I'll select Offset Paths. It defaults
to making something fatter, which is not
| | 02:27 | necessarily what I want in this case,
so I'm going to set it down to 0 to start
| | 02:31 | with, because I kind of
like that original shape.
| | 02:34 | Then go to the end and then decrease my
Offset Paths to break off these pieces
| | 02:42 | from each other so that these
intersections actually become detached lines.
| | 02:47 | Now I have a shape layer that actually
appears to be morphing into a much more
| | 02:52 | complex 3D object during
the course of this animation.
| | 02:55 | And that should really get your mind
going for what the possibilities are when
| | 02:59 | you combine shape layers
with the ray-traced renderer.
| | 03:01 | This is one possibility;
| | 03:03 | if you want to see another solution,
I've created one inside Comps_Finished.
| | 03:07 | Now, be warned: ray-traced 3D
does take a while to render.
| | 03:13 | And in this particular case I increased
the ray-trace quality to make this look
| | 03:18 | better when it renders.
| | 03:19 | Ray-trace Quality can be accessed by
Command+Clicking or Ctrl+Clicking on
| | 03:22 | your Rendering Engine.
| | 03:23 | I've gone up to 5 rays on the
side rather than default of 3.
| | 03:27 | Or if you like instant gratification,
just jump ahead to the Finished movies,
| | 03:31 | open up Extruding Shapes_final.mov,
and preview that, and see that I've also
| | 03:37 | animated the environment so that it's
rotating around our layer, again just to
| | 03:41 | move the reflections and to show you
how refraction alters the look as light
| | 03:46 | rays bend through your 3D object.
| | 03:48 | So that's just a quick overview of
the possibilities of the ray-traced 3D
| | 03:53 | renderer that was added in After Effects CS6.
| | 03:56 | Again, I've covered the parameters in
a lot more detail back in the 3D space
| | 04:00 | lesson, but I wanted to show it in the
context of shape layers, and in particular
| | 04:05 | how do you target the
properties in shape layers?
| | 04:07 | You have to use the Add button as if
you're adding shape operators to your
| | 04:11 | Shape group.
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|
|
9. SidebarsTips for stylized bars| 00:07 | I want to take a couple of minutes
to share with you one of my favorite
| | 00:09 | techniques, combining shape layers
with Photoshop-type layer styles to create
| | 00:16 | some more interesting looks for your
graphical elements, particularly buttons
| | 00:20 | for user interface design or lower third bars.
| | 00:23 | Now this is just a various
simple rectangular shapes.
| | 00:26 | I will twirl open a shape group.
| | 00:28 | You will see we do indeed have a gradient fill.
| | 00:31 | If I want this to be the full width of
this composition, I just need to drag out
| | 00:35 | its width and drag out the user
interface elements for this gradient fill.
| | 00:41 | I am going to hold down Shift to
make sure they stay horizontal.
| | 00:45 | There we go. And drag this out to full width.
| | 00:48 | Now one of the first things I tend to
do with the gradient fills in other bars is
| | 00:54 | have them dissolve off the ends.
| | 00:56 | This is particularly a good design
trick when you have to design something that
| | 00:59 | works in widescreen and 4x3.
| | 01:02 | People justify the text inside of 4x3
but still need to have a bar that looks
| | 01:07 | good across a whole widescreen display.
| | 01:08 | So with my shape layer is selected, I
will go into something like Fill and play
| | 01:12 | around with the Opacity Stops
just to create some fade-offs.
| | 01:16 | I will click to add a new stop,
select this one, fade it out to 0 so we get
| | 01:21 | transparent at the end, like that,
and maybe do the same thing here.
| | 01:27 | Add another stop, take its Opacity down
to 0, have a bit of fade going on there.
| | 01:33 | But you can go so much further than this.
| | 01:35 | I am going to turn off this layer
for now and look at this second bar.
| | 01:39 | By the way, if you have the exercise files, these
are all inside Comps_Finished > 99-Styled Bars.
| | 01:45 | I will turn it on.
| | 01:46 | This one has much more a
rounded plastic look to it.
| | 01:49 | Well, there are some few things going on.
| | 01:51 | I will turn off the Layers Styles
now to get back to my flat shape layer.
