IntroductionOverview| 00:06 | Hi! I am Chris Meyer of Chrish Design, and
welcome to After Effects Apprentice: Advanced
| | 00:10 | Animation. In this lesson, I want to share
with you a number of tips and tricks you can
| | 00:14 | use to help craft and refine your animations
inside After Effects. A lot of the lesson
| | 00:20 | is going to be spent on the After Effects
Graph Editor. That's the most powerful tool
| | 00:24 | at your disposal to help refine your movements
and your speed changes and coordinate movements
| | 00:29 | across multiple layers and multiple parameters.
But there are a lot of other cool tricks inside
| | 00:33 | After Effects as well. For example, there's
the often-overlooked anchor point. It's the
| | 00:37 | center of all your transformations in After
Effects, but also it's a great thing to animate
| | 00:41 | if you're trying to create a Ken Burns-style
movement across still images. There is motion
| | 00:46 | sketch, where you get to hand draw your own
animation path. There is smoother, where you
| | 00:50 | get to smooth out kinks in that motion path.
There is an Auto Orient, where you can have
| | 00:53 | layers automatically rotate to follow your
motion path. And there are also really nice
| | 00:58 | things like roving keyframes, a little-known
feature to control the speed across the complex
| | 01:03 | motion path with just the start and end keyframes.
There are other nice things in After Effects
| | 01:08 | like motion blur, the ability to
automatically blur objects depending on their movement.
| | 01:12 | There is hold keyframes, the ability to
create stop motion and slam down animations, and
| | 01:18 | there is also few other tricks to create really
nice, smooth, elegant movements in After Effects
| | 01:21 | as well. But first, we're going to start with
the fundamentals, how do you navigate between
| | 01:26 | keyframes, and what information exists in
keyframes underneath the hood that you can
| | 01:30 | manipulate to help smooth out your animations.
So let's get started, and let's have some fun.
| | 01:46 |
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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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|
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1. Keyframe BasicsReviewing keyframes| 00:07 | We're going to start with a quick
review of what keyframes look like, how to
| | 00:11 | reveal them, and how to navigate between them.
| | 00:13 | If you're already comfortable with this,
feel free to skip to the next movie.
| | 00:16 | If you have the project files that
come with this lesson, open the Project
| | 00:20 | AEA_Advanced Animation.aep, and we're
going to be in composition 00-keyframes 101.
| | 00:29 | This composition contains an animation.
| | 00:31 | You can drag the Current Time Indicator
through the Timeline to see how things
| | 00:34 | change over time, or you can click the
RAM Preview button in the Preview panel,
| | 00:39 | or press zero on the Numeric keypad.
| | 00:41 | The green bar shows it's caching the
frames for this animation, and then we'll
| | 00:46 | play back in real time.
| | 00:47 | You see that we have our snowflake both
moving around the screen, animating its
| | 00:52 | position, and also changing
in size, animating its scale.
| | 00:56 | I'll press the Spacebar to start my preview.
| | 01:01 | To reveal my keyframes, I
can do a few different things.
| | 01:03 | One, I can click on this arrow which
we call a twirly, next to my source name
| | 01:08 | Snowflake, and it will reveal Transform.
Twirl down Transform and it will reveal all the
| | 01:13 | properties for this layer.
| | 01:15 | You'll note that some of them
have these little diamonds which
| | 01:17 | indicate keyframes.
| | 01:18 | A quicker way to reveal animated
properties is to select the layer and press U
| | 01:23 | on the keyboard, and that will reveal
just the properties that are being animated
| | 01:27 | for the selected layers.
| | 01:29 | When this stopwatch next to a property's
name is highlighted, it indicates that
| | 01:33 | keyframing has been enabled for that property,
and therefore it can change value over time.
| | 01:39 | If that stopwatch is not highlighted,
the value stays constant over time.
| | 01:42 | Now the best way to study keyframes
is to have the Current Time Indicator
| | 01:46 | positioned directly on top of a keyframe.
| | 01:50 | Don't rely on just eyeballing it,
because if you're off a little bit and then
| | 01:53 | you start editing a value, you will just
create a new keyframe rather than edit
| | 01:57 | the existing keyframe.
| | 01:59 | So there are a few different ways to
make sure you land exactly on a keyframe.
| | 02:02 | One, you can hold the Shift key while
dragging, and you'll see it will snap to
| | 02:06 | the nearest keyframe.
| | 02:08 | Another is to use this keyframe navigator.
| | 02:10 | Now unfortunately, it defaults all the
way here to the left side of screen, so
| | 02:13 | one of the first things we do when we
open up a new copy of After Effects is we
| | 02:17 | grab this A/V Switches column and drag it to
the far right so it's right next to the Timeline.
| | 02:24 | That way the keyframe navigator
is right next to our keyframes.
| | 02:28 | These little arrows to the right and to
the left can jump between keyframes for
| | 02:33 | that selected property. And whenever
you're directly on top of the keyframe, this
| | 02:39 | yellow diamond in the middle will
illuminate, indicating you are indeed on a
| | 02:43 | keyframe. If I was a little bit off,
| | 02:45 | you see that these are grayed out.
| | 02:46 | They are not illuminated.
| | 02:48 | I can click on this arrow to jump to
the next keyframe for the Scale property.
| | 02:52 | Notice that Position does not have a
keyframe at this same point in time, so its
| | 02:56 | navigator is grayed out.
| | 02:58 | There is one other handy
shortcut to navigate between keyframes.
| | 03:02 | If you use the J and K keys, you will
jump earlier in time or later in time to
| | 03:07 | the nearest keyframes, markers,
starts and ends of layers, et cetera.
| | 03:11 | It's another good shortcut.
| | 03:13 | To focus on a specific property,
you can type its shortcut key.
| | 03:17 | For example, the shortcut for Position
is P. Since I already have properties
| | 03:21 | revealed, pressing P once will
actually hide all the properties.
| | 03:23 | If I press P again, it will
reveal just the Position property.
| | 03:27 | Now Position is a pretty
interesting property, because it has two
| | 03:31 | different types of keyframes.
| | 03:33 | Here in the Timeline panel, it has
what are known as temporal keyframes,
| | 03:37 | keyframes that have a value
at a specific point in time.
| | 03:42 | All properties pretty
much have temporal keyframes.
| | 03:46 | What's different about position and
other related properties--such as anchor
| | 03:49 | point, camera position, effects points,
et cetera--is they also have spatial keyframes.
| | 03:56 | The have keyframes in space revealed here
in the Comp panel; sometimes you'll also
| | 04:01 | see them in the layer panel. And you'll
note that by dragging the Current Time
| | 04:04 | Indicator so it lands exactly on a
temporal keyframe you notice our snowflake is
| | 04:08 | indeed centered right on
the spatial keyframe as well.
| | 04:11 | Note that clicking on a keyframe does
not immediately jump to that keyframe;
| | 04:16 | it merely highlights it, both in the
Timeline panel and in the case of spatial
| | 04:20 | keyframes, the Comp panel.
| | 04:22 | Now when you just look at a keyframe,
you might assume the only thing it has is
| | 04:26 | a value. Here is this frame's
value, 497, 150, at this point in time.
| | 04:33 | But in reality there is a lot more
going underneath the hood, and that's what
| | 04:36 | we'll talk about next.
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| Exploring keyframe interpolation, velocity, and influence| 00:07 | For those who skipped the last movie and
who have access to the project files,
| | 00:10 | we are in project AEA_Advanced Animation, and
we're looking around inside comp 00-keyframes 101.
| | 00:17 | To reveal the keyframes, you can
press U to reveal all animated properties.
| | 00:22 | And we were just discussing that
keyframes contain a lot more than just a
| | 00:26 | particular value at a particular point in time.
| | 00:31 | For one, if you have two different
keyframes at different points in time with
| | 00:35 | different values, After Effects will
interpolate between those values, vary from
| | 00:40 | one value to the next over that
period of time between the two keyframes.
| | 00:44 | In other words, it just doesn't
abruptly change when it hits a new keyframe.
| | 00:47 | And if I RAM-preview, you can see this.
| | 00:50 | You can see how scale doesn't jump.
| | 00:51 | It gradually scales the object up
and down. And you'll also see that
| | 00:55 | position doesn't jump from keyframe
to keyframe; the object actually moves
| | 00:58 | along its motion path.
| | 01:00 | But keyframes can do a lot more
than just hold a value and interpolate;
| | 01:03 | they also define how fast those
values change from keyframe to keyframe and
| | 01:09 | through the keyframe, and that's what
we're going to explore in this movie.
| | 01:12 | Now spatial keyframes like position
are really handy because the Comp panel
| | 01:16 | gives us some clues about this interpolation.
| | 01:19 | Namely, the spacing of these dots
along the motion path indicate how fast
| | 01:26 | that object is moving.
| | 01:27 | These dots represent the position
of that layer at each frame in time.
| | 01:31 | If I was to move it back here where
it's moving quicker and press the Page Up
| | 01:35 | and Page Down keys to step through a
frame at a time, you can see how it's
| | 01:38 | jumping from dot to dot along that motion path.
| | 01:41 | So, larger space between dots means a
larger change in position from frame to
| | 01:46 | frame and therefore a higher speed.
| | 01:48 | Closer spacing the dots, less
change from frame to frame, slower speed.
| | 01:53 | However, with temporal keyframes,
you need to do a little bit of work to
| | 01:56 | reveal this information.
| | 01:58 | If you hold down Option on Mac, or Alt
on Windows, and double-click a keyframe,
| | 02:03 | it will open up the Keyframe Velocity dialog.
| | 02:07 | Here is where you see, numerically,
what is the speed through that keyframe.
| | 02:13 | In this case, you can see the
speed before that keyframe, the Incoming
| | 02:17 | Velocity, is very fast, about 423
pixels a second. And the Outgoing Velocity,
| | 02:23 | the speed after this keyframe between it and
the next keyframe, is slower, 147 pixels per second.
| | 02:30 | Temporal keyframes default to
an interpolation type of linear.
| | 02:35 | Linear keyframes have these abrupt
transitions in speed from incoming to outgoing.
| | 02:41 | And the reason is it's because
their influence is essentially zero.
| | 02:45 | The Influence says, how long should I
attempt it to maintain the speed before or
| | 02:51 | after this keyframe?
| | 02:53 | How much do I slow down gradually or
speed up gradually coming in or going out?
| | 02:58 | A larger influence says, take your
time slowing down to the new speed or
| | 03:03 | speeding up to the new speed.
| | 03:05 | A smaller influence says ah!
| | 03:06 | Don't spend any time at all, just
abruptly change to that new speed.
| | 03:10 | You can edit these values
numerically if you like.
| | 03:13 | However, there is a more graphical
way of doing this, and oddly enough it's
| | 03:16 | called the Graph Editor. I'll click OK.
| | 03:18 | You'll notice the keyframe type has
changed because whenever you edit something
| | 03:23 | in that Keyframe Velocity dialog, it
assumes it's no longer linear, even though
| | 03:26 | we left the Influence at zero.
| | 03:28 | I will move my cursor over
to this Graph Editor icon.
| | 03:31 | Now we're going to be spending a lot of
time later in this lesson going through
| | 03:34 | the Graph Editor in depth,
but let me give you a quick overview.
| | 03:37 | Click on this icon or press
Shift+F3 to open the Graph Editor.
| | 03:43 | There are many different ways to
customize this view, but for position
| | 03:46 | keyframes, it defaults to showing what
is the speed in pixels per second across time.
| | 03:53 | You will also notice that
the values are color coded.
| | 03:55 | There is sort of lilac line matches this
lilac value of to the left for position.
| | 04:00 | A flat line like this tells me that it
is keeping a constant speed, a constant
| | 04:06 | velocity of 423 pixels per second.
| | 04:09 | When we hit this keyframe, there is a
sudden speed change down to the slower
| | 04:13 | speed of 147 pixels a second--very
similar to what we just saw in the numeric
| | 04:18 | Interpolation dialog.
| | 04:19 | The gap between these keyframe
nubbins, or handles, indicates that there is a
| | 04:24 | sudden jump in speed.
| | 04:26 | If you wanted to smooth out that speed
transition through that keyframe, you
| | 04:31 | would need to drag these so that
they have roughly the same height.
| | 04:36 | This means that the incoming and
outgoing velocity is the same, however, the
| | 04:40 | influence, the amount of deceleration
or acceleration entering or leaving a
| | 04:45 | keyframe, is still pretty close to zero.
| | 04:47 | So if I drag out these handles,
you will see I start to smooth out
| | 04:51 | this interpolation.
| | 04:52 | The smoother the line, the smoother
the speed changes through our animation.
| | 04:57 | Let me go ahead and
RAM-preview this, and watch what happens.
| | 05:00 | You'll notice as we go through this
keyframe that we've smoothed, that the speed
| | 05:04 | transition up in the Comp
panel is much more gradual.
| | 05:07 | It's not quite the sudden change.
But this one we haven't modified does have a
| | 05:11 | very sudden in jump in
speed as it hits that keyframe.
| | 05:15 | If I find that the speed change is
still a little bit abrupt, that's fine;
| | 05:19 | I'll just lengthen the handle, make it a
smoother speed change, and now we'll preview.
| | 05:24 | Now you see there is a
much more gradual transition.
| | 05:28 | There is still a slight bump because I
have this scale keyframe in the red down
| | 05:31 | here, which is still Linear.
| | 05:33 | It does not have a smooth transition.
| | 05:35 | So that little bump that you're seeing
right through here is actually an abrupt
| | 05:39 | change in Scale value.
| | 05:41 | Again, if I want to, I can go ahead and
smooth this transition as well, preview,
| | 05:45 | and now we have a smoother
transition through this point in time.
| | 05:48 | Now, as I mentioned, you don't
have to use the Graph Editor.
| | 05:52 | I can go ahead and close it and then
Option+Double-click or Alt+Double-click on
| | 05:56 | a keyframe and edit these
incoming and outgoing velocities.
| | 05:59 | I can make them the same to make
sure I have the same smooth speed, and I
| | 06:03 | can edit the influence.
| | 06:04 | For example, I can enter 50% influence.
| | 06:06 | That's actually a pretty broad
speed-up or slow-down through a keyframe.
| | 06:11 | I can do the same thing for my
Scale keyframes. They're locked.
| | 06:15 | They're showing me both the X and Y
Dimensions, which are the same, and I'll
| | 06:18 | increase the Influence here
as well. Tab over. 25% there.
| | 06:24 | You can use either the
numeric dialog or the Graph Editor.
| | 06:27 | They're editing the same information
that's hidden underneath that keyframe, not
| | 06:31 | just its value, but also the velocity
and the influence going through that
| | 06:36 | keyframe--how it interpolates.
| | 06:38 | The important thing to know is that
all that information does exist for every
| | 06:41 | keyframe and manipulating and refining
those values is how you create a more
| | 06:46 | refined sophisticated animation,
and that's what the rest of this lesson's
| | 06:50 | dedicated to: how you gain more control
over your animations and make them more
| | 06:54 | refined and more sophisticated.
| | 06:56 | But I know you're busy, so the next
movie is going to show you the quick
| | 06:59 | shortcut ways to get instant
gratification and instant refinement in
| | 07:03 | your animation.
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| Instant gratification: Auto Bézier| 00:07 | If you're new to After Effects, I can
understand if that last movie left you a
| | 00:10 | little bit intimidated, because I am
showing how to Alt+Double-clicking or
| | 00:13 | Option+Double-clicking
keyframes to edit those numerically,
| | 00:16 | I am opening up Graph Editors with all of
these graphs and handles and bars and everything.
| | 00:21 | Well, if you were intimidated, rest
assured there are a couple of great
| | 00:25 | shortcuts you can use to instantly
refine your animations. One is called the
| | 00:29 | Auto Bezier keyframe; the
other is called Easy Ease.
| | 00:33 | To see where we would use these,
let's RAM-preview this animation.
| | 00:36 | I am going to hit zero on numeric
keypad and watch this animation.
| | 00:40 | I'm seeing right around here I've got
a bit of an abrupt speed change through
| | 00:45 | this spatial keyframe.
| | 00:47 | I am slow coming into it
and fast coming out of it.
| | 00:53 | Let's say I wanted to smooth out
that transition through that keyframe.
| | 00:59 | That's a job for Auto Bezier keyframes.
| | 01:02 | This diamond indicates the default
linear interpolation, which means basically
| | 01:07 | no interpolation, a sudden speed change.
| | 01:09 | But if you hold down the Command key on
Mac or Ctrl key on Windows and click on
| | 01:14 | the keyframe, it will change to a
circle, which indicates Auto Bezier keyframes,
| | 01:19 | and now the transition to that
keyframe will be smoothed out.
| | 01:23 | I'll press zero to RAM Preview and now
you'll see as this comes around it's a
| | 01:30 | much more gradual transition speed.
| | 01:32 | It's not nearly as abrupt.
| | 01:36 | Let's see what's going on underneath the hood.
| | 01:38 | I'll hold on Option on Mac, Alt
on Windows and double-click.
| | 01:42 | Auto Bezier is not really a special keyframe;
| | 01:45 | it just automatically edits
the keyframe velocity for me.
| | 01:49 | It makes the incoming velocity and
outgoing velocity the same, so the speed is
| | 01:54 | smooth and it also adds a little bit of
influence, here just under 17%, just to
| | 02:00 | smooth out the deceleration or
acceleration through that keyframe.
| | 02:05 | If I want to look at this in the Graph
Editor, press this button, and you'll see
| | 02:09 | through this keyframe, we
now have a smoothed outline.
| | 02:12 | By the way, if you're in the
Graph Editor and if you want to change
| | 02:15 | another keyframe to Auto
Bezier type, the Command+Clicking or
| | 02:18 | Ctrl+Clicking doesn't work.
| | 02:20 | It would just remove the keyframe instead.
| | 02:22 | Fortunately, the Graph Editor gives
me other options to apply Auto Bezier.
| | 02:26 | I make sure my keyframe is selected
and then just click on this handy button,
| | 02:29 | Convert selected keyframes to
Auto Bezier, and there we go.
| | 02:32 | There are a number of similar buttons
along the bottom of the Graph Editor.
| | 02:36 | These three are for Easy Ease, which
we'll be talking about in the next movie.
| | 02:40 | There is also a button to Convert
back to linear keyframes, hold keyframes,
| | 02:43 | which we'll be talking about later in
this lesson, and if I want to see all my
| | 02:46 | choices, there is this wonderful Edit
selected keyframes button that gives me a
| | 02:50 | pop-up menu with all sorts of
different choices, including a Keyframe
| | 02:54 | Interpolation dialog with
Auto Bezier as an option there.
| | 02:58 | But if you're in a hurry, all you need
to do is click on this handy Auto Bezier
| | 03:01 | button at the bottom of the Graph Editor.
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| Instant gratification: Easy Ease| 00:07 | Auto Bezier keyframes are great if you
need to smooth a speedy transition but a
| | 00:12 | value is still going to be
changing before and after the keyframe.
| | 00:16 | If instead it's the first or the last
keyframe and you want to gradually start
| | 00:22 | up or gradually come to the stop,
| | 00:25 | that's where the Easy
Ease keyframe type comes in.
| | 00:27 | Now, there is a couple of different ways
to select the Easy Ease keyframe type.
| | 00:32 | One way is to right-click on the
Keyframe and look underneath the
| | 00:35 | Keyframe Assistant submenu.
| | 00:37 | Here you'll see three
different types of Easy Ease:
| | 00:40 | Easy Ease In, gradually slow down
to a stop as you approach a keyframe;
| | 00:45 | Easy Ease Out, gradually accelerate
away from a stop as you leave a keyframe; or
| | 00:51 | Easy Ease, do both--slow down and come
to the stop as you come into a keyframe,
| | 00:56 | then gradually accelerate away from
that keyframe as you move on in time.
| | 01:00 | Since this is the first keyframe in my
animation, I can select either Easy Ease
| | 01:04 | Out, or just Easy Ease.
| | 01:07 | Release the mouse, RAM Preview, and now
you will see that this snowflake takes
| | 01:12 | off gradually from that first keyframe.
| | 01:14 | It still ends abruptly, because I have
not edited that last keyframe, but at the
| | 01:18 | beginning of the animation is a nice
slow take-off from that initial position.
| | 01:22 | Let's go ahead and use Easy Ease
to come to a gradual stop as well.
| | 01:25 | I'll select that ending keyframe,
and in this case I'll use the
| | 01:28 | keyboard shortcut F9.
| | 01:31 | By the way, those on the Mac will
find that Expose takes over some of
| | 01:34 | your function keys;
| | 01:35 | you'll need to go into System Preferences,
in Expose and turn off those preferences.
| | 01:39 | I'll press F9.
| | 01:40 | I've got an Easy Ease type on
this end and I'll RAM-preview.
| | 01:44 | And now I've got a smooth position
animation easing out from my initial position
| | 01:49 | and then easing in to my final at-rest position.
| | 01:52 | Now just like Auto Bezier, Easy Ease is
not really a spatial type of keyframe;
| | 01:59 | it's just automatically entering numbers for me.
| | 02:02 | If I Option+Double-click or Alt+Double-
click my keyframe, I'll see that it's
| | 02:05 | change the speed to zero for both the
Incoming and Outgoing Velocity; it comes to
| | 02:10 | a complete stop. And that's a broader
influence in Auto Bezier, in this case,
| | 02:15 | about 33.3% influence.
| | 02:17 | That gives me a gradual deceleration
and acceleration as I come into and
| | 02:22 | leave this keyframe.
| | 02:23 | You can also look at this in
the Graph Editor if you like,
| | 02:26 | and you'll see these nice gradual curves
as we come into that Easy Ease keyframe
| | 02:31 | and come out of that Easy Ease keyframe.
| | 02:33 | Now Easy Ease only works for when
a value starts and stops animating.
| | 02:39 | It does not work so well if a
parameter is supposed to continuously change
| | 02:43 | through that keyframe.
| | 02:45 | Just to demonstrate that, I'll take
these position keyframes in the middle of
| | 02:48 | my animation, go down to the Graph
Editor's handy shortcut for Easy Ease, right there.
| | 02:53 | You'll see what's happened in the graph.
| | 02:55 | It comes all the way down to
zero speed and takes off again.
| | 02:58 | As I RAM-preview, you'll see well,
this is not really what I had in mind.
| | 03:02 | The snowflake stops and picks up again.
| | 03:05 | So Easy Ease rarely works
well in the middle of an animation.
| | 03:09 | It's far better at the
end points of an animation.
| | 03:11 | I'll stop, undo, and get back
to my previous smooth animation.
| | 03:16 | So Auto Bezier and Easy Ease are two
great shortcuts beginners can use to add
| | 03:23 | instant refinement to their animations.
| | 03:25 | Later on in this lesson, I'll show
how you can gain even further control and
| | 03:28 | refinement over those animation moves.
| | 03:30 | But next, I want to move into another
little-known, but very important part of
| | 03:34 | animating inside After Effects,
something known as the Anchor Point.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. The Anchor PointSetting the anchor point| 00:07 | Before you start animating the
transform properties for any layer, the first
| | 00:12 | question you should ask yourself is
where is that layer's Anchor Point?
| | 00:16 | Is it in the correct place?
| | 00:18 | Now you can practice this
exercise with virtually any layer.
| | 00:21 | If you happened to have the files that
came with this lesson, open up Advanced
| | 00:25 | Animation and double-click Comp 01-Anchor Point.
| | 00:29 | It's blank to begin with.
| | 00:30 | I'll twirl open Sources, select Flower.ai.
| | 00:34 | And I'll use the keyboard shortcut of
holding Command on Mac or Ctrl on Windows and
| | 00:37 | typing forward slash.
| | 00:38 | That will center the layer in my
composition and scale it to 100%.
| | 00:44 | So I've got myself a nice graphical
illustration of the flower, and say I
| | 00:48 | want this thing to wave back and
forth into breeze and maybe scale as if it's
| | 00:52 | growing up in the ground.
| | 00:54 | I'll twirl open the Properties for
this layer, and I'll start editing say the
| | 00:59 | scale. But as I scrub it, I see
something that's not quite right.
| | 01:03 | It's not scaling up from
the bottom of the layer;
| | 01:05 | it's scaling from the center of
the layer. That ain't going to work.
| | 01:07 | Let's try rotation. Same problem: it's
not rotating from the bottom where it
| | 01:12 | supposed to be rooted into the ground;
| | 01:15 | it's rotating around the center of the layer.
| | 01:17 | This is for a very good reason.
| | 01:19 | The Anchor Point, this little
crosshair icon, defaults to the center of every
| | 01:25 | layer, and the Anchor Point defines
the center of rotation, scale and even
| | 01:31 | the position value.
| | 01:32 | So it's very important to know where
that Anchor Point is in relationship to
| | 01:36 | the rest of the layer.
| | 01:37 | Now there are several different
ways of editing the Anchor Point.
| | 01:40 | One convenient way is to
edit it in the Layer panel.
| | 01:44 | To open up the Layer panel, double-click a
layer and you'll get this alternate view.
| | 01:48 | It will be just that layer in
isolation with its own timeline.
| | 01:52 | The Layer panel defaults to docking to
the same frame as the Composition, but
| | 01:56 | quite often, you want to see these two
side by side, so you'd either re-dock the
| | 01:59 | Layer panel to be beside the composition.
