IntroductionOverview| 00:06 | Hi! I am Chris Meyer of Crish Design and
welcome to After Effects Apprentice: Layer Control.
| | 00:11 | Now in the Apprentice lessons on basic and
advanced animation, we focused primarily on
| | 00:15 | how to take a layer and move it
around your composition stage.
| | 00:17 | In essence how to take a still image and bring it
to life by keyframing its transform properties.
| | 00:22 | However, a lot of your source footage
already has animation built into it.
| | 00:26 | It includes video footage, film frames and
other image sequences, which may already fill
| | 00:31 | your entire composition stage.
| | 00:32 | Therefore, in this lesson, we are going to
focus on how to manipulate and better combine
| | 00:36 | those types of sources.
| | 00:38 | We're going to show you how to slide,
edit, sequence, and trim layers.
| | 00:42 | We're going to show you how to apply blending
modes to them, which is a more effective way
| | 00:45 | of mixing them together.
| | 00:46 | We're going to show you how to apply effects,
layer styles, and animation presets to further
| | 00:50 | treat them, and how to use adjustments layers to apply
the same treatment to multiple layers all at once.
| | 00:55 | Of course at the end, we'll give you a little
brainteaser, just to make sure you've been
| | 00:59 | learning, and along the way we will be sharing
more technical advice as well as an animation
| | 01:02 | advice to help you more effectively
combine layers in your own project.
| | 01:06 | So let's start out by showing you
how to go ahead and edit those layers.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:02 | Throughout these After Effects Apprentice
courses, you'll find that Trish and I focus
| | 00:06 | on core concepts of using
and learning After Effects.
| | 00:09 | Not specific tricks that only work
with certain pieces of footage.
| | 00:12 | Therefore, if you don't have any exercise
files, or if you want to use your own footage,
| | 00:16 | you'll still get a lot out of
just watching these videos.
| | 00:19 | That said, studies have shown that the best
way to learn something is to actually do it.
| | 00:24 | Therefore for the optimal learning experience
we suggest you do get access to the exercise files.
| | 00:28 | There are two ways to do that.
| | 00:31 | One is to get a lynda.com premium membership.
| | 00:34 | That will allow you to download the files
for After Effects CS4, CS5, CS5.5 or CS6.
| | 00:41 | These are the same files we're
using when we record these videos.
| | 00:44 | The other approach is to get a copy
of our book After Effects Apprentice.
| | 00:48 | The third edition covers CS5, CS5.5 and CS6.
| | 00:51 | If you're still using After Effects CS4,
then get the second edition of the book.
| | 00:55 | Those files are pretty close to the
ones we use throughout this video course.
| | 00:59 | Whenever there are differences
we'll note them as we teach.
| | 01:02 | Now either way we think it's a good value.
| | 01:04 | If you get the premium membership to lynda,
you could access to exercise files for hundreds
| | 01:08 | of other courses.
| | 01:10 | If you get one of our books, you've got some
additional text explanation for each of the
| | 01:13 | features we discuss and you've got a
desk reference next to you all the time.
| | 01:17 | Now throughout these lessons we're going
to be using a combination of After Effects
| | 01:20 | CS5, CS5.5 and CS6. Don't be thrown off by
any minor differences in the user interface,
| | 01:27 | most of the functionality of After Effects
is identical across all of these versions.
| | 01:32 | If there are differences from version to
version, we'll note it in the little caption that
| | 01:35 | runs along the bottom of the screen.
| | 01:37 | But all that said, we really hope you have a
lot of fun with these courses learning After Effects.
| | 01:42 | It's the application we've been using for
ages now, we have a great time with it, and
| | 01:46 | we hope you get the same
enjoyment out of it that we do.
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1. Editing Layers in TimeStacking and sliding layers| 00:07 | If you have the Exercise Files that
come with this lesson, go ahead and open up
| | 00:10 | the comp 01_Layer_Practice*starter.
| | 00:14 | If you don't have the Exercise Files,
just import any few sources in After Effects,
| | 00:17 | create a new comp, drag your
sources into the comp, and you can play along.
| | 00:21 | We're going to start gently with the
simple concept of how the horizontal and
| | 00:26 | vertical arrangement of layers in the Timeline
panel affect what you see in the Comp panel.
| | 00:31 | Now as you probably know, the Comp
panel displays your current composite of
| | 00:36 | layers underneath the Current Time Indicator.
| | 00:39 | So as you drag your Current Time
Indicator through a project, you get an idea of
| | 00:42 | how things change over time.
| | 00:44 | I am going to move the Current Time Indicator
to where two layers overlap in the Timeline.
| | 00:50 | The stacking order in the Timeline
affects which layer takes precedence when
| | 00:55 | it's rendered to the Comp panel.
Mainly the layer on top typically wins.
| | 01:00 | If I was to take that layer on top
and drag it underneath the other layer,
| | 01:05 | you'll notice this black line indicates
where I am about to drop this new layer.
| | 01:09 | Now the new layer on top takes
precedence and is what is drawn inside the
| | 01:13 | Comp panel, simple enough.
| | 01:15 | Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.
| | 01:17 | One exception is if you have the
3D Layer switch enabled for layers.
| | 01:21 | In that case, the distances of layers
from the virtual camera will also have a big
| | 01:25 | impact on how things are
rendered inside the Comp panel.
| | 01:28 | Secondly, anything that affects the
alpha channel for layer, such as Opacity if
| | 01:33 | I press T to reveal it, also affects what
you see in the Comp panel. There is Opacity.
| | 01:39 | There is ways of modifying the
alpha channel such as masking.
| | 01:41 | There is also the subject of
blending modes, which we'll be getting into
| | 01:44 | later in this lesson.
| | 01:45 | But in general, it's the stacking order
that determines who gets precedence at a
| | 01:50 | given point in time.
| | 01:52 | Now let's talk about sliding these
layers bars in time and to make it more
| | 01:55 | clear what we are doing, I am going
to go down to the lower left corner of
| | 01:58 | the Timeline panel and
open up this Expand or Collapse
| | 02:01 | In/Out/Duration/Stretch Panes button.
| | 02:04 | I click on that, and now I get a
lot more information for my layers.
| | 02:08 | Where they start in the composition,
where they stop, the duration, and when
| | 02:13 | that they've been time stretched.
| | 02:15 | We are not going to cover time
stretching in detail in this lesson.
| | 02:18 | So if you have a limited amount of space
in your monitor, you can right-click on
| | 02:21 | any column header, and select Hide This
to make it go away, and buy yourself
| | 02:26 | back some more space.
| | 02:27 | But since I have a pretty wide monitor,
I am going to leave this open for now.
| | 02:30 | And I am going to press T just to
hide Opacity and clean things up.
| | 02:35 | Individual layers in After Effects
have two sets of In and Out points.
| | 02:41 | One is the external In and Out, where
do they start and stop in relation to an
| | 02:47 | overall composition or Timeline.
| | 02:50 | You can jump to those external points
by pressing I for In, then I'll move the
| | 02:54 | Current Time Indicator to the In
point in the Timeline for the currently
| | 02:58 | selected layer, and press O to jump to
the Out point, the external Out point in
| | 03:04 | the overall composition.
| | 03:05 | You'll notice with the layer bar that
you see the strongly colored area, but you
| | 03:09 | also see these ghosted areas before
and after in the case of this layer.
| | 03:13 | These ghosted areas indicate that
there is additional source material in this layer
| | 03:18 | that we are currently
not seeing in this composition.
| | 03:22 | This is where other set of In
and Out points come to play.
| | 03:24 | The Internal In and Out points for a
layer. Of all source material you have in
| | 03:29 | in a footage item, what is the In and
Out for that source that you chosen to
| | 03:33 | display in a composition.
| | 03:35 | That is related to, but
different than the external In and Out,
| | 03:39 | what frame of that layer do you see at
a given time in the overall composition.
| | 03:44 | If you're using an entire source,
you will not see these ghosted areas.
| | 03:47 | If the internal In and Out trim
points equal the start or end of the source
| | 03:52 | itself, you'll see this little black
corner up in the edge of the layer.
| | 03:56 | That indicates you are right up against
the start of layer or right up against
| | 03:59 | the end of the layer.
| | 04:01 | Moving a layer in the Timeline is very
easy, and as I do so, watch how the In,
| | 04:05 | Out, and Duration values
change in these columns.
| | 04:08 | As I drag a layer earlier or later in time,
you're seeing it's external in and out times.
| | 04:14 | Where does it start and stop in
relation to your overall composition.
| | 04:19 | Notice that I was not moving the
Current Time Indicator, but the image in
| | 04:22 | the Comp panel was updating as I slide this
layer relative to the overall composition.
| | 04:27 | If you have a particular time that you'd
like a layer to start, you can move the
| | 04:30 | Current Time Indicator to that time,
or click on the Current Time for the
| | 04:35 | Timeline and enter something
like 5 seconds and 15 frames.
| | 04:39 | Press Enter and then with a layer
selected, press the left square bracket to
| | 04:45 | force it to start at that time or the right
square bracket to force it to end at that time.
| | 04:51 | This again slides the entire
layer relative to the composition.
| | 04:56 | It does not change what portion of
the source material you are using.
| | 04:59 | It just changes the external timing
relative to your whole Timeline in a comp.
| | 05:03 | In the next few movies, we'll get
into changing what portion of the source
| | 05:07 | material you are using in this composition.
| | 05:09 | How do you trim the internal In and Out points.
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| Trimming layers in the Timeline panel| 00:07 | Next, we're going to discuss trimming
layers, changing their internal In and Out
| | 00:13 | points, which affects what portion of
the original source material they are
| | 00:17 | using in your composition.
| | 00:18 | To practice along with me, have at
least two movie files in a composition and
| | 00:23 | drag them so that they overlap somewhat.
| | 00:25 | You'll also notice that I have opened up
the In, Out, Duration, and Stretch panels.
| | 00:29 | There is a switch in the lower left
corner of the Timeline panel which you can
| | 00:31 | use to quickly open or close them.
| | 00:33 | Also remember that you can right-click
on any of these column headers and choose
| | 00:37 | a specific item you'd like
to see in the Timeline panel.
| | 00:42 | Trimming layers is very easy.
| | 00:43 | Make sure that you have
the Selection tool selected.
| | 00:46 | Hover it over the start or end of any layer bar.
| | 00:49 | You'll see this two-headed arrow and merely
click and drag that portion of the layer bar.
| | 00:55 | This is trimming what
section of the layer you're using.
| | 00:59 | Note that the Comp panel is not changing.
| | 01:02 | I'm not sliding the layer
relative to the composition.
| | 01:06 | I am just trimming what portion of that layer
source I am going to use in the composition.
| | 01:11 | Of course, if I trim it
past the Current Time Indicator,
| | 01:14 | I'm going to alter what's visible in
the Comp panel by revealing and obscuring
| | 01:18 | different layers on the Timeline.
| | 01:19 | Obviously, you can only drag a layer
out to the very end or very start of
| | 01:23 | the source material.
| | 01:25 | If you're up against the end, a little
black triangle in the upper corner of
| | 01:29 | that layer bar will indicate you are
at the end or start of layer, and you
| | 01:34 | can't go any further than that.
| | 01:35 | You can also get the same result as
dragging these In and Out points by
| | 01:40 | scrubbing the In and Out
values in the Timeline panel.
| | 01:42 | You'll see again I am not moving
the layer relative to the composition.
| | 01:47 | I am trimming what portion of
the layers are going to be used.
| | 01:50 | Same with the Out point.
| | 01:51 | I can't go past the end source, but I can
go before the end of the source like that.
| | 01:57 | If you are using these columns, resist
the urge to scrub the Duration value,
| | 02:02 | because it will not retrim the layer.
| | 02:04 | It will actually change the speed of
the layer, play it back faster or slower.
| | 02:09 | Most of the time you don't want to do that.
| | 02:11 | So stay away from the Duration column.
| | 02:12 | Notice there is a difference between
grabbing and sliding a whole layer bar or
| | 02:17 | just grabbing or sliding In and Out points.
| | 02:19 | There is also difference between
scrubbing the In and Out value in the Timeline
| | 02:23 | panel and clicking and editing that value.
| | 02:26 | If you click and edit the value, it will
move the layer rather than trim the layer.
| | 02:33 | In other words, it will change the
external In and Out points, not the
| | 02:38 | internal In and Out points.
| | 02:40 | The layers In and Out relative to its source.
| | 02:42 | Here are some great
shortcut keys to trim layers.
| | 02:45 | Let's say you move your Current Time
Indicator to exactly the time you'd like a
| | 02:48 | layer to start, like maybe around this
point right when the wheels touch the
| | 02:52 | ground, right there.
| | 02:54 | Have the layer selected.
| | 02:55 | Hold down Option on Mac or Alt on
Windows, then press the Left Bracket to trim
| | 03:00 | the In point or-- I am going to undo here.
| | 03:02 | Hold down Option or Alt, and press
the Right Bracket to trim the Out point.
| | 03:07 | Notice is there a similar or
different, so just pressing the left/right
| | 03:10 | brackets to slide a layer.
| | 03:12 | So, no modifier key. You're
editing the external In and Out points.
| | 03:16 | You are sliding the layer in time.
| | 03:17 | I am going to undo here.
| | 03:19 | Hold the Option key,
| | 03:21 | move my Current Time Indicator and you
are trimming the layers In and Out points.
| | 03:25 | You're moving this internal In and Out points.
| | 03:27 | This will quickly become intuitive,
but if you're brand new to working with
| | 03:30 | media in a program like After Effects,
there is difference between your time
| | 03:34 | in the overall composition versus your time
inside a layer is a very important concept.
| | 03:41 | We'll be playing with that
idea more in the next few movies.
| | 03:43 | There is one other nice thing you can do
with it that is related to trimming layers.
| | 03:47 | Let's say that you want
to split a layer in half.
| | 03:49 | Let's say I want to split into two
clips before and after this touchdown.
| | 03:54 | Press Page Up to go one frame before, and
Page Down to trim back to where I just see smoke.
| | 03:59 | If I want to split this layer at
this current time, I select it, then
| | 04:05 | choose Edit > Split Layer.
| | 04:08 | The shortcut is Command+Shift+D
on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+D on Windows.
| | 04:12 | By doing so, I will now have
two segments in the Timeline.
| | 04:16 | Note again that they do not slide
in position relative to the Timeline,
| | 04:19 | and there will be no apparent difference
when I just scrub the Current Time Indicator.
| | 04:23 | But now I have two different layers
that have been trimmed internally to use
| | 04:28 | different segments of their source material.
| | 04:30 | Once I have done that, I can
go ahead and create some space,
| | 04:32 | put another clip in between, and play
around with my edit. Go to this clip.
| | 04:37 | Then go back to the
continuation of my earlier clip.
| | 04:40 | Inside the clip, press I to go to its In point.
| | 04:43 | When you place the Current Time
Indicator and split a clip, the frame that you
| | 04:48 | see when you split will be the
first frame of the later segment.
| | 04:53 | You might also know that After
Effects has sorted out these segments so
| | 04:55 | that the later segment appears on
top rather than underneath the earlier
| | 04:59 | segment from the same clip.
| | 05:01 | This is not about default, but if it is
counter to the way you like to think, no worries.
| | 05:05 | There is a preference.
| | 05:06 | I go to After Effects > Preferences >
General and look for Create Split Layers
| | 05:14 | Above Original Layer. The default is on.
| | 05:17 | If you'd rather that split the segment,
the later segment appear underneath
| | 05:21 | the earlier segment, just turn that off.
| | 05:23 | But again, I like the default.
| | 05:24 | So I'll press Cancel.
| | 05:26 | Trimming layers in the
Timeline is easy and is one approach.
| | 05:29 | But there may also be times when
you'd prefer to trim layers in alternate
| | 05:31 | panels and I'll go over
that in the next two movies.
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| Trimming in the Layer panel| 00:07 | Users who come from an editing
background, who are used to using nonlinear
| | 00:10 | editing programs, are probably used to
the idea of having a separate source
| | 00:14 | viewer for your source material, for
your layers, and trimming your In and Out
| | 00:18 | points in that source viewer.
| | 00:20 | Well, you can do the
same thing in After Effects.
| | 00:23 | It's called the Layer panel.
| | 00:24 | All you need to do is double-click a
layer to open it in its Layer panel.
| | 00:30 | Once you do that, you see two time indicators:
| | 00:32 | the external Current Time Indicator,
the time relative to the entire
| | 00:36 | composition, and the internal Time
Indicator, the time relative to the source
| | 00:42 | material in this layer.
| | 00:44 | If that layer starts later than the
start of the composition, these two will
| | 00:48 | appear to be out of sync.
| | 00:49 | But it's important to remember
this is internal to the layer source.
| | 00:53 | This is external and applies
globally to the entire composition.
| | 00:57 | As you drag one, you'll see the other update.
| | 01:00 | As I move before, the trimmed In point
of the layer, you'll see it goes before
| | 01:04 | the trimmed In point inside the Layer panel.
| | 01:07 | There is a major difference between
trimming In and Out points in the Layer panel
| | 01:11 | and trimming them in the Timeline panel.
| | 01:14 | I switch back to the
composition viewer briefly for a moment.
| | 01:18 | When I trim a layer in the Timeline
panel, its timing relative to the
| | 01:23 | composition does not move.
| | 01:25 | There's the Current Time Indicator here.
| | 01:27 | I drag its In point.
| | 01:29 | It does not change what frame is
being displayed at this point in time.
| | 01:33 | However, in the Layer panel, any
edits I make to a layer here changes what
| | 01:41 | frames are displayed when
in the overall composition.
| | 01:44 | Watch what happens to this layer bar
and the In and Out relative to the
| | 01:47 | Timeline as I edit in the Layer panel.
| | 01:50 | As I start to trim it, you'll see that the
whole layer is sliding inside the composition.
| | 01:56 | In other words, by trimming in the Layer
panel, not only I am trimming the layer's
| | 02:01 | internal In and Out points.
| | 02:03 | I'm changing what frame that source is
going to be shown at given point in time
| | 02:08 | inside the Timeline.
| | 02:10 | Another way of doing this is if I go
ahead and move to particular time I like,
| | 02:13 | which is this touchdown.
| | 02:15 | Click on the Set IN Point in the Layer panel.
| | 02:19 | This will slide the layer bar in the
overall composition, so that the layer
| | 02:24 | starts at the same time in the comp.
| | 02:27 | But what frame this is going to be
displayed at that time is now different.
| | 02:30 | It's the time I have
trimmed inside the Layer panel.
| | 02:32 | So there are two different mindsets basically.
| | 02:35 | If you know you want these layers'
content to appear at a given time in your
| | 02:39 | overall composition, you can go
ahead and edit in the Layer panel--
| | 02:43 | Let me go and get the second balance
right there. And say that's the beginning
| | 02:48 | of the material I want to
appear in my composition.
| | 02:51 | It will just change what source is
shown in that given point in time.
| | 02:55 | On the other hand, if I say look, I
am going to slide this layer bar around later,
| | 02:59 | but I really want to change what
source I am seeing, you can go ahead and
| | 03:04 | look at these front wheels.
| | 03:06 | Trim the layer bar in the Timeline panel.
| | 03:09 | This you can get by holding Option or
Alt, left square bracket, and trim the
| | 03:12 | layer to start there.
| | 03:13 | So the Timeline panel and the Layer
panel provide two different approaches to
| | 03:18 | how you trim your source for a layer.
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| Pre-trimming and inserting layers from the Footage panel| 00:07 | You can also trim source material
before you add it to a composition.
| | 00:12 | Again, that's another concept that
editors may be more familiar with.
| | 00:15 | I am going to click to my Timeline by
deleting one of my layers and re-trim
| | 00:19 | it so I see a little more source material
here and here and use that as the starting point.
| | 00:24 | Let's say I decide that I would like to
insert another clip right at this point
| | 00:28 | in my overall composition
where this plane is touching down.
| | 00:34 | To do that, I'll go to my Project panel
which holds my source materials, and in
| | 00:38 | the Exercise Files that came with this
project I'll twirl open Sources, pick the
| | 00:43 | Clock+Skyline movie and in After
Effects CS5 I will double-click it to open it
| | 00:48 | up in its Footage panel, which I am
going to go to dock in the same frame as the
| | 00:52 | Comp and Layer panels.
| | 00:53 | By the way, in After Effects CS4 or
earlier double-clicking a QuickTime mov would
| | 00:58 | open it up. In a simplified QuickTime Player,
| | 01:01 | if you still want that behavior,
if you still want to see the source
| | 01:04 | inside QuickTime, now as of CS5 you
need to hold down Option or Alt when
| | 01:08 | you double-click it.
| | 01:10 | I like this better because double-clicking
just gets me right into my Footage panel.
| | 01:14 | While I am in the Footage panel I am
looking at the source before it is being
| | 01:17 | used in a composition.
| | 01:19 | I am going to go ahead and drag my
time indicator to pick where I want to
| | 01:23 | send my in point to be.
| | 01:24 | Maybe right at the top of 9 o'clock
there, trim my in point to start there,
| | 01:30 | decide where I want it to be out, maybe
this next hour which looks to be around
| | 01:34 | 11 o'clock, trim my out point there.
| | 01:36 | Now, I have some choices.
| | 01:38 | My target is my currently forward
composition and I can do one of two things.
| | 01:44 | I can do an overlay edit
or a ripple insert edit.
| | 01:48 | If I do an overlay edit, I will add
this source to the composition pre-trimmed
| | 01:55 | the way I had in Footage panel,
beginning at the current time indicator.
| | 01:59 | So just as that plane touches down I
cut to my clock and go back to the plane.
| | 02:03 | I am going to undo, go back to my Footage panel.
| | 02:07 | An alternative is to
instead do a ripple insert edit.
| | 02:11 | That says put this new source at the
Current Time Indicator but split any layers
| | 02:18 | at the Current Time Indicator and move
all later layers back later in time by
| | 02:23 | the duration of this new source.
| | 02:25 | I'll click the button and you'll see
down here now I've added my new source but
| | 02:31 | I've split this Jet Landing layer,
moved that new segment as well as the
| | 02:35 | Cityscape later in time.
| | 02:37 | So now my edit goes
| | 02:38 | plane is about to touch down, I switch
to the clock and I switch back to that
| | 02:43 | plane just as it did touch down.
| | 02:45 | So you can either overlay without
moving anyone else, or ripple insert where you
| | 02:50 | do move other layers later in time.
| | 02:52 | Again, this is probably a concept that
editors would be very comfortable with.
| | 02:55 | So we've covered trimming layers in
the Timeline panel, the Layer panel, and
[00:03:02.20 the Footage panel.
| | 03:03 | But there is one more editing
operation I want to show you in the next movie,
| | 03:06 | and that's slip editing layers.