| | 01:55 | I took advantage of the Pucker & Bloat
shape, effect just to give some slight
| | 02:00 | rounding and slight bowing to my shape.
| | 02:02 | Now normally you'd see me doing very
extreme things to Pucker & Bloat, but just
| | 02:07 | a moderate application can make
things more interesting. Before and after.
| | 02:13 | But what gets really interesting is using
the Photoshop style layer styles.
| | 02:18 | I will turn these all off and
build them up one at a time.
| | 02:23 | Bevel and Emboss is
perhaps my favorite layer style.
| | 02:27 | Yes, After Effects does have the
Perspective bevel alpha effect, but it doesn't
| | 02:31 | have this variety of shapes.
| | 02:33 | Outer Bevel where you
get a little bit of shadow.
| | 02:35 | As a matter of fact, I will change
my background color to something more
| | 02:40 | interesting, just so you can see the contrast.
| | 02:42 | There is difference between an
outer bevel and an inner bevel.
| | 02:53 | There is Emboss to make it appear
like it's pushing through the surface.
| | 02:55 | There is Pillow Emboss, which gives
an interesting stroke around the shape.
| | 03:00 | And then there is Stroke Emboss, which is good for
compatibility with other Photoshop layers.
| | 03:04 | But we will go back to Inner Bevel for now.
| | 03:06 | You can have chiseled edges
with hard and soft variations.
| | 03:10 | I will increase the Depth so
you can see it better there--
| | 03:15 | I tend to prefer smooth--and also a lot
of control over how much rounding there
| | 03:20 | is inside that bevel,
| | 03:22 | something really soft and plasticy or
something a bit more flattened out like that.
| | 03:27 | Hard edged, soft edged, and lots
of control over lighting, even the
| | 03:33 | highlight and shadow color.
| | 03:35 | To spice up Bevel and Emboss even more,
there is this effect called Inner Shadow
| | 03:40 | which can add little bit
more shading to your layer.
| | 03:41 | Again, before and after. And again
it has lots of nice options, including
| | 03:47 | different blending modes, and in Layer Styles
it also has a very nice Drop Shadow effect.
| | 03:53 | Again, there is an effect under the
perspective category called Drop Shadow, but
| | 03:57 | Layer Style's Drop Shadow has a lot more
power in terms the blending mode applied.
| | 04:02 | I personally think it's
got a nicer softness to it.
| | 04:05 | I'll increase my Size there and
does the effect by the same name.
| | 04:10 | I like that for creating much
classier-looking buttons and user
| | 04:15 | interface elements.
| | 04:16 | Now inside this composition we also
created something really crazy called Styled
| | 04:20 | 2 where again we are taking advantage
of shape effects, using Pucker & Bloat
| | 04:26 | again to create a more sharp-edged
shape, but also using Photoshop's layer
| | 04:32 | styles, particularly Bevel & Emboss,
to create a far more interesting fill.
| | 04:37 | This is Chisel Hard, as opposed to
the Smooth fill or the Chiseled Soft.
| | 04:42 | With Chisel Hard and with Soften really
turned down, you get a much harder look.
| | 04:49 | You even get a little bit of like plastic
scoring going on inside these areas. Or you
| | 04:54 | can soften that out a little
bit or soften the entire effect.
| | 04:59 | So when you think of shape layers,
don't think of flat Illustrator or other
| | 05:05 | vector-type artwork.
| | 05:06 | Have a lot of fun with those shape
effects to add more interest to the shapes,
| | 05:11 | but also apply effects and more
importantly, layer styles to soften them up, give
| | 05:16 | them more dimensions, and make
them really pop off your screen.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Additional shape presets| 00:07 | When you install After Effects it comes
with some animation presets for shape layers;
| | 00:13 | however, this is but a fraction of
the presets that Adobe makes available.
| | 00:16 | The rest are up on Adobe Exchange.
| | 00:20 | So search for "adobe exchange."
| | 00:25 | It will be the first thing that turns up.
| | 00:27 | You will see that there are separate
sections for each program. Go to the one
| | 00:33 | on After Effects, and there is
going to be a number of expressions,
| | 00:36 | displacement maps, animation presets,
plug-ins, templates, scripts, stock
| | 00:40 | footage, et cetera.
