Design in Motion000 Welcome| 00:04 | Hi! I am Rob Garrott and I'd like
to welcome you to Design in Motion.
| | 00:07 | the weekly series where we'll be
exploring important fundamentals in the
| | 00:10 | world of motion graphics.
| | 00:12 | Each week I am going to show you a new
project or idea that will focus on key
| | 00:15 | concepts, tools, and techniques that
will expand your understanding of this
| | 00:19 | rich and dynamic medium.
| | 00:21 | Using tools like After Effects and
CINEMA 4D, we'll take on design and animation
| | 00:25 | projects that will grow your
understanding of communicating with movement.
| | 00:28 | We will look at how you can use some
of the lesser-known tools that will make
| | 00:31 | the process of creating motion
graphics easier and more fun.
| | 00:34 | I will also share with you some of the
design techniques that I've learned and
| | 00:38 | developed over the years that will help
take your animation to the next level.
| | 00:41 | I can't wait to get started and I hope
you'll join me each week for Design in Motion.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 001 Communicating emotion using color correction | 00:01 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly where we explore
| | 00:04 | important fundamentals in
the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Color and contrast go a long ways
towards telling a viewer exactly what kind of
| | 00:11 | shot they are watching.
| | 00:12 | In the film language color and motion
are directly linked and with a few simple
| | 00:16 | filters in After Effects you can change
the mood of any shot. Let's take a look.
| | 00:22 | Now what we have here is a clip of a
cyclist that's just lost an important race
| | 00:26 | and he is really despondent over that.
| | 00:29 | The director has asked me to change
the mood of a shot by adding some color.
| | 00:32 | Right now you can see that the shot
as it exists is really great looking.
| | 00:35 | It was done at close to golden hour,
there's a beautiful transition of light and
| | 00:39 | dark across the actor's face.
| | 00:40 | It just doesn't have the right feeling
for the emotion being conveyed in the edit.
| | 00:44 | So what I want to do is to change the
emotion of this shot by changing the color
| | 00:48 | and the color that I am going to use is
blue, because that blue color tends to
| | 00:52 | connote an intensity and a darkness to a shot.
| | 00:56 | If I were wanting to change the mood
to a happy feel I would choose warmer
| | 01:00 | colors and push the saturation out.
| | 01:02 | So let's RAM preview this
and see what the action is.
| | 01:06 | So as you can see the action of the
actor really has an intense feel to it.
| | 01:09 | He is pretty upset about the race and by
changing this color value it's going to
| | 01:13 | really intensify that feeling for the audience.
| | 01:16 | So the very first thing I want to do
is to desaturate this a little bit.
| | 01:19 | The colors are very vibrant, too
vibrant for the mood that we want to use.
| | 01:22 | So I am going to pull color out of it.
| | 01:25 | To do that I am going to use
the Hue/Saturation Filters.
| | 01:27 | So I am going to select my clip here in
the timeline, go to Effect menu, and do
| | 01:31 | Color Correction, and then do Hue/Saturation.
| | 01:34 | When I do that the Effect Controls
come up for that filter and I am going to
| | 01:38 | pull the Saturation down.
| | 01:39 | Let's bring it down about 30 to 40 range.
| | 01:42 | There is no mathematical science to this.
| | 01:44 | you're really kind of doing it by feel.
| | 01:46 | I think as I pulled this down in the 40
range that feels pretty good right about there.
| | 01:50 | If I did it all the way to 100, it
would be completely black-and-white.
| | 01:53 | I don't want to do that.
| | 01:53 | I just want to pull saturation out of it.
| | 01:56 | So that's feeling pretty good.
| | 01:57 | I can twirl close the Hue/Saturation.
| | 01:59 | That's all we needed to do with that.
| | 02:01 | Now what I want to do is to change the
color cast of the image and to do I am
| | 02:05 | going to use the Curves Filter.
| | 02:07 | The cool thing about the Curves
Filter in After Effects is that it behaves
| | 02:09 | nearly identically to the
Curves Filter in Photoshop.
| | 02:11 | So if you're coming from Photoshop land
and you have used that filter a lot you
| | 02:14 | are going to be perfectly at
home here in After Effects.
| | 02:16 | So I am going to go to the Effect menu
now and go back to Color Correction and
| | 02:21 | go to Curves and when I do that you
will see the same kind of interface you're
| | 02:24 | used to seeing in Photoshop.
| | 02:25 | We've got our curves editor here and
we've got controls on the right here for
| | 02:29 | saving or creating curves that we can
use later or reload at another time.
| | 02:34 | What I want to do is to start off by
messing with each of the individual
| | 02:38 | channels in the image and the channel
I want to start with first is the Red
| | 02:42 | channel because my goal is
to get this image to blue.
| | 02:44 | So in order to do I want to
pull Red out of the image.
| | 02:47 | So let's go back to the Channel pull-down here.
| | 02:49 | I am going to go to the Red channel and
I am going to start off by pulling red
| | 02:53 | out of the image and when I do that
you are going to see the image start to
| | 02:56 | turn more and more blue.
| | 02:58 | As I do that let's bring this way down here.
| | 03:00 | I am going to start to skew this
a little bit towards the low end.
| | 03:04 | You can see it turns blue, but
there's still a lot of green in the image.
| | 03:08 | So what I want to do next is pull green out.
| | 03:10 | So if we go to the Green channel I want
to pull the Green channel down just a bit.
| | 03:15 | You can see the image go just a tad blue.
| | 03:18 | Once again there is no science to this.
| | 03:20 | I just want to start off with a
generally blue cast to it so that when I go to
| | 03:24 | my Blue channel, which is what I am
going to do next, I'll be able to really
| | 03:28 | push that blue color.
| | 03:29 | So let's take that blue
color and push it upwards.
| | 03:32 | So I want to grab it in the
middle here and push that right on up.
| | 03:36 | Now I don't want to push it too far,
because that's going to give it a weird blue tint.
| | 03:40 | I just want to push the blue values up
a bit and as I do that I think that's
| | 03:44 | felling pretty good.
| | 03:45 | Let's go back to the Red channel one more
time to pull out a little bit more that Red.
| | 03:50 | Oops!
| | 03:50 | I accidentally added a control point here.
| | 03:52 | If you do that you can just move that
and drag it off to the right and that will
| | 03:55 | delete that control point.
| | 03:56 | I want to bring that down just a bit
more and I want to try and do without
| | 04:01 | totally flattening the bottom in.
| | 04:02 | I just want to drag it to the right as
far as I can go without actually dragging
| | 04:06 | that down and making it flat.
| | 04:08 | Now I want to go back and add a lot of
contrast to the image and I am going to
| | 04:12 | do that in the main channels.
| | 04:14 | We are in all three channels
at once with the RGB controls.
| | 04:17 | This allows me to control all three
channels at the same time without disrupting
| | 04:21 | those individual curves that I set earlier.
| | 04:23 | So I am going to start off by adding a
control point here in the middle, because
| | 04:25 | I want to keep the mid
tones right where they are.
| | 04:28 | So if I click right there that gives me
a control point and if you move it just
| | 04:31 | a little bit you can
slide it back into position.
| | 04:34 | Then I am going to take the low
end and I'm going to crush them down.
| | 04:37 | So I am going to grab a control
point right here and then drag that down.
| | 04:40 | You can see this cool S
shape started to form here.
| | 04:43 | If I bring this all the way down you can
see I get a ton of contrast in here and
| | 04:47 | the highlights and the
darks go completely to black.
| | 04:49 | I don't want to do that.
| | 04:50 | What I want to do is once again just
bring it down very dark, but not all the
| | 04:55 | way to black, because I want to still
have a little bit of information right
| | 04:57 | here in the shadow areas of his face.
| | 04:59 | Then I also don't want to lose the
highlight information here in the top end either.
| | 05:04 | So I am going to take the top end
and just push them up just a bit more.
| | 05:08 | Once again too far and
they can blow out to white.
| | 05:10 | I want to bring that down just a hair.
| | 05:13 | So I think that's looking really nice.
| | 05:14 | I've got a great contrast to the image,
but I've still been able to retain a lot
| | 05:18 | of the tonal value and the highlights and darks.
| | 05:21 | Now I am going to twirl close the curves
and the next thing we want to do is add
| | 05:24 | some grain to the image.
| | 05:26 | The grain is going to really
intensify the mood and give it a gritty feel.
| | 05:30 | So I am going to go to the Effects
pull-down and go to Noise & Grain and do
| | 05:34 | Add Grain and when I do that I get this
square here and this square is a preview range.
| | 05:39 | Back in the days before really fast
computers we needed to have a preview range
| | 05:42 | on this filter, because it
took a long time to render.
| | 05:45 | But now with modern computers
it really is a pretty speedy.
| | 05:49 | So I can change this preview range to
a full preview of the final output by
| | 05:53 | going to the Viewing Mode pull-down
and changing that to Final Output.
| | 05:58 | When I do that now I can see
the grain across the entire image.
| | 06:01 | You've got some Tweaking options here and
the first we want to tweak is the Intensity.
| | 06:06 | We are going to bring
this up to about 1.8 or so.
| | 06:08 | You can see the grain get a little bit
more intense and you can see it really
| | 06:13 | gritties up the image.
| | 06:14 | Now that noise animates from frame
to frame and that's going to be really
| | 06:18 | distracting when we do that.
| | 06:19 | We want to change the animation down.
| | 06:21 | I want to see what that
noise animated looks like.
| | 06:23 | So I am going to do a quick RAM preview.
| | 06:26 | You can see it moving from frame to frame.
| | 06:29 | I don't need to really RAM preview the
whole thing, because that gives you the
| | 06:32 | idea of what it's doing.
| | 06:33 | So I will just stop that.
| | 06:35 | That noise is really distracting.
| | 06:37 | So if we go to the Animation options
here and I'm going to change the Animation
| | 06:41 | Speed from 1 down to 0.
| | 06:43 | When I do that that's going to lock
that noise in place so that it doesn't move
| | 06:48 | from frame to frame.
| | 06:49 | The next thing I want to do is to go to the
Color pull-down and change it to Monochromatic.
| | 06:55 | There's RGB values actually all
through this noise and it's really kind of
| | 06:58 | interfering with the color
correction that I did earlier.
| | 07:00 | So by changing this to Monochromatic
it's going to change the noise so that its
| | 07:05 | just one color value of
noise which is basically black.
| | 07:08 | That's going to gritty up the image
without altering the color values underneath.
| | 07:12 | The shot looks really great, but right
out here on the edge of the image I've
| | 07:17 | got a very light color
on the right and the left.
| | 07:20 | That color is distracting for the eyes.
| | 07:22 | It's drawing our eye away from the
actor in the centre of the image.
| | 07:26 | So what I want to do is to draw the eye
in towards the center of the image and I
| | 07:30 | am going to do that with
something called a vignette.
| | 07:32 | To create that vignette I am
going to use a solid layer.
| | 07:34 | So if I go to the Layer menu and do New >
Solid and I want to pull a color from the image.
| | 07:41 | Now there is a blue color in here
already, but I want to make sure that this
| | 07:44 | blue color is actually
being pulled from the image.
| | 07:46 | So I am going to grab the Eyedropper and
pull a color right off of his collar here.
| | 07:51 | Then what I am going to do is go
into the color swatch and then drag this
| | 07:56 | down towards black.
| | 07:57 | I don't want it to go all the way to black.
| | 07:58 | I want it to go just above black.
| | 08:00 | So that's a very dark blue.
| | 08:01 | Then I will hit OK and now I've
got this very Dark Royal Blue Solid.
| | 08:06 | Now I want to make sure that the comp size
is set to be the same size as my composition.
| | 08:12 | So I click the Make Comp Size button and I
see that those numbers are now the same size.
| | 08:15 | Then I'll hit OK and I will end up
with a solid covering my entire image.
| | 08:19 | Now I am ready to create a mask that
will reveal the center of the image.
| | 08:24 | To do that I'm going to go to the Pen
tool and then I am going to make sure that
| | 08:28 | RotoBezier is checked. It is now.
| | 08:30 | The RotoBEzier option allows me to
create very smooth flowing curves without
| | 08:34 | having to mess with B?zier handles.
| | 08:36 | So let's draw our curve around and I
am going to start over here on the right
| | 08:39 | and just click around.
| | 08:40 | One of the great things about this technique is
it really doesn't have to be a perfect circle.
| | 08:44 | In fact, the more irregular it is
the more natural it's going to feel.
| | 08:48 | I am going to close that off now and
I've got is blue blob here and that's
| | 08:52 | because the mask by default will
show you what's inside the mask.
| | 08:55 | We want to actually invert this so it
shows us what's on the outside over here.
| | 08:59 | So I am going to go down to the Dark
Royal Blue Solid layer and hit M on the
| | 09:02 | keyboard to reveal the Mask options
and then I am going to click the Inverted
| | 09:06 | button and when I do that I now
have an interior reveal on my actor.
| | 09:13 | I want to soften the edges of this mask.
| | 09:15 | So I'm going to twirl close my mask and
then twirl it back open again to reveal
| | 09:19 | the Mask Feather options and right now
it's set to be 0 pixels for a hard edge
| | 09:24 | and I am going to put in 150 and then
hit Enter and that softens my edge up
| | 09:30 | really nicely, and you can see I've
got a great transition from the full
| | 09:34 | intensity of the blue to nothing in the center.
| | 09:37 | Now I am going to make some adjustments here.
| | 09:38 | I am going to hold down the Command key
on the keyboard to grab that handle there.
| | 09:43 | I drew my original mask just a little
bit too close to the edge and I am going
| | 09:46 | to bring this inward a little bit to
soften the edges and I think that's
| | 09:50 | feeling pretty good.
| | 09:51 | That's a lot better.
| | 09:52 | Now what I want to do is
to adjust the blending mode.
| | 09:55 | The blue is not mixing back into the
background so I need to adjust the blending
| | 09:58 | mode for the solid layer to do that.
| | 10:00 | So let's just scroll up here and grab the
blending mode for the Dark Royal Blue Solid layer.
| | 10:04 | Right now it's set to Normal.
| | 10:05 | Let's change that to Overlay.
| | 10:08 | So I grab Overlay and the Overlay
option is going to mix into the image without
| | 10:13 | affecting the highlights too much.
| | 10:15 | So you can see in midtones and in the
shadows I've got some really interesting
| | 10:18 | interaction between that
blue and the underlying image.
| | 10:22 | Now it's a little bit too intense.
| | 10:23 | It's adding too much blue to the image.
| | 10:25 | So I am going to pullback the Opacity
on this by hitting T on the keyboard to
| | 10:29 | reveal the Opacity option and
bring that down to about maybe 75%.
| | 10:33 | You see that just lightens the image up
and pulls just a little bit of that blue out.
| | 10:36 | It's very subtle, but it's an important change.
| | 10:39 | Now we can RAM preview and see what
the result of all that hard work is.
| | 10:42 | So I am going to hit 0 on the numeric
keypad and it's going to RAM preview.
| | 10:49 | So as you can see the effects that
we've added to this have really dramatically
| | 10:53 | changed the mood of the shot,
which is just what the director wanted.
| | 10:57 | Color is an important part of the
visual language and it helps to pull your
| | 11:01 | audience into the mood of your story.
| | 11:03 | After Effects has an amazing set
of tools for manipulating color.
| | 11:06 | To learn more about those tools
check out the After Effects CS5 Essential
| | 11:10 | Training by Chad Perkins in
the video section of Lynda.com.
| | 11:14 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 11:16 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 002 Learning the basics of 3D logo animation | 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and
welcome to Design in Motion.
| | 00:03 | the weekly series where we explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now logo animation is coming long way
since pioneers like Harry Marks literally
| | 00:11 | invented the ideas that
most of us have grown up with.
| | 00:14 | What I want to focus on today are some
of the key moves that have been around
| | 00:17 | for a generation or more.
| | 00:19 | Once you've mastered these, your animation
skills are going to grow by leaps and bounds.
| | 00:22 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:24 | So here in CINEMA 4D I have got a Logo
Animation already built and I am going to
| | 00:28 | hit Play and this move is something
called an Over-the-Shoulder move, and let me
| | 00:34 | hit Play and let it go through a
couple of times then I'll explain what it is
| | 00:36 | you are seeing here.
| | 00:39 | So as you can see the logo is coming
in from over the Camera's shoulder and
| | 00:43 | that's where the name of that move
comes from and I am going to middle mouse
| | 00:46 | click on the Editor window here and
that's going to bring up a four-way split.
| | 00:50 | As I scrub through this video I am just
moving the time slider back and forth,
| | 00:53 | you can see that my logo is indeed
coming from over the top of the camera, and
| | 00:58 | this view here, this is the top view,
you can see that the logo will drop down
| | 01:01 | towards its mark which is at 0, 0, 0
and here in the right-hand view it's going
| | 01:06 | to drop down into the Camera's field of
view and as it passes by the camera it's
| | 01:11 | traveling over the camera's shoulder.
| | 01:13 | The shoulder being this left and right
of the Camera body and if you think of
| | 01:17 | it from your point of view if something
were entering into your field of vision
| | 01:21 | it will be coming from over your shoulder
and that's where that move name comes from.
| | 01:24 | Let's take a look at the next move and
I am going to go here to the Window menu
| | 01:28 | and go to 02-Tumble-In, and I've got
the same situation, my logos going to be
| | 01:31 | moving towards a mark at
the center of the world.
| | 01:34 | I am going to bring the Perspective
view full screen and then hit Play.
| | 01:37 | So this is called the Tumble-In and
you see it's very similar to the over the
| | 01:41 | shoulder move that we had earlier,
but we've added an additional element.
| | 01:44 | That element is rotation.
| | 01:46 | Let's middle mouse click again and get
out here to the four-way split, and as I
| | 01:50 | scrub backwards in time you can see
the logo drift over the top of the camera
| | 01:55 | and then tumble down into its position.
| | 01:58 | And one of the characteristics of
this type of move is that the logo always
| | 02:02 | rotates with the motion and you'll
see that it's coming across the top and
| | 02:08 | hitting its mark this way and in the
right-hand view it's a clockwise move that
| | 02:13 | the logo hits towards its mark, and as I
scrub in you'll see it hits the mark at
| | 02:18 | zero and now the logo is in frame, and
there is a little bit of a drift on this
| | 02:23 | move at the end and that's caused by
the logo coming back towards the camera.
| | 02:28 | The drift is optional.
| | 02:29 | Really it's all about that initial move
where the logo Tumbles-In across the top
| | 02:33 | of the camera's field of vision.
| | 02:35 | The next type of move is something
called an up from infinity, and it's really
| | 02:39 | the opposite of the Tumble-In.
| | 02:41 | So what I am going to do is middle
mouse click in the window here to get this
| | 02:45 | Perspective view
fullscreen and then I'll hit Play.
| | 02:48 | I'll middle mouse click
there and them I'll hit Play.
| | 02:55 | So you see the logo comes up from
infinity and there are several ways to do this.
| | 02:59 | I am going to middle mouse click again to
get to a four-way view and let's zoom in.
| | 03:04 | I am going to dolly in on the right-
hand view here, so I can see the animation
| | 03:09 | of the logo object as it
comes towards the camera.
| | 03:12 | And you can see it's actually not going
all way to infinity when it moves into
| | 03:15 | position or moves back from position.
| | 03:18 | It's actually is being scaled as well.
| | 03:20 | So I could physically move it off to
infinity, but it's much easier to simply
| | 03:23 | animate the scale of the object and if
I look at the Logo Parent and go to the
| | 03:27 | Coordinate properties you can see I
have indeed in animated all three the
| | 03:30 | Position, Scale and Rotation, so
that it animates into position.
| | 03:34 | So we start about 6000 units back on Z
and the scale starts at 0, and then the
| | 03:39 | Rotation is about -67 and it
rotates right up into position.
| | 03:45 | Once again the logo rotates with its motion
not against it, and that's very important.
| | 03:49 | You want to have it rotate with its
motion, so that it doesn't fight the move.
| | 03:55 | The next step we've
something call the Jump-Back.
| | 03:56 | Let me middle mouse click into the
Perspective view and I'll hit play and then
| | 04:00 | we'll explain what that is.
| | 04:02 | So as you can see the logo is starting
very large in frame and then the camera
| | 04:06 | jumps back to reveal the logo and
it's a very dramatic reveal used a lot in
| | 04:11 | action sequences and sometimes in
comedy as well where you need a very
| | 04:15 | energetic type of move.
| | 04:17 | Let's take a look at the four-way
split so we can understand what is going on
| | 04:21 | here with this move and I'll zoom in.
| | 04:23 | I am going to dolly in on the right-
hand view here and go right in on that area
| | 04:27 | and in all of the other previous
examples the logo was doing all of the work.
| | 04:33 | The camera was staying
still and the logo is moving.
| | 04:35 | In this particular example it's the
opposite, the camera is doing all of the
| | 04:39 | work and the logo is simply standing still at 0.
| | 04:41 | Now you'll see as I scrub through this,
the camera starts off very close to
| | 04:45 | the face of the logo.
| | 04:47 | I am going to hit E on the keyboard to
bring up the Move tool, so we don't have
| | 04:49 | those rotation bands there anymore
and then I'll scrub forward in time.
| | 04:53 | You can see that the camera is
literally jumping back off the surface of the
| | 04:56 | logo and then hitting a mark and
drifting and rotating away from it.
| | 05:00 | You can really see that
rotation in the top view.
| | 05:02 | Let's back out just a bit
here and I'll scrub through that.
| | 05:06 | You can see we're going just a little
bit off axis here which gives a nice
| | 05:09 | dynamic feel to the logo.
| | 05:11 | Next up is something
called a Jump-Back with a twist.
| | 05:14 | Now it's the exact same camera move as
before except that I've added in rotation
| | 05:20 | and you'll find that a lot.
| | 05:21 | A lot of time you'll start off with
the logo animation and then by simply
| | 05:23 | varying up one aspect of that move
you'll get a very different feel to the move
| | 05:28 | that you had before.
| | 05:29 | Before I do that I am going to middle
mouse click into the Perspective view to
| | 05:33 | get it to come
fullscreen and then I'll hit Play.
| | 05:37 | So you say it's the exact same move as
before except now we're rotating, and
| | 05:40 | we're rotating around the camera's Z-axis.
| | 05:43 | Let's take a look at how that's being done.
| | 05:45 | So here in the Right-hand view I am
going to dolly in right into that area there
| | 05:50 | and you can see that once again the
logo is standing still and the camera is
| | 05:54 | doing all the work and what I've done
is I've animated the Camera Parent with a
| | 06:00 | little bit of bank move on it.
| | 06:02 | So we start off at about 90? and then
come all way back to 0 and then just give
| | 06:07 | a little bit of off axis rotation
for a nice dynamic finish to the move.
| | 06:11 | Now last up for the day is
something called a Camera-Gib.
| | 06:14 | Now the term Gib refers to a real world
object that used to control cameras in
| | 06:20 | a very specific way.
| | 06:21 | A lot of times if you've ever been to
an award show or sometimes at football
| | 06:24 | games or car races you'll see a camera
on a giant crane and that's called a Gib,
| | 06:28 | I am not exactly sure where the term
comes from, from a historical standpoint,
| | 06:32 | but what it really refers to is how
the camera is being controlled and that's
| | 06:36 | what we care about here inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 06:39 | A Gib move allows you to move the camera
on several axis at once and it's a very
| | 06:44 | different than what we've done before
and once again though in this situation
| | 06:48 | the logo is standing still and
the camera is doing all of the work.
| | 06:51 | Let's take a look at that move.
| | 06:52 | I am going to middle mouse click
into the Perspective view and then I'll
| | 06:55 | rewind back to zero.
| | 06:56 | I am going to deselect the Camera so
we get rid of this axis band here and
| | 07:00 | then I'll hit play.
| | 07:01 | So as you can see the logo is
dropping down into frame, but really it's the
| | 07:05 | camera that's moving up.
| | 07:07 | Let's take a look at that in the four-
way split here and let's dolly in, in
| | 07:10 | the right-hand view.
| | 07:11 | There we go, bring that up.
| | 07:14 | You can see as I scrub back in time
the camera starts down below the logo and
| | 07:18 | then rises up with a twist to meet it
and that's being done by animating the
| | 07:23 | rotation and position of the Camera Parent.
| | 07:26 | If you click on that guy, you'll see
that it's rising up into frame and it's
| | 07:29 | also rotating around that axis and
the camera isn't doing anything at all.
| | 07:33 | It's simply being moved along by the
Camera Parent and that gives a very dynamic
| | 07:38 | move and a very different feel
than anything we've done before.
| | 07:42 | Learning these logo fundamentals will
give you the foundation you need to learn
| | 07:46 | and grow as an animator.
| | 07:47 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D check
out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 07:51 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion,
keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 003 Using expressions to control animation| 00:01 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:08 | Now artist are notorious for only ever
using the right side of their brain, but
| | 00:12 | today we're going to explore a part of
After Effects that is all left brain.
| | 00:15 | Now don't be scared when I
say the word expressions.
| | 00:19 | The expression language in After
Effects allows you to create and control
| | 00:22 | animation by writing lines of code.
| | 00:24 | Now you're probably thinking, Rob, I'm
an artist, I'm not a programmer, I can't
| | 00:29 | do that sort of thing. That's okay.
| | 00:32 | That's because the expression language
can be as difficult as writing lines of
| | 00:36 | code, but it can also be as easy
as a pick whip, let's take a look.
| | 00:40 | So I've got a very simple comp here
in After Effects, two shape layers.
| | 00:44 | One shape layer is this square and the
other shape layer is the star here, and
| | 00:48 | I've got a little bit of animation
on the square just so they distinguish
| | 00:50 | themselves from one another.
| | 00:51 | I'll RAM preview to here by
hitting 0 on the numeric keypad.
| | 00:56 | Now what I want to do is link the color
of the star to the color of the square
| | 01:01 | and that's where the
magic of expressions come in.
| | 01:03 | Now I don't need to write off the
code for this, I can use the pick whip.
| | 01:06 | So what I want to do is start off by
selecting the star shape layer and twirling
| | 01:10 | open the options for that and I'm going
to scroll down and twirl open the Shape
| | 01:15 | layer for the Square which is
this layer right here number two.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to reveal the Fill Options
for that so I can see the orange color.
| | 01:22 | So what I want to do is to make sure
that the color of the star always follows
| | 01:26 | the color of this square.
| | 01:28 | So this is going to be the driving force.
| | 01:31 | I want to link this color
to this color down here.
| | 01:34 | So to activate an expression for a
parameter in After Effects you hold down the
| | 01:38 | Option key and you click on the
Stopwatch for that and when I click on that
| | 01:44 | Color parameter it's
going to get a new Expression.
| | 01:47 | It's waiting for me to tell it what to
link to and you can see that it's start
| | 01:52 | off by identifying the component of
the expression that's going to be linked.
| | 01:57 | I now have some options here.
| | 01:58 | I've this little Equal sign that has
the Expression Enabled, a Graph Editor
| | 02:02 | icon, then I also have this pick whip and
the pick whip is what we're going to use.
| | 02:06 | So let's scroll down a little bit and
I'm going to grab the pick whip and drag
| | 02:10 | down and then find my color and I'm
going to link it right to the color there
| | 02:15 | and when I do that watch what happens
to the star when I let go. Nothing yet.
| | 02:20 | That's, because it's waiting
for me to confirm this expression.
| | 02:24 | So if I hit Enter on the Numeric keypad
that's going to close off the expression
| | 02:28 | and you'll see that now the color of
the star is in fact linked to the color of
| | 02:32 | the square, and if I go to the Square
shape layer which is this one right here
| | 02:36 | and I change the Color.
| | 02:38 | Let's make it a very light blue.
| | 02:41 | You'll see that no matter what color I
change it to here, the two layers are
| | 02:45 | linked together and that's really the magic
of expressions and that wasn't so bad, was it?
| | 02:49 | I didn't have to write any lines of
code and I now have two colors that are
| | 02:53 | linked together by an expression.
| | 02:55 | Next let's take a look at how we can
actually write out an expression and see
| | 03:00 | what the language actually looks like.
| | 03:02 | I'm going to Cancel here.
| | 03:03 | I'm going to open up the second
composition which is the expression loop
| | 03:07 | composition and in this
I've got a little man walking.
| | 03:10 | I'm going to enlarge my window just a
little bit here and I'll RAM Preview that.
| | 03:17 | I just have two keyframes on here.
| | 03:19 | I've a start position and I've an end
position here and what I want to do is
| | 03:23 | have a cycle where these legs just keep
moving indefinitely so I can make this
| | 03:27 | man run through a scene or walk through a scene.
| | 03:30 | But rather than do that with
keyframes I want to do it with Expressions.
| | 03:34 | That way I don't have to manage a
whole bunch of keyframes, I only have to
| | 03:37 | manage the two keyframes
for the start and stops.
| | 03:39 | So let's start off with the Right Arm
and hit U on the keyboard to reveal the
| | 03:44 | Rotation parameter and that's what I've
done as I've keyframe the rotation for
| | 03:47 | each of these layers.
| | 03:48 | So what I want to do is to
create an expression for the rotation.
| | 03:52 | So I'm going to hold down the Option
key and Click on that and that reveals
| | 03:57 | the Expression window.
| | 03:59 | So now what I want to do is to type
out an expression and there's some
| | 04:03 | particular Expression commands that are
built into the Expression language and I
| | 04:08 | can type those out by hand.
| | 04:10 | I'm going to type out the words loop
and then capital O, and capitalization
| | 04:15 | is very important in the expression
language, Out and then I'll start that
| | 04:20 | with parenthesis and then a quotation
mark and I'm going to type in the words
| | 04:24 | pingpong, and what this tells the
Expression is how I want the information to loop.
| | 04:30 | So pingpong means it's going to go
backwards and forwards and will keep doing
| | 04:34 | that over and over again
until I tell it to stop.
| | 04:37 | So I'll add another quotation mark to
close that off and then I'll close off the
| | 04:40 | expression with the parentheses.
| | 04:43 | And now when I hit Enter on the
numeric keypad I now have an expression.
| | 04:47 | Now if I typed that in
incorrectly I get an error message in there.
| | 04:51 | In order to see this in action I need
to RAM Preview, so let's go ahead and do
| | 04:54 | that and as you can see this arm will
continue to loop indefinitely and that's
| | 05:00 | really the magic of the expression.
| | 05:03 | So now let's do the same thing for
the other arms and legs, and rather than
| | 05:07 | typing that out I can just
copy and paste that information.
| | 05:10 | So if I go to this expression and I
can double-click in here and copy that
| | 05:13 | information and I can go to each one of
the arms and legs and then Option+Click
| | 05:18 | on the stopwatch and then paste that
information in, Command+V or Ctrl+V. And
| | 05:22 | then I'll hit Enter on the numeric
keypad to close it off and I'll do the same
| | 05:26 | thing down here and I'm going to Option+
Click, paste it in and then Enter on the
| | 05:33 | numeric keypad to close it off, and
one last time for the other leg, paste it
| | 05:38 | down, close it off and now I can RAM
Preview and see what that all looks like.
| | 05:45 | The Expression pingpong makes it very
easy to control that animation and the
| | 05:49 | beautiful part about it is if I want
to speed up his cycle I don't have any
| | 05:53 | other keyframes to mess with other than these.
| | 05:55 | What I'm going to do is stop the
playback and I'm going to select all the layers
| | 06:00 | and then hit U on the keyboard and
then U one more time to reveal just those
| | 06:04 | keyframes and let's select the second
keyframe for each of those layers and I
| | 06:10 | just do a rectangle around those and I
want him to walk faster, so I'm going to
| | 06:12 | put these keyframes closer together.
| | 06:14 | So when I do that it's going to kill my
cache for the RAM preview and I'll just
| | 06:18 | preview again, you'll see
that he's going to go fast.
| | 06:20 | Let's actually make him go really fast.
| | 06:23 | So now I'm going to hit 0 to RAM preview again.
| | 06:26 | So you can see the Expression makes it
really easy to control that animation, I
| | 06:31 | can slow it down speed it up at will
with just a few easy keyframes to manage.
| | 06:37 | Expressions really are the ultimate
tool in animation, just a few lines of code
| | 06:40 | can open up a whole new world of possibilities.
| | 06:43 | To learn more about the world of
Expressions check out the course After Effects
| | 06:46 | Apprentice 9 by Chris and Trish
Meyer in the video section of Lynda.com.
| | 06:50 | That's it for Design in Motion, keep
it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 004 Creating flow energy streams| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we'll
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | How many times have you ever seen an
animation that has these beautiful flowing
| | 00:10 | energy streams and wondered how it was done?
| | 00:12 | Well, with CINEMA 4D it's a lot
easier than you think. Let's take a look.
| | 00:17 | The energy streams that we are going
to be creating I've pre-rendered and
| | 00:20 | composited in After Effects.
| | 00:21 | And let's do a little RAM Preview.
| | 00:22 | I'll hit 0 on the numeric keypad.
| | 00:29 | Let's scrub through that
and see what's going on.
| | 00:31 | So these energy streams are sweeping in
with the camera, rising up and wrapping
| | 00:34 | around the logo, and these shapes are
created in CINEMA 4D and then composited
| | 00:39 | here in After Effects.
| | 00:40 | I'll show you what the actual streams look like.
| | 00:42 | They're rendered from CINEMA 4D,
and I'll double-click on that.
| | 00:46 | This is the layer window in After
Effects and you can see that they look pretty
| | 00:49 | cool, but the intensity of them, the
glow around them, that actually happens
| | 00:52 | here in After Effects.
| | 00:53 | So if I go back into the comp window,
I have on that a special plug-in called
| | 00:58 | Starglow which is a third-party plug-in
from Red Giant software that is a glow
| | 01:03 | filter that uses the light and dark
values in the rendered image to create this
| | 01:09 | glow effect and that's
what giving it the energy.
| | 01:11 | If I turn that off, you see that I now
lose that glow and I can turn that on again.
| | 01:15 | So that's how they're
composited in After Effects.
| | 01:17 | Let's go over to CINEMA 4D
and see how they're built.
| | 01:21 | This is the logo file in CINEMA 4D
and I've got this splines, the path that
| | 01:27 | are shapes we're going to be following
pre-built and I drew those as B-Splines
| | 01:32 | and then duplicated them and moved the
point subtly to create each of the variations.
| | 01:37 | Rather than build the energy streams
right here in the scene file, I'm going to
| | 01:40 | create them in an empty file and
copy and paste it into this file here.
| | 01:44 | That way we'll get a better look at the objects.
| | 01:46 | So let's go to make a new document.
| | 01:49 | I'll go File and then New at the very top.
| | 01:52 | In this new document I want to
start off by creating a Capsule.
| | 01:57 | The Capsule object is going to be
the foundation of our beam element.
| | 02:00 | A Capsule by default is a cylinder with
rounded ends on it and it's going along the Y axis.
| | 02:05 | I'm going to go to the Object
Properties and change the Orientation from Y to
| | 02:10 | +X. That way it's lying along the X axis.
| | 02:13 | The Spline Wrap object which is what
we're going to be using to create the
| | 02:16 | energy effect, that likes
to work with the X axis.
| | 02:20 | That's why I lay this down on X.
| | 02:22 | The next thing I want to
do is change the Radius.
| | 02:24 | Let's change it from 50 to 10, and
then I'll change the Height to 4000.
| | 02:28 | That's going to make a fairly
long tube with rounded ends.
| | 02:34 | The Height Segments and the Cap
Segments, I'm going to leave alone right now.
| | 02:37 | The Rotation Segments, I
don't need to be that high.
| | 02:39 | I can change those down to 16 and
that will save me a little bit of memory.
| | 02:43 | I'll come back later to the Height
Segments, because we're going to need
| | 02:46 | to tweak that value.
| | 02:47 | I want to show what that's going to
look like with a low value and then we'll
| | 02:50 | turn it up to the value that it needs to be.
| | 02:52 | So now let's add a Spline Wrap object
and the Spline Wrap is underneath the
| | 02:55 | Deformer Objects, and it's this guy right here.
| | 02:59 | The Spline Wrap object, the way it
works is it works on its parent or its peer.
| | 03:03 | Before we work with this Capsule
I'm going to prep it just it bit.
| | 03:07 | I need to add another Null object to the scene.
| | 03:10 | This Null I'm going to call Stream 01,
and Stream 01 is going to become the
| | 03:16 | parent for the Capsule object.
| | 03:18 | So let's take the Capsule and
make it a child of Stream 01.
| | 03:21 | Now what I want to do is move that
Capsule so the tip of it is right even with
| | 03:26 | the center of the world.
| | 03:27 | So I go to the Co-ordinate Properties for
the Capsule and change the X value to be -2000.
| | 03:32 | Now the tip of our Capsule lines up
with the center of the world and that's
| | 03:35 | where our stream object is.
| | 03:36 | And that's going to become the
tip of the snake so to speak.
| | 03:39 | The Spline Wrap object needs to work
with another Null and I'm going to change
| | 03:44 | this and call this one Stream 01 Wrap.
| | 03:49 | Then I'm also going to change the name
of the Spline Wrap to be 01 Spline Wrap.
| | 03:53 | That way I'll know that this Spline Wrap
goes with this stream and when it comes
| | 03:59 | down to animate it's going
to make a lot more sense.
| | 04:01 | I could take the Spline Wrap now and
move it to make it a child of the Wrap
| | 04:05 | Null object, take the Stream and put it
into the group, and make it a child of
| | 04:09 | the Wrap Null object.
| | 04:10 | Now nothing has happened, and that's
because the Spline Wrap needs to have a spline.
| | 04:15 | I'm in the Object Properties of the
Spline Wrap object and this field is empty.
| | 04:19 | Until we add a spline into this
field nothing is going to happen.
| | 04:21 | So let's draw a spline.
| | 04:23 | The spline I'm going to draw is a B-
Spline and the B-Spline is really great for
| | 04:27 | making flowing energy like this.
| | 04:29 | You should never draw that B-
Spline in the Perspective View.
| | 04:32 | Let's switch to the Orthographic
View and I'll draw one in the front.
| | 04:35 | So let's click on the spline objects
and grab a B-Spline and I'm going to click
| | 04:39 | once, second time I get a straight
line, third time I get a curve based on
| | 04:43 | those three points.
| | 04:45 | As I click and draw around I get
another curve for every three points.
| | 04:50 | I'll just make a very quick spline like that.
| | 04:52 | It's looking pretty cool.
| | 04:54 | So now let's go back to the Perspective View.
| | 04:56 | In the Spline Wrap object I'm going
to go to the Spline field and drop the
| | 04:59 | spline into that field.
| | 05:02 | Once I drop that in, you'll see
that now the Stream object is being
| | 05:06 | deformed along the spline.
| | 05:07 | It looks really jagged right now, and
that's because of the Height Segments
| | 05:11 | on the Capsule object.
| | 05:12 | The Capsule object does not have enough
segments to make it flexible enough to
| | 05:16 | conform to all those curves.
| | 05:18 | So what I need to do is go to the
Stream object right here which is that Null
| | 05:22 | and go to the Capsule, that's a child
of that, and change the Height Segments
| | 05:25 | from 8 and let's crank it very high.
| | 05:28 | The value that you put in here will
be totally dependent on how far the
| | 05:31 | object is from the camera.
| | 05:33 | I'm going to start off with 100 units.
| | 05:35 | I now see that there is a little bit of
conformity to the spline, but I've also
| | 05:40 | got places in the curves where
the polygons are very visible.
| | 05:43 | So let's double that value, 200.
| | 05:46 | Now I have a much smoother object and I
think we'll be good with that value right there.
| | 05:51 | In the Spline Wrap object, the value
that we'll be animating is the Offset.
| | 05:56 | If I scrub that value, you can see
that my Capsule moves along the spline.
| | 06:01 | There's one more thing I need to change
in here and that's this Mode pull-down.
| | 06:05 | The Fit Spline makes the Capsule object
stretch to the entire length of the spline.
| | 06:10 | If I change this to be Keep Length, it
will now maintain its length along the
| | 06:14 | spline and give me a much
smoother deformation in this case.
| | 06:17 | So I can now scrub that Offset and
have it animate right on through.
| | 06:22 | So now that we've got this rig built, we're
going to copy and paste it into the logo file.
| | 06:27 | So let's take the Stream 01 Wrap.
| | 06:29 | We don't need the Spline object because
we have the splines that we're going to
| | 06:32 | use in the file already.
| | 06:34 | So all we need is this Null
and the children underneath it.
| | 06:36 | So I select the parent, Command+C or
Ctrl+C on the keyboard and I go to Window
| | 06:41 | and switch over to my Logo-START file.
| | 06:44 | In this Logo-START file
I've got my splines right here.
| | 06:47 | I'm going to paste it down, Command+V
or Ctrl+V. Now I want to have this Wrap
| | 06:52 | group below the Spline.
| | 06:54 | That's a really good rule of thumb.
| | 06:55 | You want to keep the Wrap
objects below the Splines.
| | 06:59 | It makes the flow of data through
CINEMA 4D project much smoother.
| | 07:02 | I'll let go with that right there and
then twirl open the Stream Wrap group.
| | 07:06 | Now I've got my Spline Wrap here.
| | 07:09 | In the Spline field I'm
going to drag in Spline 01.
| | 07:13 | When I do that, I get my
energy beam on the spline.
| | 07:16 | Now it doesn't look like an energy beam yet.
| | 07:18 | So first thing I want to do is to
apply a texture to it to make it look more
| | 07:21 | like an energy beam.
| | 07:23 | I have some materials pre-built already here.
| | 07:25 | That's this stream material here.
| | 07:27 | I'll start with the white one and all
this is the Luminance channel and the
| | 07:32 | Transparency channel.
| | 07:33 | In the Luminance channel I have white.
| | 07:35 | in the Transparency channel I have
something called a Fresnel shader and
| | 07:37 | that gives me this gradient from the center
of the object to the outer edge of the object.
| | 07:42 | It's always based on the camera's point of view.
| | 07:44 | I can take this material and
apply it to the Capsule object.
| | 07:47 | Now when I render, Command+R or Ctrl+R,
you'll see that I now have this really
| | 07:51 | cool translucency that is
based on the camera's position.
| | 07:56 | The next thing I want to do
is to animate the Spline Wrap.
| | 08:00 | So let's take a look at the Spline
Wrap Object Properties and we're going to
| | 08:03 | back up in time to time 0 and then at
time 0 I'll scrub the Offset value and
| | 08:09 | back it up until it's off camera.
| | 08:13 | Then with the Offset value selected I'll
hold down the Ctrl key and click on the
| | 08:17 | black circle here and that will
change it to a red dot at time 0.
| | 08:21 | That sets a keyframe for that.
| | 08:23 | Now let's scrub forward in time until
we get to our hold point for the camera
| | 08:27 | which is right around frame 40 or so.
| | 08:30 | In that Offset field, I'm going to
scrub until my beam goes off screen, and
| | 08:36 | that's about at 100%.
| | 08:37 | Hold down the Ctrl key to set a
keyframe and now when I scrub through, I end up
| | 08:43 | with an animation that looks pretty
good except I've only got one stream.
| | 08:49 | So the next thing I'd like to do
is to make copies of the streams.
| | 08:52 | The way I'll do that is by going into
the Stream Wrap object, twirling it close,
| | 08:57 | and selecting that with the
Ctrl key and dragging down.
| | 09:00 | That makes a copy of it.
| | 09:02 | Then I'm going to rename
the two objects underneath it.
| | 09:05 | Names are very, very important.
| | 09:07 | We call this one 02 Wrap, get rid of that
.1 on there and put a space right there.
| | 09:13 | Then on the Spline Wrap
we'll change this to be 02.
| | 09:17 | In the Spline Wrap Object Properties
I'll replace the 01 Spline here with the
| | 09:22 | 02 Spline right here.
| | 09:23 | When I do that, boom, I now
have a second energy beam.
| | 09:28 | As I scrub through, there
is my second energy beam.
| | 09:32 | I'll repeat that process to
get the third energy beam.
| | 09:36 | In the third energy beam I'll rename the
objects, let's change that to be 03 and
| | 09:44 | change this one to be 03.
| | 09:48 | In the Spline Wrap object drag the
spline in and now I have three energy beams
| | 09:52 | and I can scrub through there and see that.
| | 09:55 | Now the energy beams themselves are
all exactly the same color right now.
| | 09:59 | So I have two other materials
here that I can use to apply that.
| | 10:02 | So let's twirl open the objects and
apply that material to the other energy beam.
| | 10:07 | So I'll take this first one and apply
it to number two, and then I take the
| | 10:13 | second one and apply it to number three.
| | 10:15 | Then you notice I didn't
change the names on those streams.
| | 10:17 | I could change that and make that 03
and change this guy and make it 02.
| | 10:22 | That way I'm consistent with my names.
| | 10:24 | That's very important.
| | 10:25 | Now when I render though, you can
see I have three spline wraps all
| | 10:29 | subtly shaded differently.
| | 10:30 | I want to change the shape on each
one so that they all feel a little bit
| | 10:33 | different shape wise as well.
| | 10:34 | The Spline Wrap object has a really
cool feature that allows me to change the
| | 10:37 | shape of the object along the length of it.
| | 10:40 | So if I go into Spline Wrap 03 for
example, I'll raise that up, and underneath
| | 10:45 | the Size there's this graph under here.
| | 10:47 | In the first Size graph I can take
these objects and drag them down.
| | 10:53 | I'll drag one down right here,
drag this one down right here.
| | 10:55 | You'll notice that as I do that, this
Spline Wrap is going away completely.
| | 11:00 | Now what I can do is hold down the
Ctrl key, add a point right in the middle,
| | 11:06 | and drag that point up.
| | 11:07 | Now what happens is the object is thin
at one end, it gets thick in the middle,
| | 11:12 | and then it gets thin again at the other end.
| | 11:14 | So if I drag that around, I can shift
that towards the end and give it a little
| | 11:18 | bit more weight towards the front so
that it has a long taper at the back.
| | 11:23 | I can repeat that
process for each of the others.
| | 11:25 | Twirl those guys open. Here's number two.
| | 11:29 | I don't want these to be exactly the same.
| | 11:31 | That's why I'm doing them by hand like this.
| | 11:33 | I can raise that up or I might put that
one back here a little bit, and then I
| | 11:37 | can go to the last one which is
Spline Wrap 01 and I'll take that one and
| | 11:43 | bring that down and bring that one down there,
and I'll hold the Ctrl key down and drag that up.
| | 11:49 | So now I end up with splines that have
a very pointy end and they snake to a
| | 11:55 | fatter middle and then trail off to nothing.
| | 11:58 | That gives me a really cool
look on those guys right there.
| | 12:00 | Hit Command+R on the keyboard.
| | 12:02 | That's it for the CINEMA 4D process.
| | 12:04 | All you really need to do next is to
render that out as its own layer and bring
| | 12:09 | it in After Effects to see
what that looks like again.
| | 12:12 | So here we are in After Effects and
that is the final render right there.
| | 12:16 | And just to remind you, if I double-
click on the streams itself, you can see
| | 12:20 | that in that layer if I turn off the
Starglow, you can see the final result.
| | 12:25 | That is the rendered layer.
| | 12:26 | I've got a very thin taper on either end,
a fatter middle, and then when I add
| | 12:31 | that Starglow, it gives
me a great energetic look.
| | 12:33 | Creating flowing energy streams is a
great way to add dynamic movement to your
| | 12:38 | animations and CINEMA 4D's Spline
Wrap object makes it easy and fun.
| | 12:42 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D check
out the CINEMA 4D section on Lynda.com.
| | 12:46 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 12:48 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 005 Creating a camera shake rig| 00:01 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | In the real world, a camera is a
physical object, and it's subject to the same
| | 00:11 | rules as you or I, but in
3D, that's not the case.
| | 00:14 | In order to make our animations feel
more impactful and realistic, sometimes we
| | 00:18 | need add in those realistic
phenomena like camera shake.
| | 00:21 | I am going to show you how to build a
very simple camera rig that will give your
| | 00:25 | animations a lot more
realism. Let's take a look.
| | 00:30 | This is the effect we are
going to be creating in CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:32 | Let me hit Play here. Boom!
| | 00:33 | I love how that ball
impacts the type, blows it away.
| | 00:39 | The thing that really sells this
effect though is the camera shake.
| | 00:43 | We want to build a rig that's going
to allow us to control that camera
| | 00:45 | shake with keyframes.
| | 00:47 | Let's move over to the start file
and I will show you how that's done.
| | 00:51 | The camera rig that I have set up
here is just a simple camera parent, null
| | 00:54 | object with a camera underneath it and we
are looking through that camera right now.
| | 00:58 | If I hit Play, you can
see I have the ball set up.
| | 01:01 | It doesn't have nearly as much
impact without the camera shake.
| | 01:04 | So let's build the camera shake into it.
| | 01:06 | Step 1 in the process is
something called a Vibrate tag.
| | 01:09 | The Vibrate tag allows you to
oscillate either position, scale or rotation or
| | 01:14 | all three on an object over time
and it does it without keyframes.
| | 01:18 | That's the great thing about it.
| | 01:19 | If I right click on the SHAKE CAM and
go to CINEMA 4D Tags and then Vibrate and
| | 01:24 | when I let go, I have a
Vibrate tag on the camera.
| | 01:28 | The Vibrate tag has to be enabled and
we have to enable Position and Rotation.
| | 01:34 | We don't need to worry about Scale.
| | 01:35 | You should never scale your camera.
| | 01:37 | The Amplitude controls how big the
vibration is and the Frequency controls how
| | 01:41 | fast the vibration is.
| | 01:43 | We are going to be controlling
these with sliders using Xpresso.
| | 01:47 | So the next step in the process is to build
the sliders that we are going to use in Xpresso.
| | 01:52 | So let's click on the SHAKE CAM and go to
the User Data menu and go to Manage User Data.
| | 01:58 | This brings up the User Data window
and user data is a way for you to add
| | 02:03 | custom information to objects that can be
then used to drive other actions using Xpresso.
| | 02:09 | We are going to click Add Data
and we get these fields over here.
| | 02:13 | The first thing we want to do is name
our Data field and we are going to call
| | 02:16 | this one Cam Shake Freq as in frequency.
| | 02:21 | When I tab over, the short
name gets filled in automatically.
| | 02:24 | The Data Type, we are going to leave it Float.
| | 02:26 | The Interface we are going to change
to Float and Slider and this is a little
| | 02:30 | preview of what we are
going to see when we hit OK.
| | 02:33 | This shows us what our information will
look like and you can see we have a Data
| | 02:36 | field here and a slider that
allows us to move that data around.
| | 02:40 | Nothing is linked up to this slider
so when I move it, nothing happens.
| | 02:44 | The next we want to do is change the Units.
| | 02:46 | We don't want to use Percentages.
| | 02:48 | we want to use real values and then we are
going to change the Step to 0.1 as in tens.
| | 02:54 | Then we are going to change the
Min and Max range from 0 to 10.
| | 02:58 | We don't want our
frequency to go any higher than 10.
| | 03:01 | That would make the
camera movement too frenetic.
| | 03:03 | 10 is going to be just where we need it.
| | 03:05 | Well, that's it for the first Data field.
| | 03:07 | We need to make a new one now.
| | 03:09 | I am going to click Add Data again.
| | 03:10 | This one is going to be called Cam
Shake Amp X and this is the value that will
| | 03:18 | control the amplitude on the X-axis.
| | 03:21 | So I will tab over to fill in the short name.
| | 03:24 | The Interface will leave change
to Float Slider just like before.
| | 03:27 | The value through we are going to change
to Real again and then the Step will be 0.1.
| | 03:32 | And then we are going to
change the Min and Max range.
| | 03:34 | This is going to be a little bit different.
| | 03:36 | We don't want our amplitude to travel
outside of about 50 units and so we are
| | 03:41 | going to change the Min range to -50
and we will change the Max range to 50 and
| | 03:49 | that centers up the slider in the
range here and allows us to move the slider
| | 03:55 | from one end to the other.
| | 03:56 | If you do move this slider here in the
Data field, you want to make sure and
| | 04:00 | reset that value back to 0 right there.
| | 04:02 | So I will hit that and tab over.
| | 04:05 | You don't want to hit Enter at this
point because if you do, CINEMA 4D will
| | 04:07 | think you're hitting the OK
button and close the window up.
| | 04:10 | We still got some more work to do here.
| | 04:12 | I've got the Amp X set up.
| | 04:14 | I need to do Y and Z as well.
| | 04:16 | Rather than rebuild the sliders
again, I can just duplicate this one.
| | 04:19 | So hold down the Ctrl key, drag
up and that makes a copy of it.
| | 04:23 | Now drag it down again and change the
name from Amp X to Amp Y and tab over.
| | 04:30 | Then I will do the same
thing to make the Z slider.
| | 04:31 | Ctrl+drag up, drag it down and change
the value to Z. Everything else remains
| | 04:39 | the same on each of those sliders.
| | 04:41 | So those are the four sliders that we are
going to need to create. I will hit OK now.
| | 04:44 | And you can see now on our camera,
we have a new field in User Data and
| | 04:47 | there are our sliders.
| | 04:49 | We can slide these values around,
but they are not linked to anything.
| | 04:52 | That's the next step in our process.
| | 04:54 | Let's move over to Xpresso.
| | 04:56 | In order to do that, we have to right-
click on our SHAKE CAM and go to CINEMA 4D
| | 05:00 | Tags and go to Xpresso and when we do
that that brings up the Xpresso window.
| | 05:05 | The Xpresso window is where you actually
create the code for Xpresso and Xpresso
| | 05:11 | is a node-based script writing language.
| | 05:13 | It can be pretty intimidating, but in
this case, it's going to be fairly easy
| | 05:17 | to use and understand.
| | 05:18 | So the first thing we need to
do is to bring in our camera.
| | 05:22 | This camera now is represented as a node
and nodes have inflows on the blue side
| | 05:27 | and outflows on the red side.
| | 05:28 | We are going to add some outflows for
that because we are going to use the
| | 05:31 | camera to drive the
behavior of some other stuff.
| | 05:35 | I'll click on the red and go down to
User Data and add in each of these values,
| | 05:41 | and I will add them in one at a time Amp X, Amp
Y, Amp Z, and then I will do the Freq as well.
| | 05:52 | I am going to bring the Freq up to the
top and just change the order of these guys.
| | 05:56 | You notice that the values
have these red dots here.
| | 05:59 | These dots are what we are going
to link up to other information.
| | 06:02 | Let's get that other information in.
| | 06:05 | The thing we want to be able to drive
is the Vibrate tag and so if I drag the
| | 06:09 | Vibrate tag into the Xpresso editor, I can now
add in the information I need for the Vibrate.
| | 06:13 | So let's enlarge the Vibrate node.
| | 06:16 | On the inflows for the Vibrate tag, I
will click on the blue and go to Tag
| | 06:20 | Properties and we are going to do
Position Frequency and then we are going to do
| | 06:25 | also Tag Properties > Rotation Frequency.
| | 06:28 | Enlarge this just a little bit more and
we will add in Tag Properties > Position
| | 06:32 | Amplitude, and you notice that
you can break it out separately.
| | 06:35 | We are going to leave it as a
single value, so Position Amplitude.
| | 06:38 | And then we will do the same thing
for Rotation Amplitude so Tag Properties
| | 06:41 | > Rotation Amplitude.
| | 06:43 | Add in just that single value.
| | 06:45 | So now we have four elements here.
| | 06:47 | Now, we could drag directly linkages over here,
but the Xpresso wouldn't behave correctly.
| | 06:51 | We need to change the values that we
have in our sliders into values that
| | 06:56 | these attributes can understand and
so we are going to need to create some
| | 06:59 | conversion nodes for that.
| | 07:01 | The first node we need to create
is something called a Range Mapper.
| | 07:04 | The Range Mapper allows you to convert one type
of data into another and it's a great adapter.
| | 07:09 | Let's right click, go to New Node >
Xpresso and then go to Calculate and then
| | 07:15 | to Range Mapper and in the Range
Mapper node, when you have it selected, you
| | 07:20 | have some options here.
| | 07:22 | The Input Range we are going to leave
it User Defined, the Output Range though
| | 07:25 | is the type of data we want to come
out of the node and that we are going to
| | 07:29 | change to 0 or 100 and this is
where the conversion happens.
| | 07:33 | Now, we can convert it within a range
of values and so we're going to change
| | 07:37 | these values down here.
| | 07:39 | The Input Lower, we are going to change to -
50 because that's the value that's coming in.
| | 07:45 | the Input Upper is 50.
| | 07:47 | That provides us the range of
information that's going to be in that slider and
| | 07:51 | then the Output, a Lower and Upper,
we need to change those values and the
| | 07:55 | values we are going to change
them to are going to be -50 and 50.
| | 07:59 | So let's go ahead and change that two -50
and 50 and now we've got that node created.
| | 08:07 | We need to have one of these nodes for
each of our Amp X, Y, and Z and I'm going
| | 08:12 | to hold down the Ctrl key and drag a
copy of that and you notice it snaps off
| | 08:16 | there and I'll do that one more time.
| | 08:19 | We end up with three of these nodes.
| | 08:21 | So now I have one of these nodes for
each of my X, Y, and Z amplitudes, but I
| | 08:25 | need to convert these three
values into a single amplitude value.
| | 08:29 | The way I am going to do that is a
special node called an Adapter node that
| | 08:33 | turns real values into vectors.
| | 08:35 | A vector in CINEMA 4D is any
value like Amplitude or Position that
| | 08:40 | contains three values.
| | 08:42 | So position in space is expressed
in terms of X, Y, and Z position.
| | 08:46 | Those three numbers together
constitute a vector and that vector is the
| | 08:50 | information that we need to convert.