Or, if you like, you might even float it,
| | 02:05 | undock it completely, Undock Panel, and
now you can move it wherever you want.
| | 02:10 | But position it somewhere
where we see it both side by side.
| | 02:13 | Now one of the reasons editing in the
Layer panel is so handy is because you can
| | 02:17 | focus on what you are editing.
| | 02:19 | This View pop-up defines what you are seeing
and what you were editing in the Layer panel.
| | 02:25 | I'll select the Anchor Point path, and
now as I put my cursor over the Anchor
| | 02:30 | Point in the Layer panel and start to
move it towards the base of the flower,
| | 02:34 | watch what's happening in
the Comp panel to the right.
| | 02:38 | The flower seems to be levitating up
the screen. But if you look down at the
| | 02:42 | Position value below, Position is not changing.
| | 02:45 | What's going on here?
| | 02:46 | Well, the Position value says, where is
this layer in relation to the Composition?
| | 02:53 | I can't define every single pixel of
a layer, so it has to define where the
| | 02:56 | Anchor Point is in relationship to the comp.
| | 02:59 | As I move the Anchor Point in the Layer
panel, you will notice it's not moving
| | 03:04 | in the Comp panel; in other words,
the position is not changing.
| | 03:08 | What is changing is how this layer is going to
be drawn in relationship to the Anchor Point.
| | 03:15 | Here I am saying draw this layer upward
from where my Anchor Point position is,
| | 03:20 | down at the base of the flower.
| | 03:22 | Once you've done that, then you can go
to the Comp panel and drag flower back to
| | 03:27 | whatever position you want it to be in.
| | 03:28 | I'll put it around here for now.
| | 03:31 | Now when I go scrub values like scale,
it's going to behave exactly the way I
| | 03:35 | expect it, growing up from the ground.
And as I scrub rotation, it's going to
| | 03:40 | rotate from the position
where it's rooted in the ground.
| | 03:43 | It's going to behave the way that I
expect, but only because I moved the Anchor
| | 03:47 | Point from its default position,
and that's why it's so important.
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| Exploring an alternate way to edit| 00:07 | I mentioned in the previous movie that
there is a couple of different ways in
| | 00:10 | editing an Anchor Point.
I'd like to show those to you now.
| | 00:12 | First I am going to reset the transform
properties so the Anchor Point goes back
| | 00:16 | to its default, being in the middle of
the layer. And you know it's not always
| | 00:20 | convenient to have this Layer panel
open up side by side with the Comp panel.
| | 00:23 | So I'm going to re-dock it back into
the same frame as the Comp panel, select
| | 00:27 | the Comp panel to bring it forward, and
focus on ways of editing the Anchor Point
| | 00:31 | directly in the Comp panel, not the Layer panel.
| | 00:35 | Well, one way to do that is to use a
special tool called the Pan Behind tool.
| | 00:40 | In fact, we even call it the Anchor Point tool.
| | 00:43 | Its shortcut is Y. When you select it
and move your cursor over the comp, you
| | 00:46 | will notice that it has a
special four-way arrow at the bottom.
| | 00:50 | Now as I pick up the Anchor Point in
the Comp panel and move it, you will
| | 00:55 | notice the layer stays in its same
position in the composition. But if you watch
| | 01:00 | what's happening in the Timeline panel,
both the Anchor Point value and the
| | 01:04 | Position value are changing.
| | 01:06 | That's because the Pan Behind tool is
editing both of these values at the same
| | 01:11 | time to draw the layer at the same
apparent position inside the composition, even
| | 01:17 | though its Position value is changing.
| | 01:19 | Now when I scrub scale, it's growing
up from its base the way I want it to,
| | 01:23 | and it's rotating from its base the
way I want it to, but I did not have to go
| | 01:27 | into the Layer panel.
| | 01:28 | I could do all this directly in the Comp panel.
| | 01:30 | Now the Pan Behind tool is great for
moving the Anchor Point, but it can get you
| | 01:34 | in trouble in other situations, so
quickly switch back to the Selection tool as
| | 01:38 | soon as you're done in moving that Anchor Point.
| | 01:41 | Its shortcut is V. You can also
edit the Anchor Point value numerically.
| | 01:45 | Obviously, its value appears here in
the Timeline panel, but there is an either
| | 01:48 | more precise way of editing it.
| | 01:50 | If you right-click on the Anchor Point
value and select Edit Value, you'll get
| | 01:55 | this additional dialog. Not only does
it contain the X and Y position of the
| | 01:59 | Anchor Point, it contains
this really useful Units pop-up.
| | 02:02 | Click on it and select % of source.
| | 02:06 | If you have a layer where you know you
want the Anchor Point to be, say, in the
| | 02:10 | upper-left corner, you can just say 0% X
and 0% Y, and now the Anchor Point will
| | 02:15 | be moved to the upper-left corner of that layer.
| | 02:17 | Let's say you want it to be centered
across the X dimension but placed at the
| | 02:22 | bottom of the layer in the Y dimension.
| | 02:23 | That's 50, 100. Now I've got it
centered at the very bottom of this layer.
| | 02:28 | It so happens that the pixels of this
layer don't start at the bottom of the
| | 02:31 | entire layer itself.
| | 02:32 | So I'm going to use a temporary tool.
| | 02:34 | Press and hold Y to temporarily bring
the Pan Behind tool, move it into place,
| | 02:40 | release Y, release my mouse, and now the
Anchor Point is in the right place, and
| | 02:44 | I am back on my Selection tool.
| | 02:45 | That trick of right-clicking on a
value also works for position, by the way.
| | 02:49 | Say, I want this new Anchor Point
to now be at the bottom of my comp.
| | 02:53 | I can eyeball it, I can watch the
Info panel, or I can right-click on the
| | 02:58 | Position value, go Edit Value, change
the Unit pop-ups, this time to not % of
| | 03:03 | source, but % of composition.
| | 03:06 | Now it's easy for me to say centered
along the X on my composition, place at the
| | 03:11 | very bottom in Y of my composition,
click OK, and now my layer has been exactly
| | 03:16 | positioned in the center-bottom of my comp,
| | 03:18 | again, making it easy to grow animations,
and little waving-in-breeze animations.
| | 03:22 | So that's the basics of using the Anchor Point.
| | 03:25 | It's the center around all transformations.
| | 03:27 | However, it has another
useful trick up its sleeve.
| | 03:30 | It's the best tool we use if you're
trying to do a motion-control camera move
| | 03:33 | and I'll show that next.
| | 03:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with motion control moves| 00:07 | Normally, you would set up the Anchor
Point and then leave it alone as you
| | 00:10 | go animate the other Transform
properties such as Rotation, Scale, and Position.
| | 00:16 | However, there are some types of
animation movements where you want to leave
| | 00:19 | position alone and animate
the Anchor Point instead;
| | 00:23 | for example, if you're panning around
on a large photograph, piece of video, or
| | 00:27 | even another composition. If you have
the project files that came with this
| | 00:30 | lesson, first open Comp
02a-Motion Control*starter.
| | 00:34 | It is large photos from cars on a
racetrack, and to get a bit idea what this
| | 00:38 | looks like I am going to double-click
Auto Race.jpg, open it up in the Layer panel,
| | 00:43 | say View, fit up to 100% and now I
can see how big this photo truly is.
| | 00:47 | I've got a lot of real estate here
| | 00:48 | I can go ahead and pan
around and move around. Great!
| | 00:51 | Let's say I've decided on a move where
I first focus on this lime green car in
| | 00:54 | front and then want to look at
the back of the pack layer run.
| | 00:56 | I might be tempted to be to go to my
Comp panel and say okay, move, that's position.
| | 01:02 | So I'll press P to reveal the
Position parameter, click on its stopwatch to
| | 01:06 | enable keyframing, and
then for zooming in and out,
| | 01:09 | I'll hold Shift and press S to reveal Scale.
| | 01:12 | Click on its stopwatch.
Now I can keyframe that.
| | 01:14 | Let's get a good first pose.
| | 01:16 | Let's see that green car is down here somewhere.
| | 01:18 | There we go, get it kind of put
it in the screen where I want.
| | 01:21 | It's too big. Now, I'll scrub Scale and hmm!
| | 01:25 | It's sliding off the top of my composition.
| | 01:28 | It's not supposed to be doing that.
| | 01:30 | Well, actually it is.
| | 01:32 | If you remember, all Transform
properties are centered around the Anchor Point.
| | 01:35 | That Anchor Point is up here at this red,
white, and blue car, not down by the green car.
| | 01:39 | Okay, I know Chris told me to set the Anchor
Point first, but you know I don't have time.
| | 01:45 | Let's just drag it onto Position.
| | 01:46 | There we go, and let's scale
a little bit more and oops!
| | 01:50 | It goes off the screen, pull it down again.
| | 01:53 | Okay, I am happy with my first pose.
It took little bit, but I am happy.
| | 01:56 | Now I'm going to press End to go to
the end of my Timeline and drag it
| | 02:01 | to another position.
| | 02:02 | I want to focus on these cars up here
somewhere, and it's a nice arrangement
| | 02:08 | there. And again, I think that could be
scaled little bit to get a more
| | 02:11 | inclusive view, so I'll scrub the Scale
value, and it goes sliding off the screen again.
| | 02:16 | Well, again it's sliding towards
that Anchor Point, the center of
| | 02:21 | all transformations.
| | 02:23 | That's why I am fighting myself:
whenever I move the position and then scrub the
| | 02:27 | Scale, they're just
working against each other.
| | 02:29 | It's because After Effects always
scales around the Anchor Point. But you can go
| | 02:34 | ahead and persevere until you get it the way
want it to be, until it comes time to preview it.
| | 02:39 | But I'll press 0 to get a RAM Preview,
and my preview is also kind of sliding
| | 02:44 | around in ways I don't want.
| | 02:45 | Well, I can edit my position
path, and my position path is kind of
| | 02:49 | non-intuitive at this point.
| | 02:51 | I mean my green car is here, but my
position keyframe is over here because
| | 02:54 | that's where my Anchor Point is.
| | 02:56 | Trust me, you can go ahead and do this,
but you're just going to be fighting it all day long.
| | 03:01 | There is a better way,
| | 03:03 | and that better way is
animating the Anchor Point.
| | 03:06 | So let's start over.
| | 03:07 | I'm going to open up a new blank comp
02b, nothing in there, go down to Sources,
| | 03:13 | reveal Auto Race, Command+Forward Slash or
Ctrl+Forward Slash, center it in the comp.
| | 03:17 | Now remember, the Anchor Point is in the
center of the layer. Now, when I add a layer using the
| | 03:22 | shortcut, the layer is
centered in the composition.
| | 03:25 | That means its position value is in the middle.
| | 03:29 | I don't want to edit this position value.
| | 03:31 | I want to resist the temptation
to pick up and move this layer.
| | 03:35 | Instead, I am going to animate
everything using the Anchor Point.
| | 03:38 | Shift+A will reveal that,
in addition to position.
| | 03:42 | Now, as you know from earlier movie, to edit the
Anchor Point, you can open up the Layer panel.
| | 03:46 | I'll double-click this layer, and I'll
drag these side by side so I can see them
| | 03:50 | both at the same time, and maybe do a
little bit of rearrangement of my panels to
| | 03:56 | get a bigger view on both. There we go.
| | 04:00 | Now, rather than keyframing position, I
will keyframe the Anchor Point, then hold
| | 04:05 | down Shift, press S to
reveal Scale, so do that as well.
| | 04:09 | I've moved my Layer panel.
| | 04:10 | I'll change the View pop-up to Anchor Point
Path because that's what I want to edit now.
| | 04:16 | And now let's look at that Anchor Point.
| | 04:17 | Remember before I said it
looked like a crosshair?
| | 04:20 | Well, that's exactly how you should treat it.
| | 04:22 | This is the crosshair of your virtual camera.
| | 04:25 | So I'm going to pick it up and drag
it down to the screen car, which I want
| | 04:28 | to focus on, and voila!
| | 04:30 | The Comp panel is automatically
updating to show this display.
| | 04:34 | I center the Anchor Point on the car.
The Anchor Point is centered in the Comp panel.
| | 04:38 | I have got the view I want.
| | 04:40 | Now when I go scrub Scale, you'll
notice it's scaling around the Anchor Point
| | 04:44 | and therefore staying centered in my screen.
| | 04:46 | It's a good pose I like.
| | 04:48 | I can go ahead and play with the Anchor
Point. Again, don't move position, just
| | 04:53 | edit Anchor Point and drag it to get
maybe a little bit more of a balanced photo,
| | 04:57 | a little bit of the arc of the track
coming from the frame on down and the car
| | 05:01 | down on the bottom third of the frame.
| | 05:02 | That's the nice pose.
| | 05:04 | Okay, let's go down to the
end and do the same thing.
| | 05:07 | Don't pick it up and move it into the Comp
panel, go to the Layer panel and move your
| | 05:11 | crosshair to what you want to focus on.
| | 05:13 | Let's see, I was focusing on
this group of cars before.
| | 05:18 | Let's do that again.
| | 05:19 | By centering the track, the car
is pretty well centered in the view.
| | 05:24 | I want to frame this a little bit
better, so again I just scrub the scale, and
| | 05:27 | now it behaves exactly the way I want it to.
| | 05:29 | It's just like aiming my camera at the
spot that I want and then zooming in and
| | 05:34 | out to get the framing that I want.
| | 05:36 | Notice how much faster and more direct
and less frustrating it was to edit this
| | 05:42 | way than to edit Position and
Scale to do the same type of movement.
| | 05:46 | If you want to pan around a large
source, be it the still image, video, even
| | 05:51 | another composition, edit the
Anchor Point in the Layer panel.
| | 05:55 | Now there is an alternative using 3D
cameras, and in the future lesson we'll get
| | 05:58 | into 3D. But this is the way a lot of
people create those so-called Ken Burns
| | 06:02 | moves across photographs to
give some movement to them.
| | 06:05 | And speaking of animation, I am going to
show you how to refine that Anchor Point
| | 06:08 | animation in the next movie.
| | 06:21 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using an anchor point path| 00:07 | There are a few more tricks to keep in mind
when you're trying to animate the Anchor Point.
| | 00:11 | One thing that may be confusing is
that I've animated my Anchor Point in the
| | 00:14 | Layer panel, but of course my
final stage is my Comp panel.
| | 00:18 | And I have my Layer panel forward, I
am trying to do a RAM Preview.
| | 00:21 | It's not going to be very interesting
because it's just looking at this layer,
| | 00:25 | which happens to be a still image.
| | 00:27 | If I want to preview this animation,
I need to make sure the Comp panel is
| | 00:31 | forward, either by clicking on its
center or along its tab at top, and then
| | 00:35 | RAM Preview, and now I'll see the result of
the animation I created in the Layer panel.
| | 00:42 | The other thing that's different is when
you edited the position, you could edit
| | 00:45 | its motion path directly in the Comp
panel. But again, when you're editing the
| | 00:49 | Anchor Point, you need to edit
its motion path in the Layer panel.
| | 00:54 | This actually isn't so bad because you
get to see the two side by side. You get to
| | 00:57 | see the overview of the entire scene
in Layer panel and the result of your
| | 01:01 | work in the Comp panel.
| | 01:03 | Let's say I decide I want to follow
the arc of this track, so I'll go to this
| | 01:07 | first keyframe, look for its Bezier
handle, and pull it out to get a curve.
| | 01:11 | If I couldn't see that Bezier handle,
I can press G to get the Convert
| | 01:15 | Vertex tool and pull it out as well, and get it
roughly on a bend so it goes around this track.
| | 01:20 | Let's go ahead and edit this point as well.
| | 01:23 | Again, this dot's hard to find.
| | 01:24 | There it is. But I could just
hold G and pull it out like that.
| | 01:30 | Now that I've got that path roughed out,
I can bring my Comp panel forward and
| | 01:34 | RAM-preview, and that's my rough
first animation move. Not too bad.
| | 01:41 | It looks like I need to come out a
little bit further to get on the cars.
| | 01:46 | If I want to see that result, rather than
having to go back and forth and select
| | 01:49 | Windows, there is a handy little
button at the bottom of the Comp panel.
| | 01:52 | It is the Always Preview This View button.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to turn that on for the Comp panel.
| | 01:58 | That way even if the Layer panel is
forward, if I press zero to RAM Preview,
| | 02:02 | it's the Comp panel that's going to preview instead.
| | 02:05 | So that's the nice little option
down at the bottom of the Comp panel.
| | 02:09 | Okay, I've got roughly the path I am
intending, but you know I'd like to refine
| | 02:13 | the keyframe velocity.
| | 02:14 | In the next chapter, I will be going
into the Graph Editor where you can really
| | 02:17 | refine the velocity.
| | 02:18 | Let's just do something quick and dirty.
| | 02:20 | I'll select these two keyframes
and press F9 to get Easy Ease.
| | 02:24 | I'll even select my last two keyframes.
| | 02:27 | If I can't remember that shortcut, I
can always go to Animation > Keyframe
| | 02:31 | Assistant and select Easy Ease from there.
| | 02:34 | Now that I've done that, I'll preview
and I'll ease away from the green car,
| | 02:38 | come around the bend, and
ease into my final position.
| | 02:42 | And that's really all there is to it.
| | 02:46 | It does take a bit of fiddling to
remember the Anchor Point's done in the Layer
| | 02:49 | panel, in contrast to Position, which is
done in the Comp panel. But once you get
| | 02:53 | used to this idea of splitting your
mind in two, it's actually a better way of
| | 02:57 | working because you get the
overview and you get the final result.
| | 03:00 | So now that we've mastered the center
of animation, the Anchor Point, it's time
| | 03:04 | to refine those animations with the
best tool in toolbox, the Graph Editor.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. The Graph EditorNavigating the Graph Editor| 00:07 | In this chapter, we're going to focus on
the most powerful tool in After Effects
| | 00:10 | to help refine your animations, the Graph Editor.
| | 00:14 | First I'm going to clear my display by
re-docking the Layer panel into the Comp
| | 00:17 | panel and closing all my previous
compositions. And if you have the files that
| | 00:22 | came with this lesson, go ahead and
open up Comp 03-Graph Editor*starter.
| | 00:26 | I'm going to press 0 on the numeric
keypad to RAM-preview this. It will take a
| | 00:30 | while to cache up. And you might
recognize this from the After Effects Apprentice:
| | 00:33 | Basic Animation lesson.
| | 00:35 | At this stage, we've entered all of our
keyframes, but you might notice that the
| | 00:38 | movements are a bit jerky. For example,
the snowflake just kind of plops into
| | 00:41 | place, the title comes up
and just suddenly stops.
| | 00:44 | It could be refined, it could be more
elegant, and that's what we're going to try
| | 00:47 | to do in this chapter.
| | 00:48 | I'll move ahead and stop the animation,
do Command+A on Mac, Ctrl+A on Windows
| | 00:53 | to select all my layers, and press
U to reveal all of the keyframes.
| | 00:58 | And note that all of the
keyframes have this diamond icon.
| | 01:01 | That diamond icon
indicates a linear type keyframe.
| | 01:06 | That reinforces why we're
seeing such jerky animation.
| | 01:09 | Linear keyframes have sudden starts,
stops, and speed changes, and generally are
| | 01:15 | not the most elegant animation you can create.
| | 01:17 | So let's refine them. I'm going to go ahead and open
up the Graph Editor. The shortcut is to hold the Shift
| | 01:22 | key and press F3, and
initially I don't see anything.
| | 01:27 | That's because I need various view
preferences to decide what I do want to see.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to go down here to choose which
properties are shown, and for now I'm going
| | 01:34 | to choose Show Animated Properties.
| | 01:36 | That will show me everything
that's keyframed or animating.
| | 01:40 | Now a bunch of
different lines and graphs appear.
| | 01:42 | Currently it's showing all animated
properties for all selected layers.
| | 01:46 | I can go ahead and just select an
individual layer to see just that
| | 01:48 | layer's properties.
| | 01:50 | If I want to see more than one layer, I
can Shift+click it to see that as well.
| | 01:54 | But I'll go back to just Snowflake.mov for now.
| | 01:56 | If there is a particular property you
want to see all the time, regardless of
| | 02:00 | whether or not the layer is selected, there is
a nice little option called Graph Editor Sets.
| | 02:05 | You can enable that also underneath
this eyeball icon, underneath Show Graph
| | 02:09 | Editor Set, and a set is enabled by
clicking on this little graph icon between
| | 02:14 | the animation stopwatch
and the name of the property.
| | 02:18 | Once you enable that, that set of
parameters will always be visible, regardless
| | 02:22 | of whether or not that layer is selected.
| | 02:24 | That's really good if you have a guide
layer that has important timing that you
| | 02:27 | want to synchronize other people to.
| | 02:29 | You can leave it enabled all of the
time, even as you work on other layers, but
| | 02:32 | again, I'll just turn it off
for now and select Snowflake.mov.
| | 02:35 | You will notice that the
parameters are color coded.
| | 02:39 | For example, the Position values are
in this pink color, this pink line, the
| | 02:42 | Rotation is in this turquoise color--and
there is its property graph--Opacity is in cyan--
| | 02:49 | there is its value--and then there
is Scale. X is in red, Y is in green.
| | 02:55 | Since the two values are identical, the
red graph is drawing on top of the green
| | 02:59 | graph, and that's why you just see a
red line over here in the Graph Editor.
| | 03:03 | If I was to separate those by turning
off the Constrain Proportions switch, I
| | 03:07 | would see two independent graphs as
their values diverge from each other.
| | 03:10 | You can zoom and pan in time in the
Timeline panel just as you would normally.
| | 03:14 | For example, you can go ahead and move
the corners of the Time navigator to
| | 03:18 | look at just a segment of time and slide a
segment of time through. I'll restore that.
| | 03:26 | I do have my little slider down here at
the bottom to decide how much I'm zoomed
| | 03:29 | in, and I can use the normal Plus or
Minus keys to go ahead and zoom in and out,
| | 03:34 | so that's pretty normal as well.
| | 03:35 | Home and End keys still work as normal,
and I still have my keyframe navigator.
| | 03:40 | I can go ahead and move between the
Position keyframes, move to the Rotation and
| | 03:44 | keyframe, Opacity start keyframe, et cetera.
| | 03:47 | Just be careful if you use the
keyframe navigator for a property that isn't
| | 03:50 | currently revealed; for example, I'll
go to the next Snowstorm title Position
| | 03:54 | keyframe, but because it's not actually selected,
I can't see that keyframe. Select the layer.
| | 04:00 | Now, it makes a lot more sense.
| | 04:01 | You can drag the Current Time
Indicator, and again holding the Shift key makes
| | 04:05 | it sticky, makes it want to snap to
these different keyframes. And you can turn
| | 04:09 | that snapping behavior on and off by
clicking on this little magnet icon down
| | 04:13 | at the bottom of the Graph Editor.