| | 00:41 | Just go ahead and search for "shape
presets," search, and the first thing that will
| | 00:48 | turn up are these additional
animation presets for After Effects.
| | 00:52 | It includes some really great per-
character 3D text animations that Trish created,
| | 00:56 | plus a bunch of shape
presets that I mostly created.
| | 00:59 | Download them, drag them
into your Presets folder--
| | 01:02 | it's sitting right next to the program
After Effects--and next time you start
| | 01:06 | or reload your effects and presets, they
will be added to your menu. And you will
| | 01:10 | see them as Backgrounds 2, Elements 2,
Sprites - Animated 2, Sprites - Still 2,
| | 01:16 | and Symbol Families.
| | 01:18 | To explore these, go ahead and Browse Presets.
| | 01:23 | That will open up Adobe Bridge,
pointing to the Presets Folder.
| | 01:27 | Double-click shapes to open it, and here
you will see folders for each type of effect.
| | 01:31 | There is all sorts of interesting
shapes animation presets in here to study.
| | 01:35 | For example, for Random Backgrounds,
this Autumn Leaves preset takes the
| | 01:39 | outlines with just a handful of leaf
shapes, then uses the Repeater and Wiggle
| | 01:43 | Transform to help fill out the screen.
| | 01:45 | There are other interesting presets in
here as well. And these are well worth
| | 01:50 | breaking down and studying.
| | 01:51 | For example, this one uses a similar
technique as we showed in Brainstorm shapes.
| | 01:55 | I'll go up a level, Elements 2.
| | 01:58 | There are some basic things like graph paper,
box grid, crosshatches, and honeycombs.
| | 02:04 | I will go up again. A handful of
different animated sprites, like a variation on
| | 02:11 | that sunflower we worked with earlier.
| | 02:12 | I particularly like Spiralgear preset
which has a nice animation shapes to it,
| | 02:17 | and there is a couple of
other ones you can look at.
| | 02:20 | Sprites 2 are a couple of shapes.
| | 02:22 | Spiral actually used the tool in
Illustrator to create a spiral. Then I copied
| | 02:26 | and pasted that path into a path
inside an After Effect shape layer.
| | 02:31 | Remember shape paths, motion paths,
masked paths, paint paths, these can all be
| | 02:37 | copied and pasted among each other.
| | 02:38 | You can also paste illustrator paths
into these objects inside After Effects.
| | 02:44 | A real fun library is the Symbol libraries.
| | 02:47 | It includes several sets of just
little graphical elements you can use.
| | 02:51 | Braille, including the entire Braille
alphabet, and a nice effect preset to add
| | 02:57 | some dimension to them.
| | 03:00 | The I Ching Hexagrams, including their
names, and Trigrams, just the three-line versions.
| | 03:12 | Pictograms, some standardized rock art
symbols simplified in graphical form. And
| | 03:19 | finally Schematic, which contains a
number of different electronic symbolsm which
| | 03:24 | againm you can just go ahead and reuse
to create background textures or other
| | 03:30 | just stuff to fill up your compositions.
| | 03:32 | Since shape layers are their own layers,
you don't need to select a layer ahead
| | 03:36 | of time to apply them.
| | 03:38 | In this case, back in After Effects, I have
an empty composition with no layers in it.
| | 03:44 | Inside Bridge I just double-click the
shape preset it want and back in After
| | 03:48 | Effects it will create a shape layer
for me that has all the components that
| | 03:53 | make up that shape.
| | 03:55 | If you do have a shape layer selected, go
back to Bridge and pick a different preset--
| | 04:00 | for example, I pick one of these
backgrounds like Floral Explosion--
| | 04:04 | it will replace the shape
layer you currently had selected.
| | 04:09 | So make sure you don't lose any work by
selecting something you wanted to keep.
| | 04:12 | It's best to have nothing at all selected.
| | 04:15 | Go to Bridge, find the preset you want,
double-click, and a brand-new shape
| | 04:20 | layer will be created that has that shape in it.
| | 04:24 | So definitely make sure you go to
Adobe Exchange, check out these animation
| | 04:29 | presets, as well as all of the other
things that are available to you inside
| | 04:33 | Adobe Exchange's home for After Effects.