| | 08:52 | So let's right-click and go to New Node and
then go to Xpresso > Adapter > Reals2Vector.
| | 08:58 | We are going to take this real
information and convert it into a vector value
| | 09:02 | that we can feed into the Position Amplitude.
| | 09:05 | So let's connect these up now.
| | 09:06 | I am clicking from dot to dot and I am
clicking and dragging from one dot to another.
| | 09:11 | So I go X, Y and then Z for
each of these Range Mappers.
| | 09:15 | Then I will connect up X, Y, and Z right here.
| | 09:20 | And then I'm going to take the
Output and go from the Output to
| | 09:25 | Position Amplitude.
| | 09:28 | The Amplitude is now connected for
Position, now we need to connect the
| | 09:31 | Amplitude for Rotation.
| | 09:33 | Let's draw a rectangle around all of
these nodes, hold down the Ctrl key and
| | 09:37 | make copies of them because we need
this exact same kind of set up for the
| | 09:41 | Rotation Amplitude, but we
need to change some of the values.
| | 09:43 | Now this is very important.
| | 09:45 | I want you to draw a rectangle around
all three of these nodes at once not
| | 09:50 | the Reals2Vector node.
| | 09:51 | just the Range Mapper nodes.
| | 09:53 | And now we can see the Properties for all
those Range Mapper nodes at the same time.
| | 09:58 | That way we don't have to
change one, two and three.
| | 09:59 | we can just change them all at the same time.
| | 10:02 | The thing we need to do is
to change the Output Range.
| | 10:05 | the values that we are going to be
sending out of this are going to be expressed
| | 10:07 | in terms of rotation.
| | 10:09 | Rotation Amplitude is expressed in
degrees and so we need to change these from
| | 10:13 | the 0 to 100 value that was
coming out of it to Degrees.
| | 10:16 | So we change the Output Range to
Degrees and you will notice that the Output
| | 10:20 | Upper and Lower has changed as well.
| | 10:22 | Now we don't want to bring that to -50 and 50.
| | 10:23 | That would make the amplitude much
too large and make the camera swing
| | 10:28 | wildly left to right.
| | 10:29 | So what we want to do instead is have a
much smaller range and that's really the
| | 10:32 | beauty of the Range Mapper nodes is
that it let's you convert one type of data
| | 10:35 | into another and we are going to
convert these ranges into a smaller value, -4
| | 10:42 | on the low end and tab over
and hit 4 on the upper end.
| | 10:46 | So that's the maximum range of degrees
that the camera will be allowed to swing
| | 10:51 | for the Vibration tag.
| | 10:53 | Now we need to connect up our nodes and
I'm going to connect from the Amp X, Y,
| | 10:57 | and Z to the Range Mapper.
| | 11:00 | So we are going to go X to X and then
Y to Y and then we will go Z to Z. And
| | 11:09 | then I am going to connect
the Output over to Amplitude.
| | 11:12 | The last but not least we want to
connect up the Freq from this node over here
| | 11:17 | on the camera, straight across to
Position Frequency and Rotation Frequency.
| | 11:21 | This one slider will now drive both of
these values and you could actually set
| | 11:26 | up separate values for them if you
wanted to but the frequency is basically
| | 11:30 | going to be the same number for both.
| | 11:31 | It would make the camera shake a little
too unstable if we use separate values
| | 11:35 | in there so I am driving
these both with the same value.
| | 11:38 | So let's drag from this node over to
that node and then drag from this node over
| | 11:43 | to that node again to connect up to Freq.
| | 11:47 | Close up the window.
| | 11:48 | I am going to rewind to 0
and select my SHAKE CAM.
| | 11:52 | These values are all set up at 0 and
this one I accidentally moved earlier.
| | 11:56 | That's why it's set to -0.2.
| | 11:57 | I will zero that out.
| | 11:58 | When I hit Play, nothing happens, but
now if I increase the frequency that will
| | 12:04 | control the speed, but you notice
nothing moves that's because my amplitude
| | 12:08 | hasn't been changed.
| | 12:09 | They are all set to 0.
| | 12:10 | So my curves are still flat.
| | 12:12 | So now we can introduce a
little bit of shake into that.
| | 12:14 | You will notice as I increase Amp X, my
camera starts to shake left and right.
| | 12:19 | increase Y, I get up and down shake,
Z is shake on the Z-axis and this is
| | 12:24 | really a great thing.
| | 12:26 | Now we've got the SHAKEY CAM going.
| | 12:27 | All we need to do next is keyframe it
so it starts at the right moment in time.
| | 12:31 | So let's stop playback and I will
rewind to 0 and let's zero out these values.
| | 12:37 | I am going to go 0 tab, 0 and you have to tab
twice to get to the next value and zero it out.
| | 12:43 | What I wan to do is hit Play and find
where the ball actually strikes the ground.
| | 12:47 | So let's hit Play and stop it. Boom!
| | 12:50 | So it's right around Frame 30.
| | 12:52 | I'm going to set my Shake Freq for the
maximum value that's the peak of the camera shake.
| | 12:57 | So let's take that Cam Shake and move
the frequency up to about 7 or so and then
| | 13:03 | the amplitude, let's bring that over
to about maybe 35 or so and these are a
| | 13:08 | season to taste numbers.
| | 13:09 | You don't really have to
get the numbers exactly.
| | 13:11 | You can have as much or as little
camera shake as you want and I like to put
| | 13:15 | them in opposite directions.
| | 13:17 | That way the camera is not
likely to go always the same way.
| | 13:21 | Now we need to set keyframes so I
select the first slider field, hold down the
| | 13:25 | Shift key to select the last letter
field and then I will hit Ctrl key and click
| | 13:30 | on the black circle.
| | 13:31 | That converts that information into keyframes.
| | 13:34 | If I back up in time, you
can see my camera is shaking.
| | 13:38 | I don't want it to start shaking until
the ball is right about to hit the ground.
| | 13:41 | So right around Frame 24 or so, I can take
all of these values and change them back to 0.
| | 13:46 | So let's go 0, Tab, Tab, 0,
Tab, Tab, 0, Tab, Tab, 0.
| | 13:51 | And you can see these values have turned
yellow that's because I've changed them
| | 13:55 | since the last keyframe.
| | 13:56 | I can hit Ctrl and set that keyframe for 0.
| | 13:58 | So now our camera is 0 back out.
| | 14:02 | Now one of the things about
dynamics is you can't scrub backwards and
| | 14:04 | forwards like that.
| | 14:05 | So I need to rewind to 0 and you can
see that now my ball hits, but the camera
| | 14:10 | never stops shaking after
the ball hits the ground.
| | 14:13 | So now what I need to do is to
keyframe those values later in time.
| | 14:16 | So let's move our slider to about maybe
frame 80 or so and then I will keyframe
| | 14:20 | these values back to 0 again.
| | 14:22 | So 0, Tab, Tab, 0, Tab, Tab, 0, Tab, Tab, 0.
| | 14:28 | Tab again to get out of that.
| | 14:28 | Hit the Ctrl key, set the keyframe.
| | 14:31 | Let's rewind back to 0 and see
what our SHAKEY CAM looks like. Nice!
| | 14:36 | Now you can adjust these
values to suit your taste.
| | 14:39 | That's really the beauty of this rig
is it makes it very flexible and you can
| | 14:42 | have a tremendous degree
of control over your shake.
| | 14:46 | The great thing about this rig is
that you don't have to build it again.
| | 14:50 | You can simply reuse it by copying
and pasting it from project to project.
| | 14:54 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section of Lynda.com.
| | 14:58 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 15:00 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 006 Rendering type in a seamless environment| 00:01 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Seamless environments for type and
logos are very popular these days.
| | 00:11 | The technique for doing them is
really pretty simple though if you combine
| | 00:14 | CINEMA 4D and After Effects. Let's take a look.
| | 00:18 | This is the piece that we are going to be
creating in CINEMA 4D and After Effects.
| | 00:21 | Let me hit Play on this and I'll
play it back a couple of times.
| | 00:27 | The hallmark of this style is a
lack of definition in the environment.
| | 00:32 | There is really no indication of where
we are in space except for the type's
| | 00:37 | contact with this virtual floor.
| | 00:39 | I've got a shadow being cast.
| | 00:41 | I've also got a little bit of Ambient
Occlusion where the type intersects the
| | 00:45 | floor, and that's the only
indication of the ground plane.
| | 00:48 | If it weren't for those artifacts then there
would be a type floating on a white background.
| | 00:53 | This contact with the floor is really
what gives the scene dimension and gives
| | 00:56 | the viewer an indication
of where they are in space.
| | 00:59 | This technique really comes together
in both CINEMA 4D and After Effects.
| | 01:04 | It's crucial that we render the right
pieces out of CINEMA 4D so that we can
| | 01:07 | stick them together properly in After Effects.
| | 01:09 | So let's move over to
CINEMA 4D and set up the file.
| | 01:12 | Now I have this already built
with the camera move on and I'll just
| | 01:15 | scrub through that.
| | 01:16 | You can see I've got a camera move.
| | 01:17 | I've got my lighting set up.
| | 01:18 | I have on the floor a
reflective plane and it has a perfectly
| | 01:23 | reflective material on it.
| | 01:24 | When I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R on the
keyboard I see a reflective environment.
| | 01:29 | We are not going to be using the
reflection in this composition.
| | 01:32 | I always set my file up this way though
just in case the creative director were
| | 01:37 | to walk in and say, you know what, we
don't want a white seamless environment
| | 01:40 | now, we want a dark seamless
environment with a reflective floor.
| | 01:43 | If I haven't rendered out that
reflection then I've got to go all the way back
| | 01:46 | to CINEMA 4D and render it out again.
| | 01:48 | So this is really kind of a precaution
even though we're not using it in this
| | 01:52 | composing technique it costs
nothing really to render it out anyway.
| | 01:56 | The first thing I want to talk about
is something called Linear Workflow.
| | 01:59 | I have Linear Workflow turned off.
| | 02:02 | If you're creating a file like this
from scratch, Linear Workflow will be on if
| | 02:06 | you're working in some CINEMA
4D R12 or later, R12 and 13.
| | 02:10 | Linear Workflow affects how the
lighting and textures of the objects behave in
| | 02:15 | the render engine and it also
affects how you composite in After Effects.
| | 02:19 | I personally don't like it for this
kind of workflow. So I have it off.
| | 02:23 | So if you want to work with Linear
Workflow on, you need to turn this button on
| | 02:26 | in the project file that I provided for you.
| | 02:28 | So that's it for Linear Workflow.
| | 02:30 | I am just going to bring this manager
down just a little bit so we can see the
| | 02:33 | rest of the Object Manager.
| | 02:35 | The first step in our preparation
of this file is to turn on something
| | 02:39 | called Ambient Occlusion.
| | 02:40 | Ambient Occlusion is the fact that you
see where two objects come together, the
| | 02:45 | render engine creates a dark seam.
| | 02:47 | That dark seam is in present in all
objects in the real world and Ambient
| | 02:50 | Occlusion simulates that effect in the 3D space.
| | 02:54 | So we want to turn it on.
| | 02:55 | It's not on by default.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to bring up the Render
Settings and I'll do that by hitting
| | 02:59 | Command+B or Ctrl+B on the keyboard and
that will bring up the Render Settings
| | 03:03 | and Ambient Occlusion is an effect
and I have to turn on that effect by
| | 03:07 | clicking on the Effect button over
here on the left, and going to Ambient
| | 03:10 | Occlusion at the very top.
| | 03:12 | I won't be able to see the results of
that Ambient Occlusion, because of the
| | 03:15 | reflective floor that I have in the
scene, but I know it's on in the scene now.
| | 03:20 | The next step in this process is to
make sure that I have the Compositing Tag
| | 03:23 | for my Environment sphere set up
correctly, and I do in this case, but I want to
| | 03:26 | review the settings with you.
| | 03:28 | The Environment sphere is this gradient
that I have surrounding my scene and if
| | 03:34 | I uncheck the visible in Editor button
right here, you can see that I've got
| | 03:39 | this gradient surrounding my object.
| | 03:40 | Now I am going to uncheck the camera
real quick and then I will just orbit
| | 03:43 | around so you can see that I've got this
gradient sphere surrounding my entire scene.
| | 03:48 | And this is providing the
reflectivity on the type itself.
| | 03:52 | But I don't want this Environment sphere
to show up in the reflections of the floor.
| | 03:54 | So what I did was in the Compositing
Tag on the Environment sphere, I went
| | 03:59 | to the Exclusion options and I told it to
not show up in the reflections of the floor.
| | 04:04 | And I did that by dragging the
plane into this Exclusion field.
| | 04:08 | This set of icons here says don't show
up in the reflections and that's what
| | 04:12 | this little arrow right here means.
| | 04:15 | It means reflection: Don't show up.
| | 04:18 | Next, I want to set up the
Compositing Tag for my type.
| | 04:21 | I am going to look back through the
camera and I will click on the Active
| | 04:24 | Camera button right there.
| | 04:26 | In my type object, I want the type to
have something called an object buffer.
| | 04:30 | An object buffer is an alpha channel
that allows me to lift the type off the
| | 04:34 | background so I can do things color
correction or composite things behind it.
| | 04:37 | I want to make sure I have that option
for me when I render it to After Effects.
| | 04:41 | I am going to right-click on the type
extruder and go to CINEMA 4D Tags and then
| | 04:46 | Compositing and in the Compositing tag,
I'll go to the Object Buffer option and
| | 04:51 | enable Object Buffer 1.
| | 04:53 | The number that's here is not important
as long as that number matches what's in
| | 04:58 | the Render Settings and we are
going to do that in just a second.
| | 05:00 | So I am going to leave that at number 1
for now and just know that you could put
| | 05:04 | anything in there as long as you put
that same number in the Render Setting.
| | 05:07 | That's it for the file preparation.
| | 05:09 | Now what we can do is go onto the
Render Settings and then prepare a file for
| | 05:13 | actually rendering it for After Effects.
| | 05:15 | So let's bring up the Render Settings
again, Command+B or Ctrl+B on the keyboard.
| | 05:20 | The first thing I want to do is
tell it how many frames to render.
| | 05:23 | So let's go to the Output option and the
Output option is set for 640e360 and I
| | 05:28 | set this aspect ratio up with this
sort of web size in mind ahead of time.
| | 05:33 | So I've got a 16e9 aspect
ratio on my scene already.
| | 05:36 | A lot of times I like to lock this ratio off.
| | 05:39 | That way I can't accidentally change it
or if I wanted to render a larger size
| | 05:42 | like 1280e720, it will automatically
calculate the correct aspect ratio for me.
| | 05:47 | I will leave that locked.
| | 05:49 | Then I am going to go down to the
Frame Range and the Frame Rate controls how
| | 05:52 | many frames you're going to
be rendering for After Effects.
| | 05:56 | So let's change that 0 to 44.
| | 05:57 | That way I will get exactly 45
frames for my After Effects render.
| | 06:01 | That's a second-and-a-half if
you're counting at 30 frames per second.
| | 06:04 | This technique requires Multi-Pass Rendering.
| | 06:07 | Multi-Pass Rendering is the processing
of different layers of your image, your
| | 06:12 | rendered image from CINEMA 4D and
saving them out to separate files so that
| | 06:16 | After Effects can composite them back together.
| | 06:18 | This gives you a lot of control and flexibility.
| | 06:21 | I need to first turn on Multi-Pass Rendering.
| | 06:23 | So I am going to go to the Multi-Pass
option on the left here and turn it on.
| | 06:27 | All that does is tell CINEMA 4D
that I want to do a Multi-Pass render.
| | 06:31 | I haven't told it what parts of the
image I'd like to render out and that's the
| | 06:35 | next thing I need to do.
| | 06:36 | So on the Multi-Pass button I'll
click and this presents me with a list of
| | 06:40 | options for what kinds of passes I
can render out for the Multi-Pass.
| | 06:44 | The first thing I want to turn on is RGBA Image.
| | 06:47 | That is the final rendered image
without any of the multi-passes.
| | 06:50 | It's exactly what you see in the render engine.
| | 06:52 | So I am going to add that in.
| | 06:54 | The next thing I want to do is turn on
the Object Buffer for my type, and this
| | 06:58 | is where I mentioned that number earlier.
| | 07:00 | The group ID that shows up here has to
match the group ID that's down here in this tag.
| | 07:05 | If these two numbers don't match, I
won't get an Object Buffer for that object.
| | 07:09 | You could have an infinite number of
Object Buffers in your scene as long as the
| | 07:13 | numbers in your Render Settings match
the tags that you put on your objects, and
| | 07:16 | that's very important.
| | 07:18 | The next thing I want to add in
is the Ambient Occlusion pass.
| | 07:22 | You remember we turned on Ambient
Occlusion earlier and I want to add that
| | 07:26 | into the Multi-Pass.
| | 07:27 | The Ambient Occlusion effect would
be rendered in the final image, but I
| | 07:30 | wouldn't have access to it in the
Multi-Pass unless I turned it on here.
| | 07:34 | So I'll go in the Multi-Pass and I will
go to Ambient Occlusion and add that in.
| | 07:38 | Then I want to do Reflection
and then I also want to do Shadow.
| | 07:42 | Now you notice I didn't turn on all of
the image layers, and that's because I
| | 07:47 | want to be efficient in my rendering process.
| | 07:49 | I know I am not going to need
all those pieces in the future.
| | 07:52 | I only want to render out the
ones that I absolutely need.
| | 07:56 | It doesn't really affect the render
time and all, but it does affect how much
| | 07:58 | drive space you are taking up.
| | 07:59 | So you want to be
efficient with your render passes.
| | 08:02 | I've told CINEMA 4D what
pieces I want to render out.
| | 08:05 | Now I have to tell them where to put
them and what format to put them in.
| | 08:08 | So we are going to go to the Save
options and the Save options are where you
| | 08:12 | tell CINEMA 4D where do you want to put
those files and what format to put them in.
| | 08:16 | In this field, the most important
button to turn off is this Multi-Layer File.
| | 08:22 | After Effects can read a multilayer
Photoshop file but it cannot read a sequence
| | 08:26 | of multilayered Photoshop files.
| | 08:27 | So you don't want accidentally render that out.
| | 08:30 | If you're working on a still frame
or still image or style frames for a
| | 08:33 | storyboarding process, you could
render out single multilayer frame and then
| | 08:37 | composite them in Photoshop, but
we want to do this in After Effects.
| | 08:41 | The next thing I want to do
turn the Bit Depth down a bit.
| | 08:44 | I don't need 16 bits for this type of render.
| | 08:46 | So I will turn it down to 8 bits per channel.
| | 08:47 | That's the amount of color
information per pixel in the frame.
| | 08:51 | The next thing I want to do is to
tell it where to put those files.
| | 08:55 | Now I am going to click on the Save
Image button here and that's going to ask me
| | 08:57 | where I want to put my frames.
| | 08:59 | And I'll go the Desktop and go to the
Type-Seamless and our C4D RENDERS folder
| | 09:04 | and I am going to call this Seamless,
and you can see I've already rendered
| | 09:07 | these ahead of time, but this
is where I'd rendered them to.
| | 09:10 | So I called this Seamless.
| | 09:13 | I don't need to worry about any of
these extra bits on the name here.
| | 09:16 | CINEMA 4D will put all those tags on for me.
| | 09:18 | So I'll hit Save and you can see now it's
telling exactly where my rendering is going to go.
| | 09:24 | The last step in our CINEMA 4D
preparation is the compositing project file info.
| | 09:28 | If I twirl open this arrow, you can
see that I've got some checkboxes here.
| | 09:32 | Now I want to turn on Save,
Relative, and 3D Data.
| | 09:37 | The Timeline Markers, I don't need in
this case, but I could if I had made
| | 09:41 | rendering cues inside of the timeline
in CINEMA 4D, I could get those rendering
| | 09:46 | markers out to After Effects as well.
| | 09:48 | I don't need that in this case
so I will leave it turned off.
| | 09:50 | The Save Project File
button is only for a manual save.
| | 09:54 | When I render this out of CINEMA 4D, the
last step in the process will be CINEMA
| | 09:58 | 4D saving out an AEC file.
| | 10:00 | That's a file that we import into After Effects.
| | 10:04 | That is a crucial step in this
Multi-Pass rendering process.
| | 10:07 | I've already got these rendered out.
| | 10:09 | I don't need to render them now, but this
is how I set up the files for rendering.
| | 10:12 | Let's move over to After
Effects and stick this together.
| | 10:15 | Here we are in After Effects and I want to
go to the File menu and do an Import and File.
| | 10:21 | I have this file already set up for rendering.
| | 10:25 | I have an image sequence folder here and
I've got this Seamless.aec file at the bottom.
| | 10:30 | This file is able to be imported into
After Effects, because I've installed the
| | 10:34 | CINEMA 4D import plug-in into
my After Effects plug-ins folder.
| | 10:39 | If you want to learn more about that
process, you can check out the CINEMA 4D
| | 10:43 | Essential Training course and there is
a chapter on working with After Effects.
| | 10:46 | I am going to import this AEC file and hit Open.
| | 10:49 | That gives me two folders, the logo-
seamless-End.c4d, and Special Passes.
| | 10:55 | My first step is always to take the
Special Passes and drag it in here.
| | 10:58 | That way I know the Special
Passes go with this particular shot.
| | 11:01 | A lot of times on projects, you're
working with multiple C4D renders and you
| | 11:05 | want to make sure that you
Special Passes stay organized correctly.
| | 11:09 | The composition here is
what CINEMA 4D saved out.
| | 11:12 | So let's double-click on that
and see what's in this composition.
| | 11:16 | I'll enlarge the name column here.
| | 11:18 | So we can see what's going on, and
you can see it's put two of the passes
| | 11:21 | already, but you notice it
didn't put in the RGBA pass.
| | 11:24 | That's because, by default, it thinks
we want to do a multi-pass render and it
| | 11:27 | only gives us the image
layers, not the actual RGB layer.
| | 11:30 | The RGB layer is contained in the
Special Passes folder and that's what we are
| | 11:33 | going to use to composite with.
| | 11:35 | a bug in the C4D rendering process.
| | 11:40 | When it saves out that AEC file and
you imported into After Effects, the
| | 11:43 | rendering is perfectly fine, but the
AEC file tells After Effects that the RGB
| | 11:48 | pass has been pre-multiplied.
| | 11:50 | That affects how the rendering
shows up in the composition window.
| | 11:54 | We don't want it to be pre-multiplied.
| | 11:56 | we want it to ignore the Alpha channel.
| | 11:57 | We did not turn on Alpha channel in
our renderings in CINEMA 4D, so we want
| | 12:00 | have this Alpha ignored.
| | 12:02 | So I'll right-click on the RGB pass,
go to Interpret Footage, go to the
| | 12:06 | Main interpretation.
| | 12:08 | Underneath the Alpha option here,
I'm going to tell it to Ignore.
| | 12:12 | Then I'm going to hit Return on the
keyboard to get rid of that window and now
| | 12:17 | I've got my RGB pass set for Alpha ignored.
| | 12:20 | Putting it together is a very simple process.
| | 12:22 | Step 1 is to bring the RGB pass into the scene.
| | 12:26 | So I am going to bring RGB pass in and
when I bring that out, you can see I've
| | 12:30 | got my type on this black
background with the reflective floor.
| | 12:33 | I don't want the reflexively.
| | 12:35 | all I want is the type.
| | 12:37 | So I'm going to use the Object Buffer.
| | 12:38 | I'll drag that in and place it above the RGB.
| | 12:41 | Then I'm going to hit my Switches/Modes column.
| | 12:44 | In the Track Mattes, I am going to set the
Object Buffer to be a Track Matte for my type.
| | 12:49 | So I'll go to Luma Matte Seamless_object_1.
| | 12:51 | Now I have my type set on top of the background.
| | 12:54 | I've got my Reflective floor and
my Shadow pass already turned on.
| | 12:59 | Now I don't need this reflection
anymore, because I am not going to be using
| | 13:02 | it in the composites.
| | 13:03 | So I can turn that off and then I want
to turn off the shadow pass as well and I
| | 13:09 | want to bring in the Ambient Occlusion
pass and put that right below everything.
| | 13:12 | You can see the Ambient Occlusion pass
gives me that contact with the floor that
| | 13:16 | I was missing before.
| | 13:18 | Now when I turn on my shadow, I've
got a shadow and I've got my Ambient
| | 13:22 | Occlusion pass and my type is
sitting in a seamless white environment.
| | 13:25 | Now if I want to dial the shadow up or
down, I can just go to the shadow, hit
| | 13:29 | T to bring up the Opacity options and dial
that down, so I don't have quite as dark a shadow.
| | 13:34 | So it gives you a lot of control and
flexibility for the compositing process.
| | 13:38 | That's it for creating a
seamless and white environment.
| | 13:40 | It really is not that difficult.
| | 13:43 | The success of this technique really
depends on what pieces you render from
| | 13:46 | CINEMA 4D and how you put
them together in After Effects.
| | 13:50 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D
and After Effects, check out the video
| | 13:53 | section of Lynda.com.
| | 13:54 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 13:56 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 007 Using the Graph Editor to control animation| 00:01 | Hi! Rob Garrott here, and
welcome to Design in Motion.
| | 00:03 | the weekly series where we explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:08 | Now, getting precise control over your
objects is essential to becoming a good animator.
| | 00:12 | The best way to control your animations
in After Effects is with the Graph Editor.
| | 00:16 | By unlocking its power, your animations
will only get better. Let's take a look.
| | 00:21 | So what I have here is a very simple
animation of a ball bouncing down the stairs.
| | 00:26 | I've made this already ahead of time.
| | 00:28 | I have the actual Start file if you want to do
this from scratch and animate the ball yourself.
| | 00:33 | This has no keyframes in it at all.
| | 00:35 | These were just made by moving the
position of ball over time and animating it.
| | 00:39 | let's RAM-Preview this to see
what the motion actually looks like.
| | 00:44 | As it hits, each of the steps has a
distinct pause in there, and that's
| | 00:47 | because of the way After Effects is
interpreting the information in between the keyframes.
| | 00:52 | It knows where it needs to be at a
particular keyframe but what happens in
| | 00:55 | between the keyframes is
not being handled correctly.
| | 00:58 | To control that information in between
the keyframes, we need to get access to
| | 01:02 | the curves, and we're going to
do that with the Graph Editor.
| | 01:04 | So to access the Graph Editor, I am
going to select the position track here and
| | 01:08 | then click on the Graph Editor icon.
| | 01:10 | When I do that, I now see the Graph Editor.
| | 01:13 | Let's get this a little bit larger over here.
| | 01:15 | I am going to raise this up a bit.
| | 01:18 | With the Graph Editor visible for the
position track, you can actually see
| | 01:21 | the pauses and the pauses are not in
the Y information, the pauses are in the
| | 01:26 | X information, the information comes into
the keyframe, and then travels out again.
| | 01:32 | That is what we want to get rid of.
| | 01:35 | If I select that individual keyframe,
that is going to allow me to change the
| | 01:39 | data on a keyframe or I can move that
information up and down and change where
| | 01:43 | that keyframe happens in space,
notice that it's moving up here as well.
| | 01:47 | That's not what I want to do.
| | 01:48 | What I want to do is to be able to
actually change how this information is
| | 01:51 | flowing into that keyframe.
| | 01:53 | To do that, I need to
unlock the X and Y positions.
| | 01:58 | The way you do that is by turning on
this little button right here called
| | 02:02 | Separate Dimensions.
| | 02:03 | It allows us to get very
precise control over those keyframes.
| | 02:06 | I am going to click that and
watch what happens to my curves here.
| | 02:10 | The shape of the image changed but
more importantly, when I click on a
| | 02:13 | keyframe, I now have access to Bezier
handles that will allow me to control the
| | 02:18 | tension of the information coming in and out of
the keyframes, and that's what I want to tweak.
| | 02:23 | So let's zoom in on that.
| | 02:24 | I am going to hit Plus on the keyboard to zoom
in, hold down the Spacebar to get us back here.
| | 02:30 | Now, what I want to do is I want to
just change the incoming and outgoing
| | 02:34 | information and I want to
have a nice smooth line there.
| | 02:38 | What I will do is take the handle on each side
and I'm going to point it at the next keyframe.
| | 02:44 | By doing that, I am going to end up
with a very nice smooth line and I'll work
| | 02:47 | my way through each of the curves, take
that guy and move it over here and I'll
| | 02:54 | take this one and move it here.
| | 02:56 | You notice that as I select each curve,
the handles become visible and the
| | 03:00 | previous handles go away.
| | 03:02 | That helps to declutter the interface.
| | 03:05 | Smooth that last one out, and now
I've got a very smooth X position.
| | 03:09 | Now, let's grab that last one,
bring that right in as well.
| | 03:14 | Let's check that out,
and see what it looks like.
| | 03:16 | I am going to enlarge the window here
and then do another RAM preview, and hit 0
| | 03:22 | on the numeric keypad.
| | 03:23 | You notice the animation
feels a lot more natural.
| | 03:28 | We've gotten rid of that pause and the
bouncing down the stairs feels like a ball.
| | 03:32 | Now, if we wanted to, we could
enhance this motion even more.
| | 03:36 | If I wanted the ball to bounce higher in
between, I can use these same curves again.
| | 03:39 | Let's check that out.
| | 03:40 | I am going to enlarge this window
one more time and this time instead of
| | 03:44 | focusing on the X keyframes, I am
going to focus on the Y keyframes.
| | 03:48 | So when I do that, I can select these
guys, and I can now make it the ball
| | 03:52 | bounce higher by making
this little dip here go lower.
| | 03:56 | In After Effects, the graph is defined
by these values on left-hand side here
| | 04:01 | and by adjusting these values lower, I
am going to have a higher animation here.
| | 04:05 | It's a little bit counterintuitive,
but that's the way the After Effects
| | 04:08 | adjusts its numbers.
| | 04:10 | So I am going to take these guys and
just grab the handles down and when I do
| | 04:13 | that, the values change and so let's take
these guys and raise it up here. There we go!
| | 04:19 | You notice that curve got bigger here.
| | 04:23 | So I can do that for each one of these curves.
| | 04:26 | I can click on the keyframe
to reveal the handles for that.
| | 04:32 | I want to try and make them about the
same size on each curve, so that the ball
| | 04:37 | doesn't feel like it's losing
energy as it bounces down the stairs.
| | 04:41 | Let's re-enlarge the frame,
hit 0 on the numeric keypad.
| | 04:44 | You can see now I have a much bigger
bounce as it goes down the stairs, but I
| | 04:49 | still have that same sharp
clean motion for my ball.
| | 04:54 | Unlocking the power of the Graph Editor
will unlock your potential as an artist.
| | 04:58 | To learn more about the Graph Editor,
check out Chris and Trish Meyer's After
| | 05:02 | Effects Apprentice 03 in the
Videos section of lynda.com.
| | 05:05 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 05:07 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 008 Creating dynamic liquid| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:08 | Next to creating a photorealistic human,
flowing water is probably the hardest
| | 00:12 | thing to create in 3D animation.
| | 00:14 | CINEMA 4D doesn't have a fluid
simulator built into it, but with some dynamic
| | 00:20 | objects and a little bit of creativity
we can make something that doesn't look
| | 00:23 | exactly like flowing water, but it
still looks pretty cool. Let's take a look.
| | 00:28 | This is the finished animation that
results from the CINEMA 4D file that
| | 00:32 | we'll be setting up.
| | 00:33 | I'm not going to focus on the
render and compositing in this episode.
| | 00:37 | I really want to talk
just about the dynamic setup.
| | 00:39 | I'll be giving you the final render as
an After Effects file so you can work out
| | 00:42 | the post effects for yourself.
| | 00:44 | Let's hit Play on this and see
what the animation looks like.
| | 00:50 | So we've got this water like
substance that is going to flowing down the
| | 00:54 | slide and hitting our type and knocking it
out of the way for a little transition effect.
| | 00:58 | CINEMA 4D does not have a fluid
simulator, but this behaves kind of like water
| | 01:04 | and it interacts with our objects kind
of like water and I think that's going to
| | 01:08 | be just fine for this kind of application.
| | 01:11 | Let's move over to CINEMA 4D
and see how this comes together.
| | 01:15 | So I'm in a blank file, first step I want to
create is the balls that I'm going to need.
| | 01:20 | The object that we're going to create
the water with is something called a
| | 01:23 | Metaball object and the
Metaball needs to work with spheres.
| | 01:27 | So let's add a sphere.
| | 01:30 | This sphere is a little bit
too large for our purpose.
| | 01:32 | So we're going to change the
Radius and also the Segment count.
| | 01:36 | So the Radius we're going to bring down
to about 10 units and then the Segment
| | 01:40 | count we're going to make 6.
| | 01:42 | The Segment count controls how
many polygons are in this sphere.
| | 01:45 | If I hit O on the keyboard now, you can see
that it doesn't really look like a sphere anymore.
| | 01:50 | But the Metaball doesn't care.
| | 01:52 | It looks at the sphere object,
not how many segments it has.
| | 01:55 | This little button right here Render
Perfect always ensures that my sphere will
| | 01:59 | render perfectly no matter
how many segments it has.
| | 02:02 | If I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R, it
still shows up as a perfect sphere.
| | 02:07 | I want to get a grid of these spheres
that I can use as a starting point for
| | 02:10 | my dynamic simulation.
| | 02:12 | Let's back out just a bit and
start off by adding a Cloner object in.
| | 02:17 | So we'll go to MoGraph and add a
Cloner and this Cloner I want to be a grid.
| | 02:21 | If I make the sphere a child of the
Cloner, you'll see that it's creating copies
| | 02:25 | of these spheres, but it's doing them
along the Y axis and I want to create a
| | 02:28 | grid of these, a very dense grid.
| | 02:30 | Let's go to the Cloner object
and make a couple of tweaks here.
| | 02:34 | The first thing we want to change
is the type of clone it's creating.
| | 02:37 | It's creating a Linear
clone arrangement right now.
| | 02:39 | Let's change that to be a Gird Array.
| | 02:41 | Now we end up with a 3e3
e3 grid of the spheres.
| | 02:46 | The Grid Array needs to be a little
bit tighter and a little bit more dense.
| | 02:51 | The first thing I want to do is
change the count for the spheres.
| | 02:54 | If I change the count from 3e3e3 to 10e10
and I don't need quite that many on the Z axis.
| | 03:01 | So let's make it 7 on the Z. Now
I've got a dense grid of spheres.
| | 03:07 | CINEMA 4D's simulation engine works on
the idea of dynamic objects and colliders.
| | 03:14 | I need to create something for this
group of spheres to collide with and that's
| | 03:18 | going to be a simple plane object.
| | 03:19 | So let's add a plane to the scene.
| | 03:22 | I don't want my spheres to be
intersecting the plane with the
| | 03:24 | starting animation.
| | 03:25 | Let's raise this up and let's
back out just a bit and pan down.
| | 03:32 | Now the Cloner object, I want to drop
down and hit the floor and break apart
| | 03:36 | into a bunch of little spheres.
| | 03:37 | So the way I need to do that is by
changing this Cloner object into a dynamic object.
| | 03:43 | The way I'm going to do that is by right-
clicking on the Cloner object and going
| | 03:47 | to Simulation Tags submenu and
then selecting the Rigid Body.
| | 03:53 | When I do that, I now have a Rigid Body object.
| | 03:57 | If I hit Play, watch what happens.
| | 04:01 | Not too exciting, is it?
| | 04:03 | The Cloner object is passing through the plane.
| | 04:06 | Remember I mentioned earlier that it
works on the idea of rigid bodies and
| | 04:09 | colliders and the plane needs to be a collider.
| | 04:12 | Otherwise, this thing won't know it's
there and it will not collide with it.
| | 04:16 | So let's right-click on the plane and go
to Simulation Tags and then we're going
| | 04:20 | to create a Collider Body.
| | 04:23 | Now when we hit Play, the object
drops down and bounces off the ground.
| | 04:31 | Let's stop that for a second and hit H
on the keyboard to zoom in on everything.
| | 04:35 | That didn't do exactly what I wanted it to do.
| | 04:38 | It hits the plane all right, but it
reacts as an entire group and I want it to
| | 04:42 | react as a bunch of individual balls.
| | 04:45 | Now the way you do that is by going to
the tag that's on the Cloner object and
| | 04:49 | telling the collision to include all objects.
| | 04:54 | Now when I do that and rewind and hit
Play, I now get a whole bunch of balls
| | 05:01 | reacting dynamically to that plane.
| | 05:05 | Now I need to create the Metaball setup
that will make it look like a blob and
| | 05:10 | that blob will put a texture
on to make it feel like water.
| | 05:14 | Let's go to the Modeling Objects and
underneath this icon right here is the
| | 05:18 | Metaball in the bottom left.
| | 05:20 | The Metaball object works with
spheres and my Cloner object is creating a
| | 05:24 | whole bunch of spheres.
| | 05:25 | So the way this works is I take the
Cloner and I make it a child of the Metaball
| | 05:29 | and I'm going to get a very large blob.
| | 05:31 | Let's rewind back to 0.
| | 05:33 | The Metaball creates a skin based on
the spheres that are underneath it.
| | 05:38 | And right now that skin is too
large for the body of spheres.
| | 05:42 | So I have to make it smaller and make
it more tightly conform to the actual
| | 05:46 | spheres that are in there.
| | 05:47 | The way I do that is by changing the
Hull Value underneath the Object Properties.
| | 05:51 | The way the Hull Value works is that the
higher the Hull Value, the more tightly
| | 05:55 | it conforms to the spheres.
| | 05:56 | So let's bring this up to about 500%.
| | 05:59 | You notice as I scrub that value, it's
going to get smaller and smaller, and as
| | 06:03 | I approach 500%, it's going to
get very tight to those spheres.
| | 06:08 | I've gone beyond that and you can see you
can actually go inside the body of the spheres.
| | 06:11 | But what I want to do is
change that just to 500.
| | 06:15 | The Subdivision controls how much
information you're seeing here in the Editor window.
| | 06:20 | What I want to do is bring
this down to about 10 units.
| | 06:23 | That'll give me an idea of
what my object is looking like.
| | 06:27 | This Metaball is
conforming tightly to those spheres.
| | 06:32 | I'll rewind back to 0 and then hit Play,
you'll see that the Metaball now looks
| | 06:37 | as if it's colliding with the plane object.
| | 06:39 | Now you may have noticed that the
playback here was very slow, and that's
| | 06:45 | because the Metaball
object has a lot to think about.
| | 06:48 | So it's a good idea when you get to
this phase of the animation to start making
| | 06:51 | preview movies instead of just hitting Play.
| | 06:53 | That will guarantee you're
seeing the exact playback speed.
| | 06:57 | For more on making preview movies,
check out the chapter on animation in the
| | 07:01 | Essential Training course for CINEMA 4D R12.
| | 07:03 | Now that we've got a Metaball that's
properly reacting to the collider object,
| | 07:08 | we can move this rig into
the existing project file.
| | 07:12 | So let's take the Metaball, select it
Command+C or Ctrl+C and I'll go to the
| | 07:17 | Window menu and go to Dynamic-Liquid-START.
| | 07:20 | This file here has a camera move
already in it with the slide and the type.
| | 07:26 | You can see the camera just drops
down the slide and focuses on the type.
| | 07:29 | I don't want to look
through the camera right now.
| | 07:31 | I want to see my whole scene file.
| | 07:32 | So I'll uncheck the active camera
icon and now I can see my scene.
| | 07:37 | As I orbit around that, I've got the
type and the slide all together in frame.
| | 07:42 | Let's paste down our Metaball object,
Command+V or Ctrl+V. Now I have this
| | 07:47 | object right here at the center of the
world, I need to move it up in space.
| | 07:53 | So I'm going to take the Metaball and
move it up to the top of the slide, up on
| | 07:59 | Y axis and then over on X until
it's firmly embedded in the slide.
| | 08:05 | Orbit around just a bit, take the red handle
and move it right up about here. There we go!
| | 08:11 | If I select the Metaball object and
look at the Position values for it, I'm
| | 08:15 | seeing I'm at about 700 on X and
about 2000 on Y and 427 on the Z axis.
| | 08:22 | That's close enough I think for this,
but for those of you that want to follow
| | 08:26 | along at home exactly
numerically, let's round these up a bit.
| | 08:29 | I'll go 722 and then about 2100 on Y
and then about 370 or so on Z. What that's
| | 08:40 | going to give me is a good
starting point for my water.
| | 08:43 | It'll fall down and intersect with the slide.
| | 08:46 | If I hit Play right now, you'll see
that it does in fact fall down, but it
| | 08:50 | doesn't intersect with the slide.
| | 08:52 | That's because we have to tell the
dynamic simulation that the slide is important.
| | 08:56 | So let's rewind that back to 0 and
then in the object manager I'm going to
| | 09:01 | select the Sweep NURB.
| | 09:02 | The Sweep NURB is the slide object.
| | 09:04 | So if I right-click on that and go to
Simulation Tags > Collider Body, now the
| | 09:10 | Sweep NURB is in fact a collider and
these spheres will no longer intersect the
| | 09:15 | slide, they will hit it and then slide down.
| | 09:18 | When they get to the bottom of the slide,
they have to hit the floor and spread out.
| | 09:21 | So I need to tell the plane to
be a collider object as well.
| | 09:24 | So I'll right-click on the plane and go
to Simulation Tags and then Collider Body.
| | 09:29 | So now I have a collider for the
slide and a collider for the plane object.
| | 09:33 | The last thing I need to do is
to make the type a dynamic object.
| | 09:35 | We're using something called a fracture
object that I've built it ahead of time
| | 09:40 | that allows you to treat individual
spline objects as if they were clones.
| | 09:44 | Then we can also treat them with
dynamics as well, because they are clones.
| | 09:48 | You'll notice that I have a separate
spline for each letter in the word SPLASH
| | 09:52 | and they're all underneath the fracture
object and the fracture object is what I
| | 09:56 | want to tell to be dynamic.
| | 09:58 | I'm going to right-click on the
Extrude NURB and then I'm going to go to
| | 10:03 | Simulation Tags and then go to Rigid Body.
| | 10:07 | Just to see what's going to
happen I'm going to hit Play.
| | 10:13 | This is going to take a little bit
of time to actually play back, because
| | 10:16 | there's so much geometry
and information in here.
| | 10:18 | You may have noticed a couple
of things about this animation.
| | 10:22 | It didn't work exactly
the way we thought it would.
| | 10:24 | The reason it didn't work that
way is because of two factors.
| | 10:27 | The first one is the type.
| | 10:28 | The word SPLASH simply fell
over the moment we hit Play.
| | 10:32 | The other thing you'll notice is that
the slide itself, the balls, didn't go
| | 10:35 | down the slide, they kind of rolled
off the surface of the object as if there
| | 10:39 | were no indentation there.
| | 10:41 | So we have to tell the dynamic
engine to treat the letters of the word as
| | 10:45 | individual objects and then not to have
those letters move until they have a collision.
| | 10:49 | So let's go to the type first.
| | 10:51 | On the Extrude NURB, I'm going to go
to the Collision property and tell it to
| | 10:55 | be Individual Elements > All and then
I'm going to go to the Dynamics and tell
| | 11:00 | it when to trigger.
| | 11:02 | I don't want it to trigger until it
actually has a collision with something else.
| | 11:06 | That means the type will sit
there until my water droplets hit it.
| | 11:10 | The next thing I want to do is go to
the tag that's on the Sweep NURB which is
| | 11:14 | the slide itself and under the
Collision options there is a Shape property.
| | 11:18 | The Shape property is set to Automatic,
and that works for a lot of things.
| | 11:23 | In the case of an object that has an
indentation like the slide, then I have to
| | 11:27 | change that from Automatic to Static Mesh.
| | 11:32 | What that's going to do is tell the
dynamic engine to look inside the geometry
| | 11:36 | and then use the actual shape
of the slide as the collision.
| | 11:40 | Let's rewind back to 0 and hit Play now.
| | 11:46 | The actual simulation time
took quite a while to do.
| | 11:49 | It's not a real-time process at all.
| | 11:52 | You normally would want to make a
preview movie with this so you could actually
| | 11:55 | judge the speed of the animation.
| | 11:58 | You can keep making subtle tweaks to
the actual properties of the simulation
| | 12:02 | tags to get different bounce rates and
different weights for the objects in the
| | 12:06 | scene, but that's the basics of the setup.
| | 12:09 | The only thing that I haven't done this
file was texture map the Metaball and I
| | 12:13 | have a glass material here that all I
really need to do is just apply that right
| | 12:17 | to the Metaball object and it's done.
| | 12:19 | I've got the reflections already set up
for it, bunch of other lights and things
| | 12:23 | in the scene that will make it look
the way it does in the final render.
| | 12:26 | Let's take a look at that again in QuickTime.
| | 12:38 | Even though this doesn't move exactly
like water, it still looks pretty cool.
| | 12:42 | And a lot of times in motion graphics
looking cool is really what it's all about.
| | 12:46 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section of Lynda.com.
| | 12:50 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 12:51 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 009 Doing more with less in the After Effect render queue | 00:00 | Hi, Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:03 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:06 | Now the Render Queue in After Effects is
really one of its most amazing features.
| | 00:11 | It allows you to stack up
renders in a dizzying number of ways.
| | 00:14 | Now on a typical job you may have dozens of
renders that all have to get done on time.
| | 00:19 | So you really need to be efficient.
| | 00:21 | So what's the best way to setup your
renders for output? Let's find out.
| | 00:26 | So here we are in After
Effects and I've got this animation.
| | 00:28 | It could be representative of a show
open or a bumper graphic that you have to
| | 00:33 | get out to editorial, and that's
really the important thing here is, when you
| | 00:36 | need to get something out After Effects,
usually you're sending it to someone
| | 00:39 | who's going to use it in another
situation, but have to prepare this graphic in
| | 00:42 | a very specific way and that's
where the render queue comes in.
| | 00:45 | Now this animation is very short five
seconds I'll just RAM preview it, so you
| | 00:48 | guys can see what it is we're rendering out.
| | 00:54 | In order to get this to the render
queue, I have to go up to the Composition
| | 00:57 | menu and I'm going to go to Add to
Render Queue. Now you can also use Make
| | 01:00 | Movie, but most of the time I use
the Add to Render Queue, and there is a
| | 01:03 | keyboard shortcut for that even
though it's not listed here, and that is
| | 01:06 | Shift+Command+/ and I'm going to do that
right now, so I'll hit Add to Render Queue.
| | 01:12 | The Render Queue has some columns here
and the columns and rows show you what it
| | 01:18 | is that you're rendering and
what's happening in the render.
| | 01:20 | There are two different components to
a render in After Effects. There is the
| | 01:23 | Render Settings and then
there's the Output Module.
| | 01:26 | The Render Settings control things
like the number of frames that you're
| | 01:29 | rendering, the quality of the frames, and
some other more technical aspects of the render.
| | 01:34 | The Output Module controls what format
the frames are rendering to and also what
| | 01:38 | size the frames are rendering to.
| | 01:40 | I need to tell this where to go so
I'm going to click on the Not yet
| | 01:43 | specified, and that's going to take me
out to the Finder window, and asks me
| | 01:47 | where do I want to save this. I'm
going to save it on the Desktop in my
| | 01:51 | Project folder here and I'll just
make a new subfolder and call it renders.
| | 01:56 | Create and now I'll save.
| | 01:59 | You notice I didn't pay attention to the
format that was listed there and that's
| | 02:02 | because you want to control that
format here in the Output Module, and if I
| | 02:06 | click on this, it says the word lossless
is there right now. Well lossless in After
| | 02:11 | Effects terms means the animation
codec and the animation codec has no
| | 02:15 | compression associated with it
so it's a very high image quality.
| | 02:18 | So here in the Render Queue we've got
Video Output, we've got a Resize, we've
| | 02:22 | got Crop, we've got Audio Output. The
only thing we care about right now is
| | 02:26 | the way it is with the default options, so I'm just
going to hit Cancel there and leave it alone.
| | 02:31 | Before I render this I'm going to
stack up another render after this one and
| | 02:36 | that's really the important thing
about communicate here is the idea of
| | 02:38 | efficiency. You don't want to render
one thing, wait around for that render
| | 02:41 | to get done and then set up another
render. You are much better of setting up
| | 02:44 | a batch render, so that you have a
bunch of things going off all the same time.
| | 02:48 | That way you can be doing something
else entirely while this machine is rendering.
| | 02:52 | So I'm going to go back to my
compositions here. I've something called 02_Matte
| | 02:56 | and Fill Render and if I open that up,
that's the exact same animation, but with
| | 03:00 | the Blue Solids turned off.
| | 03:02 | We have transparency behind the type.
| | 03:04 | Typically you would want to give this
to an editor if they were going to be
| | 03:07 | keying it up over some other
background and they want the ability to choose.
| | 03:11 | Maybe they don't want to have that blue;
they just want to have a live-action
| | 03:14 | shot that they want to key this over.
| | 03:16 | Then you can give it to
them with an alpha channel.
| | 03:18 | Some editorial systems can handle a
Matte and Fill embedded in the single movie
| | 03:22 | file and other systems have to have
that Matte and Fill separately, so we are
| | 03:26 | going to render this in next
movie out in three for ways.
| | 03:29 | So I'm going to go to the Composition
menu and go to Add to Render Queue. Now
| | 03:35 | what I want to do is to specify how
I'm going to be rendering this out.
| | 03:39 | By default it say lossless here, but this
does not have an alpha channel embedded in it.
| | 03:43 | That's just a movie, and if I rendered
it as is, it would render over black.
| | 03:46 | So I'm going to click on the word
losses and I'm going to go to the Output Area
| | 03:50 | and I want to render RGB+ Alpha.