And finally, if you come from using nonlinear
| | 04:17 | editing systems, you can use the J and
K keys to move earlier in time and back
| | 04:22 | in time between keyframes.
| | 04:24 | Another important thing you need to
know about navigating the Graph Editor is
| | 04:27 | how to zoom and pan in height to look at values.
| | 04:31 | A great default is to
enable Auto-zoom graph height.
| | 04:35 | That means it will always maximize the
available height in your Timeline panel.
| | 04:39 | I am going to go ahead and zoom
on a smaller segment of time here.
| | 04:44 | As I go ahead and pan around what
time I'm looking at, you will see it
| | 04:46 | automatically rescales as I'm
looking at the smaller value range.
| | 04:50 | I'll go back here and it rescales
to show a wider value range.
| | 04:53 | So the Auto Zoom behavior
is really, really handy.
| | 04:57 | On the other hand, if you find that
this is getting in your way, you can turn
| | 05:00 | that off and now manually pan around this.
| | 05:04 | One great shortcut is to hold down the
Spacebar, then drag with your cursor.
| | 05:09 | You can drag left and right in time
and up and down and in the value range to
| | 05:12 | see where your graphs are.
| | 05:14 | If you have some specific values you
want to focus on, temporarily hold down
| | 05:18 | the Z key, the Zoom key, drag a
marquee around the keyframes or value range
| | 05:23 | you're interested in, release the mouse
and the Z key, and it will automatically
| | 05:27 | zoom to center that range.
| | 05:29 | By the way, if you have a mouse with a
scroll wheel, the scroll wheel will also
| | 05:32 | move up and down the values in the Graph Editor.
| | 05:35 | If you hold down Option,
it will also zoom in time.
| | 05:37 | I'll double-click to see
my whole Timeline again.
| | 05:42 | One other really important zoom option,
if you need to see even more resolution
| | 05:45 | inside the Graph Editor, is the Tilde key.
| | 05:48 | You might remember from After
Effects Apprentice: Pre-Roll, the Tilde key
| | 05:52 | maximizes a frame to take up
the entire application window.
| | 05:56 | This is where you get maximum resolution.
| | 05:58 | However, it's at the cost of not seeing
anything else, so personally I just leave
| | 06:02 | things where they are.
| | 06:03 | I just tap Tilde to go back to normal
display, and I turn on the Auto Zoom Height
| | 06:07 | to always maximize the
amount of space I have available.
| | 06:10 | Next, let's get into what these
different graphs actually mean and how to change
| | 06:14 | what they're showing us.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding graph types| 00:07 | A very important part of the Graph
Editor is deciding what type of graphs
| | 00:10 | are being drawn, and that's set by the
second pop-up menu, Choose graph type and options.
| | 00:17 | The default is to auto-select the
graph type, show you the type of graph that
| | 00:22 | makes the most sense at that given time.
| | 00:23 | For example, with Snowflake most of the
parameters are simple values that change over time.
| | 00:29 | They're temporal keyframes.
| | 00:31 | Therefore, we'd see value graphs for
those parameters, and the value rule is
| | 00:38 | here along the left side of the screen,
from 0 to 500, and also going negative,
| | 00:42 | depending on what the value is.
| | 00:43 | For example, the Snowflake
is rotating from -90 degrees to 0,
| | 00:47 | while opacity is starting at 0 and going
to 100%. On the other hand, position is
| | 00:54 | more of a spatial value.
| | 00:55 | I'll select the Snowstorm Title to show that.
| | 00:57 | In this case, the graph type will change
to showing the velocity, how many pixels
| | 01:02 | per second my layer is traveling,
as opposed to a specific pixel value.
| | 01:06 | And again, along this left side you can
see the ruler, from 0 to 100 pixels per
| | 01:10 | second and higher in the case
of this particular animation.
| | 01:13 | Now if this automatic behavior is a
bit confusing, you can select the type of
| | 01:17 | graph you want to see.
For example, let's say Edit Value Graph.
| | 01:20 | Now our position has been split out to
separate green and red graphs for the X
| | 01:25 | and for the Y position values.
| | 01:28 | This so happens that this
title is not moving in axis.
| | 01:30 | It's not moving left and right, so I
get a perfectly flat graph, because its
| | 01:34 | value is not changing over time.
| | 01:36 | And contrast this to the Y dimension,
where it's rising over time, moving up the comp.
| | 01:41 | Just moving from being a high-pixel
value, very low in the comp, to a lower-
| | 01:45 | pixel value, which actually means a
higher in the comp in the case of Y. This
| | 01:49 | is even more fun in the case as Snowflake,
because position is following a curved path.
| | 01:53 | You can see how this path
curves through the Timeline panel.
| | 01:56 | I'll even turn on the rulers, Command+R, so
you get an idea where these values reside.
| | 02:02 | And down here in the Timeline panel,
you can also see the curves independently
| | 02:06 | for the X dimension and for the Y dimension.
| | 02:09 | And as I move my Current Time
Indicator through my animation, you can see how
| | 02:13 | the position of that layer follows the
pixel values for those X and Y dimensions
| | 02:18 | down in the Graph Editor.
| | 02:19 | Now you might remember back in the
normal view--I'll turn the Graph Editor off--
| | 02:24 | if you hovered the cursor over a keyframe,
you received information about that keyframe:
| | 02:28 | what time it was at and what its value is.
| | 02:31 | As you might have noticed already
in the Graph Editor, you get that
| | 02:33 | information and more.
| | 02:35 | You do indeed get the time and value
for individual keyframes, but also, as you
| | 02:40 | hover the cursor over the graph
itself, you get to see the value at each
| | 02:44 | specific point in time.
| | 02:46 | So you get a lot more information.
| | 02:48 | You can see what values are as
they interpolate between keyframes.
| | 02:52 | And by the way, in After Effects CS4
and earlier, when you hover the cursor of
| | 02:56 | the keyframe, you
actually did not get a tooltip.
| | 02:58 | They fixed value as 5, so now you get a
tooltip, whether you're on a keyframe or
| | 03:02 | just on a graph in between keyframes.
| | 03:04 | So these are how the
values are changing over time.
| | 03:07 | Let's instead see how the speed, or
the velocity, of these parameters is
| | 03:11 | changing over time.
| | 03:12 | I'll go back down to my type,
and this time select Edit Speed Graph.
| | 03:17 | Now remember I've mentioned most of
these keyframes were linear, which means
| | 03:21 | constant speed and very sudden speed changes.
| | 03:25 | You can really see that when
you're looking at speed graphs.
| | 03:28 | Flat lines mean constant speed.
| | 03:31 | A flat line on zero means
nothing is happening at all.
| | 03:34 | You can also see where in this case
the Snowflake is moving faster during
| | 03:38 | the first half of this animation, then moving
slower, not quite as faster in the second half.
| | 03:43 | I'll RAM-preview again.
| | 03:44 | You can see that speed change reflected in the
height of the Speed Graph in the Graph Editor.
| | 03:51 | If you want to see both of these
graphs at the same time, you can select one,
| | 03:54 | such as Edit Value Graph,
and then select Show Reference Graph.
| | 03:59 | What this will do is show the
unchecked or unselected graph type, like speed,
| | 04:03 | as gray lines behind.
| | 04:05 | So in the case of the position of the
Snowflake, this grayish pink line is how
| | 04:09 | its speed is changing over time,
while the red and green lines are how the
| | 04:14 | actual value is changing over time.
| | 04:16 | You might want to experiment with these as you
get comfortable with the Graph Editor.
| | 04:19 | Personally, I find that the Auto-
Select Graph Type is actually what you
| | 04:22 | want most of the time.
| | 04:24 | Most of the time it shows you values.
The difference is when it is showing
| | 04:27 | position and it shows you speed.
| | 04:28 | And as you may have noticed,
there are other view options as well,
| | 04:31 | to show a Waveform overlay,
if you happen to have an audio on a
| | 04:34 | particular layer, In/Out
Points, Markers, Expressions.
| | 04:38 | But I'm going to show just Graph Tool
Tips, this my only other option for now.
| | 04:42 | As you can see here from where I've rested my
cursor, when you're past the last keyframe
| | 04:47 | inside a graph, you just get a dotted
line, because all it's going to do is hold
| | 04:51 | that constant value for
the rest of the Timeline.
| | 04:54 | Now, let's dive in and start editing these graphs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing values and timing| 00:07 | Next I am going to use the Graph Editor to
edit the timing and the value of my keyframes.
| | 00:12 | I'll make sure my layer is selected,
Snowflake.mov, and I'll make sure that I am
| | 00:16 | seeing my animated properties. And to
help simplify my display, I am going to
| | 00:19 | go ahead and say just auto-select the graph
type and don't show me the reference graph.
| | 00:24 | That way I will be seeing the values
from most of my keyframes and the speed for
| | 00:27 | my position keyframes.
| | 00:30 | I am going to play around
with this rotation value first.
| | 00:32 | I hover the tooltip over it, and I
see this ending as 0 degrees at time 120.
| | 00:37 | Let's say that I want it to rotate more.
| | 00:39 | I just select the keyframe and drag it
up or down to change its value range.
| | 00:45 | Higher is a higher value.
| | 00:46 | Now, After Effects will naturally try
to snap to the same point in time as
| | 00:51 | other keyframes, or the same values of
the keyframes; that's controlled by this
| | 00:55 | old magnet icon, Snap.
| | 00:57 | If you find yourself straining a
little bit, or you can't keep the same time
| | 01:00 | while you are editing value, add the
Shift key after you start dragging, and it
| | 01:04 | too will constrain your movements.
| | 01:06 | So here I have a much more rotation,
but ending at the same time. I'll RAM-preview
| | 01:11 | briefly, and you'll see that the
snowflake is twirling around much more.
| | 01:16 | Okay, it strikes me as a little bit
odd that it's just stopping there at the end.
| | 01:19 | So let's say instead, I want to take it
longer to rotate, and I am going to go
| | 01:23 | ahead and drag it out here to later in
time. And again, if I'm having trouble
| | 01:27 | keeping the value, I just
hold down the Shift key.
| | 01:30 | It will constrain my movement, and I can
go ahead and just slide it horizontally
| | 01:35 | to a different point in time. Preview
| | 01:37 | and now that's how my animation looks like now,
| | 01:40 | taking a little bit longer to rotate.
And you can do that with any other value.
| | 01:44 | Now opacity can't go 100%, so that's
not very interesting, but you can take
| | 01:48 | things such as the Scale Value and have
the snowflake scale all the way down to
| | 01:52 | 0%, maintain a larger value, et cetera.
| | 01:55 | I am going to undo back to where it was.
| | 02:00 | In addition to editing individual
keyframes, you can also edit all keyframes
| | 02:04 | for a given property.
| | 02:06 | To do that, double-click the property,
and you'll see a white bounding box appear
| | 02:11 | around all the keyframes for
that property you clicked on.
| | 02:14 | Now you can move them as a group.
| | 02:16 | For example, say that you
like the basic animation;
| | 02:19 | you just wished that it
started and stopped later in time.
| | 02:22 | Well, pick up this bounding
box and slide it later in time.
| | 02:25 | Again, if you are having trouble
constraining your movements, you're moving it
| | 02:28 | to a different value range or different
time range, hold the Shift key and that
| | 02:32 | will constrain your movement.
| | 02:34 | Now it happens later in time. Quick preview.
| | 02:38 | Now it starts rotating there.
| | 02:40 | Let's say instead, you like the timing,
but you want to change the value range.
| | 02:44 | You want it to have the same amount of
rotation, but just have the start and end
| | 02:49 | values to be different.
| | 02:50 | Same thing, just drag the white bounding,
add the Shift key to constrain it so I don't
| | 02:54 | move its timing, and now I am moving the
start and end values of those keyframes
| | 02:58 | as a group, and I'll undo.
| | 03:00 | Let's say that you liked the value range;
| | 03:02 | you just wish you took longer in time.
| | 03:05 | Hover your cursor over one of the little
nubbins at the end of this bounding box
| | 03:09 | until you see this double-
cursor. Then drag it out longer.
| | 03:12 | Now you'll keep the same start and
end values and in between values for your
| | 03:16 | keyframes, but they will all scale
together to take a longer amount of time or
| | 03:22 | shorter amount of time.
| | 03:23 | For example, here I have my snowflake
animation take the same rotation but end much sooner.
| | 03:28 | See, it's done rotating right
there, pretty early. And I'll undo.
| | 03:33 | Finally, if you have a selection
keyframes that you are basically happy with the
| | 03:36 | timing of, but now you need to
expand or contract their value range,
| | 03:40 | again, position the cursor over one of
the nubbins from the bounding box and
| | 03:44 | then just drag the bounding box taller.
| | 03:46 | That will keep the same timing
but give me a different value range.
| | 03:49 | There you see, I've got a
larger rotation overall.
| | 03:54 | Undo. I can also make it a
smaller range if I want less rotation.
| | 03:58 | Now, you'll see it has a much more
subtle rotation as it lands into position.
| | 04:02 | To remove your selection, just click
anywhere that's not on another keyframe, et
| | 04:06 | cetera, and now you'll lose your selection;
| | 04:08 | you are back to where you started.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Interpolating in the Graph Editor| 00:07 | Now, let's use the Graph Editor to
refine our animation, change the keyframe
| | 00:12 | interpolation and velocity,
| | 00:13 | and get something different happening
besides just my normal linear keyframes.
| | 00:17 | I am going to go ahead and drag my
rotation value here and go ahead have it
| | 00:20 | finish later like I was doing earlier, and
rotate more so it has a larger value range.
| | 00:25 | I'll RAM-preview that.
| | 00:27 | Okay, but the problem here is that that
snowflake keeps spinning well after it
| | 00:32 | lands and then stops.
| | 00:34 | Let's say I want to ease
into that final position.
| | 00:37 | There is a couple of ways of doing that.
| | 00:38 | One, as you may remember from an earlier movie,
| | 00:40 | you can select a keyframe, then
use the Easy Ease keyframe type.
| | 00:44 | You can ease both directions
or just Ease into the keyframe.
| | 00:47 | Once I do that, I get an influence
handle that decides how it's going to
| | 00:52 | interpolate into that value. I'll RAM-preview.
| | 00:56 | You see now that the rotation gradually just
comes to a halt here at the end of the animation.
| | 01:00 | Easy Ease is just a default value;
| | 01:03 | you're not stuck with it.
| | 01:04 | Let's say I want an even
more gradual deceleration.
| | 01:06 | I'll go ahead and grab this handle
and elongate it, so that I've got an even
| | 01:11 | longer ease-in of more gradual slow-down.
| | 01:15 | If I'm having trouble keeping this
handle even, I'll have the Shift key while
| | 01:18 | dragging, and again it will be constrained.
| | 01:20 | So let's try that RAM, and
let's see what that looks like.
| | 01:27 | That's a much more gentle landing.
| | 01:29 | I kind of like that.
| | 01:30 | That has a nicer feel to it.
| | 01:31 | It really settles in.
| | 01:33 | As I look in my curve though, I do have
a little bit of a funny business going
| | 01:35 | on here where it's not rotating as
fast, than having to catch up as we go.
| | 01:41 | If I want to confirm that behavior,
I'll look at the Speed Graph to see what
| | 01:44 | going on. I can indeed see that the
snowflake is initially rotating faster,
| | 01:49 | then slowing down, and that's
the thing about editing keyframes:
| | 01:52 | you're balancing time versus range of value.
| | 01:55 | They have to add up at the end of the day.
| | 01:57 | So I am going to go ahead and drag
this Speed Graph to go ahead and be
| | 02:01 | flatter to start to get a much more
constant speed, have a fast rotation here in
| | 02:07 | the middle, then land into my
final value. I'll RAM-preview.
| | 02:13 | Now I've got a pretty constant speed at
the beginning of the animation and settle
| | 02:16 | nicely into the end.
| | 02:18 | I'll switch back to my Auto-Select,
so it shows me the value graphs.
| | 02:22 | Now I've got a nice curve going
into the rotation of that snowflake.
| | 02:26 | The other thing I see as wrong in
this animation is this real hitch, this
| | 02:29 | discontinuity in the
position value for that snowflake.
| | 02:33 | Let's smooth that out.
| | 02:35 | By going back again to an earlier
movie in this lesson, I can go ahead and
| | 02:38 | select those keyframes and
change them to Auto Bezier.
| | 02:41 | That will automatically smooth the movement.
| | 02:43 | There is a couple of ways of doing that.
| | 02:46 | One is to use the handy Convert
Selected keyframes to Auto Bezier button, which I
| | 02:50 | showed you earlier at the
bottom of the Graph Editor.
| | 02:53 | But another is just to use the keyboard
shortcut of holding down the Option key
| | 02:56 | on Mac, Alt key on Windows and
that gives me the Convert Vertex tool.
| | 03:01 | Click on the keyframe, and now I have an
Auto Bezier keyframe through that point
| | 03:05 | in time, which will give
me a smoother animation.
| | 03:07 | I'll RAM-preview, and now I don't have
quite the hitch in my motion through here.
| | 03:13 | Again, Auto Bezier is just a set of
default values on how to smooth this out.
| | 03:17 | I'll go ahead and play with this
curve more, because I notice it's curving up
| | 03:20 | here, coming down kind of sharply,
coming under, and going back up again.
| | 03:24 | I prefer that the graph be actually
less complex and be smoother to give me
| | 03:28 | more elegant motion.
| | 03:30 | So I am going to go ahead and drag
these out a little bit to get a more even
| | 03:34 | movement through that keyframe.
| | 03:35 | Now you see how it's much
flatter and smoother through there.
| | 03:38 | Then play with my beginning and ending speeds,
| | 03:42 | so I have a constant ending speed, and
maybe I should have the ending speed come
| | 03:46 | all the way down to zero,
| | 03:47 | so that it just softly lands into place.
| | 03:50 | Okay, once I drag this out, I see I need to start
playing around with my timing, so I can smooth out
| | 03:56 | my graph and get the sort
of smooth animation I like.
| | 04:00 | Getting close. Let's try that. I'll RAM-review.
| | 04:07 | Now you see the snowflake has a nice
smooth constant motion and settles into place.
| | 04:12 | Frankly, I think it's taking little bit
too long to settle, so I'll go ahead and
| | 04:15 | select that last keyframe,
| | 04:16 | shorten the influence handle so it
doesn't spend as much time decelerating.
| | 04:22 | Pull this down to smooth out the motion.
| | 04:24 | Pull it up, so that I have a hitch
here at the beginning, just creates some
| | 04:28 | nice smooth curves.
| | 04:29 | Let's see how that looks, RAM
preview. Yeah, I like that better.
| | 04:36 | Settle in and bounce there at
the end of the animation.
| | 04:38 | Now since I already have an easy end that
I've added manually to the end of the snowflake,
| | 04:43 | I can go ahead and add an automatic
ease to the end of the Scale Animation and
| | 04:47 | if I want the opacity.
| | 04:48 | So I'll stop again, select my ending
scale keyframe, and heck, let's Shift+Select
| | 04:54 | the ending opacity as well, and
click on the assistant Easy Ease In.
| | 04:58 | See how that smoothes things out.
| | 05:02 | Subtle, but a softer landing still.
| | 05:04 | And I can play around with that timing, and I play
around with the eases more if I want to later on.
| | 05:07 | So I have a little hitch here in this curve.
| | 05:10 | Let's smooth that out even
more and play around that a bit,
| | 05:13 | give some more gradual speed change over time.
| | 05:17 | By the way, remember how you used
Option or Alt to convert vertex.
| | 05:20 | I can change this back to a linear
keyframe by Option+Clicking again, I'll undo,
| | 05:24 | and I can break these handles by
Option+Clicking or Alt+Clicking on the handle.
| | 05:27 | They are joined right now.
| | 05:29 | Click again, now they are separated.
| | 05:32 | I'll undo to get back to my smoother animation.
| | 05:34 | Now it's easy to be working on an
animation and lose track of where you started.
| | 05:39 | So something I did earlier is I
actually duplicated my starting point for this
| | 05:42 | composition and kept it here
in the project as a reference.
| | 05:45 | So if I want to check whether I am
actually improving my animation, I can open
| | 05:49 | up the earlier reference, RAM
preview it, see what it looks like.
| | 05:53 | That will take a little second to
build the screen and preview bar to get the
| | 05:56 | frames cached into RAM.
| | 05:58 | Yeah, the snowflake is not very exciting.
It kind of hitches and clunks into place.
| | 06:05 | Let's go back to my edited version.
| | 06:09 | That's more exciting, has a smoother
ending. Again, I might play around with the way
| | 06:13 | it eases at the end as well.
| | 06:14 | That gives you an idea of some basic
things you can do to refine an animation.
| | 06:18 | Now, let's work on coordinating how
multiple layers animate in relation to
| | 06:22 | each other.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Coordinating keyframes| 00:07 | Next I am going to use the Graph Editor
to coordinate animation across multiple
| | 00:10 | layers, and also to
coordinate keyframes with a video.
| | 00:14 | Now in this case I have my
Snowflake.mov all nicely easing, and I've got
| | 00:19 | nice animation on it.
| | 00:20 | But I've been neglecting Snowstorm title,
which ends at a different point in time.
| | 00:25 | I can Shift+Click to try to see both of
them, but sometimes you get into trouble
| | 00:29 | by deselecting a layer accidentally.
| | 00:31 | So the far better way to go is to
go ahead and enable Show Graph Editor
| | 00:35 | Set, which means always show a particular
parameter whether or not that layer is selected.
| | 00:40 | Now turn on the graph editors set for
all of the properties I am interested in.
| | 00:43 | Now it doesn't matter whether or not
they are selected, I am going to see them.
| | 00:47 | It becomes very easy for me to see
that this second position keyframe for
| | 00:51 | Snowstorm Title is landing a bit
earlier than all the other ones.
| | 00:54 | If I want to coordinate them,
| | 00:55 | I'll just pick it up and start dragging.
| | 00:58 | I'll add the Shift key to constrain so
it keeps a constant speed, and now they
| | 01:01 | end at the same point in time.
| | 01:02 | Now the other thing I've done with all
these always keyframes is I've eased them
| | 01:05 | into their final value.
| | 01:07 | Now when you are coordinating
multiple animations, it's good that they all
| | 01:10 | have the same interpolation if you
want them all to seem to move together and
| | 01:13 | have the same type of movement.
| | 01:14 | So with this second position keyframe
selected, I can either ease in to it, or I
| | 01:19 | can just go ahead and drag it
down until its speed is at zero.
| | 01:23 | Again, I might want to do a little bit
of playing to keep just a fairly steady
| | 01:27 | state speed across this animation,
| | 01:29 | make sure that it keeps a constant speed
starting out, and just lands into its final place.
| | 01:35 | Let's press 0 to RAM preview.
| | 01:38 | Now every one lands together, eases
together, a nicely coordinated animation.
| | 01:43 | But while I have been focusing on
these layers I've been animating, I haven't
| | 01:48 | really been paying attention to the
video, to what's going on there, and there's
| | 01:51 | some very strong action going on.
| | 01:53 | There is this guy shoveling on the right,
but even more important, there is this
| | 01:56 | snowboarder on the left.
| | 01:58 | It'd be really cool if my landings
coordinated with that snowboarder.
| | 02:02 | I could do a couple of different things.
| | 02:04 | One, I could slide the snowboarder
layer in time so that he lands at the same
| | 02:09 | time that these keyframes are.
| | 02:11 | And actually there is a later lesson in
this series that goes over editing layers.
| | 02:15 | Or I can put the Current Time Indicator
at the point where the snowboarder hits
| | 02:18 | the ground and then move
my keyframes to match that.
| | 02:21 | So let's go ahead and drag the current
time indicator and look to see when that
| | 02:25 | snowboarder hits the ground.
| | 02:26 | I need to zoom out a little bit here in
time to see that more, and he seems to
| | 02:32 | kind of start landing right around there,
and that's when he really crunches in.
| | 02:36 | So I'd say he is fully
hit at about this frame.
| | 02:40 | The next thing I want to do is
stretch my animation to go ahead and end at
| | 02:44 | this point in time.
| | 02:46 | Now if I only had two keyframe
animations, a starting keyframe and an ending
| | 02:50 | keyframe, I would just need to marquee
my ending keyframes and drag them out
| | 02:54 | to this point in time.
| | 02:55 | However, the position has an
intermediate keyframe as well.
| | 02:59 | So this is where I want to take
advantage of the trick I showed you earlier, of
| | 03:02 | animating all the keyframes for
a particular property as a group.
| | 03:06 | I'll just go ahead and marquee all of these,
| | 03:07 | make sure I've got this one selected
and there I have got the whole group now.
| | 03:12 | Now I just press my cursor over the
nubbins of this bounding box and drag the
| | 03:16 | whole group out to end at
the Current Time Indicator.
| | 03:20 | So about right around there, and it looks
like all my curves kept in nice shape.
| | 03:24 | As soon as I clicked off,
my display auto-zoomed.
| | 03:27 | I notice I've also got this rotation
keyframe, which is now landing early.
| | 03:31 | I'll drag him out, too.
| | 03:32 | I hold the Shift key after I start
dragging to keep same value, and now they are
| | 03:37 | aligned with my Current Time Indicator.
| | 03:39 | I'm going to go ahead and press Shift+1 to
place a marker at point in the
| | 03:43 | Timeline, just to remember where that guy landed.
| | 03:46 | 0 to RAM Preview, and now everyone kind of comes in.
| | 03:50 | But you know, it looks like all the
layers are landing before the snowboarder
| | 03:54 | is, and there is a good reason for why
they don't seem to line up, even though
| | 03:58 | their timings are all the same,
and it has to do with interpolation.
| | 04:02 | The snowboarder is
hitting the ground pretty hard.