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| Slip editing| 00:07 | Next, I want to show you a really useful
feature in After Effects called slip editing.
| | 00:12 | Let's say that I created a
Timeline that I'm basically happy with.
| | 00:15 | I've got the layers in the correct
timing that I want in the overall
| | 00:18 | composition and I've got them
stacked the way I wan,t etcetera.
| | 00:22 | However, I run across the layer and
say the external in and out points,
| | 00:26 | this timing relative to the Timeline
is fine, but I don't like the segment of
| | 00:30 | content that's being shown
inside that period of time.
| | 00:34 | Well, I can go ahead and use the Slip
Editing feature to change what content I'm
| | 00:39 | using from the source without changing
the time that layer is visible in the
| | 00:45 | overall Timeline and overall composition.
| | 00:47 | I am going to select my
fist layer here, Clock+Skyline.
| | 00:51 | Press I to go to its In point.
| | 00:53 | Keep an eye on these In, Outs, and Durations.
| | 00:55 | These are relative to the overall comp.
| | 00:57 | Next, I am going to move my cursor over
this ghosted area in the bar before or
| | 01:03 | after the segment that's actually
visible and being used in the Timeline.
| | 01:07 | When I do so, you'll see the cursor change
to a dual-headed arrow with bars on the ends.
| | 01:13 | This is a Slip Editing cursor.
| | 01:15 | If I click-and-drag on one of these
ghosted parts of the bar, notice that the
| | 01:19 | ghost changes, meaning I'm trimming the layer.
I'm changing the internal in and out points.
| | 01:25 | I'm using a different segment of my source.
| | 01:28 | However, the layer's in and out
points in the overall composition are not
| | 01:32 | changing. Notice the In and Out
comps to the left are staying the same.
| | 01:37 | So what I can do is I can park my time
indicator like I have here, slip edit, and
| | 01:41 | watch the Comp panel and decide you know,
I'd rather use it starting here at 1 o'clock
| | 01:45 | rather than starting
at 9 o'clock like I did before.
| | 01:49 | Now my overall timing is the same.
| | 01:51 | I am just using a different
segment of this particular clip.
| | 01:54 | By the way, as with all editing functions,
you can also keep your eye on the Info
| | 01:58 | panel to also see what you're up to
when you perform any editing command.
| | 02:02 | For example, when I do a slip edit,
you'll see that it's showing me what my
| | 02:05 | internal in and out points are for the
clip, the delta, how much I'm changing
| | 02:10 | those points by, and what my duration is.
| | 02:12 | In this case, I'm not
changing my duration at all.
| | 02:15 | I can slip edit in the Timeline panel
or I can bring open the Layer panel for
| | 02:20 | this clip and slip edit in here by
looking for that double-cursor and moving
| | 02:25 | the layer bar visible in the Layer panel
relative to the overall length of the source material.
| | 02:30 | You'll see I have the same effect going on here.
| | 02:32 | I'm changing what segment is being
used at the source, but down there in the
| | 02:37 | Timeline panel, I'm not changing when
this layer is going to be visible in
| | 02:41 | the overall Timeline.
| | 02:42 | So I'll pick a segment here like around there.
| | 02:45 | See what that looks like.
| | 02:47 | It's not quite as interactive as doing
things directly in the Timeline panel but
| | 02:50 | it is an alternative.
| | 02:51 | Then I go back to Composition.
| | 02:55 | If you happen to be working on a comp
where you are so far zoomed-in on a source
| | 03:00 | that you cannot see ghosted sections
of the bar at the end or at the start,
| | 03:05 | there is an alternative.
| | 03:06 | You can switch to the Pan
Behind tool. The shortcut is Y.
| | 03:11 | Remember, you can press-and-hold
the key to temporarily switch tools.
| | 03:16 | By doing so, I am going to move my
cursor over this bar, it's normally the
| | 03:19 | Selection tool to move the entire bar.
Press-and-hold Y and you'll see I now
| | 03:24 | again have my Slip Edit tool.
| | 03:28 | Now, while holding Y, I can drag inside the
layer bar to decide what segment I'm using.
| | 03:34 | The In and Out times here are not
changing, but I am changing what content is
| | 03:39 | visible at the current time, and I'll
zoom-out so I can see everybody again.
| | 03:44 | What's really interesting is if I had
keyframes attached to a layer. Let me go
| | 03:48 | ahead and select this Jet Landing bar.
Move the cursor to where the previous
| | 03:53 | layer bar ends by holding
the Shift key. That will snap.
| | 03:55 | Press T to reveal this
layer's Opacity. Keyframe it.
| | 04:00 | Press I to jump to its In
point, enter 0 for its opacity.
| | 04:04 | Now, I've got a fade up.
| | 04:06 | So it's crossfading from the
layer underneath to the layer on top.
| | 04:11 | If I don't have any keyframes selected
and I use a Slip Edit tool, notice that
| | 04:18 | the keyframes will stay in place.
| | 04:21 | So I am still slip editing the layer
but I'm keeping my Fade Up at exactly the
| | 04:27 | same time, which is desirable in this
case because I do want to cross-fade.
| | 04:31 | I just want to change what segment
is being used like right around there.
| | 04:36 | On the other hand, if these keyframes
have an important relationship to the source,
| | 04:41 | say I'm painting on top of
the source or masking out a particular
| | 04:44 | feature of the source, I may want to
move those keyframes together with a
| | 04:49 | source as I slip edit.
| | 04:51 | In that case I'll select those
keyframes. They're highlighted in yellow.
| | 04:54 | Now when I slip edit, the keyframes
move along with the source material which
| | 04:59 | means that they are moving
in the overall composition.
| | 05:01 | Not what I would want to do for
opacity. Definitely what I'd want to do for
| | 05:05 | rotoscoping or with masking, etcetera.
| | 05:06 | So remember slip editing.
| | 05:08 | it's also really useful.
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|
|
2. Sequencing LayersApplying sequence layers to footage| 00:07 | Next, I'd like to show you a really
great tool in After Effects that will
| | 00:10 | automatically arrange
your layers in time for you.
| | 00:12 | I could keep working with this Comp
ahead but I am going to clean things up and
| | 00:15 | open up a brand-new comp.
| | 00:16 | If you have the Exercise Files,
it's 03a-Sequence-Full Frame*start.
| | 00:20 | Here I have already trimmed a number of
source layers to be the durations that I want.
| | 00:25 | By the way, if I want to solo these,
I can go ahead and turn on the Solo
| | 00:28 | switch for a layer.
| | 00:29 | It's this little solid dot
in the A/V Features column.
| | 00:33 | Turn on that switch for the
corresponding layer and now I'll see just this layer.
| | 00:37 | There is my pan up, turn that off,
turn on the next one, look at City Rush.
| | 00:43 | That's just a segment of that
layer that I chosen. And Cityscape.
| | 00:47 | That's the segment I've chosen there,
and finally Jet Landing, coming in and
| | 00:54 | touching down and a little bit of that bounce.
| | 00:56 | So those are my four layers already
trimmed, and as you already know from the
| | 01:00 | previous movie you could go ahead and
slip edit these if you want to use a
| | 01:03 | different segment in time. Turn off Solo.
| | 01:06 | What we want to do is arrange these layers in
time so each one starts one after the other.
| | 01:10 | We could do that by hand or we
could use a Keyframe Assistant in After
| | 01:14 | Effects to do that for us.
| | 01:16 | I am going to select all the layers
that I want to be involved in this
| | 01:18 | operation, click my first
one, Shift+Click my last one.
| | 01:22 | I can either go to Animation >
Keyframe Assistant or just right-click on any layer
| | 01:27 | and I'll get a similar menu.
| | 01:29 | I'll choose Keyframe
Assistant > Sequence Layers.
| | 01:33 | a special dialog will open.
| | 01:35 | Right now the only question it's asking me
is whether or not I want to overlap them?
| | 01:38 | Let's start by leaving that off.
| | 01:39 | I just want them that end-to-end
what's known as a butt edit where their
| | 01:42 | butts are spliced together.
| | 01:44 | Click OK and automatically they've
been arranged in time, keeping their
| | 01:49 | internal in and out points, namely the
segment of the source material we want
| | 01:53 | to use, but changing their external
in and out time, how they are timed in
| | 01:57 | relation to the timeline in
the composition, to be end-to-end.
| | 02:01 | Very quick and a lot faster
than I could've done it by hand.
| | 02:04 | I am going to undo and try a different option.
| | 02:07 | Right-click, Keyframe Assistant > Sequence
Layers, and this time I will turn on Overlap.
| | 02:12 | When I do that, I've got a few choices.
| | 02:14 | I can have them overlap say by 1 second
each and I can decide what I want to do
| | 02:21 | during that overlap.
| | 02:22 | If I know I'm going to be doing some
transition effects later on I might leave
| | 02:25 | this off, or I can have After Effects
fade from one layer to another for me.
| | 02:30 | I'll start with this first choice.
| | 02:31 | Dissolve Front Layer.
| | 02:33 | When you're working with full frame
material like these full frame videos here,
| | 02:38 | this is a choice you want to use
when using Sequence Layers. Okay.
| | 02:42 | Overlap, 1-second duration
overlap, dissolve, click OK.
| | 02:45 | You'll notice that the layers now have
an overlap in the Timeline and if I press
| | 02:50 | U to reveal all of their animating
properties, you'll see that they have opacity
| | 02:55 | keyframes toward the layer on top,
fades out over the 1 second I specified to
| | 03:00 | the next layer, and so on and so on.
| | 03:05 | This is a great way to go ahead
and create a sequence of layers.
| | 03:09 | Now, let's try that other option we had.
| | 03:11 | I am going to Undo again back to
where I started. They are all selected,
| | 03:14 | right-click, Keyframe
Assistant > Sequence Layers, Overlap.
| | 03:20 | I have a duration already.
| | 03:21 | This time I am going to choose
Cross Dissolve Front and Back Layers.
| | 03:25 | You might think that if you want to
cross dissolve from one layer to another
| | 03:29 | that this is the option you want.
| | 03:30 | But actually, it has some problems when
you are working with full frame footage,
| | 03:33 | and I'll show you what they are. Click OK.
| | 03:37 | Now you'll see that as the top layer
fades up, the bottom layer is fading down.
| | 03:40 | But there's a problem.
| | 03:42 | When you're in between and both layers
are around 50% of their fade, they are
| | 03:47 | both partially transparent and as a
result of that you see anything behind them.
| | 03:53 | Since I happen to have the
Transparency Grid toggle on right now, I see my
| | 03:57 | Transparency Grid, which
is not at all what I want.
| | 04:00 | This is something that
catches beginners up all the time.
| | 04:02 | When they want to crossfade between
layers, they think they want to fade up the
| | 04:08 | layer underneath and fade down the layer on top.
| | 04:11 | But that's not at all true.
| | 04:13 | When they are already filling the
whole frame, all you need to do is fade out
| | 04:17 | the layer on top to reveal the
full opacity layer underneath.
| | 04:21 | So I am going to right-click one
more time, Keyframe Assistant > Sequence
| | 04:24 | Layers, go back to Dissolve, click OK,
and now I have my desired result.
| | 04:31 | I'm revealing the fully opaque layer underneath.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using sequence layers with objects| 00:08 | There are times where that Cross
Dissolve option comes in really handy, mainly
| | 00:12 | if your sources do not have the same
size or shape or otherwise have partial
| | 00:16 | transparency or complex alpha channels.
| | 00:19 | I'll open up this next comp, 03b-
Sequence - Alpha, and look at these sources.
| | 00:23 | I'll solo one at a time.
| | 00:24 | I've got an old-fashioned cell phone,
a microscope, an old-fashioned computer monitor.
| | 00:34 | You can tell these are old models, huh?
How quickly technology changes! And a wireframe wheel.
| | 00:40 | They each have complex alphas so they
don't completely obscure one another when
| | 00:46 | they are all turned on top of each other.
| | 00:48 | If I were to select all of them,
right-click, go to Keyframe Assistant >
| | 00:53 | Sequence Layers, Overlap 1 second and
say Dissolve Front Layer, the same thing I
| | 00:59 | did for the Full Frame videos,
| | 01:01 | you will see my problem.
| | 01:02 | I'll type U to see my keyframes.
| | 01:04 | As the phone starts to fade out, the
layer underneath the microscope immediately
| | 01:10 | pops on at full opacity, which is very
distracting, and as this starts to fade out,
| | 01:14 | the other layer pops on
at full opacity underneath.
| | 01:19 | There are occasions where you might
want sudden pops in your animation like
| | 01:22 | that, but if you're trying to get a nice
gentle cross-fade this is not at all what you want.
| | 01:26 | So I am going to undo.
They are all still selected.
| | 01:29 | Right click, Keyframe > Sequence.
| | 01:34 | For things that do not completely
obscure each other, definitely use Cross
| | 01:38 | Dissolve Front and Back Layers. Click OK.
| | 01:41 | Now see, I have Opacity keyframes for one
that fades up while the other is fading
| | 01:46 | down, and now you'll see I have a much
gentler transition between these layers
| | 01:51 | with complex or mismatched alpha channels.
| | 01:54 | By the way, again, underneath,
it has Opacity keyframes as well.
| | 01:57 | I'll close this up a little
bit so you can see. There we go.
| | 01:59 | So that's where the other option comes in handy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Example: Sequence layers and photographs| 00:07 | So let's pull together some of the
things you've learned in the last few movies
| | 00:10 | and use them altogether.
| | 00:11 | I am going to open up comp
03c-Sequence - trim*starter.
| | 00:15 | Here I have a fun sequence
of flowers, different tulips.
| | 00:19 | Let's say that I want to create a nice
animation where I fade from one flower to
| | 00:23 | another and that they're all on the
screen for the same amount of time.
| | 00:27 | Each individual flower has the same duration.
| | 00:30 | Maybe I am matching it to music or whatever.
| | 00:33 | I'll set all my layers and remember to
make layers start at a particular time,
| | 00:38 | you may have to move the current time
indicator there and press the left bracket
| | 00:42 | down to have them all join there, or you
just go ahead and press Option+Home, Alt+Home
| | 00:47 | on Windows, to send them all at the same time.
| | 00:51 | Now I've got them all starting at the same time.
| | 00:52 | Maybe I decide the
duration should be 5 seconds.
| | 00:58 | Now you have to be careful about
how time counts in After Effects.
| | 01:01 | The first frame is time zero.
| | 01:04 | So that I go to time 5:00, I actually
have duration of five seconds and one
| | 01:10 | frame, because I'm
basically counting zero twice.
| | 01:14 | Time zero and time 5 zero.
| | 01:16 | If I want exactly 5-second duration I
need to go from zero to time 4.29 at
| | 01:24 | 30 frames a second.
| | 01:26 | Now that I've got the current time
indicator at my desired duration, I hold down
| | 01:30 | the Option key on Mac, Alt key on
Windows, and press the right bracket to trim
| | 01:35 | the layers, rather than move them.
| | 01:37 | Now they're all the same duration.
| | 01:38 | I'll right-click, choose Keyframe
Assistant > Sequence Layers. I want to Overlap,\.
| | 01:45 | They are full frame, they obscure each other.
| | 01:47 | So I'll pick the Dissolve
Front Layer option. Click OK.
| | 01:51 | And now I've got a nice sequence
fading from flower to flower where each gets
| | 01:57 | the same amount of time on screen.
| | 01:59 | Simple, fun, looks nice.
| | 02:02 | And by the way, in the next chapter
inside this lesson, we'll be talking more
| | 02:06 | about how to handle sequences
of still images such as this.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a new composition using sequence layers| 00:07 | There is one more place
where Sequence Layers pops up.
| | 00:10 | Let's say you're going to create a new
composition and you're going to do it by
| | 00:13 | dragging your sources to
this New Composition icon.
| | 00:17 | If you know, you also will want
to be sequencing those sources,
| | 00:20 | you can go ahead and select your
multiple sources, say my multiple tulips here.
| | 00:24 | I'll select all of them, drag them to my
New Composition icon, and I'll get some
| | 00:30 | options, including the ability to
set the duration, such as 5 seconds a
| | 00:34 | duration, whether or not I want
a Single Comp or Multiple Comp.
| | 00:37 | I want them all in the Single Composition,
and I want to sequence them, which I do.
| | 00:42 | Sequence Layers, Overlap.
| | 00:44 | I'll set a duration of
just 1 second in this case.
| | 00:48 | Again they're full frame, so I'll
Dissolve Front Layer. Click OK.
| | 00:52 | And a brand new comp has been
created for me, where they all have been
| | 00:56 | pre-trimmed to 5 seconds, the
duration I set. You see the duration here.
| | 00:59 | And they've automatically been
sequenced to go through this nice crossfading.
| | 01:04 | So I've got a nice sequence of my flowers.
| | 01:08 | So that makes editing really fast and easy.
| | 01:11 | If you have a bunch of sources and
you're just creating say a bunch of logos,
| | 01:14 | a bunch of photos, some sort of slideshow,
you can do it literally in a couple
| | 01:19 | clicks and a drag, as opposed to having
you do a lot of hand editing to get the
| | 01:22 | arrangement that you want in time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the importance of layer order| 00:07 | There's one more trick I would
like to show you with Sequence Layers.
| | 00:10 | The order that you select layers
affects the order of the final sequence.
| | 00:16 | Your sequence is going to start at the
beginning of the first layer you select.
| | 00:20 | So I am going to select Tulip_1 first.
| | 00:22 | Then I can hold Command on Mac, or
Control on Windows to add layers to my
| | 00:26 | selection in whatever order I want.
| | 00:28 | After Effects will remember this.
| | 00:29 | So I'll do 6, 2, 5, 3 and 4.
| | 00:35 | Right-click, Keyframe
Assistant > Sequence Layers, Overlap.
| | 00:40 | Go for my 1 second overlap
again. Dissolve Front Layer.
| | 00:46 | Click OK.
| | 00:47 | And now you'll see that my layers have
been arranged in the order I clicked.
| | 00:50 | 1, 6, 2, 5, 3 and 4.
| | 00:56 | And if I press "T", to reveal their opacities,
| | 00:59 | you'll see that it is always the
layer on top that is doing the fading.
| | 01:03 | It remembers what order the layers
were stacked and sets the Opacity
| | 01:06 | keyframes accordingly.
| | 01:07 | It'ss a nice little trick.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Looping, Stretching, and Frame Blending FootageLooping footage| 00:07 | Some stock footage or other
animations are designed to loop automatically.
| | 00:13 | If you place them end-to-end in a
timeline, those ends will join together
| | 00:16 | seamlessly and the animation
will appear to go on forever.
| | 00:19 | For example, if I change View > Loop
to be on for this movie and press Play,
| | 00:24 | you'll see it goes through this
animation of the clock going around and watching
| | 00:28 | the hour hanging towards the top, and
as we get near the end of the timeline here,
| | 00:32 | this will hitch as the movie loads,
but otherwise it is perfectly seamless
| | 00:38 | and will continue going through
the same animation. Click Stop.
| | 00:42 | Back in After Effects, I am going to
go ahead and clean up my display by
| | 00:45 | choosing Close All
from the Composition panel.
| | 00:49 | And I am going to import that
source we were just looking at.
| | 00:52 | Select Sources. Do Command+I
or Ctrl+I to import a file.
| | 00:56 | Navigate to my Exercise Files >
Sources > Movies and choose that
| | 01:01 | Clock+Skyline movie, and Open.
| | 01:05 | Drag this to my New Composition icon.
| | 01:09 | It makes the comp exactly
same length as my movie.
| | 01:11 | I want a longer comp.
| | 01:13 | So I'll change Composition
Settings and Duration to say 30 seconds.
| | 01:19 | Press the minus key to see my whole timeline.
| | 01:21 | By the way many users make footage
repeat is they select the footage, press O
| | 01:27 | to go to its Out point, press Page
Down to go one frame past that Out point,
| | 01:31 | duplicate the footage, then use the left
bracket to have a new piece start where
| | 01:36 | the old piece ended.
| | 01:37 | And that's how they repeat footage
that's been designed to loop seamlessly.
| | 01:41 | But there's an easier way.