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| Converting vector layers to shapes (new in CS6)| 00:07 | A nice feature added to After
Effects CS6 is the ability to change vector
| | 00:11 | artwork, such as layers imported from
Adobe Illustrator, into shape layers that
| | 00:16 | you can then further
manipulate inside After Effects.
| | 00:19 | If you have access to the CS6 version
of the project files, open up the comp
| | 00:23 | SB-Vectors to Shapes* starter.
| | 00:26 | In it I have a single Adobe
Illustrator layer, and it has a very simple logo
| | 00:31 | created from multiple shapes, including text.
| | 00:34 | I merged the layers of the original
Illustrator file into a single After Effects
| | 00:38 | layer when I imported it.
| | 00:39 | But just to remind you, you do
have a function to right-click and
| | 00:43 | convert flattened or merge artwork
from Photoshop or Illustrator into a
| | 00:48 | layered composition.
| | 00:49 | This does buy you some flexibility.
| | 00:51 | I'll open up the now-nested
composition that has all the individual layers.
| | 00:56 | However, these are still just
pixel-based layers once brought into After Effects.
| | 01:03 | You do not have access in After Effects to the
paths that form those layers. I'm going to undo.
| | 01:10 | Therefore, a welcome addition in CS6 is
the ability to right-click on a layer
[00:01:13 .86]
or go to the Layer Menu and
select Create Shapes from Vectors.
| | 01:19 | Doing so keeps my original
Illustrator or vector-based file, just turns off
| | 01:23 | its video switch, and instead creates
a brand new shape layer that embodies
| | 01:28 | all of these paths.
| | 01:30 | And what's really cool is those paths
are editable and may be modified by shape
| | 01:33 | operators in After Effects.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to twirl it open here, and
inside the Contents you'll see a large
| | 01:38 | number of shape groups.
| | 01:40 | A group has been created for
every object or path that was in the
| | 01:45 | original Illustrator file--
| | 01:47 | one exception being compound paths
like the hole in the middle of an e or
| | 01:51 | something like that; that would be grouped
into one shape group inside After Effects.
| | 01:55 | Inside each group you see the paths
that make up that particular character.
| | 01:59 | In this case, since it's a
stencil-type font, you have the main part of the S
| | 02:03 | and the two Ns, along with the shape
operator that merges those three paths
| | 02:07 | together, a fill, and a transformation.
| | 02:08 | And each path created is indeed a pen-type path.
| | 02:12 | I'll turn on my ability to
see the shape path outlines.
| | 02:16 | If I wanted to I could start editing
those individual paths as if they were any
| | 02:20 | other pen-created shape.
| | 02:21 | Let me turn this off for now,
just to clean up my display.
| | 02:25 | Now, the first thing I might do when
I bring in an object like this from
| | 02:28 | Illustrator and convert it to a shape
layer is group things in a more logical manner.
| | 02:33 | This is a lot of shape groups to manage.
| | 02:35 | So first I'm going to create a shape
group for the word Studios and see
| | 02:43 | which groups those are.
| | 02:45 | It looks like I'm from Group 1 to Group 7,
| | 02:49 | so I'll select those seven groups and
drag them into my brand new Studios group.
| | 02:56 | Now I can handle them with one set
of transforms for the entire word.
| | 02:59 | I'll go do the same for Quarry.
| | 03:06 | Select the Y. That's Group 8.
| | 03:10 | The Q is Group 13, so it's safe to say it's
all those groups in between, and add it to Quarry.
| | 03:18 | Finally, I just need to select the
remaining groups and see. This is my vertical
| | 03:23 | slash, my hollow rectangle, the yellow rectangle,
blue rectangle and purple rectangle.
| | 03:38 | Now that these are separated out, there
are all sorts of things I can do with them.
| | 03:43 | For example, I can change the color.
| | 03:45 | Let's say I wanted that blue rectangle
to be a more vivid color. I've selected it.
| | 03:49 | I'll go up to its Fill color swatch,
and now I can interactively change it to,
| | 03:53 | say, be a little more saturated.
| | 03:55 | I can select my purple rectangle,
click on its Fill options, and actually
| | 04:01 | change it to be a linear gradient.