| | 04:04 | You could say he, in essence, has
very little interpolation or very little
| | 04:07 | influence, because we just suddenly
whacks in that final value, rather
| | 04:11 | than easing into it.
| | 04:13 | However, all the other layers are
gently slowing down to that final keyframe,
| | 04:17 | so they appear to reach their final
position much sooner relative to the snowboarder,
| | 04:23 | just because they are slowing
down as they get to that last frame.
| | 04:26 | There is a couple of ways of curing this.
| | 04:28 | One would be to shorten the
influence handles for all these animations,
| | 04:33 | just to make them hit their final
position much harder, like the way the
| | 04:38 | snowboarder is hitting his
final position much harder.
| | 04:41 | Opacity and let's go ahead and edit scale while
| | 04:46 | we're at it. Hold the Shift key to
constrain, so I am on a straight path and maybe
| | 04:53 | even tighten this up a
little bit, too. There we go.
| | 04:56 | The other thing to do would be to grab
those ending keyframes and just nudge
| | 05:01 | them a little bit in time.
| | 05:02 | Now, since they seem to be landing
early, I can go ahead and move them as a
| | 05:06 | group later in time to compensate for
the fact that they have more ease-in than
| | 05:11 | the snowboarder does.
| | 05:13 | Let's go ahead and preview that.
| | 05:15 | Now, they all come, boom!
| | 05:20 | I could tweak this further
in a couple of different ways.
| | 05:22 | I can continue to work on the
influence, for the way that the snowflake
| | 05:25 | lands into position, to better echo the way
the snowboarder lands into his final position.
| | 05:30 | Or I can go ahead and
cheat the timing a little bit,
| | 05:33 | move it a frame or two earlier or later
in time, until it has the right feel, and
| | 05:37 | that's an important thing about animation.
| | 05:39 | Don't get your head locked into
numeric perfection when animating layers.
| | 05:44 | You ultimately have to preview it and
see what looks right and what feels right,
| | 05:49 | because things will give you different
impressions depending on how they are
| | 05:52 | animating, where they're coming
from, and their type of movement.
| | 05:56 | Tools like the Graph Editor are great
to get you close, but use your intuition
| | 06:01 | and your gut feeling to get
it the rest of the way there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with separate dimensions| 00:07 | You've no doubt noticed that the Graph
Editor in After Effects treats position
| | 00:11 | graphs differently than it
does graphs for other values.
| | 00:14 | For example, when the display is set to
Auto-Select Graph Type, for other values
| | 00:19 | it shows the value graph, but for
position, it shows the speed, or velocity graph.
| | 00:25 | This is because it's bundling the X and
Y coordinates--and if it was in 3D space
| | 00:30 | the Z coordinates, as well--into one
keyframe value, and then calculating what is
| | 00:34 | the composite speed for changes
in all of those dimensions at once.
| | 00:39 | I'll select Snowstorm Title so I
can focus on just a position graph.
| | 00:42 | Now I can indeed look at the Value Graph for
position, and I can see a separate X and Y graphs.
| | 00:50 | However, I'm kind of limited
in what I can do with them.
| | 00:52 | For example, if I hold the Command key
down and hover the cursor over the graph
| | 00:56 | to add a keyframe to the Y graph,
| | 00:59 | it also adds a keyframe to the X graph.
| | 01:01 | You'll notice that I can't select
just one keyframe without its partner
| | 01:05 | dimension being selected at the same time.
| | 01:07 | Also, I don't get any influence handles
in the Graph Editor for position values.
| | 01:13 | I have to do all of my editing with
the motion path in the Comp panel.
| | 01:17 | This bundling together of values into
single keyframes actually makes animation
| | 01:20 | a lot easier in many cases. However,
| | 01:22 | there are a few cases where it
makes animation more difficult.
| | 01:25 | I'm going to open up the Comp:
| | 01:27 | 04-Separate Dimensions, and here I have a
volleyball I'd like to bounce across the screen.
| | 01:33 | Well, this is exactly the type of animation
that's a bit harder to do in a Graph Editor.
| | 01:37 | I want to keep a constant speed in the
X dimension, have the ball travel across
| | 01:41 | the screen horizontally at an even
speed, but I need to have it do something
| | 01:44 | considerably fancier in the Y dimension.
| | 01:47 | I need it to come down here,
instantly reverse direction without slowing
| | 01:50 | down, slow down up here at the top of
its bounce, then pick up speed again
| | 01:55 | as it bounces again.
| | 01:56 | Very complex movement in the Y dimension,
| | 01:58 | while on the X dimension, it's doing
something very simple. A very linear flow.
| | 02:03 | You can indeed try to craft a motion
path to do this, but it's going to be very
| | 02:07 | hard to get the sort of
speed that you want to out of it.
| | 02:09 | Fortunately, in After Effects CS4
they've added a feature called Separate
| | 02:14 | Dimensions that makes these
sorts of moves more possible.
| | 02:17 | With my volleyball selected, I'm going to
press P to reveal position, enable keyframing.
| | 02:21 | This will be my first keyframe
in time in the upper-left corner.
| | 02:24 | Then I'll press End to go
to the end of my Timeline.
| | 02:26 | I decide that the ball is going to hit
its last bounce here at the end of time.
| | 02:32 | I'll select the Graph Editor, and I
can actually see the separate X and Y
| | 02:36 | dimensions. But as I mentioned before, I
can't set the keyframe for one without
| | 02:40 | also setting a keyframe for the other.
| | 02:41 | When I set Auto-Select Graph Type, it's
actually going to show me the constant
| | 02:46 | velocity graph, not the more detailed
positional graph, or the Value Graph.
| | 02:52 | To get around that, I want to go click
on this brand-new Separate Dimensions
| | 02:55 | button, and by doing so you'll see this
one line separate into two, X and Y, and
| | 03:01 | if this was a 3D layer,
I'd have a Z graph as well.
| | 03:04 | These are my two independent graphs,
but now I can hold down Command or Ctrl,
| | 03:08 | add a keyframe to one, and it's not
going to add a keyframe to the other
| | 03:12 | dimension; I have independent control.
| | 03:15 | I also get Bezier handles,
which I was lacking before.
| | 03:18 | So let's see what we can do
with this new flexibility.
| | 03:20 | I'll undo back to where I was.
| | 03:22 | As I mentioned before, I want to have
this ball travel in a constant speed in
| | 03:26 | X across the screen.
| | 03:27 | X is color coded red.
| | 03:30 | So this is a red graph I'm looking at.
| | 03:31 | I see it indeed has a little bit of
a curve at the beginning and ending.
| | 03:36 | This has to do with After Effects
choosing Auto Bezier as its default
| | 03:40 | spatial keyframe type.
| | 03:42 | I'd prefer this would be perfectly
constant, and this is one of the few cases
| | 03:45 | where I do indeed want linear keyframe.
| | 03:48 | So I'll go ahead and select the X
dimension, double-click it so that both
| | 03:52 | keyframes are selected. Only the X,
not the Y keyframes are selected.
| | 03:56 | Then I'll go down to our very handy
Convert selected keyframes to Linear button.
| | 04:01 | Once you do that, you'll see that
this line straightens out and I've got a
| | 04:04 | perfectly even velocity.
| | 04:06 | I will even go look at the Speed Graph,
perfectly flat line for red whereas
| | 04:11 | green has this little bit of bend in it still.
| | 04:13 | I'll go back to Auto for now.
| | 04:15 | I've got our X dimension sorted out.
| | 04:18 | Let's work on Y. I've already set
where I want the ball to be when it
| | 04:22 | bounces off the floor,
| | 04:24 | so let me go ahead and select that Y
keyframe and copy it, because I want to
| | 04:28 | reuse that value elsewhere in the Timeline.
| | 04:31 | Let's go back to where I might want
my first bounce to be, say somewhere
| | 04:34 | around 15 frames or so.
| | 04:37 | When you're in Separate Dimensions mode,
you must resist the temptation to go up
| | 04:41 | to the Comp panel and drag
the layer to reposition it.
| | 04:44 | This creates keyframes for both X
and Y, which is not what I wanted.
| | 04:48 | I wanted to work on Y by itself.
| | 04:50 | So I'll undo to deselect that.
| | 04:52 | I can either scrub my Y position
independently to go ahead and give it the
| | 04:56 | value that I want, or with that keyframe
selected, just paste the value that I copied down here.
| | 05:03 | And now I've got that exact same
bouncing-off-the-floor position I had before.
| | 05:07 | I'm going to point a later in time
like around 1:15, and I'll paste again, and now
| | 05:12 | I've got my bounces on the
floor in the Y dimension.
| | 05:15 | The only problem is that this curve
doesn't do exactly what I was intending.
| | 05:19 | If I go ahead and RAM Preview, you see that
the ball kind of slithers along the floor.
| | 05:23 | It doesn't exactly bounce.
| | 05:25 | Now normally I'd say it's time to go
edit the motion path in the Comp panel, but
| | 05:29 | when you're in Separate Dimensions mode
you do not edit the motion path in the
| | 05:33 | Comp panel, oddly enough.
| | 05:35 | You do all of your editing down in
the Graph Editor, by tugging out the
| | 05:39 | handles for the layer.
| | 05:40 | I basically want the Y value to have a
graph, a curve, that follows the bouncing
| | 05:46 | shape, or path, that I desire the ball to take.
| | 05:48 | I am going to start in this first keyframe,
start tugging out handles. There we go.
| | 05:55 | The problem is that the handles, by
default, are connected as continuous
| | 05:58 | Bezier, but that's okay.
| | 05:59 | I'll hold down the Option key on Mac,
Alt key on Windows, get to Convert Vertex
| | 06:04 | tool, and break the handles.
| | 06:06 | Now when I do that, I've got separate control.
| | 06:09 | As I started to bend the Y graph
into a bouncing shape, you'll see the
| | 06:14 | corresponding motion curve in the
Comp panel takes on the same shape.
| | 06:19 | I'll select the second keyframe, hold
down Option or Alt, drag out its handle,
| | 06:23 | and do the same to its other handle here.
| | 06:27 | As I drag in the Graph Editor, I'm
going to watch what's going on in the Comp
| | 06:32 | panel to get the shape that I want.
| | 06:33 | Do I want it to bend in that direction,
bend it the left instead, or have a more
| | 06:38 | even arch there in the middle?
| | 06:39 | I start dragging these other
keyframes out to go ahead and shape the sort
| | 06:43 | of bounce that I want.
| | 06:45 | I want my last bounce to be
not as tall as the initial bounce.
| | 06:48 | I do want my initial throw of the ball
to maybe come out straight a little bit
| | 06:52 | before bouncing, and that's
roughly the curve that I like.
| | 06:57 | Maybe a little bit more influence down
this direction there. There, let's try that.
| | 07:02 | RAM Preview.
Bounce, bounce, bounce.
| | 07:07 | That's exactly the animation I was going for.
| | 07:08 | I could have tried to get something
close by doing a normal motion path edit,
| | 07:13 | but there is no way I would have had
the velocity this smooth, because the ball
| | 07:16 | is going continuously in X,
but jerking back and forth in Y.
| | 07:21 | Another nice thing about having the
dimensions separated like this is I can edit
| | 07:26 | one of them without affecting the other.
| | 07:28 | Now let's say the client comes along and
says, well, it's a cool animation, but I
| | 07:32 | don't want the ball to
travel as far across screen.
| | 07:36 | Well, previously that would have
required me to edit all of the position
| | 07:39 | keyframes to make that happen.
| | 07:41 | But in this case the client is
talking about X. So I can take just the X
| | 07:45 | parameter at the second keyframe and say don't
travel as far, don't go too high of a value.
| | 07:50 | Here I'll collapse the
bouncing motion. Much less travel.
| | 07:56 | On the other hand, the client might
say, I want it to go off the screen.
| | 07:59 | So I'll go ahead and drag the X graph,
add the Shift key to constraint it in
| | 08:04 | time to where the ball goes off the screen.
| | 08:09 | I've got a constant speed going across screen.
| | 08:11 | If I want the ball to slow down, I
might go ahead and take this, hold down
| | 08:15 | Option for the Convert Vertex tool and pull
out a handle and say go ahead and ease into it.
| | 08:20 | Now if I hold down the Shift key the
constraint its movement, it's going to come
| | 08:24 | like an Easy Ease to no motion
at all in X. But since I want it to be
| | 08:28 | moving a little bit next to slower, I'm
going to put these handles at an angle
| | 08:34 | and just give a bit of a bowing motion.
| | 08:36 | So it goes faster in X and slows down
gradually as it gets to the second keyframe.
| | 08:40 | I will RAM-preview that. Boom, boom!
| | 08:45 | Going too far now.
| | 08:46 | Let's just drag it down, so it
doesn't travel as far in X. Preview again.
| | 08:52 | Now the ball is slowing down gradually
as it goes across the screen, but it keeps
| | 08:56 | the same up and down
movement in the Y dimension.
| | 08:59 | Trust me, this was much easier and went
much faster than if I was trying do to
| | 09:02 | tug of war with motion path handles in
the old mode, in the Normal mode without
| | 09:06 | Separated Dimensions.
| | 09:07 | Now once you've created a path like this,
if you want to go back to the old mode
| | 09:13 | where every one is bundled together,
you can indeed select your parameter and
| | 09:18 | turn off separate X, Y, Z, Separate
Dimensions. And it will revert to the old
| | 09:23 | keyframe type where you get a
motion path in the Comp panel.
| | 09:27 | However, you see that the
approximation is not that great.
| | 09:30 | It kind of goes out at an odd angle
here it, and it doesn't really work there.
| | 09:34 | The velocity's really linear in-
between the keyframes where I have something
| | 09:37 | more subtle going on.
| | 09:38 | Really, for moves like this, Separate
Dimensions just makes it much easier to
| | 09:42 | execute, and you really realize it when
you're start doing camera moves in 3D as well.
| | 09:47 | Anyway, that was a tour of Graph Editor.
| | 09:49 | I know it takes a bit of thinking to
get your head wrapped around it, but it's
| | 09:52 | a very powerful tool.
| | 09:53 | But don't worry. For the rest of this
lesson, we're going to play with some
| | 09:56 | fun stuff.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Crafting Organic MovementsUsing Motion Sketch| 00:07 | After Effects has lots of ways to help
you craft an animation, but sometimes the
| | 00:11 | best way is to merely draw it by hand.
| | 00:13 | This is where Motion Sketch comes in.
| | 00:16 | If you have the exercise files that
came up with this lesson, open up the Comp
| | 00:19 | 05a Butterfly Flight *Starter.
| | 00:22 | You can also substitute any object of
your own choice, or you can even just
| | 00:25 | create Llayer > New > Solid and make
yourself a small solid, say something
| | 00:31 | about 100 pixel square.
| | 00:33 | Anyway, I've got a butterfly, so I
am going to play with that for now.
| | 00:35 | My goal is to have this butterfly fly
around the scene. Maybe start in this
| | 00:40 | flower, go around happily,
and then back up on this flower.
| | 00:45 | It looks a little bit big for this
image, so let's go ahead and type S for
| | 00:49 | scale and scale him down until he looks more
appropriate given the size of flower, somewhere around 60%.
| | 00:56 | Next comes opening up the
Motion Sketch Assistant.
| | 00:58 | There are a couple of ways of doing that.
| | 01:00 | I can go to window and select Motion
Sketch. Another approach is to go to the
| | 01:05 | Workspaces and select Animation.
| | 01:08 | This will open up a selection of
panels which are very useful for creating
| | 01:11 | animations, including the Smoother
which we'll talk about in the next movie,
| | 01:15 | the Wiggler, and Motion Sketch.
| | 01:18 | Just to make sure no one has fiddled
with my defaults, I'll go ahead and say
| | 01:20 | yeah, reset Animation and say
yes to discard. There we go.
| | 01:24 | And I'll go ahead and resize this so I
can view it at 100%, so I can have all
| | 01:28 | the pixels to play with.
| | 01:30 | Motion Sketch allows you to use your
mouse or whatever cursor controlled device
| | 01:34 | you may have to go ahead and
drag around inside the Comp panel.
| | 01:38 | It will remember that path and the
timing of that path and create a set of
| | 01:42 | position keyframes to
try to re-create that path.
| | 01:46 | I want to make sure my butterfly is selected.
| | 01:47 | I need to have a layer
selected for this to work.
| | 01:49 | I go to my Motion Sketch
panel and look in my options.
| | 01:53 | Capture speed at basically says how
fast do you want the clock to be running
| | 01:58 | while you're drawing around the screen.
| | 02:00 | A 100% says capture real-time.
| | 02:03 | If you're trying to create a
particularly complex path that you may have trouble
| | 02:06 | drawing in real time, you can enter a
lower number here so it slows down the
| | 02:10 | clock and gives you more
time to draw out your path.
| | 02:13 | I tend to capture in real-time.
| | 02:15 | Next is Smoothing and this was
added sometime later to Motion Sketch.
| | 02:21 | When you Motion Sketch a path around the screen,
you are going to create a lot of keyframes.
| | 02:26 | Smoothing is a way of reducing those
keyframes to keep just the essence of your path.
| | 02:30 | One, it's not a bad default,
but personally I set this to zero to keep all of
| | 02:36 | my keyframes and then I'll make a
decision later about how much I want smooth this.
| | 02:41 | Show has an option of Wireframe.
Basically whether or not you want to see the
| | 02:45 | bounding box around the outside
edges of your layer as you draw.
| | 02:49 | If you turn it off,
you won't see anything at all.
| | 02:51 | You want to even see the
layers. So I leave it on.
| | 02:53 | And then Background. Background is
important in case you have important context
| | 02:58 | that you want to use for reference
while you're drawing, and in this case I do.
| | 03:02 | I want to start in this flower,
| | 03:03 | I want to end in this flower, and so I
definitely need to see the background.
| | 03:06 | And then there is a Start Time and
Duration. These are controlled by the work
| | 03:11 | area inside your comp.
| | 03:13 | If you are not familiar with the work
area, we have a separate sidebar movie at
| | 03:16 | the end of this lesson about it. Okay.
| | 03:18 | Now that I am all set up I'll make
sure again that the butterfly is selected.
| | 03:21 | I click on Start Capture and I don't
need to panic. Motion Sketch won't start
| | 03:27 | until I start dragging, so don't feel
rushed. Calm down, take a breath, thing
| | 03:32 | about what you want to do, and when
you're ready, click and start dragging.
| | 03:37 | And you'll notice the time indicator
in the Timeline panel starts running as
| | 03:40 | soon as I click on the object.
| | 03:42 | So here is my initial path.
| | 03:44 | I don't know if I got back to the
flower in time before my time ran out.
| | 03:48 | So let's go ahead and press zero on the
numeric keypad and RAM Preview to see how it looks.
| | 03:52 | Okay, it was a little late off
the mark there. Not a bad path.
| | 03:58 | I wouldn't mind flying around the
wider range of this comp and it looks like I
| | 04:01 | indeed did not get back in time. Okay.
| | 04:04 | I'll stop my preview and I can either
Undo to remove all those keyframes or
| | 04:09 | press U to Reveal them, press Home to
make sure I'm back on my initial start
| | 04:14 | position, and just turn the
animations stopwatch off to remove all those
| | 04:18 | keyframes. Either way.
| | 04:19 | Okay, let's try again. I'll go over
select Start Capture, remember that this is
| | 04:25 | going to start recording at the moment I
click, and now I take off and say, okay,
| | 04:29 | let's take a more loopy path around the
whole screen and get back here in time.
| | 04:33 | There we are, see how that works.
| | 04:35 | That's a little bit more like it.
Maybe that little bit ending is a little bit
| | 04:42 | funky, but I'll clean it up in the next movie.
| | 04:45 | Yeah, that's something I can work with.
| | 04:47 | It is a little bit rough.
| | 04:49 | It does have an awful lot of keyframes,
particularly if I want to go in and
| | 04:53 | start editing it, but again these are the
things I can do with tools like the Smoother.
| | 04:57 | If I wanted, I could Undo and keep trying again.
| | 04:59 | Another approach is to make multiple
copies of your object you want to drag
| | 05:02 | around or create multiple new
solids and then create different motion paths
| | 05:08 | for a variety of objects allowing you
to defer your decision later, as to which
| | 05:12 | path you prefer best, but I want
to go ahead and go with this path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Smoother| 00:07 | In the previous movie I used Motion
Sketch to go ahead and create this natural
| | 00:11 | organic flight-path for this butterfly.
| | 00:14 | However, there are a couple of problems.
| | 00:15 | One, it's generally the right shape,
but it is little bit jerky, a little bit
| | 00:19 | rough here and there, and two, when I
stop my preview I see that the motion path
| | 00:23 | has a lot of keyframes. So if I want to
do any editing I would be having to move
| | 00:28 | around quite a few different points.
| | 00:29 | Now the main reason it has so many
keyframes is when I used Motion Sketch I set
| | 00:34 | the Smoothing parameter to zero.
| | 00:36 | This is because I want to make sure it
captured every single intricacy of my
| | 00:40 | movement to give me more
options later to edit it if I want to.
| | 00:44 | Well, that time has come and I'm
going to use Smoother to do this.
| | 00:46 | Note that if you don't have
anything selected, Smoother grays out.
| | 00:51 | Smoother needs to have more than
two keyframes selected to be able to
| | 00:53 | do anything useful.
| | 00:55 | To select all the keyframes for
Position, I merely click on the word Position
| | 00:58 | and now they all will be selected.
| | 00:59 | You can tell that because they're yellow now.
| | 01:02 | Up in the Smoother panel I get a choice
whether it applies to the Spatial Path
| | 01:07 | or the Temporal Graph.
| | 01:09 | Since this is position I am dealing with a
spatial property, so that is the right choice.
| | 01:14 | And I get to set the Tolerance,
how much I smooth out the path.
| | 01:18 | The default is one, so let's just go ahead
and apply it and see what that looks like.
| | 01:21 | You'll see that that's reduced the
number of keyframes considerably, maybe half
| | 01:27 | or so, but still quite a complex pat.
That's a lot of detail to edit,
| | 01:32 | which may be a good thing or a bad thing.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to undo and say to
myself what do I really want here?
| | 01:38 | I just want the essence of my path,
and I want just a few handles to edit.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to try a higher Tolerance
like say 10, and this is not a precise
| | 01:46 | science, so keep trying
numbers to see which you like.
| | 01:48 | Higher numbers give more smoothing.
| | 01:50 | I find that 10 quite up
and it works well for me.
| | 01:52 | So I click Apply and now I have a very
simple path with just a couple handfuls
| | 01:56 | of keyframes and some very
simple handles to drag around.
| | 02:00 | Now that I've a properly smoothed path,
I can go about editing it to change the
| | 02:03 | flight path around here.
| | 02:05 | Note that when Smoother is done all of
your keyframes are enabled, so if you
| | 02:09 | were to try to move one of them you
would move the entire motion path as a unit.
| | 02:12 | I am going to Undo, click off to
deselect the path, and now pick one
| | 02:17 | individual keyframe.
| | 02:18 | I want to work on this one, so I'll
click just that keyframe, pull it outside a
| | 02:23 | little bit further here, pull it down so
I go by that little blade of grass back here,
| | 02:27 | and start playing
around my path a little bit.
| | 02:30 | Smooth out the path there, pull down a
wider loop here, and a wider loop here,
| | 02:36 | and see how much easier this is to edit
than all those keyframes I had before.
| | 02:39 | I also notice at the end here I have
some really crazy jerky movement going on.
| | 02:44 | Oh, at the start and end.
I need to edit both of these.
| | 02:48 | Okay, so let's delete a couple of keyframes.
| | 02:52 | I'm starting at the right place.
| | 02:53 | I don't mind editing up down here.
| | 02:55 | This keyframe is a bit weird, so let's
go ahead and pull it out a little bit and
| | 02:59 | work on the Bezier handles.
| | 03:01 | It looks like one of my
Bezier handles is missing.
| | 03:03 | It looks like I have a strange linear path
between here, so I need to pull out some
| | 03:07 | handles to go to bend in this shape.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to press G to temporarily
switch to Convert Vertex tool and pull
| | 03:13 | myself out a handle there.
| | 03:14 | Pull this butterfly's path out little bit.
| | 03:18 | Again, use G and pull out that handle as well.
| | 03:22 | Now I've got a little handle I can
deal with. I can reposition the butterfly,
| | 03:26 | get the a better flight path coming
off that flower. That's better.
| | 03:32 | My ending here is bit funky as well.