And then I want to render instead of
| | 03:55 | Premultiplied, I want to
render as a Straight alpha.
| | 03:58 | Straight alpha will bleed the edges of
the subject out into the black areas and
| | 04:03 | then give you a very clean edge when
it's composite, and so that's always the
| | 04:07 | preferred way to render out
something with an alpha channel.
| | 04:10 | So now I'm going to hit OK and there
you see it says custom QuickTime here.
| | 04:15 | Now normally if you're rendering on
your own system, this is the kind of
| | 04:17 | render that you do on a regular basis
and so you want to have a custom Output
| | 04:20 | Module already set up for this.
| | 04:22 | And so you can click on this pulled on
here and go to Make Template. That will
| | 04:26 | bring up the Output Module settings
and you can call this one lossless with
| | 04:30 | alpha str8, and I would abbreviate straight by
doing that Str with the number 8. And I hit OK
| | 04:38 | and you can see now I've got that going here.
| | 04:40 | I have set up this lossless witho
alpha straight and it's ready to go, but I
| | 04:45 | still have two more
versions of this movie to create.
| | 04:47 | One with an alpha not embedded, so that
I have just a matte fill render and that's
| | 04:52 | going to actually be two movies.
| | 04:53 | So I need to go to the Composition
menu and add Output Module. You notice
| | 04:57 | that it adds a second Output Module and this
one I'm going to render as just a straight fill.
| | 05:04 | So I'm going to click on this and I'll
go to the Channels, leave it on RGB, but
| | 05:09 | I want to tell this to be Straight. You
will notice that you are going to get a
| | 05:13 | warning down here that says settings
mismatch, and it says you should also
| | 05:16 | output an alpha channel and we're
going to do that in just a second.
| | 05:18 | So I'm going to hit OK here.
| | 05:21 | And then I'm going to go to the
Composition menu and add another Output Module
| | 05:25 | more time, and this time I'm going to
change this one to be alpha, and I can
| | 05:30 | change this to Straight (Unmatted) as
well. I will hit OK and you'll notice now
| | 05:36 | I've three renders here and I can
change this one to be 02_Matte-FILL and then
| | 05:44 | I'll change this one after it to
be 02_Matte - and then Matte.
| | 05:52 | So now I can have a very clear definition.
| | 05:57 | In the Render Queue, I've got just a
couple of items that are set up to render,
| | 06:01 | but they are going to generate
several different versions of the movie and
| | 06:04 | that's a very efficient way to work.
| | 06:06 | Instead of just two items, you may
have a dozen, two dozen, three dozen
| | 06:09 | different render items in the Render
Queue all generating different types and
| | 06:13 | versions of your movie.
| | 06:14 | Regardless of how many you're working
with, it's important to be efficient.
| | 06:20 | These techniques will make your
rendering process a well oiled machine, instead
| | 06:23 | of a shot in the dark.
| | 06:25 | To learn more about rendering, check
out the After Effects CS5 Essential
| | 06:28 | Training in the Video section of lynda.com.
| | 06:30 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion. Keep on moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 010 Logo modeling basics| 00:01 | Hi! Rob Garrotte here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now designing a logo was a long and
intensive process that quite frankly a lot
| | 00:11 | of clients skip over.
| | 00:12 | There is going to be a lot of
situations where a client is going to present you
| | 00:16 | with a logo that was designed for
another medium like print or the web, and they
| | 00:20 | are going to ask you to
create a 3D version of it.
| | 00:23 | Now how you prep that file in
Illustrator is going to have a huge impact on the
| | 00:26 | modeling process in
CINEMA 4D. Let's take a look.
| | 00:29 | We are in Illustrator and this is a
very typical logo that's indicative of the
| | 00:34 | kind of situation you might find
yourself in with a client, and I've got several
| | 00:38 | different things going on here.
| | 00:39 | I've got an outer border with an inner
shape here, and then I have got type that
| | 00:43 | has a very thick heavy black outline.
| | 00:46 | Now that type outline was created
using a stroke and I know that CINEMA 4D
| | 00:50 | cannot reach stroke information.
| | 00:52 | So I have to do some prep work here
inside of Illustrator in order to get this
| | 00:55 | type prepared, so that I can
have a good result in CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:59 | Now one of the other things I've done
ahead of time is I've broken each of the
| | 01:03 | elements out in the layers and let
me rebuild this from the bottom up.
| | 01:07 | So now and I've got the shape fill and I
will click twice with the Option key or
| | 01:12 | Alt key on the PC to bring up the shape,
and that's the outer border, and then
| | 01:16 | I've got the type border and
then I've got the type center.
| | 01:20 | Now the type border and the type
centre are still font data and those are the
| | 01:24 | layers that I need to tweak a
little bit here in Illustrator.
| | 01:27 | So the first thing I want to do with the
type center is convert this to outlines.
| | 01:31 | So I will go to the Type menu and I
will go to the Create Outlines command.
| | 01:35 | I could also go to Shift+
Command+O on the keyboard.
| | 01:38 | The next thing I want to do is to
convert these all into their own elements.
| | 01:42 | Now before I do this I would always
want to double check with the client and
| | 01:45 | make very certain that the type
was not going to be ever animating by
| | 01:50 | itself, and in this case I know
that the type is always going to stay
| | 01:53 | together as a solid chunk.
| | 01:55 | So I am going to prepare that
solid chunk here inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:58 | So what I need to do is
bring up the Pathfinder menu.
| | 02:00 | So I will go to the Window and then go
to Pathfinder, and in the Pathfinder I'm
| | 02:06 | going to do a Unite operation.
| | 02:08 | When I click Unite.
| | 02:10 | that merges all of these
objects into one single object.
| | 02:14 | You can see it got rid of all of those
overlaps, and that's just what I want.
| | 02:18 | Let's go back to the type border now.
| | 02:19 | Now type border is a slightly different case.
| | 02:21 | It's still font data, but the font data
has a very heavy black outline on it and
| | 02:27 | that black outline cannot be read by CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:30 | So I am going to grab the Type menu and
go Create Outlines and now before I do
| | 02:36 | an overlap, I want to get the outer border.
| | 02:39 | that's very important here.
| | 02:40 | I don't really care about the center of the
letters, because I have that in the other layer.
| | 02:45 | I only want the outer edge.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going to go to the Object menu,
to the Path submenu, and do an Outline
| | 02:51 | Stroke, and when I do that, I now
have this mess of outlines here, but it's
| | 02:56 | very important and I've got that mess
of outlines that give me the outer shape
| | 03:01 | of the type itself.
| | 03:03 | So if I click on there, you can see
that it highlights all that information.
| | 03:07 | Now I don't need the center information anymore.
| | 03:09 | So I'm going to click another Unite,
and when I do that that unites all of
| | 03:14 | that stuff into a single object, without me
having to go back in and delete them individually.
| | 03:19 | You notice that I've got a little bit
of extra stuff right here in the center
| | 03:23 | for the A and right here where there is
a little bit of an opening in the letter
| | 03:27 | S, and I don't need that information either.
| | 03:29 | So I can hit the letter A on the
keyboard to get the direct selection tool, and
| | 03:32 | I can click on that and I will hold
down the Option key to click that and grab
| | 03:35 | the whole thing and I will hit
Delete twice to get rid of that.
| | 03:39 | I'll do the same thing right here.
| | 03:41 | delete that center of the A. Now all I
have is just the outer black border for
| | 03:46 | that type and when I turn on the type
center, you can see that everything is
| | 03:50 | nice and filled in, and it's all good to go.
| | 03:52 | So that's the prep work that I
have to do here in Illustrator.
| | 03:55 | Now what I need to do is save out
each one of these layers as its own
| | 03:59 | Illustrator document.
| | 04:00 | Now I am going to save these layers out
as their own separate files, let's start
| | 04:03 | off with the type center.
| | 04:04 | So the first thing I want to do is
to get rid of all these other layers.
| | 04:07 | So I will grab those layers,
drag them to the trashcan.
| | 04:10 | Don't worry, we are going to get
those back by undoing in just a minute.
| | 04:13 | But now I will go to the File > Save
As command, and in my Adobe Illustrator
| | 04:18 | folder I've got a AI 4 C4D folder and
I am going to call this one Type Center
| | 04:26 | and I will hit Save and I want to save
this as an Illustrator 8 file, because
| | 04:29 | that's all that CINEMA 4D can open
is Illustrator 8 or earlier files.
| | 04:33 | Hit OK, and I can ignore this warning,
warning me about older file formats,
| | 04:38 | and I'll hit OK there.
| | 04:39 | Now I've got the Type Center.
| | 04:41 | Now I can undo until I get all my other
layers back and now I can hold down the
| | 04:45 | Command or Ctrl key on the PC and I
can delete these layers and now I am left
| | 04:50 | with just the type border.
| | 04:52 | Now I can go Shift+Command+S or Shift+
Ctrl+S on the PC and bring up the Save As
| | 04:57 | window, and I'll call this one Type Border,
and then save it as an Illustrator 8 file.
| | 05:08 | Now I will undo again,
until I get my layers back.
| | 05:10 | Now I can turn on all these
layers and I need the outer shape.
| | 05:14 | So I'll select these other layers,
delete them and then I'm left with the
| | 05:19 | outer shape and I'll do a Shift+Command+
S again and I'll go to Type Border and
| | 05:24 | change the name to Shape Outer and Save, save
it as an Illustrator 8 file, hit OK and OK again.
| | 05:34 | And then undo one last time and delete
everything, except for the shape fill,
| | 05:40 | and then Shift+Command or Shift+Ctrl+S
again, and then I will save it as Shape Inner.
| | 05:48 | Save it as an Illustrator 8 file and OK.
| | 05:51 | So now I have got all of
these layers broken out.
| | 05:54 | One last thing I want to do just to
illustrate a point, is I am going to undo to
| | 05:58 | get all the layers back on again, and I
want to save out a version of the file
| | 06:02 | that's all the layers turned on, just
to Illustrate what would happen if you
| | 06:05 | didn't do this prep work
inside of Illustrator ahead of time.
| | 06:08 | So you see how that'll
behave inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 06:10 | So I will just go Shift+Command+S
and I will call this one All Layers ON.
| | 06:17 | And I will save this in
Illustrator 8 file, hit OK and OK again.
| | 06:24 | Now let's move over to CINEMA 4D and
take a look at importing these elements in.
| | 06:29 | Now in CINEMA 4D I'm going to go to the
object manager File menu and do a Merge
| | 06:35 | Objects that's going to allow me to
load in these Illustrator files into the
| | 06:38 | existing CINEMA 4D document.
| | 06:40 | So let's start off by
grabbing the All Layers ON.
| | 06:43 | I just wants you to see what would
happen if you left all the layers on from
| | 06:47 | Illustrator and tried to
import them in the CINEMA 4D.
| | 06:49 | So I will hit Open, and then I will leave
these values at the defaults and hit OK.
| | 06:55 | This blue arrow right here is telling me
that the object that I have selected in
| | 06:59 | the object manager, this All Layers
ON spline object is down off camera.
| | 07:03 | Let's go down here and that's normal.
| | 07:05 | Things in CINEMA 4D when you import
them from Illustrator will come in down in
| | 07:08 | the bottom right like this.
| | 07:10 | So all of these elements are
mushed together inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 07:13 | Now I could break them apart here in
CINEMA 4D, but it's actually better to do
| | 07:16 | that in Illustrator ahead of
time and that's what we have done.
| | 07:19 | I just wanted you to see what
would happen if we tried to import all
| | 07:22 | those layers at once.
| | 07:23 | So I will delete this and then I'll go
back to the File > Merge Objects and go
| | 07:28 | start with the Shape Inner, and hit OK.
| | 07:33 | Leave all these values at the default
and then go File > Merge Objects and I
| | 07:37 | will go Shape Outer.
| | 07:40 | And then File > Merge Objects > Type
Border and then File > Merge Objects >
| | 07:46 | Type Center.
| | 07:50 | There we go.
| | 07:53 | So now I've got all of these
objects imported into CINEMA 4D.
| | 07:58 | They are not at the center of the world yet.
| | 07:59 | Now I always want to model
at the centre of the world.
| | 08:01 | So I am going to use my Shape Outer as the
parent for this entire group just temporarily.
| | 08:07 | So I will grab all these objects and
hold down the Shift key and grab them in,
| | 08:10 | parent them up to the Shape Outer.
| | 08:12 | And then on the Shape Outer, I will go to
the coordinate properties and 0 them out.
| | 08:16 | 0, Tab, 0, Tab, 0.
| | 08:19 | that gets the object to the center of the world.
| | 08:21 | Now I can't see it, so I will hit H
on the keyboard to bring this to the
| | 08:24 | center of the world.
| | 08:25 | Now I've got everything
lined up right where I need it.
| | 08:28 | So now I am ready to do my extrusions
and let's start off by extruding the Shape
| | 08:33 | and the shape Inner objects.
| | 08:35 | So let's bring this down here and
unparent them, and I'll go to the NURB objects
| | 08:40 | and grab an Extrude NURB and we will
call this one Shape Outer and take the
| | 08:47 | Shape Outer spline and parent
it to the Shape Outer object.
| | 08:50 | Then I want to do the same
thing for the Shape Inner.
| | 08:53 | So let's add an Extrude NURB and call
that one Shape Inner and then parent the
| | 09:01 | Shape Inner object to that and
now you can see it's filled in.
| | 09:06 | Right now these two objects are exactly
of the same dimension on the Z-axis, and
| | 09:11 | so they're perfectly lined up.
| | 09:12 | I actually want a little bit of a gap
and to create a sense of depth to the logo
| | 09:17 | on the Shape Inner object.
| | 09:19 | I'm going to go to the Object
Properties and change the Movement value to 1.
| | 09:24 | that's going to make a very thin plate here.
| | 09:26 | Then I am going to move that back on Z
. I will just eyeball it for now, and
| | 09:30 | that gives me a nice indentation in the surface
of the logo and a location for my type to sit.
| | 09:37 | Now what we need to do is to extrude
the Type Center and let's grab another
| | 09:42 | Extrude NURB, call it Type Center.
| | 09:46 | Parent up the Type Center spline at the
Type Center Extrude NURB and then repeat
| | 09:52 | the process for the Type Border.
| | 09:54 | The Type Border actually has to sit
outside the Type Inner, and I want to have
| | 09:59 | the same sort of indented situation in
here, but I need to do something a little
| | 10:02 | bit different for this.
| | 10:03 | I need to create an outline for this type,
because I want to have a black border
| | 10:07 | out here and then a very
thin type in the center.
| | 10:11 | So in order to do that I need to
create a shape that is just the Type Border
| | 10:17 | without the Type Center.
| | 10:19 | There is a very cool object inside of
CINEMA 4D that allows you to do that and
| | 10:22 | it's under the modeling objects
and it's called the Spline Mask.
| | 10:26 | And the Spline Mask, when I twirl open
the Type Center, I am going to take a
| | 10:31 | copy of the Type Center and bring it up here.
| | 10:34 | Now hold down the Ctrl key to make a
copy when you drag, and then I will take
| | 10:37 | the Type Border and bring that up here.
| | 10:40 | What the Spline Mask is, is a Boolean
object for splines, and it allows you to
| | 10:43 | -- a lot like Pathfinder inside of
Illustrator create cutouts of splines and
| | 10:48 | create much more complicated
shapes using copies of splines.
| | 10:51 | So I am going to takes the Spline Mask
and change it to A subtract B and I will
| | 10:57 | take the Type Border and that's the A
position in the Type Center and that's the
| | 11:00 | B position and what I end up with is a
spline that is just the border by itself.
| | 11:07 | Now you will be able to see
this one, I do my extrusion.
| | 11:09 | Now in order to hide all these other
objects I will hold down the Option or Alt
| | 11:12 | key on the PC and click twice to paint
them red and then drag down to make them
| | 11:18 | all go to red at once, and
now I am just left with this.
| | 11:20 | Now I can add an Extrude NURB to the
scene and I'll call this one Type Border
| | 11:26 | and then grab the Spline Mask and drag
it in and now I've got this Type Border.
| | 11:30 | You can see it's perfectly outlined and
if I reveal the Type Center it fills it
| | 11:35 | in perfectly and then I can just take
the Z Movement on the Type Center and
| | 11:39 | make it 1, just like it did for the
Shape Inner and I can move that back on its
| | 11:43 | local Z-axis and create a nice
indentation there, and then I can reveal all the
| | 11:48 | other parts of the logo.
| | 11:49 | So now I've got a perfectly shaped logo.
| | 11:52 | The last thing I want to do is to add
a little bit of a Beveled Edge to my
| | 11:56 | objects inside of CINEMA 4D and
that adds a little hint of realism.
| | 12:00 | Objects in the real world do not have
perfectly square edges like these 3D
| | 12:04 | extrusions do, and so by adding a
little bit of a bevel, it smooth things out
| | 12:08 | and makes them feel less computer-generated.
| | 12:10 | So on the Type Border and the Shape Outer,
hold down the Ctrl key to select both
| | 12:17 | of those, and then under the Caps
property, I will go to Cap and change it to
| | 12:21 | Fillet and Cap and then change the End
Cap to Fillet and Cap and that does it on
| | 12:26 | both the front and the back.
| | 12:27 | You can see that, I now
have this large bevel on there.
| | 12:30 | Now I don't want it to be that large.
| | 12:31 | I will just go to the Steps and I will
change the steps which control how many
| | 12:34 | transition levels you get
from the front to the side.
| | 12:37 | I will change that to 2 and then change
the Radius by hitting the Tab key to 1
| | 12:42 | and that's going to give me a
very fine edge to my object.
| | 12:45 | And I will do the same thing down here.
| | 12:48 | Change the back side to 2 Steps by 1
Radius and that's going to give me a very
| | 12:53 | nice logo that's ready for texturing.
| | 12:56 | Let's bring that into the center of the screen.
| | 12:58 | Hit Command+R or Ctrl+R on the
keyboard and you see that there are all
| | 13:02 | our shapes ready to go.
| | 13:04 | By correctly rebuilding the file in
Illustrator before you import in the CINEMA
| | 13:07 | 4D, even the most complicated logo
can be easily translated into 3D.
| | 13:12 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D check
out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 13:16 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 13:17 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 011 Building simple objects with polygons in C4D| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we'll
| | 00:03 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now, there is going to be a lot of
times when you're creating motion graphics
| | 00:09 | that you need a special type of object
to complete a design or logo animation.
| | 00:13 | Now, sites like Triple Squid are
amazing resources, full of all kinds of models
| | 00:18 | that are available for download or purchase.
| | 00:20 | But what do you do when you can't
find the right one? You build it yourself
| | 00:23 | using CINEMA 4D's amazing modeling tools.
| | 00:26 | I am going to show you how to build a
simple paper airplane using the polygon
| | 00:29 | modeling tools in CINEMA 4D. Let's take a look.
| | 00:32 | This is the logo
animation that I want to complete.
| | 00:35 | I am going to start by playing the
one without the paper airplane first.
| | 00:40 | And Flying Paper Productions logo is
pretty cool, but we really need to have
| | 00:43 | that little paper airplane object to
help bring the logo home, so to speak.
| | 00:47 | Now, let's play the logo animation with the
paper airplane and you will see what I mean.
| | 00:54 | That really makes it feel a lot more
like the vibe that you'd want to have for a
| | 00:57 | company called Flying Paper.
| | 00:58 | We've got a paper airplane
flying in. It matches perfectly.
| | 01:01 | A paper airplane like this is
really kind of hard to find.
| | 01:04 | If you do a search on Triple Squid,
you're going to come across paper airplanes,
| | 01:07 | but it may not be exactly
the one you're looking for.
| | 01:10 | Sometimes it will be too complicated.
| | 01:11 | sometimes it will be made so
poorly that they're not just usable.
| | 01:14 | So the situation is
perfect for modeling your own.
| | 01:18 | And that's really the idea that I want
to get across today is that you don't
| | 01:21 | have to settle for what you see on Triple Squid.
| | 01:23 | Don't be afraid to try to make things yourself.
| | 01:25 | A lot of times when you approach the
modeling process in a logical way, you can
| | 01:28 | make things quickly and easily
for very little money or time.
| | 01:32 | So let's go over to CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:34 | So here we are in CINEMA 4D. This is the
project file that we're going to working out
| | 01:38 | of, and the camera is locked
off using this Protection tag.
| | 01:42 | The Protection tag keeps me from
accidentally moving my camera around.
| | 01:45 | So for now I don't really need to see
through the camera so I'll uncheck the
| | 01:48 | Active Camera button right there, and
now I'm able to navigate around in the
| | 01:52 | scene and I can move
with ease inside that space.
| | 01:55 | Now, I don't need to see any of the logo
pieces or anything like that right now,
| | 01:58 | they're kind of getting in the way,
so I am going to hide everything.
| | 02:01 | The way I am going to do that is by
twirling close the Type object and
| | 02:04 | holding down the Option key and
clicking twice on the Status box, and then
| | 02:08 | I'll do the same thing for the Lights and the
Light Target and the Plane path and the Camera.
| | 02:14 | So basically I am down to an empty scene.
| | 02:16 | So everything is hidden
from view. It's not deleted.
| | 02:19 | It's just no longer visible.
| | 02:21 | Now I am ready to start the modeling process.
| | 02:23 | Now, a paper airplane is going to start
in CINEMA 4D the same way it would start
| | 02:26 | in the real world, and that's with a
flat piece of paper, and that piece of
| | 02:30 | paper is going to be from a Plane object.
| | 02:32 | So let's add a Plane to the scene.
| | 02:33 | And the plane has options, and
those options control, under the Object
| | 02:39 | Properties, how large the plane is and then
how many Segments or polygons it has on X and Y.
| | 02:45 | I am going to change the Segments to
2 by 1, and that's going to give me
| | 02:50 | basically two large polygons side-by-side.
| | 02:54 | Now I am going to make that plane
editable by clicking on the Make
| | 02:56 | Editable button over here.
| | 02:58 | I could also hit C on the keyboard.
| | 03:00 | When I do that now, I end up with a
plane that is editable, meaning I can now
| | 03:06 | edit the points that make up that object.
| | 03:08 | And I am going to make sure that I am
in Point Mode over here on the left-hand
| | 03:10 | side of the interface.
| | 03:12 | And inside of Point Mode now I
can move these points around freely.
| | 03:16 | So let's switch to the Top View and
I'll hit O on the keyboard to bring this
| | 03:19 | up full-screen and then back out just a bit
to give myself of little bit of breathing room.
| | 03:24 | Now, I want to move these points over,
so I will hit Command+A to grab all the
| | 03:29 | points and then drag them over to
the right, and that's on the positive X axis.
| | 03:36 | Now, I want these two points to
line up exactly with the Z axis here in
| | 03:40 | this view, so I will select that
point and then I'll hold down the Shift
| | 03:43 | key and select that point.
| | 03:44 | And then using the Coordinate Manager,
which is down here below the Time Bar, I
| | 03:50 | can change the position of
those guys to be exactly 0.
| | 03:53 | And now I know they're exactly lined
up with the Z axis, and that's crucial.
| | 03:57 | Next thing I would like to do is to start
to shape this half of the paper airplane.
| | 04:02 | Basically what we're doing is we're
building half the plane and then we're going
| | 04:04 | to use a special object in
CINEMA 4D to flip that half over.
| | 04:08 | That way we don't have to model the whole
thing; we only have to model one side of it.
| | 04:12 | So let's shape this into
half of the paper airplane.
| | 04:14 | I am going to take these points and
move them over just a bit and then I'll
| | 04:20 | take these points and move them over just a bit.
| | 04:23 | And I'm eyeballing this. The
numerical values aren't necessarily important.
| | 04:27 | Then I'll take these two points
right here and bring them down.
| | 04:32 | Now, this is not the right shape, I
want to take this second point here and
| | 04:35 | bring it up so that it's in line, and
basically now what I have is the folded
| | 04:40 | wing of the paper airplane.
| | 04:42 | The size of this section here controls how
fat the body of your paper airplane will be.
| | 04:46 | And this is a little bit too fat right
now, so I'll take these two points, hold
| | 04:49 | down the Shift key to grab both of those,
and I am going to move that over there
| | 04:53 | to make my wing larger than the body
of the airplane, and I'll bring that up
| | 04:57 | here just like that.
| | 04:59 | And now let's bring this over
just a bit more. There we go.
| | 05:04 | And then you can straighten
that out here. There we go. Nice!
| | 05:08 | So now I've got this folded half of a
paper airplane and I need to start to
| | 05:13 | shape it into the actual folded paper airplane.
| | 05:16 | And if I go here to the Perspective
View, I just middle-mouse click to get in there,
| | 05:20 | what I want to be able to do
next is to rotate these points up so that
| | 05:24 | they're now shaped like a paper airplane.
| | 05:27 | Before I do that though, I want to
add something called a Symmetry Object.
| | 05:31 | The Symmetry Object allows me to flip
this geometry over so I am only modeling
| | 05:36 | one half of the plane without
having to worry about this side at all.
| | 05:40 | So I go to the Modeling Objects and add
in a Symmetry, and then I take my plane
| | 05:44 | and drop it under the Symmetry Object.
| | 05:46 | And instantly I have both halves of the plane.
| | 05:49 | And the beautiful thing is, anything
I do to this side, if I select both of
| | 05:52 | those points and move them up, it
happens on the other side to. Really cool!
| | 05:56 | Command+Z to get that back to Flat again.
| | 05:59 | The next step in the process is going
to be to rotate these points up a bit.
| | 06:03 | And I think what I am going to do is
by simply grabbing these points and
| | 06:08 | grabbing these points, I could use a
Rotate tool and hit R on the keyboard and
| | 06:12 | grab the bands and start rotating them
around, but there is an easier way to do it.
| | 06:16 | So if I switch to the Front View, I am
going to middle-mouse click in there,
| | 06:19 | and I don't want the Rotate tool. I am
going to hit E on the keyboard to get
| | 06:22 | the Move tool back, and I'm going to hit O on
the keyboard to Zoom in on the whole object.
| | 06:27 | And then I'll back out just a bit.
| | 06:28 | What I want to do is to take
these points and simply move them up.
| | 06:32 | And now I am folding my paper airplane
without having to use the Rotate tool.
| | 06:37 | I get myself a nice V here, and let's
take a look at that in the Perspective View.
| | 06:40 | You can see that I've folded that
plane by simply moving those up.
| | 06:44 | I'll undo that and do it one more
time, just you can see what I mean.
| | 06:47 | And this time I am going to use the Axis
Band right here, and that keeps me from
| | 06:50 | accidentally moving them.
| | 06:51 | It will only allow me to
move them on the Y and X axis.
| | 06:55 | So I grab that up and I bring it up here
like that and I have folded my paper airplane.
| | 06:59 | How cool is that!
| | 07:00 | Really simple to do.
| | 07:02 | That's pretty much it for the
modeling of the paper airplane.
| | 07:04 | Now we want to make it white. The
default gray color is not what we need.
| | 07:07 | In the Material Manager, I already
have a Plane material in there. I'll just
| | 07:11 | drag this onto the Plane Object.
| | 07:14 | The default gray color is
not what we need for this.
| | 07:17 | It needs to be white paper airplane.
| | 07:19 | The last step in this
process is to make the plane thick.
| | 07:22 | Right now the Plane Object by
default is a single polygon wide, which is
| | 07:26 | basically an infinitesimal number.
| | 07:29 | It's not really measurable.
| | 07:30 | It's a single width of a polygon.
| | 07:32 | What we want to give it is a little
bit of thickness so that it has some
| | 07:35 | substance to it and some body.
| | 07:37 | And that's a very easy process as well.
| | 07:39 | What I am going to do is switch my
mode over here on the left-hand side from
| | 07:42 | Point Mode to Polygon Mode.
| | 07:44 | And in Polygon Mode I can use the
Selection tool and click on a single polygon
| | 07:49 | and then I hit Command+A or
Ctrl+A to grab all the polygons.
| | 07:53 | Now I am going to right-
click inside the interface.
| | 07:56 | You notice I am not right-clicking on any of
the polygons, just out here in the gray area.
| | 08:00 | And I am going to use the Extrude tool.
| | 08:03 | Now, the Extrude tool has some options,
one of which is very important, and
| | 08:07 | that's the Create Caps option.
| | 08:09 | You want to make sure that is turned on,
if it's not turned on in your file.
| | 08:12 | And what that's going to do
is make a thickness for us.
| | 08:15 | When I drag to the right, and this is
very important, do not drag on the arrows.
| | 08:20 | You want to drag out here in the Editor
window. When I drag to the right, you're
| | 08:24 | going to notice my plane gets thicker.
| | 08:26 | Now, I don't want to drag too
far, because it gets too thick.
| | 08:28 | I am going to just drag just a little
bit, and that gives me a little bit of
| | 08:33 | thickness and weight to my paper airplane.
| | 08:35 | Now, it doesn't seem like much,
but it's a very subtle thing.
| | 08:38 | When I render that, you can see that I have a
width here now where I didn't have that before.
| | 08:43 | So that's pretty much it for the
modeling of the paper airplane. Now we are
| | 08:45 | ready to drop it into the animation.
| | 08:47 | So I am going to add a Null Object to
the scene, and this Null Object is going
| | 08:52 | to be the parent that allows me
to move and fly the paper airplane.
| | 08:56 | What I need to do is call
it first Paper Airplane.
| | 08:58 | And I want this paper airplane to fly
from the center of its axis and that
| | 09:06 | center of its axis is going to
be somewhere here in the body.
| | 09:09 | So I will take the Null Object and
raise it up, right into the center of the
| | 09:13 | gravity for the paper airplane.
| | 09:15 | And then I'll take the Symmetry
Object and parent it up there.
| | 09:17 | Now, to get this to animate, first
thing I need to do is to reveal my Plane
| | 09:23 | path and there is my Plane path right
there, and this is the path that I want
| | 09:26 | my plane to fly on. I drew that
ahead of time using the Spline tools.
| | 09:30 | CINEMA 4D has a great little tag
called the Align to Spline tag. I will
| | 09:34 | right-click on my Paper Airplane, go to
CINEMA 4D Tags and do Align to Spline.
| | 09:38 | Do not do Align to Path.
| | 09:39 | That's something different.
| | 09:40 | We want Align to Spline.
| | 09:42 | When I add that, nothing happens initially.
| | 09:45 | That's because it's waiting for me to
add the Spline to this Spline path field.
| | 09:48 | I am looking at the Tag Properties right now.
| | 09:51 | I drag this Plane path into
that field and watch what happens.
| | 09:55 | My plane jumps to one side of the Spline.
| | 09:59 | This button here is very
important, the Tangential button.
| | 10:02 | That's going to force the plane to
move on an axis that is tangent to the
| | 10:06 | Spline, and that will make the plane
appear as if it's moving along the Spline
| | 10:10 | and rotating as it travels down the Spline.
| | 10:13 | Let's click that and see what happens.
| | 10:14 | When I click it, boom, my plane lines
up with the Spline. It looks fantastic!
| | 10:18 | Now, the value that I want to
keyframe is this Position value right here.
| | 10:22 | So let's move back in time to about
Time 0 and I will hold down the Ctrl key
| | 10:28 | and click on this black circle.
| | 10:30 | That adds a keyframe for Position at Time 0.
| | 10:33 | Now I can move forward to about Frame
60 is where I want my plane to hit its mark,
| | 10:38 | and I am going to move
that value from 0% to 100%.
| | 10:42 | You will see the Paper Airplane
go right to the end of the Spline.
| | 10:47 | Hold down the Ctrl key to set a keyframe
for Position at 100%, and I am almost ready.
| | 10:52 | Let's look through the Camera to see
what things are looking like and I am
| | 10:55 | going to make all my other
objects in the scene visible.
| | 10:57 | So I will hold down the Option key or
Alt on the PC and click once on the Status
| | 11:01 | buttons on the Type to make it visible.
| | 11:04 | I will do the same thing for the
Lights and then the Camera as well.
| | 11:07 | Now, let's look through our
camera and see the logo here.
| | 11:11 | And as I scrub through this animation,
you'll see my plane come through there
| | 11:15 | and right into position for the logo animation.
| | 11:19 | So that's it for the Paper Airplane animation.
| | 11:21 | If you want to get cool with it, you
can go in and animate the banking of the
| | 11:24 | plane so that it arcs around and hits
its mark underneath the logo in a much
| | 11:29 | more realistic fashion.
| | 11:30 | Being able to quickly model simple
objects like this is a valuable skill and it
| | 11:34 | can save you time and money on a project.
| | 11:36 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D, check
out the CINEMA 4D's section on lynda.com.
| | 11:40 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion, keep it moving, and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 012 Creating gradient type in After Effects| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | will explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | After Effects has some very
sophisticated type tools and when you combine them
| | 00:12 | with a wide variety of effects, you can create
great looking type in just a few simple steps.
| | 00:17 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:18 | This is the effect we are going to
create in After Effects. Let's hit Play here.
| | 00:21 | Now, what I've done is I've used a
basic type layer and some type animation
| | 00:26 | techniques to create a look of type
that has a gradation across the face of it
| | 00:31 | and a little of that wet look
reflection line that is so popular these days.
| | 00:37 | There's a few steps of this technique,
so let's get started in After Effects.
| | 00:41 | So here in After Effects I have got a
composition and I've got a blue solid with
| | 00:45 | the gradation on it, using the Ramp
effect and another blue solid right below it,
| | 00:50 | and that's what's creating this
infinite plane that you see here in the
| | 00:52 | Composition window, and then
I've just got a basic type layer.
| | 00:55 | Now this type layer is what we are going
to use as the foundation for our animation.
| | 00:59 | There is a problem with this technique
though and that problem is that when we
| | 01:03 | animate the type, the gradients that
we create on the type surface will not
| | 01:07 | move with the type.
| | 01:08 | And so we'll have to do little bit of
precomping in order to get the look that
| | 01:11 | we want to create.
| | 01:12 | So let's start off by selecting type
layer, hit Shift+Command+ or Shift+Ctrl+C
| | 01:16 | to create a composition, and I'm going
to call this one Type Master Pre as in
| | 01:23 | pre-comp, and in this Type Master Pre
will be just our type layer, and if I
| | 01:28 | double-click on this, it
takes me into the type pre-comp.
| | 01:30 | Now this is where I want
to do my type animation.
| | 01:33 | So the animation that I am going to use
is actually a preset and there is a lot
| | 01:37 | of great type presets in After Effects.
| | 01:38 | The one I am going to use is called Smooth Move.
| | 01:41 | So I'll go to the Effects &
Presets and I will clear out this out.
| | 01:44 | In that field I am going to type in
smooth, and let's bring this down here and
| | 01:51 | there is my smooth move in.
| | 01:54 | And all I have to do is drag this from
the Effects & Presets window onto my type
| | 01:58 | layer and now my type will animate.
| | 02:00 | And as I scrub forward, there is the
move and I really like this move because
| | 02:03 | it's very simple and clean and
gives a nice look to the type.
| | 02:07 | Now it doesn't happen quite when we
want it to, so if I select my type and hit
| | 02:11 | U on the keyboard, that reveals all of the
keyframes that are used to make up this effect.
| | 02:16 | And want to do is to re-time this and
all I need to do to do that is to grab
| | 02:21 | these last keyframes, and I want to have my
type settled by about just after one second.
| | 02:26 | So I am going to drag
these down to right about here.
| | 02:29 | I'll tighten up the Opacity keyframe
just a little bit and now when I scrub
| | 02:34 | through, you can see my
type is settled by one second.
| | 02:38 | Now the next step in the process is
going to be to create the gradients that are
| | 02:41 | going to show up on the surface of
this type and I'm going to do that in
| | 02:45 | another composition.
| | 02:46 | So let's go back to the Gradient type
START, and we are going to precompose
| | 02:50 | this one more time.
| | 02:51 | And I'm going to hit Shift+Command+C or
Shift+Ctrl+C on the keyboard and we will
| | 02:55 | call this one Type Gradient PRE.
| | 02:57 | I will Type Gradient PRE. I n the Type
Gradient PRE composition we are going to
| | 03:04 | creating the gradients, and let's go
into there and now we have the pre-comp
| | 03:08 | from our type animation there already. We are
going to be using that to cut off the gradient.
| | 03:12 | So the first step in creating the
gradient though is we need to make a solid
| | 03:15 | layer, so let's hit Command+Y or Ctrl+
Y on the keyboard to bring up the solid
| | 03:19 | settings and whatever is in here, you
want to hit Make Comp Size and that's
| | 03:23 | going to make it the same
size as our composition.
| | 03:26 | Now the color doesn't matter, because
we are going to be putting a Ramp effect
| | 03:29 | on it. So let's hit OK here and then
with the white solid selected, go to the
| | 03:34 | Effects, and then to Generate
and then we are going to do a Ramp.
| | 03:40 | And the Ramp effect creates a gradient
on your solid layer and what we want to
| | 03:45 | do is we want have black at the
bottom and then orange at the top.
| | 03:48 | So I will just use the color picker on
end color. You can see the end color is
| | 03:52 | down here, that's white, and I am going
to change that to black and then on the
| | 03:56 | black color I am going to click on the
swatch and then I'll change the colors.
| | 04:00 | Now red will be 255 and the green will
be about 105, and that gives me a nice
| | 04:06 | looking orange color. I'll hit OK there.
| | 04:08 | So now I am gradient from orange to black.
| | 04:11 | The gradation needs to happen from to
happen from the top of the type roughly to
| | 04:14 | the bottom of the type.
| | 04:15 | So let's take a look at the type.
| | 04:16 | In order to see the type on top of the
gradient, I'm going to bring the solid
| | 04:20 | layer down and then scrub forward in
time to where the type is animated on.
| | 04:24 | And so with the white solid selected,
I click on the word Ramp and that
| | 04:28 | reveals the handles for the gradient, and I
can take these gradients and drag them around.
| | 04:32 | You can see as I move this
around, the gradient moves with it.
| | 04:34 | If I hold the Shift key down, that
will keep it from sliding left and right.
| | 04:38 | I am going to move my gradient to about
right there for the orange and I will
| | 04:41 | grab the black handle and hold down the
Shift key again and move it right about there.
| | 04:45 | So now you can see that the gradation
transitions from a bright orange down to
| | 04:50 | black over the course of the type.
| | 04:52 | Let's tighten that up so we have
nice little black down there and a nice
| | 04:55 | little bit of orange right down here.
| | 04:58 | So that's it for the gradient.
| | 04:59 | Next thing we want to create is that
wet look line that creates the illusion of
| | 05:03 | a reflection across the surface of the type.
| | 05:05 | We are going to need
another solid layer to do that.
| | 05:07 | So let's hit Command+Y or Ctrl+Y on the
keyboard to make another solid layer and
| | 05:11 | you can leave at the comp size and hit OK.
| | 05:14 | And now we are going to create a mask on
this, but we want to create a circular mask.
| | 05:17 | So lets grab the Ellipse tool and then
I'm going to draw a circular mask and I
| | 05:22 | am going to click from the top right to
the bottom left and I am going to draw
| | 05:25 | it so that the curvature happens
about on my type and I am going to size it
| | 05:31 | right about there, and I can move
is around to adjust it a little bit.
| | 05:34 | But I think that's got it pretty good.
| | 05:35 | I want the curvature of that line to
travel right through the book or the word.
| | 05:40 | I think I'm good. If I hit V on the
keyboard, I can now move that mask around
| | 05:43 | and I will just adjust that right about
there and I think that's looking pretty good.
| | 05:48 | If I want to make the oval a little
more ovalized, I can hit Command+T on the
| | 05:52 | keyboard with mask selected, and I can
now adjust that mask and make it a little
| | 05:58 | more oval and bring it down, so that
it's passing a little more naturally
| | 06:02 | through the word, okay.
| | 06:04 | Now I want this white solid
to show up in the GRADIENT.
| | 06:09 | So I am going to drag it down right
below the type and you see I have got white
| | 06:12 | type on a white oval on this GRADIENT.
| | 06:15 | What I want to do is change the
blending mode on the white solid and I am going
| | 06:19 | to change the blending mode to Add, I
think, will give me a decent result and
| | 06:23 | then I am going to adjust the Opacity down.
| | 06:25 | So I hit T on the
keyboard and draw that way down.
| | 06:30 | Let's turn off the type so
we can see what this is doing.
| | 06:32 | You see that now the white solid is
blending right into that GRADIENT and giving
| | 06:37 | a nice-looking result and I will turn
that off and you can see we have a really
| | 06:40 | nice highlight line that travels through there.
| | 06:42 | One of the nice things about this
technique is I can adjust the softness of that
| | 06:45 | line and if I select the white solid
and hit M on the keyboard to bring up the
| | 06:49 | Mask tools, I can select the mask
and go to Layer > Mask > Mask Feather.
| | 06:55 | And I am going to feather the mask, not
too much. Let's call it about 5 pixels,
| | 07:00 | and when I deselect that, you can
see now that line is nice and soft.
| | 07:03 | It doesn't have that hard
edge that it had before.
| | 07:06 | Now when I turn the Type layer back on,
I've got my white type sitting on top
| | 07:10 | of this, but I want the type to cut
this gradient out so that I see the
| | 07:14 | gradient in the letters of the type,
and there is a great blending mode for
| | 07:18 | that called Stencil Alpha.
| | 07:20 | So let's click on the Type Master Pre
-blending modes, and if they're not
| | 07:24 | visible, you can click on your
Switches and Modes button to reveal them.
| | 07:27 | So on the blending mode I am going to
scroll way down to the bottom and I am
| | 07:31 | going to select Stencil Alpha and when
I do that, now my type is cutting a hole
| | 07:38 | in the entire composition and
revealing just the gradient in the type.
| | 07:41 | I can check the transparency by
clicking on the Transparency preview and you
| | 07:45 | can see that I indeed
have transparency everywhere.
| | 07:47 | So let's go back to the main composition,
which is the Gradient Type Start Comp,
| | 07:52 | and you could see now I have my gradient
type sitting on top of reflective floor
| | 07:56 | and as it animates in, zoom, like
that, the gradient is revealed.
| | 08:02 | Now what I want to do is to create the
reflective look on the floor and I will
| | 08:05 | select the type gradient layer and
I'm going to duplicate it, Command+D or
| | 08:09 | Ctrl+D and I will select the
bottommost one, and I'm going to hit S to reveal
| | 08:15 | the Scale properties and then I want
to change the scale to invert this type
| | 08:20 | layer, but I would only want to change
it on Y. So I will unlock the scale and
| | 08:24 | on Y change that to -100,
and that flips my type over.
| | 08:28 | Now I can drag it down. I am holding the
Shift key to constrain the movement and
| | 08:33 | then I can change the blending mode on this.
| | 08:35 | Let's change that to Add again,
and then let's adjust the Opacity.
| | 08:40 | So I hit T on the keyboard for
Opacity and dial that way down so it
| | 08:44 | doesn't overwhelm the type.
| | 08:46 | There we go. And then I can soften this
up a bit by simply adding a blur effect.
| | 08:52 | So I'll go to the Effects menu and then
go to Blur & Sharpen and then let's add
| | 08:56 | in a Fast Blur will be fine for this,
or actually I'll just use Gaussian Blur.
| | 09:00 | That gives me a smoother blur result.
| | 09:02 | And back in the days the Gaussian blur
was way too slow to run, but modern
| | 09:06 | computers have fixed all that.
| | 09:08 | So let's change the blurriness now and
I'll dial that up and this is a season
| | 09:12 | to taste moment, so I'll dial that down to
probably-- let's try about 3%, here we go.
| | 09:17 | And you can see that it softens it up.
| | 09:19 | That's not quite soft enough. et's try 10%.
| | 09:21 | That maybe too soft, oh, yeah, it's too soft.
| | 09:24 | Let's bring it to 5, split
the difference, there we go.
| | 09:27 | So now I have graded a type
on top of a reflective floor.
| | 09:30 | I want to add a little bit of a push
on this type element, so I am going to
| | 09:34 | first parent the reflective layer up
to the main type layer, so let's drag a
| | 09:38 | pick whip up to that.
| | 09:40 | Select the top type layer and hit S
on the keyboard to reveal the Scale
| | 09:43 | option, and on the Scale I'm going
to rewind to 0 and then activate the
| | 09:48 | stopwatch for Scale.
| | 09:49 | Let's drag this over so we have a
little more room on our timeline here.
| | 09:53 | Now I'll go to the end and I want to
have this type scale up towards the camera.
| | 09:57 | So I'll just scrub the Scale value and
have it scale up maybe about 10% or so.
| | 10:03 | That's 8%, but I think that will do it.
| | 10:04 | I don't want it head too close to the edges.
| | 10:06 | And now when I RAM preview, and now you
can see I have got GRADIENT type on top
| | 10:13 | of a reflective floor with a slight
push and it's looking pretty good.
| | 10:19 | Just like a lot of things in After Effects,
this is not the only way to create this look.
| | 10:23 | The only real correct answer is one
that looks good, is flexible, and make sense
| | 10:27 | for the type of animation that you are creating.
| | 10:30 | For more great lessons on type, check
out Chris and Trish Meyers' After Effects
| | 10:33 | Apprentice 6, on lynda.com.
| | 10:35 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion, keep it moving, and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 013 Logo lighting basics| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we explore
| | 00:04 | important fundamentals in
the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Creating a well lit and textured logo
doesn't have to be a complicated process.
| | 00:11 | In fact, it can be really easy if you follow
some simple guidelines. Let's take a look.
| | 00:16 | This is the final rendered logo that
we're going to be creating here today and I
| | 00:19 | want to point out a couple of things.
| | 00:20 | The first thing is the richness of the color.
| | 00:24 | It's a very rich warm tone that we've
got on the surface of the logo and that's
| | 00:28 | being created by the color of the reflections.
| | 00:31 | The next thing I want to talk
about is the shininess of the logo.
| | 00:34 | You notice that there's a gradient
transition in the sides especially and
| | 00:38 | somewhat on the face as well, and
that gradient is being created by the
| | 00:42 | reflectivity of the environment itself.
| | 00:45 | The environment surrounding the logo
has a gradient in it so the sides of the
| | 00:49 | logo are reflecting that environment,
and that's contributing to make the color
| | 00:53 | and warmth of the logo.
| | 00:55 | The lights are the third factor.
| | 00:56 | The lights are illuminating the logo,
but it's really the reflection and the
| | 00:59 | gradient that are creating the
shimmer and sheen of the logo surface.
| | 01:04 | Let's move over to the START
file and take a look at this.
| | 01:07 | Now I've got just a regular
logo here, no lights, no nothing.
| | 01:10 | I do have a camera and the
camera is very important.
| | 01:12 | It's really crucial to light
through the camera. We want to be looking
| | 01:16 | through that camera object.
| | 01:17 | We don't need to see the camera at
this point, so I'll hold down the Alt or
| | 01:20 | Option key and click twice on the status
dots for that camera to make them both red.
| | 01:26 | It still on the scene.
| | 01:27 | It's just no longer visible to us.
| | 01:30 | Now what I can do is go to the
Light Objects and grab a Target Light.
| | 01:35 | The Target Light is simply a spotlight
with a special expression on it telling
| | 01:38 | it to always look at this null.
| | 01:40 | Now the light object right now is said to be
Spot and what I'd rather have is an Area Light.
| | 01:46 | An Area Light is going to give me a
much more even soft lighting for my logo,
| | 01:51 | much akin to a soft box that you
would see in photography studios.
| | 01:55 | So if I orbit around this, you can see
the size of the light relative to the
| | 01:58 | logo is pretty small.
| | 02:00 | I need to make that much larger.
| | 02:01 | Now I could move it by hand or I could
go to the Details property for the light
| | 02:05 | and change the size from 200 to 2000 and
then I will Tab over and change that to 2000.
| | 02:12 | So now I've got a very large light
source relative to my logo and as I orbit
| | 02:18 | around that you can see that
it's huge compared to the logo.
| | 02:20 | That's going to give me a very soft even light.
| | 02:23 | Now I'll grab the axis band for that
and drag it just back in up just to here,
| | 02:29 | so now it's coming down at a
really pleasing angle on my logo.
| | 02:33 | Now before I do anything else I want
to look through my camera to verify
| | 02:36 | what I've got going on.
| | 02:37 | So if I click on active camera
icon, I'm now looking at my logo.
| | 02:41 | Now to see what the rendered result will be,
let's hit Option+R or Alt+R on the keyboard.
| | 02:46 | That brings up the Interactive Render
Region and I've got the Quality slider on
| | 02:51 | the right-hand side turned all the
way up to the top and you should too.
| | 02:55 | One very important thing before I go forward.
| | 02:56 | I want to discuss
something called Linear Workflow.
| | 03:00 | The Linear Workflow affects how light
and colors behave inside of the render
| | 03:04 | engine in CINEMA 4D.
| | 03:05 | I have that Linear Workflow turned off.
| | 03:08 | So the way you check the Linear
workflow is by going to the main Edit menu and
| | 03:12 | going to Project Settings, and in the
Project Settings screen Linear Workflow
| | 03:16 | should be unchecked.
| | 03:17 | It's always on by default in every
version of CINEMA 4D from 12 after.
| | 03:22 | Now I've turned it off ahead of time in
this one, but let me turn it back on to
| | 03:25 | show you what the logo would
look like with Linear Workflow on.
| | 03:27 | And you can see that my logo now is
changed color quite a bit and it feels a lot
| | 03:34 | more washed out, and the difference in
the render engine here is not so crucial.
| | 03:39 | The real crucial difference is when you
get into After Effects and that's where
| | 03:42 | Linear Workflow can be both a benefit
and sometimes it can be a problem as well.
| | 03:47 | So the important thing for now is I'm
working with Linear Workflow off and
| | 03:51 | you can choose to have it on if you
want to. Just know that it will affect
| | 03:54 | how the rendering looks.
| | 03:55 | So I'm going to turn that back off again.
| | 03:58 | Back to the light rig.
| | 03:59 | So this light that I have in my
scene right now is my key light source.
| | 04:03 | I'm going to rename that and call it KEY,
and I want to make a copy of that KEY
| | 04:07 | light to fill in my detail.
| | 04:09 | So I'll Ctrl+Drag a copy of it
down and call this one FILL light.
| | 04:13 | And you can see that the
logo got quite a bit brighter.
| | 04:17 | If I middle mouse click and look at
the things from the Top view, I'm going
| | 04:21 | to dolly in right here and take my FILL light
and drag it to the left using the Move tool.
| | 04:29 | I have the Move tool selected
and I'm clicking and dragging.
| | 04:31 | Notice I'm not clicking on the light;
I'm simply clicking and dragging any place
| | 04:34 | in the gray area, and then in Side
view I'm going to drag down just a bit to
| | 04:39 | fill in the logo across the face.
| | 04:41 | Now the ratio of key to fill, a
good rule of thumb is about 25% of your
| | 04:47 | fill light to your key.
| | 04:48 | So if your key is at 100%
your fill light should be at 25%.
| | 04:51 | So if I select my FILL and go to
the General properties and bring that
| | 04:55 | Intensity down to 25%,
| | 04:59 | that's a good starting point.
| | 05:01 | Now I want to start to illuminate the
back edges of this logo and that's why
| | 05:05 | it's so crucial to look through the
camera. I could place lights in the
| | 05:08 | scene that were illuminating the
back of the logo, but they may not be
| | 05:11 | hitting the sides of the logo that I
want and I can't tell that unless I
| | 05:14 | look through the lens at the logo.
| | 05:15 | And if I bring that full-screen, I'm
really concerned about this edge of the L
| | 05:19 | over here and the inside and outside
edges of the O on the right-hand side.
| | 05:25 | So I'll take the FILL light, hold down
the Ctrl key and make a copy of it, and
| | 05:29 | call this one BACK light, and the BACK
light now, in the top view I'll take it
| | 05:34 | and drag it around so that it's pointing
right at the edge of the L, and if I go
| | 05:41 | back to full-screen you can see the
edge of my L has gotten subtly brighter.
| | 05:45 | Let's bring the Intensity up just a
bit so you can see that. There we go.
| | 05:50 | Now take the BACK and hold down the
Ctrl key and drag a copy of it and
| | 05:55 | we'll call this one BACK 2, and the
BACK 2 light I want to have coming from
| | 06:01 | the opposite direction.
| | 06:02 | So I'll just take it and drag it around,
there we go, and now I'm illuminating the
| | 06:10 | inside edge of the O over on this
side and the inside edge of the L on this
| | 06:14 | side, and I have a very
good definition to my logo.
| | 06:18 | And that's really the key to the lights.
| | 06:19 | The lights give you the definition in
your shape and now the environment and the
| | 06:22 | reflections are going to give us the
warmth and texture and the shininess and
| | 06:26 | sheen that we're looking
for in this metallic logo.
| | 06:29 | So the first step in creating that
metallic sheen is going to be to create an
| | 06:33 | environment for our logo.
| | 06:34 | So if I go to the Material Manager and
double-click and I'm going to call this
| | 06:39 | material ENVIRO, short for environment,
and in the ENVIRO material I only want to
| | 06:45 | have the Luminance channel available to me.
| | 06:48 | And the Luminance channel makes
everything in that channel show up exactly as it
| | 06:53 | would in Photoshop when you render.
| | 06:54 | So colors show up at a 100% of their
value. They're not affected by light and
| | 06:59 | that's really crucial for an environment sphere.
| | 07:01 | So, in the Luminance channel now I
want to create a gradient, but before I do
| | 07:05 | let's apply this material to a sphere so we
can see the impact that it has on the scene.
| | 07:10 | So start off by adding a sphere to the
scene and call that sphere ENVIRO SPHERE.
| | 07:18 | Now this ENVIRO SPHERE needs to be huge.
| | 07:20 | It needs to encompass the entire scene
and in order to do that I'll change the
| | 07:24 | Radius from 100 to 50,000.
| | 07:29 | No rule of thumb there.
| | 07:30 | Basically you just want it large
enough to encompass the entire scene with no
| | 07:34 | chance for your objects to
animate through the sphere.
| | 07:37 | 50,000 in this case is plenty.
| | 07:39 | Now I'm going to apply the ENVIRO
material to the ENVIRO SPHERE and by dragging
| | 07:44 | across and putting it on
there in the Object Manager.
| | 07:47 | Now things just got really white.
| | 07:50 | I can't see any impact on the logo itself
because I haven't added reflections yet.
| | 07:54 | We're going to do that in just a second.
| | 07:55 | First though we want to create
a gradient on our ENVIRO SPHERE.
| | 07:59 | So I'll go to the ENVIRO material and
in the Luminance channel I'm going to go
| | 08:03 | the Texture pull-down and add in a
gradient, and that gradient now is applied to
| | 08:09 | our ENVIRO SPHERE, but you can
see it's going from left to right.
| | 08:12 | It is basically around
the equator of the sphere.
| | 08:14 | What I want to have is I want it to
go from pole to pole on the sphere.
| | 08:18 | So if I go to the Texture field and I
click on the Gradient swatch ,that takes me
| | 08:22 | into the Gradient Properties and I need
to change the Type from 2D - U, which is
| | 08:26 | along the x-axis, to 2D - V,
which is along the y-axis.
| | 08:31 | And now I get a gradient
that's traveling from pole to pole.
| | 08:35 | Next thing I need to do is edit the
gradient. So I need to create a gradient
| | 08:39 | that has a very strong bright equator
and then two big bands on either side of
| | 08:44 | that equator in black.
| | 08:45 | So let's start off for creating the
white equator. So I drag that knot over.
| | 08:50 | I'll hold down the Ctrl key and drag a
white knot over here and then a second
| | 08:55 | white knot right about there and then
I'll hold down the Ctrl key and drag a
| | 09:01 | black knot over here, and then one
more white not at the very bottom and that
| | 09:07 | gives me a very strong gradient.
| | 09:08 | I can move these guys over to tighten
that up and the cool thing is we can
| | 09:12 | always come back and tweak these
settings to make very interesting changes in
| | 09:16 | the surface of our logo.
| | 09:18 | So now we've got this environment
that's surrounding our object, we don't want it to
| | 09:22 | show up in the camera when it renders,
so we have to apply a very special tag
| | 09:26 | called a compositing tag to the ENVIRO SPHERE.
| | 09:29 | So if I go to the ENVIRO SPHERE and
right-click and go to CINEMA 4D Tags and do
| | 09:33 | Compositing, this Compositing tag
allows me to tell the ENVIRO SPHERE not to
| | 09:38 | show up in the render.
| | 09:39 | The way I do that is under the Tag
Properties I'll go to Cast Shadows and
| | 09:43 | Receive Shadows and turn them off.
| | 09:45 | Then I'll turn off Seen by Camera and
for good measure I'll turn off Seen by AO.
| | 09:49 | So now the only thing that this
environment sphere will do is show up in the
| | 09:52 | Transparency, the Refraction, or the
Reflection and that's very important.
| | 09:57 | I need to have my logo reflective.
| | 09:59 | Right now the materials that are on the
logo have no reflection channel at all.
| | 10:03 | If I draw a rectangle around all
three of them at once and go to the Basic
| | 10:06 | Properties, you'll see that the
Reflection channel is not even on.
| | 10:10 | So let's start off by turning on
the Reflection channel on all three of
| | 10:13 | these materials at once.
| | 10:14 | And you'll see that my logo gets
shiny but it changes color to gray.
| | 10:19 | That's because the Reflection is
100% reflection, so it's a true mirror.
| | 10:24 | The environment that's
surrounding us is gray in value basically.
| | 10:28 | It's a white and black gradient which
has lots of gray values in it, and so
| | 10:31 | my logo turns gray.
| | 10:33 | So to get this logo back to that nice
warm rich color, I'm going to go into
| | 10:37 | the Reflection channel on these materials and
I'm going to change the color of the reflections.
| | 10:45 | By changing the color of the
Reflections I'll be changing the color of the
| | 10:48 | surface of the logo.
| | 10:49 | So I want this to be that same
rich orange color that I had before.
| | 10:53 | So I'll take the Blue and
bring it all the way down to zero.
| | 10:56 | Take the Green value and bring that to
about 120 and now I've got a very rich
| | 11:02 | warm color in my logo.
| | 11:04 | And the great part is by modifying the
gradient that's on the ENVIRO SPHERE.
| | 11:08 | I can affect the texture that
shows up in the sides of this logo.
| | 11:12 | I can go into the ENVIRO SPHERE and
go to the Gradient and I can move these
| | 11:17 | knots around. As I do that it
changes how the logo looks and behaves.
| | 11:21 | I can take that and push it up here and
push that one up there, and now I have a
| | 11:25 | very tight gradient on the
sides. Darken the front up.
| | 11:28 | It looks really rich and shiny.
| | 11:30 | I can add in an extra knot down here
at the bottom and change that even more.
| | 11:35 | So you've a lot of flexibility and
control over how that logo looks.
| | 11:39 | So you see by lighting through the
camera, creating an environment, and coloring
| | 11:43 | your reflections you can create a
beautiful looking logo in no time at all.
| | 11:47 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D check
out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 11:51 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion. Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 014 Creating a smooth camera orbit using parenting| 00:00 | Hi Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:03 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | After Effects has a really interesting
set of tools for designing and animating
| | 00:10 | 3D layers, but the camera
can be a bit difficult to use.
| | 00:14 | But thanks to parenting,
| | 00:15 | we can cerate a camera set up that's both
easy to use and flexible too. Let's get started.
| | 00:19 | Here in After Effects, I've already
got an animation setup and I want to show
| | 00:23 | you what it looks like.
I'm going to RAM preview this.
| | 00:35 | This type of move is very, very difficult
to do with an existing After Effects camera.
| | 00:39 | The type appears to drop in the
frame but really what's happening is the
| | 00:43 | camera is backing up from the type
and then the camera is orbiting smoothly
| | 00:48 | around the type and with the existing camera in
After Effects, this move is really hard to do.
| | 00:53 | So before we build this move let's
talk a little bit about how the camera
| | 00:56 | behaves in After Effects.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to go over here to a example
scene I have and I've got two cameras in
| | 01:02 | the scene and After Effects camera's
behave in two very specific ways and I'm
| | 01:06 | going to switch my Camera view from
Active to Top and I'm going to back out just
| | 01:12 | a bit, so I can see these two cameras.
| | 01:14 | So lower this down a little bit in the
interface and now I can see both cameras
| | 01:20 | clearly in the window.
| | 01:21 | So there's a 1 Node Camera and a 2
Node Camera. Rhose are the two types of
| | 01:25 | cameras you can create and the difference
between them is how they focus on objects.
| | 01:29 | Now the 1 Node Camera only has a single
point of control here at the node of the
| | 01:33 | camera which in the case of After
Effects is the access point for the camera.
| | 01:37 | If I twirl open the rotation tools for
this and then scrub the Y value, I can
| | 01:42 | orbit this camera smoothly around the node.
| | 01:45 | The second type of camera is a 2
Node Camera and the 2 Node Camera has an
| | 01:49 | additional point of control that's out
here in front of the camera and so this
| | 01:53 | point of control is called the point of
interest and it allows me to determine
| | 01:56 | what the camera is looking at by
dragging this point around. And so as I move
| | 02:00 | this point around, I can
control where the camera is facing.
| | 02:03 | So you have a node back here at the
axis point and you have a second node out
| | 02:07 | here at the front that allows you to
control where the camera is looking at.
| | 02:10 | This control does not
allow you to do a smooth orbit.
| | 02:14 | To get a smooth orbit we have to build a
very special relationship for the camera.
| | 02:18 | I've an illustration to
show you what that looks like.
| | 02:20 | I'm going to turn off these two cameras
and then bring the window up and fit it
| | 02:28 | up to 100% so it comes in the full
screen and then I'm going to turn on this
| | 02:33 | layer here, and this is just an
Illustrator file I made, but it shows the kind
| | 02:36 | of relationship that we want to create.
| | 02:38 | This is representative of the camera
body and this is the point around which the
| | 02:42 | camera needs to rotate and I've moved
the axis point for the layer to that
| | 02:45 | location so that when I bring up the
Rotation values for this and I scrub them,
| | 02:50 | you can see that the layer orbits
smoothly around that location and this type of
| | 02:55 | movement is what we want
to create for our camera.
| | 02:57 | Our camera now moves in a perfect arc
around this focal point and that's what's
| | 03:02 | going to enable us to do that type of move.
| | 03:04 | So now let's start building the camera move.
| | 03:06 | I'm going to go in to the Camera
Parent START file here and now raise it up a
| | 03:11 | bit so I can have a little
bit more room to work down here.
| | 03:13 | So step one in this
process is to create a 3D camera.
| | 03:16 | I'm going to go to the Layer menu and
go New > Camera and I'll use the default
| | 03:21 | settings here. They are fine and
so now there's a 3D camera scene.
| | 03:25 | We don't have any 3D layers, but there
is a camera and so if I move these layers
| | 03:29 | around or if I move the camera, they
won't react to one another because that's
| | 03:32 | the way After Effects behaves when
there's no 3D objects in the scene.
| | 03:35 | So the first thing I need to do is to
add some 3D objects and I've already got
| | 03:39 | the layers that I want to add in here.
| | 03:40 | The Reflection type, the gradient, and
the Reflection type PRE comp here, that is
| | 03:45 | actually the reflection down below.
| | 03:48 | I'm going to turn all of these in to 3D
layers by clicking on the 3D layer switch.
| | 03:52 | If this is invisible you can click on
your Switches and Modes button down here
| | 03:55 | to make that visible.
| | 03:56 | I'll turn all three of those on.
| | 03:58 | Now it looks like nothing's happened.