| | 01:44 | One of the most underappreciated,
underused items in After Effects is the
| | 01:47 | Interpret Footage dialog.
| | 01:49 | It now exists as a button at
the bottom of the Project panel.
| | 01:53 | Select your source file, select
Interpret Footage, and you'll get all sorts of
| | 01:57 | options for the footage, including Frame
Rate settings, Fields and Pulldown, and
| | 02:02 | other options, including how many times
you went to repeat, loop this footage.
| | 02:06 | I wanted it to last 30 seconds.
| | 02:07 | It's currently 10 seconds long.
| | 02:09 | So I'll say repeat 3 times. Click OK.
| | 02:12 | You see my ghost bar showing me
I've got more source material.
| | 02:16 | Now I just need to drag out the Out point.
| | 02:19 | And I've got it repeating for my
three times, filling up my entire timeline.
| | 02:24 | If you want to practice that, do
Command+I or Ctrl+I to imports and play around
| | 02:28 | with some of the sources we've given you.
| | 02:30 | For example, the MoodyWash file
is designed to loop seamlessly.
| | 02:35 | Also underneath Sources all of these
wireframes, which were specially rendered
| | 02:39 | from a 3D program, were animated in a
way so that they will loop seamlessly.
| | 02:44 | Practice making them loop and having
them as extended backgrounds or extended
| | 02:47 | objects in your compositions.
| | 02:49 | Of course, not all footage does loop seamlessly.
| | 02:52 | This was designed to, but a lot of clips do not.
| | 02:55 | So in a sidebar movie at the very end
of this lesson, I'll show you some ideas
| | 02:59 | of how you can force a clip to become
a seamlessly looping piece of footage.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing a sequence of still images| 00:07 | Not all source footage comes in
the form of a movie where all of the
| | 00:11 | individual frames, which are
supposed to be played one after another, are
| | 00:15 | bundled together in one file.
| | 00:17 | Sometimes you'll get what's
known as a still image sequence,
| | 00:20 | a series of individual still images or
frames which you need to assemble one
| | 00:26 | after another into a continuous movie.
| | 00:28 | Well, After Effects can do
that for you automatically.
| | 00:30 | But before you do that, you
need to set up a preference.
| | 00:33 | I am going to go to Preferences in
After Effects, and go to Import,
| | 00:37 | and there's an item here for Sequence Footage.
| | 00:40 | What frame rate to assign by default to
any sequences of still images that you import.
| | 00:46 | It defaults to 30, which
is rare to use for anything.
| | 00:50 | If I was in a PAL
video country, I would make it a 25.
| | 00:54 | Since I am in an NTSC country, I'll enter 29.97.
| | 00:58 | Don't fret this too much.
| | 00:59 | You can change this after the fact
for each sequence whenever you like.
| | 01:03 | So it's nice to setup a default
ahead of time that makes sense for the
| | 01:06 | project you're working on. I'll click OK.
| | 01:09 | Next I'll select what
folder I want them to go into.
| | 01:12 | In this case I want them to go into My Sources,
and I'll do Command+I or Ctrl+I to import.
| | 01:19 | Navigate to a folder of still images
that you want to import as a sequence.
| | 01:23 | It's best if they're consecutively numbered.
| | 01:26 | Otherwise, After Effects won't know what
to do with the gaps in between the numbers.
| | 01:29 | If you have Exercise Files that came
with this lesson, we've provided a sequence
| | 01:33 | of images inside Exercise Files,
Sources, Muybridge Sequence.
| | 01:38 | As soon as I select any one of these
files, an additional option will become
| | 01:43 | available in After Effects: whether
or not to treat it as a sequence.
| | 01:47 | Keep an eye out for this checkbox, because sometimes
you might might need to only import a single image.
| | 01:53 | But if they're consecutively numbered,
After Effects will say, "Maybe there's
| | 01:56 | supposed to be a sequence.
Maybe I should treat them as footage."
| | 01:59 | If you don't want that, turn this off.
| | 02:02 | But if you do want that, turn it on.
| | 02:03 | I'll select one of my files, click Open, and
it'll be imported into the folder I selected.
| | 02:09 | You'll notice that even though there
were 10 files, it creates 1 file in After
| | 02:13 | Effects, followed by the image
numbers included in that sequence.
| | 02:17 | When I look at the top my Project panel,
I can see file size, the duration, 10 frames,
| | 02:23 | since there were 10
images, and my default frame rate.
| | 02:26 | Now 10 frames is kind of short for any movie.
| | 02:30 | So if I want to repeat that, it's very simple.
| | 02:32 | I'll open up the Interpret Footage
dialog we discussed in the last movie.
| | 02:35 | And I'll set the loop to
something very large, such as 100 times.
| | 02:40 | Now you see my duration has changed to 33
seconds and 10 frames, which is good and long.
| | 02:44 | If I want to create a comp, I'll just
drag that sequence onto the New Comp icon
| | 02:51 | and now I've got my sequence.
| | 02:52 | And as I step through these one at
a time using Page Down, each of the
| | 02:57 | individual still images that were on
my drive have been put together for me
| | 03:01 | automatically one after
another into the sequence.
| | 03:05 | Since I've set it to loop, once it's
gone past the 10th file, it started
| | 03:09 | repeating the sequence over again. Pretty cool!
| | 03:14 | Let's set up a small RAM preview,
maybe about 3 seconds worth.
| | 03:19 | Press N to end my work
area, zero to RAM preview.
| | 03:24 | This is a really brisk walk sequence.
| | 03:28 | This is because we're using one file every
frame at 29.97 frames a second. Pretty brisk pace.
| | 03:36 | If you want to slow this down, go
back to your source file and click on the
| | 03:40 | Interpret Footage button at
the bottom of the Project panel.
| | 03:43 | And let's slow down the frame rate to
maybe something like only 10 frames a second.
| | 03:48 | Click OK. Show the RAM preview.
| | 03:51 | And this is a more sedate workable pace.
| | 03:54 | You can go ahead and make this
whatever frame rate you want.
| | 03:58 | Since you've set that frame rate in the
Interpret Footage dialog, every time you
| | 04:03 | use this piece of footage in a project,
it will use this frame rate, this number
| | 04:08 | of times to be looped.
| | 04:10 | If you want to use the same sequence
multiple times inside this comp, but
| | 04:15 | at different rates, here's a couple different
tricks and I'll discuss that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Time Stretch vs. altering frame rates| 00:07 | There's a couple of different ways to
change the speed of an image sequence, but
| | 00:11 | which one you choose has important implications.
| | 00:13 | So we can see what's going on
I am going to search my imported sequence.
| | 00:17 | Click on Interpret Footage.
| | 00:18 | I am going to have it loop just one time,
| | 00:20 | just play through one time, so you
can more clearly see what's going on.
| | 00:23 | Go back to start here and press the
plus key a few times to zoom in on the
| | 00:27 | timeline so I can what's happening here.
| | 00:29 | So there is my sequence at
10 frames and we're done.
| | 00:33 | I am going to go to my end, press N to end
my work area, and RAM preview. There we go.
| | 00:40 | Let's say that I still think that's too
fast and I want this to play at half speed.
| | 00:45 | There's a couple of ways of doing that.
| | 00:47 | One is to open up the Interpret
Footage dialog and slow down the frame rating more,
| | 00:51 | say to 5 frames a second.
| | 00:54 | When I do so, you'll see my layer bar
has out-gone twice as long, since it has
| | 00:58 | now been slowed down.
| | 00:59 | each frame takes longer to play.
| | 01:01 | And now when I RAM preview, you'll
see there is a much more sedate pace.
| | 01:06 | However there's another way to do this.
| | 01:09 | Go back to 10 frames a second
in Interpret Footage dialog.
| | 01:12 | I'll right-click on any of these
headers in my Timeline panel and
| | 01:16 | choose Columns > Stretch.
| | 01:18 | I can also stretch it by 200%, which
will double the duration of this clip, or
| | 01:24 | any layer inside After Effects. Click OK.
| | 01:27 | RAM preview and I've
accomplished the same goal.
| | 01:32 | This is a real handy trick when you've
got one image sequence or one movie for
| | 01:35 | that matter. You can bring it into a
comp multiple times, give each one a
| | 01:39 | different Stretch value and they'll
all play back at different speeds.
| | 01:42 | Really great if you've got sequences
of say numbers, or other background
| | 01:45 | paraphernalia that you're using
just to make a comp look busy.
| | 01:49 | However, there is a problem with using Stretch.
| | 01:51 | I'll go back to 100% for now.
| | 01:53 | Let's say that I set a careful fade up.
| | 01:56 | I'll press T for Opacity,
| | 01:58 | enable keyframing, and my first
keyframe at 0, and my second keyframe at 100%.
| | 02:07 | Now I've got a little fade up
at the beginning of my sequence.
| | 02:11 | If I were to use Stretch to slow down or
to speed up the sequence of this layer,
| | 02:18 | you'll see that my keyframe has moved as well.
| | 02:22 | So my fade up is taking twice as long.
| | 02:24 | If that's not what you
intended, don't use stretch.
| | 02:29 | If you want to change the speed of
your source footage without changing
| | 02:33 | the spacing of any of your
keyframes, instead of using Stretch,
| | 02:38 | use the Interpret Footage dialog.
| | 02:39 | Change the frame rate here, such as to 5.
| | 02:42 | And it will lengthen my source, slowing it down
but not move the position of my keyframes.
| | 02:49 | Now my fade up is of the same duration.
| | 02:51 | The Interpret Footage dialog
processes footage before it's used in a
| | 02:56 | composition, before you've applied
any transformations, keyframes, etcetera.
| | 03:00 | An important distinction. So, the Stretch
trick is useful for just filling up a
| | 03:04 | frame with things of different speeds.
| | 03:06 | But it will get you in trouble with
keyframes. I tend to use Interpret Footage
| | 03:09 | dialog whenever I can for this type of work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Frame blending| 00:07 | We've imported an image sequence and
we've changed the frame rate of that
| | 00:11 | sequence to be slower, five frames
per second, than the frame rate of the
| | 00:17 | composition we put it into,
which is at 29.97 frames per second.
| | 00:22 | So how does After Effects make up the difference
between those two frame rates? Well, it's simple.
| | 00:26 | It just has to repeat or skip frames of
the source in order to make it fit the
| | 00:32 | frame rate of the composition.
| | 00:34 | As I press Page Down and step one
frame at a time through the composition,
| | 00:38 | you'll see the frames of
the source are being repeated.
| | 00:41 | That's because it's playing back at a
slower speed than our comp is being sampled.
| | 00:46 | As I do this you will even see we only
get these green RAM preview cache bars
| | 00:50 | where they're unique frames
of source material to play.
| | 00:54 | I am going to delete or fade up that we
played around with earlier, stretch out
| | 00:59 | the work area to take up more of the
resource, and press 0 on the numeric keypad
| | 01:03 | to RAM preview this.
| | 01:05 | You see the result is fairly jerky
motion rather than smooth motion.
| | 01:09 | Well, After Effects gives us a couple
tools to smooth this out and they're
| | 01:13 | underneath the guise of Frame Blending.
| | 01:15 | Frame Blending is similar to Motion
Blur and that you need to enable it in two places:
| | 01:19 | for the layer and for the composition.
| | 01:23 | For the layer, this little icon that
looks like a couple of film frames on top of
| | 01:27 | each other is the column
for the Frame Blending switch.
| | 01:31 | As you click once in the Frame
Blending box for a given footage item, this
| | 01:34 | means you will be in Frame Mix mode, and
I will explain that later. Click again,
| | 01:39 | you will be what's know as Pixel
Motion mode, and I'll explain that as well.
| | 01:43 | And click a third time, you're back
to Frame Blending being turned off.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to go into Frame Mix mode for now.
| | 01:49 | Turning on this switch only means that
this layer will be Frame Blended when you
| | 01:55 | do the final render.
| | 01:57 | You still will not see frame
blending in the Comp panel.
| | 02:01 | The reason is Frame Blending can be
somewhat computationally intensive.
| | 02:05 | So to make your previews faster After Effects
defaults to not displaying it in the Comp panel.
| | 02:11 | To turn on the display in the Comp panel,
you need to turn on this large frame
| | 02:14 | blending switch for the composition.
| | 02:17 | This is how you preview Frame
Blending for any layers that have it enabled.
| | 02:21 | Now you'll see as I press Page Down
and step through this footage that we're
| | 02:25 | seeing a mix of frames before
and after the most recent frame.
| | 02:30 | This is the Frame Mix mode, which
is automatically doing a crossfade
| | 02:34 | between adjacent frames.
| | 02:36 | That's what looks likes a frame at a time.
| | 02:40 | Now I'll press 0 to RAM preview.
| | 02:41 | It takes a moment to calculate, and you'll see
this is a smoother motion that we had before.
| | 02:47 | It's not quite as jerky.
| | 02:49 | Frame Mix mode works great on
amorphous objects like clouds, out-of-focus
| | 02:54 | backgrounds, etcetera, but it can be a bit
obvious when you sharp edges like these legs.
| | 02:58 | Well, what does the other
mode, Pixel Motion, look like?
| | 03:02 | Well, how it looks depends
entirely on te source footage.
| | 03:06 | To enable Pixel Motion I'll click one
more time underneath the Frame Blending
| | 03:09 | switch column and get this
solid bar, which means Pixel Motion.
| | 03:13 | What Pixel Motion tries to
do is interpolate every pixel.
| | 03:18 | It says where was that pixel in the
previous frame, where is that pixel in next frame,
| | 03:22 | and try to create a brand-new
intermediate positions, tracking the motion
| | 03:26 | of each of those pixels.
| | 03:28 | Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.
| | 03:30 | In the case of this particular shot
where there is not a lot of visual
| | 03:33 | information, you'll see it doesn't work
very well as it tries to match up these
| | 03:37 | grids and tries to match
up the legs and things that.
| | 03:40 | So this is a case where it's not successful.
| | 03:44 | However, there are other types of
footage where it works very well.
| | 03:46 | I'm going to down to our Sources folder,
select the Jet Landing footage,
| | 03:50 | drag it onto this New Comp icon and I'm going to
slow it down, basically give it a slower frame rate.
| | 03:58 | I'll open up the Stretch
column, slow down to say 500%.
| | 04:03 | Go somewhere later in time
where we see more the plane.
| | 04:05 | Now as I press Page Down, in the default
mode you'll see again that many of the
| | 04:10 | frames are being repeated.
| | 04:13 | If I turn on Frame Blending, Frame
Mix mode for layer and enable it for a
| | 04:19 | composition, you'll see we have some
ghosting or echoing going on in the details
| | 04:24 | as we get these intermediate frames.
| | 04:25 | So I will press Page Down
again to step through this.
| | 04:29 | A little bit smoother, but you do see
the sort of ghosting motion as the wheels
| | 04:32 | get fat and thin again. Not ideal.
| | 04:36 | So instead I'll click this one more
time to go into Pixel Motion mode.
| | 04:41 | Now you'll see the tires have gone skinny again.
| | 04:43 | As I press Page Down, you'll see this
actually re-creating the position of the
| | 04:48 | wings of the airplanes, the tires, and
everything as if those frames were in
| | 04:52 | the original footage.
| | 04:53 | Pretty darn good, I think.
| | 04:56 | So I continue step through it.
| | 04:57 | Pretty nice, but again it
doesn't work well with all footage.
| | 05:01 | I'll select Jet Landing.
| | 05:03 | Pick another piece of footage,
like I will this Musical Instruments.
| | 05:06 | I am going to press Command and Option
on Mac, Ctrl and Alt on Windows then the
| | 05:10 | forward slash key to replace that clip,
and I am going to go a little bit later
| | 05:15 | in time to where that stick is coming down.
| | 05:17 | Just hit this cymbal and you'll see very
strange things happen to the symbol surface.
| | 05:22 | There is not enough information for
Pixel Motion to guess what the intermediate
| | 05:27 | frames should look like, because
things are just moving too fast.
| | 05:30 | This is a clip where I'd be
better off going back to Frame Mix mode.
| | 05:34 | I'll back up to 16 seconds again, step
through this, and at least you get a more
| | 05:39 | gentle fading as opposed to
strange warping of the cymbal.
| | 05:45 | So in general Frame Blending is a great
tool to use when you've got slowed down
| | 05:50 | or even sped up footage in a Comp,
but don't just blindly turn it on.
| | 05:54 | Try the different modes, Frame Mix or
Pixel Motion, and see which one works better
| | 05:59 | for that particular piece of source footage.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Blending ModesOverview of blending modes| 00:07 | In the next few movies we're going to
play around with blending modes, sometimes
| | 00:11 | referred to as blend modes or transfer modes.
| | 00:14 | They are the secret sauce to make a
motion graphics composite look much more
| | 00:18 | rich and interesting than a
typical opacity mix between the layers.
| | 00:22 | If you have the Exercise Files that
come with this lesson, go ahead and
| | 00:25 | click Close All from the top of the Comp
panel and open the comp 06-Blending Modes*starter.
| | 00:32 | If you don't have access to these files,
create a comp with two simple layers.
| | 00:37 | One that's colorful and one that
has lot of grayscale values in it.
| | 00:41 | Stack the grayscale image
on top of the color image.
| | 00:44 | Now first let's compare what a
typical Opacity blend looks like.
| | 00:48 | I'm going to click on this Muybridge
sequence layer that's on top, press T to
| | 00:51 | reveal Opacity, and scrub its value.
| | 00:54 | You'll see that we have some
intermediate mixes and values, which are kind of
| | 00:59 | okay, kind of interesting, but maybe a bit
washed out and it doesn't really have a punch to it.
| | 01:05 | What I'm going to do is I am going to
save a snapshot of what this Opacity blend
| | 01:09 | looks like so that I can compare it to
what blending modes look like. There we go.
| | 01:14 | There is a few different ways of
revealing the blending modes column.
| | 01:18 | One is to click on the Toggle
Switches/Modes Switch down at the bottom of
| | 01:22 | the Timeline panel.
| | 01:23 | Another way is to right-click on a
header and say also reveal Modes.
| | 01:29 | I will drag it over here, so it is
closer to my layer names and drag it wider so
| | 01:33 | I can see these names.
| | 01:35 | The other is use the shortcut key F4.
It toggles between seeing the Modes panel
| | 01:40 | and seeing the Switches panel.
| | 01:42 | Underneath the Mode header you'll
see a long list of blending modes.
| | 01:46 | They are broken roughly into categories.
| | 01:49 | This first one, other than Normal, which
means do opacity fade, you'll almost never use.
| | 01:53 | The next section tends to a darken the
composite. The section after that tends
| | 01:58 | to brighten the composite. The section
after that does have more complex and
| | 02:02 | richer interactions. I call these the
intensifier or enriching modes, and then you
| | 02:07 | get into this more unusual
mathematical based ones. Difference, Exclusion,
| | 02:10 | Subtract, Divide, Add in After Effects CS5.
| | 02:13 | One that replace a property like
use the Hue from the layer on top, but the
| | 02:17 | Saturation and Luminance from layers
underneath etc and finally some special one
| | 02:21 | concerning Alpha channels.
| | 02:23 | We'll discuss these last few in other lessons.
| | 02:25 | Now if you're a scientific type person
our book, Creating Motion Graphics, has an
| | 02:30 | entire chapter devoted to blending
modes that goes through the math behind each
| | 02:35 | one of these modes and very
scientifically looks at how they operate.
| | 02:39 | However, if you are a right brain type
a person, it is perfectly okay just to
| | 02:43 | start picking modes and see what they look like.
| | 02:46 | I am going to start with Multiply.
| | 02:47 | It is from this darkening group.
| | 02:49 | Watch what happens to composite when I do so.
| | 02:51 | I am going to turn up the opacity.
| | 02:53 | What Multiply does is take the layer on
top and wherever that layer is black
| | 03:01 | it darkens the composite underneath, and
wherever the layer is light it doesn't
| | 03:06 | darken it nearly as much.
| | 03:07 | If it was completely white,
it wouldn't darken it at all.
| | 03:10 | I am going to compare my snapshot. This
is what an Opacity fade looks like and
| | 03:15 | this is what it looks like using Multiply mode.
| | 03:17 | Far more interesting.
| | 03:18 | I will drag a little bit wider
so you could see the name better.
| | 03:21 | The other modes inside the
section have related effects.
| | 03:24 | For example, the Color Burn has to be
richer, has more saturation and more
| | 03:28 | color, and then there is
other modes like Linear Burn.
| | 03:31 | But Multiply is a real good starting
point when you got a grayscale image on
| | 03:35 | top of a color image.
| | 03:36 | Now let's go look at the section
after that that brighten layers.
| | 03:40 | For example, Add mode does
substantially the opposite of Multiply.
| | 03:44 | Basically, the color values of the
pixel of the layer on top are added to the
| | 03:49 | color values of the pixels underneath.
| | 03:52 | The result always being a brighter image.
| | 03:54 | Where the layer on top is white or near
white, the result is pretty well blown
| | 03:59 | out or very close to white.
| | 04:01 | Where the result underneath is black or
near black, such as these dark areas in
| | 04:05 | between the grids, well, you know,
adding 0 to number has no effect.
| | 04:09 | It basically lets the
original color go through unaffected.
| | 04:12 | Again, if I want to compare
snapshot I can click on this button or use
| | 04:15 | the shortcut key F5.
| | 04:17 | That's Opacity blend and that's an Add blend.
| | 04:19 | Far more punch, very interesting.
| | 04:22 | Other modes in that group
have similar but different looks.