Actually I think I have too many keyframes.
| | 03:36 | So I'm going to select a keyframe,
press Delete to get rid of it, put the
| | 03:41 | final one into position.
| | 03:42 | I think I'll get rid of this keyframe as well.
| | 03:45 | Hold down G to get Convert Vertex,
pull out that handle, move this over and
| | 03:51 | there we go, smoother path.
| | 03:53 | Looks like I might have some velocity
issues here, because I see some dots are
| | 03:57 | very closely spaced here
and very spaced out here.
| | 04:00 | I'm going to go ahead and drag this
keyframe in time to balance the dots on
| | 04:05 | either side of that keyframe.
| | 04:07 | Just a couple of movies from now I'm
going to show you a really sleek way of
| | 04:11 | dealing with this velocity,
but for now this improves what I have.
| | 04:14 | Okay, let's press zero and preview this again.
| | 04:20 | Okay, that's a funer smoother path.
| | 04:21 | I do see that out here, those are going out of
frame, so let's go ahead and pull that handle in.
| | 04:26 | The idea of going past that
little wand was little too funky.
| | 04:29 | So let's go ahead and see
what we do here. Better.
| | 04:33 | And I will just pull this down
to round out my path. There we go.
| | 04:38 | So I started out with an organic hand
-sketched path using Motion Sketch.
| | 04:42 | I have now used Smoother to
improve that path, but there are still a
| | 04:45 | couple things wrong.
| | 04:46 | One, the butterfly is just skidding around.
He is not exactly flying along the path and two,
| | 04:50 | I still have some speed changes.
| | 04:52 | Let's addresses those two
issues in the next two movies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with Auto-Orientation| 00:07 | A couple of movies ago I used the
Motion Sketch to create a very organic
| | 00:11 | flight path or motion path of this butterfly.
| | 00:14 | Motion Sketch creates position
keyframes based on how I drag my cursor around
| | 00:18 | the Comp panel, but it is does not
create any rotation keyframes and you'll
| | 00:23 | notice the butterfly always keeps the
same orientation in relation to the comp,
| | 00:27 | no matter what it's doing around the path.
| | 00:29 | Well, this is not how butterflies
actually fly. So what I needed to do is rotate
| | 00:33 | so it's always pointing along that path.
| | 00:36 | Well, fortunately, there's command in After
Effects that will do that for you automatically.
| | 00:41 | Select the layer, go up to Layer >
Transforms for transformations and then
| | 00:46 | select Auto-Orient. That will open up a new
dialog. Select Orient Along Path and click OK.
| | 00:55 | Now you'll see that the butterfly has
flipped around in rotation and as I drag
| | 00:58 | my Time Indicator through all these
keyframes, you'll see that the butterfly is
| | 01:03 | automatically rotating, depending
on how it's facing along this path.
| | 01:07 | Now, unfortunately After Effect does
not know how this layer was originally
| | 01:11 | oriented, so it does not know what is the
correct initial orientation of this butterfly.
| | 01:16 | That's no problem.
| | 01:17 | I'll hold down Shift and type R to
add Rotation to my visible parameters on
| | 01:22 | the Timeline panel.
| | 01:23 | Now I'll start playing around with the
Rotation parameter to see which way the
| | 01:27 | butterfly needs to point
to along the flight path.
| | 01:30 | Normally it's a multiple of 90 degrees
unless your layer happens to be drawn skewed to
| | 01:35 | normal up-down, left-right orientation.
| | 01:38 | Okay, this is looking pretty good
actually. Now it automatically rotates along
| | 01:41 | the path, but I do have a couple of problems.
| | 01:44 | One, he goes to a really weird kink
right here, and two, it's really common to
| | 01:50 | have problems at the start and end of paths.
| | 01:54 | Fortunately this is pretty smooth,
but I'll show you the problem.
| | 01:58 | Okay, as we go through this keyframe,
we have this odd rotation and that's
| | 02:03 | because the motion path is going to
a kink right here at this keyframe.
| | 02:07 | What you want to do is play around the
path and your Bezier handles to smooth
| | 02:13 | transitions through keyframes as much as possible.
| | 02:16 | Keyframe handles that are too long will
start to bump into each other and create
| | 02:20 | unusual shapes. Sometimes better to
shorten up your handles believe it or not,
| | 02:26 | and move your keyframes
until you have more rounding.
| | 02:29 | So now let's see what that
looks likes for that path.
| | 02:32 | That's a bit better of a rotation.
| | 02:33 | The one place where you often run into
this problem is at your very first or
| | 02:38 | your very last keyframe.
| | 02:39 | I'm going to hold Command on Mac or
Ctrl on Windows, press plus, zoom in at
| | 02:44 | 200%, hold down the Spacebar to
temporarily get the Hand tool.
| | 02:48 | Let's look at that starting point.
| | 02:51 | What you really need is for your handle, for
that first/last keyframe, to come out smoothly.
| | 02:56 | If the handle is off at a weird
angle or too short, you'll get some weird
| | 03:00 | rotations as you get close to that
keyframe. Watch, this butterfly has suddenly
| | 03:04 | flipped in these first
couple frames of animation.
| | 03:06 | So whenever you're using Auto-Orient,
you really need to pay attention to those
| | 03:10 | first and last keyframes, to get a
smooth path in and out of that keyframe.
| | 03:15 | Let's go to the end.
| | 03:17 | I'll select my end keyframes so I can
see how that looks like, and it looks like
| | 03:21 | it's a linear keyframe.
| | 03:22 | It doesn't even have a
handle that I can easily discern.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to hold down the G key to
temporarily get the Convert Vertex tool.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to pull out that handle just
to make sure it's smooth, and again if I
| | 03:32 | was at a weird angle like this or
backward is off to an angle like that, I would
| | 03:37 | have problems with the butterfly doing
some bad rotations, right, when I came
| | 03:39 | close to that keyframe.
| | 03:40 | I want to make sure that the
handle is pointed along the way.
| | 03:45 | The motion path either
enters or exits that keyframe.
| | 03:50 | Better! I'll hold down Shift key and
type forward slash to re-center my image
| | 03:53 | and scale back to 100%, RAM preview,
and now I have a nice auto-oriented
| | 03:59 | butterfly flying around my
handdrawn and carefully smooth path.
| | 04:03 | Next, let's work on his speed along that path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using roving keyframes| 00:07 | In the previous movies in this chapter
I've made a complex motion path that I
| | 00:12 | am very happy with.
| | 00:12 | This is my spatial path.
| | 00:14 | Now I am going to work on my temporal
keyframes to smooth out their timing and
| | 00:18 | their contribution to the animation.
| | 00:20 | If you have the project files that
came with this lesson but you have not
| | 00:23 | worked through the previous few movies,
| | 00:25 | you can open up 05-
Butterfly Flight*starter with path.
| | 00:29 | I will do that now.
| | 00:30 | I will select position, so that you can
see my motion path. Notice the spacing
| | 00:35 | of the dots in between the keyframes.
| | 00:37 | Sometimes they are very
spaced out, like around here.
| | 00:40 | Sometimes it's bit closer together like
through here, and I will RAM Preview by
| | 00:43 | pressing 0 on the numeric keypad.
| | 00:45 | Now you can see I have got a nice
looping path of this butterfly, but there
| | 00:49 | are some speed changes.
| | 00:51 | For example, it's fast there, slow there,
very fast there, and it kind of clumps
| | 00:57 | in and out of the flower.
| | 00:58 | It doesn't land softly.
It doesn't take off softly.
| | 01:01 | Let's improve that.
| | 01:02 | Well, earlier in this lesson, we
gave you some ideas by how to quickly
| | 01:06 | improve your animation.
| | 01:08 | So let's try those out first.
| | 01:10 | One idea we had to make a slow take off
and a slow landing is to apply Easy Ease
| | 01:16 | with the first and last keyframes.
| | 01:17 | So I will do that now.
I will set my first keyframe.
| | 01:20 | I will press the shortcut
key of F9 to apply Easy Ease.
| | 01:23 | I will select my last
keyframe and do the same thing.
| | 01:27 | Now when I RAM Preview, I see that I
do indeed have a gentler start and a
| | 01:33 | gentler stop, which is nice, but I
still have these sudden speed changes in the
| | 01:37 | middle of the flight.
| | 01:38 | So let's tackle these next.
| | 01:40 | Before we go further, it might be a nice
idea to go into the Graph Editor just to
| | 01:44 | see exactly what is going
on with this motion path.
| | 01:47 | We have the Graph Editor set to the
default of Auto-Select Graph Type.
| | 01:52 | That means for position paths we are
going to see the Speed Graph, and you can
| | 01:56 | see how the speed really changes level here.
| | 01:58 | Faster, slower, a lot faster, as well
as the ease out and the ease in to our
| | 02:05 | first and last keyframes.
| | 02:06 | Even more important than these speed changes
is how abrupt the changes are at the keyframes.
| | 02:12 | Well, another trick we showed you is
to use the Auto Bezier keyframe type to
| | 02:15 | smooth out these speed changes.
| | 02:17 | Let's go ahead and select all these
middle keyframes and since we are in the
| | 02:21 | Graph Editor we will go ahead and use
this handy button to convert and selected
| | 02:23 | keyframes to Auto Bezier.
| | 02:24 | I'll do that and now at least the speed
changes through the keyframes has been
| | 02:30 | smoothed out somewhat, but we still have
some faster moments, slower moments, and
| | 02:34 | a lot faster moments.
| | 02:36 | Again, let's us RAM Preview.
| | 02:43 | It's an improvement, but it's not a
smooth even speed, which is my goal for this
| | 02:47 | particular animation.
| | 02:49 | So we are in the Graph Editor.
| | 02:51 | Let's play around with adjusting the
keyframes to try to improve our animations.
| | 02:55 | Now I am going to click All so now all
the keyframes are selected and start
| | 02:57 | playing around with dragging keyframes out.
| | 02:59 | I can do a little smoothing there. Now if
I move that there, I have got a problem.
| | 03:03 | If I get that closer, the
speed is a little more equal.
| | 03:06 | We got some big problems here with
fast speed. To slow that down I think I
| | 03:11 | need to move all these keyframes earlier,
and then do some more tugging with these keyframes.
| | 03:18 | It's still not quite as far as
I want. I saw some humps here.
| | 03:22 | You can see where this is going to take
a lot of work to really smooth out in a
| | 03:26 | flat line, if that's my goal.
| | 03:28 | And some of you are thinking
there must be an easier way.
| | 03:31 | Well, you would be right.
| | 03:33 | And that easier way is a trick unique to
After Effects known as roving keyframes.
| | 03:38 | Remember for things like position
paths, After Effects thinks of spatial
| | 03:43 | keyframes in the Comp panel
differently than it thinks of temporal keyframes
| | 03:48 | in the Timeline panel.
| | 03:49 | Roving keyframes takes advantage of this
by keeping your spatial path, but doing
| | 03:56 | what's necessary time-wise in the
Timeline panel to the temporal keyframes to
| | 04:01 | smooth out animation speed.
| | 04:03 | To apply it, select your keyframes.
| | 04:05 | You can either use the very handy
selected keyframes menu and choose Rove
| | 04:10 | Across Time or right-click on the
keyframe and choose Rove Across Time.
| | 04:16 | Watch what happens when I release the mouse.
| | 04:18 | Suddenly I have a very smooth arc for
my speed graph as opposed to all these
| | 04:23 | undulations as the
butterfly sped up and slowed down.
| | 04:26 | Our first and last keyframes are
still active and you can see I still have
| | 04:30 | my Bezier influence handles, but now all of
the middle keyframes have been caused to rove.
| | 04:36 | Let's go ahead and RAM Preview
again and see what this looks like.
| | 04:41 | Now you can see the difference.
| | 04:43 | We have a much gentler speed
throughout the course of the flight.
| | 04:46 | It comes away from the flower slowly,
keeps even speed through all these turns, and
| | 04:51 | then eases back into that final flower.
| | 04:55 | The spatial keyframes are
still live and independent.
| | 05:00 | That means if I wanted to pick up and
move one of these spatial keyframes,
| | 05:05 | like that, the temporal keyframes are
going to do what they need to do down on
| | 05:10 | the Graph Editor to maintain this even smooth
speed throughout the butterfly's flight path.
| | 05:18 | As I do things like this, you can
even see the dots move along the path.
| | 05:22 | Likewise, I can go down here and play
around with the ease in and ease out
| | 05:25 | amounts, maybe have a faster
take off and a slow ease in.
| | 05:34 | My motion path remains intact. RAM Preview.
| | 05:37 | Now we have our fast takeoff and a
gradual deceleration into the flower,
| | 05:43 | my final keyframe.
| | 05:48 | So that's kind of nice, but say that I wanted
to flatten out this graph here in the middle.
| | 05:55 | I can either play around with my
influence handles by shortening them up,
| | 05:58 | which gives me a flat speed in the middle,
but now I have a very little ease in
| | 06:02 | and ease out at the start, or I will go
ahead and make that longer of ease that
| | 06:06 | I want and instead convert one of
the keyframes back to a normal keyframe
| | 06:14 | just by clicking on it.
| | 06:16 | Once I do that, I can go ahead and
drag it, pull out its Bezier handles, and
| | 06:21 | manipulate it like a somewhat normal
keyframe to go ahead and flatten out my curve,
| | 06:26 | but all of the intermediate
keyframes on either side will still rove as
| | 06:30 | necessary to give me a nice smooth
speed change between my live keyframes.
| | 06:37 | Now my first, last, and middle keyframe.
| | 06:40 | Let's preview that.
| | 06:41 | Now I've got a nice smooth even speed in
the middle of the flight and so I have
| | 06:46 | a reasonable ease into my
landing point on the flower.
| | 06:52 | By the way, just like I unroved this one
keyframe in the middle, if you like you
| | 06:56 | can unrove all the keyframes.
| | 06:58 | Again, I will select them.
| | 07:01 | I can right-click or use a menu item
and choose Rove Across Time. Toggling it
| | 07:06 | again will turn it off and now I have
independent keyframes for all my previous
| | 07:12 | temporal keyframes, but they didn't move.
| | 07:15 | They went ahead and kept the timing and
the Bezier handles that they required to
| | 07:19 | keep this nice and smooth path.
And then I can go ahead and start editing the
| | 07:22 | speed curve again if I want to. I will Undo.
| | 07:24 | I will go back to that animation I
made earlier, this particular flight path.
| | 07:29 | I am just looking into traditional
keyframes displaying the Timeline panel.
| | 07:32 | Once again, I can just go ahead and
select Position, so that all a keyframes are
| | 07:36 | selected, right-click on a keyframe and
choose Rove Across Time, just like I did
| | 07:42 | in the Graph Editor.
| | 07:43 | Once I do that, I get the same behavior.
All the in between keyframes have slid
| | 07:48 | in time to go ahead and give me nice
smooth speeds in between. I'll RAM preview.
| | 07:53 | I have got a nice smooth speed in the middle.
| | 07:57 | I can go ahead and pick my first
keyframe, press shortcut F9 to make it Easy
| | 08:02 | Ease, same with the last
one. RAM Preview again.
| | 08:05 | Now I accelerate slowly from the flower,
go around my path, and come in slowly to
| | 08:10 | my end position. Very nice!
| | 08:13 | One last really cool thing about roving
keyframes. Since just the first and last
| | 08:18 | keyframes are active or editable, it
makes it really easy to compress or stretch
| | 08:23 | the timing of your animation.
| | 08:24 | Say I like all of this, but I wanted to
happen faster. Rather than having to
| | 08:29 | accordion the movement all the keyframes,
I just click on the last one. Drag it
| | 08:34 | and all the keyframes in between are
automatically accordion to give me the
| | 08:38 | same constant smooth speed in
between just everybody is fast to know.
| | 08:42 | RAM Preview and there I go, faster butterfly.
| | 08:46 | By the way, just to throw one more trick
at you, you can pull off that accordion
| | 08:50 | trick with normal keyframes.
| | 08:52 | I will switch back to the
comp we were working on earlier.
| | 08:55 | There are all of my unroved keyframes
in the normal display as opposed to the
| | 08:59 | Graph Editor display.
| | 09:00 | If I want to accordion them as a group,
I will select them all, pull down Option
| | 09:05 | on Mac, Alt on Windows, and drag the
first or last keyframe, and I will get the
| | 09:10 | same accordion action that I was
getting free with roving keyframes.
| | 09:15 | So that's another tip for you.
| | 09:17 | Roving keyframes in general though is a
really wonderful thing to make complex
| | 09:20 | motion paths such as fly-throughs
much, much easier to pull off.
| | 09:25 | It's a good trick to remember and
one that not a lot of After Effects
| | 09:28 | artists are aware of.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Smooth Motion and Stop MotionEnabling motion blur| 00:07 | The last two advanced animation
techniques I want to talk about is how to make
| | 00:10 | things appear more smooth and how
to make things appear more abrupt.
| | 00:14 | Let's start with a smooth one.
| | 00:15 | You might have noticed, as I preview the
motions of this butterfly, is sometimes
| | 00:19 | it's moving so fast it appears to
strobe around the screen and it can be little
| | 00:24 | hard to watch animations like this.
| | 00:26 | Well, there is an option inside After
Effects called Motion Blur, where you can
| | 00:30 | have objects that are moving quickly,
be it moving in position, scale or rotation,
| | 00:35 | automatically blur and give streaks
that indicates they're moving very quickly.
| | 00:40 | So in fact, what you're used to seeing
when you videotape or film something.
| | 00:43 | Now as we look at the motion path for
this butterfly, remember that this spacing
| | 00:48 | between the dots along motion path
indicates how far that butterfly is moving
| | 00:54 | in every frame of our animation.
| | 00:57 | That's quite a large gap.
| | 00:59 | We can use Motion Blur to help smooth
the way the layer is drawn from dot to dot.
| | 01:03 | To see the results in Motion Blur,
you actually need to perform two steps.
| | 01:07 | You need to enable it for the layer
and enable it for the composition.
| | 01:10 | First let's work on the layer.
| | 01:13 | Calculating Motion Blur does
require additional computing power,
| | 01:17 | therefore, it defaults to off
on all layers in After Effects.
| | 01:21 | However, in the Timeline panel you'll
see this Motion Blur switch. It looks like
| | 01:25 | an echoed series of dots.
| | 01:27 | To enable Motion Blur for a layer,
you need to turn on the switch
| | 01:31 | underneath that column.
| | 01:33 | So for this butterfly I will turn on
the Motion Blur switch for that layer.
| | 01:38 | But you might say, hey, nothings changed yet.
| | 01:40 | Well, there are a couple of reasons.
| | 01:42 | One, enabling Motion Blur for layer
only tells After Effects to render at this
| | 01:48 | layer with Motion Blur.
| | 01:50 | It does not yet tell it to preview it in
the current Comp panel with Motion Blur.
| | 01:55 | To do that, you then need to also
enable the Motion Blur switch for the entire
| | 02:00 | composition. As opposed to a render setting,
| | 02:03 | this is a preview setting.
| | 02:05 | It only affects what you see in this
Comp panel, and this switch has no effect
| | 02:10 | on your final render.
| | 02:12 | I am going to turn it on, and you
say, "Well, heck, I still haven't seen
| | 02:15 | anything yet, Chris!"
| | 02:16 | Well, the object actually needs
to be moving, where beyond the last
| | 02:21 | keyframe the butterfly is no longer
moving and that's why no Motion Blur
| | 02:25 | has been calculated.
| | 02:27 | Motion Blur is not just an effect
that just throws on streaks in any layer.
| | 02:31 | It's calculated depending on the speed
of motion and transformations for layer.
| | 02:36 | So just start backing up over those keyframe.
| | 02:40 | You'll see this butterfly gradually
become more and more blurred depending on how
| | 02:44 | fast it's moving in the animation.
| | 02:45 | So I get to point back here around
these terms and you can really see a lot of
| | 02:50 | blurring in the butterfly's wings.
| | 02:53 | The important thing to note again is
this is not just an effect that is doing a
| | 02:56 | linear blur on the butterfly.
| | 02:57 | Let's get him back around a tight bend,
which I think was like around here.
| | 03:03 | Note that the outer wing, which is
traveling farther and faster, is more blurred
| | 03:09 | than the inner wing, which is not
turning nearly as quickly because it's on the
| | 03:13 | inside of this turn.
| | 03:15 | Also notice that the blur is
indeed curved to follow the motion path.
| | 03:20 | The way the Motion Blur works is
that After Effects is actually rendering
| | 03:23 | multiple copies of this layer at various
points along the path in between those frame dots.
| | 03:30 | So what you're seeing is a composite of
multiple copies of this image on top of each other.
| | 03:37 | It moves the layer just a little bit,
depending on how fast it's moving from
| | 03:40 | frame to frame, renders a new image,
moves it a little bit more, renders a
| | 03:44 | new image, composites those together
for you, and that's what creates this blurred effect.
| | 04:00 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting motion blur| 00:07 | You have control over how many
intermediate frames After Effects creates for
| | 00:12 | each frame of your animation,
basically how smooth your blur is.
| | 00:16 | To get access to that, you need to open
Composition > Composition Settings, then
| | 00:22 | go underneath the Advanced tab. That's
where the Motion Blur settings reside.
| | 00:26 | There are two sets of parameters: number
of samples and shutter angle and phase.
| | 00:32 | Motion Blur is not defined by the
shutter speed in After Effects. Instead it is
| | 00:37 | defined by the Shutter Angle.
| | 00:40 | This is borrowed from film-camera terminology.
| | 00:43 | One entire film frame is
considered to be 360 degrees.
| | 00:48 | The rotating film shutter in a
mechanical film camera typically exposes that
| | 00:52 | film for only half the duration of a
frame or 180 degrees of the 360 degree
| | 00:59 | rotation that the film shutter goes through.
| | 01:02 | That's why After Effects uses degrees to
define how long the shutter is open for
| | 01:07 | each frame and therefore how
long the blur trail is going to be.
| | 01:11 | 180 as I mentioned is a default for filmic look.
| | 01:14 | You can see how that looks here.
| | 01:16 | With After Effects, you can go
ahead and reduce it to a smaller number.
| | 01:19 | As I go small, you see the blur is much less.
| | 01:22 | That's because the imaginary shutter
is open for a smaller percentage of time
| | 01:26 | during the frame. Or you can increase it.
| | 01:29 | In After Effects you can actually
beyond 360 degrees, beyond one frame of
| | 01:35 | duration to create unnaturally long blurs.
| | 01:38 | By the way, this preview we are
seeing is courtesy this brand-new Preview
| | 01:43 | switch, which was added in After Effects CS5.
| | 01:46 | Before After Effects CS5, you
actually had to close this dialog to see the
| | 01:49 | results of changing these numbers.
| | 01:51 | In CS5, you now get a more or less live preview.
| | 01:54 | You have to release the mouse
and then the screen updates.
| | 01:57 | In After Effects, you can go ahead and
increase the Shutter Angle to two whole frames.
| | 02:01 | 720 degrees .
| | 02:03 | Now close this for a second.
| | 02:05 | Step through and you can
see what this looks like.
| | 02:07 | The frames now actually overlap
the blur so long for a very cool,
| | 02:12 | surreal unnatural look out.
| | 02:14 | I will open up Composition Settings again
and go back underneath the Advanced tab.
| | 02:17 | I am going to set this temporarily
back to 180 degrees. Don't press Enter.
| | 02:24 | That would close this dialog. Just
click off to accept that new value.
| | 02:29 | Shutter Phase has to do with the
point in time where After Effects starts
| | 02:35 | calculating these additional frames.
| | 02:37 | If I set Shutter Phase to 0 degrees,
After Effects will start at the current time
| | 02:44 | and then start creating these
intermediate frames to bind together from the
| | 02:48 | current time forward.
| | 02:51 | However, that's unnatural.
| | 02:53 | It creates a blur that
basically leaves your animation.
| | 02:56 | In reality, blur seems to be
centered around the current time.
| | 03:01 | Therefore, the new default in After
Effects these days is to set this to -90 degrees.
| | 03:07 | In other words, half of
the default Shutter Angle.
| | 03:10 | When you do that, you have backed up
the calculation of Motion Blur to start
| | 03:15 | half of the entire Motion Blur duration
before the current time and that extends
| | 03:20 | to half of the Motion Blur
duration after the current time.
| | 03:23 | Whenever you edit Shutter Angle, you
want to then go set Shutter Phase to -180
| | 03:29 | of whatever you chose for Shutter Angle.
| | 03:34 | Now, of course, you can do
funny things with these numbers.
| | 03:36 | You can go ahead and make these
artificially strange numbers to go ahead and
| | 03:39 | create special effects, a blur
that seems to lag or lead the object.
| | 03:44 | This becomes really fun if you
happened to have more than one copy of the
| | 03:47 | same layer. Blur them and put different
shutter angles on different copies of the layers.
| | 03:52 | Some will lead, some will lag.
| | 03:53 | You can create some kind of
fun special effects that way.
| | 03:58 | The other half of the equation is
how many samples are used to calculate
| | 04:02 | this blurred image?
| | 04:04 | How many intermediate frames are calculated?
| | 04:06 | Internally After Effects breaks layers
down into two different camps, basically
| | 04:10 | ones that are easy to calculate and
ones that are harder to calculate.
| | 04:14 | Most frames such as most 2D animations
of layers, objects, et cetera, are easy
| | 04:20 | to calculate and that's where the
second number Adaptive Sample Limit comes in.
| | 04:25 | This tells After Effects this is the
maximum number of frames I want you to
| | 04:30 | calculate to create blur for these easy layers.
| | 04:35 | You can go ahead and use fewer if
it's moving more slowly, but don't ever
| | 04:39 | use more than this.
| | 04:40 | Let's put in there in case
you have a slow computer.
| | 04:43 | You can reduce this
number all the way down to 64.
| | 04:46 | In reality, I found the Adaptive
Sample Limit renders pretty quickly.
| | 04:50 | After Effects is pretty smart
about calculating how many frames it
| | 04:53 | actually needs to use.
| | 04:55 | I tend to leave this at its maximum value,
and then leave it to After Effects to
| | 04:59 | use as many as it needs to
create smooth animations.
| | 05:03 | Then there is the harder to calculate layers.
| | 05:05 | 3D layers take more calculation time.