That's because the camera that we're
| | 04:01 | looking through is already setup to correctly
show us how these layers look when they are 3D.
| | 04:05 | The next thing I need to do is to
introduce my control point for the camera and
| | 04:09 | that's going to be in the form of a Null Object.
| | 04:11 | I am going to go to After Effects Layer
menu > New > Null Object and that Null
| | 04:16 | Object now is a 2D layer so before I
parent my camera to it, I need to turn it
| | 04:21 | into a 3D layer so I'm going to turn
on that same 3D layer switch for it.
| | 04:24 | It's a 3D layer now and it's
exactly in the right place for a camera.
| | 04:28 | If I switch the views from Active view
camera to the Top, you can see that if I
| | 04:34 | back out a bit there's our
Camera and there's our Null.
| | 04:39 | And so we've got a existing Null Object
right on the front of our camera that we
| | 04:42 | can use to orbit smoothly around.
| | 04:44 | So what I need to do is to
parent my camera to this Null Object.
| | 04:47 | So I want to take the pick whip and go
from here to here and so now when I grab
| | 04:53 | this Null Object and
bring up the Rotation tools,
| | 04:55 | if I scrub the Y value you'll see that
the camera orbits around that point and
| | 05:00 | that's exactly what we need.
| | 05:01 | Let's see what that looks like
when we're looking through the camera.
| | 05:04 | I'm going to switch from the Top view
back to Active Camera and then bring this
| | 05:09 | up to a 100% based on this framing here
and now when I scrub that Y value you'll
| | 05:16 | see that my camera is orbiting around
the type and giving the type the illusion
| | 05:21 | that is rotating, but really the
camera is what's causing the movement.
| | 05:25 | So now that we've got the camera rig built,
we can now use it to create the animation.
| | 05:30 | So the step one in this process, when
I'm building a camera move, what I'd like
| | 05:33 | to do is to work backwards. What I mean
by that is I'd like to find my landing
| | 05:38 | point first and then find the camera's
starting point. What that allows me to do
| | 05:42 | is to setup the move for the most
important part of the animation.
| | 05:45 | The most important part of the animation
is when the type hits, because you want
| | 05:48 | that type to be legible.
| | 05:50 | So I'm going to find my starting point
and I want to have my type when it hits
| | 05:57 | its mark be right about there, about
-24 on Y for the Null object rotation, and
| | 06:04 | now when I want that point to hit is
about 20 frames into the animation.
| | 06:09 | Let's move this column over a bit so
that we can see the timing of this and I'm
| | 06:15 | going to move the time indicator and if
I go to about frame 20, you can see the
| | 06:18 | time over here is at 20 frames in.
| | 06:21 | I can now set keyframes for the
Rotation of this camera and I also want to set
| | 06:28 | keyframes for the Position of this
camera. So I'll hit P on the keyboard as well
| | 06:33 | and keyframe to position.
| | 06:35 | So now that we've got that animation I'm
going to reveal all of these keyframes by
| | 06:38 | hitting U twice, not two times in a row
quickly, but U, pause, U and that'll bring
| | 06:44 | up the existing keyframes for that Null
layer and now that I can see those I'm
| | 06:49 | going to backup to time 0 and
then find my starting point.
| | 06:53 | So to find my starting point, I'm
going to start by moving my camera on the Z
| | 06:57 | axis now the direction that I want to
move is straightened towards my type, but
| | 07:01 | if I scrub the Z position for the Null
Object you can see that my camera in type
| | 07:06 | don't move in exactly the right relationship.
| | 07:08 | What I want to do is change the
position of the camera relative to the Null
| | 07:12 | Object and so to do that I'm
going to undo for a second to get my Type
| | 07:16 | back centered in the frame and then I'm
going to setup position keyframe from the camera.
| | 07:20 | So if I hit P on the keyboard to
bring up the camera, now activate the
| | 07:24 | stopwatch for Position and I'm going to move
that Position keyframe right out here to frame 20.
| | 07:31 | And now what I want to do is to scrub
this value here. If I scrub this value
| | 07:35 | look what happens.My camera moves
straight in on my type and so I'm going to
| | 07:42 | scrub that in until my type is in frame,
there we go, and now I don't want to be
| | 07:49 | looking at the bottom of this O and
so I'm going to go to the position, Y
| | 07:53 | position specifically of the Null
Object and I'm going to scrub that value down
| | 07:56 | just a bit until my camera is
right about here in the center.
| | 08:00 | And so now if I scrub through this,
you'll see the type drops right in the frame
| | 08:05 | and hits its mark and that's
just what we want to do, boom.
| | 08:08 | After it hits its mark I want it to
continue to orbit around this layer.
| | 08:12 | So I'm going to move to the end of the
timeline and then I'm going to go to Null
| | 08:16 | Object's Y Rotation and scrub that
to the right into the positive range.
| | 08:22 | Now I don't want to go all the way over
here. I just want to go about right here.
| | 08:26 | One of the things about After Effects
3D layers is that they're not really 3D.
| | 08:29 | They're something called 2-1/2D and
they don't have any thickness to them.
| | 08:33 | So you don't want to ever see them
side on, because that completely spoils
| | 08:37 | the illusion of the 3D.
| | 08:38 | Now that I've got that keyframe set I
can do a little RAM preview, hit 0 on
| | 08:42 | the numeric keypad.
| | 08:49 |
So you can see our move looks pretty good.
| | 08:52 | One of the things I
noticed when it hits its mark.
| | 08:54 | I'll play that one more time.
Is that it hits its mark kind of hard.
| | 09:01 | At this moment of time the type hits,
but it has a very noticeable hit when
| | 09:05 | it hits that frame 20.
| | 09:06 | I want to smooth that out by
changing the Keyframe Interpolation.
| | 09:10 | The Keyframe Interpolation will create
something called an ease on the motion
| | 09:14 | and in order to do that, I want to
change the interpolation for the Position
| | 09:19 | keyframe on the Camera and the
Position keyframe on the null.
| | 09:23 | Now if I right click on the Position
keyframe for the Camera and I go to
| | 09:27 | Keyframe Assistant and I
want to do an Easy Ease In.
| | 09:32 | And that creates an ease in on that keyframe.
| | 09:35 | I want to do the same thing for the
Position for the Null Object. Right-click
| | 09:38 | Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease In and
now I've got an ease on that movement.
| | 09:43 | Let's RAM Preview just the first part of
that and see if that got rid of our bump.
| | 09:46 |
| | 09:51 | So you can see that really smoothed out
our animation and now we've got a very
| | 09:55 | nice ease onto that mark.
| | 09:57 | This type of move was really easy to
set up, but the reason it was easy to
| | 10:00 | set up was because of the
relationship that we established between the Null
| | 10:05 | Object and the camera.
| | 10:07 | Parenting can give you a ton of control
over all of your camera movements.
| | 10:10 | For more information on this checkout Chris
and Trish Meyer After Effects CS55 New
| | 10:15 | Creative Techniques in the
video section of lynda.con.
| | 10:18 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion. Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 015 Creating bouncing animated type using dynamics| 00:00 | Hi Rob Garrott here,
| | 00:01 | and welcome to Design in Motion, the
weekly series where we explore important
| | 00:04 | fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Dynamic simulations allow animators to
get physically correct movement without
| | 00:11 | using any keyframes.
| | 00:12 | But just like setting up a string of
dominoes it can be very difficult to control.
| | 00:16 | I am going to show you a really simple
dynamic setup that you can use to get
| | 00:20 | some interesting type
animations. Let's take a look.
| | 00:23 | This is the effect that we are going
to create in CINEMA 4D. Let me hit Play
| | 00:26 | here and let this go through.
| | 00:32 | So what's happening here is I have
an invisible object off camera that is
| | 00:36 | rolling down a ramp and striking the
type, causing it to jump off camera.
| | 00:41 | And this is a great effect that could
be used as part of the graphics package
| | 00:44 | for example and a transitional
element to get you from type to type.
| | 00:48 | Now the key to setting up this effect
is building the dynamics correctly and
| | 00:52 | that's what we are going to do right now.
| | 00:53 | So I am going to switch over to the starting
file and I just happen to have that already open.
| | 00:58 | This is what the scene looks like from
outside the camera and I have a camera
| | 01:02 | object in the scene and it's
locked off using thisProtection tag.
| | 01:05 | That way I can't accidentally move it.
| | 01:07 | Now the ramp and the ball and the floor
are what we are going to start with and
| | 01:12 | set up the dynamics for.
| | 01:13 | So the bowler object is just a sphere
and I wan this bowler to roll down the
| | 01:17 | ramp and strike the floor.
| | 01:19 | So step one is to make
the bowler a dynamic object.
| | 01:21 | So I'll right-click on the bowler, go to
Simulation Tags, and tell it to be a Rigid Body.
| | 01:27 | Now when I hit Play, you can see that
the ball starts to fall immediately.
| | 01:33 | The problem is it doesn't have anything
to collide with and so we need to tell
| | 01:37 | it to collide with the ramp and the floor.
| | 01:40 | The way you do that is by right-
clicking on the ramp and going to Simulation
| | 01:45 | Tags > Collider Body and then I'll do the
same thing for the plane, right-click >
| | 01:50 | Simulation Tags > Collider Body.
| | 01:52 | Now the Collider Body tag is the
same thing as the Dynamics tag.
| | 01:56 | It just tells the object not to move
and it's simply there for other dynamic
| | 02:00 | objects to push against.
| | 02:01 | So let's rewind back to zero and hit Play.
| | 02:03 | So you can see that the ball strikes
the ramp, rolls down, and passes right
| | 02:09 | through our word just the way we need it to.
| | 02:11 | The next step in the process is to
turn the letters into dynamic objects
| | 02:15 | themselves and the way we are going to
do that is with a little bit of MoGraph.
| | 02:19 | So let's go to the MoGraph menu and go
to the Fracture Object and the Fracture
| | 02:23 | Object is a special generator that
allows you to treat other objects under it as
| | 02:28 | if they were clones.
| | 02:29 | And this is a great way to get dynamic type.
| | 02:31 | So I'll take the Fracture Object and
twirl open the Logo Parent null, and you
| | 02:36 | can see that this is just an Extrude
NURB with the separate splines under it and
| | 02:40 | each one of these splines
represents a letter in the word dynamics.
| | 02:43 | The way this hierarchy needs to work
is I have to make the Fracture object a
| | 02:47 | child of the Extrude NURB and then
the splines children of the fracture.
| | 02:51 | So the way I'll do that is by dragging
the Fracture object in and then taking
| | 02:55 | each of these splines and making
them children of the Fracture object.
| | 03:00 | The Fracture object looks at each of
these children under there and it looks
| | 03:03 | as if nothing has changed in here, but now
it's thinking of them as if they were clones.
| | 03:07 | So what I can do next is make the
type a dynamic object and now each of the
| | 03:13 | letters will then react
to dynamics in the scene.
| | 03:17 | So let's start off by right-clicking on the
Type and going to Simulation Tags > Rigid Body.
| | 03:23 | Now I'll rewind it back
to zero and then hit Play.
| | 03:26 | And you'll notice two things.
| | 03:30 | When I hit Play the type jumped a little bit.
| | 03:33 | The next thing you notice is that the
letters themselves didn't break apart.
| | 03:37 | So the first thing, the type jumping,
is because of the collision detection.
| | 03:41 | The type is embedded in the floor just
a little bit and if we zoom in on that,
| | 03:45 | let's zoom in right here.
| | 03:47 | You can see that the type is
just barely intersecting the floor.
| | 03:51 | I need to raise that type up so
it's not quite touching the floor.
| | 03:54 | Then I need to tell it to not react to
anything until it gets hit by something.
| | 04:00 | So let's start by
raising it up out of the floor.
| | 04:01 | I am going to zoom in on this in the side view.
| | 04:04 | I'll move to the right-hand
view and hit O on the keyboard.
| | 04:08 | That zooms me in and this black
line here represents the floor.
| | 04:12 | And so if I take the Y handle for that
and drag it up until it's just outside of
| | 04:18 | the floor and I don't want my type
letters to be floating above the floor.
| | 04:24 | One of the things that's happening is
the baseline of the S and the C are lower
| | 04:28 | than the baseline of the I and the
M and the other letters in the word.
| | 04:31 | And so there's always going to be
something intersecting with the floor.
| | 04:34 | But that's okay, because this
next step is going to fix that.
| | 04:36 | So if I go to the Dynamics tag and
under that dynamic property tell the trigger
| | 04:41 | to happen instead of immediately to
only on collision, now when I hit Play,
| | 04:48 | the ball rolled down and hit that word and it
won't move until it gets struck by the ball.
| | 04:54 | The last step in this process is to go
to the Collision Property and tell the
| | 04:59 | individual elements to be All.
| | 05:02 | Now when I rewind back to 0, I hit Play, boom!
| | 05:07 | The ball strikes the letters and
knocks them right out of the way.
| | 05:11 | Now the problem I have is that the ball
is not quite heavy enough to knock the
| | 05:16 | letters out of the way
and so we have to fix that.
| | 05:20 | Now the way I am going to
fix that is with two settings.
| | 05:22 | Let's rewind back to 0 and in the
Bowler object, under its Dynamics tag, I'm going
| | 05:28 | to change the Density of the object.
| | 05:31 | So under the Mass options I
have a Density pull-down here.
| | 05:35 | It's defaulted to the World Density and
that makes all the objects have relative
| | 05:39 | densities based on their sizes and
what I want to do is set a custom density.
| | 05:43 | So I am going to go to Custom Density
and change that Density value to 10.
| | 05:47 | And then when I hit Play,
rewind back to 0, hit Play.
| | 05:54 | You can see that now the ball has a
lot more weight to it and it knocks the
| | 05:58 | letters much farther.
| | 05:59 | Now the next thing I want to do is to make
sure that those letters bounce a little bit more.
| | 06:03 | That's going to make sure that they get
out of the way of the ball once it hits them.
| | 06:06 | The way I am going to do that is by
going to the Dynamics tag that's on the type
| | 06:10 | object and changing the
Collision options for that object.
| | 06:14 | So let's go to the Collision property
and change the Balance from 50% to 75%.
| | 06:20 | Now let's look through the camera.
I'll twirl the Type Parent closed and then
| | 06:24 | look through the camera. Rewind back
to zero and hit Play. And that's great.
| | 06:33 | That's exactly what we needed.
| | 06:35 | That ball knocks the type beautifully.
| | 06:37 | The last thing to do is to make the
ball invisible and I'll do that by simply
| | 06:40 | making both dots on the Status
column for the Bowler object red.
| | 06:44 | I'll hold down the Option key, click
twice, and now my Bowler is invisible.
| | 06:49 | Rewind back to 0 and hit Play one last
time and there you go, dynamic bouncing type.
| | 06:58 | If you've ever tried this setup a Rube
Goldberg machine then you understand the
| | 07:01 | process of working with dynamics.
| | 07:03 | If you set things up right correctly
the first time, it should go off without a
| | 07:07 | hitch, knock on wood.
| | 07:09 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
checkout the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 07:13 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion. Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 016 Animating type using parenting| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:03 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | The idea of grouping objects
together is not new at all.
| | 00:10 | It existed in print applications like
Adobe Illustrator for a very long time.
| | 00:14 | After Effects though takes the idea
of grouping objects together one step
| | 00:18 | further, making it an essential animation tool.
| | 00:21 | Let's check it out.
| | 00:23 | So our goal is to create this animation.
| | 00:25 | I am going to do a little RAM preview
here and let it play through a couple of
| | 00:28 | times, and I'm going to hit
zero on the numeric keypad.
| | 00:32 | This type of animation is
impossible to do without parenting.
| | 00:36 | Let me just quickly review what
parenting is in After Effects.
| | 00:41 | I've got a little start file here and
I am going to scrub through this and
| | 00:44 | what I have here is a square that is rotating
around its center and I have a star right next to it.
| | 00:49 | Now I want to start to move around the
square as it's rotating and I am going to
| | 00:54 | use parenting to do that.
| | 00:55 | So if I take this child layer and use
the pick whip in the Parenting column-- and
| | 00:59 | if this column isn't invisible you can
right-click inside the column area and go
| | 01:04 | to Columns and reveal your column
for Parenting and it will show up.
| | 01:08 | And I can use this pick whip
now to go from here to here.
| | 01:13 | And when I do that and the scrub
through, you'll see that the star now moves
| | 01:17 | with the layer and that's really all
there is to parenting. You're using a pick whip
| | 01:21 | to establish a
relationship between two objects.
| | 01:23 | So now let's get back and build this animation.
| | 01:26 | I am going to the start composition
here and I've got these layers soloed out.
| | 01:31 | These are the final letters that are
going to be visible on screen when we get
| | 01:34 | to the end of our animation, and if
I unsolo that, you can see I've got
| | 01:39 | everything all stacked up here in the center.
| | 01:41 | What makes this animation work and what
makes the setup of this animation work
| | 01:45 | is how we build it, the order in
which we parent things, and that can be very,
| | 01:48 | very important for your
animation and it is in this case.
| | 01:51 | So the first do is to move the null
object that's going to be the main rotator
| | 01:56 | for all of our layers out to the side.
| | 01:58 | Because that's going to become the
hinge around which our type rotates.
| | 02:02 | So let's take this null object here and
I am going to move it-- I actually make
| | 02:07 | careful note of the position that I
wanted to move it to here, so that I could
| | 02:10 | do quickly in this movie.
| | 02:11 | But it's about -816x270, and so if I
hit P on the keyboard to bring up Position
| | 02:17 | and I go -816 and then Tab over to
270, and it's already there for me.
| | 02:25 | So when I hit Return, it's in position.
| | 02:28 | You can see that it moved
the null object way over here.
| | 02:31 | Now I don't want to move that null
object yet or rotate it yet. If I hit R
| | 02:35 | on the keyboard to bring up the rotation,
you can see that nothing is parented to it.
| | 02:39 | Now what I need to do is to start
to parent these objects up together.
| | 02:42 | And if I go back over here, I am going
to parent these in a very specific order.
| | 02:47 | So I want to start off by parenting up
parenting, and it is, and then good,
| | 02:52 | and then the final group.
| | 02:53 | Before I parent each one, I am going to
rotate it a little bit each time, kind
| | 02:57 | of like the hands of the clock.
| | 02:58 | Let's start off by
parenting up our first object.
| | 03:00 | So I am going to the go to the
parenting layer, select the pick whip, and parent
| | 03:04 | it right to our main rotator.
| | 03:06 | And if I scrub the rotation for this
main rotator, you'll see that parenting now
| | 03:10 | moves up out of position, as if it's
rotating around a distant center and
| | 03:15 | that's just what we want.
| | 03:16 | Now I need to move this to about
-23 degrees to parent up the next one.
| | 03:21 | So I am going to go to Rotation
here and type in -23 and you notice
| | 03:25 | our parenting is gone.
| | 03:26 | It's actually up in this area out of view.
| | 03:28 | So now that I've moved my layer out
to -23, I can parent up IS, and I am
| | 03:33 | going to parent up that by dragging the pick
whip from the IS layer to the main rotator.
| | 03:38 | Now I can rotate is one more time
to -39 so it can parent up good.
| | 03:42 | So I go -39 and my IS just rotated up
out of view and now I can go to the GOOD
| | 03:50 | layer and parent that up.
| | 03:51 | I'll drag the pick whip from GOOD up to
the main rotator and now that's parented up.
| | 03:56 | Now I can rotate this one last time to
-60, -60, and now we have our last type
| | 04:03 | layer here and this group of type is
parented to its own null object and that's
| | 04:08 | what I am going to use to
parent to the main rotator.
| | 04:12 | And so I'll take the pick whip and go
from this null to this null, and so when I
| | 04:17 | scrub the rotation value for this null,
you can see that everything orbits
| | 04:20 | smoothly around that location.
| | 04:22 | So let's bring this back to 0.
| | 04:23 | So now I am ready to set my keyframes.
| | 04:27 | So let's go to the rotation value for
the main rotator and I'll click on the
| | 04:30 | stopwatch and this rotation
I'm going to move into position.
| | 04:35 | And let me hit plus on the keyboard to zoom
in a bit and I am going to scrub my view over.
| | 04:41 | And 0 right here, I've left markers
in the composition to tell me where I
| | 04:48 | needed to put my keyframes for this.
That will make the process go a lot
| | 04:51 | smoother here for the tutorial.
| | 04:52 | But you can do it by feel basically.
| | 04:54 | What you're trying to get is the idea
of a clock, a mechanical like animation
| | 04:58 | that moves very quickly into position and
right now this is about 15 frames from 0.
| | 05:03 | So if I back up to time 0 and move my
animation to about 25 degrees, my PARENTING
| | 05:09 | will be out of frame.
| | 05:10 | Let's put in 25 right there, and it's
clearly out of frame and now if I scrub
| | 05:15 | through, there comes my
PARENTING right into position.
| | 05:19 | Next thing I want to do is to
move forward in time and find the 23.
| | 05:23 | But before I do that I want my
PARENTING to bounce a little bit.
| | 05:27 | So in order for it to bounce, it has to
go beyond 0 degrees just a little bit and then
| | 05:31 | come back down again and
then come back up into position.
| | 05:34 | So I'm going to move forward about
maybe three or four frames and then rotate
| | 05:39 | it up from 0, about right there, and how far it
goes up really is a touchy feely sort of thing.
| | 05:46 | The higher up it goes, the
more bouncy it's going to feel.
| | 05:49 | So you can adjust these to your taste.
| | 05:52 | Now I am going to go up to about -4
and then I am going to come back down and
| | 05:57 | it's going to come back down below its
mark, maybe about +3, and then it's going
| | 06:02 | to go back up into position to 0.
| | 06:06 | And that's going to create
this bouncing motion, boing!
| | 06:10 | And it hits its mark.
| | 06:12 | Now when it hits its mark, it's going to
hold there for a little while before it
| | 06:15 | rotates out of position.
| | 06:17 | So I am going to advance forward one
more time to just before the next mark and
| | 06:22 | I am going to set a keyframe
for Rotation on this rotator.
| | 06:25 | Now I'll back that up just a little
bit and it's going to rotate down a few
| | 06:30 | frames before rotating out of view.
| | 06:32 | So I am going to rotate it down and
then I am going to rotate it up to 23.
| | 06:39 | So we are going to go rotate up to
-23 and there is our IS, right there.
| | 06:43 | Now these keyframes are a little bit
too close together, so I can move them off
| | 06:47 | a bit, there we go, and so now we'll
have a little bit of a bounce down and then
| | 06:52 | down and then up into position.
| | 06:54 | Now if I were going to complete this
animation, I'd keep repeating that process
| | 06:58 | over and over again for each of these layers.
| | 07:01 | That's going to take a little bit
too long to do for this tutorial.
| | 07:03 | I'll just review these keyframes
and show you what they look like in
| | 07:06 | the finished product.
| | 07:08 | So over here in the parenting example
END composition I am going to go to the
| | 07:12 | main rotator and hit R on the
keyboard to reveal the rotation.
| | 07:15 | And you can see what I've done with
these keyframes is the spacing on them,
| | 07:18 | I'll zoom in just a bit, so you can
see there is the spacing on the keyframes
| | 07:22 | and it is about one, two, three
frames in between each of these keys.
| | 07:27 | And then on the last bounce key I've set
an easy ease in to smooth that settle out.
| | 07:33 | The next thing I did was I've changed
the in and out points of the layers so
| | 07:37 | that they come off and on and won't
accidentally show up in the animation when
| | 07:42 | I don't want them to.
| | 07:43 | All of that work ends up in this animation.
| | 07:47 | The important thing to remember about
this process was the order in which I
| | 07:50 | parented the layers up.
| | 07:52 | That well-ordered parenting is
what made this animation possible.
| | 07:56 | Parenting is a powerful and
essential tool for all kinds of
| | 07:59 | animation techniques.
| | 08:00 | If you need a great refresher on
parenting, be sure to check out Chris and Trish
| | 08:03 | Myers After Effects Apprentice 7
in the Video section of lynda.com.
| | 08:07 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion. Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 017 Shading type using gradients in Cinema 4D| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Creating beautiful type and logo
animations is all about style and the gradient
| | 00:12 | is a stylish design tool.
| | 00:14 | I am going to show you how to use gradients
to make your type look great in CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:18 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:19 | So here we are CINEMA 4D and we are
looking at the finished product of what we
| | 00:23 | are going to be creating today, and
what I want to point out is the change in
| | 00:26 | value on the face of the type.
| | 00:28 | You'll notice that the type goes a
lighter orange color to a darker orange color
| | 00:33 | from the top of the letter
to the bottom of the letter.
| | 00:35 | Anytime you hear the word gradient
it simply means a change in value.
| | 00:39 | In this case we're changing in
value from one color to another.
| | 00:43 | Now this change in value is going to be
easy to create using a gradient, but we
| | 00:46 | have to do some key steps first.
| | 00:48 | So let's move over to the starting file.
| | 00:49 | I've got a clean version of
this type with nothing on it.
| | 00:53 | The first thing I want to point out
about the scene file is the camera.
| | 00:56 | I have the camera completely locked off
with something called a Protection tag.
| | 01:00 | This tag keeps you from
accidentally moving the camera.
| | 01:02 | So I am going to uncheck the active camera icon.
| | 01:05 | That's going to jump me into the
editor camera and allow me to navigate
| | 01:09 | freely through the scene.
| | 01:11 | Now I can hide my camera because I
don't really need to at it at all.
| | 01:14 | I'll just make both of the dots red.
| | 01:16 | It's still in the scene and I can
still look through it if I want to.
| | 01:18 | It's just not longer visible.
| | 01:19 | We are ready to begin colorizing our type.
| | 01:21 | So let's start off by creating the
color that's going to be the base orange
| | 01:25 | color that all of the type will start out as.
| | 01:27 | I am going to go down to the Material Manager
and I'll double-click to create a new material.
| | 01:32 | I could also have gone to the Create
menu and done a New Material command from
| | 01:36 | right there, but double-
clicking is a lot faster and easier.
| | 01:39 | So now in this material I am going
to start off by naming it and calling it
| | 01:42 | Type Font, and the Type Front material I
want to start off as a orange color and
| | 01:48 | I'm going to go into the color
swatch here and change these values.
| | 01:52 | The Blue value I want to be 0, the
Red value I want to push to 255, and the
| | 01:57 | Green value I want to
bring to about the 119 range.
| | 02:01 | Anywhere between 101 and 130 range will
give you a nice looking orange and the
| | 02:05 | values aren't exact in this case.
| | 02:07 | As long as it looks cool then you're good to go.
| | 02:10 | Now what I want to do is
apply the material to the type.
| | 02:13 | So I take my material from the
Material Manager and drag it across to the
| | 02:16 | extruder and I now have orange type.
| | 02:19 | Let's dolly in on this a little bit and
I'll navigate and bring that full-screen.
| | 02:24 | Command+R or Ctrl+R on the
keyboard will render the active view.
| | 02:27 | Now you can see I've got some orange type.
| | 02:30 | This orange type looks pretty good,
but the legibility isn't what it can be.
| | 02:34 | That's really what this
technique is all about is the legibility.
| | 02:37 | We want the face of the
letters to leap off the sides.
| | 02:41 | That way our viewer will have a
much easier time reading the words.
| | 02:45 | I have an orange color on here.
| | 02:46 | I want to make the sides darker
than the actual face of the type.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to make a version of this
Type Front material and call it Type Sides.
| | 02:55 | So let's start off by holding down on
the Ctrl key and dragging to the right and
| | 02:59 | I'll double-click on that
and call this one Type Sides.
| | 03:04 | The Type Sides material I simply want to
be a darker shade of that same orange color.
| | 03:08 | So I will drag the brightness to the
left and that's going to darken things up.
| | 03:12 | I am going to exaggerate it a lot so that
we have a very dark brownish color here.
| | 03:17 | Now what I want is I want this
color to show up only on the sides.
| | 03:20 | That's a two-step process.
| | 03:22 | Step one is to apply that
material to the extruder.
| | 03:26 | CINEMA 4D evaluates these
two tags from right to left.
| | 03:30 | So this dark material is
overriding the Front material.
| | 03:34 | If I do a Command+R or Ctrl+R you can
see that my type has indeed gotten darker.
| | 03:39 | So what I want to have happen is I want the
lighter color on top so I have to reverse these.
| | 03:44 | That's step one of the process.
| | 03:46 | Step two of the process is to change how
that material is showing up on the face
| | 03:51 | and there's a special code for that.
I only want the material to show up on
| | 03:54 | the fronts of the type.
| | 03:55 | So the code that I am going to put
in is in the Tag properties under the
| | 03:59 | Selection field and I am
going to put in the letters C and the number 1.
| | 04:03 | The case of the letter is very important.
| | 04:06 | It's case-sensitive.
| | 04:07 | If you put in c1, it will
not work. So I've put in C1.
| | 04:11 | I'm going to hit Return.
| | 04:13 | Now when I render you can see that the
typeface is much brighter than the type sides.
| | 04:18 | Next what I want to do is a same kind of
treatment except for the edges of the type.
| | 04:22 | In this case I want to type edges
to be much brighter than the face.
| | 04:26 | That's going to help give
definition to the shapes of the letters.
| | 04:29 | So I am going to start off
with my Type Front material.
| | 04:32 | I am going to Ctrl+Drag a copy of the
Type Front material to the right here and
| | 04:36 | I'll double-click on
that and name it Type Edges.
| | 04:42 | Now the Type Edges material I want to be
very, very bright and there is a really
| | 04:45 | cool thing I can do with the
basic properties of this material.
| | 04:48 | I am going to turn on the Luminance channel.
| | 04:50 | The Luminance channel changes how
materials behave relative to light.
| | 04:55 | It kills the shading of the object.
| | 04:57 | And what that has the effect of doing is
any color that you put in the Luminance
| | 05:00 | channel overwhelms all of the other
channels and makes that channel dominant.
| | 05:04 | In this case, the Luminance channel shows up
is white, because the default color is white.
| | 05:08 | What we want was change that color
to the same orange that we had before.
| | 05:11 | So I am going to drag this up and I am
going to click on the Luminance channel
| | 05:15 | so we just see that value.
| | 05:16 | Now if I hold the Shift key down and
click on the word Color, I now see both
| | 05:20 | swatches for the Color channel
up here and Luminance down there.
| | 05:24 | If I want this orange color to come up down here,
| | 05:26 | I can put in the values numerically or
I could simply drag from the top down to
| | 05:30 | the bottom and now I have the same orange value.
| | 05:34 | And you can see that my material
has gotten much, much brighter.
| | 05:37 | It's a little too bright.
| | 05:38 | So I am just going to dial it down a little bit.
| | 05:39 | I am dialing down the Luminance channel
and bringing that about half way down.
| | 05:45 | Now you can see in the material editor
I have three very distinct shades of the
| | 05:49 | same color and I have a much brighter
one, a medium one, and a very dark one.
| | 05:54 | So now I want this much brighter
one so show up only on the edges.
| | 05:58 | If I drag that on to the extruder to apply
it, it's now overriding the other materials.
| | 06:02 | Now I can use another selection code
to make it show up only on the edges.
| | 06:06 | The code I am going to
use is R and the number 1.
| | 06:10 | I'll put in R1 and hit Return
and that stands for Rounding1.
| | 06:16 | Why they didn't call it Bevel or Edge1 I
have no idea, but Rounding means the bevel.
| | 06:22 | So now when I Command+R or Ctrl+R on
the keyboard to render that view, you see
| | 06:26 | that my edges are showing up much brighter.
| | 06:28 | Let's orbit around just a bit so we can
see the edges little bit better and we
| | 06:33 | will zoom in on here and hit
Command+R or Ctrl+R. There we go!
| | 06:37 | Now we could see that we've got a
lot more definition in those edges.
| | 06:41 | If I want more definition I can simply
go to the Edge material and crank up that
| | 06:45 | Luminance value and then re-render,
Command+R or Ctrl+R, and you can see that
| | 06:49 | those edges now really jump off.
| | 06:51 | This technique really gives a shape
and a definition to the typeface that
| | 06:56 | was missing before.
| | 06:57 | So the last step in this gradient process
is to actually add the gradient to the type.
| | 07:02 | Now to do that, we are going to be putting
that gradient into the Type Front material.
| | 07:07 | So in the Type Front material, in the
Color channel I going to go to the Texture
| | 07:12 | pull-down and add in a Gradient.
| | 07:14 | The default gradient is one that's
running horizontal through our type object
| | 07:19 | and it's also black-and-white.
| | 07:20 | So the first thing we need
to do is change the color.
| | 07:22 | The second thing we will need to do
change how it's being applied to the object,
| | 07:26 | and we will do that next.
| | 07:27 | So let's go into the Gradient and
start off by changing those color values.
| | 07:31 | Next to the word Gradient there is a
little black triangle and if I twirl that
| | 07:33 | open that allows me to see
the color values or the knots.
| | 07:36 | I am going to start off by
selecting the light knot.
| | 07:39 | You could see that I have my color values
set to the HSV, Hue, Saturation, and Value.
| | 07:43 | By default they're set to be RGB and
you can put in exact color values in here.
| | 07:47 | So let's switch that back
to RGB mode at the top here.
| | 07:51 | Now I can leave my Red value at 255
and bring my Green value to about the 120
| | 07:57 | range, and then bring my Blue value back down 0.
| | 08:01 | You can see now I've got
that the same orange color here.
| | 08:04 | I am going to leave my gradient to Black down here.
| | 08:07 | Now I might want to eventually change
that to be a slightly darker shade of
| | 08:10 | that same orange, but for now in order
to exaggerate the effect I am going to
| | 08:14 | leave that on black.
| | 08:15 | So let's back up a little bit from our
type and take a rendering, Command+R or
| | 08:19 | Ctrl+R. Now our type doesn't
look very gradiented, does it?
| | 08:23 | That's because the default application
of the material doesn't show up exactly
| | 08:28 | aligned with the face of the type and
we are going to change that right now.
| | 08:32 | Let's start off by selecting the tag
that represents the face of the type over
| | 08:36 | here in the Object Manager and that's this
middle texture right here. You see that.
| | 08:40 | that there is my material Type Front.
| | 08:43 | It's being limited to the Selection C1.
| | 08:45 | The Projection method though is
something called UVW Mapping and that's what's
| | 08:48 | causing our problem right now.
| | 08:50 | We need to change that to
something called Flat Mapping.
| | 08:52 | In order to see what that's going to
do, I am going to click into the Use
| | 08:56 | Texture Axis mode right
here on the left-hand side.
| | 08:59 | Now you don't have to do this.
| | 09:00 | This just helps me visualize
what's happening on the type.
| | 09:03 | What I get now is this yellow grid.
| | 09:05 | This yellow grid represents UV Mapping mode.
| | 09:08 | If I change the Projection
method to Flat Mapping, now I see my
| | 09:13 | gradients showing up.
| | 09:14 | You can see its being repeated
across the letters from left to right.
| | 09:18 | If I go to the Object Manager Tag menu
and do Fit To Object, that's going to
| | 09:23 | reposition that tag and it's going
to ask me a question, do you want
| | 09:28 | sub-objects included.
| | 09:29 | Yes, I want all of the letters to be
included in the calculation. I'll tell it yes.
| | 09:33 | And now the gradient is being
stretched across the entire word.
| | 09:38 | Now when I render, Command+R or Ctrl+
R, you can see that my gradient starts
| | 09:41 | off with black on this side and then goes
all the way to that orange color over here.
| | 09:46 | That's not quite what we want as well.
| | 09:47 | we wanted to start off light at
the top and dark at the bottom.
| | 09:51 | So the way we do that is
by changing the gradient.
| | 09:53 | So I go the Front material over here
in the Material Editor and in the Color
| | 09:57 | channel I am going to
click on the Gradient swatch.
| | 10:00 | That takes me into the gradient
properties and now I can change the Gradient
| | 10:03 | type from 2-DU which relates to the
X axis and change it to 2D-V which
| | 10:09 | relates to the Y axis.
| | 10:10 | When I do that now I have a gradient
going from a light orange to black across
| | 10:16 | the face of the letter and when I
render, Command+R or Ctrl+R, so now you can see
| | 10:20 | that the gradient is going from the top
to the bottom and at the very bottom of
| | 10:25 | the letter it's a little bit washed out.
| | 10:27 | That's because of that black color.
| | 10:28 | I am going to change that to have a
little more rich feel by adding in some
| | 10:32 | color to that and I am going to start
off by clicking on the black knot here in
| | 10:35 | the gradient and bringing my Red value up
to 255 and my Green value up to 120 or so.
| | 10:44 | I'll do 119 just like we
had it in the first color.
| | 10:47 | What I want to do is just darken that
down, but I could fumble around with
| | 10:51 | these sliders or I could switch my
mode here for the colors to be Hue,
| | 10:54 | Saturation, and Value.
| | 10:56 | If I switch from RGB to HSV, now I
have a slider that makes it really easy to
| | 11:01 | darken that up, the Value slider.
| | 11:03 | I simply shift that Value slider to
the left and my color will get darker
| | 11:07 | without changing around on the color wheel.
| | 11:09 | So I can bring that down into the 25%
range and now when I Command+R or Ctrl+R,
| | 11:14 | I have a really nice rich
gradient across the face of my type.
| | 11:19 | Gradients are a fantastic way to improve the
look and legibility of your type and logos.
| | 11:24 | To learn more about working with CINEMA 4D
check out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 11:28 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 11:30 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 018 Using custom workspace layouts in Cinema 4D| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:03 | explore important fundamental
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now even though it's really to use,
CINEMA 4D is an incredibly complex
| | 00:10 | application, and all that complexity
comes with a lot of menus and palettes.
| | 00:15 | Fortunately for us though the
programmers are given us the tools to create
| | 00:18 | custom Layouts and those will personalize and
streamline your workflow. Let's take a look.
| | 00:24 | This is a scene of a little car chase
that I've created and I am going to hit
| | 00:28 | play here just for a second. Now
what's going on here is that the camera is
| | 00:32 | moving from the helicopter down to the
lead car in the chase in order to capture
| | 00:37 | the action when the cars come around the turn.
| | 00:39 | Now this scene has a lot of objects, but
what I want to be able to do is to look
| | 00:42 | at the scene through the camera and
still manipulate objects in 3D space.
| | 00:46 | Now that's where the custom layouts come in.
| | 00:48 | In CINEMA 4D you're not limited to a
single Perspective View. You can have
| | 00:52 | many Perspective Views and that's what
I am going to create right now, is the
| | 00:56 | second Perspective View that I'll then link
to the camera and then park in the interface.
| | 01:00 | So step one is to create the second
view, and I'm going to go to the Window
| | 01:04 | menu and then down in the fourth
section here, I'll add a New View Panel, and
| | 01:10 | the New View panel pops up, and as I move it
around here, I am going to center it in the screen.
| | 01:15 | It's a little bit too small and I
can't see all the menu options and I'll
| | 01:18 | just arrange it just a little bit
larger by dragging it out like that, so I
| | 01:22 | can see the menu items.
| | 01:23 | Now the way CINEMA 4D works as a render
engine is that you've one view that's
| | 01:28 | dedicated to the render engine, and
whatever view that is, is what will render
| | 01:33 | when you hit the render button.
| | 01:34 | So what I want to do well is make this
the render view, so I'll go to the View
| | 01:38 | option and say Use as Render View, and
when I do that, you'll see that that is
| | 01:43 | now checked and this becomes
the View that we'll render.
| | 01:46 | Now I want to do is tell CINEMA 4D to
look through the camera in this View, so
| | 01:51 | in the Camera View I'll go to Cameras
and then Use Camera and then the actual
| | 01:56 | camera from where I am rendering,
which is this guy right here.
| | 01:59 | And when I do that I am now looking
through the camera, but you'll notice that
| | 02:02 | I'm looking through the same
camera in both of these layouts.
| | 02:05 | So in this View I am going go to the
Camera menu and switch this to be the
| | 02:09 | Default Camera. Now I'm looking through
a standard Perspective View that's not
| | 02:13 | tied to a physical camera object, and
the beautiful thing about that is that I
| | 02:17 | can screw up through the animation and
watch the Camera View in this port, and
| | 02:21 | then see physically what the
camera is doing out here in this View.
| | 02:24 | So as I scroll forward in time I now
can watch both the Camera View and the
| | 02:29 | Camera object and that's very, very
useful when it comes to animation and is a
| | 02:33 | great way to streamline your workflow.
That away we don't have to keep switching back
| | 02:36 | and forth between the
active view and the Camera View.
| | 02:39 | I don't like this palette just
floating here, and I want to be able to stick
| | 02:43 | it someplace in the interface, and the
place I like to put it is right above
| | 02:47 | the Object Manager.
| | 02:49 | So let's take this and park it right
above the Object Manager. The way you do
| | 02:52 | that is by clicking on this little dot of grids.
| | 02:54 | You'll notice as my mouse passes over
that, it changes into a little hand and
| | 02:59 | if I click and drag on that, I now
have the freedom to move this around.
| | 03:03 | You'll notice as I pass over different
areas of the interface, I get this thick
| | 03:06 | white line and that's going to tell me
where that window will go when I let go.
| | 03:10 | I want to have it let go right on top
of the Object Manager, so you can see
| | 03:14 | I've moved it over so that the line is right
above the Object Manager. When I let go, boom!
| | 03:19 | This View is now part above the object
manager and I have this action going on.
| | 03:26 | I can watch the scene and I can look
through the Camera for the scene.
| | 03:30 | I really like this layout. I want to
be able to save it, so I can go to the
| | 03:33 | Window menu and then go into the
Customization screen and then go to Layouts,
| | 03:39 | and this Layout button shows me all of
the current layouts I've saved with this.
| | 03:45 | These are the default ones that ship,
but if I want to save a layout I can go to
| | 03:48 | Save Layout As, and when I save this,
it'll show up in this Custom Layout menu.
| | 03:53 | So I'll go to Save Layout as and you can
see that the location where it's saving
| | 03:56 | is in the Preferences folder for the
CINEMA 4D application, and if I go into
| | 04:02 | this layout and change the name, I'll
call this one Standard w-Extra View.
| | 04:11 | And now when I Save that, and I go back
to my Layout button, you can see now my
| | 04:15 | Layout button shows Standard w-Extra
View right here, and it's also under the
| | 04:19 | Window Customization menu, and if I go
to that layout, it shows up right here.
| | 04:23 | And that's the beautiful
thing about this custom layout.
| | 04:25 | It's always going to be there for me.
| | 04:26 | So even if I switch to Visualize and
the Visualize layout is organized for
| | 04:31 | things that an architect might need to do.
| | 04:34 | But I want to get back to my old layout,
I can switch back from Visualize and go
| | 04:37 | to a Standard w-Extra View, and now
when I refresh the screens here, let's move
| | 04:42 | the interface little bit to redraw those frames.
| | 04:45 | And once I do that I now see my layout
again. So these layouts are saved and you
| | 04:50 | can move them from machine to
machine by simply moving the files from the
| | 04:52 | Preferences folder and take them with
you on a keychain drive or something like that.
| | 04:56 | So they're are totally yours. You
can customize there workflow and really
| | 05:00 | get a lot of productivity out of that.
| | 05:02 | Working on a single
monitor like this is not ideal.
| | 05:05 | normally I work with a dual monitor set
up and custom layout keep my information
| | 05:09 | organized and my workflow smooth.
| | 05:11 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 05:15 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion. Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 019 Using blend modes to stencil text and create color effects| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | will explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now blend modes in After Effects are
a crossover from the world of Photoshop.
| | 00:11 | And they are really important
tool in your design arsenal.
| | 00:14 | If you do a search on lynda.com, you'll
find tons and tons of references on them.
| | 00:18 | So rather than cover each blend mode
one at a time, I just want to show you few
| | 00:21 | cool ways you can use them in
After Effects. Let's get started.
| | 00:26 | So here we are in After Effects and I've got
this clip of a cyclist close up to the camera.
| | 00:31 | And not a lot of motion in there which
is just what we need here. We are going
| | 00:34 | to talk about how the blending
modes interact with this footage.
| | 00:38 | And a common thing that comes up is how do I
take piece of video and contain it within a layer.
| | 00:44 | Well, there is a very special
blending mode for that called, Stencil Alpha.
| | 00:47 | And I've got a Type layer
here I am going to turn that on.
| | 00:50 | And it's just some orange
type on top of the video now.
| | 00:54 | I want to be able to contain
the video inside of these letters.
| | 00:57 | And so what I am going to do is go to
the Blending Mode pull-down. If your
| | 01:00 | Blending Mode pull-down is not visible,
you can go to the Switches/Modes button
| | 01:03 | down here and Toggle that on and off
to reveal your Blending Mode pull-down.
| | 01:07 | And I am going to pull this down and
scroll all the way to the bottom and
| | 01:11 | grab Stencil Alpha.
| | 01:13 | And when I do that, you are going to
see now the video contained with in the
| | 01:17 | letters, and if I turn on the
Transparency Preview I can see now that my stencil
| | 01:22 | type is over a transparent background
and I can use this in another composition.
| | 01:27 | That's one of the awesome things
about this is that I can now put something
| | 01:30 | behind it, but I don't ever
do that in this composition.
| | 01:33 | If I make any other layer and put it
below this type, it's going to get cut out
| | 01:37 | and contained in there.
| | 01:38 | So what I want to do
instead is to pre-compose this.
| | 01:40 | So I am going to take this composition
in the Project window and drag it onto
| | 01:44 | the new Comp button and that's going
to pre-compose it automatically for me.
| | 01:47 | Now I can add a new solid layer and
I will just do a Command or Ctrl+Y on
| | 01:51 | the keyboard to make a new solid and I am
going to leave it blue. That's fine for now.
| | 01:56 | And it shows up on top.
| | 01:57 | If I move this down below in the layer
order, I now have this type on top of
| | 02:02 | that blue background and I can put
anything beneath here that I want, and this
| | 02:06 | stencil type will exist independently.
| | 02:08 | That's really an awesome tool.
| | 02:09 | Now let's go back to the original
composition and talk about the opposite of
| | 02:14 | Stencil which is Silhouette.
| | 02:16 | I will turn off this Stencil.
| | 02:17 | And you see it's totally nondestructive.
| | 02:18 | As soon as I turned that Stencil
layer off, it disappears and our layer
| | 02:21 | becomes visible again.
| | 02:23 | And the Silhouette, it is
the opposite of Stencil.
| | 02:26 | If I go to the pull-downs here and
go all the way down to the bottom and
| | 02:29 | do Silhouette Alpha, Silhouette Alpha will
reveal the transparency inside the letters.
| | 02:34 | So Stencil reveals transparency
outside the letters; Silhouette reveals
| | 02:38 | transparency inside the letters.
| | 02:40 | And if I go back to my precomposed file
over here you can see that blue now that
| | 02:44 | I had in the background
shows up inside the letters.
| | 02:46 | So that can be really awesome as well. We
can out stylize type on top of this footage.
| | 02:51 | So let's go back again to our Start composition.
| | 02:54 | And I am going to turn off the
Silhouette layer and talk about my
| | 02:58 | favorite blending modes.
| | 02:59 | And the blending modes are divided
into categories and let's take a look
| | 03:02 | at those categories.
| | 03:03 | First thing I want to do
though is turn on these two layers.
| | 03:05 | I have got a grey-ramp and a gradient.
| | 03:07 | And the grey-ramp and the gradient layers
are just illustrator files that I have made.
| | 03:11 | I have got a grey-ramp that goes from
black all the way to white on one side and
| | 03:14 | a range of colors across the image.
| | 03:17 | And I am going to select both of
these layers at the same time by holding
| | 03:20 | down the Shift key.
| | 03:22 | That way I will be able to change the
blending modes at the same time as well.
| | 03:25 | When I change one, both will change.
| | 03:26 | So I will click on the first grey-ramp
pull-down and I want to talk about
| | 03:30 | the categories real quick. So
the categories are basically Darken,
| | 03:34 | Lighten, and then Overlay.
| | 03:37 | So I go to the Darken category, my
favorite one in this is Multiply.
| | 03:40 | And Multiply gives me a really
interesting change in the values of the image
| | 03:45 | overall and it darkens and does a very smooth
blend of the colors to darken the image as well.
| | 03:50 | So as you can see, I have got a very
rich darkening of the color values in this
| | 03:53 | color ramp and also in the grey-ramp as well.
| | 03:56 | It does a very smooth darkening on the
left side of the ramp that transitions do
| | 04:00 | nothing on the right side.
| | 04:01 | And one of the characteristics of the
Multiply mode is that black values will
| | 04:06 | darken, light values will disappear.
So you can really use that to create an
| | 04:09 | effect in your composition.
| | 04:11 | Now, the next one up is the Add and all
of these modes do some sort of lightning
| | 04:17 | of the image. My favorite is Add.
| | 04:18 | And you see it does pretty
much the opposite of Multiply.
| | 04:21 | And it brightens up all the values and
tends to blow out the contrast and once
| | 04:25 | again you can use that to
a dramatic effect as well.
| | 04:28 | My favorite blending mode
though is by far Overlay.
| | 04:31 | And if I go back to my pull-down here
and let's go to the Overlay blend mode.
| | 04:34 | It tends to change the value of an
image based on the mid tones that are in
| | 04:37 | that and that can be really used to
create effect for a color correction.
| | 04:41 | You can see I have a great range of
color now that the image has been tinted
| | 04:45 | here and that tinting is
what I want to talk about next.
| | 04:48 | I am going to turn these two layers off.
| | 04:50 | Now I have a full screen grey ramp here.
| | 04:52 | I am going to turn that one on and I am
going to go to the pull-down and change
| | 04:55 | that back to Overlay as well.
| | 04:57 | And this is a technique I
would like to use quite a bit.
| | 04:59 | You can see what's happening now is that
the grey-ramp is now darken the image but
| | 05:03 | only on the side and just left these
other values a little bit brighter over
| | 05:06 | here but the mid range is been
left untouched, over on his face.
| | 05:11 | And that's a really great technique
when it comes to color correction.
| | 05:13 | Let's say I wanted to do a
color cast on this image.
| | 05:15 | Let's turn this grey ramp off.
| | 05:17 | I am going to make a new solid, Command
or Ctrl+Y on the keyboard, and leave it
| | 05:22 | the comp size and this Blue is fine.
| | 05:24 | If I go to OK, now I have
this blue solid on top of it.
| | 05:28 | If I change the blending mode from
Normal to Overlay, you are going to see now
| | 05:33 | that we get this
beautiful blue cast on the image.
| | 05:36 | Now let's say I didn't want to have
this blue cast show up on the actor's face.
| | 05:41 | I only wanted in the outsides of the image.
| | 05:43 | All I need to put up mask on this layer
and so I can go up to the Pen tool and I
| | 05:48 | am going to activate RotoBezier, if it's
not already checked. In this case it is.
| | 05:51 | And I'm going to draw a
RotoBezier around this actor's face.
| | 05:58 | And you don't have to be too precise with it.
| | 06:00 | You want it to feel kind of organic.
| | 06:03 | When you first draw the RotoBezier it's
going to contain the layer inside the boundaries.
| | 06:07 | I want to invert that so I am going to
Hit M on the keyboard to reveal the mask
| | 06:11 | options for this and then I'm
going to click on the Inverted.
| | 06:14 | And then I will reveal the Feathering
options by twirling mask closed and open again.
| | 06:18 | And going to Mask Feather and crank in
that up. Let's do it about 100 pixels.
| | 06:24 | You are going to see that the edges
of the mask just got a lot softer.
| | 06:28 | And so now what we have done is we
have colorized the background but left the
| | 06:32 | actor's face untouched.
| | 06:33 | And that's really the
awesome part of the Overlay mode.
| | 06:35 | You can do a lot of really cool color
correction effects, using that mode.
| | 06:40 | blend modes are an important way of
manipulating your animations to add
| | 06:43 | style and visual appeal.
| | 06:44 | To learn more about blend modes, check
out Chris and Trish Meyer's After Effects
| | 06:48 | Apprentice 4 in the Video section of lynda.com.
| | 06:51 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 06:53 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 020 Exploring the content browser | 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where
| | 00:03 | we will explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now creating projects in CINEMA 4D is
a lot of fun, but it can also be very
| | 00:11 | intimidating looking at that big empty grid.
| | 00:13 | So what do you do when you
don't know where to start?
| | 00:15 | You dig around in the Content Manager.
| | 00:17 | That's what you do.
| | 00:18 | It's full of all kinds of free stuff that most
folks don't even know is there. Let's take a look.
| | 00:25 | The Content Browser is in the layout
over here on the right-hand side in R13.
| | 00:29 | In R12, it will show up
here above the Object Manager.
| | 00:32 | But in R13, it's over
here on the right-hand side.
| | 00:35 | So if I click on that guy, I now see
the Content Browser and what the Content
| | 00:39 | Browser is it's a way of navigating
computer, but it's also a way for the
| | 00:44 | programmers to store presets for the
software, and that's what we're going to be
| | 00:48 | concerned with today is the Presets.
| | 00:49 | And so if I click on that guy, I want
to double-click one time and now inside
| | 00:55 | that Presets folder, I
have a bunch of subfolders.
| | 00:58 | And the subfolders that you see
here will be dependent on the type of
| | 01:01 | version that you have.
| | 01:02 | I'm working with the Studio bundle here
so I've got pretty everything that comes
| | 01:06 | with the application.
| | 01:07 | Let's start off in Prime though,
because Prime is the intro level version of
| | 01:11 | CINEMA 4D and that's
something that everybody will have.
| | 01:14 | So within that Prime folder,
I've got several subfolders here.
| | 01:17 | Example Scenes. I can get back up by
clicking this Up arrow, and Humans, and
| | 01:21 | I've got Fred and Lisa, which you can
enlarge the icons here by moving this
| | 01:26 | slider to the right here and
these are sort of default objects.
| | 01:29 | There is no textures applied to them.
They're not rigged for animation.
| | 01:32 | They're just sort of there.
| | 01:33 | A lot of folks use these as templates
to start off with, especially when they
| | 01:38 | working with architecture.
| | 01:39 | they will use them as the default size
for a person and then model things around it,
| | 01:42 | in a room, for example.
| | 01:44 | Let's go back up one level.
| | 01:45 | I'm going to make the
icons a little bit smaller.
| | 01:48 | In the Example Scenes folder though
there is some great things in here, for
| | 01:52 | example, the Collision Deformer which
is a new object inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:56 | There is a Collision Deformer
object in here that gives you this really
| | 02:00 | scary looking file here.
| | 02:02 | This is an effect that's really
popular in scary movies and it's that head
| | 02:07 | coming through the wall here and the
great thing about this is not so much that
| | 02:11 | the effect's done for you, but that
you can go back through and look at the
| | 02:14 | objects in it and see how it was done.
| | 02:16 | So I'm not going to break that apart
for you right now, but that's the cool
| | 02:19 | thing is all the objects are there
and you can see how this effect is done.
| | 02:24 | Let's go back. I'll close this file up
and get back to a blank scene and go back
| | 02:29 | to the Content Browser.
| | 02:30 | I'll go up one arrow and within the
Materials, for example, also there is a
| | 02:34 | bunch of materials that you
can use for your own scenes.
| | 02:37 | In the Miscellaneous materials, there
is woods, and metals, and glasses, and
| | 02:41 | these can be applied to
your objects in your scene.
| | 02:43 | The one thing that's really cool in the
prime folder is under the Light Setups,
| | 02:47 | I'm going to go and
scroll down and go to Lightbox.
| | 02:51 | And this Lightbox object, if you
double-click, it's an entire scene and I'm
| | 02:56 | going to middle mouse click and
get out to the Perspective view.
| | 02:59 | They have two Perspective views set up
here, and this Perspective view shows me
| | 03:03 | the entire scene and the cool thing
about this is that it's just a lightbox, and
| | 03:07 | this kind of lightbox is very common
in photography studios and it's used to
| | 03:11 | photograph jewelry and
other types of objects a lot.
| | 03:13 | And what it does is it gives you a
very even light on your object and gives
| | 03:18 | very soft reflections on the object as well.
| | 03:21 | And if we middle mouse, click back to
this main view here, this camera is lined
| | 03:24 | up with these objects.
| | 03:25 | If I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R on
the keyboard, it gives me a very
| | 03:31 | interesting looking render.
| | 03:33 | Now these two objects at the very end
here now are just default objects. There is a
| | 03:37 | cube with some glass on it and a
Taurus object with some chrome on it and
| | 03:41 | they're just there as placeholders.
| | 03:43 | You can put your own objects inhere and
render them out and they will look fantastic.
| | 03:47 | So the Prime folder contains all the
things that ship with the default version
| | 03:50 | of CINEMA 4D and CINEMA 4D Prime.
| | 03:52 | So let's go back up a couple of levels
back to the Presets folder and in the
| | 03:57 | Presets folder, let's
take a look at the Broadcast.
| | 03:59 | Broadcast is all of the stuff that
comes with the broadcast version.
| | 04:03 | So if you have the broadcast version, you
get the Prime folder and the Broadcast folder.
| | 04:07 | Now there is some really cool things in here.
| | 04:09 | There is Objects, and Presets, and Resources.
| | 04:12 | The things I like most are the objects
and if you go to the 3D Objects folder
| | 04:15 | under Celebration, for example, there
is great Halloween-Pumpkin, and then
| | 04:19 | let's make a new document here
and I'll double-click and get this
| | 04:22 | Halloween-Pumpkin into the scene.
| | 04:24 | If I hit O on the keyboard that will
zoom me in on it and it's a lot of fun.
| | 04:28 | Let's render this, Command+R or Ctrl+R
on the keyboard, and you see I've got a
| | 04:31 | great pumpkin that could be the
start of your Halloween animation.
| | 04:35 | In addition to the Halloween stuff,
there is a bunch of other things over
| | 04:38 | here in the interface.
| | 04:39 | You can see there is presents and
Valentine boxes and a fully lit birthday cake.
| | 04:43 | There is all kinds of great stuff in here.
| | 04:45 | Now let's go back up to the Presets
folder and within here is the Visualize.
| | 04:50 | Let's scroll down to the Visualize option
and in Visualize there is a bunch of things.
| | 04:55 | The Animations, Cameras, Environments.
| | 04:56 | The Visualize bundles aim primarily
add architects and product designers.
| | 05:01 | And if you have the studio
bundle, you have the Visualize.
| | 05:04 | Of course, if you have Visualize bundle
you have that as well, but the Visualize
| | 05:07 | bundle has some really cool objects inhere.
| | 05:09 | So if I go in the Objects, there is
all kinds of household objects in here.
| | 05:13 | Remember it's designed for architects.
| | 05:15 | So if I want to look for armchairs, I
can look for armchairs and there is a
| | 05:18 | bunch of really beautifully designed
furniture that I can use to populate my
| | 05:22 | interior designs with and some of
these pieces I'd love to have in my home.
| | 05:29 | The same way that I added the pumpkin
to the scene by double-clicking you can
| | 05:31 | add any of these chair objects as well.
| | 05:34 | Now let's go back up a few levels back
to the main Presets folder and I'll make
| | 05:38 | the icons a little bit smaller here.