| | 04:03 | I'll move my gradient control points
into its two corners, select my gradient
| | 04:10 | fill, and now I can have a little bit of fun
with the colors in the corners of that gradient.
| | 04:16 | Maybe make this a little more
orangish or peachish for the transition.
| | 04:22 | I can use blending modes to
change how these layers interact.
| | 04:26 | Quite often I use something like
Overlay for a starting point, but I've also
| | 04:30 | found some modes such as Color Burn
are useful to make these layers interact
| | 04:35 | in interesting ways.
| | 04:38 | Do the same for the purple
rectangle so that it blends with the text
| | 04:42 | that was underneath.
| | 04:44 | And finally, and perhaps most fun, I
can add shape operators to these objects.
| | 04:48 | For example, I'll choose this hollow
rectangle and add to it Wiggle Paths,
| | 04:54 | to make it automatically animate.
| | 04:55 | Now, the default is kind of crazy.
| | 04:58 | It makes it more like a really
crinkly rectangle. But I can twirl open the
| | 05:02 | Wiggle Paths operator, set the Detail
down to 0.0, and now it will honor the
| | 05:08 | original vertices of the object.
| | 05:09 | I'll increase the Size a little bit,
slow down the Speed a little bit, press 0
| | 05:14 | to RAM Preview, and now I have a
nice piece of automatic animation.
| | 05:19 | As a matter of fact, I could select that and copy it
to my other shape layers inside this group.
| | 05:28 | Now, I'll paste, F2 to Deselect, RAM
Preview, and now I'm starting to build an
| | 05:34 | animated logo out of what was
previously an uneditable Illustrator file that
| | 05:38 | gets rasterized to pixels in After Effects.
| | 05:40 | Just to give you a couple of more ideas
on how I can go further, let's say you
| | 05:45 | don't like rectangles; let's say
you would prefer a rounded rectangle.
| | 05:48 | That's all right. I'll just choose
Round Corners and we'll round off the
| | 05:53 | corners of that rectangle. And I can make them
more rounded if I like, maybe somewhere around there.
| | 06:00 | If I want to create a more radical
shape, I can take, say, this blue
| | 06:06 | rectangle and apply one of my
favorite operators: Pucker & Bloat.
| | 06:10 | Just its name is a lot of fun, but
it's also a fun of parameter to edit.
| | 06:16 | I'll turn it into something that has
some interesting spikes extending out.
| | 06:19 | I've got a graphical element that goes
up into the hollow space of this Q, and of
| | 06:23 | course it still auto-animates
because I have Wiggle Paths.
| | 06:27 | Let's say that these simple colored
rectangles aren't cutting it for me; maybe I
| | 06:31 | need a stroke to make them
stand out against the background.
| | 06:34 | I noticed that initially After Effects
was fairly efficient in the way that it
| | 06:38 | transferred these paths into a shape layer.
| | 06:41 | If there was no stroke in the original,
it do not add a stroke to the shape group.
| | 06:45 | It only has a fill.
| | 06:46 | But that's okay. I can still go add a stroke.
| | 06:51 | In this case, I came up with
a white color, 2 pixels wide. That's not quite to my taste.
| | 06:55 | I'll make it a black stroke, and
hairline, like 1 pixel wide, or I could even
| | 07:02 | make it something smaller like 0.5 pixel
wide, so I just have a fine the anti-alias line.
| | 07:07 | And if I like that I can select it and
paste it to the yellow rectangle
| | 07:13 | and the purple rectangle,
so now they all get an outline.
| | 07:16 | I think you can see the possibilities here.
| | 07:18 | And again, the reason that I grouped
things such as the words Quarry and Studio is
| | 07:22 | that by putting them in their own shape
group, they get one set of transforms.
| | 07:26 | So I can move each word as one group,
in addition to accessing individual
| | 07:33 | characters, and if I so desire,
moving those characters individually.
| | 07:37 | Here is just something I threw together quickly.
| | 07:39 | If you have the exercise files, down in
Comps_Finished, I have a final version
| | 07:43 | as well, which is a slightly
different treatment with a different choice of
| | 07:46 | modes and the way things are
grouped, but it gives you the same idea.
| | 07:50 | Here I've even added a
drop shadow to these layers.
| | 07:52 | So all told, a nice little addition that
appeared in After Effects CS6.
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