Also shape layers in After Effects.
| | 05:09 | And other certain effects take more
calculation time and After Effects is
| | 05:13 | concerned about using this many
samples to calculate the blur.
| | 05:17 | That's why those examples, those types
of layers, get separate samples per frame
| | 05:22 | number, such as 3D layers.
| | 05:24 | This is not adaptive at all in this case.
| | 05:26 | You set precisely how many
samples should be calculated.
| | 05:31 | 16 used to be kind like to default in
older versions of After Effects. 8 and
| | 05:35 | under to my eye is strobey in most situations.
| | 05:39 | I would use a minimum of 12.
| | 05:41 | But frankly again, After Effects
computers are so fast these days. Most of the
| | 05:46 | time, I leave these at its maximum value
for the default and only if I am having
| | 05:51 | rendering speed issues, do I
then play with reducing this.
| | 05:54 | Or if I am trying to create special
effects like strobing, I might reduce this.
| | 05:58 | Speaking of Special Effects like Strobing,
let me show me what strobing might look like.
| | 06:02 | I am going to temporarily set this
Adaptive Sample Limit down to as minimum of
| | 06:05 | 64 and I am going to speed up our
animation to be unnaturally fast.
| | 06:11 | I will put the time right here in the middle.
| | 06:13 | It's kind of hard to see what's
going on here over the background.
| | 06:15 | So I am going to temporarily turn
off our background layer and set the
| | 06:20 | background color to be white to get a
better idea of what's going on here.
| | 06:24 | I deselect the layer.
| | 06:27 | Now you can see the strobing.
| | 06:29 | Now you can see the individual copies
of the layer that are being calculated at
| | 06:34 | different points in time and merged
together to create this Motion Blur effect.
| | 06:39 | In this case, with this extremely
fast motion, 64 samples is not enough.
| | 06:43 | So that's a case where I might go back
in my Composition Settings, Command+K or
| | 06:47 | Ctrl+K as the shortcut.
| | 06:49 | Go to Advanced tab, increase the
sample limit and see how much smoother that
| | 06:54 | is, as After Effects uses as many
samples as it needs, up to 256 to create a
| | 06:59 | smooth looking blur.
| | 07:01 | I will close out of this.
| | 07:02 | Now Motion Blur is used to be a real render
hit back in earlier versions of After Effects.
| | 07:08 | It is much more efficient now.
| | 07:10 | So I don't worry about it as much I used to.
| | 07:12 | But you do need to remember the
defaults to off for all layers.
| | 07:16 | So you need to turn it on for anything
that's moving fast that you want to smooth out.
| | 07:20 | If you find that it is bogging down
your comp, particularly to say 3D layers or
| | 07:24 | some effects, you would always turn off
the preview and look at things unblurred
| | 07:28 | and let me turn it on just to check your work.
| | 07:30 | What's important is having it turned
on for the layers that you wished to be
| | 07:34 | blurred when it comes render time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Slamming down with Hold keyframes| 00:07 | We have spent most of this lesson so
far in trying to show you how to make
| | 00:10 | smooth elegant animations.
| | 00:12 | What now I am going to show you is how
to make jerky slamdowns on animations
| | 00:16 | and to do that we'll use hold keyframes.
| | 00:18 | Now Trish talked about hold keyframes
in the basic animation lesson, but I am
| | 00:22 | going to show you a very
different application of them here.
| | 00:25 | First I am going to clear my display by
doing Close All from the Comp panel, and
| | 00:30 | then if you have the project files
open up comp 06-Slam Down*starter.
| | 00:35 | If you don't have the files, just bring
in in any object or piece of text that
| | 00:39 | you might want to animate.
| | 00:39 | What I have right here is the word
REJECT inside of frame, and I want to make
| | 00:44 | this word appear to come from a height
then slam down on my white screen and
| | 00:48 | keep drifting afterwards.
| | 00:49 | I might even make it blink just for fun.
| | 00:51 | Okay, now as we have mentioned before,
quite often when you animate a good
| | 00:55 | place to start keyframing is at
the end at your final desired pose.
| | 01:00 | Well, this is my final desired pose
and let's say I want to achieve that one
| | 01:04 | second into my animation.
| | 01:05 | I've moved my Current Time
Indicator to 1 second. I select REJECT.
| | 01:10 | Press P for Position, Shift+S to also
reveal Scale, Shift+R to also reveal Rotation.
| | 01:17 | I want a keyframe all three of these properties.
| | 01:20 | To enable keyframing, I click on the
stopwatch for one of them and with the
| | 01:24 | mouse still held down, I can continue
to drag downward and it will enable the
| | 01:29 | stopwatch for the other properties as well.
| | 01:31 | Quick way to do a bunch
of properties in a hurry.
| | 01:33 | So there is my ending pose.
| | 01:35 | Let's say I want to have a
new pose every ten frames.
| | 01:38 | If I want to backup ten frames, I can
drag the Current Time Indicator, et cetera.
| | 01:42 | A great shortcut is to hold the Shift key,
which is the universal multiply by 10
| | 01:47 | key in After Effects, then press
Page Up, and I will move upwards in the
| | 01:52 | Timeline, earlier in time, by 10 frames.
| | 01:55 | Now that I am there, I am
going to go ahead and pick a scale.
| | 01:58 | Let's make it a little bit larger.
| | 02:00 | Pick a Rotation, maybe something a
little jaunty like that, and let's go ahead
| | 02:05 | and move it to different position
just to make it a little out of balance.
| | 02:08 | Let's go little David Carson here and
put this off the screen a little bit.
| | 02:12 | Shift+Page Up for another ten
frames, scale it up even bigger.
| | 02:17 | Rotate the opposite direction, maybe
like that, move over here, something
| | 02:23 | different little pose, and this is interactive.
| | 02:26 | Let's say I want to make
it a little more like that.
| | 02:29 | And then Shift+Page Up ten more frames
and let's make one more really big in
| | 02:34 | my face pose here.
| | 02:35 | It's going to animate back.
| | 02:37 | Now, let's go ahead and even make it
-90 degrees so it's standing up on edge,
| | 02:43 | and pick a couple of letters like E, C, and
scale it down a little bit so I can see them both.
| | 02:50 | Now you might have noticed that
my Scale value is well over 100%.
| | 02:55 | And one of the pieces of advice we had
given you in the past is that you don't
| | 02:59 | want to scale layers over
100%, because they will get soft.
| | 03:03 | But this is still looking pretty sharp.
| | 03:05 | Well, there's a reason for that.
| | 03:06 | Pixel-based layers will indeed
get soft when they go over 100%.
| | 03:12 | However, vector-based layers-- layers
that were drawn using Shape tools or Pen
| | 03:16 | tools such as characters inside
Illustrator or characters created by fonts which
| | 03:23 | are also vector outlines.
| | 03:25 | Well, After Effects can render those on the
fly and make them look sharper at whatever size
| | 03:29 | and trick to that is the
Continuous Rasterization switch.
| | 03:33 | If you have a vector-based layer,
something drawn with paths or a font, et
| | 03:37 | cetera, and if you have Continuous
Rasterization enabled for that layer, you can
| | 03:44 | then scale it up over 100% and it will
still render sharp inside After Effects.
| | 03:49 | If I turn this off, you
notice how-- bleb, fuzzy it looks.
| | 03:54 | It's not nice at all.
| | 03:55 | Turn on, nice, clean, and sharp.
| | 03:57 | This does have other implications with
rendering orders and stuff like that and
| | 04:01 | we will bring up later in future
lessons, but in the meantime, it's a great
| | 04:04 | thing for text and Illustrator artwork.
| | 04:06 | Anyway here we are.
| | 04:07 | I've got my Slam Down pose.
| | 04:09 | I set up one and make a drift at the end so
I'll press the End key to get to the end here.
| | 04:13 | And to make a drift, I will
scale it down a little bit.
| | 04:16 | Let's just give a little bit of "I am
falling in space" like a little bit of rotation.
| | 04:21 | Okay, that looks good. Let's RAM Preview.
| | 04:22 | I will press 0 on the numeric keypad
and that's interesting, but that's not
| | 04:31 | all what I intended.
| | 04:32 | I wanted to go pose, pose,
pose, not slide, slide, slide.
| | 04:37 | Well, that's where hold keyframes come in handy.
| | 04:41 | As usual, first I want to show you
a wrong way you may be tempted to do
| | 04:44 | something, then I will show you the right way.
| | 04:46 | The wrong way would be to say, well
you know, I just want to hold these
| | 04:50 | keyframes values for the entire
duration targets of the X keyframes.
| | 04:55 | So let's go to those keyframes, press
Page Up to back up one frame, Command+C
| | 05:01 | or Ctrl+C to copy those keyframes, then
Command or Ctrl+V to paste them at the current time.
| | 05:07 | And you go perfect, exactly what I wanted.
| | 05:10 | I am holding the same value and then when I
get to the next frame, I jump. Problem solved.
| | 05:15 | Well, maybe, maybe not.
| | 05:19 | The problem with doing things this
way is things can happen in between
| | 05:22 | those two keyframes.
| | 05:23 | For example, if you are doing video
and you need to field render your
| | 05:27 | material, you'll actually render a
field in between those two keyframes and
| | 05:31 | therefore you will see an intermediate pose.
| | 05:33 | If I had Motion Blur enabled for this
layer, you'll get some funny things going
| | 05:37 | on here in between these two frames.
| | 05:39 | I mean here is my whole pose and
here's it's slamming down to the next frame.
| | 05:43 | It may be not what I intended.
| | 05:45 | As Trish showed you in a prior lesson,
is also prompts a Position path when you
| | 05:49 | copy/paste keyframes and things wandering around.
| | 05:51 | This is not the right approach.
| | 05:53 | The right approach is to change
the keyframe interpolation type.
| | 05:57 | That's one of the secrets in After Effects.
| | 05:59 | Don't use linear keyframes or everything.
| | 06:01 | It's usually a better interpolation type
to move between keyframes in a better way.
| | 06:06 | In this case, it's hold keyframes.
| | 06:09 | I want all these guys to be hold, so I
am going to click Position, select all
| | 06:12 | those, hold down Shift.
| | 06:14 | Click Scale, select all those.
| | 06:16 | Hold down Shift, click on
Rotation, select all those.
| | 06:19 | They are all yellow and selected now.
| | 06:20 | And I can either go to the Animation
menu or right-click on a keyframe and
| | 06:26 | choose Toggle Hold Keyframe.
| | 06:29 | That says convert these to hld keyframes.
| | 06:32 | When I do so, you will see the very
ends of these frames have changed to
| | 06:36 | have squared-off edges.
| | 06:38 | The squared-off edge implies, hold that
value until you get to the next keyframe,
| | 06:43 | which has a different front on it.
| | 06:45 | You will notice that my motion
paths straightened out as well too.
| | 06:48 | There is no dots indicating
any intermediate positions.
| | 06:51 | All right, let's RAM Preview.
| | 06:55 | Okay, that beginning is right.
| | 06:57 | That's exactly what I wanted for the
beginning, but it's not drifting at the end.
| | 07:02 | What's going on here?
| | 07:03 | Well, this is the danger of
applying something to everything.
| | 07:07 | Sometimes you do need some variations.
| | 07:10 | My problem is I applied hold keyframes
even to these keyframes, which are supposed to
| | 07:15 | drift over time to the ending.
| | 07:16 | So I am going to select these last
keyframes, the ones where the drift
| | 07:20 | is supposed to start.
| | 07:22 | Hold down Command on Mac, Ctrl on Windows,
click on them to convert them back to
| | 07:26 | linear keyframes and now I'll have my
drift as I go from this linear keyframe to
| | 07:32 | the next point in time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blinking with Hold keyframes| 00:07 | I mentioned I wanted to make this blink as well.
| | 00:09 | I can blink either the frame or the text.
| | 00:12 | I think I'll continue with the text
since I have already been working with it.
| | 00:15 | Blinking is opacity, so I am going to hold
down Shift and press T to a reveal Opacity.
| | 00:20 | Enable 100% for my initial opacity and
I will keep that value for all of the
| | 00:26 | time before the first keyframe.
| | 00:29 | And the nice thing about interpolation
in After Effects is once you have set an
| | 00:31 | interpolation once, it will remember
that interpolation for all subsequent
| | 00:35 | keyframes you create later in time.
| | 00:37 | So I am going to revert this one right now
into a hold keyframe. See this squared-off end.
| | 00:42 | Let's say I want to blink every 10
frames. Shift+Page Down to move forward 10
| | 00:46 | frames, set that Opacity to zero. Now I am off.
| | 00:51 | Shift+Page Down 10 more frames.
| | 00:54 | I could keep typing in numbers
or I could be intelligently lazy.
| | 00:58 | I'll click Opacity to select those two
keyframes, Command+C or Ctrl+C to copy them,
| | 01:03 | Command+V or Ctrl+V to paste them.
| | 01:06 | When you paste keyframes the first one
will start at the current time, then keep
| | 01:11 | the same spacing afterward.
| | 01:13 | So there's my paste.
| | 01:14 | There is those two guys copied and I'm
going to 10 frames later here, copy all
| | 01:19 | these guys again, Command+C, Command+
V, and there is now all my keyframes
| | 01:24 | repeated in the same pattern.
| | 01:26 | RAM Preview and there is my
slamdown animation and blinking at the end.
| | 01:30 | That's what I was trying to do.
| | 01:33 | Hold keyframes are a really good
trick and you know there's a lot of After
| | 01:36 | Effects artists who don't even know
that they're in the program, even though
| | 01:39 | they have been in there practically since day one.
| | 01:42 | It's a nice little trick when you're
trying to create jerky rather than smooth
| | 01:45 | and elegant animations.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. QuizzlersQuizzler challenges| 00:07 | One of the most valuable skills you
can learn as a motion graphic artist is
| | 00:11 | the ability to watch somebody else's
animation and figure out how it was done.
| | 00:15 | Figure out how you would re-
create it in After Effects.
| | 00:18 | In that vein, we have three movies
we'd like you to look at and try to figure
| | 00:22 | out and recreate yourself.
| | 00:24 | If you have the project files that came
with this lesson, you've got access to
| | 00:27 | these inside the Quizzler Movies folder.
| | 00:29 | First, I am going to open
up Quizzler Bounce+Squish.
| | 00:33 | It is very similar to the bouncing
ball you saw earlier in the Separate
| | 00:36 | Dimensions movie, but you'll notice
at the bottom of the bounces something
| | 00:40 | different is going on.
| | 00:41 | The ball is actually
compressing or squishing as it hits.
| | 00:45 | Squishing, by the way, is a really
important skill for all sorts of character
| | 00:49 | style or just even cartoon style animations.
| | 00:52 | Let's scrub though this and see what's going on.
| | 00:54 | As we come close here, we're actually
compressing the ball and then going back
| | 00:58 | to the normal dimension during the
bounce and then when we hit again,
| | 01:02 | compressing the ball again,
and then returning back to our normal size.
| | 01:06 | How would you do that?
| | 01:08 | Think about that for a moment.
| | 01:09 | Let's go look at the second
movie, Quizzler Butterfly Orbit.
| | 01:13 | You learned a lot about Motion Path in
both the Basic Animation lesson and in
| | 01:17 | this Advanced Animation lesson.
| | 01:18 | Well, watch this butterfly
as it goes in a perfectly
| | 01:22 | round-circular-orbital motion path.
| | 01:26 | How would you create a
perfect circle for a motion path?
| | 01:31 | It's another one to
think on for a moment. Okay.
| | 01:37 | And third Quizzler Overshoot.
| | 01:40 | We played earlier with this flower
illustration and making it grow, but how
| | 01:44 | would you create this animation, where
it grows and rotates but overshoots the
| | 01:48 | mark and then snaps back
into final resting position?
| | 01:52 | What's the minimum number of keyframes
you could use to recreate this animation?
| | 01:58 | It's another good challenge for you.
| | 02:00 | The answers to all of these
Quizzler challenges are based on extending
| | 02:05 | techniques you've
learned already in this lesson.
| | 02:07 | So with that in mind, try to solve
these and when you're done, come back and
| | 02:12 | look at these solutions
to see if you got it right.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Quizzler solution one: Bounce and squish| 00:07 | The first Quizzler solution we're
going to walk-through is this Ball
| | 00:10 | Bounce+Squish Animation.
| | 00:13 | Now this ball bounce is something
you saw in the earlier lesson on
| | 00:15 | separate dimensions.
| | 00:17 | We are animating separately in the X
dimension and in the Y dimension, but
| | 00:21 | you'll see we have added an
additional element, the Squish.
| | 00:24 | Let's go ahead and look at the solution.
| | 00:25 | I am going to open up the
folder Quizzler Solutions and open
| | 00:29 | comp Quiz-Bounce+Squish.
| | 00:32 | And by looking at the Timeline,
you'll see that we've got a few additional
| | 00:34 | keyframes. Here's our X Position
keyframes. As you might expect, a bit of an
| | 00:38 | Easy Ease in there at the end.
| | 00:41 | Here's the Y Position keyframes.
| | 00:42 | You're very similar with at this point,
that bouncing animation, but we've added
| | 00:47 | some Scale keyframes.
| | 00:49 | We're starting the ball at 25%,
but then one frame before the ball hits the ground,
| | 00:56 | we are making a keyframe at
25-25, that when the ball contacts the
| | 01:00 | ground we are squishing the ball.
| | 01:02 | We've turned off the
Constrain Proportions switch.
| | 01:05 | We've kept the X dimension, the width
of the ball, the same, but we've now
| | 01:10 | reduced the Y dimension
down to 15%. That's our squish.
| | 01:15 | And then over the course of a few
frames we are animating back to a keyframe of
| | 01:20 | 25-25 again, back to a normally inflated ball.
| | 01:24 | Since the ball is losing energy from
bounce to bounce, we're reducing the
| | 01:29 | size of this keyframes.
| | 01:31 | Again, one frame before, we
are at full-size, 25, 25.
| | 01:33 | We go to the squish and now we see we
are 25 X, normal width, and now 20% Y,
| | 01:41 | not squished as much in the height at the Y
dimension, and then over fewer frames we
| | 01:46 | bounce back to normal size, and then as
we approach the final keyframes, there's
| | 01:51 | our full-size, and now we are reduced
to just a little bit, then we slowly
| | 01:55 | inflate back to normal size, and
I put in the Easy Ease on this as well.
| | 01:59 | So the ball has a more gradual inflation to it.
| | 02:02 | If you want to see this in the
Graph Editor, it looks like this.
| | 02:05 | There's that X and Y animation,
you saw from separate dimensions.
| | 02:09 | But I am going to turn them off
for now and focus instead on Scale.
| | 02:13 | Here's a simple Scale animation,
green being the Y dimension.
| | 02:18 | Squish, return to normal, squish less,
return to normal, swish, return to normal.
| | 02:23 | There is one other trick we used,
however, to make this squish easier to pull off
| | 02:27 | and that's mutilating the anchor point.
| | 02:30 | Instead of having the anchor point in
the center of the ball, we placed the
| | 02:33 | anchor point at the very bottom of the ball.
| | 02:36 | This way we can squish the ball as
much as we wanted and not worry about the
| | 02:40 | ball actually lifting off the floor.
| | 02:43 | Since the anchor point is even with
the floor and even with the bottom of the ball,
| | 02:46 | we can edit the Y Scale as much
as we want and not worrying about then
| | 02:50 | having to adjust the position to compensate
for the amount of squish we had in our animation.
| | 02:55 | So this Quizzler actually used two
tricks you learned earlier in this lesson.
| | 02:59 | You might also have notice that in
our movie the ball was motion blurred.
| | 03:02 | I have enabled the Motion Blur switch for
this layer. To preview it in the Comp panel,
| | 03:08 | I need to also turn on this larger
Enable Motion Blur switch and now we have
| | 03:12 | Motion Blur during our bounces.
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| Quizzler solution two: Perfect orbit| 00:07 | The next Quizzler solution we are
going to walk through is how to create this
| | 00:11 | perfectly orbiting motion path.
| | 00:14 | Now one way you can tackle this is
indeed you try to craft a perfectly round
| | 00:19 | motion path using Bezier handles and
carefully tugging things out and you can
| | 00:26 | do that, but you will spend a lot of time
and it's going to be hard to get it perfect.
| | 00:30 | So what other tricks can you
use to create this perfect orbit?
| | 00:33 | Well, one of the subjects we
discussed in this lesson is the anchor point.
| | 00:38 | We set the anchor point is the center
around which all transformations take
| | 00:42 | place, including rotation.
| | 00:45 | Now you might think of well, the anchor
point should be somewhere on the layer,
| | 00:49 | but who says it has to be?
| | 00:50 | If you move the anchor point well off
to the side and then animate rotation,
| | 00:56 | well, that layer is going to animate
around that anchor point, no matter where
| | 01:00 | that anchor point is.
| | 01:02 | So now let's go look at the solution.
| | 01:03 | I'll stop this, open up
Quiz - Butterfly Orbit Comp.
| | 01:07 | I'll select my Butterfly layer and type
Shift+P to also reveal the position and
| | 01:12 | you will see no Position
keyframes. It is keeping the same position.
| | 01:16 | Instead, I'm animating Rotation.
| | 01:18 | That's how I'm getting this orbital path,
and the trick all came down to the anchor point.
| | 01:23 | It has been moved off to the side of
this butterfly and indeed if I want to
| | 01:27 | make a larger orbit, all I need to do is
just scrub the anchor point value to put
| | 01:32 | the butterfly closer to the
center or further away from the center.
| | 01:36 | Now I can have a more exaggerated orbit path.
| | 01:38 | I could even animate the anchor point
to have the butterfly come in towards the
| | 01:42 | center during the course of my animation.
| | 01:46 | Now it well slowly spiral in, not by
animating position, by animating the anchor
| | 01:51 | point, the center
rotation, and animating Rotation.
| | 01:54 | Now as long as we're playing around with this,
I want to show you one more trick.
| | 01:58 | I am going to undo to get back to where I was.
| | 02:00 | There is my butterfly. How would I create a
perfectly seamless loop to this animation?
| | 02:06 | Right now, I have got the pause at the end.
| | 02:07 | Well, all too many After Effects
artists think all they need to do is press
| | 02:11 | the End key, move their last keyframe
to that end of a composition, and set it
| | 02:17 | to say one rotation.
| | 02:18 | At home I have a value of zero rotations
and at the end I have a value of one rotation.
| | 02:23 | But that's not quite the right answer.
Because when you press End you're not at
| | 02:29 | the very end of the comp.
| | 02:30 | You're one frame before the end of the comp.
| | 02:33 | And if you have essentially the same
value at the endpoint as you do at the
| | 02:38 | start point you're going to
repeat that position for one frame.
| | 02:42 | Let me press zero to do another
RAM preview and you see what I get here.
| | 02:45 | There's a slight hitch in the
butterfly's motion as he pauses for one
| | 02:50 | frame before moving on. There it is.
| | 02:56 | So the secret to creating seamlessly
looping animations in After Effects is not
| | 03:02 | to put your last keyframe at the end of
the comp but to press Page Down and go
| | 03:07 | one frame beyond at the end of the comp.
| | 03:10 | By doing so, you are now at a point
that's essentially the same as coming back
| | 03:15 | to the start of the comp.
| | 03:16 | If I put my last keyframe one frame
beyond the end of my comp, now I have a
| | 03:21 | seamless loop as I go back to
the start of the comp position.
| | 03:24 | I'll preview and as we come around to this
point there is no hitch, perfectly smooth.
| | 03:33 | And this is a trick even a fair number
of experienced After Effects users get
| | 03:37 | wrong or don't know about. They put
things at the end of the comp when really
| | 03:41 | that looping keyframe
should be one frame past the end.
| | 03:43 | So that's something else you've learned.