| | 04:26 | Screen is a less intense version of Add.
| | 04:28 | You see we see a bit of the muscle
tone that was missing with that Add mode,
| | 04:32 | and just like we had Burn modes
underneath the darkening section, we've got the
| | 04:37 | Dodge modes underneath the Add section,
and they create a more intense composite
| | 04:42 | just like the Burn modes did previously.
| | 04:45 | Small change there. Lighter Color.
| | 04:48 | That not nearly as interesting.
| | 04:49 | Again, I tend to use Add or
Screen as a starting point.
| | 04:53 | Then I mentioned this next section,
the intensifier or enriching modes.
| | 04:58 | Overlay is probably my single
favorite blending mode inside After Effects.
| | 05:03 | Put two layers together, put the
layer on top in Overlay mode, and you must
| | 05:07 | always get a richer, more
saturated, more intense result.
| | 05:12 | I mean I love this, this is beautiful.
| | 05:14 | I'll press F5. That's the Opacity blend.
| | 05:17 | You can see how dull and uninteresting
that is now, compared to releasing F5 and
| | 05:22 | looking at the Overlay mode.
| | 05:24 | Other modes in that
section provide different looks.
| | 05:26 | Soft Light tends to be a
less intense version of Overlay.
| | 05:31 | Hard Light tends to be a
more intense version of Overlay.
| | 05:34 | Then there is other ones too, like Vivid
Light, and Pin Light, and Hard Mix give
| | 05:38 | really unusual posterize effects.
| | 05:41 | Pin Light is kind of grayish. Vivid
Light can be interesting. Again this is kind
| | 05:46 | of like dodge and burn modes, more saturated.
| | 05:49 | But I love Overlay.
| | 05:50 | It's my first call when I am using
blending modes to put together multiple layers.
| | 05:55 | Now in addition to selecting modes
you still have that Opacity command.
| | 05:59 | If you find this result is too intense,
you can always knock down that layer on top.
| | 06:06 | Just blend it a little more lightly
just to give more of a hint of the
| | 06:08 | composite, something that is less intense
all the way down to something like that
| | 06:12 | which is ghosted, but I
might go somewhere in here.
| | 06:16 | You also don't need to
restrict yourself to one mode.
| | 06:20 | It's not unusual to take a layer on top,
duplicate it, press T to reveal its
| | 06:25 | Opacity as well, and put the layer on
top in a different mode like Screen.
| | 06:30 | Then you can start to bounce
these modes off of each other.
| | 06:32 | Overlay tends make things a
little bit darker, more saturated.
| | 06:35 | Screen tends to make things a bit
brighter and now I've got a much more intense
| | 06:39 | composite, where I've got my
saturated colors in the dark areas, thanks to
| | 06:44 | Overlay mode, but I have more white
and definition in the bright areas thanks to
| | 06:48 | having a copy in Screen mode on top.
| | 06:50 | But you don't need to go this far.
| | 06:53 | One copy is often enough.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining modes and effects| 00:07 | Using blending modes is about as close
as you can get to instant gratification
| | 00:11 | inside After Effects.
| | 00:12 | However, you don't have to stop
at just applying a blending mode.
| | 00:17 | I showed in the previous movie where
you can try using more than one mode.
| | 00:20 | Another great trick is to apply
effects to the layer that's moded on top.
| | 00:25 | This is another way to
create some interesting looks.
| | 00:27 | For example, say that I wasn't quite
happy with the mixtures between the
| | 00:31 | highlights and darks in this
particular composite of images.
| | 00:35 | I can keep trying different
modes like Soft Light and Hard Light,
| | 00:41 | seeing if one of them gives me the effect that
I want, but another way is just to process this
| | 00:45 | layer to maybe get the contrast that I prefer.
| | 00:47 | So I'll select this layer and go
to the Effects & Presets panel,
| | 00:52 | which is a very nice way of finding effects.
| | 00:55 | I am going to apply a very simple Levels.
| | 00:58 | I can drag the effect onto the
desired layer or if I already have the
| | 01:02 | layer selected, I just need to double-click
the effect and now Levels has been applied.
| | 01:06 | I'll drag the Effect Controls a
little bit wider so I can see the full
| | 01:10 | Histogram and Levels.
| | 01:11 | From reading the Histogram, I can see
that the original source goes down to the
| | 01:15 | darkest darks and goes up to the
brightest whites, but what I can play with is
| | 01:19 | the gamma, where the midpoint gray is
in this image and what is the balance
| | 01:24 | between the darks and the lights.
| | 01:26 | So I am going to click on this
intermediate slider and start dragging it while
| | 01:29 | watching the Comp panel to the left.
| | 01:31 | By dragging to the left, I'm going to
bias towards more brights being above 50% gray.
| | 01:36 | It gives me sort of a brighter
image, or go to other extreme and go to a
| | 01:42 | darker image, towards a bit more ghosted in there.
| | 01:44 | That also has a very
interesting effect right around there.
| | 01:47 | As a matter of fact this hump in the
Histogram indicates to me that's kind of like
| | 01:51 | the middle of the brights.
| | 01:52 | So that's another particular look which
is kind of interesting, or I can go to
| | 01:56 | the other extreme where my colors
are more closely matched with the layer
| | 02:02 | underneath and to get rid of this some
of this film grain that's in the layer on top,
| | 02:06 | I can apply another effect.
| | 02:07 | And go to Effects & Presets, you just
go to Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Fast Blur
| | 02:12 | and give it just a little bit of
blurring, just to get rid of some of that noise.
| | 02:16 | Just a small amount of blur, I am
going to hold down Command to go ahead and
| | 02:21 | scrub the smaller
increments to get around there.
| | 02:25 | That's before the blur and after the blur.
| | 02:27 | That's fairly close I can finess that more.
I might even knock the Opacity down a
| | 02:30 | little bit to get right around there.
| | 02:33 | And again, I'm going to recall that
snapshot I took in the previous movie.
| | 02:36 | Just an Opacity blend. Press F5.
| | 02:39 | You can see now why I'm so
in love with blending modes.
| | 02:42 | That's now very boring looking
compared to this rich image I have here.
| | 02:46 | You can play with other effects of course.
| | 02:48 | I am going to go ahead and turn off
Levels and turn off the Blur for now.
| | 02:51 | Instead, try a color
tinting effects such as Tritone.
| | 02:56 | Click on Tritone, drag it over to my
layer, release and play around with the
| | 03:01 | midtone color of that image on top.
| | 03:03 | I drag it here side by side, so
you can see what's going on here.
| | 03:07 | Pick maybe a more saturated
color and play around with blending.
| | 03:10 | Maybe if I want to add a little bit of
coolness to it, I can go ahead and pick a
| | 03:15 | bluish purple for my midtone color,
which is now tinting the final composite.
| | 03:20 | And go to red to get some magentas
into here or make it that much warmer by
| | 03:24 | picking something in the orange range.
| | 03:26 | I can also use the Eyedropper to pick a
color for my source, like around there.
| | 03:31 | Click OK and again play with
Opacity to get the blend that I want.
| | 03:36 | Maybe around there and maybe I'll
switch the mode to something like Soft Light,
| | 03:42 | increase the Opacity back.
| | 03:43 | That's something a little
more harmonious of a blend.
| | 03:45 | I could also play around
masking, feathering this edge.
| | 03:48 | You can try crazier effects as well.
| | 03:50 | I'm going to turn off Tritone.
| | 03:52 | Instead pick something like Minimax.
| | 03:54 | I like Minimax, because it kind of
creates sort of a crystallized look.
| | 03:58 | I'll double-click it to apply it to
my selected layer and play around with
| | 04:02 | increasing the Radius.
| | 04:04 | Maybe to something even small
around 2 or 3 just to create this
| | 04:09 | interesting crystallized look.
| | 04:11 | Maximum is bright, Minimum is dark.
| | 04:14 | So there is a lot you can do with
combining blending modes and effects.
| | 04:19 | In the chapter later in this lesson,
we're going to show you one of our favorite
| | 04:22 | tricks called the filmic glow
look, which uses this combination.
| | 04:26 | But right now, I'd like to explore this
combination of modes and effects a little bit more.
| | 04:30 | You can use modes to apply effects in
a way you may not have thought of and
| | 04:33 | I'll show that next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Why apply effects to solids?| 00:07 | There is another case where the
combination of blending modes and effects comes
| | 00:11 | in really handy and that's if you are
trying to use an effect that create some
| | 00:14 | sort of lighting effect like a Lens Flare.
| | 00:18 | If you have the Exercise Files that
came with this lesson, go ahead and open
| | 00:21 | up the Project panel.
| | 00:22 | If you can't see it, slide this bar
along the top of its frame until you can
| | 00:26 | see the word Project.
| | 00:27 | Now I'm going to open up comp
07-Effects Solids Modes*Starter.
| | 00:32 | If you don't have the Exercise Files,
just create a comp with any piece of
| | 00:36 | footage that might make sense
with say a Lens Flare applied.
| | 00:39 | Now here I have a night scene and I've
decided it might be interesting to include
| | 00:44 | an additional Lens Flare
off some light in this scene.
| | 00:48 | Normally, you may think well to apply
an effect like Lens Flare, I select my
| | 00:53 | footage, search for Lens Flare, and
apply that directly to my footage.
| | 01:01 | Now you have a Lens Flare.
| | 01:02 | It does have a flare center, an effect
point, you can drag around and it does
| | 01:09 | have couple of Lens Types to just
create three different types of flares.
| | 01:15 | But frankly this gets
pretty limiting, pretty fast.
| | 01:19 | You're kind of stuck with
color of that flare, etcetera.
| | 01:22 | There are other really fantastic Lens
Flare and lighting effect plug-in sets,
| | 01:27 | which are a lot of fun to play with.
| | 01:29 | Let's say you want to take advantage
of what's built into After Effects and
| | 01:32 | get more out of it.
| | 01:33 | Well, quite often if we have lighting
type effects like Lens Flare, we don't
| | 01:38 | apply them directly to the footage.
Instead we apply them to a black solid that
| | 01:44 | fills the entire frame.
| | 01:46 | Then use blending mode to mix that Lens
Flare and Solid on top of our original footage.
| | 01:52 | Let me show that to you.
| | 01:54 | Now select Lens Flare and delete it,
and I'll create a layer, New > Solid.
| | 02:00 | It's very important for this
trick that the solid be black.
| | 02:04 | It must be pure black or you're going to
colorize parts of the footage you do not intend to.
| | 02:09 | And you should make it at
least the same size as the comp.
| | 02:13 | I'll click the Make Comp Size button,
click OK, and now I have completely
| | 02:18 | obscured my footage with a
black solid, but that's okay.
| | 02:21 | I've got two more steps.
| | 02:23 | First, I want to apply that Lens Flare.
| | 02:25 | You can apply it onto the solid.
| | 02:27 | By the way, your most recently
applied effect always resides underneath
| | 02:31 | the Effect menu item.
| | 02:32 | So I'll just select Lens Flare again.
| | 02:35 | Now I've got my flare on my black solid.
| | 02:38 | Next is setting a blending
mode for that black solid.
| | 02:42 | I'll Toggle Switches/Modes, pull this out
a little wider so I can see it, and I'm
| | 02:48 | going to pick a mode in
this range. The Add group.
| | 02:51 | What Add does again is add together the
color values for the pixels for the two layers.
| | 02:56 | A layer on top and the layer underneath.
| | 02:57 | If the layer on top is black, the
result is no change to the layer underneath.
| | 03:03 | However, if the layer on top is not
black, it has some color like this Lens Flare
| | 03:07 | does, it's going to add the
results to the pixels underneath.
| | 03:11 | So I'll select Add mode and now I've
got my flare again and just as before
| | 03:15 | I could pick up and move it and I can
still pick my different flare types, etcetera.
| | 03:19 | The advantage of doing this is
now that I have the Lens Flare--
| | 03:23 | type E to reveal Effect-- separated
from the underlying footage, I can apply
| | 03:28 | further affects to the Lens Flare
without affecting the underlying footage.
| | 03:33 | For example, say I don't like those colors.
| | 03:35 | I wish the color was a little bit different.
| | 03:37 | A good effect for that is
the Hue/Saturation effect.
| | 03:41 | I'll apply that to the Black Solid not
to the footage, but to the Black Solid
| | 03:46 | that has the Lens Flare.
| | 03:47 | And now as I scrub the Hue, I'm going
to change the hue of just that Lens Flare
| | 03:53 | and not change the hue
of the footage underneath.
| | 03:56 | If I had the Lens Flare applied
directly to the footage, changing the color
| | 04:00 | of the flare would change the color of the
footage as well, but now they're isolated.
| | 04:03 | Of course, I am not stuck with
just using the Add mode either.
| | 04:08 | Other modes in this group are also
very useful ,like Color Dodge creates a
| | 04:11 | very intense version of this effect,
or I can pick Screen, which is a less
| | 04:16 | intense variation on Add.
| | 04:17 | I kind of like classical Add mode
myself, and as before, I'll hold down
| | 04:22 | Shift+T to add Opacity to what I see in
this panel, and I can go ahead and mix it,
| | 04:28 | fade it, right directly here.
| | 04:31 | And I can apply other effects
that I want to such as various blurs,
| | 04:34 | distortion effects.
| | 04:35 | other things to make this more interesting.
| | 04:37 | Again, I can apply something like Levels
to change the gray balance of my flare.
| | 04:42 | I play around the gamma a little bit,
and make it brighter or focus it just as
| | 04:47 | a little intense hotspot and just a
hint of these ranks. What makes all those
| | 04:51 | possible is isolating effects like Lens
Flares etcetera onto their own black solid layer.
| | 04:58 | Now this only works with
modes inside this Add group.
| | 05:02 | Choosing something like Darken will
not give the desired effect at all.
| | 05:06 | Before what is worth, you would use these
modes if your effect was applied to a white solid.
| | 05:12 | That can be interesting if you're doing
something like some sort of circles or
| | 05:15 | radio waves or other geometric effects.
Apply that to white solid, then use
| | 05:19 | these modes as a way of darkening the
underlying image, or if you want to use
| | 05:23 | anything in this set, like Overlay
which I said it was my favorite, these modes
| | 05:27 | need to be applied into a layer that's 50% gray.
| | 05:31 | 50% gray has no effect on the underlying
layer and you'll only see the result of
| | 05:35 | the effect applied to a gray solid,
but it's most common to go ahead and use
| | 05:39 | things like Lens Flares on black
solids with something like Add mode.
| | 05:43 | One another tip off throw in is that
normally an effect like Lens Flare is based
| | 05:48 | around the center of the composition.
| | 05:51 | I'll turn off Levels now as so
you can see it more prominently.
| | 05:54 | If you find it to be limitation, your
solid does not have to be the same size
| | 05:59 | as your composition.
| | 06:00 | It can be much bigger which will give you a
bigger layer and a bigger canvas to drag around.
| | 06:05 | With the Black Solid still selected, I am going
to go ahead and choose Layer > Solid Settings.
| | 06:11 | I want to give it a more
useful name like lens flare solid.
| | 06:16 | Then we'll change a size to
something big like, let's say 1500x1500.
| | 06:23 | Change this to Square Pixels.
| | 06:24 | We'll talk about Pixel Aspect Ratio in
a sidebar at the very end of this lesson.
| | 06:28 | Click OK.
| | 06:29 | Now that I have this super-size layer, I
can type S, scale it down, or scale it up.
| | 06:37 | I can move its position around.
| | 06:38 | I can rotate it independently
of the center of the composition.
| | 06:43 | I've got a lot more
flexibility in a way this is placed.
| | 06:46 | It may not be exactly the way a Lens
Flare works in real-life, but Motion
| | 06:50 | Graphics is not always about real-life.
| | 06:52 | It's about creating cool imagery and a
very large solid with an effect applied
| | 06:57 | and of course a blending
mode is a very handy tool.
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|
|
5. Effects and PresetsUsing the Effects & Presets panel| 00:07 | In the next few movies I would like to
show you a little bit more about applying
| | 00:10 | effects and how to use effects presets.
| | 00:13 | I want to go ahead and do a Close All
again just to clean up my display and if
| | 00:18 | you have the Exercise Files that come
with this lesson I'm going to open up the
| | 00:21 | comp 10-Adobe's Preset*starter.
| | 00:26 | If you're following along using the
After Effects Apprentice book, I'm going to
| | 00:29 | go through these things in a little
different order than they are in the book,
| | 00:31 | but I am going to cover the exact same concepts.
| | 00:34 | If you don't have the Exercise Files,
just create a comp with a piece of footage
| | 00:38 | for now and we'll play around with that.
| | 00:39 | There are two ways to apply effects to a
selected layer or layers in After Effects.
| | 00:46 | One is to use the Effect menu.
| | 00:48 | It does give a nice hierarchical
menu of all these different effects.
| | 00:52 | The problem with this menu is that if
you have a very specific effect you know
| | 00:56 | you want to use but you can't remember
which category or submenu that it's in,
| | 01:02 | you can spend a fair amount of time
trying to find it by going through these
| | 01:05 | different categories and things could
change between versions every now and then too.
| | 01:09 | Sometimes things are in the Channel menu;
| | 01:11 | sometimes they are in the Color Correction menu.
| | 01:13 | You can waste a bit of time.
| | 01:15 | That's why we prefer using
the Effects and Presets panel.
| | 01:19 | It's part of the standard workspace.
| | 01:22 | If you cannot see this panel, just
open it underneath the Window menu item.
| | 01:26 | There it is, Effects and Presets. Command
+5 or Ctrl+5 is the shortcut to open it.
| | 01:31 | You might have noticed that
| | 01:32 | we're already been using Effects
and Presets to search for Effects.
| | 01:35 | Click the X at the top of this Quick
Search dialog to clear out the previous
| | 01:39 | search and now you'll see the
same categories as I had before.
| | 01:43 | Since the Effects and Presets panel
tends to be a pretty long panel with a lot
| | 01:47 | of information, if I have the screen
real estate, I leave and drag it out to its
| | 01:53 | own frame with more height
so it's easier to see.
| | 01:56 | I'm initially presented with the same
categories that I get underneath the Effect menu.
| | 02:02 | I have some control over
how these are displayed.
| | 02:05 | I can sort by categories or by the
folders that the effects are contained
| | 02:09 | in actually in my Finder or Explorer or in
alphabetical order if that's what I prefer.
| | 02:14 | Alphabetical shows me all of the
Effects and all of the Presents without any
| | 02:19 | folder distinctions.
| | 02:21 | I'll go back to Categories for now.
| | 02:23 | To see the contents just twirl open and
see what effects are underneath the category.
| | 02:27 | There is also this folder
called Animation Presets.
| | 02:32 | Animation Presets contain different
configurations of effects, transformations,
| | 02:36 | keyframes, etcetera.
| | 02:38 | This is something we're going to dealing
with a lot more in the next two movies.
| | 02:42 | Now let's get back to our initial problem.
| | 02:45 | Let's say we cannot remember
what category an effect is in.
| | 02:49 | For example, the Invert effect.
| | 02:51 | Well, all I need to do is click in this
Quick Search dialog and start typing the name.
| | 02:56 | Immediately, After Effects starts
sorting until I get down to any animation
| | 03:02 | presets or effect that includes the
characters that I'm typing up here in Quick Search.
| | 03:08 | If all you're interested in right now
are effects, not presets, you can clean up
| | 03:13 | your display in Effects and Presets
by clicking on the Options menu for the
| | 03:16 | Effects and Presets panel and
turning off Show Animation Presets.
| | 03:22 | Now we've cleaned up to just
the effects and there is Invert.
| | 03:25 | You can drag effects over the Comp
panel and apply them to piece of footage or
| | 03:31 | if you already have footage selected
just double-click it and it will applied to
| | 03:34 | any layers that are already
selected in the Timeline panel.
| | 03:38 | Now undo to get out of here.
| | 03:40 | Let's say you want to see every
Blur effect you own. Type Blur.
| | 03:42 | Now I've got all of the effects that
include the word blur in their name.
| | 03:48 | Most are underneath the Blur & Sharpen
category, but as you see here there is
| | 03:52 | one in the Time category as well.
| | 03:54 | Maybe color correction, just type Color.
| | 03:57 | Now you see the color effects are
spread across Channel, Color Correction,
| | 04:01 | Expression Controls, Generate, Keying,
Stylize, Synthetic, Aperture's own Color
| | 04:05 | Finesse, a great color
correction effect, and Utility.
| | 04:09 | Now you can really see where
this search dialog comes in handy.
| | 04:12 | You can find effects regardless of what
category they happen to be sorted into.
| | 04:16 | A lot of users just use the
Effects and Presets panel all the time.
| | 04:19 | They don't even bother with the Effect menu.
| | 04:22 | I'll clear my search.
| | 04:23 | Now in general whenever you apply an
effect, we strongly recommend going away
| | 04:29 | from the default parameters.
| | 04:30 | I mean quite often when you apply an
effect to footage, it may do nothing at all
| | 04:34 | and you have to edit the parameters.
| | 04:36 | However, it can be hard to master
every single effect particularly if you are
| | 04:40 | new with After Effects.
| | 04:41 | Therefore, you might want to start out
by taking advantage of the hundreds of
| | 04:46 | effects and animation presets that
Adobe ships with After Effects, and that's
| | 04:50 | what we're going to explore in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying presets| 00:08 | Adobe After Effects ships with
hundreds of animation presets,
| | 00:11 | many of which take a range of the hundreds
of effects that After Effects shapes with.