Take a look at the Studio folder.
| | 05:42 | The Studio folder has a lot of stuff in
it and the Studio bundle has everything
| | 05:46 | that Maxon makes related to CINEMA 4D,
and there are some great things in here.
| | 05:51 | My favorite folder by far is the
Character folder. And if I double-click on
| | 05:55 | that, even if you're not a character
animator, there are some great things in
| | 05:58 | here that you can use to
learn how to become one.
| | 06:01 | This Animated Teapot is a fantastic example.
| | 06:04 | I'll double-click on that and this is
an entire scene file within animated
| | 06:07 | teapot walking across the room.
| | 06:10 | I'll pause that animation and the great
thing once again, if I go to the Object
| | 06:14 | Manager, the entire geometry, all of
the keyframes, I can bring up the Timeline
| | 06:19 | from the Window menu and bring up the
Timeline and look at how it was animated,
| | 06:24 | examine the keyframes, and really
study how this process came together.
| | 06:27 | It's all there for free if
you have the Studio bundle.
| | 06:31 | Let's take a look at some of the other objects.
| | 06:32 | So go back to the Content Browser and
there is some regular characters. Tere is
| | 06:36 | a great looking T-Rex animation.
| | 06:38 | It's untextured, but it's fantastic.
| | 06:40 | Now this is provided as a learning tool
and some of these objects are, in fact,
| | 06:44 | not for commercial use, but they're
great starting points and great ways to
| | 06:49 | learn how to build these characters.
| | 06:51 | Let's close this up, Command+W, and
I'll close up the teapot as well and the
| | 06:57 | pumpkin, I don't need that anymore
and I don't need this lightbox either.
| | 07:00 | Get back to an empty scene file.
| | 07:01 | Let's go up one level back to the Studio bundle.
| | 07:05 | Now the Simulation folder has
subfolders in it that contain examples of some of
| | 07:10 | the different types of simulation
effects you can do in there and if you look in
| | 07:13 | the Dynamics folder, there
are some great things in here.
| | 07:15 | I really love the RB Simple Particles file.
| | 07:20 | I'll double-click on that and I'll
hit Play here and let that go through.
| | 07:26 | And what's happening is these particles
are being animated out into the scene.
| | 07:31 | And I'm getting a little bit
stuttery playback, because there is a lot of
| | 07:34 | geometry in here, but they animate out
into the scene and then they'll fall down
| | 07:38 | onto the ground and then roll off the floor.
| | 07:41 | And it's a beautiful animation, but once
again, the beauty of it is not that the
| | 07:45 | animation is cool, but the fact that
you can go to the Object Manager and
| | 07:49 | examine how this was done and by
looking at the objects and seeing how they are
| | 07:53 | combined together to create
this really cool animation.
| | 07:57 | The Content Browser can be a
great resource and a lot of fun.
| | 08:01 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section on lynda.com.
| | 08:05 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 08:07 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 021 Learning the basics of 2D tracking| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now tracking involves the process of
identifying a particular feature in video
| | 00:11 | clip and locking onto it.
| | 00:13 | And once you've got that lock, you can do all
kinds of amazing things with that information.
| | 00:18 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:20 | So the shot that we have here is of a
cyclist riding along the beach and it was
| | 00:24 | shot from a moving
vehicle with a handheld camera.
| | 00:26 | And let's take a RAM preview of
this to see what the motion looks like.
| | 00:29 | I am going to hit zero on the numeric
keypad, just going to preview the frames.
| | 00:34 | So as you can see the footage is very jerky.
| | 00:37 | What I want to be able to do though is
to put a piece of type in this footage
| | 00:40 | and have it stick to the motion.
| | 00:42 | In order to do that I need to track a
feature in this and use that as the motion
| | 00:46 | source for my Type layer.
| | 00:48 | The feature that I am going to track is
this logo right here on the cyclist's wrist.
| | 00:52 | When you're looking for a tracking
feature, what you want to look for is an
| | 00:55 | element in the frame that is not moving
too much, but also visible in this shot
| | 01:00 | for the entire length and
this logo I think will do great.
| | 01:03 | So in order to track this footage, I need to
go to the Window menu and change my layout.
| | 01:07 | So I am going to go up to Window >
Workspace and do Motion Tracking.
| | 01:11 | What that's going to do is reset my
palettes a little bit and reveal the
| | 01:14 | Motion Tracker here.
| | 01:16 | The way this Tracker panel works as I
have to specify what layer I want to track.
| | 01:20 | And so the motion source I am
going to track is this cyclist prores.
| | 01:23 | So if I select Motion Source and go to
that layer and now that's going to kick
| | 01:27 | me into the Layer window and it's also
going to ask me what kind of track I want
| | 01:32 | to do or do I have a tracking
source and right now I have none here.
| | 01:35 | And so what I want to do is select this
layer and click Track Motion and that's
| | 01:39 | going to give me a tracking
point out here in the window.
| | 01:42 | Now I am going to use the period key
on the keyboard to zoom in and then I am
| | 01:46 | going to hold down the spacebar to move
over a little bit and I am going to move
| | 01:49 | this tracking point.
| | 01:50 | What do you want to do when you grab
this tracking point is to click in the
| | 01:53 | center of the tracking
point but not on the plus sign.
| | 01:56 | So when I click in the center but not
on the plus sign I can now drag this
| | 01:59 | tracking point and I get this little
enlarged window and I can move it right
| | 02:03 | over that logo and I am going to put it
right on the center of the B and this logo.
| | 02:08 | And that's B that's on his sleeve
there, so I am going to move that in.
| | 02:10 | Now I want to enlarge these tracking
points. There is an inner region and outer
| | 02:13 | region and I want to encompass that
entire logo in these regions, when I do that
| | 02:18 | that's going to help the tracking
analysis to lock onto that logo even better.
| | 02:21 | Now that I've got my region specified
and I've got it locked on that point, I can
| | 02:26 | now tell it analyze forward, but
before I do that I am going to return the
| | 02:29 | Timeline back to zero.
| | 02:30 | So I am going to scrub that back to
zero and then I am going to hit the
| | 02:34 | Analyze Forward button.
| | 02:36 | You notice that when I move that the
tracking point jumped off of there.
| | 02:40 | So before I hit Analyze Forward I want
to move his back onto the logo; otherwise
| | 02:44 | I would try and track that little
spot back there behind the sleeve.
| | 02:47 | So let's do that. I am going to move it
right back here and put it back on the
| | 02:51 | logo right in the centre of the B.
Now I am ready to track forward.
| | 02:54 | So I am going to hit this Analyze
Forward button and keep an eye on that mark
| | 02:59 | and now when it jumps off like that you
want to stop it. I just hit the Spacebar
| | 03:02 | to stop that and I want back up
to the point where it jumped off.
| | 03:06 | And that's going to happen from
time to time when you're tracking.
| | 03:09 | The video footage will jerk around so
much that you will lose cohesion on that.
| | 03:13 | And so what you want to do is back
up to the point right where it jumps.
| | 03:16 | Let me use the Page Down command and
Page Up command to move through the footage.
| | 03:21 | And I'm also going to use the Period
key to zoom in one more time, maybe twice
| | 03:25 | so I can really find that.
| | 03:26 | And you could see that when I
Page Down it jumps off of that logo.
| | 03:30 | So what I am going to do on this frame,
I am going to move that back onto the B,
| | 03:34 | right there in the center of the B just
like it was before, and then I am going
| | 03:37 | to hit the Analyze Forward button one more time.
| | 03:39 | And as I do that you're going
to see it lock on pretty good.
| | 03:45 | And I'm going to stop it for a second.
| | 03:47 | I am going to back out.
| | 03:48 | The footage itself has moved so that I
can't see the tracking point anymore.
| | 03:51 | So I want to back out a little bit.
| | 03:52 | I want to make sure that it's sticking
to that logo so that I don't to have to
| | 03:55 | go back and re-analyze.
| | 03:56 | So now that I've backed out, I am going
to hit the Analyze Forward button again
| | 04:00 | and keep an eye on that tracker.
| | 04:02 | Oops! And I saw it jump again and
let's back up one more time.
| | 04:06 | So I am going to page up to the point
where it jumps off and I can page forward
| | 04:10 | and find that point, there we go. There it is.
| | 04:15 | So I can see that it jumped off, I am
going to zoom back in on that guy and I am
| | 04:19 | going to drag it right down back to the
center of that B and then I am going to
| | 04:22 | back out using the comma key to back
out and I am going to Analyze Forward one
| | 04:27 | more time, there we go.
| | 04:33 | It's almost done. And so now you can see
that I've got a very good lock on that
| | 04:38 | feature and that's what you're looking for.
| | 04:39 | You want that feature, the track point, to be
locked on the element that you're tracking.
| | 04:44 | And as I scrub through the clip you
can see that it is moving right with
| | 04:47 | that element very well.
| | 04:49 | So now what we'd like to do is to
use this information to control another
| | 04:53 | element and right now I only have the
one layer here in my Timeline so the
| | 04:58 | element that I am going to
use to control is a null layer.
| | 05:00 | So I am going to go to the Layer menu
and go New > Null Object and when I add
| | 05:07 | that Null object to the scene it's just
another layer in here and it's a layer
| | 05:10 | that doesn't have any pixels
associated with it, but they can be used to
| | 05:13 | control other layers and so what I
am going to do is apply this tracking
| | 05:16 | information to that Null layer.
| | 05:18 | So if I go to the Composition window.
I was in the Layer window before and now I
| | 05:21 | am back in the Composition window.
| | 05:22 | And I can see there is my
Null layer in the center.
| | 05:25 | What I want to do is go back to my
cyclist prores and back here in the Tracker
| | 05:30 | window I am going to select my motion
source and it remembers that I have that
| | 05:34 | tracker assigned to this layer already.
| | 05:36 | Now what I want to do is tell it what
layer do I want to assign that motion to
| | 05:40 | by editing the target. And I click and
then you can see I've got the choice to
| | 05:44 | assign it to Null 1.
| | 05:46 | And so I am going to going to hit
OK and the Track Type is set to be
| | 05:49 | Transform, which means that it's going to move
that Null layer around with that information.
| | 05:54 | So now I hit the Apply button and it's
going to ask me do I want to track this
| | 05:58 | on the X and Y? Yes, I do.
| | 06:01 | And now what it does is it kicks me
back out to the Composition window and
| | 06:04 | you'll see that this Null object now has
the exact same position information and
| | 06:09 | is locked right to that logo as well.
| | 06:11 | So now I can add a piece of type in the
scene and I am going to hit Command+T or
| | 06:14 | Ctrl+T on the keyboard to bring up the
Type tool and I am going to click in here
| | 06:18 | and I am just going to
type out the word CYCLING.
| | 06:21 | And I am not going to obsess over the
design of the font right now, because I
| | 06:26 | can always go back and change it later.
| | 06:27 | I've got a blue color here and
I am using the Arial Black font.
| | 06:31 | I'll hit Enter on the numeric keypad
that finish that type off and then unlock
| | 06:34 | my caps lock to redraw the screen.
| | 06:37 | Now what I want to do is I want this
type to move with that Null object.
| | 06:40 | So I am just going to use the pick whip
here to parent my type to the Null layer.
| | 06:44 | So I click on pick whip, drag it
across, and now my type is going to move but
| | 06:50 | when I drew the type it's off frame here.
| | 06:52 | So I can grab the type by hitting V on
the keyboard to bring up the Move tool
| | 06:56 | and just drag it down into
frame here up into the sky.
| | 06:59 | And now when I RAM preview, so now you
can see that the type is sticking right
| | 07:03 | to the footage and that
it matches up really well.
| | 07:05 | That's really the magic of tracking.
| | 07:07 | I really would like to
have this footage stabilized.
| | 07:09 | I don't really need the type in there.
| | 07:10 | I just want to see this footage smoothed out.
| | 07:13 | So in order to do that I'm going
to do something called Stabilize.
| | 07:17 | Now, I've already done the tracking
information. I can use that same tracking
| | 07:20 | information to stabilize this footage.
| | 07:21 | I am going to back to the tracking
start composition here. I am just going to
| | 07:25 | duplicate that and I am going to call
that by hitting Return on the keyboard and
| | 07:30 | I am going to call this one stabilize.
| | 07:33 | In this stabilize composition,
| | 07:35 | I am going to double-click on that.
| | 07:36 | I don't need this type or
the Null object anymore.
| | 07:39 | I am just going to delete those guys
and get back just to clean footage.
| | 07:42 | And now I want to get back
to the tracking information.
| | 07:45 | So over here in the Tracker palette I
am going to go to the Motion Source and
| | 07:48 | select that again and now I've
got this same tracking information.
| | 07:52 | Let's close up the Character and Paragraph
palette so that we have some more room here.
| | 07:56 | Close those guys up and you can see
that there is that tracking information
| | 07:59 | just like it was before.
| | 08:00 | So now what I want to do is change
that current track from Raw, which is the
| | 08:04 | tracking information, to Stabilize.
| | 08:07 | When do that now it's going to
change some of the options here.
| | 08:11 | I am just going to
stabilize the position right now.
| | 08:13 | I could stabilize rotation and scale if I
wanted to with additional tracking points.
| | 08:18 | But this is going to be just fine for position.
| | 08:20 | So I am going to Edit Target, just to
confirm that it is in fact going to that
| | 08:24 | layer and when I OK and hit Apply
down here, it's going to apply it and it's
| | 08:29 | going to ask me once again do I want to
apply it on X and Y. Yes I do, hit OK, and
| | 08:33 | now it's kicked me back
to the Composition window.
| | 08:35 | When I scrub through you can see that
this location is now going to be locked
| | 08:40 | into the frame and I can now
scrub through and that clip is moving.
| | 08:45 | You notice that the anchor point isn't moving.
| | 08:47 | If I hit U on the keyboard and
bring up the keyframes for this, what's
| | 08:51 | happening is, it's moving the anchor
point around so that the clip stays
| | 08:59 | locked in position.
| | 09:01 | Now I can still move the clip
around and move it over there.
| | 09:04 | You could see that I
have the freedom to move it.
| | 09:07 | What I want to do instead of moving
this clip, because I'd like to hide
| | 09:11 | these black borders here as you can
see that it moves the clip around and
| | 09:14 | it's adjusting that.
| | 09:15 | I want to scale this up a bit, so that
I can crop in and move it to get rid of
| | 09:19 | these black borders and so I am going
to use another null layer to do that.
| | 09:21 | So I am going to go up to Layer menu >
New > Null Object and I'm going to parent
| | 09:26 | this movie to that Null layer.
| | 09:29 | So I am going to go back to time zero
so that it's lined up right on the center
| | 09:33 | and I am going to pick
whip this to the Null layer.
| | 09:35 | And then I am going to select the null
object and hit S for Scale and I'll hold
| | 09:39 | down the Shift key and hit P for Position.
| | 09:42 | Now what I want to do is to find the
worst place where the video is moving
| | 09:48 | around and I'm going to move it down
just a bit and then scale it up just a bit.
| | 09:54 | Now I hold down the Shift key, when I
click and drag on that to constrain the
| | 09:59 | proportions. And then I want to scrub
through and see if I've missed anywhere.
| | 10:04 | And if I've missed some place, I am
going to scale it up so little bit more
| | 10:07 | and that's one of the things with the
stabilize is you are always going to
| | 10:10 | lose a little bit of resolution because you
have to scale it up to make up for that movement.
| | 10:14 | And so you want to be really
careful of how much you do that.
| | 10:16 | Now you could see that I've got a very
locked down shot and if I RAM preview,
| | 10:22 | you see that the footage
is very well stabilized.
| | 10:30 | 2D tracking like this is an
important part of many visual effects and
| | 10:33 | compositing workflows and After
Effects CS5.5 has a great new feature
| | 10:38 | called the Warp Stabilizer which does an
amazing job at stabilizing jerky hand-held footage.
| | 10:43 | To learn more about that check out
the After Effects CS5.5 New Creative
| | 10:48 | Techniques by Chris and Trish Meyer
in the Video section of Lynda.com.
| | 10:52 | That's it for Design in Motion. Keep
in moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 022 Controlling animation with track properties | 00:01 | Hi Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where
| | 00:04 | we'll explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Animation timing is all about control.
| | 00:09 | An animator has to know exactly when
things are going to happen. They may be
| | 00:13 | animating different objects with different
properties all animating at the same time.
| | 00:17 | Fortunately CINEMA 4D has an amazing
tool called the Time Track that lets you
| | 00:21 | control a whole bunch of keyframes
with just a few. Let's take a look.
| | 00:24 | Now here in CINEMA 4D I've a very
simple scene I've a ball animated down the
| | 00:29 | stairs and you may recognize this
animation from the CINEMA 4D R12 Essential
| | 00:33 | Training course and the really simple scene
file. I'll just let it play back a couple of times.
| | 00:39 | Now it's a very simple scene, just a
sphere that I am using as a ball animated,
| | 00:44 | bouncing down this extrude NURBS.
| | 00:45 | A lot of times when you're working on
animations you're going to want to retime
| | 00:49 | that animation and there are
several ways you can do that.
| | 00:52 | In order to manipulate this time I am
going to need to work in the Animation
| | 00:55 | layout, so lets go up to the Layout
pull-down and switch it to Animation, which
| | 00:59 | is right at the top, and the Animation
layout allows us to see both the editor
| | 01:05 | View and the Timeline at the same time
on a single screen, and over here I've
| | 01:09 | got my Object Manager and I've got my
Attributes Manager right up here and then
| | 01:13 | my Timeline down below, so
everything is all right where it needs to be.
| | 01:17 | So here in the Timeline I've got my
sphere and these are all the keyframes that
| | 01:22 | I used to animate it bouncing down the stairs.
| | 01:24 | I could simply take this handle and
slide it to the left to speed up the
| | 01:29 | ball bouncing down the stairs and in
fact, I'll do that real quick and move it
| | 01:32 | all the way to 30 frames.
| | 01:34 | Now that ball bouncing down the stairs
happens from 0 to 30 and if I hit Play
| | 01:38 | you can see it goes very quickly. But
what happens when I need to make the ball
| | 01:46 | bounce down the stairs slowly and then
perhaps go backwards, back up the stairs?
| | 01:50 | That's where Time Tracks come in. They
allow you to manipulate keyframes without
| | 01:55 | actually having to add or
touch the keyframes themselves.
| | 01:58 | So what I mean by that is there is a
special track in CINEMA 4D called the
| | 02:02 | Time Track and I'll right-click on my Sphere
and under the Special Track there is Time Track.
| | 02:07 | There's a trick to using them. The time
track itself can't be simply added to an
| | 02:12 | object like I just did and I did that
on purpose, so you could see what would
| | 02:16 | happen. When I hit play you'll see that
the speed of my ball did not change and
| | 02:20 | the Time Track had no effect on it.
That's because the Time Track needs to be
| | 02:23 | applied to the keyframes
that's its going to affect.
| | 02:27 | I don't normally also like to put my
Time Track directly on the object it's
| | 02:30 | manipulating. What I like to do is have
a Null object in the scene that's called
| | 02:34 | Time Control. That way I can use that
Time Track to manipulate other objects
| | 02:39 | besides of the single sphere. Let's
say I may have a whole bunch of spheres
| | 02:42 | animated on the stairs.
| | 02:43 | I can use that one time track to
manipulate all of those things, so I am going
| | 02:47 | to delete the time track off of this
Sphere, just simply select the Time Track
| | 02:50 | and hit Delete, and then I'm going to
go to Create menu and go to Object and
| | 02:55 | Null. My primitive objects
are blocked up by the layouts.
| | 02:58 | So I can get to those guys by going to
the Object > Null from the Create menu.
| | 03:02 | And I'll call this Null object Time
Control, and the Time Control Null is not
| | 03:08 | showing up here in the Timeline and
that's because I have my view set to only
| | 03:12 | show me things that have keyframes on them.
| | 03:14 | I can temporarily go to View > Show and then
uncheck Show Animated. You can tell it's checked
| | 03:20 | because it's blue right there and so when I
uncheck that all the things show up in my Timeline.
| | 03:25 | I can now right-click on Time Control and go
to Add Special Tracks and add a Time Track.
| | 03:30 | To clean up my view here, because I
don't need to see the rest of this stuff,
| | 03:32 | I can go to active View and then go to
Show and then turn Show Animated back on.
| | 03:37 | That cleans up my view on the left-hand
side here and I am only seeing the Time
| | 03:41 | Control object with the Time Track and
then the sphere with its Position track.
| | 03:45 | So the way that you use the Time Track
is by clicking on the word Position and
| | 03:50 | over here in the Attributes, you can
see that there's a field for Time Track.
| | 03:54 | That is the control point.
| | 03:56 | I take my Time Track here and drag it
and put it right into that field and watch
| | 04:01 | what happens to my animation.
| | 04:03 | Before my animation stopped at frame
30 right, because I had contracted these
| | 04:07 | keyframes down to make it shorter.
| | 04:09 | Now watch what happens to my animation.
When I hit Play watch what's going to happen.
| | 04:13 | The animation of the ball down the
stairs will now use the entire 90 frames and
| | 04:17 | that's because the Time Track is
controlling how long that those keyframes take
| | 04:22 | to actually occur, and that's the beauty of it.
| | 04:25 | I can now take these one set of
keyframes and drag to the left if I want to make
| | 04:29 | it faster for example. I can take this
handle here and drag it to left and watch
| | 04:33 | my animation will speed up. I'll hit Play.
| | 04:38 | It feels a little more natural now,
because it's happening closer to the right
| | 04:40 | speed and I can also, while it's
animating on the fly, just move this around.
| | 04:44 | I can have it go faster.
| | 04:47 | I can also, if I don't want it to start
right at 0, I can move this whole Time
| | 04:50 | Track to have the animation start at
frame 40 and now it will occur just within
| | 04:55 | this yellow range here. That's really
the beauty of the Time Track is I don't
| | 04:58 | have to touch these keyframes anymore.
So if I've a whole bunch of objects in my
| | 05:02 | scene where I need to move the keyframes
around, rather than manipulate all those
| | 05:06 | objects I could assign them in
individual Time Track and then control them.
| | 05:09 | The Time Tracks also work with F
curves. I can go into the F Curve Manager by
| | 05:14 | hitting the Spacebar and I am going to
raise the layout up just a bit, so I've a
| | 05:18 | little more room to work and I'll
select the Time Track and then hit H on the
| | 05:22 | keyboard and you can see there is my
Time Track curve, and when I back out here
| | 05:27 | I'll just use the 2 key to
kind of squish things down.
| | 05:30 | I can select that keyframe there and
if the handles are not showing, you can
| | 05:35 | right-click and go to Spline Type and
then Soft and that'll give you a actual
| | 05:39 | Bezier handle right here and I
can manipulate this up and down.
| | 05:43 | Now be careful when you manipulating
these curves. You don't want to get your
| | 05:47 | keyframe down below 0, because it
won't in fact go backwards. It actually will
| | 05:52 | just pause the animation until the
Timeline hits the zero point for the curve itself.
| | 05:57 | What you would rather do
instead is to have the curve--
| | 06:01 | You want your object to go backwards, so
you need to add an extra keyframe to the
| | 06:04 | Time Track and let me show you what
that means. I'm going to undo this for
| | 06:07 | just a second. Undo.
| | 06:09 | Let's go back to the Timeline view
to the keyframes and I'll hit the
| | 06:13 | Spacebar to get back there.
| | 06:14 | What do I want to do is have this ball
go backwards and I'm take this keyframe
| | 06:17 | right here, hold down the Ctrl key, and
I am going to drag the 0% mark right back
| | 06:22 | here and what this looks like in the
curve now is that. And I can take my curves
| | 06:27 | and manipulate them around.
| | 06:29 | I've got both curves selected, so I can
take this when move it up here and grab
| | 06:33 | this curve and right-click and go
and make that be a soft interpolation.
| | 06:37 | Now I've got a very smooth
animation and that one goes down below 0.
| | 06:41 | So I'll move that one up as well.
| | 06:43 | Now when I hit Pplay, let's get back to
the keyframe view, the animation won't
| | 06:47 | start into a frame 30 and when it
hits frame 64 it's going to go backwards
| | 06:51 | again, so let's rewind back to 0 and
hit play and there it goes and then there
| | 06:57 | goes my ball going backwards again.
So you have really total control over how
| | 07:01 | this ball animates.
| | 07:03 | Controlling time has never been this easy.
| | 07:05 | Time tracks allow you to manipulate complex
animations with just a few simple keyframes.
| | 07:10 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section on lynda.com.
| | 07:14 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 023 Styling animation to communicate emotion| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and
welcome to Design in Motion,
| | 00:03 | the weekly series where we explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:08 | So today we are going to
be talking about perception.
| | 00:10 | I want to make a very simple statement.
| | 00:12 | The kind of movement that you create has
a huge impact on how a viewer perceives
| | 00:16 | that graphic animation.
| | 00:18 | Now, that may seem like a very simple statement,
but what does it really mean? Let's take a look.
| | 00:24 | Here we are in After Effects and I've got
two words set up in the exact same fashion.
| | 00:28 | Action and Romance.
| | 00:30 | Now, each of these words
conjures up very different images.
| | 00:32 | The word Action conjures up images of
action, fight scenes and car chases and
| | 00:36 | things like that, things we associate
it with high-intensity, high-energy.
| | 00:40 | The word Romance is a very
soothing word. It relaxes you.
| | 00:43 | It makes you feel and think of things of love.
| | 00:46 | These two words have very different
meanings and they conjure up very different
| | 00:49 | images and I have animated
them in very different ways.
| | 00:52 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 00:52 | I am going to go over here to the Action
comp and I am going to do a RAM Preview.
| | 00:59 | The word Action is animated in a very
action oriented way. The type slams down
| | 01:03 | with a bunch of camera shake and
shatters the glass. Very intense action packed
| | 01:07 | animation to match the feeling of the word.
| | 01:10 | Now let's take a look at
the animation for Romance.
| | 01:12 | I am going to RAM Preview this.
| | 01:16 | So as you can see, the very relaxing and
smooth word Romance has a very relaxing
| | 01:21 | and smooth animation.
| | 01:23 | That matches the feeling that you
want to associate with that word.
| | 01:27 | That's really what I am trying to get
behind here is. You have to think about the
| | 01:30 | target audience, think about what it is
you're trying to say to that audience,
| | 01:33 | and match your animation to that target.
| | 01:36 | So to illustrate that, I am
going to do a little swap.
| | 01:38 | I am going to swap out the word
Romance for Action and vice-versa.
| | 01:41 | Let's start off in the Romance comp
and change the word to read Action.
| | 01:45 | So here we are on the Romance comp
and I am going to double-click on the
| | 01:49 | Type layer to tunnel down into the pre-comps
to get to the actual typeface that I have set.
| | 01:54 | So I am going to double-click on that
and we're inside the gradient type here
| | 01:57 | and this is where I actually set the gradient.
| | 01:59 | I have the Type layer set as a Stencil Alpha.
| | 02:01 | So it's cutting out this gradient beneath it.
| | 02:03 | So let's double-click to tunnel down
in there and let's change this word
| | 02:07 | Romance to say Action.
| | 02:08 | So I am going to hit Command or Ctrl+T
on the keyboard and I am going to type
| | 02:12 | out the word ACTION with
Caps Lock on. A-C-T-I-O-N.
| | 02:17 | Hit Enter on the numeric keypad to
commit that and let's go back to our Romance
| | 02:20 | Comp and do a little RAM Preview.
| | 02:24 | So the animation is not bad, but the
energy of the animation does not match the
| | 02:29 | intensity of the word.
| | 02:30 | Now, let's do the same thing
for Romance in the Action comp.
| | 02:34 | So if I go over to the Action comp
and I am going to tunnel down into it by
| | 02:38 | double-clicking on this Action Gradient
type Pre layer, and in one more time, and
| | 02:43 | then here's our word Action.
| | 02:45 | Now, I am going to change
this out to read Romance.
| | 02:47 | I am going to hit Command or Ctrl+T on
the keyboard to bring up the Type tool
| | 02:50 | again and click in there and
type out the word ROMANCE in all caps.
| | 02:57 | Hit Enter on the numeric keypad to
commit that and let's go back to the Action
| | 03:01 | comp and do a RAM Preview.
| | 03:02 | So you can see the word Romance now
is animated with that action feel.
| | 03:08 | In honesty, it doesn't work that bad.
| | 03:10 | It actually communicates a
different type of romance.
| | 03:14 | This would be a really appropriate
animation for a film that was about people
| | 03:17 | breaking up and getting back
together again in a funny way.
| | 03:20 | Maybe the romance is
shattered and then it rebuilds itself.
| | 03:23 | So there are types of animation that do
cross over, but once again you have to
| | 03:27 | think about what type of animation
it is you're doing, who is going to be
| | 03:30 | watching it, and what is it about.
| | 03:32 | So you see how you animate something is
really just as important as what you're animating.
| | 03:38 | But the most important
question is why you're animating?
| | 03:41 | If you can answer that question, why, then
everything else will fall right into place.
| | 03:45 | To learn more about these
important fundamentals, check out the
| | 03:47 | course Principles of Motion
Graphics by Ian Robinson in the Video
| | 03:50 | section of lynda.com.
| | 03:52 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 03:54 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 024 Modeling with MoGraph | 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and
welcome to Design in Motion,
| | 00:02 | the weekly series where we will
explore important fundamentals in the world
| | 00:05 | of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now MoGraph is a
powerful component of CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:10 | Now while back I was asked to create a
set of train tracks for a show open, and
| | 00:13 | that's exactly the kind of thing that
MoGraph is good at. Let's take a look.
| | 00:18 | So this is the finished track that
we're going to be creating and pay special
| | 00:22 | attention to the hierarchy.
| | 00:23 | That's really what this exercise is all
about. It's about MoGraph modeling, but
| | 00:27 | really it's about hierarchy,
understanding that if you build things in the
| | 00:30 | correct order, then you get a very
specific result out at the back side and that
| | 00:34 | really is important.
| | 00:35 | So I've got a Track cloner, a Tie
cloner, and then a Spike cloner, so for the
| | 00:42 | different parts of the track.
| | 00:43 | Now I'm not going to concentrate on
building these actual elements. I'm only
| | 00:46 | going to concentrate on the MoGraph parts.
| | 00:47 | We've got everything built in the start
file. Let's switch over to that right now.
| | 00:51 | I want to go over to the Tracks-Start
file and in the Tracks-Start file I have a
| | 00:55 | Tie, a Spike symmetry, which I'll
show in just a second, and the Track.
| | 01:00 | And the Track is just a simple Extrude
NURB and the length of it is about 2000 units.
| | 01:05 | I just want to zoom in on the end
of this so you can see the shape of
| | 01:09 | the railroad track.
| | 01:10 | And the railroad track is underneath a null
object and that's really important as well.
| | 01:15 | I like to put my Extrude NURB underneath
a null that I named then Track, because
| | 01:21 | if I want to change this track at any
time, this setup makes it very easy to do.
| | 01:26 | So now I've got a track. I need to clone it.
| | 01:28 | I want to have two tracks and so I'm
going to go to the MoGraph menu, grab a
| | 01:32 | Cloner object, and take my Track
and put it underneath the Cloner.
| | 01:36 | That cloner creates a vertical arrangement
of clones. That's not exactly what I want.
| | 01:42 | I want to have two tracks side by side.
| | 01:44 | So I'm going to go to the Cloner object,
just raise this window up a bit, and
| | 01:49 | in the cloner, I'm going to change the mode
of the clone from a Linear to a Grid Array.
| | 01:54 | Now the grid array creates an
arrangement of clones in a grid, a 3x3x3 in the
| | 02:00 | arrangement by default, and we
don't want that many. I only want two.
| | 02:03 | So I'm going to change the Count on X
to be 2 and I'll change the Count on Y to
| | 02:09 | be 1 and the Count on Z to be 1 as well.
| | 02:12 | So 2x1x1. I end up with just two
tracks exactly side by side, 200 units apart.
| | 02:18 | I am going to rename this
and call it Track Cloner.
| | 02:23 | Very important to name your objects.
Otherwise you're going to end up with
| | 02:26 | several different cloners and all
called cloner, and you won't know
| | 02:28 | what each one does.
| | 02:29 | So this was the track cloner,
so I'll name that track cloner.
| | 02:32 | Now let's take a look at the railroad
ties, and if I reveal them, I just made
| | 02:37 | both their dots gray by holding on the
Option or Alt key and clicking on the
| | 02:41 | stated dots. And now I've got a railroad tie.
| | 02:44 | And the railroad tie itself, if I zoom
in on that, the railroad tie is just a
| | 02:48 | single Cube object that I've textured
with a wood texture. I'll render that
| | 02:52 | real quick, Command+R or Ctrl+R on the
keyboard, and you can see that it has a
| | 02:55 | wood texture on it and that wood
texture makes it feel a lot more like a
| | 03:00 | railroad tie than a cube.
| | 03:01 | So I'll hit A on the
keyboard to redraw the frame.
| | 03:04 | The tie now I want to create copies
of along the Z axis into the distance.
| | 03:10 | So I'll use MoGraph again.
| | 03:12 | So let's go to the MoGraph menu and go
to the Cloner object and take the tie and
| | 03:17 | drag it underneath this cloner.
| | 03:18 | And now if the cloner by default
creates copies along Y, I want to create these
| | 03:23 | copies along Z, so I go to the Cloner
object and change the direction from 50
| | 03:28 | units on Y. I'll have to zero that out.
| | 03:32 | By default though, tie cloner creates the
copies of that they tie along the Y axis.
| | 03:37 | I want to create them along the Z axis.
| | 03:39 | So let's start by zeroing out
the Y value. Change that to 0.
| | 03:44 | And now I'm going to change the Z
value and I could scrub it here and eyeball it,
| | 03:50 | but I happen to know that hundred
units ought to do me just fine, so I'll
| | 03:54 | change that to be 100.
| | 03:56 | And now I've got each tie
spaced out along the Z axis.
| | 04:00 | Now that's not enough ties, so I'll
change the Count from 3. Let's try a 10.
| | 04:06 | That's not enough, you can see that.
Let's back out a little bit so we can see
| | 04:10 | how far down the tracks that went.
| | 04:12 | That went about halfway,
so let's change out to 20.
| | 04:14 | You can see that now I have 20 railroad
ties reaching almost the end of the track.
| | 04:20 | Now I don't want to go all the way to
the end. I want to have a gap, so that
| | 04:24 | when I create a clone of this, I'm
going to create a new section of track with
| | 04:28 | the ties and the stakes and
everything, all off into the distance.
| | 04:32 | And basically what I making is a
master track section, so that's perfect
| | 04:35 | for what I need to do.
| | 04:37 | So let's move that over here.
| | 04:39 | Now I'm going to call this cloner the
Tie Cloner and the Tie Cloner will get
| | 04:46 | twirled close, and so I have a
Track Cloner and a Tie Cloner.
| | 04:50 | Now I need to clone the spikes,
and let's reveal the spikes.
| | 04:53 | And I'll select the Spike symmetry
object and hit O on the keyboard and then
| | 04:57 | let's raise it up on Y so
that you can see what that is.
| | 05:00 | What the spike symmetry is is a
symmetry object that CINEMA 4D uses to create
| | 05:05 | copies on either side of an axis.
| | 05:06 | And I've basically built one spike and
plate and then flipped it over an axis so
| | 05:11 | that I ended up with two on either side.
| | 05:13 | And I've spaced them out already so
that they fit perfectly on the track.
| | 05:16 | And all I really need to do is to
clone the sky in the same way that I cloned
| | 05:20 | the track and I'll be good to go.
| | 05:22 | So let's bring this back to
000 for the spike symmetry.
| | 05:27 | Now I can rebuild the Track Cloner
with the same values or I can simply
| | 05:31 | duplicate the Track Cloner and then
call this one Spike Cloner, and really this
| | 05:38 | Spike Cloner Side By Side, because
this is going to create the copies of the
| | 05:43 | clone that are going to go left and right.
| | 05:45 | And so the Spike Cloner Side By Side
has underneath the old track object.
| | 05:49 | I don't need that, so I'll delete and
then I'll take the Spike symmetry and place
| | 05:53 | it underneath the Spike Cloner Side By Side.
| | 05:55 | And now look what happens.
| | 05:57 | I end up with a spike clone on either
side, lined up perfectly with the track.
| | 06:03 | Now the track and the ties are embedded in each
other and really they should be sitting on top.
| | 06:08 | So let's take the Track Cloner and the Spike
Cloner Side By Side and raise them up a bit.
| | 06:12 | And I want to raise them up so that
they're just flush with the railroad
| | 06:17 | tie and that's perfect.
| | 06:19 | I need to create a clone of the
spikes that will go off and match the exact
| | 06:26 | position of the railroad ties.
| | 06:29 | Now I don't have to do that again.
I can just use the Tie Cloner as the basis
| | 06:34 | for my spike cloner.
| | 06:35 | So I'll create a copy of that and I'll
rename this one and call it Spike Cloner.
| | 06:42 | And I don't need the stuff that's
under the spike cloner, so I'll delete that
| | 06:46 | and then take Spike Cloner Side By Side
and put it underneath the Spike Cloner.
| | 06:50 | Now when I do that, you notice that the spike
clones jumped back down inside the railroad ties.
| | 06:56 | That's because the cloner object takes
over the position of the actual clones
| | 07:01 | it's creating and places
them where they need to be.
| | 07:03 | So even though I had erased that up
before, the cloner object takes that over
| | 07:07 | and puts it back down to where its
axis is, which is right at 000. As you can
| | 07:11 | see they're all in a flush there.
| | 07:13 | So what I can do is I can take the
Spike Cloner and just raise that up again.
| | 07:17 | Here we go, and that's perfect.
| | 07:21 | And now everything is lined up exactly
the way it needs to be and let's back
| | 07:26 | out just a bit here.
| | 07:27 | And take a look at our track. And I'm
going to hit Command+R, or Ctrl+R on the
| | 07:32 | keyboard to render that.
| | 07:33 | Now the actual track is just one
section. I need to now clone this entire
| | 07:38 | group so that I can make copies of
the track to have it go off into the
| | 07:41 | distance even farther.
| | 07:43 | So rather than duplicate this by
hand, I'll use another cloner object.
| | 07:46 | So let's start by grouping all of
these objects under a single null.
| | 07:49 | So let's click on the
Primitive objects here and grab a Null.
| | 07:52 | I'll call this one Track Group and then
take this object and put in under here
| | 07:58 | and all of these objects
now are under a single null.
| | 08:01 | So if I clone them, then I will end up
with tracks going off into the distance.
| | 08:05 | So I go to MoGraph and grab another
Cloner object and I'll call this one
| | 08:09 | Track Group Cloner.
| | 08:11 | And the Track Group Cloner will have
the Track Group as a child underneath it
| | 08:20 | and it's going to make copies underneath.
| | 08:23 | But remember it does it by default on
the Y axis and that's not what I want to do.
| | 08:26 | I want to make them along the Z axis.
| | 08:27 | So let's go to the Track Group Cloner
and under the Object properties we're
| | 08:31 | going to change the values that are in
this area here. And the values that I
| | 08:36 | want to change are the Y
value. Let's change that to 0.
| | 08:39 | And then the Z value, I
want to change to be 2000.
| | 08:44 | And that's because my original clone was
about 2000 units long, my original track
| | 08:50 | model that I created was about 2000 units.
| | 08:52 | So if I make these clones 2000 units
apart, then I'll end up with tracks that
| | 08:56 | are perfectly spaced.
| | 08:57 | And in fact, if I zoom in here on the
spot where the tracks come together,
| | 09:01 | which is right there, let's zoom in on
that area there, you see I now have a
| | 09:05 | perfect seam. There is no gap in the
tracks at all. Everything lines up just
| | 09:10 | the way it ought to.
| | 09:11 | You maybe noticing a little bit of
sluggishness in your system, once you start
| | 09:15 | creating a lot of clones you can end up
in a situation where you've got lot of
| | 09:19 | geometry in the scene.
| | 09:21 | And there is a great little button
called Render Instances in the cloner object,
| | 09:24 | and this is a time where I can turn
this on and get a lot of performance back
| | 09:28 | for my objects and I want to
do that in the sub cloners as well.
| | 09:31 | So I can go into the Tie Cloner and
turn on Render Instances and then I can go
| | 09:35 | into the Spike Cloner and turn
on Render Instances there as well.
| | 09:39 | And now I end up with much better
performance. You see that it's much snappier
| | 09:44 | and easier to work with.
| | 09:46 | By properly building the hierarchy when
modeling with MoGraph, you're going to
| | 09:49 | set yourself up for all kinds of
success when it comes time to animate.
| | 09:53 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 09:57 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 09:59 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 025 Creating distressed metallic type| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we'll
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | The kind of materials that you place
on your objects in CINEMA 4D tell the
| | 00:10 | viewer exactly what that
object is supposed to be made of.
| | 00:13 | Is it plastic or metal, wood
or glass, cheese or Jell-O?
| | 00:17 | Regardless of what your object is
supposed to be made of, if you build
| | 00:21 | your textures up one layer at a time,
you will have total control over what
| | 00:24 | that object looks like.
| | 00:25 | I am going to show you how to make a
distressed metal type in CINEMA 4D. Let's take a look.
| | 00:31 | This is the effect that we are
going to be creating in CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:33 | It's a metallic type and it looks
like it's made out of these indented and
| | 00:37 | distressed riveted metal panels.
| | 00:39 | It's actually fairly simple to create, but
we got to follow some very specific steps.
| | 00:43 | The most important thing I want to talk
about is something called Linear Workflow.
| | 00:46 | Linear Workflow was introduced in
CINEMA 4D R12 and it affects how the lights
| | 00:51 | and textures behave in the render engine.
| | 00:53 | I prefer to work with it off.
| | 00:54 | If you prefer to work with it on, you
can leave it on, but if you want to follow
| | 00:58 | along at home and you want your
rendering to look like mine, you need to make
| | 01:01 | sure to turn Linear Workflow off.
| | 01:02 | The way you do that is by going to
the main Edit menu and going to Project
| | 01:06 | Settings and in the Project Settings
window that comes up, you can turn off
| | 01:10 | Linear Workflow. Now I have already
turned it off and I've turned it off in the
| | 01:13 | Start file as well, so you don't have to
worry about it if you have the project files.
| | 01:17 | Once again if you don't have the project
files, there is another thing I want to
| | 01:20 | talk about and that's the bitmap
images we are going to be using here.
| | 01:23 | I am going to Tab out to the Finder.
| | 01:25 | I've got two bitmap images, a JPEG and a
PSD file, that I'm using in this texture.
| | 01:30 | The first one, basic049, is an image
that actually ships with CINEMA 4D and I am
| | 01:34 | going to show you how to get that.
| | 01:37 | The second one is this grunge-O1.psd
and this was something I created myself in
| | 01:42 | Photoshop just using some grungy
brushes that I downloaded from Brusheezy and
| | 01:46 | then using the Offset
filter to make it tile-able.
| | 01:49 | Now if you don't know anything about
that process you can look up the Offset
| | 01:51 | filter on lynda.com here and find some
great tutorials on creating textures.
| | 01:55 | Let's go back and show you
where that basic049 image is.
| | 01:57 | If I go back to CINEMA 4D, I am going
to go into the Content Browser and in the
| | 02:02 | Content Browser is the Presets
folder, and I'll double-click on that.
| | 02:06 | Let's give myself a little more room
here; into Prime and then Materials, and then
| | 02:10 | to Basic and then there's a tex folder
right inside that Basic folder. You may
| | 02:14 | have to scroll down to see it, and then
you go inside that folder and then there
| | 02:18 | is the basic049.jpg and you can drag
that into the texture field at the moment
| | 02:24 | when I use this, if you don't
have access to the project files.
| | 02:26 | If you do have access to the
project files, you are good to go.
| | 02:29 | So let's go now and start creating this texture.
| | 02:31 | I am going to switch over to the
Window menu and go to the Start file. And so
| | 02:36 | here is our metal type. Let's go back
to the Object Manager. You can see it's
| | 02:39 | just a regular Extrude NURB with some
text underneath it, and that we have got
| | 02:42 | some lights and they're
casting shadows and things.
| | 02:44 | I need to create my material first off,
so let's create a new material.
| | 02:48 | I'll double-click in the Material Editor to create
that material. Let's call this one metal type.
| | 02:53 | In this metal type material, I want to
apply to my metal type, so let's drag
| | 02:57 | it from the Material Editor onto the
Extrude NURB and now my metal type gets lighter.
| | 03:03 | This is very important.
| | 03:04 | I want to make sure that this texture
is being applied to the type correctly.
| | 03:08 | The default mapping method for
textures in CINEMA 4D is something called UVW
| | 03:11 | mapping. That doesn't work very well
with Extrude NURBS and I happen to know that
| | 03:15 | from experience, and I know that we are
going to want to change this, and we need
| | 03:18 | to change it to something called cubic mapping.
| | 03:20 | In order to see what that looks like,
I'm going to switch over to the Texture
| | 03:24 | tool and I now see this yellow grid.
This represents the UVW mapping method.
| | 03:29 | When I switch this to a Cubic
mapping, I now see a grid on my object.
| | 03:33 | Now it looks like nothing's changed on
my object, but essentially it's changed
| | 03:37 | how the texture is being applied to it.
| | 03:38 | This is very important.
| | 03:39 | We want to see this cube here, so
that we get a better arrangement of the
| | 03:43 | texture on the surface of the type.
| | 03:44 | So now let's switch out of the Texture tool.
| | 03:46 | We don't need to see that grid anymore and
then we are ready to start making our material.
| | 03:50 | Now before I make the material, I am
going to turn on the Interactive Render
| | 03:54 | Region, so if I click on this guy and
hold down and go to the very bottom where
| | 03:58 | it says Interactive Render
Region, I'll turn that on.
| | 04:00 | Now my Interactive Render Region has been
already sized. I've changed the size of it.
| | 04:05 | I've also increased the quality by
moving this slider up and down. And so that's
| | 04:09 | given me the image that you see here.
| | 04:12 | Now let's click in the metal type
material and start off with the Color channel.
| | 04:17 | The Color channel, we are going to
want to add in that riveted metal texture.
| | 04:22 | I am going to click on the Add Image
button and then go to my text folder, and I
| | 04:26 | am working off the desktop here,
and I'll go to basic049 and hit Open.
| | 04:30 | You can see now there are
those panels on our type.
| | 04:33 | They are very clean and even right now,
there is none of the distress part
| | 04:37 | that we are going to need later, but
we've got the panels, the rivets are
| | 04:40 | there on the object, and that Cubic
texture mapping really made it come onto
| | 04:43 | the type perfectly.
| | 04:44 | Now what we need to do is make some
changes in how the specular highlight behaves.
| | 04:49 | The specular highlight is the little shiny
point source that you see on your object.
| | 04:53 | We want to change ours from Plastic,
which has its own independent color, to
| | 04:57 | Metal, which uses the color of the
object to create the color of the specular
| | 05:02 | highlight, and I am going to crank up the
height or the intensity of the specular
| | 05:06 | highlight so that our type gets a lot brighter.
| | 05:09 | Now we can start to distress the surface of it.
| | 05:11 | We are going to start off with a Bump
channel and I'll go the Basic properties
| | 05:15 | and I need to turn on Bump.
| | 05:16 | When I do that, nothing really happened.
That's because the Bump needs light and
| | 05:20 | dark image information in order to
generate bumps, and the first part of that
| | 05:23 | Bump process is going to
be adding a noise in there.
| | 05:26 | So let's go into the Bump channel and
then I'm going to click on that Texture
| | 05:29 | pulldown and add in Noise, and the
Noise that we get at first is this sort of
| | 05:34 | light and dark gray blobby stuff and
that's not really what we need. We want
| | 05:38 | something that looks a little
more gritty and realistic.
| | 05:41 | So let's click on the swatch here and
there is a great little pulldown right
| | 05:44 | here that shows me what the Noise looks like.
| | 05:46 | If I click on that, the one that I
want to use is something called Poxo.
| | 05:49 | That's the name and you can see the
name right down here at the very bottom.
| | 05:53 | I want this guy right here though, which
is Poxo, and the names that you see here
| | 05:58 | are actually based on an old shader
system that used to be in CINEMA 4D as a
| | 06:02 | third-party plug-in that MAXON
incorporated into the application here, and so
| | 06:06 | these are all names that were used that system,
but the Poxo is what we want to use right now.
| | 06:11 | So let's click on that.
| | 06:12 | And you can see it gives us
gritty asphalt-looking texture to it.
| | 06:15 | It's a little bit too finely detailed,
so we need to scale it up and I am
| | 06:19 | going to go to Global Scale and change
that to be 500%. Let's go and blow it
| | 06:24 | up a little bit and just remove some of that
grit. We didn't want it quite as gritty as that.
| | 06:28 | Let's click on the up arrow up here and
now the next step in the Bump process is I
| | 06:32 | want the panels to have a little bit
of bump indentation to them as well.
| | 06:36 | We can see them already on there, but they
are sort of sitting on top of the bump map.
| | 06:40 | By incorporating the panels into the
Bump texture though I'll now get a more
| | 06:43 | realistic adaptation of that Bump material.
| | 06:46 | So let's go to the Texture pulldown and I am
going to add in something called a layered shader.
| | 06:50 | When I do that, it looks like nothing has
happened, except that now it's taken the
| | 06:54 | existing noise pattern and placed it
into a new shader system that allows me to
| | 06:59 | work a lot like Photoshop.
| | 07:00 | If I click on this, I now
see a new set of properties.
| | 07:03 | My Noise is still there and if I click
on this swatch it would take me into
| | 07:06 | the Noise Shader, but now I see these extra
options and this behaves just like Photoshop.
| | 07:11 | We have got a blending modes pulldown,
we have got an Opacity slider, we have
| | 07:15 | even got the eyeball just like Photoshop.
| | 07:17 | So what I am going to do is load in an
image and the image I want to load in is
| | 07:21 | that same metallic and riveted plate pattern.
| | 07:24 | So I load that in and so now you'll
notice that the Bump is overriding the
| | 07:28 | Noise pattern beneath.
| | 07:29 | That's because, just like Photoshop,
a layer that's at 100% opacity will
| | 07:33 | override the layer below it.
| | 07:34 | So I need to change the blending mode
here and the blending mode I am going to
| | 07:37 | use is Overlay. And so I add in Overlay
and now I can see that the bump pattern
| | 07:43 | is mixing in with that gritty Poxo
noise pattern that I had before and it's starting
| | 07:47 | to look a lot cooler.
| | 07:48 | Next, I want to add in
something called Diffusion.
| | 07:51 | Now Diffusion in the 3D world is
often referred to as the dirt map and it
| | 07:55 | affects how light comes off the surface
of your object; much the way dirt does
| | 07:59 | on a dirty object, and so I am going
to load in that grunge texture now.
| | 08:03 | Before I can load in the grunge texture
though, I have to add in the Diffusion channel.
| | 08:07 | So if I click on the material down
here in the Material Editor that takes me
| | 08:10 | out to the top level.
| | 08:11 | I go to Basic properties and I'm going
to turn on Diffusion, and in the Diffusion
| | 08:16 | channel, I'll load in that material.
| | 08:18 | So I'll click on the Add Image button
and I am going to load in grunge-O1.psd.
| | 08:23 | When I hit Open, I now get a really
dark material on our object and it's way too
| | 08:29 | dark and so I need to adjust the
intensity of the diffusion material.
| | 08:32 | So what I need to do is
to adjust the Mix Strength.
| | 08:35 | So let's take a Mix Strength down to about
down to 40% or so, and that's good right there.
| | 08:40 | When I let go, you will see the text
get a lot brighter and this makes a big
| | 08:44 | impact on how gritty and
the dirty the text feels.
| | 08:47 | If I go back to the Basic properties
and turn off the Diffusion for just
| | 08:50 | a moment, you'll see a before and
after. So that's with Diffusion and
| | 08:54 | that's without Diffusion.
| | 08:56 | With the Diffusion on, it feels a lot older
and dirtier and just more weather-exposed.
| | 09:01 | Lastly, we need to turn on
something called Displacement.
| | 09:03 | The Displacement is going to give us
the actual indentations and deformations
| | 09:08 | that we see in the service of the object.
| | 09:10 | The Bump channel simulates indentations.
| | 09:13 | The Displacement channel actually
moves the surface of your object and
| | 09:17 | creates these indentations.
| | 09:18 | So let's go now to the Basic
properties, which we are already there, and we are
| | 09:23 | going to add in Displacement.
| | 09:24 | Nothing happens at first. That's because
displacement needs light and dark values
| | 09:28 | just like the Bump channel.
| | 09:29 | So let's click on Displacement now
and what we are going to do is add in a
| | 09:33 | noise and the noise we are going to
use this time is something called Stupl.
| | 09:36 | But we need to first add in the noise,
so we go to the Texture pulldown, add in
| | 09:41 | the Noise shader and you are going to
see our type changed shape suddenly, and
| | 09:45 | we need to make some other changes to
the Displacement channel, but first let's
| | 09:48 | load in that new noise pattern because this
one doesn't really look the way we want it to.
| | 09:52 | So click on the Noise swatch and
then go to that same pulldown over here.
| | 09:55 | Sometimes it can be hard to find the right
name there and so the one that we want is Stupl.
| | 10:00 | It's this one that I have
my mouse over right now.
| | 10:03 | When I click on that and add that in, you'll
see that the Displacement changes subtly.
| | 10:08 | One of the things about Displacement is
that it's reliant on the geometry that's
| | 10:12 | in your object, and right now there's
not very many polygons in our type, but
| | 10:16 | there is a really cool button for that
to fix that problem and that's something
| | 10:19 | called Sub-Polygon Displacement.
| | 10:21 | Sub-Polygon Displacement will subdivide
the surface of your object in the render
| | 10:25 | engine, so you have a very lightweight,
low-poly object in the Editor window,
| | 10:29 | but when it comes time to render, it
gets subdivided and you get a much more
| | 10:32 | accurate displacement on there.
| | 10:34 | When I turn this on, I'm going to
get a very different behavior in
| | 10:36 | my displacement maps.
| | 10:37 | So let's scroll down here and I am
going to activate Sub-Polygon Displacement.
| | 10:42 | When I do that, now suddenly my type
gets really, really distorted and that's
| | 10:47 | because I have a lot more polygons
in there virtually because of that
| | 10:49 | Sub-Polygon Displacement.
| | 10:51 | Now I don't need quite that
much displacement on my type.
| | 10:54 | It's a little too distorted, so let's
change that Subdivision Level from 4 to 2
| | 10:57 | and that will soften the
displacement up a little bit.
| | 11:03 | So that's pretty much it.
| | 11:03 | We have got distorted, weathered,
gritty metallic-looking type.
| | 11:07 | The reason that this material works on
the type boils down to how it was built
| | 11:11 | and then how it was applied.
| | 11:12 | By building up layer at a time and
using cubic mapping to apply it to the type
| | 11:16 | object, it made all the
steps fall right into place.
| | 11:20 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 11:24 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion. Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 026 Creating realism with Global Illumination| 00:01 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:08 | Realism in your renders is a very
hot topic in the 3D world these days.
| | 00:11 | And one of the best ways to
achieve it is using something called
| | 00:14 | Global Illumination.
| | 00:15 | But that begs a couple of questions.
| | 00:17 | What is global illumination and is it
right for my project? Let's take a look.
| | 00:22 | In CINEMA 4D here, I have got a very
basic scene of a toy plane sitting on the
| | 00:26 | ground and I've got a very basic light setup.
| | 00:30 | It's a four-point light rig with a
fill, a key, and a couple of backlights to
| | 00:33 | catch some of the edges on the plane.
| | 00:35 | And I want to point out that I am
working with Linear Workflow turned off. Here
| | 00:39 | in the Attribute manager I have got
the Project Settings visible, and Linear
| | 00:42 | Workflow is unchecked.
| | 00:44 | Linear Workflow changes how the
lights and textures behave in CINEMA 4D,
| | 00:48 | in the render engine, and I prefer
to turn it off when I am working.
| | 00:52 | If you want to work with any workflow
on, there's nothing wrong with that.
| | 00:55 | It's just that your
renders won't match mine exactly.
| | 00:58 | So let's do a quick rendering of this,
Command+R or Ctrl+R on the keyboard.
| | 01:02 | That's going to give us a render of
the plane, and it looks pretty good.
| | 01:07 | We have got some nice even light on the plane.
| | 01:10 | We have got some reflections happening from
the Environment Sphere that's in the scene.
| | 01:14 | Some shadow being cast on the ground.
| | 01:16 | It doesn't look too bad.
| | 01:18 | One of the problems with the render
engine in all 3D applications is that light
| | 01:22 | in 3D does not bounce by default.
| | 01:25 | And in the real world, light bounces all
around your objects and affects how the
| | 01:31 | colors on the object behave, because
the light from another nearby object will
| | 01:35 | bounce off your object and
suddenly change the color of it.
| | 01:38 | That light bounce is incredibly
difficult for the computer to calculate and so
| | 01:42 | that light bounce is not present
in the render engine on purpose.
| | 01:46 | Global Illumination is a way
of simulating that light bounce.
| | 01:48 | And it gives a very different looking render.
| | 01:51 | I am going to a turn off the lights in
the scene so I will uncheck all these
| | 01:56 | lights and my scene will get dark.
| | 01:58 | Let's render, Command+R or Control+R
just to see what that looks like.
| | 02:01 | So there are no lights that are on in
the scene except for the auto light,
| | 02:04 | and what I want to do next is to point out
the sphere that I have surrounding my scene.
| | 02:09 | This sphere has a texture on it and that
texture looks like a beach scene on a sunny day.
| | 02:15 | It's actually I think a Marina
or something like that, but it's a
| | 02:18 | beautiful scene--has some great blue cast to it
from the sky and some earthy tones underneath.
| | 02:23 | This image is now going to be used
to light the scene when I turn on
| | 02:27 | Global Illumination.
| | 02:28 | That's what Global Illumination does,
is it allows you to light with images.
| | 02:32 | And that can provide a lot of
interesting color information in the scene that
| | 02:35 | will be difficult to get with just lights alone.
| | 02:38 | So let's go to the render settings,
Command+B or Ctrl+B. So in the render
| | 02:41 | settings we are going to go to the
Effects and turn on Global Illumination.
| | 02:44 | When I add that in, I am going to
render again, and you are going to notice
| | 02:49 | the previous render only took
less than a second or about a second.
| | 02:52 | And I will hit Command+R or Ctrl+R on the
keyboard and let's wait and see how long it takes.