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| Quizzler solution three: Overshoot animations| 00:07 | The last Quizzler puzzle we're going
to unravel is how do you create this
| | 00:12 | overshooting animation with the
minimal number of keyframes, and it's really
| | 00:16 | quite a useful trick.
| | 00:18 | Now the obvious way to solve this
problem is to use three keyframes: have a
| | 00:22 | starting keyframe here for both Scale
and Rotation, come out to the end of my
| | 00:27 | overshoot, put another keyframe there
for this Rotation and this Scale, and then
| | 00:34 | add a third keyframe
here at my rest position.
| | 00:39 | However, you can do this in
two keyframes instead of three.
| | 00:42 | I'll open up Comp Quiz - Overshoot Comp.
I saved this with the Graph Editor open
| | 00:47 | and you see what I've created are two
keyframe paths where the handle actually
| | 00:53 | is pulled upward to create
an overshooting animation.
| | 00:56 | A typical Ease In animation comes in
flat and horizontal along this line.
| | 01:01 | I'll press the Shift key to constrain that.
| | 01:04 | Now I'll do the same for Rotation here.
| | 01:06 | This is your classic ease in to your final
position animation and I'll RAM Preview.
| | 01:14 | But if you want to overshoot that final
position, you can pull the handle above
| | 01:19 | the horizontal line.
| | 01:20 | This will cause the graph to now
actually go above the at-rest position then
| | 01:26 | come back down into at-rest.
| | 01:29 | I'll do the same with Rotation here,
preview, and now you'll see our overshoot
| | 01:35 | and snap back animation.
| | 01:36 | You can do a lot of fun things with the
shapes of these curves inside of the Graph Editor.
| | 01:40 | I could go to the other extreme.
If I pull this handles below the line, maybe
| | 01:44 | even something like this,
| | 01:46 | instead of easing into my final pose,
instead I will rush up to my final poss.
| | 01:51 | I'll preview and you see how
it slams into that position.
| | 01:55 | So it's another fun animation which is
easy to create in the Graph Editor, but
| | 02:00 | what you can't really do if you're
not in here. You need control of these
| | 02:03 | handles to create unusual
animations such as this.
| | 02:06 | Let's do one more trick.
| | 02:09 | Now honestly, this little overshoot and slam,
| | 02:13 | it's not my favorite look.
| | 02:14 | It's kind of unsettling to see this
snap back and sudden stop in position.
| | 02:20 | It's visually interesting, but maybe
not what a real plant would do, as if
| | 02:24 | this was a real plant.
| | 02:25 | So let's try variation on this move.
| | 02:27 | Rather than editing the last keyframe
in an unusual way, let's go and make
| | 02:31 | a simple Ease In here on these, instead
let's edit the first keyframe in an unusual way.
| | 02:39 | Now the default is a linear keyframe,
which means no handles. That's no problem.
| | 02:43 | I'll hold down the Option key on Mac,
Alt key on Windows, get my Convert Vertex
| | 02:49 | tool and drag myself out of handle.
| | 02:51 | I'm going to do the same
thing for my Rotation value.
| | 02:55 | Now that I have handles, I can
play around with what they do.
| | 02:58 | If I want to create an overshoot
animation, I need to pull this handle upward
| | 03:03 | and pull it to some
considerable length to create my overshoot.
| | 03:08 | See that's a very similar curve as I
had before, but now I've got my incoming
| | 03:13 | handle to my last keyframe to
smooth out this final approach.
| | 03:18 | So you can see what's going on here.
| | 03:20 | I'm going to go ahead and hit plus a
few times and move a little bit later in
| | 03:24 | time, so you can see what's happening
with this final keyframe. There we go.
| | 03:28 | Overshooting, there is a handle for
it, then coming back into position.
| | 03:32 | I'm going to zoom back out again
and do the same thing with Rotation.
| | 03:36 | Get its handle, drag it really long
so I overshoot my final value then use
| | 03:42 | my second keyframe's handle, Shift key to make
it horizontal, and ease into that final value.
| | 03:48 | Now let's look at this animation.
| | 03:53 | Now the flower still overshoots its mark,
but rather than slamming back in its
| | 03:56 | final position, it more
softly settles in to the position.
| | 04:01 | Now I can change how softly it settles by
playing around the links of these handles.
| | 04:05 | Now I know the Graph Editor is daunting
and it's not necessarily intuitive for
| | 04:09 | an artistic type, but I hope you can
see now how useful it is to master it,
| | 04:14 | because you can create these subtle or
complex animations with relative ease,
| | 04:20 | where you'd just otherwise be creating loads
of keyframes and really tweaking values
| | 04:24 | and spending a lot of time trying to
get the look you want, when it might be as
| | 04:27 | simple as dragging couple
handles in the Graph Editor.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Idea CornerIdea corner one: Alternative camera movements| 00:07 | Earlier in this lesson, we used the
anchor point to animate a fake motion
| | 00:11 | control camera move around
this large photo of these cars.
| | 00:16 | Well, you've learned a little bit since
then so let's apply some of those ideas
| | 00:19 | and techniques to make this more interesting.
| | 00:21 | For example, we've been playing with
Motion Blur to make very fast camera
| | 00:24 | moves look interesting.
| | 00:25 | We've played a little bit with Hold keyframes.
| | 00:28 | Let's try out some ideas on this photo.
| | 00:30 | I want to make a new composition.
| | 00:32 | Before I make a comp, I should
select the folder I want to put it into.
| | 00:36 | Since this is the Idea Corner
section, I'll select that folder.
| | 00:39 | I go Composition > New Comp.
| | 00:43 | After Effects remembers my last
settings, the last comp I created.
| | 00:47 | 640x480, NTSC video rate
of 29.97 is fine with me.
| | 00:51 | 7 seconds was the last duration I entered.
| | 00:54 | I'll keep that for now.
| | 00:55 | I can always change it later,
| | 00:57 | shorter or longer, and give this comp a
useful name like camera move 2. Click OK.
| | 01:04 | I have my blank comp.
| | 01:05 | Go down to my image.
| | 01:07 | If you have the exercise files that
came with this lesson, you can drag Auto
| | 01:11 | Race into your new comp.
| | 01:13 | If you don't, just go for another
photo you have that has lots of interesting
| | 01:16 | things to focus on.
| | 01:17 | There is my photo in my comp.
| | 01:18 | Now hopefully you remember that to
pan around images like this, the anchor
| | 01:23 | point, A is the shortcut,
is the best thing to animate.
| | 01:27 | You need to animate the
anchor point in the layer panel.
| | 01:30 | So I'll double-click the
layer to open up the Layer panel.
| | 01:33 | I want to see it the same time as the comp.
| | 01:35 | So I'll drag it to the side here, so I
can see the two of them side-by-side.
| | 01:40 | I have my magnifications set up to Fit
to 100%, so I can see as much as I can as
| | 01:45 | I try to maximize my displays. There we go.
| | 01:48 | Over in the Layer panel, I want to view
the anchor point path, and I'm going to
| | 01:53 | start off by just dragging the
anchor point around the Layer panel.
| | 01:57 | Watch what happens in the Comp panel,
and see what I have that I might like.
| | 02:01 | Well, I do like this car, and I do
like the grouping of these four cars.
| | 02:07 | Another nice grouping is down here.
| | 02:09 | Actually, it's quite lovely, Classic
Camaro Mustang Battle, and there is another
| | 02:13 | grouping up here I kind of like.
| | 02:15 | Yeah, that trio of cars is interesting.
| | 02:16 | I have something interesting here.
| | 02:19 | Four, three, two, one.
| | 02:24 | Maybe I'll make that a
theme to play around with.
| | 02:27 | Okay, let's start by focusing on our intro.
| | 02:29 | Now I personally find this car, this Javelin,
to be kind of interesting. I like this a lot.
| | 02:34 | I promise that he is not big enough, so
my temptation would be to scale him up.
| | 02:38 | I'll type Shift, then add S to
add Scale, and make him larger.
| | 02:43 | Then I can go ahead and scale him up to
where he is really dominating the frame.
| | 02:48 | I'll actually see it right in that
windshield, but the promise is I've had the
| | 02:52 | scale past 100%, which is usually not
a good idea for photographic or other
| | 02:56 | pixel-based images
because they start to get soft.
| | 02:59 | However, I learned this cool
motion blur trick early on.
| | 03:03 | If I do a really fast move on this image,
I bet that motion blur will cover for
| | 03:08 | my lack of resolution. Let's find out.
| | 03:10 | I'll zoom in a bit tighter and
harder on him. That's very cool.
| | 03:15 | I kind of like that.
| | 03:17 | Enable animation for Anchor Point and Scale.
| | 03:20 | Go few frames later, like maybe about ten frames.
| | 03:23 | These timings are guesses right now.
| | 03:25 | I can change them later on.
| | 03:27 | Scale down to something more reasonable,
like maybe even 100% to see how that looks.
| | 03:30 | He is not so interesting by himself.
| | 03:34 | But let's move to that group of four cars.
| | 03:35 | I'm moving in the Layer panel, or
watching what's going on in the Comp panel.
| | 03:41 | I can scale even smaller, like around there.
| | 03:46 | Now I want to make sure that
none of these cars get cropped off.
| | 03:50 | My wife and partner in design Trish told
you back in the basic animation lesson
| | 03:54 | that you can always enable the title and
action safe grids just to make sure the
| | 03:58 | bezel of the TV is not going to crop things off.
| | 04:01 | So I'll enable that. I see
I do have a cropping problem.
| | 04:03 | So I'll Scale it down just little bit
smaller to make sure everyone fits in quite safely.
| | 04:09 | Maybe 60% for now and do a little reframing.
| | 04:14 | Okay, let's see how that slam-down looks.
| | 04:17 | I'll move the Current Time
Indicator just a little bit later.
| | 04:19 | Type End to end my work area there,
and press 0 on the Numeric Keypad to see
| | 04:23 | what this looks like.
| | 04:24 | Now it looks a bit strobey.
| | 04:27 | I don't really mind the
resolution, but it's hard to watch.
| | 04:30 | But a motion blur can come to my rescue here.
| | 04:33 | I went to enable Motion Blur for the layer.
| | 04:36 | Then to preview it, I'm going
to enable it for the composition.
| | 04:39 | Now I'll press 0 again to RAM Preview.
| | 04:41 | You see it takes a bit longer to
calculate, but it's a much nicer look, much
| | 04:47 | smoother rather than scrubby. I like that.
| | 04:50 | Okay, that's a good start to my animation.
| | 04:52 | Now that I'm on this pose, I'll turn
off Motion Blur just to save myself some
| | 04:57 | rendering time so things are clearer.
| | 04:59 | Let's say I want to just drift on
that a little bit. I like that pose.
| | 05:03 | Let's just go to one second time
and just drift slightly down the road here.
| | 05:10 | Maybe scale a little bit.
| | 05:15 | Just get the action coming towards me,
just to create a little bit of interest
| | 05:19 | in action and excitement.
| | 05:21 | I can extend my work area by dragging
its end, or move my Current Time Indicator
| | 05:25 | and press the End key. Preview.
| | 05:28 | Okay, that's going somewhere.
| | 05:34 | But it gets kind of boring quickly.
| | 05:35 | This will be a good time
to pick up another pose.
| | 05:38 | I have a couple of different ways I can go here.
| | 05:40 | I can use Hold keyframes to suddenly
jump to other poses, or I can keep this
| | 05:46 | idea of constant motion going.
| | 05:48 | I think I'm going to try that.
| | 05:50 | Now one technique that's kind of
popular is something called a whip pan.
| | 05:53 | It comes from moving a camera very
quickly from one point of interest to
| | 05:57 | another point of interest.
| | 05:58 | To fake a whip pan in After Effects,
I'm going to move just, and let's just try
| | 06:03 | three frames later on time to begin with.
| | 06:04 | Go back to my layer panel and move my
anchor point to this new group of cars
| | 06:09 | I want to focus on,
| | 06:11 | that group of three there. That's fun.
| | 06:16 | I want to zoom in a little bit just
to get some better framing on them.
| | 06:20 | Right around there is kind of nice.
| | 06:21 | I like that and it's 100%.
So that's a good scale.
| | 06:24 | So I've got my slam down, I've got my
drift, and then I've got my whip pan.
| | 06:29 | You might notice that my
drift is wandering a bit now.
| | 06:33 | This is where keyframe handles come in.
| | 06:36 | Remember, motion paths defaults to a form a
Bezier to automatically smooth your movements.
| | 06:43 | The problem is that my smoothed
movements are creating an undesired motion here.
| | 06:47 | So I'm going to go ahead and retract
these handles, convert them to linear, so
| | 06:52 | that I drift in a straight line.
| | 06:53 | To do that, I'll press the G key to
temporarily switch to the Pen tool.
| | 06:58 | I've got the Convert Vertex tool.
| | 07:00 | When I hover over a keyframe,
click linear keyframe.
| | 07:03 | Go up here as well, click
linear keyframe as well.
| | 07:07 | Now I have a much more even drift,
and then there is my Whip Pan to note on pose.
| | 07:14 | Okay, that's coming together.
| | 07:15 | So here is my second pose.
| | 07:17 | Let's hold on it for the same amount
of time as before, which was 20 frames.
| | 07:21 | Shift+Page Down, that's 10, 20 frames
later in time. Where shall I drift too?
| | 07:27 | Well, let's start going down the track. Oops!
| | 07:29 | Do you see the mistake I've made?
| | 07:31 | I've started panning this image in
the Comp panel, which is changing
| | 07:35 | the Position value.
| | 07:37 | I don't want to do that.
| | 07:38 | Instead, I want to go back to this
panel and move the anchor point. Oh!
| | 07:44 | I see the keyframe nubbin.
| | 07:46 | I am going to preemptively hold G,
convert that to a linear keyframe. There we go.
| | 07:50 | Now that I'm later in time, I'm going
to go ahead and drift a little bit down
| | 07:54 | on my road here, just a small drift. Nice!
| | 07:59 | Maybe change the scale just a little bit.
| | 08:02 | Don't I get too much of this car in
the frame, because I want to focus on
| | 08:06 | these three, but it is outside of
Action Safe, so it'll probably be cut off by
| | 08:11 | the television bezel. That's good.
| | 08:12 | My whip pan was three frames long
before, so let's go one, two, and three.
| | 08:17 | I can always adjust this timing later,
and now let's move the anchor point to go
| | 08:22 | focus on this group with two cars down here.
| | 08:25 | But I'm traveling a lot
further in that period of time.
| | 08:30 | There is a chance I can give
myself more frames for that pan.
| | 08:34 | So first, I'm going to get my framing
that I like, maybe somewhere around there,
| | 08:41 | and then just for fun, move
these out to be five frames.
| | 08:44 | One, two frames later in time.
| | 08:47 | To see how this is coming along, I'll
move my Current Time Indicator later.
| | 08:50 | Press N to make a longer work area, turn
Motion Blur back on, so I get an accurate
| | 08:55 | idea what my whip pans look like, and preview.
| | 09:06 | That's kind of fun, so I'm
slamming down, drift, move, move.
| | 09:11 | I might want to space these out a bit more.
| | 09:14 | Okay, but it's a start.
| | 09:15 | I can always play with timing later on.
| | 09:17 | 20 frames later, do a drift where
I'm starting to move down the road.
| | 09:22 | We're leading the eye to the
direction I am eventually heading in.
| | 09:25 | What I want to about Scale here?
| | 09:27 | Maybe just a hair or smaller like
that, then another shorter whip pan like
| | 09:32 | one, two, and three.
| | 09:34 | Repetition with variation, that's an
important concept here in graphics.
| | 09:41 | There is a nice pose in that car and again a
little less scale so I can fit him in there.
| | 09:49 | Extend my Work Area and look at that.
| | 10:01 | And here is our preview.
| | 10:07 | And that's a lot more
exciting move around this image.
| | 10:10 | Since I've ended up on the green car,
which was my initial pose back in the
| | 10:14 | movie where we first showed the
motion control camera move technique.
| | 10:18 | Maybe it'd be fun to go ahead and
use the rest of that lesson to create a
| | 10:22 | movement that went around the
road that looked at the entire field.
| | 10:26 | So a few seconds later in time, grab
my anchor point to go further down the
| | 10:31 | road, and just give myself a funer
pose, like maybe on that part of the track
| | 10:40 | around there, just to be something different.
| | 10:42 | I want to curve around
this section of the track.
| | 10:44 | So I'm going to hold down the G key
again to go ahead and pull out a handle.
| | 10:48 | Let's start to come around the track.
| | 10:50 | I need a handle here as well.
| | 10:52 | So I'll hold G and start to pull that out.
| | 10:53 | Well, I've got a Bezier, so I'm going
to hold G again and break my handles.
| | 10:58 | So I can make that keyframe an arc
and pull this other keyframe back down.
| | 11:03 | So I've got my quick move to that frame.
| | 11:06 | So now we move around the track like
we did before and I'll try to do some
| | 11:11 | things with scale and timing later on.
| | 11:13 | But now you have an idea.
| | 11:15 | We've got some exciting pans going on,
and then I've ended with the move that we
| | 11:18 | created back in the anchor point lesson.
| | 11:21 | If you have the exercise files that came
with this lesson, I've got another idea
| | 11:25 | here in the Idea Corner panel, Idea1 -
Motion Control, which is a variation on
| | 11:30 | this quick whip pan idea.
| | 11:31 | Let me go ahead and close the layer
panel for now, RAM Preview, and you see here
| | 11:37 | I've used more in the way of Hold
keyframes and whip pans to create a different
| | 11:41 | dynamic animation around the photo.
| | 11:44 | The point I'm trying to make in
general is when the instructor has finished
| | 11:47 | with the tutorial, it
doesn't mean that you're finished.
| | 11:51 | Go ahead and take the materials
and keep trying out different ideas and
| | 11:54 | different variations.
| | 11:56 | If you hit upon a new look
that you like, that's great.
| | 11:59 | If you hit upon a new look that you hate,
that's useful too, because now maybe
| | 12:03 | you have an idea of what doesn't work
as well and you can avoid wasting time
| | 12:07 | going down that path on a paying job.
| | 12:10 | Regardless, experiment, have fun.
| | 12:12 | Particularly when you do have free time,
because when you're on deadline,
| | 12:16 | you want to have this little store of
ideas in the back of your head to draw
| | 12:19 | on so that real jobs go faster.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Idea corner two: Independent slam| 00:07 | We'd like to leave you with
one more idea corner to explore.
| | 00:11 | Again, drawing upon and extending
things you've learned earlier in this lesson.
| | 00:14 | Now you might remember this animation
from earlier on when we're playing around
| | 00:17 | with hold keyframes.
| | 00:19 | We used to hold keyframes to go ahead
and slam the word Reject into various
| | 00:22 | positions and poses and also use hold
keyframes opacity to blink the frame that
| | 00:27 | goes round the word Reject.
| | 00:28 | Well, the fact that Reject came as one entire
word, it did kind of limit what we can do with it.
| | 00:34 | However, if we have any access or any
control over how this file is created,
| | 00:39 | we can make some requests such as hey,
could you give me each character of that
| | 00:44 | word Reject as a separate
layer in Illustrator or Photoshop?
| | 00:48 | Because if you do that, when I bring it
into After Effects, I can animate each
| | 00:52 | layer independently and create a
really fun, complex slam-down animation.
| | 00:57 | Well, we've done that for you.
| | 00:59 | Let's go ahead and import a
layered version of this Reject.
| | 01:02 | First, I am going to select
the folder I want to import into.
| | 01:06 | In this case, Idea Corner,
and I go to File > Import > File.
| | 01:12 | If you have exercise files that came
with this lesson, go to Exercise Files >
| | 01:17 | Sources and select Reject_split.
| | 01:21 | That's with the character split onto
their own layers inside Illustrator.
| | 01:25 | I can ignore the Import As dialog for
now, because I will get the second dialog
| | 01:30 | where I decide how I'm going
to import this layered file.
| | 01:34 | In this case, I want to import it as a Composition.
| | 01:36 | A composition that contained each of
those characters as their own layer.
| | 01:40 | I get some choices about
how those layers get cropped.
| | 01:44 | Are they cropped based on the entire
document size, or an each individual layer size?
| | 01:50 | Quite often, I prefer
the individual layers size.
| | 01:52 | The reason is, if I crop down each
character and the anchor point defaults
| | 01:57 | to the center of each layer, chances are
really strong that that anchor point is
| | 02:01 | going to default to the middle of each
of those characters, which is already
| | 02:05 | going to make it much easier to animate.
| | 02:06 | So I pick Layer Size.
| | 02:08 | I click OK and now I have two things.
| | 02:11 | I have a comp called Reject_split,
and I have a folder of each of those
| | 02:17 | individual layers, R, E,
J,E, C, T, and the frame.
| | 02:23 | Let's go ahead and play around with this.
| | 02:24 | Well, initially, when I import a
layered file as a composition, the composition
| | 02:30 | it creates is going to be the size of
either the document size in Illustrator,
| | 02:34 | or of the image itself.
| | 02:36 | In this case, it's smaller than I
want for true video image. That's okay.
| | 02:40 | You can edit the
composition settings after the fact.
| | 02:42 | I'll go to Composition Settings.
| | 02:45 | Let's go back to that size
we're working with, 640 x 480.
| | 02:50 | I'm happy with the frame rate,
remember that, and let's pick something
| | 02:53 | shorter like 5 seconds for now, and the
background color black is kind of boring actually.
| | 02:59 | Let's go ahead and do something on white.
| | 03:01 | That makes it pop a lot better. Click OK.
| | 03:04 | I want to animate this down and let's
go ahead and make it really exciting.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to make it to slap down
into positions on every three frames.
| | 03:12 | When you go ahead and set new
keyframes or new poses, every certain number of
| | 03:16 | frames, like every three frames,
that's referred to as animating on threes.
| | 03:22 | If you do it every two frames,
it would be call animating on twos, et cetera.
| | 03:25 | Okay, another piece of advice we've
given you is sometimes your ending pose is a
| | 03:30 | good place to put your first keyframe.
| | 03:32 | Let's say I want to have one pose,
two poses, third pose, fourth pose, and
| | 03:40 | maybe a fifth pose there.
| | 03:42 | That's where I want to end up here.
| | 03:43 | I'm going to select all of my layers
by clicking on the first one, and then
| | 03:48 | Shift+Clicking on the last one,
the entire range will be selected.
| | 03:51 | I'll type P to reveal their Position,
Shift+S to reveal their Scale, and I could
| | 03:57 | optionally animate the Rotation as well.
| | 03:59 | But since I am going to have a lot going
on these characters, I'm going to leave
| | 04:02 | rotation out of it for now.
| | 04:04 | Drag up my Timeline panel to
see a bit more what's going on.
| | 04:08 | Click on the animation stopwatch for
one of these, Position, and just drag
| | 04:12 | down the list with my mouse held down, and now
I've set the keyframes for all those properties.
| | 04:18 | Life is good.
| | 04:19 | Now let's have fun positioning each character.
| | 04:22 | I'll go ahead and click off
for now, so nobody is selected.
| | 04:25 | Otherwise, I might move everybody at once.
| | 04:27 | Go one, two, three frames earlier.
| | 04:30 | Pick up the R. Go ahead and pick a
new Scale value for him, like say around
| | 04:34 | there, and he is looking fuzzy.
| | 04:37 | Well, that's because the Continuous
Rasterization switch did not default to being on.
| | 04:42 | If this was a pixel-based
layer, it'd always be fuzzy.
| | 04:45 | But since it's an
Illustrator file based on vectors,
| | 04:49 | if I enable Continuous Rasterization,
After Effects knows to render this file
| | 04:55 | on-the-fly to always be sharp.
| | 04:57 | It's only works for things like
fonts and other path-based objects.
| | 05:01 | Click on that. Now it's sharper.
| | 05:03 | Let's go ahead and do that for everybody.
| | 05:05 | Click on 1, and drag down the list,
until they are all selected. Great!
| | 05:09 | They're all going to be sharp now.
| | 05:10 | Let's go ahead and move E over
to different pose say down here.
| | 05:15 | This is random and I can
always move these things later on.
| | 05:18 | Let's go ahead and pick up the J.