| | 00:15 | Let's explore some of those presets.
| | 00:17 | First off, make sure you can view
them in the Effects and Presets panel by
| | 00:20 | clicking the Option menu and making sure
that Show Animation Presets is indeed enabled.
| | 00:26 | Its folder will sort to the top of this list.
| | 00:29 | You can just start twirling this open
and look through the names of presets to
| | 00:32 | see what they might be.
| | 00:33 | For example, Image - Creative.
| | 00:36 | Say that I want treat this
selected piece of footage.
| | 00:38 | I'll twirl this open and look at all
these different presets I've got here.
| | 00:44 | Now some of these names may make
enough sense that you can just apply them
| | 00:47 | directly, just like you can drag an
affect directly on to any piece of footage
| | 00:52 | or double-click it to
apply it. Same with Presets.
| | 00:54 | Just drag your preset under
piece of footage and bang, it's
| | 00:56 | automatically applied.
| | 00:57 | In this case, blue wash did indeed
give more of a blue tint to this footage.
| | 01:02 | To remove a preset, just press Command+Z
or Ctrl+Z to go back to where you were.
| | 01:09 | Double-click gold dip.
| | 01:10 | That's a far different look, very intense.
| | 01:13 | Undo. Colorize-sepia,
that what I expect it to.
| | 01:16 | Now quite often with these presets I
can just go ahead and double-click a name
| | 01:20 | and get what I expect.
| | 01:21 | Grayscales, different grayscale
variations, different intensities there in
| | 01:26 | the sky. Inset Video.
| | 01:28 | That's kind of nice little
instant picture in picture effect.
| | 01:32 | Notice by the way than an animation
preset can apply more than one effect.
| | 01:37 | It's not just a single effect and a
single set of parameters. I'll undo that.
| | 01:42 | However, some of these names may not
be immediately obvious, like what is a
| | 01:46 | scoop mask, what is a Bloom-
crystallize? Mood Lighting-digital, what the
| | 01:53 | heck does that mean?
| | 01:54 | Well, you don't need to just play
guesswork to see what these things look like.
| | 01:58 | You can also browse these
animation presets visually.
| | 02:02 | To do that, you click on the Option
menu again and choose Browse Presets.
| | 02:08 | Doing so will open Adobe Bridge
which ships with After Effects.
| | 02:13 | The first time you do it it'll take a
few seconds to launch. As you can see here
| | 02:16 | we've got a little bit of delay.
| | 02:18 | But now I'm inside Bridge and it takes
me right to the folder inside the After
| | 02:23 | Effects application folder
that has my animation presets.
| | 02:26 | I click on the Folders tab here in
Bridge and I see that inside Applications >
| | 02:30 | After Effects CS5 > Presets is
exactly where I am right now.
| | 02:36 | The animation presets have been
broken down into numerous folders.
| | 02:39 | If I want to see what they look like,
I double-click a folder to open it.
| | 02:42 | Here is Image - Creative where I was before.
| | 02:45 | Now I get an actual visual preview of
what these different effects look like.
| | 02:49 | I start to see what these Bloom
effects look like when I soften the images.
| | 02:55 | Go down here to picture and picture displays.
| | 02:57 | Here what the scoop masks looks like.
| | 02:59 | Animation presets can
include mask shapes by the way.
| | 03:03 | And look down the list.
| | 03:04 | Here is Mood Lighting streaks.
| | 03:06 | I see that actually animates now over the image.
| | 03:08 | Mood Lighting - amorphous. It's kind of nice.
| | 03:12 | Animation presets can include
animation, either automatic animation caused by
| | 03:17 | effects or expressions or keyframed animations.
| | 03:21 | So animation presets are
actually really, really flexible.
| | 03:24 | Let's go up a level to Presets and
start looking some of these other effects.
| | 03:30 | Image - Utilities creates different
things like flipping and flopping,
| | 03:33 | different automatic levels.
| | 03:34 | I will go back up a level.
| | 03:36 | There is Transitions such as Dissolves
and again clicking on one of these gives
| | 03:42 | me a little animated preview of
how this transition might look.
| | 03:44 | Some different effects to look at here.
| | 03:48 | Again, these can contain animation for me.
| | 03:52 | The thing to remember about
animation presets by the way is they're just
| | 03:56 | like pasting keyframes.
| | 03:58 | The first keyframe of the present will
start at the Current Time Indicator and
| | 04:04 | there's also other categories like
creating synthetic backgrounds for me
| | 04:07 | automatically, etcetera.
| | 04:10 | Let's go back to Image - Creative and say
I want to apply one of these to my footage.
| | 04:14 | Let's say that I like this
Colorize - sunset gradient preset.
| | 04:18 | I want to see how that looks on my sky.
| | 04:19 | If it's going to add some morphs to my sky.
| | 04:22 | All I need to do is double-click it
here on Bridge and I'll be switched back to
| | 04:27 | After Effects and the presets will be
applied to the layer that was selected
| | 04:32 | when I first choose Browse Presets.
| | 04:36 | So that's an important tip to remember.
| | 04:38 | Select your footage then go browse the presets.
| | 04:41 | You can edit these presets just like
you edit any effect that you apply to
| | 04:45 | footage and if you don't like a preset just
Command+Z and Ctrl+Z to undo its application.
| | 04:50 | You can also stack presets on top of each other.
| | 04:53 | If I go back Image - Creative and
say I want to first convert this to a
| | 04:59 | grayscale and then I want to add the
sunset gradient on top, it'll just stack
| | 05:05 | all those effects and those
presets on top of each other.
| | 05:07 | If I want to see before and after I go
to the Effects Switch in timeline, turn
| | 05:11 | off the processing, and then turn it back on.
| | 05:13 | Again, also remember you've got the
Take Snapshot and Show Snapshot as another way
| | 05:18 | of remembering a previous state and
then comparing it to where you're now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with behaviors| 00:07 | As I mentioned before, presets are
not all about effects by the way.
| | 00:11 | For example in the exercise files
I've got an additional layer called Kite.
| | 00:15 | Now I'll go ahead and turn that on. There is
your friendly little kite still image there.
| | 00:20 | Let's say I want him animate.
| | 00:21 | Well, I can animate him by hand or
I can try out an animation preset.
| | 00:27 | One really fun category
present in here is called Behaviors.
| | 00:32 | Behaviors create
automated self-animating motions.
| | 00:36 | For example, if I want the kite
just to drift over time, I can either
| | 00:39 | double-click this present or drag it
directly under the kite. 0 to RAM preview.
| | 00:44 | I'll see that he's now drifting off
to the angle specified in the Effects
| | 00:48 | Control panel at the speed
in the Effects Control panel.
| | 00:51 | Let's go ahead and see that again.
| | 00:53 | If I don't like that direction, I can
just go ahead and edit it directly inside
| | 00:59 | the Effects Controls or
Undo to go back to where I was.
| | 01:03 | Really fun are these different Wiggle behaviors.
| | 01:06 | For example, if I want to wiggle his
position so that he seems to be buffeted by
| | 01:10 | the winds, I make sure he is
selected and double-click Wiggle - position.
| | 01:15 | Now when I RAM preview, you'll see
that he's automatically bouncing around in the
| | 01:21 | wind without me having to do any keyframing.
| | 01:25 | This can be very helpful and quite expedient.
| | 01:27 | He's not moving enough?
| | 01:29 | I'll just turn up the Wiggle Amount.
| | 01:31 | I'll turn up the Wiggle Speed.
| | 01:34 | Be careful with this parameter. A little goes
long way and then we will RAM preview again.
| | 01:40 | Now he's buffeted around quite a bit more.
| | 01:43 | In addition to these individual
Wiggle presets, there is also Wigglerama,
| | 01:48 | which include a whole bunch of
different parameters all in one.
| | 01:51 | So I am going to undo back to
where the preset is no longer applied.
| | 01:54 | Double-click Wigglerama.
| | 01:56 | Now I've got speed, nervousness,
basically how edgy the movement is, and then
| | 02:01 | separate controls for how far he's
wiggled in position, how much he's wiggled in
| | 02:05 | rotation, how much he's even done inside scale.
| | 02:09 | RAM preview and now the kite is
bouncing around a lot automatically without me
| | 02:15 | having to do any keyframing.
| | 02:17 | So you see why I like these behaviors.
| | 02:19 | They give some really nice
instant gratification movements.
| | 02:22 | There are some automatic Fade-Ins
and Fade-Outs, which are very useful,
| | 02:26 | things that automatically flash, things that
automatically cause layers to bounce.
| | 02:29 | There are various sorts of presets here.
| | 02:32 | And as with the effects, you don't
have to leave presets at their defaults.
| | 02:36 | You see how we've been editing these parameters.
| | 02:38 | Now the really nice thing about
animation presets is you don't have to rely on
| | 02:42 | the ones provided by Adobe.
| | 02:44 | You can create and reuse your own
presets and that's what I'll show in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and saving presets| 00:07 | One of the best things about animation
presets in After Effects is that you can
| | 00:11 | use them to save your own favorite
configurations of effects and apply those
| | 00:15 | configurations to other
layers or other pieces of footage.
| | 00:19 | If you have the Exercise Files in this
project, switch to the Project panel and
| | 00:23 | open up comp 08 - Save Preset*starter.
| | 00:27 | If you don't have the
Exercise Files, just create a comp.
| | 00:30 | with, you know, any piece of
footage because we are just going to be
| | 00:32 | applying some effects.
| | 00:34 | My goal here is to create an
interesting transition effect to dissolve out of
| | 00:38 | this footage in an interesting
way and reveal something else.
| | 00:41 | After playing around I've
decided to use a Radial Blur.
| | 00:44 | So I am going to type in radial blur.
| | 00:48 | Since I don't have any footage selected
in this comp, double-clicking the effect
| | 00:53 | does not do anything.
| | 00:54 | After Effects does not know what to apply it to.
| | 00:56 | But I can just drag it onto piece of footage
in the Comp panel, and now it will be applied.
| | 01:00 | The Effects Control panel will come
forward automatically, and I get to see the
| | 01:04 | custom UI for Radial Blur.
| | 01:06 | I can change the Blur Amount.
| | 01:07 | I can drag around the center of
the blur to where I want it to be.
| | 01:12 | Right here in the sky kind of works
for me, and change the type of blur.
| | 01:17 | Zoom out from the center, and you
might want to use a higher blur amount for
| | 01:19 | that, or a Spin Blur.
| | 01:23 | And that usually looks
better with smaller blur amounts.
| | 01:26 | You can drag this slider interactively
or just go ahead and scrub the amount
| | 01:30 | value, right around there I kind of like.
| | 01:34 | As I mentioned, I want to use
this as a sort of transition effect.
| | 01:37 | I want to create an amount of spin
that I like, like say I like that much.
| | 01:42 | Then I am going to enable
keyframing for the Amount.
| | 01:46 | This will automatically set my
first keyframe down in the timeline.
| | 01:49 | If I want to verify that's there, I'll
select my layer and press U to reveal all
| | 01:54 | animating properties.
| | 01:56 | Say that I decide I want to come out
of this blur fairly leisurely, like
| | 01:59 | maybe over 4 seconds.
| | 02:01 | I can click to relocate to my Current
Time Indicator, or click on the time
| | 02:05 | display directly and enter
the time I want to go to.
| | 02:07 | Regardless, I am going to go ahead
and scrub the Amount value down to zero,
| | 02:12 | automatically setting the second keyframe.
| | 02:14 | I can do this in the Timeline panel,
or in the Effect Controls panel.
| | 02:18 | I am going to move my Current Time Indicator
just little bit pass my second keyframe.
| | 02:23 | Press N to end my work area here, then
press 0 on the numeric keypad to RAM preview it.
| | 02:30 | And this is going to be my
transition out of this effect.
| | 02:35 | Radial Blur takes little while to
calculate, but here it is at full speed.
| | 02:39 | Okay, the Radial Blur is something, but
you know, I think it also would create a
| | 02:47 | better time travel look if I also came
out of some sort of colorization or tint
| | 02:51 | or something as I came out of the blur.
| | 02:54 | That could be a better transition
from dream world to current world.
| | 02:57 | I am going to press Home to locate the
start of the clip where I am the most
| | 03:01 | blurred, and now I'm going to
look for some sort of tinting effect.
| | 03:04 | I'll click on the X to clear out
my previous search and type tint.
| | 03:09 | And there is the Tint effect.
| | 03:11 | Now that my layer is selected,
I just need to double-click it
| | 03:14 | and it will be applied to that layer.
| | 03:16 | The default of Tint is to
create a nice black and white image.
| | 03:19 | And that's kind of nice
standard look for back in time.
| | 03:22 | A lot of people do their dream
sequences in black and white and do the
| | 03:24 | present day in color.
| | 03:26 | I want to keyframe this to take
the same amount of time as my blur.
| | 03:29 | So I enable keyframing for Amount to Tint.
| | 03:32 | I am going to use my Keyframe
Navigator down here in the Timeline to go to my
| | 03:35 | second Radial Blur keyframe.
| | 03:38 | And now with the exact same time, I am
going to go ahead and scrub the Amount of
| | 03:41 | Tint down to 0 to go back to full color image.
| | 03:45 | Press 0 on the numeric keypad to RAM preview it.
| | 03:52 | And now I got my transition out of a
black and white Radial Blur world to a
| | 03:57 | color, sharply focused world.
| | 03:58 | Okay, that's my transition.
| | 04:00 | Once you have something that you like,
you might even want to make sure that you
| | 04:04 | save your project or even better, use
the File > Increment and Save command so
| | 04:09 | that you have the previous version
underneath an older version number in your
| | 04:12 | new version underneath a brand
new version number, like Version 2.
| | 04:16 | Say that I like this transition and I
think I would like to reuse it on this job
| | 04:20 | and apply it to more than one piece of footage.
| | 04:22 | To do that, first I need to select all
of the effects involved in my transition.
| | 04:28 | I clicked on Radial Blur, and I
will Shift+Click on Tint so that both
| | 04:32 | effects were selected.
| | 04:34 | Selecting an effect selects all of the
parameters of that effect, including any
| | 04:39 | keyframes applied to those parameters.
| | 04:42 | If I wanted just an individual
parameter, I would just need to click on
| | 04:45 | the parameter alone.
| | 04:46 | And now to save an animation preset I
can either go to the Animation menu and
| | 04:51 | choose Save Animation Preset, or I can
click on this icon down in the lower
| | 04:56 | right corner of the Effects & Presets panel.
| | 04:58 | The one that looks like a document.
| | 05:00 | I'll click on that.
| | 05:01 | And I'll be given a chance
to save my animation preset.
| | 05:05 | Now After Effects Palette changes from
version to version where it defaults the Save.
| | 05:09 | What I like to do, is find the
Presets folder for Adobe After Effects and
| | 05:14 | then create my own folder.
| | 05:18 | I might even name that folder based
on the project that I am working on.
| | 05:21 | Let's say that this is a documentary, so
I might type New York City documentary.
| | 05:27 | Create, and now I will give my animation
preset a name that I am likely to remember.
| | 05:33 | Don't give these funky names that
you'll never figure out later on.
| | 05:37 | You might even be boring call it
radial blur + grayscale transition.
| | 05:45 | Lots of good keywords there
to remember. And click Save.
| | 05:49 | I'll clear my previous search,
twirl open the Animation Presets folder.
| | 05:53 | If I can't see that by the way, you
just reveal it underneath the Effects &
| | 05:57 | Presets options menu.
| | 05:59 | And there is New York City
documentary and there is my animation preset.
| | 06:04 | Okay, now I want to apply this
to a brand new piece of footage.
| | 06:07 | I'll go back to my Project panel, and open
up a different comp, in this case, 09 - Apply Preset*starter.
| | 06:14 | If you don't have the Exercise
Files, just create a new comp with a
| | 06:17 | different piece of footage.
| | 06:18 | Select the footage you want to apply
your preset to, move the Current Time
| | 06:24 | Indicator to the time where
you want any keyframes to begin.
| | 06:28 | The first keyframe will be
placed at the Current Time Indicator.
| | 06:32 | If it's way down here at the end
of your comp, that's where the first
| | 06:35 | keyframe is going to be.
| | 06:37 | This is one of the most common
beginner mistakes when applying presets.
| | 06:41 | I want this to apply at the
very beginning of my clip.
| | 06:43 | So I'll press Home.
| | 06:45 | Then go get my preset and either double-
click it or drag it onto the desired footage.
| | 06:50 | Once I do that, I see my
Spin Blur and my grayscale.
| | 06:54 | To reveal keyframes, I'll press U.
To reveal any parameters that have been
| | 06:59 | changed from the defaults, I'll
press U-U, two Us in quick succession.
| | 07:04 | That's where I get to see that I've
also changed the center of this preset.
| | 07:08 | Move my time indicator a little bit
later, N to end my workspace, RAM preview.
| | 07:12 | Again, Radial Blur does take a
little bit to calculate here. And there we go.
| | 07:22 | And now I have my transition.
| | 07:24 | You can edit any preset by the way,
just like you would edit anything else
| | 07:27 | inside After Effects.
| | 07:28 | There's nothing special about them.
It's as if you copied and paste them.
| | 07:32 | For example, say that I want my Blur
center to be in a little bit different place.
| | 07:36 | Maybe around this walk,
don't walk sign. No problem.
| | 07:40 | I'll go up to Radial Blur in the
Effects & Presets panel, click on my center,
| | 07:44 | and drag it up to where
that walk sign is, right there.
| | 07:48 | And now my transition will
be centered around that sign.
| | 07:53 | Kind of a cool effect.
| | 07:54 | So Animation Presets are really
nice tool inside After Effects.
| | 07:58 | If you're just getting started,
Adobe's own presets that they supply with the
| | 08:02 | program may be good starting points.
| | 08:04 | But as you get better and start
creating your own secret recipes, save them,
| | 08:09 | keep them, reuse them on future projects.
| | 08:11 | They will save a lot of time.
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|
|
6. Layer StylesImporting Photoshop files with layer styles| 00:07 | In addition to the effects that
come with Adobe After Effects and any
| | 00:11 | third-party effects you might install,
you also have access to Photoshop-style
| | 00:17 | layer styles in After Effects.
| | 00:18 | So in the next few movies I want to
show you how to take advantage of those.
| | 00:22 | I am going to go ahead
and close my previous comps.
| | 00:25 | And for my first demonstration I am
going to import a Photoshop file that
| | 00:29 | already has layer styles attached.
| | 00:32 | I am going to select the My Sources
folder, and press Command+I or Ctrl+I.
| | 00:36 | If you have the Exercise Files that come with
this project, navigate to the Exercise
| | 00:40 | Files Sources folder and
select Reality_drop.psd.
| | 00:45 | or you can go ahead and import any Photoshop
file that has layer styles already applied.
| | 00:51 | Click Open.
| | 00:52 | To get access to the layer styles,
I need to import as Composition.
| | 00:58 | This is what preserves all the individual
components that make up a Photoshop file.
| | 01:03 | I also want to make sure that
Editable Layer Styles is indeed enabled.
| | 01:08 | I don't want to merge layer styles
because that means they'll be rendered during
| | 01:12 | the import and I won't have a
chance to edit them. Editable.
| | 01:16 | Click OK.
| | 01:17 | Inside My Sources I have all of the
individual layers that made up that
| | 01:21 | particular Photoshop file and a
composition called Reality_drop, named after the file.
| | 01:27 | Double-click that comp to open it.
| | 01:29 | And here is an interesting little
widget created by Andrew Heimbold of Reality
| | 01:33 | Check that uses a lot of layer styles.
| | 01:35 | To access layer styles,
select your layer, twirl it down.
| | 01:39 | You'll see an item called Layer Styles.
| | 01:42 | Now there's a little display bug in
After Effects CS5 where the twirly will
| | 01:46 | initially be missing next to Layer Styles.
| | 01:49 | Don't worry, and just double click
Layer Styles and that twirly will appear.
| | 01:53 | We've also seen cases where the
twirly next to layer style names disappear.
| | 01:58 | Again double click them, the arrow
will return and life will be good.
| | 02:01 | So this particular layer has a lot
of styles applied to this element.
| | 02:06 | I am going to go ahead and Solo this
particular element for now to focus on
| | 02:09 | these cool little indented plastic pieces.
| | 02:13 | Each layer style applied to a layer
has an individual visibility icon.
| | 02:19 | You can go ahead and turn them off and
on to see what effect each layer style is
| | 02:24 | contributing to this image.
| | 02:25 | It's a good way of deconstructing
what other people do to figure it out.
| | 02:30 | And there is a lot of fun stuff that's
actually going on inside this image.
| | 02:33 | some subtle things and some
very nice things. Pretty cool!
| | 02:37 | I am going to un-Solo this so
I can see it in more context.
| | 02:41 | Now the way that some people use layer
styles under Photoshop files may not be
| | 02:45 | entirely obvious just from the name.
| | 02:46 | For example, Outer Glow is what a lot
of people use to create an interesting
| | 02:51 | shadow around objects.
| | 02:52 | In this case, for the internal elements,
Outer Glow was what was providing that really
| | 02:57 | cool shading, almost giving a shadow
effect from these inserted elements as
| | 03:01 | opposed to a classic glow type of look.
| | 03:03 | So it's really fun to dissect
Photoshop files from other people to see what
| | 03:07 | they've done with layer styles.
| | 03:09 | We also encourage you to go ahead and
check out other Photoshop training that
| | 03:12 | includes layer styles and also to go
to the Adobe Exchange web site which has
| | 03:16 | loads of layer style presets.
| | 03:19 | The one caveat I'll give you about
using presets you find on Adobe
| | 03:22 | Exchange is most of them were
created for high-resolution still image
| | 03:27 | documents, print documents.
| | 03:28 | Therefore the parameters tend to be a bit
large and exaggerated for video in After Effects.
| | 03:33 | You may need to dive in and cut back on
things like the size of glows and bevels
| | 03:37 | to make them look right.
| | 03:38 | After Effects cannot load layer style
presets directly; they need to be attached
| | 03:44 | to a Photoshop file to begin with.
| | 03:46 | But once that's the case and you have
a treatment you like, you can select a
| | 03:51 | layer style and save an animation
preset of it, just like you could any
| | 03:55 | other normal effect.