| | 02:59 | The Global Illumination process
takes a bit of more time to render.
| | 03:02 | And you will notice that it
took 10 seconds from one second.
| | 03:05 | That's 10 times as long as the
previous render, without lights or shadows.
| | 03:11 | This render looks significantly
different than that previous render.
| | 03:15 | This one has a lot of subtle color
information being cast in the scene by the
| | 03:19 | sky object that I have in here.
| | 03:21 | That's this beach scene, remember?
| | 03:22 | And there is a reflectivity and a life
in the image that wasn't present before,
| | 03:29 | and some great soft
shadows underneath the object.
| | 03:31 | So there is a lot of benefit to using
this Global Illumination from a realism
| | 03:35 | standpoint, because now this looks
like it's sitting outside and could be
| | 03:38 | sitting just on the ground somewhere.
| | 03:39 | It has a much better feel to it.
| | 03:41 | There is a very important setting in the
render settings for Global Illumination
| | 03:45 | called Diffuse Depth.
| | 03:46 | And the Diffuse Depth controls how
many times that light simulation bounces.
| | 03:50 | By default, it's only 1.
| | 03:51 | Now you want to be careful with this.
| | 03:53 | There is a sort of a point of
diminishing returns with the Diffuse Depth, and so
| | 03:56 | we don't want to just crank this value up.
| | 03:58 | It's not a, the more you have
the better it is kind of situation.
| | 04:01 | There's always a point of diminishing returns.
| | 04:03 | So let's change it up to a 3
and that ought to be about fine.
| | 04:07 | And you are going to notice that the
render will take a lot longer--go a
| | 04:10 | Command+R or Ctrl+R on the keyboard.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to have this
rendering effect sped up in post,
| | 04:15 | that way we don't have to
wait around so long for it.
| | 04:17 | So here is our rendered scene, and you
notice that it took two seconds longer.
| | 04:21 | Now, that doesn't seem like a lot,
| | 04:22 | but relative to the amount of time
the freeze render took, two seconds is
| | 04:26 | percentage-wise quite a bit longer to render.
| | 04:29 | This scene really doesn't
look that much different.
| | 04:31 | We've got a little bit of a subtle red
cast to the floor and that's because the
| | 04:35 | red light bouncing off the surface of
our plane and hitting the floor again.
| | 04:39 | But that's really about all the
benefit we have, the diffuse adds more color
| | 04:43 | in those bouncy areas.
| | 04:44 | And sometimes it can look really good and
other times it can look not such a big deal.
| | 04:48 | And this is one of those not such a big
deal times and you want to be careful.
| | 04:51 | That extra two seconds can translate
into a lot longer render time, if you have
| | 04:55 | a very complicated scene.
| | 04:57 | The next effect I wanted to talk about
is something called, Ambient Occlusion.
| | 05:00 | And Ambient Occlusion is a component of
Global Illumination but we can also turn
| | 05:06 | it on and add in more Ambient Occlusion
using the Ambient Occlusion effect.
| | 05:09 | I am going to go to the render settings,
Command+B or Control+B and I will go to
| | 05:13 | the effects and add in Ambient Occlusion.
| | 05:16 | It's right there at the very top,
because it's so important. Actually it's just
| | 05:19 | alphabetized, but Ambient
Occlusion is really important.
| | 05:22 | What it is, is the darkening of seams
on objects. Any place where two pieces
| | 05:27 | of geometry meet, you are going to
see the Ambient Occlusion effect.
| | 05:30 | And what that's going to do in this case
of this plane, is give me little dark
| | 05:34 | lines right where the wing, for
example, meets the body of the plane, and the
| | 05:38 | where the tail parts meet the body of the plane.
| | 05:42 | This doesn't seem like such a big deal
until you see a before and after without
| | 05:46 | that on, and I will just render this with it on.
| | 05:49 | Let's hit Command+R or Ctrl+R on the
keyboard, and what you are going to see
| | 05:55 | when it gets to rendering, is that
we've got now this Ambient Occlusion effect
| | 06:00 | happening in all the joints on the plane.
| | 06:01 | And it's the most prevalent right where
the wing meets the body and this seems
| | 06:08 | like a subtle thing, but it has
a lot of realism to your object.
| | 06:11 | In the real world, the Ambient
Occlusion effect is everywhere.
| | 06:14 | Any place two objects come together
and meet, there is going to be a seam
| | 06:18 | created, and light travels into that
seam, but not all of it can back out,
| | 06:21 | so that seam tends to be darker, and that's
what the Ambient Occlusion effect simulates.
| | 06:25 | So you can see our plane
looks quite a bit better.
| | 06:27 | It's a great looking render.
| | 06:29 | Global Illumination isn't always that important.
| | 06:32 | And I am going to show you a scene now
with a very similar setup but using type
| | 06:36 | where it's not that big a deal.
| | 06:38 | And so let's go in to the Window
menu and I'll go to the STANDARD-TYPE.
| | 06:42 | And so this is a Standard Type
object that I have set up.
| | 06:46 | It's just an Extrude NURB
with a text object underneath it.
| | 06:49 | I have also got the very same
lighting rig that I was using on the plane.
| | 06:52 | For my Environment Sphere, I have
this reflective scene setup right here
| | 06:57 | which is, once again, that same beach
scene that we had before. So all the
| | 07:00 | elements in the scene are
essentially the same, except we have type now
| | 07:03 | instead of a plane.
| | 07:04 | When I render, Command+R or Ctrl+R,
I'm going to see a pretty quick render.
| | 07:08 | And the type looks not too bad.
| | 07:10 | I've got a little bit of light coming
from the back sides of the type object and
| | 07:14 | the faces are well illuminated.
| | 07:16 | We got a great shadow being cast in the back.
| | 07:18 | And the render time didn't take long
at all, about three seconds, so that's
| | 07:22 | a very quick render.
| | 07:23 | Let's take a look at a render settings
on this, Command+B or Ctrl+B, and you can
| | 07:27 | see that all the render settings are a default.
| | 07:29 | Let's close that out for just a moment
and then we are going to come back and
| | 07:32 | turn on Global Illumination.
| | 07:34 | Now this time what I am going to do is I
am going to leave the lights on so you
| | 07:37 | can see what the lights look like.
| | 07:39 | And that will give us a better idea of
what the Global Illumination effect is doing.
| | 07:43 | It's using the Environment Sphere, to
light the scene, but it can also use the
| | 07:47 | Environment Sphere and regular lights.
| | 07:50 | So what we want to do is
turn on Global Illumination.
| | 07:52 | So let's go Command+B or Ctrl+B to
the render settings and go to the
| | 07:56 | Effects pulldown, and do Ambient
Occlusion, and then also we are going to
| | 08:01 | do Global Illumination.
| | 08:02 | And those are the two effects that are
related to one another, and I want to
| | 08:05 | turn those guys on, and
now let's do another render.
| | 08:07 | So you see, last one took three seconds,
and I will go Command+R or Ctrl+R and
| | 08:14 | let's see how long this takes to render.
| | 08:15 | I am going to have this rendering
sped up in post, so we don't have to wait
| | 08:19 | quite so long for it.
| | 08:20 | So now we can see the rendering, and
it actually it looks pretty darn good.
| | 08:24 | But you have to ask yourself the
question, was it worth the 18 seconds it took
| | 08:29 | from the three seconds we had before?
| | 08:31 | The first rendering took three seconds,
this rendering took 18 seconds, and it
| | 08:35 | looks pretty good, but it
doesn't look that much different.
| | 08:37 | That's always the bounce when you are
creating in 3D, is with the effect that I have
| | 08:41 | turned on worth the time it took to render?
| | 08:43 | In this case I would say probably not.
| | 08:45 | We can simulate this same kind of
effect without having to use Global
| | 08:48 | Illumination, just by adding a little
bit of color to our floor object and
| | 08:51 | cranking up the intensity of the lights.
| | 08:53 | I will render this scene with both the
Environment Sphere and the lights, both
| | 08:58 | contributing to the brightness of the scene.
| | 09:00 | That's why it looks so bright and illuminated.
| | 09:02 | Now I think it looks okay, but
personally I don't think it was worth the extra
| | 09:05 | 15 seconds that it took to
render this simple scene.
| | 09:08 | Global Illumination or G.I. for short,
can be beautiful, but it can also have a
| | 09:13 | huge negative impact on your render times.
| | 09:15 | You should never commit to using it,
without first doing a bit of testing and research.
| | 09:20 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section on lynda.com.
| | 09:24 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 09:26 | Keep it moving, and I will see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 027 Creating a reflective floor using After Effects| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and
welcome to Design in Motion.
| | 00:03 | The weekly series where we explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now there is a lot of ways to create a
reflected floor look in After Effects.
| | 00:10 | Most motion graphics artists
have there own formula for doing it.
| | 00:14 | Today, we're going to look at two different ways using
the built-in tools in After Effects. Let's get started.
| | 00:20 | This is our starting file in After
Effects and what we want to do is create the
| | 00:23 | illusion that this type is sitting on a
reflective floor with an infinite plane,
| | 00:28 | and we'll see that the type is zooming
pass the camera into the center of the
| | 00:31 | frame and then rotating
gently in front of the camera.
| | 00:34 | We got a little bit of a drift on there.
| | 00:36 | Let me walk through the layers just a
bit so you can see what's going on here.
| | 00:40 | I've got some Blue Solids at the bottom.
| | 00:41 | I am going to start by soloing out
the first one and that's just a regular
| | 00:44 | Solid layer with a ramp effect applied to it
to give me this fall off from dark to light.
| | 00:50 | Then I've got the same layer
duplicated and I've got it set on Multiply.
| | 00:55 | I am going to be moving this
layer to create the infinite plane.
| | 00:57 | So that's why there's two of these right here.
| | 01:00 | Now the next layer up is a
Reflective type PRE, and this type precomp,
| | 01:05 | if I double-click on that it takes me
into the precomp itself. This type is just
| | 01:09 | a regular type layer, but it's inside
of its own composition and it has the
| | 01:13 | Gradient Overlay applied to it which
is giving us this light orange to dark
| | 01:17 | orange transition across the face of the type.
| | 01:20 | The reason I have it precomped is so
that the Gradient Overlay won't move when
| | 01:23 | I transform the type, but also it gives me the
flexibility to change the type at will later on.
| | 01:28 | I may want to have to say tomorrow or
today or coming up next, that kind of thing.
| | 01:32 | It makes it very easy to change that
in a precomp and I can also add extra
| | 01:36 | things to it if I want to
make variations on the type.
| | 01:38 | Precomping your type like that is
a great way to give yourself some
| | 01:42 | flexibility, in this particular situation.
| | 01:45 | Let's go back to the START composition.
| | 01:47 | The next two layers are simply the
Camera and the Camera Parent, and these are
| | 01:51 | what's animated in giving us the movement.
| | 01:53 | I am going unsolo those layers so
I am back to the full composition.
| | 01:57 | So the first step in this process is to
create the infinite plane and this top
| | 02:01 | Blue Solid that I've on Multiply is
going to become the infinite plane.
| | 02:04 | All I need to do is just take
it and drag it down. Watch this!
| | 02:07 | I am going to hold the Shift key down
while I am dragging and the position that
| | 02:11 | you drag it to is entirely up to you.
| | 02:14 | We don't want to bring it down here,
because we want the type to have the
| | 02:16 | feeling that it's sitting on this plane.
| | 02:18 | So I'll drag it about there.
| | 02:20 | I don't want to drag it
down in the middle of the type.
| | 02:22 | That's little bit distracting
having that line running through my type.
| | 02:25 | So I am going to bring that right up
about here and then now when I scrub
| | 02:28 | through, you can see that my type
appears to be sitting on an infinite plane.
| | 02:33 | The next step is to create the
reflective look for that infinite plane.
| | 02:37 | The technique that I am going to
use this first time is simply a
| | 02:40 | transformation technique.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to create a copy of this
layer and flip it over and that will
| | 02:45 | become the reflection.
| | 02:46 | This technique works really well with type.
| | 02:49 | Let's select the type Precomp, hit
Command+D or Ctrl+D on the keyboard and
| | 02:53 | on the lower Precomp I'm going to hit S on
the keyboard to reveal the scale options.
| | 02:59 | Normally, the scale options are
all linked together so that they
| | 03:02 | transform together as one.
| | 03:04 | I'm going to unlink them and then on
the Y option, this is X, Y, and Z. On the Y
| | 03:10 | option I'm going to change it to -100
and that's going to flip my layer over.
| | 03:15 | Now I can hit P on the keyboard and
bring up the position options, and I'm going
| | 03:20 | to drag on the Y. I'm going to click on
the Y option and scroll it down,
| | 03:26 | and as I scrub that value down, it's going
to bring the type down perfectly only on Y.
| | 03:31 | I don't want to slide it left or right.
| | 03:33 | I want to align it perfectly.
| | 03:34 | I am going to eyeball this.
| | 03:36 | There isn't really a numeric value you
could put in here, because that value
| | 03:39 | would change based on the word that
you've typed out here, and also the font size
| | 03:43 | that you're choosing as well.
| | 03:44 | So it's best to just eyeball it.
| | 03:46 | So now you can see I've got a great
looking reflection, but it still doesn't
| | 03:50 | feel like it's part of the floor.
| | 03:52 | To make it look like it's part of the
floor is going to be a multi-step process.
| | 03:55 | They're easy steps, but the first step
is to change the blending mode and I've
| | 04:00 | already forgot my Modes visible here
and I'll select the blend modes for that
| | 04:04 | Precomp for the reflection, and I
am going to change that to Add.
| | 04:07 | That Add blending mode is going to
give the type a little bit of a washed out
| | 04:10 | feel so it starts to feel
like it's embedded in the floor.
| | 04:13 | Now I want to adjust the Opacity.
| | 04:15 | So I'll select that layer and hit T
to bring up the Opacity options and
| | 04:18 | I'll dial that down.
| | 04:20 | This is sort of a season to taste moment.
| | 04:21 | I am going to go to about maybe 45% or
so, and now you can see that it starts to
| | 04:27 | really feel like it's in the floor.
| | 04:29 | On most floors that are reflective the
reflection diminishes in intensity from
| | 04:34 | the reflective object.
| | 04:36 | That means that we need a gradient in
our reflection so that it's more intense
| | 04:40 | here and less intense down here.
| | 04:43 | That gradient is something we're
going to create with a solid layer.
| | 04:46 | So let's make a new solid, Command+Y or
Ctrl+Y, and that will bring up this Solid
| | 04:50 | Settings window. And the Solid Settings,
whatever they say here in your particular
| | 04:55 | version of After Effects, it will
remember the last time you created a solid.
| | 04:58 | You want to hit Make Comp Size.
| | 05:00 | We want this composition to be the
same as our existing comp, and I am
| | 05:03 | working at 960x540 here. I'll hit OK now.
| | 05:06 | The color is not important. Let's just hit OK.
| | 05:09 | That gives us a white solid.
| | 05:10 | The reason that color is not
important is because we're going to use this
| | 05:13 | solid as a mask layer.
| | 05:14 | So what we are going to do next is to
create a mask that will provide us with a
| | 05:18 | gradient on the edge of this.
| | 05:20 | So I'll hit Q on the keyboard to
bring up the Mask tool, and when I
| | 05:24 | click and drag on this Solid layer it's
going to create a mask, and I am dragging
| | 05:28 | from top left or close to top
left towards the bottom right.
| | 05:32 | Now that sets up a mask on this layer.
| | 05:34 | I want to feather the edges of
this mask, but only on this side here,
| | 05:38 | so I am going to go to the Layer
menu > Mask > Mask Feather.
| | 05:43 | On the Mask Feather I'm going to unlock
the Vertical and Horizontal, and only on
| | 05:47 | the Vertical I'll change it to about 75,
and that's gives me graded edge only on
| | 05:53 | the top part of the mask.
| | 05:55 | Now what I can do is use
this mask to mask off that type.
| | 05:59 | So let's bring this down. We want to use
it as a Track Matte for that type layer,
| | 06:03 | so it needs to be down right above it.
| | 06:06 | The next thing I want to do is to
change it into a 3D Solid so that it moves
| | 06:09 | with the type in 3D space.
| | 06:12 | So I'll click on my Switches/Modes columns and
then turn on the three Switch for that solid.
| | 06:16 | You'll notice that it jumped.
| | 06:18 | All I really need to do now is hit P
on the keyboard to bring up the position,
| | 06:22 | and I can scrub the X value left and right.
| | 06:25 | I am going to bring that X value
right over here. There we go! Excellent!
| | 06:32 | I don't need to parent these guys
up, because my type is not moving.
| | 06:35 | But if my type were going to move,
I'd want to parent this Solid layer to
| | 06:39 | that reflection type.
| | 06:40 | So I'll go ahead and do that now,
just in case I decide I want to animate
| | 06:43 | them together later.
| | 06:44 | Now this White Solid will
move with the reflective type.
| | 06:47 | The reflected layer is
now below the White Solid.
| | 06:49 | What I want to do next is
to use this as a Track Matte.
| | 06:52 | So let's switch back to the Modes
column and I'm going to click on the Track
| | 06:55 | Matte options and tell it to
be an Alpha Inverted Matte.
| | 06:59 | So that sets the White Solid up as an
Alpha Inverted Matte for that Reflection
| | 07:02 | layer and now I've got a graded reflection.
| | 07:05 | Now the cool thing about this is that I
can adjust this by simply grabbing the Y
| | 07:09 | handle on the Solid layer, and I'll hit
V on the keyboard to bring up my Move
| | 07:12 | tool, and I can just move that up and down.
| | 07:14 | You can see that I can gradate that
reflection off by just moving the position
| | 07:18 | of this Solid layer.
| | 07:20 | And that gives me a lot
of control and versatility.
| | 07:23 | So the next technique I want to show you is a
variation on this theme, but it uses a filter.
| | 07:28 | So let's bring up the floor Mirror START.
| | 07:30 | Now this is the same
composition file that we had before.
| | 07:33 | I am going to take the Blue Solid layer
and just like I did before drag it down.
| | 07:36 | Now I am going to select the type
layer and then go to Effects & Presets,
| | 07:40 | the palette here, and I can't remember
exactly what submenu the Mirror effect is under.
| | 07:44 | So I'll just type in mir and that's
going to find the Mirror effect and it was
| | 07:49 | under the Distort submenu.
| | 07:50 | So now I can drag it from this palette
right onto my Type layer, and when I do
| | 07:55 | that, I now get Mirror
controls pop-up in the effects here.
| | 07:59 | Now what I need to do is to first rotate
the mirror, and I'll rotate it 90 degrees.
| | 08:04 | I can drag it here and look,
here comes at mirror just like that.
| | 08:08 | I've done it 90 degrees
and I get this cool effect.
| | 08:10 | This can be a lot of fun.
| | 08:12 | You can put this effect on video and
you have all kinds of great fun with it.
| | 08:14 | But now I want to slide that mirror down.
| | 08:16 | So let's go to the Y value, which is
270 right now, and I just drag it down.
| | 08:20 | I can eyeball that, again, you can see
now I have a same kind of look that I had
| | 08:24 | before with the duplicated layer
except I only have that one effect and just
| | 08:28 | one layer down here.
| | 08:30 | I want to be able to gradate that
reflection off, but there isn't a control for
| | 08:33 | that in the effects here.
| | 08:35 | So I have to use that same
technique with a Solid layer.
| | 08:37 | So I'll get that same Solid
layer rather than make it again.
| | 08:40 | I've got it in the other composition.
| | 08:42 | So I am going to go to the Solid layer
here grab it, Command+C or Ctrl+C to copy
| | 08:46 | it, and then in my Mirror composition I
am going to paste it down, Command+V or
| | 08:49 | Ctrl+V, right above that layer.
| | 08:52 | Now I can set this as a Track Matte again.
| | 08:54 | It's already a 3D Solid, so I just
turn that on and set it to be an Inverted
| | 08:58 | Matte and that'll gradate off the reflection.
| | 09:01 | Now the downside of this technique is
that I don't have as much flexibility,
| | 09:04 | because the Mirror effect is linked
to that layer, anything I do to this
| | 09:09 | reflection will tend to
happen on the type layer itself.
| | 09:13 | For example, if I move this up you can see
that it gradates out the actual type layer too.
| | 09:18 | And I won't do that, Command+Z or Ctrl+Z.
So here is the two finished movies side
| | 09:23 | by side, and I am going to hit
Play on the Reflective floor.
| | 09:26 | Now this is the first technique that uses
the actual transformation of a duplicate layer.
| | 09:31 | It looks pretty good, nice reflection on
there, and it's got good movement to it
| | 09:36 | and we got a great gradient coming off there.
| | 09:39 | So it's little bit less intense from the top
of the reflection to the bottom of reflection.
| | 09:43 | Then here is the
reflective floor with the mirror.
| | 09:49 | Now these two techniques look very similar.
| | 09:52 | The advantage to the reflective
mirror is that it uses only one layer.
| | 09:56 | The disadvantage of course
is that you have less control.
| | 10:00 | The technique using the duplicate layer
transform, which is this one here, uses
| | 10:04 | more layers, but it gives you more control.
| | 10:07 | Now remember this is not
the only way to do this.
| | 10:10 | There is a lot of
variations on these techniques.
| | 10:12 | The most important thing is that the
technique that you're using should be
| | 10:16 | flexible and it should make sense for
the type of animation you're creating.
| | 10:20 | For more great After Effects courses,
check out the After Effects section on lynda.com.
| | 10:24 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 10:26 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 028 Creating a simple car animation using splines| 00:00 | Hi, Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now a spline is simply a path in the 3D world.
| | 00:10 | They can be drawn in many different
ways and they come in any shape or size.
| | 00:13 | They are crucial tool
in modeling and animation.
| | 00:17 | I am going to show you how to animate a very simple
car chase using splines in CINEMA 4D. Let's take a look!
| | 00:23 | So this is the starting file in CINEMA
4D and what I want to create is a little
| | 00:27 | two car chase scene,
| | 00:29 | that is going to come down this main
street and turn right at this intersection
| | 00:33 | and head off into the distance.
| | 00:34 | I have a camera move already set up.
| | 00:36 | Let's look through it real quick so you can
see what the camera is going to be looking at.
| | 00:39 | And you can see that it's going to
start off--our cars are going to come from
| | 00:42 | this direction and then turn right at
this corner and then head off in to the
| | 00:46 | distance, just down the street like that.
| | 00:50 | So the first step in this process is to
draw the path that I want the car to follow.
| | 00:55 | So let's get out of the camera and I'm
going to switch to the overhead view.
| | 00:59 | Good rule of thumb when you are drawing
splines is you always want to draw them
| | 01:01 | in the overhead view.
| | 01:03 | That gives Cinmea 4D a good ground
plane on which to draw the splines, so they
| | 01:07 | don't get weird points
jumping all over the place.
| | 01:09 | So let's switch over to the Top view
and you can see there is my camera right
| | 01:13 | there and that's the
intersection I need to turn right at.
| | 01:15 | So I am going to start my spine over
here and then finish drawing it down here.
| | 01:19 | The type of spine that I am going to
use is something called a B-Spline and
| | 01:23 | if you click and hold on the Spline
object, you will see that you have
| | 01:26 | several different types of free hand splines you
can draw, and then a bunch of spline primitives.
| | 01:31 | The one that I want is the B-Spline
and if you've been drawing paths in
| | 01:35 | Illustrator and Photoshop and After
Effects for a long time, you are used to
| | 01:39 | something called a Bezier Spline.
| | 01:40 | A Bezier Spline has a point with
tangent handles in either side of it.
| | 01:44 | A B-Spline draws its curves based on
triangulation of three or more points and
| | 01:48 | it's a very good way to draw animation paths.
| | 01:51 | It's very hard to put a
hard angle into a B-Spline.
| | 01:54 | That's why I like to use it for motion paths.
| | 01:56 | So the way I am going to do is I've
got my B-Spline tool selected already and
| | 01:59 | I am going to start over here, about
even with this building and I am just
| | 02:04 | going to click once.
| | 02:05 | That adds a point in to this scene.
| | 02:07 | The next time I click I get a second point.
| | 02:10 | Now it's a little bit hard to see
what's going on with this spline because we
| | 02:13 | can't actually see the spline.
It's embedded in the street.
| | 02:16 | And so, in order to be able to see
that I'm going to go to the Display and
| | 02:20 | change it to Lines.
| | 02:22 | That way I can now see the path being drawn out.
| | 02:24 | I'll change it back to the
other display mode in just a moment.
| | 02:28 | So there is my intersection, so
let's draw out a path real quick.
| | 02:31 | I am going to click about four or
five times and I get to the corner, and
| | 02:35 | I will draw a path right there.
| | 02:36 | It turns the corner.
| | 02:38 | I am going to have to
refine that curve a little bit.
| | 02:40 | I don't want my car to cut the turn and I am
going to draw it down into the distance,
| | 02:44 | and that's probably good enough right there.
| | 02:46 | So once you've got those points drawn
out you need to refine it a bit, and I am
| | 02:50 | going to switch to my Rectangular
Selection tool and the Rectangular Selection
| | 02:54 | tool allows me to click and draw a
rectangle around points, and I am going to
| | 02:58 | zoom-in a bit so I can see my curves.
| | 03:01 | I think the other thing I'll do, is I am
going to turn my Shading mode back on again.
| | 03:05 | So if I go to Display and turn it to
Gouraud Shading, and that is a French word
| | 03:09 | I'm pretty sure and I always butcher it.
| | 03:11 | So if you speak French out there,
please forgive my pronunciation.
| | 03:15 | I am going to select that and now I can
see my street again, my purple street.
| | 03:20 | I can't see the spline yet, so what I
am going to do is select all the points.
| | 03:24 | I select just a few and then hit Command+A
or Ctrl+A and now I can switch into the
| | 03:28 | right-hand view, and I am going
to raise the spline up just a bit.
| | 03:33 | A great way to do that is using
the coordinate manager down here.
| | 03:36 | If I select this value here, the Y value
that's showing right now represents the
| | 03:41 | position in space of the points that I
have selected, not the access point of
| | 03:46 | the spline object, but the
points that I have selected.
| | 03:48 | If I make these points, say 0.1 on the Y
axis and hit Return, they should jump
| | 03:53 | up just outside the floor.
| | 03:55 | Now they're no longer exactly in the
same location as the floor, they're just a hair
| | 03:59 | above it, and now I can
see my path much easier.
| | 04:01 | Now I will switch into the Top view and
zoom-in a bit and that's not quite enough.
| | 04:06 | As you notice in the Perspective view I
can see it easily, but in the Top view I
| | 04:11 | can't see it very well at all, and I
have my Display mode set to Gouraud Shading
| | 04:14 | there as well. And I am going to raise it up
just a bit more. Let's go 0.5. There we go.
| | 04:21 | Now I can see that.
| | 04:22 | I may want to drop it down again a bit.
| | 04:24 | My car may appear to be floating on
the street, but for now that'll be good
| | 04:27 | because I can at least see my spline.
| | 04:29 | So what I want to do is give the
impression that the car is going to be swerving
| | 04:32 | a bit, as it rounds this corner.
| | 04:34 | I don't want to have it
pull it in such a clean line.
| | 04:37 | I want to have it little more erratic.
| | 04:38 | So I will take this path and I am
going to use this axis band right here to
| | 04:42 | move that point over.
| | 04:43 | So you see that now he is going to swing
in a little bit and then swing out wide
| | 04:47 | and then come out around the corner this way.
| | 04:50 | Let's bring that path out here and then
I'll drag that point out over here, so
| | 04:55 | that it comes a little bit wide.
| | 04:57 | This car is a little bit more frantic.
He is going to be the one being
| | 05:00 | chased, and now I can take that
point and bring in just a little bit.
| | 05:05 | So he's going to swing in wide around
the corner and then come back into the
| | 05:09 | middle of the street a little bit.
| | 05:10 | So that's a pretty decent
spline for a starting point.
| | 05:13 | Now we can make our car move along it.
| | 05:16 | So let's go to the DUMMY CAR 1.
| | 05:18 | DUMMY CAR 1, let me explain the hierarchy here.
| | 05:21 | I've got a DUMMY CAR 1 and let's
switch to the Perspective view.
| | 05:24 | So what I've got going on is this dummy car;
| | 05:26 | it's just a very simple polygon object
that looks kind of like a car and it's got
| | 05:30 | the wheels and everything in it,
but none of these parts move.
| | 05:33 | This is a placeholder car that I create
depending on a type of car that I need
| | 05:36 | for the project, but this placeholder
car has all of the right proportions of a
| | 05:40 | real car and it makes it
very easy to animate with.
| | 05:43 | I get very quick response in the scene
and I can quickly put my animation in and
| | 05:46 | then put the real car in and
fine tune the animation later on.
| | 05:50 | So this dummy car now needs
something called an Align to Spline tag.
| | 05:54 | That's what's going to allow
us to animate along the spline.
| | 05:57 | So I am going to right click on DUMMY
CAR 1, and then I will go to CINEMA 4D Tags
| | 06:01 | and then do Align to Spline.
| | 06:03 | Do not use Align to Path, that's
something different, we want Align to Spline.
| | 06:07 | When I add that, nothing happens.
| | 06:09 | That's because the Align to Spline tag
needs a spline to behave correctly, and
| | 06:14 | this is the path that we
are going to put it into.
| | 06:16 | So we take our spline and drag it
right into there and our car is going to
| | 06:21 | disappear from this view. Boom! It's gone.
| | 06:23 | Where it went to was the very end of the
spline and it's actually the starting point.
| | 06:29 | In CINEMA 4D, splines have a direction
and that direction is based on where you
| | 06:33 | drew the first point.
| | 06:34 | In our case, we started our spline over here,
so this is the starting point for the spline.
| | 06:38 | Now in order to get that car to move
along the spline I have to keyframe, or in
| | 06:43 | this case, I am just going to
scrub it for now, this Position value.
| | 06:46 | And watch what happens as I scrub it.
| | 06:48 | You see the car moves along the path.
| | 06:50 | Let's back out a little bit
so we can see what's going on.
| | 06:52 | As I scrub this value, there goes my
car around the corner, but you notice it's
| | 06:56 | kind of moving funny.
| | 06:57 | It's not exactly following the path
and that's because I need to turn on one
| | 07:01 | more option, the Tangential option.
| | 07:03 | And when I do that, boom!
| | 07:05 | The car lines up and the Tangential
has an Axis mode, and you notice I drew my
| | 07:09 | car with the front of the car on
these positive Z axis and that's the first
| | 07:14 | option for Tangential.
| | 07:15 | We can switch it to others if we need
to, but I drew my car in positive Z so
| | 07:19 | that's what we are going to use.
| | 07:20 | Now when I scrub the Position value,
it will follow that path nicely.
| | 07:26 | It goes right around the
corner just the way we want it to.
| | 07:29 | So now we need to set up some
keyframes to make our car move and I'm going to
| | 07:33 | start off by setting Position keyframes.
| | 07:36 | I am at time 0 right now.
| | 07:37 | I will hold down the Ctrl key and click
on the Position property and that sets
| | 07:41 | to keyframe for that.
| | 07:42 | Now let's go forward in time to frame
90, the end of the animation sequence, and
| | 07:47 | I'm going to set this
Position keyframe to be 100%.
| | 07:51 | So I change it to 100.
| | 07:52 | It changes yellow, that tells
me that I've changed that value.
| | 07:55 | Hold down the Ctrl key and set another keyframe.
| | 07:58 | Now when I hit Play, I
will rewind back and hit Play.
| | 08:00 | There is my car going around the corner. Nice!
| | 08:05 | So that car going around the
corner is the basis of the animation.
| | 08:09 | You notice that the car, when it rounds
the corner though, it doesn't have a lot
| | 08:13 | of personality to it.
| | 08:14 | It just kind of follows the path and goes.
| | 08:16 | I want a little bit of a skid, a
slide when it goes around the corner.
| | 08:19 | So I need to set some keyframes on
the objects that make up that car.
| | 08:22 | Now if you look at the car hierarchy
I have something called a car 1 steer.
| | 08:26 | This car 1 steer is the object we are
going to keyframe to animate the direction
| | 08:30 | that the car is pointing in.
| | 08:32 | If I select that object I'm going
to scrub the Rotation H parameter.
| | 08:37 | As I do that you can see my car
changes directions and that's going to allow
| | 08:40 | me to do that slide.
| | 08:42 | I like to do these little
sound effects when I do that.
| | 08:44 | It makes it a lot more fun, but you
can see that the car has a really nice
| | 08:47 | dynamic motion to it.
| | 08:49 | So what I want to do is I am going to
set that to 0 and I want to set a keyframe
| | 08:53 | just before the car hits the curve.
| | 08:55 | So right about here and I'm going to go
to the Rotation and hold down the Ctrl
| | 09:01 | key and click on the dots to make them red.
| | 09:05 | Now I can advance forward through the
sequence, and right about here is where I
| | 09:10 | want the car to start to swing out
again and so I am going to add just a little
| | 09:14 | bit of movement outward,
right there, and it's about -13.
| | 09:19 | I will Ctrl+Click again and then I'm
going to go forward in time and I want it to
| | 09:23 | swing out much farther there.
| | 09:25 | So I am going to go -13 out to
about there, -43 or so, Ctrl+Click.
| | 09:30 | And then as it goes down the path
I want it to straighten out again.
| | 09:34 | So right around frame 55 or so, I
will set this to the 0 again and then
| | 09:39 | Ctrl+Click to set a keyframe.
| | 09:41 | Now I could fishtail it back and forth
again, but I think you get the point.
| | 09:45 | So now when we hit play--I will rewind and
hit play again, it goes round the curve nicely.
| | 09:52 | It has a nice little swing out.
| | 09:53 | It's a little bit fast, but we could
slow that down by moving the keyframes
| | 09:56 | around in the timeline.
| | 09:58 | I think you get the idea at this point.
| | 10:00 | So the next thing we need to
do is to create the second car.
| | 10:03 | The second car is going to be a
derivative of the first car, so we don't need to
| | 10:06 | do that operation all over again.
| | 10:08 | All we really need to do is to
duplicate the parts that make up that first car.
| | 10:11 | So let's go to the spline, and first thing I
want to do is add a Null object to the scene.
| | 10:15 | I am going to group everything under this.
| | 10:16 | I will call this Null object Car
Group 1, or 01 actually. I like to put 0 on
| | 10:23 | there, and then I am going to call
this one Car Spline 1, Car Spline 01, and
| | 10:30 | then let's take the DUMMY CAR and Car Spline
01 and make them children of the car group.
| | 10:35 | Now this entire group if I
duplicate it, watch what happens.
| | 10:39 | I'll hold down the Ctrl key and I am
going to drag that down and it changes the
| | 10:43 | name to .1, but it now gives me two cars.
| | 10:46 | Now they're exactly in the same
location as one another right now.
| | 10:50 | So I need to adjust their position.
| | 10:52 | The way I am going to do that
is by moving the spline around.
| | 10:55 | Before I do anything else
I want to change the name.
| | 10:57 | So let's change this name to be Car 02.
| | 11:00 | Change that Car spline to Car 02 spline,
and then change DUMMY CAR 1 to DUMMY CAR 2.
| | 11:04 | Now I've got a clean hierarchy
here with two different names.
| | 11:09 | Let's select the Car spline
and switch to the Top view.
| | 11:13 | Now watch what happens.
| | 11:14 | I am going to back out just a little
bit so I can see my whole spline and I am
| | 11:19 | going to draw a rectangle around these points.
| | 11:20 | I am going to move them just out of the way,
and look you can see that I've got two cars.
| | 11:23 | This little white dot is a car here.
| | 11:25 | I'm going to just offset their splines
a little bit, so that they are not going
| | 11:30 | in exactly the same path around that turn.
| | 11:34 | That's very important to make sure
that they do not look exactly the same.
| | 11:37 | You don't want them to be slot cars, they
want to feel more realistic, and two cars
| | 11:41 | wouldn't take exactly the
same line around a curve.
| | 11:45 | Now bring this out here and take
these guys and move time right over here.
| | 11:50 | That's pretty good.
| | 11:52 | And now when I scrub through the
timeline, let's zoom in a little bit on that,
| | 11:58 | you can see that we have got two cars
that are right next to each other and they
| | 12:01 | are a little too close together.
| | 12:02 | There are some overlaps and stuff still,
but we are going to move the keyframes
| | 12:05 | around and they cut around the
corner and head off into the distance.
| | 12:11 | And you notice my camera
doesn't quite line up with that.
| | 12:14 | We are going to have to fix
that in just a second too.
| | 12:16 | So we want to adjust the keyframes on the
camera in order to make it line up perfectly.
| | 12:21 | So now what we need to
do is to adjust the keyframes.
| | 12:24 | Let's switch over to the timeline.
| | 12:26 | I will go to Window and then go to
Timeline and that brings up the timeline
| | 12:30 | where I can manipulate
the keyframes on this car.
| | 12:33 | So right now we are looking at the F-
Curves for the scene and I need to look at
| | 12:37 | the keyframes for right now.
| | 12:38 | So let's hit the Spacebar with our
mouse over this window and then hit the
| | 12:41 | letter H on the keyboard; that frames
up and shows us all of the keyframes.
| | 12:45 | For the moment I don't want to touch
the camera parent keyframes, I
| | 12:49 | want to mess with the car keyframes.
| | 12:51 | I am going to do that by
changing the keyframes on the objects.
| | 12:55 | Now you notice that these objects, all
four of them have the same names, the
| | 12:59 | same groupings of names.
| | 13:00 | What I need to do is to go in and
change the names of the objects.
| | 13:04 | Car 1 steer and car 2 steer; this one
needs to have the name car 2 steer and you
| | 13:10 | will notice that when I change that,
it changes the name of it here.
| | 13:13 | The Align to Spline tag needs to
have its name changed to under the Basic
| | 13:17 | properties for the tag.
| | 13:18 | I'll call it Car 1 Align to Spline.
| | 13:23 | Actually, I'm sorry that's Car 2.
| | 13:26 | Let's change that to be Car 2 Align to Spline.
| | 13:28 | And then on the other Align to Spline, I will
change this to be Car 1, Car 1 Align to Spline.
| | 13:33 | Let's add a little space in there. There we go.
| | 13:37 | Now we've got the names that make
sense and I can see which one is which.
| | 13:40 | I want Car 1 to be ahead of Car 2,
| | 13:42 | so I want its keyframes to happen just
a little bit quicker and sooner in time.
| | 13:46 | So let's grab those keyframes.
| | 13:48 | I held on the Shift key to grab both
tracks and I'm going to move those cars and
| | 13:54 | forward in time just a bit.
| | 13:55 | So now when I scrub through, you
notice that the cars are suddenly behind
| | 13:59 | each other, and as I go back to time 0
and scrub through the piece, there's Car
| | 14:05 | 2 behind it and they can swing out
and then go around the corner and then
| | 14:09 | come back in again.
| | 14:11 | Now what I need to do is to adjust the
keyframes on the camera and so that they
| | 14:15 | capture the moment.
| | 14:16 | So I want the camera to follow the cars
around a turn and so this is the point
| | 14:19 | where they hit the turn,
| | 14:21 | and in my CAM Parent, these are the
keyframes that represent the camera turning
| | 14:25 | to follow the actions.
| | 14:26 | So if I take these keyframes right here
and move them to the left, there we go.
| | 14:32 | Now my camera will follow that action much
more closely, boom, and the cars leave the frame.
| | 14:38 | Let's double check something.
| | 14:39 | I am going to close the timeline up,
switch back to the Camera view, and then
| | 14:43 | switch to the Perspective view and now
when we scrub through, there's our cars
| | 14:49 | rounding in the corner, boom, and
then they go off into the distance.
| | 14:52 | Now you can keep tweaking these values
to refine the animation more, but I think
| | 14:56 | you get the picture.
| | 14:57 | An important thing to remember here is
that the splines make your animation a
| | 15:00 | lot more manageable.
| | 15:01 | Let's hit play and see
what our action looks like.
| | 15:03 | You can see the cars coming at the
camera and right around the corner there.
| | 15:07 | That looks really cool.
| | 15:08 | These animation paths give us tons of
ability to change the character of the
| | 15:12 | animation with just a few clicks.
| | 15:14 | Using splines for motion paths can
save you a lot of time and give you more
| | 15:17 | control when you are animating.
| | 15:19 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D check
out the CINEMA 4D section on lynda.com.
| | 15:23 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 15:25 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 029 Working with XRefs to simplify your workflow| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and
welcome to Design in Motion;
| | 00:03 | the weekly series where we explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:06 | Today we are going to talk about
something called an XRef in CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:11 | Working flexibly and efficiently is
really the only way to get your motion
| | 00:14 | graphics projects done on time and
still be able to react to client changes.
| | 00:19 | Recently, I had to create a scene with
race cars chasing through a cityscape.
| | 00:24 | About halfway through the project, the
director decided that he wanted to have
| | 00:27 | different cars in the scene.
| | 00:29 | XRefs saved my life.
| | 00:31 | They helped me and they can help you too.
| | 00:33 | An XRef is a special object in CINEMA 4D
that points at an external C4D scene file.
| | 00:39 | What that allows you to do is to keep
that scene file updated, and then any
| | 00:43 | place that XRef uses it, gets
automatically updated as well, and makes a
| | 00:48 | very flexible workflow.
| | 00:49 | Let me show you what that means.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to go to the Create menu down
to the XRef submenu and there is an Add
| | 00:55 | XRef command but I don't like to do
that, I prefer to add it manually.
| | 00:58 | So I am going to add in an XRef.
| | 01:00 | This red icon here indicates that
the XRef has no reference to it.
| | 01:04 | So under the Object Properties for the
XRef, I am going to tell it to look at a
| | 01:08 | scene file, and that's this Reference field.
| | 01:10 | So I'll click on the Load Scene File
button and then I'll navigate to white sedan.
| | 01:15 | If I open the white sedan, I now have
this white sedan here, and it looks like
| | 01:20 | everything is a regular object in
CINEMA 4D except that this XRef points back
| | 01:25 | at that white sedan.
| | 01:26 | If I click on the XRef and go to the
Object Properties and hit Open for Edit,
| | 01:31 | it's going to open up that white sedan model.
| | 01:34 | If I make a change to this white sedan,
let's say I will add a cube to the
| | 01:38 | scene, and I'll put that cube
right on top of the car. There we go!
| | 01:45 | Now there is a big block
sitting on top of my car.
| | 01:48 | I am going to save, Command+S, and if I
switch back over to my Untitled document
| | 01:52 | that I was just working out of, it
looks like nothing has changed here.
| | 01:55 | But if I click the Reload button, look
at that, the Reload button loaded in that
| | 02:00 | change I made in the scene.
| | 02:02 | If I go back to the scene and delete
the cube, go back to the white sedan, and
| | 02:06 | select the cube and delete it, and
then save, Command+S or Ctrl+S on the PC.
| | 02:12 | I'll go back to my Untitled
document and reload it again.
| | 02:15 | That cube disappears.
| | 02:16 | So any changes I make in that scene file
get updated wherever I am using the XRef.
| | 02:21 | So let's take a look at that
in a practical application.
| | 02:24 | So I've got a car chase here and let
me just rewind back to 0 and hit play.
| | 02:28 | Let's bring the Perspective view full-screen.
| | 02:30 | When I hit play on this, I've got a
really cool looking car chase here.
| | 02:35 | Only problem is, is that the director
has now told me that instead of two white
| | 02:39 | sedans, they want a red
hatchback being chased by a green van.
| | 02:43 | So I have got to swap the cars out.
| | 02:45 | Well, the XRef process makes
that really quick and easy.
| | 02:48 | The way I have built my hierarchy here
is that I have a dummy car object that's
| | 02:52 | being animated along the spline, and
underneath that is a second null object
| | 02:56 | that is controlling the direction that car is
facing and then under that, I've got my XRef.
| | 03:02 | Now that may seem excessive for a
parenting arrangement, but that means that
| | 03:06 | I can move this XRef, or swap it out,
and not affect any of the keyframes
| | 03:10 | because the only objects that have
keyframes on them are the car 1 steer, or
| | 03:14 | the car 2 steer, and then the Align to
Spline tags. Those are the only places
| | 03:18 | that have keyframes.
| | 03:20 | That means I can move this around and it
won't affect my animation or I can swap
| | 03:23 | it out entirely and my
animation will not change.
| | 03:26 | That's the flexible part.
| | 03:28 | So let's change the first car to the
red hatchback that the director asked for.
| | 03:31 | So I am going to go to the XRef,
select the Load Image button, and navigate
| | 03:35 | to the Desktop to my Xrefs folder and I
will grab the red hatchback, and then hit Open.
| | 03:40 | It's going to ask me, are you sure
you want to update it? Yes I do.
| | 03:44 | When I do that, you can see now
that's changed to a red hatchback.
| | 03:48 | My animation is still valid.
| | 03:49 | There goes the red hatchback.
| | 03:51 | I kind of like that one.
| | 03:52 | Now, the second car needs to be a green van.
| | 03:55 | So let's find the XRef for the second car.
| | 03:57 | That's in this hierarchy right here.
| | 03:59 | When I select this, and I click the
Load Scene file button, I will navigate to
| | 04:03 | my Desktop to my Xrefs folder, and I
will grab the green van out of there.
| | 04:06 | When I hit Open, I tell it, Yes, I
want to update that green van, and boom!
| | 04:11 | There is the green van.
| | 04:14 | I'll deselect my objects by
clicking over in the Object Manager.
| | 04:17 | Now when I hit Play, I've got the
same animation with two different cars.
| | 04:21 | That's exactly what the director wanted and
it took me no time at all because I used XRefs.
| | 04:27 | XRefs truly are a game changer when
it comes to having a flexible workflow.
| | 04:31 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 04:35 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 04:37 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 030 Using constraint tags to control the camera| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:03 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | In the 3D world, a constraint allows you
to create relationships between objects
| | 00:11 | that aren't in the same hierarchy.
| | 00:13 | This gives you incredibly powerful tools for
controlling the camera in CINEMA 4D. Let's take a look.
| | 00:19 | In CINEMA 4D the idea of a constraint
is expressed through a tag and that tag
| | 00:23 | can be applied to objects and that
tag will allow you to link the position,
| | 00:27 | scale, rotation or the direction
of an object to another object.
| | 00:31 | There's lots of different
ways you can create constraints.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to right click on the Cone and
in the Character Tags, I'll add a Constraint.
| | 00:38 | It looks like a little pushpin.
| | 00:40 | Now nothing happened initially.
| | 00:41 | That's because I've to turn on the
Constraint tag, and the one I'm going to turn
| | 00:46 | on is the PSR and that stands
for Position, Scale, and Rotation.
| | 00:50 | There are many different types of
constraints I can create, but we're going to
| | 00:53 | focus just on this one today and link
the position of this cone to the positions
| | 00:57 | of these other letters.
| | 00:58 | So I'll turn on PSR and that jumps me
right to the PSR options and I can now see
| | 01:03 | the properties for Position,
Scale, and Rotation constraining.
| | 01:07 | The Target field is where I want to tell the
tag what objects should this cone be linked to.
| | 01:13 | You can see that Position and
Rotation are already activated for this tag.
| | 01:17 | So when I drop my first letter,
which is going to be the letter, A, into
| | 01:20 | that Target field, the cone is going
to jump from its current location to
| | 01:24 | the position of the A.
| | 01:25 | So I drag the A right into that field
and you can see my cone did indeed jump
| | 01:30 | and if I select the A and move it
around, even though they're not linked
| | 01:36 | together visibly here in the Object
Manager, the cone is still moving with the
| | 01:41 | A no matter where it goes.
| | 01:43 | Let's undo to get that
back to its regular position.
| | 01:46 | Now back in the tag, I now have the
ability to add in a second target.
| | 01:51 | So I'm going to click the Add button
and the Add button allows me to add a
| | 01:55 | target and now I've got two targets here.
| | 01:57 | Let's add in the B and when I do that,
the cone jumps to exactly the middle of
| | 02:04 | these two letters and that's
because of these sliders here.
| | 02:07 | Let's enlarge this window just a bit,
and this slider controls the Weight, the
| | 02:11 | priority of the target relationship here.
| | 02:15 | And if I drag this slider for the A Target
to the left to make it 0, watch what happens.
| | 02:20 | The cone is going to go from here over to here.
| | 02:23 | And I drag that down.
| | 02:25 | you see the cone goes to B. If I drag
that back again, it splits the difference.
| | 02:30 | Two 100 percents will average out the 50%
and that's what's happening here.
| | 02:34 | Now the really cool thing about this
relationship is that wherever I move the A,
| | 02:39 | the cone will always stay exactly half
of the distance and so if I grab this
| | 02:44 | handle and move it around, the cone
stays exactly 50% of the distance from the A
| | 02:51 | to B, and that's a really magical thing.
| | 02:53 | It allows you to do a lot
of really cool relationships.
| | 02:55 | Constraint tags were originally invented
for building character rigs, but we can
| | 02:59 | use them to control our camera.
| | 03:01 | Let's move over to an example file and
I'm going to go to the Window menu and
| | 03:05 | I've got it open already.
| | 03:06 | it's called Car-Chase START, and what
I've got going on here is a car chase
| | 03:10 | that is traveling along this road
and two cars travel around the corner,
| | 03:15 | skiding along the way.
| | 03:17 | And what I want to be able to do is
have a camera move that goes from the
| | 03:20 | helicopter and then jumps down from
the helicopter and links to the first car
| | 03:26 | and that is something I
could not do with keyframes.
| | 03:29 | I have to do that with
constraints. It's the only way.
| | 03:32 | So the first step in this process is
to look at the controls that I have setup
| | 03:36 | in this scene file.
| | 03:37 | I have in my helicopter a camera mount
null and that null is simply a Null Object
| | 03:43 | that's placed inside the helicopter.
| | 03:44 | Let's zoom in here a little bit, and
it's right inside the helicopter and that
| | 03:48 | will become the location that the
camera will start from and then leave on its
| | 03:52 | way to the other car.
| | 03:54 | Now let's look at the car objects and
we'll zoom in on the car, let's bring them
| | 03:57 | forward into the scene.
| | 03:58 | And these are just simple dummy cars
that I've built for this scene file, but
| | 04:02 | they're rigged in a way that makes it
really easy to swap out the car body.
| | 04:05 | Within each of the cars is a cam
position null, and that cam position null
| | 04:10 | will become the location of the
camera will try to jump to during the
| | 04:14 | animation of the sequence.
| | 04:16 | So I've got a null in the helicopter,
I have a null in the hero car, now I've to
| | 04:20 | create the relationship between the
camera and these Null Objects so that it can
| | 04:24 | jump from one to the other.
| | 04:26 | So let's back up here a little bit so
I can see the whole scene file, and the
| | 04:32 | way I have my camera setup, I have
something called a Camera Constrainer and
| | 04:35 | this null is setup as the parent of
the Camera Parent and it allows me to move
| | 04:41 | the camera from one location to
another and still have the Camera Parent free
| | 04:45 | to move around underneath that null, so it
gives me a lot of control and flexibility.
| | 04:49 | So let's start off by right-clicking
on Camera Constrainer and going to
| | 04:53 | Character Tags and then doing
Constraint, and the Constraint tag now shows up on
| | 04:58 | the Camera Constrainer and there's that pushpin.
| | 05:00 | Let's raise this up just a bit and I'm
going to activate PSR and within the tag,
| | 05:06 | I don't need Rotation in this case.
| | 05:08 | I only want to activate Position.
| | 05:10 | So I'm going to turn Rotation off.
| | 05:12 | And then in the first Target field,
I'm going to drop in the helicopter
| | 05:16 | camera mount, and now you'll notice my camera
jumps right up to the position of the helicopter.
| | 05:22 | The next thing I want to do is to add
a second target and then deactivate the
| | 05:26 | Rotation for that as well.
| | 05:28 | Now for this one, I want to
add in the Car Cam position.
| | 05:32 | That is the location I
want the camera to jump to.
| | 05:34 | So when I add that null into the
target field, the camera will now split
| | 05:39 | the difference between those two
locations, and you watch as I scrub
| | 05:42 | through the animation,
| | 05:43 | the camera is going to be moving
exactly half the distance between the Null
| | 05:47 | Object in the helicopter and
the Null Object in the first car.
| | 05:49 | If I adjust the balance between those,
I can get the camera to stick to one of
| | 05:53 | the other and that's what we're
going to keyframing is this Weight value.
| | 05:56 | So let's bring the car target value
to 0 and that locks our camera to the
| | 06:01 | helicopter and then let's go and
forward in time to the point where we want
| | 06:05 | the camera to jump.
| | 06:06 | So we're going to have it jump from the
helicopter somewhere right about frame
| | 06:09 | 45 or so, and I want to set a
keyframe for each of these Weight values.
| | 06:14 | So I'll hold down the Ctrl key, I
selected both of them by hitting Ctrl and
| | 06:18 | clicking on the word Weight.
| | 06:19 | I'll hold down the Ctrl key and
change that black circle to a red dot.
| | 06:23 | Now if I move forward in time, I
want the camera to drop down after the
| | 06:27 | car turned the corner.
| | 06:28 | Let's pan this out a little bit so
we can see exactly what's happening.
| | 06:33 | So about frame 60 or so, I'm going to
switch these values, and as I switch these
| | 06:40 | values, the camera will now jump.
| | 06:42 | Now it jumped very harshly right there,
but you'll see when we keyframe it, it's
| | 06:46 | going to jump smoothly.
| | 06:47 | So if I hold down the Ctrl key and
change these yellow circles to red dots, now
| | 06:51 | I've got keyframes for those
values and watch what happens.
| | 06:55 | As I scrub through the animation, the
camera will now start moving right to that
| | 07:00 | target car and it locks itself on the
target car as the car is moving, and this
| | 07:07 | is something that you
could not do with keyframes.
| | 07:09 | This constraint tag really allows you
tons of control and flexibility for your scene.
| | 07:14 | In order to look through the
camera I'm going to switch my layout.
| | 07:17 | I have a custom layout I'll set up for this.
| | 07:20 | I'll go from my Layout button and
change it to Standard w-Extra View and this
| | 07:24 | Standard w-Extra View gives me two windows.
| | 07:26 | I'll just resize the window a little
bit just to get those to redraw correctly,
| | 07:30 | and you can see now I'm looking through
the camera, the actual camera object in
| | 07:34 | this view, and that is indicated by
the Active Camera icon right here.
| | 07:39 | I have this view port set up as the
Render view, and now I can look through that
| | 07:42 | camera and as I scrub through the
animation, I start on the helicopter and then
| | 07:46 | drop down right to the car as
it rounds the corner. Boom!
| | 07:51 | And there's my car, and the camera
position right now is dead even with the
| | 07:56 | ground and that's the great
thing about this camera parent.
| | 07:58 | I can go in here and move this value
around and adjust the position, so I can
| | 08:02 | take the camera position and raise it up
just a bit so it's not in the asphalt anymore.
| | 08:06 | It's just even with the headlights
of the car, and then I can adjust the Z
| | 08:11 | position of the camera to control
just how close the camera is to the car.
| | 08:15 | That's pretty much it for how you
control the camera with the constraint.
| | 08:18 | There is lots of variations on this
technique you can do and there is also lots
| | 08:22 | of subtleties you can add to the camera
movement by keyframing the camera parent
| | 08:25 | and the camera itself.
| | 08:27 | Take a look at the end example file
that's with the project files and you'll
| | 08:30 | see just what I mean.
| | 08:31 | I've keyframed the camera and done some
subtle movements on the F-Curves to get
| | 08:35 | the smooth response.
| | 08:36 | This kind of control is an essential
tool for capturing intense and dynamic
| | 08:40 | action, and it will open up a
whole world of possibilities for your
| | 08:44 | animation projects.
| | 08:45 | For more on working with CINEMA 4D,
check out the CINEMA 4D section of lynda.com.
| | 08:49 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 08:51 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 031 Creating motion blur in After Effects| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here!
| | 00:01 | Welcome to Design in Motion, the
weekly series where we explore important
| | 00:04 | fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:06 | In this edition we're going to take a
look at motion blur in After Effects and
| | 00:09 | how it can be used to make your compositions
more interesting and realistic. Let's get started.
| | 00:14 | Now motion blur is an artifact that
was first experienced in motion picture
| | 00:19 | cameras that used film footage.
| | 00:21 | A motion picture camera has something
called a shutter in it that it used to
| | 00:26 | control how much light gets
to the film back of the camera.
| | 00:29 | While that shutter is open, if an
objects moves within the frame, then
| | 00:32 | that object is blurred.
| | 00:34 | Everything that's not moving
in the frame remains crisp.
| | 00:37 | That artifact is called motion blur.
| | 00:39 | It's a characteristic of video cameras
and film recorders and it is something
| | 00:44 | that we've all grown accustomed to seeing.
| | 00:46 | Computer animation software, like
After Effects or Cinema 4D, do not actually
| | 00:51 | produce that artifact naturally.
| | 00:53 | The programmers of them had
to put it in there for us.
| | 00:57 | That's actually a good thing, because
it allows us to control how much motion
| | 01:01 | blur we have, or if
we have motion blur at all.
| | 01:03 | There are times where you don't want to have it.
| | 01:05 | In After Effects, a motion blur
is kind of a two-step process.
| | 01:08 | Now I have a very simple composition
here and this is a simple shape layer of a
| | 01:13 | square moving across the
screen from left to right.
| | 01:15 | I'm going to do a RAM Preview by
hitting 0 on the numeric keypad.
| | 01:20 | As you can see, the square is moving
from left to right across the frame
| | 01:23 | just fine, but as it moves, there's
a crispness to the motion that just
| | 01:27 | screams computer-generated.
| | 01:30 | In reality, all of us know that this
was generated in a computer, but we still
| | 01:34 | want it to feel very natural and realistic,
and that's where motion blur comes in.