Fill up some space there with them.
| | 05:22 | Became big and maybe
they can crowd in little bit.
| | 05:27 | Take the other E. You are getting the idea.
| | 05:30 | We're just kind of goofing around here,
looking for some interesting balance,
| | 05:35 | and also some surprises.
| | 05:37 | Putting a few things you don't expect
them to be, maybe even cut off a little bit.
| | 05:41 | C, yeah, he is fine down here,
just scrolling down, scaling.
| | 05:50 | And finally T. Let's just scale him up
in place to see what he looks like. Continues to
| | 05:54 | fill some space over here.
Scale him up a little.
| | 06:01 | And the frame, I think I'll have
fun scaling him to different sizes as
| | 06:04 | we slam down as well.
| | 06:05 | So let's just try that for
now for an alternate framing.
| | 06:07 | Kind of like how that bridges
through there, ties these together.
| | 06:11 | Okay, one, two, three frames
earlier by pressing Page Up.
| | 06:16 | Pick some different poses.
| | 06:17 | Move the R to an unexpected part of the frame.
| | 06:20 | Scroll up to where I can see him.
| | 06:22 | You notice that the default path
is Auto Bezier. That's okay.
| | 06:25 | When I turn it into a hold keyframe for Position,
| | 06:28 | it's not going to matter.
| | 06:29 | Scale him up to some bigger value like there.
| | 06:33 | Take this E. Cram him up
into this corner, make him bigger.
| | 06:39 | Take the J. Move him down here to
fill this space up and you know just
| | 06:43 | to randomize things,
| | 06:44 | let's scale him down rather than up.
| | 06:46 | We don't need to have
everyone doing the same thing.
| | 06:48 | We need some variety.
| | 06:50 | Repetition with variation, it's
one of the main principles of art.
| | 06:55 | Okay, C. Oh, the C is
going to be better over here.
| | 06:58 | So let's put the C there, then pick up
the J, and move him over there, like that.
| | 07:06 | All right! I'm sure
you've got the idea by now.
| | 07:09 | So there is no need to make you watch me
create the rest of these keyframes in real-time.
| | 07:12 | So let's zip ahead while
I create the rest of these.
| | 07:15 | If you're working along with me, go
ahead and pause this video, create your
| | 07:18 | own keyframes, and let's get back together,
set the work area, and preview our work.
| | 07:22 | I go to 20. Type N to set down on my work area.
| | 07:28 | As you probably remember from the
earlier lesson, if I just RAM Preview this,
| | 07:32 | I just have a bunch of characters sliding
around, and frankly, that's not horrible.
| | 07:38 | But I want to go for that slam animation.
| | 07:39 | So I'll drag a marquee around all my
keyframes, right-click on any one of them,
| | 07:46 | and choose Toggle Hold Keyframe.
| | 07:48 | Notice how all my motion paths
drained out automatically, and now I got
| | 07:52 | do-do-do, slamming into position.
| | 07:55 | Remember, if I want to do something
with the characters or whatever later on,
| | 07:58 | I can convert these ending
keyframes to linear and keyframe some other
| | 08:02 | animation later on.
| | 08:03 | Now in fact, I think I'm going
to want to do that with my frame.
| | 08:07 | Let's go ahead and hold down a
Command on Mac, Ctrl on Windows.
| | 08:11 | Click on the keyframes
to convert them to linear.
| | 08:14 | Just for fun, I'm going to move the
Current Time Indicator back there.
| | 08:16 | Hold Shift so it snaps.
| | 08:18 | Shift+R to add Rotation,
and keyframe that too so things drift over time.
| | 08:24 | Get down to this point.
A little bit Rotation on the frame.
| | 08:28 | Just to create something
fun. Scale up a little bit.
| | 08:31 | I could do more Rotation.
| | 08:34 | Okay, there is my drift.
| | 08:40 | As I drag my Current Time Indicator, I
notice something funky is going on here.
| | 08:43 | The R is actually still animating.
| | 08:46 | As I scroll up my Timeline, ha, I forgot to
select them and make those hold keyframes.
| | 08:54 | That was a mistake on my part.
| | 08:56 | But sometimes you get happy accidents.
| | 08:59 | So I'm going to leave like that for now,
and see if I want to change him later on.
| | 09:03 | Anyway, I'm going to go back to
the home, time 0, start of my comp.
| | 09:07 | I've got a kind of red mess here.
| | 09:10 | It's kind of an abstract.
| | 09:12 | But maybe I want some ways of
seeing these things more clearly.
| | 09:15 | One way to help is lift a layer off of
other layers behind it and get some space
| | 09:19 | and distinction is to
add a drop shadow to it.
| | 09:23 | I'm going to my Effects & Presets
panel and search for Drop Shadow.
| | 09:29 | Double-click him
and he'll be added to my layer.
| | 09:32 | Now you see I've got some separation
between my R layer and all of the other layers.
| | 09:37 | I'm going to go ahead and scrub the
Distance a little bit larger to get little
| | 09:41 | bit more distance and a little bit Softness,
because I like the organic feel. Before, after.
| | 09:49 | Now when I don't have very much softness,
you'll see that I'm losing definition
| | 09:54 | on the inside of the R, because my
Drop Shadow is going this direction
| | 09:57 | but I don't have anything casting back
in the other direction to distinguish the
| | 10:03 | hold on that R. If I increase my
Softness, you'll see that this shadow spread
| | 10:09 | so much, it gives me a little bit
of definition in there as well.
| | 10:12 | So go ahead and get a
little bit of outline there.
| | 10:16 | Once I have one shadow that I like, I
can select it, Command+C or Ctrl+C to copy it,
| | 10:22 | and paste it to the other layers.
| | 10:23 | I'll go ahead and select E through T by
Shift+Clicking, and then do Command or
| | 10:30 | Ctrl+V to paste the shadow to them all.
| | 10:33 | Click off to deselect.
| | 10:36 | That's pretty cool.
| | 10:37 | I don't think I'll lost
any of my charm either here.
| | 10:38 | So let's go ahead and preview.
| | 10:41 | That's kind of fun with that R moving
around, and then I've got my whole frame
| | 10:44 | moving in the background.
| | 10:45 | Now this is a very busy animation,
and frankly I'm kind of losing out what's
| | 10:51 | happening to the frame behind stuff.
| | 10:53 | So let's say we let these characters
have their hero day and then after they've
| | 10:59 | come down in position,
| | 11:00 | go three frames later and then drag
my outer frame to start then in time.
| | 11:09 | After all, the fun's happen
with the other characters.
| | 11:11 | To slide a layer in time, I click
anywhere in the layer bar, start to dragging,
| | 11:17 | and notice the keyframes come along with me.
| | 11:19 | I can hold the Shift key to make it
snap with the Current Time Indicator,
| | 11:24 | just like I could snap keyframes.
| | 11:25 | Now let's see how that looks.
| | 11:28 | Drag my work area to add a little bit
later, to encompass my entire animation,
| | 11:32 | and preview. It's a nice rhythm. The rhythm kind
of carries over from the characters to the frame.
| | 11:43 | I can start it a little bit earlier. Try that.
| | 11:49 | Now it's getting lost. Or start it later
since more of a surprise element. Preview.
| | 11:57 | Yeah, just when I think I'm done,
something fun happens with that frame.
| | 12:01 | I am going to go ahead
and select the Drop Shadow.
| | 12:04 | I had one of other layers, paste it to the
frame because it's looking lonely without it.
| | 12:09 | That's little bit more cohesive.
| | 12:12 | Finally, since I have this R sliding around,
| | 12:15 | let's say we enable Motion Blur for
that R just for laughs. Peview that.
| | 12:24 | This is one of those cases when
I don't think Motion Blur helped.
| | 12:27 | So I turn it off for that layer,
preview again, and I got an alternate slam
| | 12:32 | down, and actually that's fun.
| | 12:34 | That's something that will hold
the viewers attention more than once.
| | 12:37 | That's something we try to create.
| | 12:38 | It's something called an "again" animation.
| | 12:41 | Once the animation is where a viewer
watches something one time, they get it, and
| | 12:46 | frankly, they're going to go to
the fridge and get a sandwich
| | 12:48 | the next time this is on TV.
| | 12:50 | However, if you create something with
complexity, and subtlety, and interest,
| | 12:54 | you've created an again animation where
someone wants to see it multiple times,
| | 12:59 | and that adds more value for your
client, be it a commercial or whatever.
| | 13:03 | Anyway, that's one idea of what to do with
a layered version of this particular title.
| | 13:08 | If you have exercise files, we've
created another idea and stored it in
| | 13:12 | Idea Corner > Idea2.
| | 13:15 | Here is the folder of all the individual layers
and here is the comp with an alternate idea.
| | 13:20 | We encourage you to go try your ideas.
| | 13:26 | We don't have the only solutions. This is art.
| | 13:30 | Art is somewhat subjective.
| | 13:32 | Experiment on your own.
| | 13:34 | Come up with your own look
and above all have fun.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. SidebarsWork area tips and tricks| 00:07 | In the prior lessons, Trish and I talked about
how useful the work area is in After Effects.
| | 00:12 | Among other things it says rather
than having to preview your entire
| | 00:16 | composition, which is what I'm doing now,
| | 00:18 | you can go ahead and drag the beginning
of the work area, the ending of the work
| | 00:22 | area, and now After Effects will
preview just the duration of your comp
| | 00:28 | underneath that work area bar.
| | 00:30 | Kind of convenient!
| | 00:32 | Double-click it to reset it to being
the entire length of the composition and
| | 00:36 | then trim it as necessary.
| | 00:38 | Not only does the work area control
your preview duration, it can also
| | 00:43 | optionally control the length of your
renders and it also has some impact on
| | 00:47 | some keyframes in some instances.
| | 00:49 | For example, this sets the
duration that we use for motion sketching.
| | 00:53 | But there's a lot more you can do with
this work area bar. As you may remember,
| | 00:56 | the keyboard shortcuts are B to set
the beginning of the work area and N for
| | 01:02 | the end of the work area.
| | 01:04 | If you move the Time Indicator to some
point after the work area and type B,
| | 01:08 | it will slide the entire work area
bar intact at its current duration.
| | 01:13 | That's nice if you want to move along
the comp say in 10 second increments and
| | 01:16 | keep trying out different parts of it.
| | 01:18 | Another trick you can use to focus on a
specific area comp, let's say you have a
| | 01:22 | layer that's been trimmed already
to not be the entire length of your
| | 01:26 | composition and you want to preview just
that duration, just the duration of the
| | 01:31 | selected layer or layers.
| | 01:33 | Well, if you hold Command+Option on Mac
or Ctrl+Alt on Windows and then type B,
| | 01:39 | that shortcut for the beginning of
the work area, After Effects will
| | 01:42 | automatically set the work area to
equal the duration of the selected layers.
| | 01:48 | To reset it, again you can either
double-click it or pick a layer that's the
| | 01:52 | entire duration of the comp, use the
same shortcut, Command+Option+B, and now
| | 01:56 | the work area will be the
entire length of the comp.
| | 01:58 | Let's say you have a long composition
and after working with it you realize you
| | 02:02 | really don't need the entire composition.
| | 02:04 | You really don't need everything earlier
in time and maybe you don't need things
| | 02:08 | later in time as well.
| | 02:10 | Well, if that's the case, set the work
area to the area you want to keep and
| | 02:14 | you know this is the only area you want to keep.
| | 02:16 | And then either go up to the
Composition menu and select Trim Comp to Work Area
| | 02:22 | or right-click directly on the work
area bar and select Trim Comp to Work Area.
| | 02:28 | This will automatically reduce the
length of your comp and slide and trim all
| | 02:34 | your layers to begin at where the
work area bar previously started in the
| | 02:38 | older longer composition.
| | 02:40 | That's another handy thing to trim
down a large scratch project you might
| | 02:43 | have been working on.
| | 02:45 | But this other commands you can use as well.
| | 02:47 | Let's say after working for while on a
particular comp you realize, you know,
| | 02:50 | there is this whole dead section in the middle.
| | 02:53 | It's slowing things down.
| | 02:54 | I really want to just trim that out.
| | 02:56 | You can do a couple of different things.
| | 02:58 | Again, I'll type B for the beginning of my
work area, N for the ending of my work area.
| | 03:04 | I'm going to be careful as
to what layers are selected.
| | 03:06 | I'm going to start by deselecting all
layers. In other words, they are all equal.
| | 03:11 | If I say look, I need to get rid of this
whole area underneath the work area bar,
| | 03:15 | I'll right-click on it
and say Extract Work Area.
| | 03:19 | What Extract does is say delete
everything underneath the work area bar and
| | 03:25 | slide up everything
afterwards in time to fill the gap.
| | 03:29 | Extract and there is my
new trimmed down animation.
| | 03:33 | You noticed that After Effects
actually had to split the layer, which made it
| | 03:37 | appear to be duplicated to show one
segment here, then jump to this other
| | 03:40 | segment later in time.
| | 03:41 | Now, it did all of the layers
because I had none of the layers selected.
| | 03:47 | It would have done the same thing
if I had all the layers selected.
| | 03:50 | However, if you have only a specific
layer selected, if you say, you know, this
| | 03:54 | snowboarder, it's just the beginning
part here that's really dull, so I'm going
| | 03:58 | to go ahead and set my work area here.
| | 03:59 | I am going to select just that
Snowboarding movie, maybe set the beginning here
| | 04:04 | a little bit after the start just so
you can see what I'm about to do, then
| | 04:07 | say Extract Work Area.
| | 04:10 | Since I only have one layer selected,
it's going to extract, trim out, just
| | 04:15 | that portion of that movie, so now we'll
have a jump between this two different sections.
| | 04:21 | Well, that was handy.
| | 04:23 | I'm going to Undo for now.
| | 04:24 | But let's say rather than slide up all
the later segments, instead I want to
| | 04:28 | create a gap in my project.
| | 04:30 | Say I want to leave that gap there
because I'm going to fill it with
| | 04:33 | something different.
| | 04:34 | Again, I'll go ahead and set my work
area and let's go ahead and say put it
| | 04:37 | down there for now, right-click again,
instead of saying Extract, I'm going to
| | 04:41 | say Lift Work Area.
| | 04:43 | What Lift does is remove just the
sections underneath the work area and leave
| | 04:49 | everything else as it was.
| | 04:51 | So I have just one layer
selected. Lift Work Area.
| | 04:54 | It creates a gap just in that one
selected layer and now I can insert something
| | 04:58 | else in that period of time. I'll Undo.
| | 05:01 | I'll deselect so nobody is selected, right-
click on the work area bar, say Lift Work Area.
| | 05:06 | Now you see it had created a gap in all
of the layers so I can insert as much
| | 05:11 | material as I need to fill in
that gap later on. I'll Undo.
| | 05:16 | So the work area bar is
actually more powerful than you think.
| | 05:18 | Rather than just control the amount of
times that you are previewing, rendering,
| | 05:22 | or doing something like Motion Sketch,
you can also use it as an editing tool to
| | 05:25 | go ahead and trim and slide up
portions of the layers in your composition.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with time display format| 00:07 | The last thing I want to talk about in this
lesson is how time is displayed in After Effects
| | 00:12 | and how you can change this time display.
| | 00:15 | You would probably notice that as you move
the Current Time Indicator, the times displays
| | 00:19 | at the bottom of the comp panel at the top
left edge at the timeline panel increment
| | 00:24 | depending on what frame you're on.
| | 00:26 | As I press Page Down, you'll
see that frame number increment.
| | 00:30 | You might have noticed something kind of
funky goes on here if you're not used to video.
| | 00:34 | When you get up to frame number 29, it
rolls over to 1 seconds and 0 frame.
| | 00:43 | This is how SMPTE timecode--the Society of
Motion Picture and Television Engineers count
| | 00:48 | time particularly when working with video.
| | 00:50 | They count in terms of hours,
minutes, seconds and frames.
| | 00:55 | To see and change those options, we'll go
to File > Project Settings and focus on the
| | 01:01 | top of this dialog, Display Style.
| | 01:04 | The first area is this SMPTE timecode
and I'll get back to that in a second.
| | 01:08 | But you have other options such as
Frames; what frame number 1, 2, 3,
| | 01:13 | 4, 5--you are in your overall timeline.
| | 01:16 | Traditional animators like cell
animators probably prefer this way of counting.
| | 01:21 | People who work in traditional film and we're talking
physical film here, might prefer feet and frames.
| | 01:27 | Yes people edit film by saying how many feet
and film have gone past and how many frames
| | 01:32 | have I into this current foot of film.
| | 01:35 | Different film formats have
different number of frames per foot.
| | 01:39 | The common 35mm format
has 16 frames in a foot.
| | 01:44 | So rather than counting 29 frames and rolling
over to 1 second and 0 frames, with feet and
| | 01:49 | frames you got up to say 15 frames
then rollover to 1 foot and 0 frames.
| | 01:56 | And you also have a starting frame number.
| | 01:58 | But let's go back to SMPTE timecode here for a
second, because there's a lot of complexity inside here.
| | 02:03 | Different video formats in different regions
have different frame rates and therefore you
| | 02:08 | need to use different counting
methods to match those frame rates.
| | 02:12 | NTSC video common in North America, Japan and
then few other places, typically uses something
| | 02:18 | close to 30 frames a second, it's actually
29.97 but we'll get to that in a second.
| | 02:24 | On the other hand, in Europe and some other
countries, they tend to use PAL or SECAM video
| | 02:28 | formats which run at 25 frames a second.
| | 02:31 | In these cases you count up to 24
then rollover 1 second and 0 frames.
| | 02:38 | 24 frames per second is not a traditional SMPTE
time format, SMPTE is typically associated with video.
| | 02:45 | 24 frames a second is typically a film rate.
| | 02:48 | However a lot of cameras used these days can
emulate the speed of traditional motion picture
| | 02:53 | film, that's why this has become kind of handy
when you're working on these filmic video projects.
| | 02:58 | And these other choices, 50 and 60 are a double speed
rate that sometimes are used in high-definition
| | 03:03 | for again, PAL like countries
and NTSC countries, et cetera.
| | 03:07 | Let's get back to this 30
frames a second though.
| | 03:10 | Like I said in reality most of the time the
real frame rate for video is really 29.97, not 30.
| | 03:19 | It may seem like a small difference but that
tiny difference adds up when you have long
| | 03:24 | programs like a half-hour, an hour, two
hours. You could be several seconds off.
| | 03:30 | And now you've got a real issue, you don't
want to like cut out a promo or cut out a
| | 03:34 | commercial or something like that.
| | 03:37 | Therefore, the wise souls at SMPTE have come up
with an alternative counting method known as Drop Frame.
| | 03:44 | Unlike what its name may imply, drop
frame does not drop actual frames of content.
| | 03:52 | What drop frame does is skip numbers used to
label those frames just so that the number
| | 04:00 | in your timeline and After Effects and video
programs will match the clock running on the
| | 04:04 | wall for long content, and it does that by
skipping the first two frame numbers, 0 and
| | 04:12 | 1, on every minute.
| | 04:14 | With the exception--don't you
love this--of every tens of minutes.
| | 04:20 | So when you start from time 0 that's considered a ten
of minute, 0 tens of minutes, you won't drop any frames.
| | 04:26 | But when you get to that first minute, you
will drop a couple frame numbers. You're not
| | 04:32 | dropping content. You're
just dropping the labels.
| | 04:36 | Let's see what that looks like, I am going
to leave that selected and click OK, I am
| | 04:40 | going to temporarily lengthen my composition
out to over a minute long and say 2 minutes
| | 04:46 | long, there we go and now I'm going to go
ahead and locate to just before a minute in
| | 04:53 | time, 59 seconds and 26 frames.
| | 04:57 | As I step forward in time by pressing the
Page Down key you'll see I go to 27, 28, 29,
| | 05:04 | but instead of rolling to a minute
I roll to a minute and two frames.
| | 05:09 | I haven't skipped any frames of content, I've
skipped two frame numbers. Very important concept.
| | 05:16 | However back at the start at time 0,
I do see 0 and 1 as frame numbers.
| | 05:22 | So for tens of a minutes we don't skip anything,
but on minutes themselves you'll see I can't
| | 05:26 | even go to 1 minute, I go to a couple
of frames before or immediately after.
| | 05:32 | This is important piece of bookkeeping for
long form programs like a half hour or more,
| | 05:37 | but quite often you are working on short stuff
and After Effects, a few seconds, 30 second
| | 05:41 | commercial, a couple minute music video.
| | 05:43 | In that case, you would much prefer to be
working in Non-Drop Frame timecode; that says don't
| | 05:50 | skip any numbers. I know we're going to drift
over long content, but for short content this
| | 05:56 | isn't important and let's
not create any ambiguity.
| | 05:58 | Let's just go head and click
through and look at all those numbers.
| | 06:01 | So as I go from 59:29, I go to 1
minute and 0 frames 1 frame, et cetera.
| | 06:07 | After Effects defaults to Drop Frame
timecode and it so happens that the DV tape format
| | 06:14 | also defaults to Drop Frame timecode.
| | 06:17 | But trust me, for most of the projects you
are going to be working on in After Effects.
| | 06:20 | If are indeed following the NTSC type
standard of 30 frames a second, you will prefer to
| | 06:25 | be in Non-Drop Frame timecode, it will make your
life much easier and virtually all pros do that as well.
| | 06:33 | Let's talk a little bit more about how time
is displayed and point out how things have
| | 06:36 | changed in recent versions of After Effects.
| | 06:39 | In After Effects CS5 and earlier, if I want
to quickly change how time is displayed in
| | 06:43 | the timeline panel, I hold Command on Mac
or Ctrl on Windows and click on the current
| | 06:48 | time in the timeline panel.
| | 06:50 | Doing so will toggle in between frames,
feet and frames and SMPTE timecode.
| | 06:55 | If I want to change the preferences for how
those different formats are displayed in CS5
| | 07:01 | or earlier, the shortcut is to click on the
color bit depth indicator at the bottom of
| | 07:06 | the Project panel.
| | 07:07 | Doing so will open the Project Settings, I'm
going to go ahead and change my Timecode Base
| | 07:11 | back to Auto, which is the default, and which
works great most of the time, click OK in
| | 07:16 | the timeline panel will update accordingly.
| | 07:18 | Things did change a little bit as
after After Effects CS5.5 though.
| | 07:22 | I'm in After Effects CS6 now, although these
changes did take place back in 5.5, and the
| | 07:27 | first thing you might notice is that timeline
panel now has a dual display that shows you
| | 07:32 | your primary display format, in this case
SMPTE, but also a secondary format, in this
| | 07:38 | case frames, and also indicates what the frame
rate and counting method of this composition is.
| | 07:44 | Holding Command on Mac or Ctrl on Windows
does indeed toggle between frames above
| | 07:48 | SMPTE below or SMPTE above frames below.
| | 07:52 | And if you want to change these preferences
the procedure is a little bit different.
| | 07:55 | If you want to change the frame counting methods
you still want to open up the Project Settings,
| | 08:01 | change your display style to Frames, that
will make it the primary display format.
| | 08:06 | And if you want to use Feet and Frames
instead of just a frame count enable the Use Feet
| | 08:11 | + Frames check box.
| | 08:13 | Disable this and now you'll use just normal
frame numbers and you get to decide whether
| | 08:17 | or not you start at 0, 1 or does a conversion based
on the start timecode for the composition. I'll click OK.
| | 08:25 | If you want to change the SMPTE display
format, and I'll Command+Click or Ctrl+Click again
| | 08:29 | to change this, you now go into the Composition
Settings and this can indeed be changed per composition.
| | 08:34 | You have your frame rate which you had before,
but now you have the counting method, Drop
| | 08:40 | Frame or Non-Drop.
| | 08:43 | After Effects CS5.5 and later also now uses the
auto display format. You can't mix and match
| | 08:48 | such as having a 24 frames display
format when your comp is actually 29.97.
| | 08:53 | Note that you can set a start timecode for
your composition. This is particularly handy
| | 08:57 | if you need to do an insert into what is a
longer format program, you're editing elsewhere
| | 09:02 | say in Adobe Premiere, and this is also the
timecode that will be used to convert your
| | 09:06 | starting frame number if you set that
preference back in the Project Settings.
| | 09:10 | It's a little bit confusing now, the things
are split up between comp settings and project
| | 09:16 | settings, but on the other hand it is nice to
have different SMPTE formats for different
| | 09:20 | oppositions rather than having to keep
changing your project settings just because one comp
| | 09:24 | is a 29.97 and the other one is a 23.976.
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