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| Applying layer styles inside After Effects| 00:07 | One way to work with Photoshop layer
styles in After Effects is to import a
| | 00:11 | Photoshop file that
already has layer styles applied.
| | 00:13 | Just remember to import it as a
composition, so that you get access to the
| | 00:17 | components to make it up and the layer
styles that applied to those components.
| | 00:21 | However, you can apply layer styles
to your own layers inside After Effects
| | 00:25 | directly without having to go through Photoshop.
| | 00:28 | If you have this lesson's exercise files,
open up Comp 11-Layer Styles*starter.
| | 00:34 | Here we've started on what could be a
DVD or a website user interface design.
| | 00:37 | A still image, a little bit of text in the
background and a startup of some buttons.
| | 00:42 | These buttons frankly look a little bit flat.
| | 00:45 | We'd like to make them look far
more interesting and more dimensional.
| | 00:48 | To do that, we'll use layer styles.
| | 00:50 | Quite often, layer styles are more
powerful than their corresponding
| | 00:55 | effect counterparts.
| | 00:57 | To start, press this first button.
| | 00:58 | It was created using shape layers,
which we discussed in a different lesson.
| | 01:02 | Let's say I want to give it some dimension.
| | 01:04 | Rather than apply Effect >
Perspective > Bevel Alpha, instead I want to try
| | 01:11 | Layer > Layer Styles > Bevel and Emboss.
| | 01:16 | Layer Styles exist underneath
the Layer menu, not the Effect menu.
| | 01:21 | Choose Bevel and Emboss and I got
initially a nice little bevel not too
| | 01:25 | different from using the bevel alpha effect.
| | 01:27 | However, there's a lot of
extra power underneath the hood.
| | 01:29 | I'll go down to Bevel and Emboss in
the Timeline panel and twirl it open.
| | 01:34 | I have a lot more parameters to
play with here than I do inside the
| | 01:36 | corresponding Adobe effect.
| | 01:38 | For example, I have many
different styles for Bevel and Emboss.
| | 01:42 | Inner Bevel is the default, but Outer
Bevel makes it look like it's raised up
| | 01:46 | from the surface of the image.
| | 01:49 | Emboss makes it look like it's
been punched through a little bit, but
| | 01:53 | particularly different is
something like Pillow Emboss.
| | 01:56 | This is something where it's been
pushed in and then pulled back out of the
| | 01:58 | surface and it's hard to see what's going on.
| | 02:01 | Just increase the size.
| | 02:02 | Now you're seeing a much stronger effect.
| | 02:07 | I can try different techniques like
Chisel Hard to give a harder edge there.
| | 02:12 | In this case, I might want the smaller
size or switch it back to Smooth and I
| | 02:17 | can keep playing around
with creating different looks.
| | 02:19 | Inner Bevel is back to where I've
started, but the size is going to really
| | 02:22 | soften this button up to be more like a
pill capsule rather than just a beveled
| | 02:26 | button and there are other parameters
as well including blending modes which we
| | 02:31 | played around with earlier in this lesson.
| | 02:33 | There are lots more
layer styles I can play with.
| | 02:36 | For example, if I wanted this button
to float off the surface of that photo
| | 02:39 | rather than seeming to be integrated
into it, I might also apply Layer > Layer
| | 02:44 | Styles > Drop Shadow.
| | 02:46 | Again, there is an Adobe effect
called Drop Shadow, but there are far more
| | 02:50 | parameters to work with in the
layer style called Drop Shadow.
| | 02:54 | You can create far more subtle effects.
| | 02:56 | A good distance here, the sizes will
really soften to just a glow, increase the
| | 03:02 | Opacity, play with the mode and indeed
Adobe says that layer styles work more
| | 03:07 | like blending modes than normal effects.
| | 03:10 | Maybe something like Overlay
| | 03:12 | so it interacts more with the photo underneath.
| | 03:15 | Again, if you hit upon a look that you
like, you can select layer styles, just
| | 03:19 | like you selected effects and save an
animation preset of your layer styles.
| | 03:24 | There're only a limited number of layer styles.
| | 03:27 | It tends to be a glow and
dimension sort of look, but if these are the
| | 03:33 | sort of looks that you like, I highly
recommend that you explore them in a lot more depth.
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7. Adjustment LayersUsing adjustment layers| 00:07 | Another important technique to learn
while working with effects is applying them
| | 00:10 | to adjustment layers.
| | 00:12 | If you have the Exercise Files that
came with this lesson open up the comp
| | 00:16 | 12-Adjustment Layers*starter.
| | 00:17 | If you don't have access to the files
go ahead and create your own composition
| | 00:20 | with a few different elements.
| | 00:22 | For example, I have text, a
foreground element, and a background element.
| | 00:28 | Say I wanted to apply an effect to help
unify the composite of all these layers.
| | 00:32 | How would you go about doing that?
| | 00:34 | Well the obvious way is to apply the
same effect to each of the layers, but
| | 00:37 | that can have problems.
| | 00:39 | I am going to pick an obvious effect
just to show you what those problems are.
| | 00:42 | Now search for Twirl. It's
underneath the Distort category.
| | 00:45 | I am going to apply to each
of these layers individually.
| | 00:48 | Here it is on my foreground, give a
bit of twirl, apply it again to my text layer,
| | 00:53 | give a little of twirl and
then apply it to my background layer.
| | 00:59 | Double-click and give a bit of a twirl.
| | 01:02 | Now the problem with effects like
Twirls is that they process each layer
| | 01:07 | individually; they don't know about
the other layers in the composition.
| | 01:11 | Therefore each one has its own center
that may not line up with the center of the
| | 01:15 | Twirl on the other layers and you
have to manage Twirl amounts and other
| | 01:19 | settings for each of the layers individually.
| | 01:22 | Well there is a better way.
| | 01:23 | Let me go ahead and Undo to get back
to where I was and I am going to go to
| | 01:28 | Layer > New > Adjustment Layer.
| | 01:32 | With adjustment layers what After
Effects does is make a composite of all the
| | 01:35 | layers underneath in the timeline stack
and copies that to the adjustment layer.
| | 01:40 | Now when you apply an effect to
adjustment layer, like Twirl, it will now affect
| | 01:45 | all of the layers as a composite.
| | 01:47 | You can see the Twirls now pulling
together the text, the background,
| | 01:50 | and foreground layers.
| | 01:52 | So that's very useful.
| | 01:53 | Now again, adjustment layers
don't do anything on their own.
| | 01:57 | There needs to be an effect applied
to them for them to become obvious.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to delete the Twirls as
this is a bit silly and show you more
| | 02:04 | subtle application.
| | 02:06 | For example I'm just going to apply
Effect > Blur & Sharpen, a simple Fast Blur.
| | 02:12 | Now when I increase the blurriness
parameter it affects the composite of all of
| | 02:16 | the layers underneath.
| | 02:17 | With Fast Blur I like to turn on Repeat Edge
Pixels, so that my edges don't pull on black.
| | 02:21 | But what if you don't want all
of the layers to get the blur?
| | 02:26 | You just want some of the layers.
| | 02:27 | Well remember, adjustment layers create
a composite of all the layers underneath
| | 02:32 | them in the timeline stack.
| | 02:34 | So if I also drag this adjustment
layer below the text, but above my
| | 02:39 | foreground and background elements. The text
is not blurred, but the other two elements are.
| | 02:45 | Drag it down on further and
now just the background's blurred.
| | 02:48 | Now unfortunately, you cannot sort
arrange of layers for adjustment layer to
| | 02:51 | affect. They always affect everyone
underneath them, but with a little bit a
| | 02:56 | careful thought about how you stack
the layers in your comp, you can do some
| | 02:59 | nice selective processing.
| | 03:01 | Next I'll show you some tricks you can
do with adjustment layers in a really
| | 03:04 | common treatment that they are good for.
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| Working with adjustment layers and alpha channels| 00:07 | Now remember in the previous movie I
said that After Effects makes the copy of
| | 00:11 | all the layers underneath the
adjustment layer and then copies that composite
| | 00:15 | into the adjustment layer.
| | 00:17 | You still have all those layers underneath.
| | 00:19 | The adjustment layer is just a copy of them.
| | 00:22 | That means that anything that affects
the Opacity or Alpha Channel adjustment
| | 00:25 | layer will have an affect on the final results.
| | 00:28 | For example, if I do something
simple like just press T for Opacity, as I
| | 00:32 | fade the adjustment layer out, you'll see I'll
get back to the original composite underneath.
| | 00:37 | So this gives you sort of blend with
original for your effects applied to
| | 00:41 | the adjustment layer, and by the way
you can apply more than one effect to
| | 00:44 | that layer, so the Opacity becomes a blend
with original for the entire effects of the stack.
| | 00:49 | Now I'm going to type Shift+S to reveal
Scale and scale down adjustment layer.
| | 00:54 | As I do so, only a portion of my frame
is going to get the effects applied to
| | 01:00 | this adjustment layer.
| | 01:01 | So I'm only blurring the area
underneath this adjustment layer.
| | 01:05 | You can see the layer outlines.
| | 01:08 | Anything else I do to affect its Alpha,
like even rotate it a bit, will affect
| | 01:12 | what portion of this layer is going to
get these effects, the effects applied to
| | 01:17 | the adjustment layer.
| | 01:19 | I'll reset my rotation.
| | 01:21 | There are many other ways to
affect the Alpha channel of any layer
| | 01:24 | including adjustment layers.
| | 01:25 | We haven't covered masking yet, but
let me just quickly pick something silly
| | 01:28 | like a Star, make sure the adjustment
layer is selected, and drag out this shape
| | 01:34 | on the adjustment layer.
| | 01:35 | You'll see now just that star shape is
what gets the blur of this adjustment layer.
| | 01:42 | I'll deselect so you don't see the
outline. You just see the blurred effect, and
| | 01:46 | again I can change where it is in
stacking order to control what gets blurred.
| | 01:51 | Now as I mention you can apply multiple effects.
| | 01:53 | For example, I can go ahead and
apply Effect > Color Correction >
| | 01:56 | Hue/Saturation and do a little hue
rotation for anybody that's underneath that
| | 02:01 | adjustment layer as well.
| | 02:03 | I can animate rotation and
do all sorts of fun stuff.
| | 02:06 | Now any layer can become an adjustment
layer. When I use Layer > New > Adjustment Layer,
| | 02:12 | all After Effects did was create
a solid the size of this composition and
| | 02:17 | then turned on the adjustment
layer switch for that layer.
| | 02:22 | If I turn this off, it just becomes a normal
white solid that has a mask and a blur.
| | 02:27 | Turn it back on; now you see it
has that processing effect instead.
| | 02:31 | I am going to turn this layer off
and I am going to turn my text into
| | 02:35 | an adjustment layer.
| | 02:37 | When I first turn it on, you will see
that it is getting the effects applied to
| | 02:40 | this layer, the tint and applying that
now to all the layers underneath using
| | 02:46 | the Alpha channel of that particular layer.
| | 02:49 | So adjustment layers have a lot of
flexibility. Beyond just being able to process
| | 02:52 | the entire frame, you can process
selective portions of the frame.
| | 02:57 | But speaking of processing the entire
frame, in the next movie I'm going to show
| | 03:00 | you one of my favorite
tricks, creating a filmic glow.
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| Applying a filmic glow treatment| 00:07 | As I mentioned, adjustment layers process
the composite of all the layers underneath.
| | 00:13 | This makes it really handy to unify a
composition, not only as a stack of layers,
| | 00:18 | but also as it changes over time
with a consistent set of effects.
| | 00:22 | One of my favorite uses of this trick
is to do something called a Filmic Glow.
| | 00:26 | If you've got the Exercise Files,
open something that has several layers of
| | 00:29 | footage on it, such as this comp
03a we are working with earlier.
| | 00:33 | If you don't have the files, just
create something that has several cuts, edits,
| | 00:36 | cross-fades and another layers.
| | 00:38 | Now you see I've got an edit between
these different layers in this composition.
| | 00:44 | What if I want to apply the same treatment
to all of these layers across those edits?
| | 00:50 | Well, this is another place where
adjustment layers come in really handy.
| | 00:52 | I'll go to Layer > New > Adjustment
Layer. Nthing happens initially, because
| | 00:58 | I've not applied any effects yet.
| | 01:00 | You need to have an effect apply to an
adjustment layer before you're going to
| | 01:02 | see any result, and I'm going to
apply Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Fast Blur.
| | 01:09 | As I increase it, you'll see
the entire composite blurs.
| | 01:13 | Now remember, this adjustment layer is a
copy of everything underneath, but blurred.
| | 01:20 | Also remember, we discussed how useful
this thing called blending modes are to
| | 01:24 | help process footage.
| | 01:25 | Well, one way is to take a blurred copy
of your footage and apply it on top of
| | 01:29 | everybody underneath.
| | 01:30 | If I pick a nice brightening mode such
as Add, you'll see I get nice blown -out
| | 01:36 | puffy highlights on all of my footage.
| | 01:38 | And the same effect
will apply across my edits.
| | 01:43 | Just to show you, this is before and after.
| | 01:48 | If that depth is too much, I'll press
T to reveal Opacity and just fade down
| | 01:52 | adjustment blur and control how
much of this effect that I see.
| | 01:56 | And remember this effect is a
composite of all the layers underneath, blurred,
| | 02:02 | and then apply it in top of the
original layers using a blending mode.
| | 02:05 | I can pick a different mode. For example,
Overlay is one of my favorite modes.
| | 02:09 | It really increases the
saturation before and after.
| | 02:15 | There is my skyline.
| | 02:17 | There is my night scene.
| | 02:19 | There is the jet landing.
| | 02:20 | Now one really gets an improvement between
the normal footage and the adjusted footage.
| | 02:24 | And if you like, you can
create multiple adjustment layers.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to go ahead and duplicate
this layer, set its mode to something
| | 02:30 | different like Add, start balancing
off the brightening qualities, and the
| | 02:37 | saturation qualities of these
multiple applications of these layers, before
| | 02:43 | and after.
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|
8. QuizzlersQuizzler challenges| 00:07 | We'd like to test you to make sure
you've learned what we've been trying to
| | 00:09 | teach you in this lesson.
| | 00:10 | So we have a couple quizzler challenges for you.
| | 00:13 | First off, let's say we have two layers:
this symbol and this explosion shot on black.
| | 00:19 | The question is how would you take those
two sources and create this end result?
| | 00:26 | Notice that when the explosion happens, we
can see through it to the symbol underneath.
| | 00:33 | The black background of the
pyro is not obscuring the symbol.
| | 00:36 | What's the tool to use to
make this composite happen?
| | 00:39 | And your second Quizzler challenge
involves this sequence of layers.
| | 00:45 | See how we have four different objects
slowly build on the screen? They're on for two
| | 00:49 | seconds, then there is a one
second fade, then the next one comes on.
| | 00:53 | How would you easily create this sequence?
| | 00:56 | I'll give you a hint.
| | 00:58 | We used Sequence Layers,
but not in the standard fashion.
| | 01:02 | Okay, think about that then
watch the solution movies.
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| Quizzler solution one: Pyrotechnic composite| 00:07 | Our first Quizzler challenge is how to
make a nice composite out of this simple
| | 00:10 | background footage in this
pyrotechnic foreground footage?
| | 00:14 | Just to prove that this pyro has no
Alpha channel, I'm going to solo it and use
| | 00:19 | Transparency Grid.
| | 00:20 | And you see, no alpha. Solid black layer.
| | 00:23 | I'll turn off Solo.
| | 00:25 | Now if you come from a video editing
background, you maybe tempted to look for
| | 00:29 | Effect > Keying > Luma Key.
| | 00:34 | This is a way a lot of
editors try to key out black.
| | 00:38 | I'll apply it, start to determine the
threshold, and start to eat away the black
| | 00:43 | until I can see the symbol underneath.
| | 00:47 | Let me tell you, this is
not the preferred solution.
| | 00:51 | No matter how much you tweak Tolerance,
Edge Thin, and Edge Feather, you're
| | 00:55 | going to end up with a black fringe and
basically unsatisfactory details around
| | 00:59 | the edge of this object.
| | 01:01 | So don't use Luma Keyl
instead use blending modes.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to Toggle Switches/Modes,
bring up my Mode panel, and then for
| | 01:10 | the explosion on top I'm going to choose a
mode that inherently brightens the composite.
| | 01:16 | When you choose something like Add, or
Screen, or Color Dodge, anything that's
| | 01:21 | black in the layer on top will have no
effect on the composite and any pixels
| | 01:26 | brighter than black will
add to the layer underneath.
| | 01:30 | I'll start with Add mode and
that is result that I wanted.
| | 01:33 | The black of the explosion
is dropped off completely.
| | 01:38 | No Alpha channel has been created.
| | 01:40 | It's basically not adding any
color values to the footage underneath.
| | 01:44 | Then the color values of the rest of the
explosion are added to the symbol footage.
| | 01:49 | And you can try other modes. Screen has
a less severe look, Color Dodge tends to
| | 01:55 | have a more interesting
colorize look, but I'll go with Add.
| | 01:58 | Now there is one other small problem
here is that explosion is not lined up
| | 02:05 | with where the stick is hitting the symbol.
| | 02:07 | So to change that, I just need to pick up
that footage and move it so that it does align.
| | 02:12 | Of course now I have a problem that I don't
have enough footage to cover the entire shot.
| | 02:18 | My anchor point already exists at the
center of the explosion. That's great.
| | 02:21 | I'll just press S for Scale and
scale it up until I see that it's going to
| | 02:26 | cover my entire frame.
| | 02:29 | Now the layer is outside the
layer boundary of this composition.
| | 02:33 | Normally, it's a bad idea to scale
this up pass 100% . That's why it's good
| | 02:36 | to have a store of high-def footage
around, but in a composite like this,
| | 02:40 | you can get away with it.
| | 02:41 | I'll RAM preview and there you go.
| | 02:44 | The main point is don't always reach
through things like keying effects when you
| | 02:49 | need to composite layers.
| | 02:51 | Blending modes is often one of your
best tools to create composites, be it for
| | 02:54 | motion graphics or for visual effects.
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| Quizzler solution two: Sequenced fades| 00:08 | The second Quizzler challenge involved
how would you go about building on
| | 00:12 | these layers in sequence.
| | 00:14 | You've learned how to do a lot of
editing in this lesson, including how to slide
| | 00:17 | layers and fade things in and out,
but are there any tools in After Effects
| | 00:21 | which might make this a little bit
easier and help automate parts of the process?
| | 00:24 | Well, yes there is. Sequence Layers.
| | 00:27 | I'll go ahead and open up the Starter
composition that came with the Exercise Files.
| | 00:31 | Here we have our four objects already
in space, and let's go about trimming
| | 00:35 | and arranging them.
| | 00:36 | I mention when I laid out the challenge
that I want these each beyond for two
| | 00:39 | seconds, then cross-fade for a third second.
| | 00:41 | So let's give sequence layers the
impression that each of these segments is
| | 00:45 | going to be three seconds long.
| | 00:46 | I am actually going to back up to 2:29,
since the time from 0 to 2:29 is 3 seconds.
| | 00:53 | Select all my layers and remember
that After Effects remembers the order
| | 00:56 | I select layers in.
| | 00:58 | So if I want that cell phone to be first,
I need to select him first actually,
| | 01:02 | then the microscope, then
the wheel, then the monitor.
| | 01:06 | Hold down Option on Mac, Alt on
Windows, press Right Bracket to trim the
| | 01:09 | layers, then I'll right-click in
any of the layers and select Keyframe
| | 01:12 | Assistant > Sequence Layers.
| | 01:14 | I'm going to pretend that this
is going to be a simple sequence.
| | 01:17 | I'm just going to say Overlap,
1 second, Dissolve Front Layer, click OK.
| | 01:22 | You see that it does build on the layers.
| | 01:27 | However, since I pre-trimmed the layers to
three seconds, it thinks they should now end.
| | 01:32 | That's not the problem to fix.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to press End to go
to the end of my composition.
| | 01:36 | I have all my layers selected and
then I'm going to use that keyboard shortcut
| | 01:39 | you already learned.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to hold down Option or Alt,
press the Right Bracket, and retrim all the
| | 01:44 | layers to extend the entire length of the comp.
| | 01:47 | So I pre-trimmed their durations
to give Sequence Layers something to
| | 01:51 | sequence them by, but then I edited their
outpoints to stay on screen for the entire fade.
| | 01:57 | And the intention here is just to
give you an idea of how to take the tools
| | 02:00 | After Effects gives you. Don't treat
them as magic spells that only do one thing,
| | 02:05 | but think more about what they're
actually doing underneath the hood.
| | 02:09 | Once you know what these tools are
actually doing to layers, you can apply
| | 02:12 | them in ways that maybe they weren't
originally intended to create new and different looks.