| | 01:38 | Now I've got another composition here.
| | 01:40 | It's the exact same comp with a
square moving across from left to right.
| | 01:44 | What I'm going to do in this composition
though is I'm going to activate motion blur.
| | 01:48 | Now activating motion blur in
After Effects is a two-step process.
| | 01:51 | Now step one is to click on the layer
that you want to activate motion blur for.
| | 01:55 | You don't actually have to click on the layer;
| | 01:58 | it's just something I like to do,
because it allows me to trace visually
| | 02:01 | across the screen to the Switches Column,
where you're going to actually commit step one.
| | 02:05 | Step one is to activate the
motion blur switch for that layer.
| | 02:09 | And you'll notice when I click on
that button, you'll see that the word
| | 02:12 | motion blur appears.
| | 02:13 | That's to remind me that
I've turned on motion blur.
| | 02:15 | That is not enough.
| | 02:17 | If I were to do a RAM Preview right
now, I wouldn't see anything happening.
| | 02:20 | So in order to see the motion blur
visible on the comp, I have to tell After
| | 02:24 | Effects that I want to
actually preview that motion blur.
| | 02:27 | And I do that by turning on this
switch right here and you'll see that the
| | 02:31 | little pop up says Enables
Motion Blur for all layers.
| | 02:33 | So I'll click on that and now I can do
another RAM Preview and I'll hit 0 on
| | 02:38 | the numeric keypad.
| | 02:39 | And as my object moves across screen,
it's doing the exact same motion, but
| | 02:43 | there's now a very smooth blur
happening from frame to frame.
| | 02:48 | I'm going to stop
playback and just park on this.
| | 02:50 | Now because I've got it selected here,
you can see the wireframe for the layer,
| | 02:54 | I'll deselect that by clicking in the gray area.
| | 02:56 | And now you could see if
there's a very slight blur.
| | 02:59 | That blur is the interpolation of After
Effects calculating how far the pixels
| | 03:02 | have moved from frame to frame,
simulating that motion blur effect.
| | 03:06 | Now you can control this motion
blur in the composition settings.
| | 03:10 | Now I'll hit Command+K or Ctrl+K on the
keyboard and in the Advanced tab are the
| | 03:15 | Motion Blur settings, and
there are four settings here;
| | 03:18 | Shutter Angle and Shutter Phase, they
determine the intensity of the Motion
| | 03:23 | Blur effect, and then Samples Per Frame and
Adaptive Sample Limit determine the quality of it.
| | 03:28 | Now the Shutter Angle is
the most important one here.
| | 03:32 | This tops out at 720 degrees, but you
can use this to increase or decrease the
| | 03:37 | amount of motion blur.
| | 03:38 | I'm going to max this out at 720
degrees by just clicking and dragging all
| | 03:43 | the way at the right.
| | 03:44 | You can see here that in the Preview window,
the motion blur has gotten much more intense.
| | 03:48 | I'll hit OK here and then do another RAM
Preview by hitting 0 on the numeric keypad.
| | 03:55 | And as you see, the object moves through the
frame with much more blur. Let's park on it.
| | 04:01 | You can see that there's a bunch of steps here
in that, and that's controlled by the quality.
| | 04:05 | And if I hit Command+K again to get back
to the Composition Settings and go back
| | 04:10 | to the Advanced tab, I can
dial down the Samples Per Frame.
| | 04:13 | The Samples Per Frame and Adaptive
Sample Limit work together to control the
| | 04:17 | quality of the motion blur.
| | 04:19 | I'm going to take my Adaptive Sample
Limit and scrub it all the way down to 16
| | 04:24 | and hit OK, and you
notice that nothing happened.
| | 04:26 | That's because if I go back to the
settings here, you'll see that the Samples
| | 04:29 | Per Frame is still set at 16.
| | 04:31 | If I dial those down to the lower
limit of 2, now I start to see a very
| | 04:36 | steppy motion blur.
| | 04:37 | And there actually may be a
stylistic reason that you'd want to do it.
| | 04:40 | In practice over the years, I haven't
ever really messed with these values, but
| | 04:43 | it's there if you need it.
| | 04:45 | I'm going to turn that back up to the
default of 16 and 128; 16 for the Samples
| | 04:50 | Per Frame and 128 for the Adaptive
Sample Limit and leave my Shutter Angle at
| | 04:54 | 720, and you could see I'm now
back to that nice smooth blur.
| | 04:58 | Now the next thing I want to talk about
is the idea that not all layers in the
| | 05:02 | composition need to have this motion blur.
| | 05:05 | There are times where you may want to
make a point by having one object have
| | 05:09 | motion blur and another
object not have motion blur.
| | 05:11 | In this next type example, I've got
some layers here and I'll do a RAM Preview.
| | 05:15 | So as you can see, I have two
simple sentences here, motion blur good;
| | 05:19 | no motion blur bad.
| | 05:20 | Now there may be a time, like I said
earlier, that you'd want to have one set of
| | 05:24 | layers not have motion blur.
| | 05:25 | And that's the beauty of After Effects,
is that it's completely optional on a
| | 05:28 | layer-by-layer basis.
| | 05:30 | I'm going to turn on motion blur for
the Good layers and that's layers 3 and 4
| | 05:35 | here, and I'll activate that
motion blur by doing that.
| | 05:38 | You can see that it immediately
killed my RAM Preview for the comp.
| | 05:42 | And if I back up in time, I
still don't see the motion blur.
| | 05:46 | That's because remember, I have to
activate it here, when I turn it on.
| | 05:50 | I can now scrub through and see a
very nice smooth motion blur for that.
| | 05:55 | If I do a RAM Preview, I've got
motion blur good, no motion blur bad.
| | 06:00 | Let's go ahead and crank up that motion
blur so that we get a really strong effect.
| | 06:04 | I'm going to hit Command+K or Ctrl+K
on the keyboard to bring up the
| | 06:08 | Composition Settings and go the
Advanced tab and I'll crank that Shutter Angle
| | 06:12 | up to 720, which is the max.
| | 06:14 | And you can see I have a much more
intense Motion Blur effect, and let's do
| | 06:18 | another RAM Preview.
| | 06:20 |
| | 06:27 | So as you can see in this example, the
motion blur good layers have a smoothness
| | 06:32 | to their animation that really just
isn't present in the no motion blur layers.
| | 06:36 | As you can see, motion blur has a huge
impact on the look and feel of your animations.
| | 06:41 | I have a couple of clients that don't like it,
but generally speaking, I always have it on.
| | 06:45 | For more great After Effects courses,
be sure to check out the After Effects
| | 06:48 | section on lynda.com.
| | 06:49 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 06:51 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 032 Using keyframe interpolation in After Effects to fine-tune movements| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and
welcome to Design in Motion.
| | 00:03 | The weekly series where we explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | In this edition, we are going to look at
basic keyframe interpolation in After Effects.
| | 00:11 | I know it sounds really, really scary, right?
| | 00:13 | But it's actually pretty simple and it can add
a lot of polish and style to your animations.
| | 00:19 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:20 | So After Effects has two different types
of interpolation, Temporal and Spatial,
| | 00:25 | and they both relate to
how the keyframes behave.
| | 00:28 | The Spatial Interpolation, relates to how that
object moves through the frame of a composition.
| | 00:34 | The Temporal Interpolation relates to
how data passes through a keyframe from
| | 00:39 | one value to another.
| | 00:40 | Interpolation is how the software
determines what happens in between the keyframes;
| | 00:45 | and that phrase in between is the key.
| | 00:47 | Let's take a look at this
Spatial Interpolation example.
| | 00:50 | When I select the Linear object, you
can see I have got a very hard angle here
| | 00:55 | as the information passes through a keyframe
and out the other side, and that's what
| | 00:59 | Linear does, it's a hard corner, and if I
do a RAM Preview, you can see that it's
| | 01:04 | got that nice little point right at the top.
| | 01:07 | Now the BEZIER option, if I select
that and turn those other guys off, has a
| | 01:13 | smooth interpolation as the data
passes through. When I RAM Preview that, you
| | 01:18 | can see, I have got a nice smooth arc there.
| | 01:21 | When I select the middle keyframe for
this, you will notice that I can break
| | 01:25 | that handle, that's what Bezier is all about.
| | 01:27 | It allows you to break that handle
and introduce hard edges and then smooth
| | 01:31 | outputs to the object.
| | 01:33 | I didn't mention this earlier, but you
can get to these interpolation methods by
| | 01:37 | either selecting keyframe and right-
clicking and going to Keyframe Interpolation,
| | 01:41 | or you can go to the Animation menu,
once you have the position track. If I hit
| | 01:46 | the letter P on the keyboard, bring a
position, select the word Position and go
| | 01:49 | to Animation > Keyframe Interpolation,
I am going to get to this Interpolation
| | 01:54 | menu and I am going to set that
interpolation to be Bezier and hit OK and it
| | 01:59 | doesn't change here. That's because
Bezier keyframes can take any shape.
| | 02:03 | Now if I go back in, and
select Continuous Bezier.
| | 02:06 | A Continuous Bezier looks a lot like Bezier
and AUTO Bezier looks very similar as well.
| | 02:12 | If I turn those guys on and select
them both, if I hold down Command or Ctrl
| | 02:16 | keys and I can see that as I scrub
through they look exactly the same.
| | 02:20 | Those two squares are
right on top of one another.
| | 02:22 | If I turn off the bottom, I can see
that I have just got that one guy, and if I
| | 02:27 | do a RAM Preview you can see that
it's moving on a nice smooth arc.
| | 02:29 | It looks just like Bezier.
| | 02:30 | The difference between Continuous
and AUTO is how the handles behave.
| | 02:33 | Now I don't want to belabor the point here.
| | 02:35 | Chris Meyer has a great course called
After Effect Apprentice, and Chapter 3,
| | 02:39 | goes into great detail about these
interpolation methods and I suggest you guys
| | 02:44 | go and check that out for
some more in-depth information.
| | 02:47 | So that's a really quick
overview of Spatial Interpolation.
| | 02:50 | Temporal Interpolation relates to how
data passes through the keyframes and if I
| | 02:55 | open up this Key Frames Assistant one, I
have got a same Linear motion here.
| | 02:59 | But I don't have that third keyframe.
| | 03:01 | If I hit U on the keyboard and
so I have got four keyframes here.
| | 03:05 | If I bring the size down a bit, so I can
see everything, you can see that I have
| | 03:10 | got movement here, a hold here, and
then a movement here, and so the default
| | 03:14 | method Linear is this little diamond
shape in the keyframe, and that's how you
| | 03:19 | can tell what you have got going on
here is the shape of the keyframe.
| | 03:21 | Now if I reveal the next one down which
is Ease In, the Ease In keyframe, as I hit
| | 03:27 | U on the keyboard, look a little bit different.
| | 03:29 | You can see that they have this little
cut out shape here and that phrase Ease
| | 03:34 | In is again important, because data
passes through a keyframe from left to right
| | 03:39 | and as data travels into a keyframe,
it's easing or slowing down, and as it
| | 03:44 | travels out of the keyframe, in this
case, it's going to have an hard out.
| | 03:48 | If I do a RAM Preview on that, you will
see that it hits its mark smoothly and
| | 03:52 | then takes off very hard.
| | 03:54 | Ease Out is going to be just the
opposite of that and you can see that Ease
| | 03:59 | Out hits it's mark hard and then travels smoothly out
of it, and then Easy Ease has both of them.
| | 04:11 | And last up is the Hold keyframe which
is like a switch and if I reveal those
| | 04:16 | keyframes, let's go back and twirl
these others closed and take a look at those
| | 04:19 | guys, Easy Ease. If I hit U on the
keyboard, you can see that those guys are cut
| | 04:23 | out there, and if I do a Hold keyframe,
U on the keyboard, you can see that one
| | 04:28 | has a little hard edge on it.
| | 04:29 | That's because that the
Hold keyframe is like a switch.
| | 04:32 | When I hit 0 on the keypad and get my
RAM Preview, you can see that it holds
| | 04:34 | there and when it hits the
keyframe it immediately jumps position.
| | 04:39 | Now you can tap on the keyframe while
holding down Command or Ctrl on the PC and
| | 04:44 | it will cycle through the keyframe
interpolation methods of Linear and
| | 04:48 | Continuous rasterization.
| | 04:50 | Now to get the Easy Ease you can
hit F9 on the keyboard which is a
| | 04:53 | great keyboard shortcut.
| | 04:55 | To get the Ease In, Ease Outs, you can
right-click and go to Keyframe Assistant and
| | 05:00 | do Easy Ease In or Out.
| | 05:01 | Now you can use these keyboard
shortcuts that you see here, Shift+F9 or
| | 05:05 | Command+Shift+F9, on the PC
it would be Ctrl+Shift+F9.
| | 05:08 | Now I am not a super big keyboard
shortcut maven but I think these are ones that
| | 05:12 | are definitely worth remembering.
| | 05:14 | So once again, check out Chris
Meyer's course for more detail about these
| | 05:18 | interpolation methods.
| | 05:19 | What I really want to talk
about is why they are important.
| | 05:22 | So I have an animation here, let's do a
RAM Preview on that, and so it's a smooth
| | 05:29 | animation and if I select the type
element and hit U on the keyboard, I have got
| | 05:34 | some keyframes. The Blur Length is
these two keyframes and then the Scale is
| | 05:39 | what's making the object
appear to come from infinity.
| | 05:41 | Now I have this middle keyframe set to
be Continuous Bezier and that's what's
| | 05:46 | giving me my nice smooth hit as
it passes through that keyframe.
| | 05:51 | Now that's a very smooth animation.
| | 05:53 | Let's watch what happens when I change this
back to Linear and let's do a RAM Preview again.
| | 06:00 | You will notice that it doesn't feel
very smooth and that's really what I want
| | 06:05 | to talk about is the personality that
your objects take on when you change that
| | 06:11 | keyframe interpolation.
| | 06:14 | Now if I do an Ease In on this,
let's right-click and go to Key Frame
| | 06:18 | Assistant > Easy Ease In, and now
you will see it has the same sort of
| | 06:26 | disjointed feel. It really does not
match the style of the original animation
| | 06:31 | and it doesn't feel very smooth.
| | 06:32 | Let's take a look at this one last one as well.
| | 06:34 | It's sort of the opposite situation.
| | 06:36 | I will do a RAM Preview here. BAM!
| | 06:40 | So I have got this type element that
hits and shatters this piece of glass here
| | 06:44 | and let that play through couple of times.
| | 06:50 | Boom!
| | 06:51 | Now if I select the BAM! type and hit U on the
keyboard to bring up the keyframe, you see that I've
| | 06:56 | got both Position and Scaled keyframes
on here, and those Position and Scaled
| | 07:01 | keyframes are set to Linear and that's
what's making it feel like it's hitting, BAM!,
| | 07:06 | and shattering that glass.
| | 07:07 | If I change these keyframes and make
them say Easy Ease keyframes, I will
| | 07:11 | select them both and hit F9 on the
keyboard, and change those to Easy Ease, I
| | 07:16 | can also right-click.
| | 07:17 | But now when I RAM Preview, it just
doesn't have the same kind of impact.
| | 07:24 | It feels like it's slowing down as it
hits that glass, which in fact it is, and
| | 07:29 | it really doesn't match the
intensity of the animation.
| | 07:32 | It was a lot more powerful when at the Linear
keyframe and the BAM! Type smacking that glass.
| | 07:39 | So that is the awesome power of interpolation.
| | 07:42 | It really communicates a lot of
information about your objects to your audience.
| | 07:48 | The important thing to remember is
that you're not limited to what you create
| | 07:51 | just by adding keyframes.
| | 07:52 | You can add a lot of polish to your
animations with just a few simple clicks.
| | 07:56 | That's it for this edition of Design
in Motion, keep it moving and I will
| | 07:59 | see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 033 Creating motion blur in Cinema 4D| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to Design
in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | This week we are going to
look at motion blur in Cinema 4D.
| | 00:10 | Adding motion blur to your 3D animations
can be a really huge hit on your render
| | 00:14 | times, if you want it to look right.
| | 00:16 | In general, it's a really
misunderstood process, but with a few key tips, you
| | 00:20 | can have just the right effect for
your animations. Let's take a look.
| | 00:23 | Now motion blur is an artifact that
occurs when an object moves position within a
| | 00:29 | frame while a camera shutter is open.
| | 00:32 | Now this effect was first visible
in film cameras and modern digital
| | 00:36 | cameras have been made to
reproduce this artifact, because it's very
| | 00:40 | pleasing to the eye.
| | 00:42 | Modern animation software like After
Effects and Cinema 4D, both have this
| | 00:46 | ability to mimic that effect, and once
again, it is something that is extremely
| | 00:52 | pleasing to the eye.
| | 00:53 | It makes the animation seem and feel
more polished, and so it's something that
| | 00:58 | you, generally speaking, always
want to have in your animations.
| | 01:01 | How you get it though is a little bit
of formula for some people and everybody
| | 01:05 | has got their own individual
kind of mix that they like to do.
| | 01:09 | What I want to do is show you two
different types of motion blurs in Cinema 4D
| | 01:14 | and how they function, and then a third type in
After Effects that I think works even better.
| | 01:19 | So here in Cinema 4D, I have
got a simple logo animation.
| | 01:22 | I will just scrub through it real quick.
| | 01:24 | You see it's a logo falling
back down into position here.
| | 01:28 | Let's go to Frame 2, and I am going to
go Shift+R on the keyboard to render out
| | 01:34 | the current frame in the Picture Viewer.
| | 01:37 | Let's move that Picture Viewer smaller
here and just get up like that. There we go.
| | 01:41 | And now the Picture Viewer is showing
us just that single frame and I have got
| | 01:47 | just the default Render settings on here.
| | 01:49 | Now you see that the logo has
no motion blur on it at all.
| | 01:53 | Motion blur is not on by default, and
that's the case for most 3D applications.
| | 01:56 | That's because motion blur can be a
pretty significant render hit and they
| | 02:00 | want to give you the fastest render first
and let you turn on all the bells and whistles.
| | 02:04 | So let's do that.
| | 02:05 | So there's two types of
motion blur in Cinema 4D.
| | 02:08 | There's Vector Motion Blur and then the
motion blur associated with the physical render.
| | 02:12 | So the Vector Motion Blur, I will talk
about first, and that's a two-step process.
| | 02:17 | Step one is to activate the
motion blur inside the Render Settings.
| | 02:22 | So let's bring up the Render Settings,
Command+B or Ctrl+B on the keyboard, and
| | 02:26 | we want to go to Effect and then go to
Vector Motion Blur and when we turn that
| | 02:32 | on--let's close that for a second.
| | 02:34 | And I will do a Shift+R
again, and let that render.
| | 02:38 | You can see that nothing happened.
| | 02:39 | That's because it's a two-step process.
| | 02:41 | So step one is to activate
it in the Render Settings.
| | 02:44 | Step two is to tell Cinema 4D which
object should have the blur on it, and
| | 02:49 | that's the logo parent.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to right-click on that and
go to Cinema 4D Tags and then to Motion
| | 02:57 | Blur, and when I do that now, and I
Render, Shift+R, you see that then I get a
| | 03:05 | motion blur on here, and you saw
that it happened after the fact.
| | 03:08 | That's because motion blur is
something called a post-effect.
| | 03:10 | It happens after the rendered image is
complete and the blur gets applied to the image.
| | 03:14 | And because it's a post-effect, it
doesn't really look all that good.
| | 03:19 | It doesn't look nearly as good as
the Physical Render Motion Blur.
| | 03:22 | Now there are some Quality
Settings that I haven't turned on yet.
| | 03:25 | If I go to Command+B or Ctrl+B to bring
up those Render Settings again, you can see
| | 03:29 | that the Vector Motion Blur has
some settings associated with it.
| | 03:32 | Now the Phase and Density can be used
to adjust the intensity of the Motion
| | 03:37 | Blur and also where the motion blur
sits on the object. Typically, I always
| | 03:41 | leave that at zero.
| | 03:42 | The Samples and Sample Radius
control how good the motion blur looks.
| | 03:47 | And so the Sample Radius, if I
bring that up to, say 3, and let's do
| | 03:51 | another Render, Shift+R, you can see that,
that smoothed out the motion blur quite a bit.
| | 03:58 | This was the default value right here,
and that is the Sample Radius, and you
| | 04:03 | can see it smoothed out those pixels.
| | 04:05 | If I go back to the Samples now and
let's bring those up to 128 and then do
| | 04:09 | another Render, Shift+R, it's going to
take a little bit more time to process
| | 04:13 | it, and you can see it
smoothed it out quite a bit.
| | 04:16 | So this was the default.
| | 04:17 | That is the Sample Radius increased,
and then that is the Samples increased.
| | 04:22 | And it's not a bad looking motion blur,
but there's a better looking motion
| | 04:26 | blur, and that's in the Physical Render,
which was introduced in Version 13 of Cinema 4D.
| | 04:31 | So what I am going to do is--let's
bring up a new file here to start off with.
| | 04:36 | So I've got another file here that we are
going to use to demonstrate that motion blur.
| | 04:40 | So let's close up the Picture Viewer
for a second in the Render Settings and
| | 04:42 | let's scrub forward in time.
| | 04:44 | It's the exact same animation as before
and I've just got all of the values set
| | 04:49 | to zero in the default Render Settings.
| | 04:51 | And so if we bring up the Render Settings,
you can see it's on the Standard Renderer.
| | 04:55 | Now if I do a rendering, Shift+R, you can see that
the logo looks crisp and clean.
| | 05:02 | So if I go to the Renderer and turn on
Physical Render and I select the Physical
| | 05:06 | Render options, now there's
a check box for Motion Blur.
| | 05:09 | Let's turn that on and do
another rendering, Shift+R.
| | 05:14 | Now the first thing you will notice is
that the rendering is taking a lot longer.
| | 05:20 | The next thing you will notice is
that the motion blur is burned into the image,
| | 05:24 | and it looks pretty good. It's a much
better starting point than it was with
| | 05:29 | the Vector Motion Blur.
| | 05:30 | The Vector Motion Blur, that's the
starting point for it, this is the starting
| | 05:34 | point for the Physical Render Motion Blur.
| | 05:36 | So it's already a much
nicer looking motion blur.
| | 05:39 | Now there's some Quality
Settings in here as well.
| | 05:42 | Now you can crank those quality
settings up in the Sampler, and this Motion
| | 05:47 | Subdivisions control how many
subdivisions you should get for a really complex
| | 05:52 | motion, like a helicopter blade is a
great example, where you'd would want to crank
| | 05:56 | up those motion subdivisions.
| | 05:57 | Same thing goes for
Deformation and Hair Subdivisions.
| | 05:59 | You don't need to touch those values
unless you have deformations or hair in
| | 06:03 | your scenes. You can leave those at 1.
| | 06:05 | But generally speaking, the Motion
Subdivisions of 4 is going to be fine for most cases.
| | 06:09 | And I will leave the Sampler on
Adaptive for now and turn up the Sampling
| | 06:11 | Quality from Low to High.
| | 06:14 | And then I will do another rendering.
| | 06:16 | You are going to see that we are going
to get a great looking motion blur, but
| | 06:17 | it's take a lot longer to render.
| | 06:20 | I will hit Shift+R on the keyboard and
you'll see that this is going to take a
| | 06:24 | significant amount of time to render.
| | 06:26 | It's going to take so long, in fact,
that I am going to fast forward
| | 06:28 | through this to the end.
| | 06:30 | So you can see that took nearly a
minute and 53 seconds and that's compared to
| | 06:36 | the original frame time of 8 seconds.
| | 06:38 | It took a lot longer, but as you can
see it looks much, much, nicer. Very clean
| | 06:44 | motion blur; beautiful quality.
| | 06:47 | Those two motion blurs are
great starting points in Cinema 4D.
| | 06:51 | I got to tell you though, I don't
normally ever render motion blur burned into
| | 06:55 | my images in Cinema 4D.
| | 06:57 | That's because one of the problems
with motion blur in C4D is that it's
| | 07:00 | burned into the image.
| | 07:01 | If you don't like it, you got to go all
the way back to square one and re-render
| | 07:05 | your image again, and that can be
really time-consuming and you don't always
| | 07:09 | have that luxury to go back and do that.
| | 07:11 | So what I prefer to do is use a very
special plug-in in After Effects called
| | 07:15 | ReelSmart motion blur.
| | 07:16 | Let me show you what that looks like.
| | 07:18 | So here I am in After Effects and I am
going to import a file and I have got
| | 07:23 | this For-ReelSmart motion blur.
| | 07:24 | Now this is just a clean rendering of
that animation that you saw before and I
| | 07:30 | will double-click on that.
| | 07:31 | I will just scrub through this footage,
and you can see that's just the rendered
| | 07:35 | animation as we saw it before.
| | 07:38 | So very simple, no motion blur at all.
| | 07:40 | So let's drag that on to the New Comp
icon and I will do a RAM Preview, and you
| | 07:47 | can see there's our animation. And it's okay.
| | 07:50 | It's going to look a lot
nicer with motion blur though.
| | 07:53 | So I am going to select my layer down here.
| | 07:55 | I am going to down to the Effects menu
and do RE:Vision Plug-ins > RSMB Pro.
| | 07:59 | Now I have the Pro version and it's
got a couple of things that make it a lot
| | 08:03 | nicer to use than the basic version.
| | 08:06 | So if I select RSMB Pro, you are going
to notice that I now see a motion blur on
| | 08:12 | this logo and that's the magic of this.
| | 08:15 | What it does is it looks at the change
in values of the pixels from frame to
| | 08:19 | frame, and it blurs them based on the
direction of travel, and if I scrub through
| | 08:24 | this animation, you can
see I have got a motion blur.
| | 08:27 | There are some little artifacts though;
| | 08:28 | we will talk about it in just a second.
| | 08:29 | Let's do RAM Preview.
| | 08:32 | So you can see the animation looks
pretty good, but you'll notice that there are
| | 08:38 | some spots in the animation where the
logo is traveling from off-camera on the
| | 08:43 | camera. We're getting some weird
artifacts here and there's a really cool
| | 08:47 | feature called the Track Frame.
| | 08:49 | And that Track Frame feature allows you
to tell the filter which way to analyze
| | 08:55 | the video, and so if we go and tell it
to do Previous, that's going to cleanup a
| | 09:01 | lot of that artifact and let's do
another RAM Preview, and sometimes you may have
| | 09:05 | to go both directions to
see which one looks better.
| | 09:08 | Now I have got a little bit of a
scrunching issue, because I'm looking at
| | 09:12 | not the full size here.
| | 09:14 | After Effects has given me a little bit
of chunkiness on my image, and if I go
| | 09:19 | back and just make that Full Size there,
100%. I will hit RAM Preview, you can
| | 09:25 | see that chunkiness goes away.
| | 09:29 | So as you can see, doing the motion
blur here inside of After Effects gives me
| | 09:34 | a lot more control.
| | 09:35 | It's faster and easier to use and
if the client doesn't like it or they
| | 09:40 | change their mind on something, I don't have to
go all the way back to Cinema 4D to rerender it.
| | 09:45 | So this is a much better way to work,
much more efficient and doing motion
| | 09:49 | graphics is really all about
efficiency and that's the way I like to work.
| | 09:53 | Motion blur is one of the most important
things you can do to your animations to
| | 09:57 | make them look more realistic
and less computer-generated.
| | 09:59 | I always use motion blur in my work
and it can make your work look more
| | 10:03 | professional and polished.
| | 10:04 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 10:06 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 034 Using negative space in designs| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here, and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | The principles of good design were
formulated long before the idea of video
| | 00:12 | or motion graphics even existed, but really
they transcend any sort of notions of format.
| | 00:18 | In this edition we're going to take a
look at the ideas of negative space and
| | 00:22 | balance and how they can be used to make
your designs more effective. Let's take a look.
| | 00:27 | Negative space is very important for
design and it's something that we actually
| | 00:31 | take for granted because there is
negative space in just about everything we do.
| | 00:34 | Now this is a composition that has
absolutely no negative space, it's a solid
| | 00:38 | block of color. And no negative space
really isn't very useful for a design,
| | 00:43 | because you can't see anything
except for that solid block of color.
| | 00:47 | So some negative space is necessary for
us to even read objects on screen, and
| | 00:52 | so this composition has just a little
bit of negative space, but that negative
| | 00:57 | space now defines the shapes of those
letters, and it defines the words and the
| | 01:02 | spaces that those words occupy.
| | 01:04 | It's very important to legibility.
| | 01:06 | So you've to have some negative space
in order for you to actually be able to
| | 01:10 | read the objects on screen.
| | 01:12 | So let's take a look at this next composition.
| | 01:14 | Now in this composition don't be
alarmed if you don't see exactly the same
| | 01:18 | thing on your screen.
| | 01:19 | I've used the Futura font to create the type
on screen here that says No Negative Space.
| | 01:23 | And if you do not have the Futura font
installed on your computer, you won't see
| | 01:28 | exactly the same layout. But that's okay.
| | 01:30 | Just watch along with the screen if
you don't see exactly the same thing.
| | 01:34 | It talks about some of the benefits.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to do a RAM Preview here
by hitting zero on the numeric keypad.
| | 01:39 | Now some of the benefits of space are
that it gives space for the eye to rest.
| | 01:43 | It defines informational hierarchy,
improves legibility and eases visual navigation.
| | 01:49 | Now these are things that we kind of
take for granted in normal life, in normal
| | 01:53 | viewing of documents.
| | 01:55 | But here in design, you've to be very
thoughtful about it, and so when we look at
| | 01:59 | this composition you can see that there
is just a little bit of negative space,
| | 02:03 | and that negative space defines
the letters that we see on screen.
| | 02:07 | Really what negative space is all
about is the idea of communicating with
| | 02:11 | the viewer, and that's really what motion graphics
is all about, is communicating with the viewer.
| | 02:15 | In order to do that you have to use
sound layout principles, and those layout
| | 02:20 | principles involve negative space and balance.
| | 02:23 | Now if you look at this simple layout
here, the negative space that is on the
| | 02:28 | left-hand side of this block of type
defines it as a subheading of this headline here.
| | 02:34 | That is a very simple thing, but that
negative space is powerful and that it
| | 02:38 | communicates with the viewer that
these items are related to this headline.
| | 02:42 | And once again, that's what it's all
about, is communication with the viewer.
| | 02:47 | Now this next composition uses
negative space and it's got a lot of negative
| | 02:51 | space surrounding the type block and it
really helps to define what it is that's
| | 02:58 | important on screen, and the most
important thing on screen is right here at the
| | 03:02 | center of all this negative space and
it tells us that our eye should look
| | 03:06 | towards that type block.
| | 03:08 | So negative space in this case is
telling us this type block is the most
| | 03:13 | important thing in the composition.
| | 03:14 | Now the type in this comp is perfectly
balanced, it's right in the center of the
| | 03:19 | screen, and that balance can create or
relieve tension in your designs and it
| | 03:26 | can also tell the viewer
where to look on screen.
| | 03:29 | In this case, there's no question where
we want the viewer to look, it's in the
| | 03:32 | center of the screen.
| | 03:33 | But that negative space can lend
itself to an unbalanced layout as well which
| | 03:38 | can create a little bit more style.
| | 03:40 | Now in this very simple
illustration of this, I'll do a RAM Preview.
| | 03:43 | The type, instead of coming to the
direct center of the screen comes right up to
| | 03:47 | the upper left-hand corner, and that
unbalanced position combined with all this
| | 03:53 | negative space forces our eye to look
up here, even though it's not in the
| | 03:57 | center of the screen.
| | 03:59 | This becomes the most important thing on screen.
| | 04:01 | Now let's take a look at the idea of
balanced composition with 3D elements.
| | 04:07 | Now this type element is
centered up in the frame perfectly.
| | 04:12 | It's got a little bit of negative space
around it that defines its position on
| | 04:17 | screen, but it's right in the dead center.
| | 04:19 | Let's take a RAM Preview of this
and watch how it animates on screen.
| | 04:25 | You can see that that type comes up
nicely in frame and because it's centered in
| | 04:29 | the frame, it's going to give us a
very pleasing easy-to-read type element.
| | 04:36 | Now some folks would say that that type
element isn't very interesting, having
| | 04:40 | it right in the center of the
screen, that it needs a little bit more
| | 04:43 | personality and a little bit more
pizzazz, and that's where an Unbalanced
| | 04:47 | layout comes into play.
| | 04:49 | And if I go into my Unbalanced
layout for this, you can now see that the
| | 04:53 | negative space over here defines the
perspective and the shape of this object,
| | 04:59 | and I now have a very easy
read that is a lot more dynamic.
| | 05:04 | And when I do a RAM Preview of this,
now having it resolved to the right-hand
| | 05:09 | side of the screen really gives it a
sense of dynamic energy that wasn't present
| | 05:12 | in the Balanced
composition that we just looked at.
| | 05:16 | Don't be afraid to experiment
with negative space and balance. I'm
| | 05:20 | actually using some negative space
here to make this talking head shot seem a
| | 05:23 | bit more interesting.
| | 05:24 | With the right technique even a
drab layout will really come to life.
| | 05:28 | For more ideas take a look at Ian
Robinson's course, Principles of Motion Graphics.
| | 05:32 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 05:34 | Keep it moving, and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 035 Creating depth of field in After Effects and C4D| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to Design
in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | The term depth of field comes from
photography and it refers to how much of an
| | 00:11 | image is in or out of focus.
| | 00:13 | In a camera this can be controlled
with the type of lens you're using or
| | 00:16 | the Aperture setting.
| | 00:17 | In motion graphics though, we control it
with filters, and something called a Depth Map.
| | 00:22 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:24 | Now here we are in After Effects and
I've got a very simple composition here
| | 00:27 | that illustrates, I think pretty well,
the idea of depth of field, and we've
| | 00:31 | got some background objects, an in-focus
set of type, and some foreground objects here.
| | 00:36 | Now I have already generated a RAM Preview.
| | 00:38 | I will just hit 0 on the
numeric keypad to activate it.
| | 00:42 | Now as you can see these white
spheres drop into frame and knock over the
| | 00:45 | background type and travel from the
background into the foreground, and as they
| | 00:50 | do, they travel into and out of focus.
| | 00:53 | Now that effect is being generated here
in After Effects by a very cool filter
| | 00:56 | called Camera Lens Blur, and I have
it applied to the adjustment layer.
| | 01:00 | Let's take a look at the
Effects Controls here for that.
| | 01:02 | You can see that the Lens Blur
filter is using a Depth Map Layer.
| | 01:07 | Now the Depth Map is this very special
layer that's generated by Cinema 4D when
| | 01:12 | you do your rendering, and I'll talk about
the Render Settings for that in just a moment.
| | 01:16 | And as you can see, it's a grayscale
representation of the scene as seen from
| | 01:20 | the camera, and it shows in black and
white detail what is in focus and out of focus.
| | 01:26 | White is fully out of focus, black is
fully in focus and then the shades of gray
| | 01:31 | will determine the intensity of
the focus from that point forward.
| | 01:34 | Now let's move over to Cinema 4D and
see how that depth map was generated.
| | 01:38 | So this is the scene in Cinema 4D.
| | 01:40 | I will just scrub through it so
you can see what's going on here.
| | 01:44 | You can see those balls knocking down
the type and washing over them, and moving
| | 01:48 | into the foreground.
| | 01:49 | If I uncheck the Active Camera icon
here, we can see what's going on here.
| | 01:53 | Now these green lines here represent
the zones of the camera, and I've actually
| | 01:57 | prebaked this animation in the Picture Viewer.
| | 02:00 | Go to the Window menu and select Picture
Viewer and I've got that animation there.
| | 02:04 | I will hit Play and let it cache through.
| | 02:08 | Now as you can see, these balls are
traveling from one zone through the central
| | 02:15 | zone into a third zone, and those
zones define the focus of the camera.
| | 02:21 | Let's close up the Picture Viewer
here and take a look at that.
| | 02:23 | So here we are back in the
Perspective View, and if I select my camera, the
| | 02:28 | basic depth of the scene is
controlled by something called a Focal Plane.
| | 02:33 | And if I go to the Object Properties,
that Focal Plane is defined by the
| | 02:37 | Focus Distance, and I can scrub that value in
or out, and you can see those values moving.
| | 02:43 | Now I've got three planes here;
| | 02:45 | there is a foreground plane, the mid-
ground plane, and the background plane here.
| | 02:51 | This foreground plane and the background
plane are defined in the Detail section.
| | 02:55 | If I uncheck the Depth of Map Front
Blur, the foreground plane goes away.
| | 03:00 | If I uncheck the Depth of Map Rear
Blur, the background plane goes away.
| | 03:04 | These values represent a gradient;
| | 03:06 | 0 being the start of the camera, and 366
units representing this plane right here.
| | 03:13 | So from this point to this point is a
transition zone, or a gradient, and that
| | 03:19 | gradient represents 100% blur to no
blur, and then we get a area that is 100%
| | 03:27 | in focus, and then transitioning
backwards from that, we get another gradient
| | 03:32 | that tells us that everything from this point
forward should get blurry into the distance.
| | 03:36 | That's the first part of setting up
the depth of field, is activating the
| | 03:40 | settings on the camera.
| | 03:41 | The next part is in the Render Settings.
| | 03:43 | I will hit Command or Ctrl+B to bring
up those settings, and if we look at the
| | 03:47 | Render Settings, I've activated the
Depth Map under the Multi-Pass Settings.
| | 03:51 | Now that Depth Map doesn't
have any settings on it at all.
| | 03:54 | You can see this area is blank
even though I have it selected.
| | 03:57 | All you have to do is make sure that
you have that Depth Map activated when you
| | 04:02 | render out your multi-pass image.
| | 04:03 | If you've saved out your After Effects
Compositing file correctly, using these
| | 04:06 | settings here on the Save Image
page under Compositing Project file.
| | 04:10 | When you move over After Effects, in
your scene file, when you import it, you
| | 04:14 | will have these passes.
| | 04:15 | Let's move over to the depth of field-
START composition and these are just the
| | 04:20 | basic layers without the blur added to them.
| | 04:23 | Now we don't have to get into how to use
object buffers, that's covered in other
| | 04:27 | courses in the library.
| | 04:28 | What I want to talk about here
is the Camera Lens Blur filter.
| | 04:31 | So I normally use that on an adjustment layer.
| | 04:34 | So I go to the Layer menu and select
New > Adjustment Layer, and on that
| | 04:38 | adjustment layer, I'm going to go to
Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Camera Lens Blur.
| | 04:44 | Initially, the entire image gets blurry,
and that's because the Camera Lens Blur
| | 04:48 | filter doesn't know what
layer to use as the Depth Map.
| | 04:52 | Now we haven't added the Depth Map into
the scene, so let's raise this up just a
| | 04:56 | bit, and go back over to the Project
window, and take this Depth Map and drag it
| | 05:01 | in and we'll put it down at the bottom.
| | 05:03 | It doesn't need to be visible in
the scene, it just has to be in the
| | 05:06 | composition, and so I'll
drop it here at the very bottom.
| | 05:09 | I typically always put my Depth Map at
the very bottom of the comp, and now we
| | 05:13 | can go back to the layer
controls for the Adjustment Layer 3.
| | 05:18 | I need to tell the Lens Blur filter
what layer to use as the Depth Map, and
| | 05:23 | that is the layer 10.
| | 05:24 | So I select the Blur Map Setting,
and I highlight Layer 10 DOF_depth.mov.
| | 05:29 | When I do that, instantly, the in-focus
layer becomes in focus, and that's
| | 05:34 | because it's now using that gradient
to define what areas of the image are in
| | 05:39 | focus and out of focus.
| | 05:40 | If I go to the Blur Radius setting,
and I highlight this, and scrub it in and
| | 05:46 | now you can see that I can really
accentuate that depth of field, and blur
| | 05:50 | out those settings.
| | 05:51 | Now there are some issues with that,
and that's because we're applying it to
| | 05:56 | these layers here as set with object buffers.
| | 05:59 | Now you can correct this by putting
everything inside of a single comp and then
| | 06:02 | running it on that, but there are
limitations in there and typically, you'll get
| | 06:07 | this kind of bleeding.
| | 06:08 | So you want to be careful
about how you use it here.
| | 06:11 | Now I will say this, the depth of
field that Cinema 4D generates using the
| | 06:14 | physical render engine inside of the
application is far superior to the Camera Lens Blur.
| | 06:19 | The disadvantage is that, that lens
blur is burned into your 3D rendering, and
| | 06:25 | that if you don't like it, you have
to go all the way back to Cinema 4D and
| | 06:29 | re-render your entire image.
| | 06:30 | So if your rendering took nine hours,
you'd have go back and re-render it every
| | 06:33 | single time you wanted to
change that depth of field.
| | 06:36 | The advantage to this, even though
it doesn't look quite as good is that
| | 06:39 | you have flexibility.
| | 06:41 | Depth of field can be a great tool
for telling your viewer what's important
| | 06:45 | within your flame, and with the right
Depth Map from Cinema 4D, you'll have
| | 06:48 | total control over that effect in After Effects.
| | 06:50 | For more on working with renders in
After Effects, check out my course Cinema 4D:
| | 06:54 | Rendering Motion Graphics for
After Effects, here on lynda.com.
| | 06:57 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 06:59 | Keep it moving and I will see you next time!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 036 Correcting color in After Effects with C4D and object buffers| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here, and welcome to
Design in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Being a good motion graphics artist is
really about getting control over your
| | 00:10 | animations, and in the 3D compositing
world there is no better tool for that
| | 00:14 | than the object buffer.
| | 00:15 | An object buffer is simply a fancy
way of saying, a matte for individual
| | 00:19 | components within your 3D rendered scene.
| | 00:22 | They can be a bit confusing to use at
times but I think you'll see that this is
| | 00:26 | worth it for the control you get in
After Effects. Let's take a look.
| | 00:30 | So I've got this Raw Rendering from
CINEMA 4D and I've already organized the
| | 00:33 | layers here in After Effects, and
this is the Raw Render from CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:37 | You can see I've got the white
type on type of green pillar.
| | 00:40 | If I do a RAM Preview, it's kind of a
cool reveal here, where it says Object
| | 00:44 | Buffer on a rotating
pillar, on a reflective floor.
| | 00:48 | Now I'm going to show you how to take
this rendering here from the Raw green,
| | 00:52 | blue and white and change the colors
here in After Effects to this blue,
| | 00:56 | white and red scene.
| | 00:58 | I'll do a RAM preview of that by
hitting 0 on the numeric keypad.
| | 01:01 | So I've already organized these files
here in After Effects and I've got my
| | 01:05 | renderings all imported correctly with
the Special Passes including the RGBA
| | 01:10 | pass in these folders here in After Effects.
| | 01:13 | Now let me move over to CINEMA 4D and
show you how these files are generated,
| | 01:17 | because that's really where the
magic starts is here in CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:21 | You can see that I've got compositing
tags on all the key elements, and I've set
| | 01:25 | up object buffers for them.
| | 01:26 | So if you're not sure how to set up
object buffers, take a look at the CINEMA 4D
| | 01:31 | Essential Training course and
you'll see just how to do that.
| | 01:33 | If I go to the Render Settings, I'll
hit Command+B or Ctrl+B on the keyboard.
| | 01:38 | You can see that I have Render
Settings set up the Multi-Pass and I've got
| | 01:40 | object buffers identified for all the
key elements, and I like to name my
| | 01:45 | object buffers here so that I have it as kind
of a guide for what I did in the project file.
| | 01:49 | Because when you get in After Effects
all they are called is object buffer 1
| | 01:54 | through whatever--how ever many
object buffers you named.
| | 01:56 | And so it's very important to go back
and create this guide for yourself so you
| | 01:58 | can figure out how things were made.
| | 02:00 | So I've got a single object buffer for
each of the key elements in my scene, and
| | 02:06 | I have rendered this out using the
standard settings for Multi-Pass, that you
| | 02:08 | can also find in the Essential Training course.
| | 02:11 | So let's go back to After Effects
and I've got them imported already.
| | 02:15 | I've imported the AEC file and what
I want to do start from a clean comp.
| | 02:20 | So I'll open up the Special Passes
folder and grab the RGBA movie file and drag
| | 02:25 | that onto the New Comp button and that's
going to give me a new composition with
| | 02:28 | this as the new name.
| | 02:30 | And I'll rename this composition by
hitting Command+K or Ctrl+K on the keyboard
| | 02:34 | and call it Working.
| | 02:36 | And I'll drag that Working file out here
and let's boot it out to here, anyplace, you
| | 02:41 | can just drag it down and that
will pop right out of that file.
| | 02:46 | You see it's at the bottom of the stack now.
| | 02:48 | So this is going to be the base
where we'll actually start our color
| | 02:52 | correction of that scene.
| | 02:53 | So the first thing I want to do is
get control over my image, and the way
| | 02:57 | I'm going to do that is by using the object
buffers to isolate this type and the pillar.
| | 03:01 | So the first object buffer I'm going
to use is object buffer 6, and if I drag
| | 03:06 | into the composition you can see that
this object buffer represents the type and
| | 03:10 | the pillar altogether.
| | 03:11 | So now I've got this object buffer set
up, how do I use it as a Track Matte? I
| | 03:16 | change my Switches and Modes. If your
Switches are showing just click on this
| | 03:18 | button to toggle it back and forth.
| | 03:20 | Now I'll tell this layer number two
to use object buffer 6 as a Track Matte
| | 03:25 | and also use Luma Matte object buffer
6, and you can see now I've got that
| | 03:29 | object buffer isolated.
| | 03:31 | The reflection is now gone from the
floor, and if I turn on Transparency
| | 03:34 | Preview, you see I have this fully isolated.
| | 03:36 | So now, the next thing I
want to do is isolate the type.
| | 03:40 | So I've already got my object buffer
set up here, all I really need to do is
| | 03:42 | select both of these layers and hit
Command+D or Ctrl+D to duplicate them, and
| | 03:45 | now I want to automatically replace
this object buffer 6 with my new object
| | 03:50 | buffer, and the object buffer I'm
going to use is object buffer 5.
| | 03:55 | So if I select that layer and I go to
object buffer 5 and I hold down the Alt or
| | 03:59 | Option key and drag that in, and
now it's automatically replaced.
| | 04:03 | That's a really great thing,
drag and drop replacement.
| | 04:06 | If I turn on the Transparency Preview
it looks like nothing has happened, but
| | 04:10 | if I turn on the Solo you can see that I
now have object buffer, the type, all isolated.
| | 04:15 | Now I could change its color.
| | 04:17 | So let's go to the RGBA layer and
we'll go to Effects and then choose CC
| | 04:22 | Toner from the Color Correction menu,
and when I do that, my type gets this
| | 04:26 | kind of sepia color on it.
| | 04:27 | Now in the Effects Controls for CC
Toner I can change this, it's set to a
| | 04:31 | tritone, and I'm going to change
the Midtones and make this blue.
| | 04:34 | So I'll select a nice blue color up
in this range here, not too saturated.
| | 04:38 | Now to get the faces to come over I
will change the Highlights and I'll go
| | 04:42 | into the blue range again and let's
bring those Highlights into about there,
| | 04:46 | that's pretty good.
| | 04:47 | You can season to taste as
they say in the cooking world.
| | 04:50 | So now I've got this object buffer color
corrected blue, and you can see that if
| | 04:54 | I highlight this, that I've got my object
buffer all corrected out and I can make
| | 05:00 | it any color I want.
| | 05:01 | So now what we can do is move
onto the other elements in the scene.
| | 05:05 | So I'll duplicate these layers again,
selecting them both by holding down the
| | 05:08 | Shift key and then Command+D or Ctrl+D
to duplicate them, and now when I replace
| | 05:12 | that object buffer one more time.
| | 05:14 | So the next object buffer I'm going to
use is object buffer 2. So let's go back
| | 05:18 | in here and find object buffer 2, and
I'll hold-down the Alt or Option key again
| | 05:23 | and Option+Drag that in there, and you
can see now I've isolated these little
| | 05:28 | vertical things on the pillar.
| | 05:30 | And if I solo that out
you can see there they are.
| | 05:32 | Now I can make them any color.
| | 05:33 | I think I'll go ahead and leave
them this kind of darker blue.
| | 05:36 | Now we can move on to the horizontals.
| | 05:38 | I'll duplicate these layers one more
time and then grab just this object buffer
| | 05:44 | and then I'll drag an object buffer 7 by
holding down the Alt or Option key, and
| | 05:49 | that gives me these
horizontal elements on the pillar.
| | 05:52 | Now I can change those colors to red,
so I'll select the RGBA and go over here
| | 05:56 | to the Effects Controls and I'll
change these tritone colors to be red.
| | 06:00 | Let's start with the Highlight and
bring that up here and that's good right
| | 06:04 | there, and these layers have mostly
Midtones and so that's why you didn't see
| | 06:09 | much of a change there.
| | 06:10 | So I'll select the Midtones and bring
that up here, make that a nice bright red,
| | 06:13 | and it contrasts nicely with the verticals.
| | 06:15 | Now I need to do these rings and
the rings are a little bit tricky.
| | 06:20 | I've got them as separate items in
object buffers, in separate object buffers
| | 06:23 | and I did that on purpose to
illustrate a point that you can combine object
| | 06:27 | buffers together rather than
having to do all this duplication.
| | 06:29 | So I want to change both these rings
at the same time, even though I have a
| | 06:34 | single object buffer for each one.
| | 06:35 | So if I go back to my Project Settings,
I know that object buffers 1 and 4 are
| | 06:40 | the ones for these rings.
| | 06:41 | So if I select object buffer 4 and then
I select object buffer 1 by holding down
| | 06:45 | the Command or Ctrl key, I can drag
those on to the New Comp button and I get
| | 06:49 | the choice to make a
Single or Multiple Composition.
| | 06:52 | I'll do Single, hit OK, and
now I've got these in here.
| | 06:55 | Now you can see there is only one ring visible.
| | 06:57 | If I change this blending mode for the
top ring to be Add, now the white colors
| | 07:02 | will add in and now I've got both rings visible.
| | 07:05 | And now let's change the name of this
composition, I'll hit Command+K or Ctrl+K,
| | 07:09 | and we'll call this one Ring Buffers PRE.
| | 07:12 | So this Ring Buffers PRE composition,
we're going to use as a Track Matte back
| | 07:15 | here on our Working composition.
| | 07:17 | So let's duplicate these layers one last
time and let's select just this topmost
| | 07:21 | layer, and now we'll Option+Drag or Alt+
Drag in this Ring Buffers PRE, and you
| | 07:28 | can see now that's changed
the rings to that red color.
| | 07:31 | So I'll go ahead and leave those as red,
and I think that's going to work just fine.
| | 07:35 | Now the last step in this process is to
do the reflection, and the reflection is
| | 07:39 | another multi-step process.
| | 07:41 | There is no way to do
reflections with an object buffer in C4D.
| | 07:45 | So I came up with this technique of
rendering things as green and then
| | 07:48 | using that green color to generate a mask,
and I'm going to do that using a Keying plug-in.
| | 07:53 | Let's start off by taking the reflection
movie and dragging it onto the New Comp
| | 07:57 | button and we'll change the name of
this composition by hitting Command+K or
| | 08:01 | Ctrl+K on the keyboard and calling it
Reflection Green Mask, and I'll hit OK.
| | 08:06 | So if I scrub forward in time, I want
to make a alpha channel for everything
| | 08:10 | that's green, and I'm going to
use a Keying program to do that.
| | 08:13 | First I need to select the layer, and
then if go to Effects and I go to Keying
| | 08:18 | and I'll select Keylight.
| | 08:21 | And the Keylight plug-in is
defaulted to black as the screen color.
| | 08:24 | So we have to tell it what color to use as a
key, so I'll select this nice bright green.
| | 08:28 | You can see that immediately keys it out.
| | 08:31 | And I'll turn on the Transparency Preview,
so I can see what my grid looks like,
| | 08:35 | and now I can use the Screen Gain to
blow that out a little bit to include more
| | 08:40 | of the image, and I'll bring that up
to about 300 or so, in the 300 range.
| | 08:44 | So I think that's pretty good right there.
| | 08:46 | Now that's going to give me a nice
matte for everywhere that's green.
| | 08:49 | So let's go back to our Project Window.
| | 08:51 | Now what we need to do is to take
this reflection movie and we're going to
| | 08:55 | make a reflection pre comp, and I'll
do that by dragging that onto the New
| | 08:59 | Composition button.
| | 09:00 | Let's change the name of this
composition and call it Reflections PRE.
| | 09:05 | So let's scrub forward in time, and in
this composition we're going to now drag
| | 09:09 | in that Reflection Green Mask, and we
want to use this Reflection Green Mask in
| | 09:13 | the same way that we use the
object buffers as a Track Matte.
| | 09:16 | So now let's go to the Track Matte
options, and we'll tell the Track Matte
| | 09:20 | for this number two layer to use the Alpha
Inverted Matte for the Reflection Green Mask.
| | 09:24 | And you'll see that when I do that,
now I have my green parts isolated.
| | 09:28 | So let's go back to the Working comp.
| | 09:29 | We'll take the CC Toner
off of this red layer here.
| | 09:33 | We'll just take that and copy it and
we'll move back to the Reflections PRE
| | 09:37 | and we'll select this layer and paste down
that same red color onto our reflection layer.
| | 09:43 | Now what we want to do is to duplicate
this layer, because we need to have the
| | 09:47 | rest of the layer visible in the reflection.
| | 09:50 | So we'll duplicate that and
we'll move it down below everything.
| | 09:54 | Now we don't wanted to have a Track
Matte, so we'll turn the Track Matte
| | 09:58 | settings off to None, and also we
don't want this to be colorized red.
| | 10:01 | So we'll go the CC Toner
for that and just delete it.
| | 10:04 | Now we've got that nice red and
blue reflection going on here.
| | 10:08 | If we go back to the Working
composition now, we can now set this up with a
| | 10:13 | reflection of floor.
| | 10:14 | So if we go back to the Project Window
and we take our Reflection PRE comp and
| | 10:18 | drag it into the composition, now all we
need to do is dial down this reflection
| | 10:24 | to the right intensity.
| | 10:26 | You never want to see the reflections at
100% because they compete with the image.
| | 10:29 | So if we go to the Transparency Options
for this, I'll hit T on the keyboard and
| | 10:34 | dial down the Opacity, you can see now
I've got control over that image and we
| | 10:40 | have a fully colorized
image using the object buffers.
| | 10:43 | Getting control over the color of your
3D renderings will really make your work
| | 10:47 | stand out from the crowd.
| | 10:49 | For more on working with object
buffers, check out my course CINEMA 4D:
| | 10:52 | Rendering Motion Graphics for
After Effects here on lynda.com.
| | 10:55 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion.
| | 10:57 | Keep it moving and I'll see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 037 Creating and animating a flower with MoGraph| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here, and welcome to Design
in Motion, the weekly series where we explore
| | 00:04 | important fundamentals in
the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | I love building things with
the Cinema 4D's MoGraph toolset.
| | 00:11 | What MoGraph is, is a set of objects and tags
that let's you create about anything you can
| | 00:16 | imagine, but it's real special to use them
in repetition and repetition is exactly what
| | 00:20 | you need to create the petals of
a flower that can open and close.
| | 00:24 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:25 | So this is what we are
going to build right now.
| | 00:27 | Let me hit play here, and you can see
that flower opens and closes beautifully.
| | 00:34 | It starts off as a little bud and
then flowers open and blossoms open.
| | 00:39 | Now we are not going to worry about any of
the textures or lighting today, we are going
| | 00:42 | to focus just on the modeling.
| | 00:44 | I am going to close up the Picture Viewer.
| | 00:46 | Let's start off with the cube.
| | 00:47 | I am going to start off by modeling the
petals and I am going to make that about 310 units
| | 00:53 | high on the Y axis and I am just going to
eyeball the thickness, about like that I think.
| | 00:59 | Now I am going to be using a Hyper NURB
modeling technique to create this petal, and start
| | 01:03 | off by making he cube editable by
clicking on the Make Object Editable button.
| | 01:07 | I could also hit the letter C on the keyboard.
| | 01:09 | Now let's go on to Point mode, so we can manipulate the
points of this cube and let's zoom in just a bit here.
| | 01:15 | Now I want to have the base of the flower
petal be even with the ground plane here,
| | 01:20 | so I am going to first select all the points,
Command+A or Ctrl+A on the PC and raise this up.
| | 01:26 | Now I'm going to middle-mouse click and switch
to the front view here, so I can see my points.
| | 01:32 | I want them to be even with the floor, there
we go! Now I can get my Knife tool out and
| | 01:37 | I will right-click any place inside the
Editor View here, and I'll grab the knife.
| | 01:41 | Now the Knife options that show
up here, a very important one.
| | 01:44 | I will raise up this window here,
so it's a little easier to see.
| | 01:47 | The Mode is what we are going to change,
we can change it from Line to Loop.
| | 01:50 | And what that does is that allows us to cut
all the way around our cube, and if I hold
| | 01:54 | the knife over the cube, you can see that
it creates this line that travels all the
| | 01:58 | way around the cube.
| | 01:59 | Now I am going to make some key cuts here
and one of the great things about modeling
| | 02:03 | organic, natural objects is that
you don't have to be super precise.
| | 02:07 | So I am going to start off by making a cut
about in the middle vertically and then I'm
| | 02:11 | going to make I think two cuts,
one here and one about here.
| | 02:17 | Now those are the sort of handles
that we need to shape our flower.
| | 02:20 | Now what we are going to do is to really
give it the curve shape that it needs.
| | 02:25 | Before I do that, I want to be able to see
the result of this shape and how it's going
| | 02:28 | to look smoothed out.