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|
9. Idea CornerIdea corner one: Adjustment layer shapes| 00:08 | Here's a simple animation we
created using the motion sketch keyframe
| | 00:11 | assistant which we showed you back in the
After Effects Apprentice: Advanced Animation lesson.
| | 00:16 | Okay, it's kind of fun,
butterfly flying around a flower.
| | 00:18 | But we could make this more
interesting or more mysterious.
| | 00:22 | Now you may remember in the
adjustment layer chapter inside this lesson,
| | 00:25 | we mentioned that any layer can be an
adjustment layer, and particularly layers
| | 00:28 | with interesting Alphas can make
very interesting adjustment layers.
| | 00:31 | Well, this butterfly has what I
would call an interesting Alpha channel.
| | 00:36 | Let's make an adjustment layer.
| | 00:39 | One step in this process is to turn on
the Adjustment Layer switch for this layer.
| | 00:44 | Once I do that, the butterfly disappears
and you go "Well, that's not what I wanted."
| | 00:48 | But remember adjustment layers
need to have effects applied to them.
| | 00:53 | All we have right now is a composite of
all the layers underneath stuck right on
| | 00:57 | top of the original composite.
| | 00:59 | That's why you don't see anything.
| | 01:01 | But if we pick an effect such as Color
Correction > Hue/Saturation and start to
| | 01:07 | play around with the hue, you can see
that we're changing the color of the
| | 01:10 | flower just underneath where the
adjustment layer -- the butterfly -- is.
| | 01:15 | Let's try something like that.
| | 01:17 | Now when I ran preview, instead of a
cutout butterfly flying around the scene,
| | 01:21 | now I have a color correction in the
shape of the butterfly flying around this scene.
| | 01:25 | Far more interesting, a bit more
mysterious and certainly out of the ordinary.
| | 01:29 | Of course you can apply other effects
to this butterfly as well to create more
| | 01:32 | interesting treatments of the flower underneath.
| | 01:35 | You could also play around with things
like the scale animation of the butterfly
| | 01:37 | to make it bigger and smaller
as it goes around the flower.
| | 01:40 | So that just reinforces alternate
ways you can use adjustment layers.
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| Idea corner two: Creating a traveling glass bar| 00:07 | Earlier in this lesson in the
chapter on adjustment layers, we showed you
| | 00:10 | how you can use the adjustment
layer to apply effects to the entire
| | 00:13 | composite of this composition.
| | 00:15 | We also showed you how you could scale
down that adjustment layer to affect just
| | 00:18 | a smaller portion of this composite.
| | 00:20 | Well let's take those ideas and extend them.
| | 00:22 | Say that I want to have a vertical bar
that travels across my screen and I want
| | 00:27 | just the area underneath
that bar to be affected.
| | 00:29 | Maybe a bit blurred, maybe a bit
blown up, maybe a bit color shifted, as if
| | 00:33 | it was under glass.
| | 00:34 | This is a trick you might have seen on an
opening title sequence of say a television show.
| | 00:38 | Well, first I am going to
add an adjustment layer.
| | 00:40 | Layer > New > Adjustment Layer.
| | 00:44 | It defaults to being the
entire size of the composition.
| | 00:46 | And the reality is just a solid that
has the Adjustment Layer switch set.
| | 00:51 | So I am going to make sure the
adjustment layer is selected.
| | 00:54 | Go to Layer > Solid Settings.
| | 00:57 | Here you can rename it, such as
adjustment bar, and change it's width.
| | 01:03 | Let's say it's only 100 pixels wide.
| | 01:06 | Note that the color of an adjustment
layer has no effect on the outcome.
| | 01:09 | It's the Alpha channel you're
interested in. I'll click OK.
| | 01:12 | I have a smaller bar but I don't see
any adjustment yet because I don't have
| | 01:16 | any effects applied.
| | 01:17 | Well that's simple enough.
| | 01:18 | Let's go to Effect and apply Hue and Saturation.
| | 01:22 | Here I can do a little bit of a color
shift, maybe to make it a bit more golden.
| | 01:26 | Maybe make it a bit more
saturated underneath that bar.
| | 01:29 | If I want to blur it out, I can apply Effect
> Blur and Sharpen, something like Fast Blur.
| | 01:35 | Box Blur is also a very good choice by the way.
| | 01:39 | Increase the Blurriness.
| | 01:40 | And now I've got little bit of
a defocused frosted glass look.
| | 01:45 | And one thing I normally do with Fast
Blur and treatments like this is turn on
| | 01:47 | Repeat Edge Pixels because that
cleans up the edges of the top and bottom.
| | 01:51 | Now a third treatment I would like to
do is slightly expand or magnify the area
| | 01:56 | underneath the adjustment layer bar.
| | 01:58 | Again going for that
refracted through glass sort of look.
| | 02:01 | The problem is that if I just use
normal scale-- press S to reveal-- it has no
| | 02:06 | effect on the adjustment.
| | 02:09 | That's because Scale is not an effect.
| | 02:12 | It's just changing the size of the
area that gets the treatment that gets the
| | 02:17 | effects, but is not an effect itself.
| | 02:20 | Whenever you need to apply a
transformation property as an effect, you can apply
| | 02:27 | an effect called Transform.
| | 02:29 | I'll double-click that.
| | 02:32 | And now I have a whole set of
transformations including Scale, Skew, Rotation, etc,
| | 02:37 | that's applied as an effect.
| | 02:39 | So if I scale this up slightly, you'll see that
I get that refracted look of it being expanded.
| | 02:44 | I'll go ahead and type P to
reveal just the position of this layer.
| | 02:48 | You'll see it's magnifying
whatever is underneath this bar.
| | 02:50 | All that's left now is to do some keyframing.
| | 02:53 | So just do what you like.
| | 02:54 | Go ahead and set a Position keyframe here.
| | 02:57 | Go little later in time, move to a
different position of the frame, go little
| | 03:01 | later in time, move it back,
go little bit later in time.
| | 03:05 | Maybe do a little jig this direction,
and then go to the end, and you can scrub
| | 03:10 | it all way back, or of course you can
just pick it up and have the Shift key to
| | 03:14 | constrain your movement,
then push it off the screen.
| | 03:18 | The default keyframes are linear which
gives kind of a boring bounce-bounce
| | 03:22 | sort animation, a bit abrupt.
| | 03:26 | But I would prefer is to maybe to select these,
| | 03:28 | hold down Command on Mac or Control
on Windows, and click on one of them
| | 03:32 | to convert them to Auto Bezier keyframes,
which automatically smoothes out the movement.
| | 03:36 | So I get little bit better of a bounce as it
hits those corners and goes back and forth.
| | 03:46 | And again using what you've learned,
you can apply something else such as Easy Ease
| | 03:48 | to make him come to complete
stop when he hits those keyframes.
| | 03:52 | But anyway that's another use for
adjustment layers to create some fun
| | 03:55 | treatments of your footage underneath,
as if you're viewing it through another
| | 03:59 | surface or another layer.
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| Idea corner three: Creating sequences from filmstrips| 00:07 | Earlier in this lesson you used
this sequence of Muybridge images.
| | 00:11 | Muybridge is a person who did a lot
of photography of people and animals in
| | 00:14 | motion to see how they moved.
| | 00:17 | I am going to press Page Down and
step through the frames of this.
| | 00:21 | The way we created this sequence
is we took a series of 10 individual stills,
| | 00:25 | then had After Effects
import them and string them together as if
| | 00:29 | they were a continuous movie.
| | 00:31 | The question is how did I
create the sequence in the first place?
| | 00:34 | I want to show you that.
| | 00:35 | I am going to select my Sources folder,
do a Command+I or Ctrl+I to import, and
| | 00:39 | select a couple of scans I made.
| | 00:42 | I am going to make sure Sequences is
disabled because I want the individual images.
| | 00:46 | Click Open.
| | 00:48 | Dover Books has a wonderful
publication called The Human Figure in Motion
| | 00:53 | by Eadweard Muybridge.
| | 00:55 | And here are a couple of scans from that book.
| | 00:58 | You see that the book presents the
Muybridge images as continuous panels,
| | 01:03 | not as individual frames of animation.
| | 01:05 | So what we did is we took one of these
panels, created a new composition out of it,
| | 01:10 | and said how can we start
sequencing this inside a comp, so that we can
| | 01:14 | have as an output a series of individual
frames that we could then make a movie out of?
| | 01:18 | Well the first thing to do is make
sure that the scan is squared away and it
| | 01:21 | actually looks like a tilts a little bit here.
| | 01:23 | To be sure, I am going to go ahead and
turn of on the rulers, pull down a guide,
| | 01:30 | and see how things change across this image.
| | 01:32 | And I indeed see that I've got some very
slight rotation going on in this image.
| | 01:37 | Let's pick a nice clear line like
that one. I am going to press R to reveal
| | 01:42 | rotation and I am going to hold
Command on Mac, Ctrl on Windows to scrub by
| | 01:47 | very tiny amounts, something as
small as just couple tenths of a degree.
| | 01:53 | Looks like it's enough to
maybe square way this image.
| | 01:57 | Looks like it could use a touch less.
I am going to type in 0.3 instead.
| | 02:03 | And see how that looks.
| | 02:08 | That seems to hold up pretty well.
| | 02:09 | So I am happy with that.
| | 02:10 | The next I am going to do is trim my
composition to be the size of just one of these images.
| | 02:16 | To do that I am going to first
position the top of it so that it's up against
| | 02:20 | the top left corner of my
comp, back around there.
| | 02:25 | If I like I can zoom in a little bit here.
| | 02:27 | Press spacebar to get the hand and drag it
around to make sure I am where I want to be.
| | 02:31 | Be it a little bit left
and up a little bit. OK.
| | 02:38 | Scale down, reposition.
| | 02:40 | If you now want to measure the size of
one frame. To do that I am going to make
| | 02:44 | sure my Info panel is open.
| | 02:46 | I can even drag it closer to my
comp panel so I can see what's going on.
| | 02:49 | Then place the cursor over what would be at
the lower right corner of one of these frames.
| | 02:55 | And I am seeing I am measuring
very roughly 400 by 806. OK.
| | 03:01 | That'll be my composition size.
| | 03:03 | So I'll go to
Composition > Composition Settings.
| | 03:06 | If I just type in these numbers, 400 wide,
806 tall, the composition defaults to
| | 03:14 | cropping down to the center
of the previous image area.
| | 03:17 | However, underneath the Advanced tab,
you can decide how to justify your cropping.
| | 03:22 | Since I was working in the upper
left corner, I'll choose that option.
| | 03:25 | And you see now it has just the one cell
that I was working on in the upper left corner.
| | 03:29 | Click OK.
| | 03:30 | I have my starting frame.
| | 03:32 | The next thing I want to
do is sequence these images.
| | 03:34 | To do that, I'll press P to reveal
position, turn on the animation stopwatch for
| | 03:39 | Position, and immediately
convert it to a Hold keyframe.
| | 03:43 | I know that I will want to be stepping
from image to image rather than animating
| | 03:48 | or interpolating across.
| | 03:49 | So I'll turn this on right away and
now all my keyframes from here on out
| | 03:53 | will be Hold keyframes.
| | 03:54 | Press Page Down to step forward a frame.
| | 03:57 | And then I am going to start eyeballing this.
| | 03:58 | So I am going to start dragging
the layer and add the Shift key to
| | 04:01 | constrain movement.
| | 04:03 | And try to drag him into
roughly the same position.
| | 04:05 | The question is what is exactly
the right position? I don't know.
| | 04:10 | So why don't we use a guide for this?
| | 04:11 | I will go ahead and pull out a guide,
and say let's pick roughly the center of
| | 04:16 | this comp, 200 pixels, and try to center
some feature of him, such as maybe this
| | 04:21 | dark area under his neck, on that center line.
| | 04:25 | Now I start to drag, put that there.
| | 04:28 | I'll Page Up to go to my previous
frame and say I need to do a little bit of
| | 04:32 | adjustment to put it there. OK.
| | 04:34 | Now it's holding pretty much the
same relative position in the frame,
| | 04:38 | from frame to frame.
| | 04:40 | Step down to my third frame.
| | 04:42 | Start to drag, add Shift, and then just
drag until my guide bisects that little
| | 04:49 | neck mark I was looking at as my guide.
| | 04:50 | Good, he is in same position. One more.
| | 04:54 | So dragging, add Shift to constrain, lin eup.
| | 05:02 | Check my work. Page Down one more time.
| | 05:07 | Drag, shift, Align.
| | 05:14 | There's my sequence.
| | 05:16 | Now all I need to do is add my
other scan to the composition and do the
| | 05:19 | same thing with that.
| | 05:20 | And now I can render this out as a
movie I can loop over and over again.
| | 05:24 | So I just wanted to give you some
insight on how we use raw materials such as
| | 05:28 | a scan from this Muybridge book and
convert it into an element we could use
| | 05:32 | inside After Effects.
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10. SidebarsLooping footage by crossfading| 00:07 | Earlier in this lesson we
showed you how to make footage loop.
| | 00:10 | You select it in the Project panel,
you click on the Interpret Footage button,
| | 00:14 | and then underneath Other Options
you increase the Loop parameter.
| | 00:18 | Set it to something like 2 and now
the original clip will repeat twice.
| | 00:23 | However, just because you can make a
clip loop or repeat does not mean it
| | 00:27 | will be a seamless loop.
| | 00:29 | Fortunately, a lot of abstract
backgrounds, such as this Digidelic footage from
| | 00:34 | Artbeats is designed to loop seamlessly.
| | 00:37 | I'll zoom out in my Footage panel here.
| | 00:39 | As I get to the end of this clip,
press the Spacebar to play, and you'll see as it
| | 00:45 | jumps back to the start that it's seamless.
| | 00:48 | There's no real hitch there.
| | 00:49 | That was just part of the animation.
| | 00:52 | Play through again. Seamless.
| | 00:55 | Now I look at it through this 12-
second mark where I caused it to loop,
| | 00:57 | it's also seamless.
| | 00:59 | Unfortunately, not all
clips are this cooperative.
| | 01:02 | For example, if I was to look at a
piece of cloud footage, when I get to the end
| | 01:07 | and play through the head,
there's a visible hitch.
| | 01:09 | I am going to do that again.
| | 01:11 | Play at the end and there's a
hitch as it goes back to the start.
| | 01:16 | Now there is a trick in After Effects
to force footage to loop seamlessly.
| | 01:22 | It doesn't always work perfectly, but
it's better than having a sudden jump.
| | 01:26 | The first thing I want to do is
look at the length of my footage.
| | 01:29 | This cloud clip happens to be 15 seconds long.
| | 01:32 | If I've the opportunity to shoot my
own footage, I would really prefer to have at
| | 01:35 | least 30 seconds for this sort of material.
| | 01:38 | You need enough material for your
loop plus extra to create a crossfade to
| | 01:43 | make it a seamless loop.
| | 01:45 | Next, I'll create a new composition.
| | 01:48 | This is D1 footage, so I'll use that preset.
| | 01:51 | I'll call it cloud loop and I
need to think about my Duration.
| | 01:56 | This is a 15 second clip.
| | 01:58 | So maybe I'll make it 10-second
duration with a 5-second overlap for my
| | 02:03 | crossfade to make it seamless.
| | 02:06 | I personally prefer loops that
are at least 16 seconds long.
| | 02:09 | This is actually based on
psychoacoustics in music where they found that once
| | 02:12 | you get past 16 seconds, it's hard
for a listener to detect whether or not
| | 02:16 | something is rhythmic or random.
| | 02:18 | I tend to use that number to
create my own looping footage.
| | 02:20 | But 15 second clip?
We'll use what we have.
| | 02:23 | I'll click OK and I'll go up to 100%.
| | 02:26 | I am going to add my clip to this composition.
| | 02:31 | Now I need to think very carefully.
| | 02:33 | Basically when I get to the end of
this composition or namely one frame past
| | 02:39 | the end of this composition, I need that
frame to be exactly the same as the first frame.
| | 02:46 | That's what's going to make it seamless.
| | 02:48 | Therefore, I cannot have my clip
start at the start of the composition.
| | 02:52 | It's much better to have my clip end at
the end of the composition than worrying
| | 02:57 | about creating a crossfade.
| | 02:59 | To do that, I'll make sure the clip is selected.
| | 03:01 | Hold down Option and press End.
| | 03:04 | This automatically aligns the endpoint of
the clip to the endpoint of my composition.
| | 03:08 | Then I'll make sure my Current Time
Indicator is at the start of my comp.
| | 03:12 | This will be the first
frame of my looping footage.
| | 03:16 | And I am going to trim this layer by
holding down Option and pressing the
| | 03:19 | left square bracket.
| | 03:22 | I need this frame to also exist
one frame past the end of this comp.
| | 03:29 | To do that, I'll press End
to get to the end of the comp.
| | 03:32 | Then press Page Down to go one frame
beyond, at 10 seconds as opposed to 929.
| | 03:38 | I'll select my clip, duplicate it,
then I'll press the left square bracket
| | 03:43 | without the Option or Alt key to slide
it so that first frame now aligns with my
| | 03:49 | Current Time Indicator.
| | 03:51 | Remember my Current Time Indicator is
one frame past the end of the comp, which
| | 03:55 | for looping footage is the same
as the first frame of the comp.
| | 03:58 | I need to create a crossfade.
| | 03:59 | So I'll press T to reveal
Opacity, enable keyframing.
| | 04:04 | Now let's drag out the rest of
this footage that we trimmed off.
| | 04:08 | This will be our crossfade section.
| | 04:10 | I'll press I to jump to the endpoint.
| | 04:12 | Then set the Opacity to 0, because I
want this overlap section to fade up over
| | 04:20 | the underlying shot during this duration.
| | 04:23 | Let's RAM preview and see how we did.
| | 04:28 | Here is 5 seconds of the original
untouched clip, here's the crossfade, and then
| | 04:34 | watch what happens when we get to the end.
| | 04:37 | Seamless, as it goes now
from the end to the beginning.
| | 04:40 | There wasn't that really hard hitch when
we just used the footage in this normal state.
| | 04:46 | There it comes through again.
| | 04:48 | We do have some funny stuff
going on during the crossfade.
| | 04:50 | Like I said, this is not a perfect technique.
| | 04:52 | Some footage is going to
work better than others.
| | 04:55 | However, you can at least force this to be
less obvious by using this crossfade trick.
| | 05:00 | Just follow the same steps on
virtually any piece of footage, experiment
| | 05:03 | with comp durations, and amount of
overlaps as see what you can do with your own shots.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with effect point paths| 00:07 | Earlier in this lesson, we played
around with effects like the Lens Flare and
| | 00:11 | showed that it was possible to
reposition the flare center.
| | 00:15 | Whenever an effect has a position value
like this, it's referred to as an effect point.
| | 00:21 | You can animate effect points, but
how you do it is a little bit tricky.
| | 00:26 | If you worked your way through the
Advanced Animation lesson, you may remember
| | 00:30 | that you can edit position motion
paths directly in the Composition panel.
| | 00:35 | However, the anchor point path that
you had to edit in the Layer panel.
| | 00:39 | Well, it's the same thing with effect points.
| | 00:42 | Even though you can pick them up and
move them directly in the Comp panel,
| | 00:45 | if you want to animate them, you can
only see their path in the Layer panel.
| | 00:50 | Now earlier, we advocated putting the
lens flare on its own solid, not on the
| | 00:54 | footage you wish to treat.
| | 00:56 | So if I want to see my motion path in
context with my footage, I want to see my
| | 01:01 | Layer panel and my Comp panel at the same time.
| | 01:04 | Well, that's easy enough.
| | 01:05 | I am going to double-click the flare solid.
| | 01:07 | So I have got the Layer panel open.
| | 01:09 | I am going to drag it to the right here
and dock it to the right of this frame.
| | 01:13 | So now I have got the Comp panel
and the Layer panel side-by-side.
| | 01:17 | Now, of course, if I've applied an
effect directly to footage, I don't need to
| | 01:21 | do this two-window dance.
| | 01:23 | I can do everything directly in the
Layer panel, because I'll see the layer that
| | 01:27 | the effects are going to apply to.
| | 01:28 | The next thing I am going to do is
I am going to change my View pop-up.
| | 01:32 | I am going to give myself a bit more space
here, and I want to view the Lens Flare effect.
| | 01:36 | That's who I want control over.
| | 01:37 | There is the lens flare and
here is how it looks in context.
| | 01:40 | By the way, with the View pop-up, you
can say let me see after Hue/Saturation.
| | 01:44 | And let me see it after Levels, which is
currently turned off. I can turn it back
| | 01:47 | on and change its value for now.
| | 01:51 | Anyway, I want to work with Lens Flare.
| | 01:54 | Notice that by dragging the Layer panel,
the Comp panel updates automatically.
| | 01:58 | So let's say I have decided that I
want this flare to follow the freeway.
| | 02:03 | I am going to move it so that it lines
up at the beginning of the freeway.
| | 02:06 | Move my Current Time Indicator
to the start of my comp.
| | 02:09 | The shortcut for that is the Home key.
| | 02:10 | I am going to turn on the
animation stopwatch for Flare Center.
| | 02:15 | Notice that they exist in the Effect
Controls panel as well as the Timeline panel.
| | 02:19 | Turn that on.
| | 02:21 | Press U to reveal it down
here in the Timeline panel.