| | 02:29 | So I am going to add a
Hyper NURB to the scene.
| | 02:31 | So let's add a Hyper NURB, that's this icon
right here, and I'll take the cube and make
| | 02:35 | it a child of the Hyper NURB.
| | 02:36 | Now that gives us the sort of soft edges that we are
looking for and the Hyper NURB smoothes things out.
| | 02:43 | Now I don't need the
Knife tool anymore right now.
| | 02:45 | So I am going to switch back to the Selection
tool and you notice these curved lines here,
| | 02:51 | this is called Isoline Editing and I don't
really like that in my preview, and you can
| | 02:55 | turn that off under the Options menu, and I
can go right here and turn off Isoline Editing.
| | 03:01 | That gives me the bounding box, the actual
cage of the lower-poly mesh and I much prefer
| | 03:06 | working like this.
| | 03:07 | But if you like to work with the Isolines on, you
can always come back and turn them on at any time.
| | 03:11 | It really doesn't affect the behavior of
the Hyper NURB, but it's just a different way
| | 03:14 | of interpreting the points.
| | 03:16 | So I am going to turn that off and now what
I can do is get my Selection tool and select
| | 03:20 | the Rectangular Selection tool, very important
option here called Only Select Visible Elements.
| | 03:25 | I am going to turn that off. That means that
when I draw a rectangle around those points,
| | 03:29 | notice that it's selected the points on the backside,
as well as the front side, and that is a good thing.
| | 03:34 | Now I am going to hit the letter T on the
keyboard to bring up the Scale tool and scale
| | 03:38 | this down at the base, and this is
going to be the base of our flower petal.
| | 03:42 | I think that's pretty good.
| | 03:43 | Now the middle of the flower petal is okay,
but I don't want that straight line there,
| | 03:47 | so I am going to bulge
these points out just a bit.
| | 03:50 | I just hit the spacebar to get back to the
Selection tool and I select those points and
| | 03:56 | I'll hit T on the keyboard again to get back to the
scale, and I can just bulge that out just a bit.
| | 04:01 | Now I can grab the points here at the top
and I will hit the spacebar again to grab
| | 04:06 | just these points and that
spacebar works on both Mac and PC.
| | 04:11 | And now I want to take these points at
the top and just raise them up a bit.
| | 04:13 | And you see, notice when I do that, that it
creates a nice little rounded look to the
| | 04:18 | flower petal here.
| | 04:19 | The last thing I want to do is to give a
little bit of a curvature to the flower petals.
| | 04:23 | So let's switch to a 4-way view. I just
middle-mouse clicked to get to the 4-way view here
| | 04:28 | and in the front view, I am going to zoom in
a bit, so I can see all the points clearly
| | 04:33 | and I'll grab just the ones running down the
middle of the flower petal, and I don't want
| | 04:37 | these ones at the base, I am going to leave those alone,
so I'll hold down the Ctrl key and deselect those.
| | 04:43 | Now if I switch back to the Perspective view, I can
take these points and just drag them on the Z axis.
| | 04:49 | Notice I grabbed just the Z handle here
and I just bring that back a little bit.
| | 04:53 | That gives a really nice
curvature to our flower petal.
| | 04:57 | Now what I want to do is to position the flower
petals so it's lying on the floor and instead
| | 05:01 | of rotating the whole object, I
am going to rotate the points.
| | 05:05 | And so let's select all the points,
Command+A or Ctrl+A, and now I can rotate.
| | 05:10 | I'll hit R on the keyboard to bring up the
Rotate tool and what I can do is grab this
| | 05:14 | red band here and I can rotate that around.
| | 05:17 | I'll hold the Shift key down after I start
rotating it and that constrains it to 90 degrees.
| | 05:22 | Now I can switch to a 4-way view by hitting
the middle-mouse button, and I can hit the
| | 05:26 | letter E on the keyboard to get the Move
tool, and I can position those points.
| | 05:30 | You notice, I am grabbing the red handle
here in the right-hand view. I am going to drag
| | 05:34 | that down and put them right about here, so
they are pretty much even with the ground
| | 05:40 | plane; a little bit
embedded in there and that's okay.
| | 05:42 | I want to make sure that these
points here are flush with the Y axis.
| | 05:46 | So now our object is lying on the floor, more
importantly when I switch back to model mode,
| | 05:50 | I can see that the axis for my flower petal is
pointing up on Y and that's exactly what I want.
| | 05:56 | So that's it for the modeling of the flower
petal, and next thing we want to do is to
| | 06:00 | add our Bend Deformers.
| | 06:01 | The Bend Deformers are what's going to give
the flower petal the ability to curl in that
| | 06:05 | animation that you saw earlier.
| | 06:06 | So I will start off by clicking and holding,
these are all the deformers that we can use
| | 06:10 | and I'll grab this one right here, the Bend
Deformer, and I am going to start off by naming
| | 06:14 | this Bend Deformer, Bend Fold, and this Bend
Fold is going to be the deformer that gives
| | 06:24 | the initial curl that
curls it up off of the floor.
| | 06:28 | The way the Bend Deformer works is that if
you adjust the strength, the Bend Deformer
| | 06:32 | will curve here, and it
always curves along the Y axis.
| | 06:37 | So I'll zero that back out and what I want to
do is get the Rotation tool, R on the keyboard
| | 06:42 | and rotate this around.
| | 06:43 | I will hold the Shift key down to do it
exactly 90 degrees, and then what I'm going to do is
| | 06:47 | switch to a 4-way view here and I'm going
to eyeball the size of this Bend Deformer.
| | 06:52 | So I will start up by moving it into position.
| | 06:54 | The Bend Deformer always works best when it's the same
size as the object it is going to be deforming.
| | 07:00 | So let's turn off the Hyper NURB here, so we
can see the actual polygons of our flower petal.
| | 07:05 | So let's switch here in the top view and in
the top view, if I click on the Bend Deformer
| | 07:09 | to get its Object properties, so bring that
over just a bit, so we can see all the values.
| | 07:14 | Now if I grab the Y value here, anytime you
see three of these, it's always X, Y and Z.
| | 07:19 | So if I grab the Y value and scrub it up,
I will eyeball it into position and I will
| | 07:25 | just move it just a little bit, so
that it's centered on those polygons.
| | 07:28 | Give it just a little bit more room here,
so everything is contained inside that.
| | 07:32 | Now I can switch to each of the other views.
| | 07:34 | In the right-hand view, I'll adjust the Z
value and scale that down, here we go and
| | 07:40 | in the front view you can see that all
my polygons are contained inside that.
| | 07:44 | I can see that in the top view as well.
| | 07:45 | So I am pretty good here.
| | 07:46 | Now the Bend Deformer works on its parent
or its peer, and so what I need to do is to
| | 07:51 | introduce a new Null object into the scene
and so I will click on hold on these primitives
| | 07:55 | here and add a new Null and
I will call this one Petal.
| | 08:00 | And I want to take the Petal and add the Cube
to it from before and add the Bend Fold Deformer,
| | 08:07 | and that Bend Fold Deformer
now has an impact on the Cube.
| | 08:12 | If I select it and adjust the
Strength, you can see that it bends.
| | 08:16 | Now it's doing some weird things.
| | 08:18 | The reason it's doing along this axis
here is because of this Angle value.
| | 08:23 | I am going to change that to be 90 degrees
and you notice that when I do that, now the
| | 08:28 | flower petal moves along that
axis nicely and it folds up.
| | 08:32 | I don't want it to appear stretchy, so I
am going to tell it to Keep Y-Axis Link.
| | 08:36 | Now when I do it, you can see that it just
maintains its volume and that's perfect.
| | 08:41 | Now let's get this whole thing back under
the Hyper NURB, so you can see and I will
| | 08:45 | turn the Hyper NURB back on and we can see
that Bend Fold is really doing its job and
| | 08:49 | giving us a great look and
bend for our flower petal.
| | 08:52 | So let's zero out the Strength on that, now,
we want to have a second deformer. The second
| | 08:57 | deformer is going to give the flower petal
the ability to curve, and so what I'm going
| | 09:01 | to do is take the Bend Fold and I will hold
down the Ctrl key and drag a copy of it and
| | 09:07 | this Bend Fold is going to be changed to
Bend Curl and the Bend Curl Deformer, I want to
| | 09:15 | rotate it around, so that it's
going across the axis like this.
| | 09:19 | So the Y is pointing this way.
| | 09:21 | So I'm going to go into the Coordinate Properties
for the Bend Curl. So I want to be able to
| | 09:25 | change the Coordinate Properties and
instead of doing them numerically over here, what
| | 09:30 | I'm going to do is to use a Rotate
tool and eyeball it into position.
| | 09:34 | So if I hit R on the keyboard to get the
Rotate tool going, I can rotate this up. I want to
| | 09:39 | get the Y axis pointing this way.
| | 09:42 | And so, I'm going to
rotate it around like this.
| | 09:45 | Now you want to be careful. I accidentally
clicked away from one of the axis bands, and
| | 09:50 | so I will do Command+Z or Ctrl+Z.
| | 09:52 | I want to highlight the blue band and rotate
it just like this, and I'll hold the Shift
| | 09:56 | key down to make sure that it conforms.
| | 09:59 | Now what I can do is to change the size of
this deformer, so if I go to the Bend Curl,
| | 10:05 | into the Object properties, I want to change
the Y value and get it to be about the same
| | 10:10 | size as the width of the petal, and then I
think I will move it up here just a bit.
| | 10:16 | I want to have it encompass the
top of the flower petals as well.
| | 10:20 | So I'll bring that up right here like that.
| | 10:23 | Now what I can do is when I go to the Bend
Curl, I can adjust the Strength and you can
| | 10:26 | see that it curves the flower petal
just like that. Undo.
| | 10:33 | So that is the basic
modeling of the flower petal.
| | 10:35 | Now what we want to do is Clone it and
MoGraph is a fantastic collection of objects in C4D
| | 10:41 | that allow you to create different kinds of
repetition, and the main object that we are
| | 10:45 | going to use is the Cloner.
| | 10:46 | And the Cloner Object basically repeats
anything you put under it, and the way we're going
| | 10:51 | to use the Cloner in this instance is to take the
petal and drag it and make it a child of the cloner.
| | 10:56 | So let's go ahead and do that, and
now it instantly gives us copies.
| | 11:00 | Now these copies are not in the right
formation, so we have to go to the Cloner and change
| | 11:04 | the mode from Linear to Radial.
| | 11:07 | Now the Radial array is oriented around the
wrong axis and so what I need to do is change
| | 11:12 | the plane, and I want to change it to the
XZ plane. So I click on that and go to XZ
| | 11:18 | and now my flower petals are
arranged around this XZ plane.
| | 11:22 | Before we do anything else, let's get the
flower petals back underneath the Hyper NURB Objects.
| | 11:27 | So let's add another Null object to the
scene and we will call this one Flower and then
| | 11:33 | take the Cloner and put it under the flower
and then drag it underneath the Hyper NURB.
| | 11:37 | Now we can see our flower petals are nice
and smooth and then what we can do is to go
| | 11:42 | back to the Cloner Object
and adjust some settings here.
| | 11:44 | We want to change the Count to 12, so we got
12 petals on our flower, and then were going
| | 11:49 | to take the Radius and adjust it
downwards to about 40 Units, that sounds good.
| | 11:56 | And there we go! So we now got a
nice tight center on our flower petals.
| | 12:01 | Now all of these lines that we are seeing
here are very confusing and that's because
| | 12:05 | we're seeing the visibility of
the Fold and Curl deformers.
| | 12:08 | So let's hide those.
| | 12:09 | I am going to hold down Option key and click
twice on these two gray dots here and that's
| | 12:14 | going to make them invisible.
| | 12:16 | It doesn't disable them, it just makes them
invisible here inside of the window, and that
| | 12:21 | cleans things up quite a bit.
| | 12:22 | And now we are almost done with the flower.
| | 12:25 | So what I am going to do next is go to the
Bend Curl and adjust the strength on that,
| | 12:30 | and that's going to give me a little bit less
overlap. You notice how everything is overlapping
| | 12:35 | here? I can curl that up and eliminate
those intersections of the polygons.
| | 12:40 | Now if I go to the Bend Fold Deformer, I can
now adjust that and have the flower petal close,
| | 12:46 | and that's really a beautiful thing.
| | 12:48 | The last thing is the center of the flower
and I will just use a simple cube for that.
| | 12:51 | I'll add that to the scene and then drop it
underneath the Hyper NURB, underneath the
| | 12:56 | flower petal, and then let's just squish it
down a little bit and then raise it up into
| | 12:59 | position. There we go. And that's pretty
much all there is to modeling the flower.
| | 13:07 | The animation of the petals happens in the Bend
Deformers, and so, what we can do is set keyframes.
| | 13:13 | Let's have our flower petal open
and finish opening at Frame 60.
| | 13:18 | As you can see, when I adjust the Bend
Fold Deformer, then it closes the flower up.
| | 13:23 | So let's undo that and let's set a keyframe
for the flower to be open here at Frame 60.
| | 13:29 | So I'll Ctrl+Click on the word Strength
here and then I will do the same Curl.
| | 13:35 | I like where it's at right now and I
always animate backwards like this.
| | 13:38 | Let's back up in time and go to 0,
and now we can close everything up.
| | 13:43 | So let's go to the Bend Fold Deformer and
adjust the Strength until the flower is closed
| | 13:49 | and then let's Ctrl+Click.
| | 13:50 | You notice that yellow there, that is telling
us that we haven't confirmed that change and
| | 13:54 | so we click on that, now
our keyframe is confirmed.
| | 13:57 | Now you can go to Bend Curl Deformer and we
can make an adjustment here and just slide
| | 14:03 | that down, so that none of the polygons are
intersecting, and then we can Ctrl+Click on
| | 14:08 | the Strength again and then
our flower will open and close.
| | 14:12 | You can see it opening up
and that is a beautiful thing.
| | 14:16 | So that's pretty much it for the
modeling of the actual flower.
| | 14:19 | I have given you guys the finished file here
and this is the actual flower that you saw
| | 14:24 | in the animation earlier.
| | 14:25 | I've got some lights and textures and things
and you can go ahead and take a look at all
| | 14:29 | of those settings and break them down and examine
how I did all the lighting and texturing of this flower.
| | 14:35 | But that's it for the basic
modeling, it really is that simple.
| | 14:38 | MoGraph is just what the doctor
ordered for this kind of repeating element.
| | 14:43 | For a great introduction in MoGraph, check out the
Cinema 4D Essential Training course here on lynda.com.
| | 14:48 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion,
keep it moving and I will see you next time.
| | 14:51 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 038 Animating circular text in Cinema 4D| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to Design
in Motion, the weekly series where we explore
| | 00:04 | important fundamentals in
the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:06 | Have you ever wanted to create animated 3D
text on a circle but weren't quite sure how
| | 00:10 | to approach it? You could start with your
text inside of Illustrator wrapped on a circle
| | 00:15 | and import that into Cinema 4D and extrude it,
but that becomes very problematic for animation.
| | 00:20 | In this edition, I am going to show you how
to get animated 3D text, using the MoGraph
| | 00:24 | tools in Cinema 4D, and
just a little bit of XPresso.
| | 00:27 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:28 | Okay, here I am in Cinema 4D's Picture Viewer.
| | 00:31 | I am going to hit Play.
| | 00:33 | We have got this Wood Plank Films type that
comes in surrounding this clapboard, and you
| | 00:39 | can see that the letters are actually pointing in one
direction as they land and then they flatten out.
| | 00:45 | There are also at a different spacing, you
see the spacing between the letters is changing
| | 00:49 | as well, and I created this effect by
putting the letters of the words on to a spline.
| | 00:56 | So let's see what I mean by that.
| | 00:58 | So I have got this Wood Plank Films type here
and I could have made this type here in Cinema
| | 01:02 | 4D or brought it in from
Illustrator, it really doesn't matter.
| | 01:05 | The important thing is that they're just
splines, and so you can see I have got each of the
| | 01:08 | letters of the words Wood Plank Films.
| | 01:11 | So let's start off by making a spline and
I am going to go to my Spline Objects and
| | 01:15 | grab a circle, under the Object properties
for that, let's make it about 300 or so.
| | 01:21 | So what we want to be able to do is to have
each of the letters show up around the edge
| | 01:27 | of this circle and the really cool thing we
are going to do for that is use a MoGraph effect.
| | 01:32 | So right-click on MoGraph and go to Effector
and I'm going to use a Spline Effector and
| | 01:37 | the Spline Effector is an awesome tool in
MoGraph that allows you to modify objects
| | 01:43 | with splines, and so I'm going to take this and
make it a child of the W, in the word wood.
| | 01:50 | Now the Spline Effector has no effect yet
and that's because there's a very important
| | 01:55 | button we need to turn on and
that's under the Deformer options.
| | 01:58 | We have to change it to be Object Deformation.
| | 02:01 | That's going to modify the whole
W that we are going to use here.
| | 02:05 | Now this W still isn't being modified by the
Effector and that's because under the Effector
| | 02:11 | properties, we haven't
told it what Spline to use.
| | 02:13 | And so if I take this circle and
drag it into the Spline field.
| | 02:17 | Watch what happens. Boink!
| | 02:20 | The letter jumps onto the spline and you can
see that the W is actually pointing the wrong
| | 02:26 | direction for us and it's on
the back side of the spline.
| | 02:29 | So the first thing I an going to do is take
the Circle and rotate at 180 degrees. Let's
| | 02:33 | go to the Coordinate properties
and change the heading to be 180.
| | 02:37 | That flips the W around in the right direction but
you can still see that it's pointed in the wrong way.
| | 02:43 | Now what we need to be able to do is
control what direction it's going to point.
| | 02:47 | We need to be able to do that dynamically.
| | 02:49 | So in order to do that, we are going to use
something called a Rail Spline. And so in
| | 02:55 | order to make this Rail Spline, I am going
to take this Circle and hold down the Ctrl
| | 02:58 | key and drag out a copy of it.
| | 03:00 | Now I am going to rename
this Circle and call it Rail.
| | 03:04 | Now this rail needs to be
larger than the original circle.
| | 03:07 | So I will go to the Object
Properties and adjust it outward.
| | 03:10 | Now in the Spline Effector,
there is a field for Rail.
| | 03:13 | So let's take the Rail and drag it right into that
Rail field, and watch what happens when I let go.
| | 03:19 | The W now points out towards that.
| | 03:22 | Now you notice it's still facing the wrong way.
| | 03:24 | It's not lining up with the circle and that's
because under the Parameter options is this Rotation.
| | 03:29 | If I scrub the heading
Rotation, I can now rotate this W.
| | 03:33 | So I am going to rotate this -90--oops, sorry, I
need to change that and make it a positive +90.
| | 03:39 | Let's do that. There we go.
| | 03:42 | And there is also a Bank option here
that allows us to adjust the tilt of the W.
| | 03:47 | Before I mess with that though, we are
going to make some changes in the letters.
| | 03:52 | So I will zero that out again.
| | 03:54 | Now you notice that it's tilting away.
| | 03:55 | That's because the axis point for the letter,
if I disable the Spline Deformer, the access
| | 03:59 | point for the letter, if I select the W, you
can see that it's in the bottom left corner
| | 04:04 | of a box that's surrounding the W.
| | 04:07 | I want to have that axis right exactly in
the center, and I want to be able to do it
| | 04:11 | for all the letters as well.
| | 04:13 | Each of the letters has their axes in the
same location at the bottom left, and that's
| | 04:18 | a characteristic of type that's generated
within Cinema 4D, and I did degenerate this
| | 04:23 | type in C4D, so it's all
in the wrong position.
| | 04:25 | So let's center these up.
| | 04:27 | So if I click on W and then hold down the
Shift key and scroll all the way down and
| | 04:31 | select everything, deselect the Spline
Effector, what I want to be able to do is to modify
| | 04:36 | all these axes as once and there's a really
great tool under the Mesh menu, Axis Center
| | 04:41 | and when I let go of that, I get the Axis
Center panel and I want to take the axes and
| | 04:48 | move them all exactly to the center
and then line them up with the bottom.
| | 04:52 | So in order to do that I'm going to center
the axis to all points and I will hit Execute,
| | 04:58 | and then I can tell it to line
the axes up with the baseline.
| | 05:01 | So I am going to drag it down on Y right there and hit
Execute, now all of these are in the right location.
| | 05:08 | We are going to need to modify the word Films
later on, but we will leave them there for now.
| | 05:11 | So let's close up the Axis Center window.
| | 05:13 | Now when I turn on my Spline Deformer, you can see
that now my W is lined up nicely right on that circle.
| | 05:20 | So what I need to do next is to re-create
the Spline Deformer and apply it to each of
| | 05:25 | the words in Wood Plank and we'll
come back to Films in a second.
| | 05:29 | So in order to do that I'm going to just hold
down the Ctrl key and make a copy of the Spline
| | 05:34 | Effector and put it under each of the letters.
| | 05:36 | So if I hold down the Ctrl key and just drag,
and I missed it that time, I want to make
| | 05:40 | sure it goes right underneath there, and
I'll hold down the Ctrl key, hold down the
| | 05:45 | Ctrl key, and each time I am doing this, I
am making a copy of this Spline Effector.
| | 05:50 | I am holding down the Ctrl key
and going all the way to the K.
| | 05:56 | Now all of these letters are lined up,
and I need to space them out, okay?
| | 06:00 | Now before I do that, I
want to point out something.
| | 06:03 | If I go to the circle and if I adjust the
Radius of that circle outward, you can see
| | 06:10 | there is a point where the Rail
causes the objects to flip over.
| | 06:15 | So I want to be able to animate the size
of this circle and not have that happen.
| | 06:19 | So I am going to use a little bit of XPresso to
adjust it automatically the size of the Rail.
| | 06:25 | Let's change this back to
300 Units on the Radius.
| | 06:28 | I always want to have the
Rail be larger than the circle.
| | 06:31 | So If I right-click on the Circle and go to
Cinema 4D Tags > XPresso, I am going to get
| | 06:35 | this new XPresso Editor window.
| | 06:37 | So I am going to drag the circle in, that's
going to create a New XPresso node, and let's
| | 06:42 | enlarge that and then I will drag in the Rail.
| | 06:44 | And the way XPresso works is that
there are inflows and outflows.
| | 06:48 | The outflows are red, the inflows are blue.
| | 06:50 | So I want to take the radius of the circle,
and use it to drive the radius of the rail.
| | 06:54 | So let's get the radius out.
| | 06:56 | So we go to the Object Properties and grab the
Radius, then we grab the Radius of the Rail.
| | 07:05 | Now what I can do is use a little bit of math.
| | 07:06 | If I were to just simply connect these two
nodes up like that and drag it across, then
| | 07:11 | the radius of these two
objects would be exactly the same.
| | 07:14 | If I click on that, you see that now it's
refreshed the screen and the size of the Rail
| | 07:18 | Radius is exactly the same as the
Circle Radius and that's not what I want.
| | 07:22 | So I want to be able to have that jump out
and have it always be the same distance away.
| | 07:27 | So I'm going to right-click and go to New Node >
XPresso and then to Calculate > Math.
| | 07:34 | Now don't be afraid, this is very simple math.
| | 07:36 | I'm going to just tell it to do an addition.
| | 07:39 | So you can see in the Properties for this
Node, the Math function is Add, and then I
| | 07:43 | am going to take the Input
of Radius and put it in here.
| | 07:46 | Now the second input is saying, what do you
want to add to this radius? I want to add
| | 07:51 | about, let's call it 300 units or so.
| | 07:54 | Now what I want to say is take the result
of this addition and pump it into the Rail
| | 07:59 | Radius, and so I connect that up there and as
soon as I do that, now I have this even space.
| | 08:04 | And you notice when I take the Circle and
adjust the Radius, that it always stays the
| | 08:10 | same number of units away, and that's a
really powerful thing to be able to do.
| | 08:14 | Let's close up the XPresso Editor and now I
can take the Rail and parent it to the Circle,
| | 08:19 | and I am ready to start adjusting my letters.
| | 08:22 | Every now and then, I get a slight error like
that where a middle-mouse click doesn't work.
| | 08:27 | So what I need to do is just adjust the view
here and the perspective a little bit. That's
| | 08:31 | going to give Cinema 4D a little kick in the
pants, and now I can middle-mouse click again,
| | 08:35 | and let's change the size of this window down here and
I'm going to middle-mouse click to the front view.
| | 08:42 | Let's drag this down.
| | 08:44 | So what I want to do is to be
able to space all these letters out.
| | 08:46 | We will leave the W exactly where it is and
then start off with the OOD, and the PLANK.
| | 08:52 | So let's grab each of those letters, and what
I want to do is if I hold down the Shift key,
| | 08:56 | it's going to grab all those letters.
| | 08:57 | I only want to grab the Spline Effector.
| | 08:59 | So watch this, I am going to drag a
rectangle down and just grab the Spline Effectors.
| | 09:04 | Now I have got all the same parameters showing,
and I can go to the Effector window and I
| | 09:09 | can adjust something called the Start.
| | 09:11 | I can either do the Offset or the Start, and
I am going to use, in this case, the Start
| | 09:15 | function and I can now space those out, and
I can go up, there's the O, and then when
| | 09:20 | I hold down the Ctrl key and deselect, I can
now move the next O out and there's that one,
| | 09:26 | and hold down the Ctrl key and deselect
again and I can move the D out. There we go.
| | 09:32 | And I will do that at about 17.5.
| | 09:34 | There we go.
| | 09:36 | And I can now just hold down the
Ctrl key and repeat that process.
| | 09:39 | Now I have gone ahead and sped up time a little bit
here and this is a little bit of a tedious process.
| | 09:45 | Now I have finished spacing out all the letters,
but you will notice some of the letters have
| | 09:48 | a little bit wonky rotation.
| | 09:50 | The A is a great example of that.
| | 09:52 | So what I can do to fix that is in the Spline
Deformer for the A object, I'm going to the
| | 09:57 | Parameter option and I can adjust the Banking.
| | 09:59 | If I just give that a couple of
clicks, you can see I can rotate that.
| | 10:02 | I will just do it really extreme, so you can
see what I am working with here, and I can
| | 10:06 | adjust each of the letters like that.
| | 10:07 | So I will just go through and
just quickly space those out.
| | 10:12 | There is that one.
| | 10:13 | I will do the same thing for the W.
| | 10:14 | Let's scroll up and adjust the
banking there, there we go! Nice.
| | 10:19 | Okay, we are just about
done with our Type layout.
| | 10:23 | The next thing we want to do is to do the
word Film, but the word Film rather than having
| | 10:28 | it be wrapped around the same way, I want to
have it be facing in a different direction,
| | 10:33 | so that the word faces outward with
the tops of letters on this inner ring.
| | 10:37 | So the way I'm going to do that is start
off by duplicating our Circle, because we are
| | 10:43 | going to use this circle in a different way
now and I'll hold down the Ctrl key and drag
| | 10:48 | a copy of it and bring it way
down here by the word Films. Okay.
| | 10:52 | Now what I am going to do is
borrow one of these Spline Effectors.
| | 10:55 | I'm going to grab the one from the letter W.
| | 10:57 | Hold down the Ctrl key and
drag it down under the letter F.
| | 11:00 | Now I need to change which splines are showing up
in this Effector field, and so I don't get confused,
| | 11:07 | let's change this.
| | 11:08 | We will call this one Lower Circle.
| | 11:11 | So now what I'm going to do is also
change the name of the lower Rail.
| | 11:15 | I will go ahead and
change that to be lower Rail.
| | 11:18 | Now what I need to do is
change which spline is being used.
| | 11:22 | If I click on this Spline effect for the F,
you can see it's using the old spline.
| | 11:25 | So let's take this Lower
circle and drag it in there.
| | 11:28 | Take the lower Rail and drag it in there.
| | 11:30 | And now it looks like nothing has changed.
| | 11:32 | That's because the
splines are exactly the same.
| | 11:34 | Now in order for this Films to
show up, I have to change the axis.
| | 11:40 | If I select the F, hold down the Ctrl key
and grab the I, L, M, S, I need to set the
| | 11:46 | axis so that it is up here
at the tops of the letters.
| | 11:50 | So if I go back to the Mesh menu and grab
Axis Center, I am going to take this and change
| | 11:55 | it to 100 on the Y axis and if I
hit Execute, that moves them up.
| | 12:01 | And look the F jumped right to the top.
| | 12:03 | I've got another problem in that my F is
pointing inward, and I want it to be facing down like
| | 12:10 | this, and that's because of that Rail Spline.
| | 12:12 | So let's close up the Axis Center.
| | 12:14 | I need to modify this XPresso. I want this
rail to be inside of this circle, so that
| | 12:20 | the letters will point upward.
| | 12:22 | So if I go to this XPresso and take the Math
Add and change that to be a subtraction, I
| | 12:28 | will go to Subtract and then close that up.
| | 12:33 | Now what will happen, you will see is that
the lower Rail is always going to be inside
| | 12:38 | and look what happened to my letter F.
| | 12:40 | You see that it's now facing the wrong way,
let's rotate that spline a little bit.
| | 12:43 | If we take the Circle in order to rotate it
around, you can see there's my F right there,
| | 12:47 | and it's facing the wrong way.
| | 12:49 | To fix that, what I do is go to the Spline
Effector and go to the Parameter option, and
| | 12:54 | take the Heading instead of having it be 90, I
can just take that and flip it around to be 270.
| | 13:03 | There we go.
| | 13:05 | Now our F is facing the right way.
| | 13:06 | So now what we can do is take the same Spline
Effector and do that same technique and just
| | 13:11 | respace out those words.
| | 13:13 | So hold down the Ctrl key and grab that and
duplicate it each time to each of the other letters.
| | 13:20 | And now I can do that same
technique of spacing things out.
| | 13:23 | So let's start off by drawing a rectangle
around each of these, and I'm going to go
| | 13:27 | to the Effector Parameter and raise that up a
bit, and let's adjust the Start and let's go.
| | 13:34 | Now you will notice that what we have to do
in this case, we have to do a negative start
| | 13:37 | value and you can actually do that.
| | 13:39 | You can go in the negative values.
| | 13:40 | I'm going to adjust this
one probably about -4 or so.
| | 13:45 | Okay, so you can see that the
F is touching the W over here.
| | 13:50 | So to fix that I can take this Lower Circle
and rotate it around, and before I'd make any
| | 13:55 | adjustments, let's get the W into position,
so I can take the W and rotate it around.
| | 14:01 | So you can see that I'm using this red axis
here as a guide and then I can scroll down
| | 14:06 | here and grab the Lower Circle and take
this and put it over here at the top.
| | 14:10 | So now I have got Wood
Plank Films right there.
| | 14:15 | So that's pretty much it
for the setup of the text.
| | 14:17 | I know it seems like a tedious process,
but it really gives me a lot of control.
| | 14:21 | So the last thing I want to do is to extrude that
type and show you how to build the hierarchy for that.
| | 14:26 | So let's grab an Extrude NURB, let's click
and hold on the NURB objects and drag one in.
| | 14:30 | Let's call this Wood for short and then call
it Ext, and I'm going to bring that down below
| | 14:36 | the circle and I will take each of the letters
in the word, Wood Plank and I will hold down
| | 14:40 | the Shift key this time and grab all of
those guys and put them into the Extrude.
| | 14:45 | Now let's switch to Perspective
view so we can see what's going on.
| | 14:48 | The Wood Plank is not all extruded, that's
because the Wood has to have the Hierarchal
| | 14:53 | button all turned on.
| | 14:55 | So now that Wood Plank type is all extruded,
I can repeat that process for the Films.
| | 15:00 | Let's add another Extude NURB, drag it down
right below this circle here and then we will
| | 15:06 | grab the Films and put it all inside that.
| | 15:10 | And then on this Extrude NURB, we will
click the Hierarchal button and now we have got
| | 15:13 | everything extruded.
| | 15:15 | The last thing I want to do is grab both of
these Extrude NURBS, hold on the Ctrl key,
| | 15:18 | so I am editing them both at once, and under
the Caps, I am going to change the front side
| | 15:22 | to Fillet Cap, and then let's make that a
little bit smaller, say 2 units, and now we
| | 15:27 | have got a nice tasty type extrusion.
| | 15:30 | I will just hit Command+R or Ctrl+R to do a
quick rendering here in the Editor window.
| | 15:35 | In order to animate all this stuff, I have
built up a little hierarchy here and what
| | 15:39 | I can do is animate the radius of each of
these rings, and I can animate the Films ring,
| | 15:46 | I can animate the Wood Plank ring, and rather
than show you that whole process, I have got
| | 15:51 | the file that I used to generate the movie that I
showed you at the very beginning of this tutorial.
| | 15:55 | So let's go to the Wood Plank Films and I'm
going to give you guys this as one of the
| | 16:00 | exercise files so you can
walk through it yourself.
| | 16:02 | But basically what I've done is I've animated
under the Hierarchy here, this is the hierarchy
| | 16:08 | for the top group, and I've animated
the Radius of the Circle and I've also animated
| | 16:14 | the position of the Rail.
| | 16:15 | The position of the Rail is what
controls the angle of this type.
| | 16:19 | You can see it moving back and forth.
| | 16:20 | And all I have done is keyframe the position
of that Rail Circle and that's what's causing
| | 16:25 | the type to bank.
| | 16:26 | And so when I scrub through, you can see that
the radius of those circles is animating into
| | 16:32 | position and dropping that text down.
| | 16:35 | It has a nice little tilting
effect when it hits its mark.
| | 16:38 | The Clapper Object is something that comes
right out of Cinema 4D's content browser and
| | 16:43 | the planks are something
that I have made myself.
| | 16:45 | I shot some pictures of some wood and created
some rough outlines and texture mapped those,
| | 16:50 | just simple Extrude NURBS.
| | 16:51 | If I twirl that open you will see, I have
got a bunch of Extrude NURBS underneath the
| | 16:54 | Fracture object and I am using a Plain Effector and a
Delay Effector to animate and reveal these objects.
| | 17:01 | And that's a really great animation technique.
| | 17:03 | So you've got this file here as part of
exercise files, you can take it apart and play around
| | 17:07 | with it, but you can see that that technique
for using XPresso to control the size of the
| | 17:13 | rings is really valuable.
| | 17:15 | This is a great example of one of the truly
simple ways to use MoGraph and XPresso together.
| | 17:20 | XPresso is one of those things that a lot
of artists are afraid of and hopefully, this
| | 17:24 | will show you that you don't
need to be afraid anymore.
| | 17:26 | For an introduction to XPresso, check out the
Cinema 4D Essential Training Course here on lynda.com.
| | 17:32 | That's it for this
edition of Design in Motion.
| | 17:33 | Keep it moving, and I will see you next time.
| | 17:36 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 039 Glowing "sci-fi" text in C4D and After Effects| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and
welcome to Design in Motion.
| | 00:03 | The weekly series where we explore important
fundamentals in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:06 | I am a huge fan of the movie Tron. Both the original
and the remake spark my imagination in a huge way.
| | 00:13 | Now what I really like the most
about them is the look and feel.
| | 00:17 | Glowing lines on the dark
environment really draw you into the scene.
| | 00:21 | Now that look is pretty simple to
create in CINEMA 4D and After Effects.
| | 00:25 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:27 | Okay, so I am here in QuickTime Player and
I have got this pre-rendered movie, let's
| | 00:30 | hit Play here, and you can see I have got
this really cool SILICON glowing type on a
| | 00:39 | reflective floor and if I back up to the
beginning here, we can see close, I have got this really
| | 00:44 | great striated pattern with
these glowing edges here.
| | 00:47 | Now the glowing edges are going to happen
inside of After Effects but the setup for
| | 00:51 | this process happens inside of Cinema 4D.
| | 00:54 | So let's move over to CINEMA
4D and start that process.
| | 00:58 | So here is the START file and I have got the
type and the camera move already set up and
| | 01:02 | I have a got a reflective floor set up here.
| | 01:05 | If I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R on the keyboard
you can see that I've got just a perfectly
| | 01:09 | reflective floor in a black environment.
| | 01:11 | So the first step in this process is to
create a material for the sides of the type, and
| | 01:17 | I am going to double-click in the material manager to
create a new material, and let's call that SIDES.
| | 01:23 | And the SIDES material, let's raise that up. The only
thing I care about is the Luminance channel for now.
| | 01:29 | Go to the Basic Properties and turn off Color,
turn on Luminance, and turn off Specular, and
| | 01:34 | now I have got just this white ball.
| | 01:36 | In the Luminance channel
let's add-in Tiles shader.
| | 01:39 | So I will click on the Texture pulldown, go
to Surfaces and go to Tiles, and that makes
| | 01:44 | for this interesting checkerboard pattern.
| | 01:46 | Now this is not what we are going to end up
with, it is just a starting point. We are
| | 01:49 | going to change some settings on that,
| | 01:51 | but for now it's really
good, it's really helpful.
| | 01:53 | So let's take this SIDES material
and apply it to the Extrude NURB.
| | 01:56 | When we do that, I will hit
Command+R or Ctrl+R on the keyboard.
| | 02:00 | You can see that I now have the material
bunched up on the sides but not showing it all on
| | 02:05 | the front, and that's the normal behavior
for the Extrude NURB. So we want to change
| | 02:10 | that behavior and the way we do that is by
clicking on the Tag, and under the Tag properties
| | 02:14 | we are going to change the
Projection method from UVW Mapping to Cubic.
| | 02:19 | And when we do that, you see instantly now we can see
that checkerboard pattern showing up everywhere.
| | 02:23 | I'll hit Command+R or Ctrl+R
again to render that.
| | 02:26 | Next we want to change the Tag properties
so that this material is rotated and that
| | 02:33 | is not going to make much of a difference
right now, but it's a very important step
| | 02:36 | for aligning the material correctly on the object.
| | 02:39 | We want to have those lines traveling down
the sides of the type, but along the Z axis
| | 02:44 | and this rotation is going to help us.
| | 02:46 | So what we want to do is go to the Tag again
and go to the Coordinate properties, and in
| | 02:51 | the Pitch Rotation we are going
to change it to be 90 degrees.
| | 02:55 | Now it doesn't look like much has happened
here but the whole material has rotated around
| | 02:59 | this axis here and it is now
pointing essentially this way.
| | 03:03 | Next we want to stretch this material so that it's
aligned and stretched across the entire object.
| | 03:08 | So to do that we select the Tag here, and go
to the Tag menu and tell it to Fit to Object.
| | 03:14 | When I do that, it is going to ask me, do
you want the sub-objects included? Yes I do.
| | 03:18 | Now you can see that we have got everything
stretched across the face and then bunched
| | 03:21 | up tightly on the sides, and
that's exactly what we want.
| | 03:24 | If we hit Command+R or Ctrl+R
you can see what's going on there.
| | 03:28 | So now let's hit A on the keyboard to redraw
that frame back to the shaded view and now
| | 03:34 | we can focus on the material.
| | 03:35 | So in the SIDES material, in the Luminance
property, I am going to click on the swatch
| | 03:40 | here for the tiles, and that
takes me into the Tiles property.
| | 03:43 | And the first thing we want
to do is change the Pattern.
| | 03:45 | The Pattern is set for Squares right
now and we want to set it to be Lines 1.
| | 03:49 | And the lines right now are traveling vertically
along this way and what we want to do is change
| | 03:55 | the Orientation, and if I hit Command+R on the
keyboard you can see that they are traveling
| | 03:59 | vertically up that way.
| | 04:01 | What I want to do is change the Orientation
U to Orientation V, and now you can see that
| | 04:05 | I have these lines traveling along the Z
axis of the type and traveling down the sides.
| | 04:12 | But they are way too big, so now what I can
do is to change the scale of those, and so
| | 04:16 | in the Shader again, I can go to the Global
Scale, and change that Global Scale to be about
| | 04:23 | 10%, and that 10 % really
tightens up that pattern.
| | 04:26 | Now we don't need that red color anymore
and let's change that color to be white.
| | 04:30 | So I will go to the Tile Color red, click
on the Swatch, and in the Color Picker, set
| | 04:33 | it to be white and then hit OK.
| | 04:35 | Now I am just about where I
need to be for this pattern.
| | 04:38 | If I hit Command+R you can see that I have
got it showing up on the sides just the way
| | 04:42 | I want to. We're a little bit far away to see that,
so if I back up in time and then go right
| | 04:48 | in there, you can see that I have got
those great horizontal lines on there.
| | 04:52 | So let's back up just a bit, so we can see
the whole word, and now what we want to focus
| | 04:56 | on is the transparency of this.
| | 04:59 | So if we go into the SIDES material again
and go to the Basic Properties and turn on
| | 05:04 | Transparency, the entire
word becomes transparent.
| | 05:06 | You can see that the material goes away, and if I hit
Command+R or Ctrl+R, then the whole word is gone.
| | 05:11 | So that's because in the Transparency,
the default option is fully transparent.
| | 05:15 | Let's resize that window a bit.
| | 05:17 | And so now what we want to
do is to add in a gradient.
| | 05:21 | What we want to have happen is we want
that gradient to travel along Z axis.
| | 05:25 | So let's start off by adding the gradient. So I
go to the Texture pulldown, in the Transparency
| | 05:28 | channel, and go to Gradient, and that gives
me a gradient in the Transparency channel.
| | 05:32 | If I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R, you can see
that the gradient is causing the transparency
| | 05:37 | to be fully opaque down here
and then transparent down here.
| | 05:41 | The first thing I want to do is to change
the way that gradient is facing and so to
| | 05:45 | do that I need to reverse the gradient.
| | 05:47 | So I will click on the Gradient swatch and
in here I am going to take the black and drag
| | 05:51 | it down here. I take the white and drag it over
here, and you see that flips the knot around.
| | 05:56 | Then what I want to do is to take the middle
point of the gradient and move it down here
| | 06:02 | to tighten that up a bit.
| | 06:03 | That gives me a really
long transition in the gray.
| | 06:05 | Now I can take the Type and change it from 2D-U
to 2D-V. Right now it's going to be all
| | 06:11 | bunched up on this side now, so I want to
change that to 2D-V and now when I look at
| | 06:16 | that, you will see that I have this great
fade off here on the edges; it's more opaque
| | 06:23 | here and less opaque down here.
| | 06:26 | It's a little bit confusing because we are
seeing stuff on the fronts of the letters
| | 06:29 | and let's fix that right now.
| | 06:31 | So the next step in this process is to make
a new material for the front, and so I will
| | 06:35 | double-click here to make in a material. Let's
call it Front, and that Front material under
| | 06:40 | the Basic Properties, I will leave Color
on and I am going to turn on Transparency.
| | 06:44 | When I do that my object becomes completely
transparent except for the Specular highlight,
| | 06:49 | and I don't really need
that so I will turn that off.
| | 06:51 | Then I want to go to the Transparency option.
| | 06:55 | Let's bring that down to about 96% or so.
| | 06:58 | And you can see I have got a very faint ball
here and a very faint preview down here, and
| | 07:04 | I want to apply this to the type now.
| | 07:05 | So let's take that and
apply it to the Extrude NURB.
| | 07:09 | And when I do that it's
going to completely overwrite.
| | 07:11 | If I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R again, then I
have got this sort of faded type, and that's
| | 07:16 | not really what I want. I only want
that to show up on the front face.
| | 07:19 | So in the Tag properties, I am going to
go to the Selection and type this in.
| | 07:23 | It's case-sensitive; capital C and the number 1.
| | 07:27 | When I do that, that limits the material to
only showing up on the front face, and so when
| | 07:32 | I render now, you can see that I now
have much less information on here.
| | 07:37 | I want to repeat that process for the back.
| | 07:39 | So let's take the Front material, hold down
the Ctrl key and drag a copy of it over to
| | 07:43 | the right, and call it Back and then the
Back material, let's apply that to the Extrude
| | 07:48 | NURB, and in the Selection property again,
we are going to type in capital C and the
| | 07:53 | number 2, and that means the backside.
So 1 is the front, 2 is the back.
| | 07:58 | And now when we render, you can see that I
now have much more prominent sides and the
| | 08:03 | faces are a little bit more transparent.
| | 08:06 | Now I want to have the back be slightly more
transparent than the front, so under the Back
| | 08:10 | property I am going to change that to be,
in the Transparency about 98%, there we go.
| | 08:16 | Now when I render, you can see that the
front is much more prominent than the back.
| | 08:19 | So the last step now is to address the edges
of the type and I am going to make another
| | 08:24 | new material and call that material Edges. In
that Edges material, only thing I care about
| | 08:30 | is the Luminance channel.
| | 08:32 | Don't need Color, just Luminance, no
Specular, and I will leave it at a 100%.
| | 08:36 | And what I'm going to do is take the
edges and apply it to the Extrude NURB.
| | 08:43 | Now that's going to change the entire word
white, but I am going to use the same Selection
| | 08:46 | property again to change it to only show up
on the edges, and the information I will type in
| | 08:52 | here is capital R and the number 1.
| | 08:54 | That stands for rounding one
and that means the bevels.
| | 08:57 | Now I'll hit Command+R or Ctrl+R again.
| | 08:59 | You can see now I have got this great type,
I have got a faded edge there and I've got
| | 09:05 | a faded face and a faded back, and I'm going
to create one more new material for the edges.
| | 09:09 | You see I can see the striate pattern going
on, on the back edge, and that's because I
| | 09:13 | need to put a material in there on the back
edge, and that striated pattern is showing
| | 09:18 | up in the back edge.
| | 09:19 | So I will hold down the Ctrl key and drag
the edges over and I will call this Back edge.
| | 09:23 | And in the Back Edge material, I am going to
add in Transparency because I don't want the
| | 09:28 | back edges to be as bright as the front edge.
| | 09:30 | So in the Back Edge material, I'll take the
Transparency and bring it down to about 96% or so.
| | 09:37 | I'll take that Back Edge and I'll apply it to
the Extrude NURB, and in the Selection property,
| | 09:41 | again, I am going to type in this time R2, and
that stands for Rounding 2, it's the back side.
| | 09:47 | So let's back up a little bit from this type so we
can see it at an angle and hit Command+R or Ctrl+R.
| | 09:52 | You can see now I have got this great
looking define type, and if I zoom in to the first
| | 09:57 | part of the animation and render there,
I have got these great edges going on.
| | 10:03 | So that's pretty much all there
is to prepping this file in C4D.
| | 10:06 | The render settings are very important. Let's
hit Command+B or Ctrl+B on the keyboard, and
| | 10:10 | talk about how I have
these Render Settings set up.
| | 10:12 | Now you can see I've got them set up already,
and the most important part is that I'm doing
| | 10:16 | Multi-Pass rendering.
| | 10:17 | I'm rendering out the RGBA Image.
| | 10:19 | Ambient, which relates to the Luminance channel,
the Reflection Pass, which is going to give
| | 10:23 | me the floor that I need, and an Object
Buffer, and that Object Buffer is just the type.
| | 10:28 | And I don't think I'm going to end up using
it, but a lot of times I'll put an Object
| | 10:31 | Buffer in here anyway, just in case.
Better to have it than not have it.
| | 10:35 | And you can see in the Compositing Tag on
the Extrude NURB, I've got the Object Buffer
| | 10:39 | set for number 1, and
that number matches here.
| | 10:42 | I'm rendering this out at 640x360
in just 90 frames of animation.
| | 10:47 | So I've already got this rendered out and you
notice also, let's go into the Save options
| | 10:52 | that I've got the Compositing
Project File options all turned on.
| | 10:55 | And so I've already rendered this out.
| | 10:57 | Let's go over to After Effects
and import that project file.
| | 11:01 | So I'm going to double-click
here in the Project Window.
| | 11:04 | Now I'm in the exercise files on the Desktop, and
I'm going to go to 3D RENDERS and import SILICON.aec.
| | 11:12 | Now if your AEC import is not working or
the AEC file is grayed out, that means you do
| | 11:17 | not have the correct After Effects Import
plug-in installed from CINEMA 4D inside your
| | 11:23 | After Effects plug-ins folder.
| | 11:24 | Now you can get this from Maxon's web site
in the Downloads section or from the Exchange
| | 11:29 | Plug-ins folder in your
CINEMA 4D installation.
| | 11:31 | For more information on this technique watch
the chapters on working with After Effects
| | 11:36 | in CINEMA 4D, in the CINEMA 4D Essentials Training
course, or inside of the After Effects Apprentice series.
| | 11:42 | And when I do that, I get
these two folders here.
| | 11:44 | I'll take the Special Passes and drag it in
there and twirl that open, and now I've got
| | 11:48 | my SILICON composition.
| | 11:50 | Let's drag that out here so it's
floating loose and let's go into that.
| | 11:54 | So what we end up with inside of After Effects,
let's move this over just a bit, and scrub
| | 12:00 | forward, and you see we've got
this really cool looking type.
| | 12:02 | Now to get the glow looking just the way we
want it, we're going to need to do some things.
| | 12:07 | Now if I solo these layers out, the Ambient
Pass is just the edges in the parts that have
| | 12:14 | the Luminance channel in them.
| | 12:15 | That's going to great as
the basis for our glow.
| | 12:18 | So let's unsolo that.
| | 12:20 | I'm going to use this Ambient
Pass in a couple of different ways.
| | 12:22 | The first thing I want to do is to use the
Ambient Pass to isolate just the white lines,
| | 12:27 | and the way I'll do that is by making a new
solid layer, Command+Y or Ctrl+Y on the keyboard,
| | 12:32 | and let's make that the same as the Comp Size,
but let's make the color of the Solid layer
| | 12:36 | white, and I'll hit OK.
| | 12:39 | And now what I want to do is I want to
duplicate this Ambient layer, Command+D or Ctrl+D and
| | 12:44 | let's take that and put
that up here above that.
| | 12:46 | We're going to use that as a Track Matte.
| | 12:47 | Now if your Track Mattes aren't showing, you
can click the Switches/Modes button down there.
| | 12:51 | And so I'm going to set that to use
Luma Matte for the SILICON_ambient movie.
| | 12:54 | And what that does, if I solo out this White
Solid layer is that you can see the transparency.
| | 12:58 | I now have just those lines over transparent,
and that gives me a lot more control than
| | 13:03 | just using the Ambient Pass by itself.
| | 13:05 | The next thing I want to
do is, let's unsolo that,
| | 13:08 | take the Ambient Pass, and I can take both
of these layers and just drag them down below
| | 13:12 | the camera. It's a good form to keep
your camera at the top of the layer stack.
| | 13:16 | I'm going to take this Ambient Pass and
move it up here, and on the Ambient Pass we're
| | 13:20 | going to apply the very cool Starglow filter.
| | 13:24 | Now if I go to the Effects, and I'm going
to go to Trapcode and I'll add Starglow.
| | 13:30 | Now when you first add Starglow it's
going to make this crazy disco pattern.
| | 13:34 | And what we want to do next is
to adjust some of the settings.
| | 13:38 | So the first thing we want to is we want the
Source Opacity to be 0, because we only want
| | 13:43 | to focus on the Starglow itself, and I'm going
to solo this layer, and then adjust the Source
| | 13:49 | Opacity down to 0.
| | 13:50 | You can see that now we're only seeing the glow.
| | 13:54 | Now I can unsolo this.
| | 13:55 | I just soloed it just so you guys could
see what would happen when I did that.
| | 13:58 | So I'll unsolo that, and now with that un-soloed,
I'm back to where I was before.
| | 14:01 | Now it seems like nothing has changed,
except now we have total control over this glow.
| | 14:05 | So the first thing I want to do is go to the
Colormap, and actually I can twirl-open the
| | 14:09 | individual colors.
| | 14:10 | You can do all kinds of great things here,
but I want to go to Colormap A and instead
| | 14:14 | of having it be a 3-Color Gradient,
I'm going to set that to be One Color.
| | 14:18 | And that just isolates just that middle color.
| | 14:21 | In Colormap B, I don't need to be a 3-Color
Gradient either. I'll set that to be One Color as well.
| | 14:27 | And that one color we're going to use is going
to be a really nice kind of cyany kind of blue.
| | 14:32 | So let's click on that swatch and then pick a
nice blue color, and that's feeling pretty
| | 14:37 | good, right about there, and I'll do
the same thing for this pattern here.
| | 14:42 | In fact, I'll just use the Color
Picker here and grab that color.
| | 14:45 | You can see it gives us this
really great looking blue color.
| | 14:49 | And now the streaks are too long, so I can
take the Streak Length and dial it way down.
| | 14:54 | There we go, and let's zoom in a bit
to the beginning of the animation.
| | 14:59 | I want to have it spread out a little
bit across the surface of the logo.
| | 15:04 | So what I'll do is go to the Pre-
Process and adjust the Threshold downward.
| | 15:07 | And as I do that, that opens the glow
up to showing up on more of the type.
| | 15:12 | You can see as I get down into the 50 or 60
range, I'll bring it down to about 30 or so,
| | 15:18 | and I think that' s going to look really nice.
| | 15:20 | Now I can bring the Streak
Length down even more than that.
| | 15:22 | Let's bring it to 1, there we go.
| | 15:25 | You can see now I've got this great looking
glow happening here, and I think that's pretty
| | 15:30 | good for the Starglow.
| | 15:32 | Now what I want to do is address the Reflection,
and for the Reflection the first thing I want
| | 15:36 | to do is dial it down in Intensity.
| | 15:39 | You'll notice that the color doesn't match now.
| | 15:41 | We've got this blue color here and gray
here, and we're going to have to fix that.
| | 15:44 | But first let's dial down the Intensity.
| | 15:46 | So hit the letter T on the keyboard to bring
up the Opacity and bring that down. Before
| | 15:50 | I do anything else, I'm going to bring up
a new solid layer, Command+Y or Ctrl+Y.
| | 15:54 | Let's make a black Solid and put it down at
the very bottom of the layer stack, and I
| | 15:58 | do that a lot of times rather than just
turning off the Transparency because it affects how
| | 16:02 | blending modes behave.
| | 16:03 | So I'm going to raise it up and take the
black Solid and bring it right down here at the
| | 16:07 | bottom, and that's going to give me a very
solid color for everything to sit on top of.
| | 16:12 | Now what I can do is just adjust that Opacity
down for the Reflection, and bring that down
| | 16:16 | into the 10% or 15% range.
| | 16:19 | Cool! Now let's change the
color so that it matches.
| | 16:22 | So I'll go to SILICON_refl, go to Effects >
Color Correction > CC Toner.
| | 16:27 | And for the Midtones on this, I'm going to
pick that cyan color that I had before, so
| | 16:31 | I can either pull it as part of the
Color Picker, I think that will do.
| | 16:36 | That gives me a great match up for that.
| | 16:39 | Now what I want to do is to blur it out.
| | 16:41 | I don't want my reflection
to be very sharp like that.
| | 16:44 | I want it to have a nice blurry feel.
| | 16:46 | So I go to Effects > Blur & Sharpen and now
I'll do just a regular little Gaussian Blur.
| | 16:50 | I think that will work just fine.
| | 16:52 | And in the Blurriness, I'll just adjust that up
until it feels nice and soft, and there we go.
| | 17:00 | That's pretty much all there is to it.
| | 17:02 | This gives us a great-looking sci-fi feel
type with these fantastic glowing edges.
| | 17:08 | Capturing this look is all
about using the idea of contrast.
| | 17:12 | The visual difference between the glowing
lines in the surfaces that they're on allows
| | 17:16 | you to define the shapes of your objects
while at the same time allowing your imagination
| | 17:21 | to fill in all the blanks that aren't there,
and it's your imagination that really draws
| | 17:25 | you into the scene.
| | 17:26 | That's it for this edition of Design in Motion,
keep it moving, and I'll see you next time.
| | 17:31 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 040 Editing music for motion graphics| 00:00 | Hi! Rob Garrott here and welcome to Design
in Motion, the weekly series where we
| | 00:04 | explore important fundamentals
in the world of motion graphics.
| | 00:07 | Now when I was first getting started
in motion graphics, I didn't really
| | 00:10 | understand the importance of sound to animation.
| | 00:13 | We've all grown up with
sound, it's all around us.
| | 00:16 | In fact, the Saturday morning cartoons
are filled with music and sound effects.
| | 00:20 | Now I really didn't appreciate how
important those were until I went to my first
| | 00:24 | audio sweetening session.
| | 00:26 | In that session, a really talented
sound designer added music and sound effects
| | 00:30 | to a project that I've been working
on and the effects left me speechless.
| | 00:34 | Now adding music and sound effects
to your own animations is really not that hard.
| | 00:39 | In this episode we're going to take
a look at how to cut music to a very
| | 00:43 | specific animation project.
| | 00:45 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:46 | So here I'm in Premiere Pro CS6 and I
want to make a really important point
| | 00:52 | before I get started.
| | 00:54 | It doesn't matter what application
you're working in, the editing tools
| | 00:58 | are editing tools.
| | 00:59 | What I'm really talking about here is
a technique for understanding the music
| | 01:03 | and really figuring out how to look at
the music so that you can put it in the
| | 01:06 | right place within your system.
| | 01:08 | You can do this in any program; Final
Cut, Avid, Premiere Elements, iMovie;
| | 01:13 | it doesn't matter.
| | 01:14 | I'm in Premiere Pro CS6, but you could
follow along in any editing application.
| | 01:18 | I've got a sequence here and it's
already preset to 1080p at 29.97, and I'm
| | 01:24 | going to start off with the animation.
| | 01:26 | Let's double-click on this to bring it
up into the Viewer Window and I'll hit
| | 01:29 | Play so you guys can see this.
| | 01:31 | (video playing)
| | 01:52 | Okay, so this piece already has
really solid sound design on it, but
| | 01:56 | it's missing music.
| | 01:57 | And so what I want to do is to
cut some music underneath it.
| | 02:00 | So before I do anything, I need
to get this video into my timeline.
|
|
|