| | 02:25 | Now I have got my first keyframe.
| | 02:26 | I can go a little bit later in time
like two seconds and drag it to maybe the
| | 02:34 | top of this bend, then go a little bit
later, like five seconds, and drag it off
| | 02:40 | the bottom of this freeway.
| | 02:43 | Note that I've got handles for my curve
just like I do for anchor point and position.
| | 02:50 | They default to Auto Bezier handles.
| | 02:53 | You don't see the connecting bar.
| | 02:55 | Just like with position,
as soon as I click and drag,
| | 02:57 | now I'll get my handles.
| | 02:59 | So if I want to change my path a little
bit, I can bend it around these handles.
| | 03:04 | Maybe I have it come straight or out like that.
| | 03:08 | When you've got the Layer panel and the
Comp panel open side-by-side, there is
| | 03:12 | an additional trick you need to be aware of.
| | 03:13 | If I was to press 0 on the numeric
keypad to RAM preview, I can see my animation
| | 03:20 | in the Layer panel, but I'm not
seeing it in context in the Comp panel.
| | 03:25 | If I want to see it in context in the
Comp panel, I need to either bring the
| | 03:30 | Comp panel forward then preview, or
turn on this handy little Always Preview
| | 03:35 | This View switch in the bottom-
left corner of the Comp panel.
| | 03:39 | This is a relatively new
feature in After Effects.
| | 03:41 | I'll turn that on, press 0, and now
I am seeing my animation along the freeway
| | 03:47 | and I can decide if it needs any tweaks.
| | 03:50 | I'm fairly happy with that. I think I'm
going to lower it right into that range here.
| | 03:53 | So I am going to go ahead and
scrub my Current Time Indicator here.
| | 04:00 | See where my lens is and say okay, you
know something, you've got to come down.
| | 04:06 | You got to bend a little bit.
| | 04:07 | Look at it a little later in time.
| | 04:10 | I think you are a little high there.
| | 04:14 | So let's go ahead and pull this
handle out, shorten this handle up.
| | 04:17 | So this is more of the bend that I intend.
| | 04:23 | Better to drag the Time Indicator to
have the Comp panel a little high there.
| | 04:26 | A ittle bit of an iterative
process, but I'm getting where I want.
| | 04:31 | Now notice I have the Layer panel
forward, but I have preview this view
| | 04:35 | turned on the Comp panel.
| | 04:36 | I press 0 on the numeric keypad, and
that previews my Comp panel for me.
| | 04:41 | That's a little close to the animation
I want and again I can tweak the velocity
| | 04:45 | using all the tricks you have
learned back in the Advanced Animation lesson.
| | 04:50 | So that's another good trick to have.
| | 04:52 | We have found somewhat experienced
users who are unaware that you can indeed
| | 04:56 | edit the effect point path.
| | 04:58 | The trick is you need to
do it in the Layer panel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Brainstorming| 00:07 | When you're unfamiliar with the range
of possibilities a given effect might
| | 00:10 | offer or if are just plain stuck for
ideas, After Effects offers a tool called
| | 00:14 | Brainstorm, which you might find useful.
| | 00:17 | If you have the exercise files that
came with this project, open up Brainstorm
| | 00:20 | Sidebar and the project Brainstorm Sidebar.aep.
| | 00:25 | If you have our book, After Effects
Apprentice, look at the end of the
| | 00:28 | Lesson 10, Paint and Puppet.
| | 00:29 | I'll open the project and here I have
some text that is frankly a bit too clean.
| | 00:35 | I'd like to wither this or age it or
just give this some more character.
| | 00:39 | So I'll select my text layer, and
underneath Effect. Oh, let's see what I want to do.
| | 00:44 | Stylize kind of makes sense.
| | 00:45 | Brush Strokes, Burn. Hmm, Roughen Edges
sounds like something that might give me this
| | 00:51 | withering look that I am going for.
| | 00:53 | So I apply it and I go well,
frankly, it's not too exciting.
| | 00:57 | I was hoping for something a bit more.
| | 00:58 | We either start playing around for
parameters or search the online Help file or
| | 01:03 | you can use a tool called Brainstorm.
| | 01:05 | I am going to select the effect either
in Effect Control panel or go down to the
| | 01:09 | Timeline panel. Press E to reveal the effects.
| | 01:13 | Select the effect I want to play
with and then click on Brainstorm.
| | 01:17 | When I do that, a window opens that
shows me nine variations of my chosen effect.
| | 01:23 | Brainstorm operates on any parameter or
whole effect you select and it operates
| | 01:28 | on multiple effects.
| | 01:29 | I got a few different ideas here.
| | 01:31 | If I want to keep trying out different
ideas, I'll just click on the Brainstorm
| | 01:33 | button to get another set of
options and then keep going.
| | 01:36 | If you find that these variations
aren't quite as wide as you are hoping,
| | 01:40 | you can increase the Randomness.
| | 01:42 | For example, I'll often go as high
as 100% initially just to see my full
| | 01:45 | range of possibilities.
| | 01:48 | Click it a couple more times and now I am
starting to get some different looks here.
| | 01:51 | I see this example is
getting close to what I have in mind.
| | 01:57 | There are a few things I can do with it.
| | 01:58 | For example, if I want to look at
in greater detail, I can click on the
| | 02:01 | Maximize Tile button and I'll see in greater
detail exactly what's happening to the edges.
| | 02:07 | I'll go ahead and minimize it back down.
| | 02:09 | If I think this may be close but not exactly
what I want, I can save it as a new composition.
| | 02:14 | This will create a duplicate of my
current comp with these settings applied, but
| | 02:19 | will keep me in Brainstorm as I keep working.
| | 02:21 | So I'll go ahead and do that for now.
| | 02:24 | I can say well, I am happy with
this as it is and apply it to my current
| | 02:26 | composition, or I can say use this
as my seed for future brainstorms.
| | 02:33 | I am going with variations on this idea.
| | 02:35 | I am going to select that tile.
| | 02:37 | If you want, by the way,
you can select multiple tiles.
| | 02:40 | I am going to select just this one for now.
| | 02:42 | Since I am already fairly close, I am
going to reduce my Randomness back down to
| | 02:45 | something like 25, just to
give me variations on that look.
| | 02:48 | I'll keep clicking through.
I kind of like this look.
| | 02:52 | I think I'll save that in my composition as
well, and what other variations do we have?
| | 02:58 | These two are getting close-- oh, I
like this color around this edge here.
| | 03:01 | This is what I was going after.
| | 03:03 | If there was animation applied or if
this was footage, I could go ahead and
| | 03:06 | preview it down here at the Preview button.
| | 03:08 | Since this text is not animating,
I'll just say apply to my current comp and
| | 03:13 | there I have my new Brainstorm treatment.
| | 03:16 | I go back to my Project panel.
| | 03:17 | I see it is also saved off for me
these other variations I was interested in.
| | 03:21 | So it's kind of a handy tool in that way.
| | 03:23 | Brainstorm is particularly useful with
complex effects such as the cartoon effect.
| | 03:28 | I'll double-click my second
comp here. Cartoon*starter.
| | 03:30 | I have some footage that I want to get
like a hand-drawn or cartoon treatment too.
| | 03:34 | So I select Baseball. Type in the word cartoon.
| | 03:38 | Now the default settings for
cartoon frankly aren't that exciting.
| | 03:42 | It doesn't really change
the colors all that much.
| | 03:44 | The black outline is a bit heavy for my taste.
| | 03:47 | Since I'm personally already familiar
with Cartoon, I know to go to the Fill
| | 03:50 | section and start playing around with
things like reducing the Shading Steps to
| | 03:54 | get a more posterized look.
| | 03:55 | Reducing Shading Smoothness also
gives me a sharper look here, a little bit
| | 03:58 | more like a photocopy.
| | 04:00 | I also know that since my edges are
too thick, I might want to reduce my Edge Width
| | 04:04 | a little bit just to thin those
up to something closer to pencil lines.
| | 04:08 | But if you're not already familiar with
Cartoon, you can use Brainstorm to help you out.
| | 04:11 | Again, I go down to my Timeline
panel, press E, select Cartoon.
| | 04:16 | Since I want to randomize all of the
parameters in this effect, I am going to
| | 04:19 | click on Brainstorm.
| | 04:22 | Once I do that, I get a lot of the
very different variations on this look,
| | 04:26 | including what I started with, to just
black and white outlines, to kind of this
| | 04:30 | really interesting grayed off posterized look.
| | 04:33 | I think I'll select that one and
sayy include that one in the next
| | 04:35 | Brainstorm, keep my Randomness low, and
keep brainstorming off of that look until
| | 04:40 | I come to something I like.
| | 04:41 | Now since it is a video footage, I can
go ahead and click the Play button to
| | 04:46 | preview this on moving footage.
| | 04:49 | It takes a while to render since I
am doing nine copies of this effect.
| | 04:52 | But it does give you an idea of how it
might look on different frames or how it
| | 04:55 | might look in motion.
| | 04:56 | I'll go ahead and stop.
| | 04:59 | Clicking Stop will play what's already
been rendered in real speed and I can
| | 05:02 | see it in real time. I can stop again
| | 05:08 | or go back to very start.
| | 05:10 | If I think I might have missed
previous good idea, I'll just go ahead and go
| | 05:16 | back and look at my previous ideas.
| | 05:18 | In this case, I think I
actually prefer this one.
| | 05:20 | So I'll go ahead and apply this one to my
current composition, and there is my look.
| | 05:24 | You can always undo Brainstorm as well.
| | 05:28 | Other effects Brainstorm is really
useful for are these natural effects ones
| | 05:31 | such as Turbulent Noise or Cell Pattern.
| | 05:35 | Now by default, Turbulent Noise
produces a grayscale image, which I
| | 05:38 | personally find a bit boring.
| | 05:40 | So I often add the Tritone
effect to give this some coloration.
| | 05:44 | I'll select Turbulent Noise.
| | 05:45 | So I am going to vary all of its parameters.
| | 05:48 | But then I'll hold Command on Mac or
Ctrl on Windows, and click on just Midtones.
| | 05:53 | I want to brainstorm the very just
the middle colors that keep my white as
| | 05:58 | whites and black as blacks
to keep that full contrast.
| | 06:00 | I'll click Brainstorm.
| | 06:01 | I get a lot of different looks.
| | 06:04 | Crank up Randomness and
Brainstorm off of that and get some
| | 06:07 | very unexpected results.
| | 06:08 | It really shows you how you can go ahead
and push an effect like Turbulent Noise
| | 06:13 | to get very different looks.
| | 06:14 | Again, if you find something you like,
just go ahead and say save that as a comp.
| | 06:18 | I'll come back and explore that later, but
let's keep going and look at other variations.
| | 06:23 | As I mentioned, Cell
Pattern is also good for this.
| | 06:26 | Again, I've got Cell Pattern.
| | 06:28 | I'll also have Tritone.
| | 06:29 | So I am going to Command+click
Midtones so I vary those colors as well.
| | 06:33 | Click on Brainstorm and now look at
all the variations that the Cell Pattern
| | 06:38 | effect can create for me
and brainstorm from there.
| | 06:42 | I like that one back there.
| | 06:43 | I am going to go ahead and save
that one, go back forward again, and
| | 06:46 | keep brainstorming.
| | 06:47 | A very digital pattern there like
some sort of digital malfunction.
| | 06:51 | Anyway, it gives you an idea.
| | 06:53 | It's easy for a lot of people to
dismiss the Brainstorm tool, because they
| | 06:56 | don't want randomness.
| | 06:57 | They want everything to be well thought out.
| | 06:59 | But sometimes part of the creative
process is getting that random kick to
| | 07:02 | take you down the path you maybe haven't
thought of or haven't been exposed to before.
| | 07:06 | So it's another good
tool to add to your arsenal.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with pixel aspect ratios| 00:07 | Most of the compositions in this lesson
were created at a size that's suitable
| | 00:11 | for standard definition video and when
we talk about standard definition we talk
| | 00:15 | about an image aspect ratio that's
four units wide to three units tall.
| | 00:20 | If you were to pull out a calculator
that would be four divided by three equals
| | 00:26 | an image aspect ratio of 1.333.
| | 00:29 | However, you might have noticed in
most of the compositions we created and
| | 00:32 | footage we used don't match these number.
| | 00:34 | Go back to After Effects, to
Composition > New Composition
| | 00:38 | and look at Standard
Presets like NTSC, D1 or DV.
| | 00:43 | these have dimensions like a 720 x
480 or in the case of the D1, 720 x 486.
| | 00:52 | The PAL standard has even
different numbers, such as 720 x 576.
| | 01:00 | And if we were to haul out our
calculator again and do clear, 720 divided by 486,
| | 01:09 | we'd find that we're nowhere
close to 1.33 Image Aspect Ratio.
| | 01:13 | We have something strange here. 1.48
with a bunch of numbers afterwards.
| | 01:17 | What's going on here?
| | 01:19 | Well, it's video's fault.
| | 01:21 | Most computers draw each pixel, each
picture element, square. As wide as it is tall.
| | 01:28 | However for various technical reasons
most video formats have a pixel aspect
| | 01:33 | ratio that is not square. A pixel may
be wider or skinnier than it is tall.
| | 01:38 | Let me give you some
examples what this looks like.
| | 01:41 | Here's some stock footage based
on a nice circular pattern.
| | 01:45 | I brought up a high definition
version of this footage, which has square
| | 01:49 | pixels just like our computer does, and you'll
see inside the Project panel it even says 1.00.
| | 01:55 | That's the pixel aspect ratio for this footage.
| | 02:00 | However, if I bring up the NTSC
version you'll see that the circle's a bit
| | 02:05 | wider than it should be and if I look
at its information in the Project panel I
| | 02:08 | see the number. It's 0.91.
| | 02:11 | What that is saying is to draw this
properly After Effects should scale the
| | 02:16 | width of the shot by 91% to make it
look correct again, to make it look like
| | 02:22 | the high def shot does.
| | 02:24 | We'll look at a couple of other clips.
| | 02:25 | I'll open up the PAL version of the
same clip and now you see it's got the
| | 02:29 | opposite problem. It's skinny rather
than wide, and if I look at its pixel
| | 02:33 | aspect ratio in the Project panel I see
it's 1.09. After Effects is telling me
| | 02:38 | this clip will ultimately be displayed about
9% wider than I am seeing it on my computer.
| | 02:45 | But things get even crazier with
widescreen footage, particularly Standard Def
| | 02:49 | widescreen. I mean here is an NTSC
widescreen image. You can see now those
| | 02:53 | circles are really squished down and
has a very distorted pixel aspect ratio
| | 02:57 | of 1.21 and it needs to be display
21% wider to look right, and then PAL
| | 03:02 | widescreen footage is even crazier. To display
it properly, it needs to be stretched by 46%.
| | 03:09 | At this point you're probably going,
"This is a lot of math and you expect me to
| | 03:13 | do this on every video job?"
| | 03:15 | No, After Effects will do it for you as
long as you set everything up correctly.
| | 03:21 | The first thing you need to do is make
sure each footage item you import to a
| | 03:25 | project has the correct
pixel aspect ratio for that clip.
| | 03:32 | After Effects is actually pretty good
at either detecting or guessing this
| | 03:36 | pixel aspect ratios.
| | 03:38 | It occasionally has trouble with widescreen.
| | 03:40 | It depends on how that footage was created.
| | 03:42 | Whether or not After Effect can
automatically detect that aspect ratio correctly.
| | 03:46 | If you ever have footage that has a
wrong aspect ratio,select the Project
| | 03:50 | panel, open up Interpret Footage for
that clip, and then change the Pixel Aspect
| | 03:55 | Ratio pop-up for that footage to
match the format of that footage.
| | 03:59 | It is really, really important that you
don't lie to After Effects in this dialog.
| | 04:05 | You don't say "I want to see it
square, give me square pixels."
| | 04:08 | No, that's not how the source was created.
| | 04:11 | If it was widescreen video stored on
let's say DV tape, you need to pick
| | 04:16 | DV Widescreen and let After Effects do to
the math to make things look correct. Click OK.
| | 04:23 | When you create a new
composition you have a similar pop-up.
| | 04:28 | Most of the comps you create will be
at your Output Format size. For example,
| | 04:32 | if I was going to go to D1 I would
choose the D1 preset, it will automatically
| | 04:37 | enter the right dimensions and the right
pixel aspect ratio to compensate for me.
| | 04:43 | You'll see that many of the other
formats have their own aspect ratios
| | 04:46 | including some of the high def formats,
like HDV also has a very distorted
| | 04:50 | pixel aspect ratio.
| | 04:51 | But that's okay. If you're using
these presets After Effects will enter
| | 04:55 | the correct numbers for you,
don't change it, and it will do the
| | 04:59 | composition automatically.
| | 05:00 | I go back to my Footage panel for now.
| | 05:03 | While you're working in After Effects
you may go, I really don't like looking at
| | 05:07 | distorted footage like this.
| | 05:09 | This is a little too weird
for me to design properly.
| | 05:11 | Well you have a couple choices.
| | 05:13 | one is, After Effects will often let
you create square pixel equivalents of
| | 05:20 | these different common video format
sizes where you can create using nice normal
| | 05:23 | square pixels where everything looks
normal, After Effects will do the math
| | 05:27 | underneath the hood to stretch footage
out to fit, then you need render it in
| | 05:30 | a way that squishes it back down
to the size that format requires.
| | 05:35 | The other option, which we normally
avoid, to be honest, is this little Toggle
| | 05:39 | Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction button.
| | 05:42 | It's at the bottom of every
Footage, Comp and Layer panel.
| | 05:46 | When you enable it After Effects will
look at the pixel aspect ratio for that
| | 05:51 | footage and perform that stretch just
for display purposes to show you how that
| | 05:57 | clip should look when finally displayed.
| | 05:59 | Now the problem with this option is
that at its default settings it does not use a
| | 06:04 | very good algorithm to stretch the
footage; it just uses nearest neighbor.
| | 06:08 | That's why you see up there a ragged
edge around my circle here, which used to
| | 06:12 | be perfectly smooth.
| | 06:13 | This is the reason I've always
avoided this feature, to be honest.
| | 06:16 | However, as if After Effects CS5 they
added a new feature. Under Preferences >
| | 06:22 | Previews there is now a Viewer Quality
Setting, and if you set Zoom Quality to
| | 06:29 | More Accurate and click OK, it will
now Anti-alias footage, as does this
| | 06:36 | Display Pixel Aspect Ratio correction.
| | 06:39 | It will slow down your previews a little bit.
| | 06:42 | If you if you're working on a slower
computer and you find this is really
| | 06:44 | bothering you, you can indeed set
Preference > Previews > Viewer Quality zoom to
| | 06:51 | More Accurate Except RAM Preview.
| | 06:53 | That'll speed it up at the cost of image quality
while you are performing one of these previews.
| | 06:58 | However if I were you, I'd set this
to More Accurate and not go down unless
| | 07:02 | you absolutely need to.
| | 07:04 | Okay, another reason to use this
Display Correction for the Pixel Aspect Ratio
| | 07:09 | is if the client is looking over your shoulder.
| | 07:11 | For example, if I was to open up this
Standard Def, D1 piece of footage,
| | 07:15 | your client may look at themselves in the
video and say "I don't look like that.
| | 07:19 | My face is not that wide."
| | 07:21 | That's because, in this case, D1
footage is artificially stretched in the
| | 07:25 | computer and will be squished skinnier when
it comes time to playback on a video system.
| | 07:29 | However, if this is freaking your client
out, that's the time to go ahead and hit
| | 07:33 | the switch and say that's how you'd
really looked on the set. Don't worry.
| | 07:38 | This is how it's going to look at the end
of the day when you view it back on a TV.
| | 07:42 | If you've created your
composition, use one of presets and if it has
| | 07:46 | non-square pixels and you left this
pop-up alone After Effects will render
| | 07:50 | your footage correctly.
| | 07:52 | You don't need to worry about it anymore.
| | 07:54 | However, if you chose one of these
Square Pixel versions, you need to make a
| | 07:59 | decision when it comes render time
because the format itself does not take
| | 08:02 | square pixels. It expects non-square pixels.
| | 08:06 | One is to ask the client will they
take a square pixel version of the render.
| | 08:10 | Perhaps whatever system they are
loading it into will automatically compensate
| | 08:14 | or maybe it's going to the Web where
all the pixels are supposed to be square
| | 08:17 | and you'll be doing them a favor
by delivering it as square pixels.
| | 08:20 | If you need to deliver it with pixels
not square, check what the actual width for
| | 08:26 | the video format is supposed to be, in
this case 720, go ahead and work in your
| | 08:31 | Square Pixel comp, but when it comes
time to render, Make Movie, go to the Output
| | 08:38 | Module Settings, enable Resize, you can
turn off its Lock Aspect, and change the
| | 08:45 | Width back down to the that
size required by your video format.
| | 08:50 | This way, when After Effects renders,
it will squish or stretch the final
| | 08:55 | composition as necessary to fit
that video format. I'll click OK.
| | 09:01 | The issue of non-square pixels
can indeed be very confusing.
| | 09:04 | Fortunately, After Effects
does all the hard work for you.
| | 09:07 | The main thing is let it do its job.
Don't try to outsmart it by creating
| | 09:11 | elements that are, say, 720 x 46 and
then calling them square pixels because
| | 09:15 | After Effects will then treat them wrong.
| | 09:17 | Set up everything in the first place
and then you could ignore it for the rest of the job.
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