1. IntroductionIntroduction| 00:04 | Hi! I'm Chad Perkins and welcome to
After Effects CS5 Essential Training.
| | 00:09 | In this training title, we're going to
get familiar with Adobe After Effects
| | 00:13 | CS5, the world standard for motion graphics,
compositing, animation and visual effects.
| | 00:20 | Now although After Effects is a very
robust application, to say the least, we'll
| | 00:24 | be starting from the ground up here,
including an introductory project to help you
| | 00:27 | feel comfortable with the application.
| | 00:29 | I'll show you how to use the After
Effects animation tools, especially the
| | 00:33 | ever-popular Puppet tool, to breathe
life into still images, allowing you to
| | 00:37 | manipulate an object as if it were a puppet.
| | 00:40 | Then we'll explore effects,
the core of the program.
| | 00:44 | Effects allows you to easily create
stuff like glows, blurs, lens flares or even
| | 00:50 | a galaxy scene from scratch.
| | 00:53 | We'll look at the concept of
compositing, and we'll look at several features in
| | 00:56 | After Effects that allow us to
merge objects into the same scene.
| | 01:00 | We'll also look at the powerful new
Roto Brush tool, which allows you to simply
| | 01:04 | paint away areas of an object
that you'd like to get rid of.
| | 01:07 | And of course, what After Effects
training would be complete without digging
| | 01:11 | into the world of 3D?
| | 01:13 | We'll be looking at lights, cameras,
shadows, depth-of-field, and other
| | 01:18 | real world 3D concepts and how you
can use them to create the ultimate
| | 01:22 | realism in your scenes.
| | 01:24 | I'm excited to share with you After
Effects CS5 Essential Training, so let's
| | 01:28 | get to it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| What is After Effects?| 00:00 | Adobe After Effects CS5 is the
professional standard for motion graphics,
| | 00:04 | compositing, and visual effects for video.
| | 00:07 | Anyone from visual effects artists to
motion graphics artists to animators to
| | 00:11 | compositors can find tools to create
stunning results with this powerful tool.
| | 00:15 | Designers can work with practically any element:
| | 00:18 | video, audio, still images, or Adobe
Illustrator and can manipulate these
| | 00:25 | objects in either 2D or 3D space.
| | 00:28 | The 3D world in After Effects comes complete
with simulations of real lights and cameras.
| | 00:33 | These lights and cameras add a huge
dimension of reality to your 3D environments,
| | 00:38 | giving you control over real world
properties such as light falloff, shadows,
| | 00:43 | and even depth of field.
| | 00:45 | And by using Advanced techniques, such
as the Roto Brush feature, you can grab
| | 00:48 | just the part of the layer you want and
combine, or in other words composite it,
| | 00:53 | with a new background.
| | 00:55 | After Effects CS5 also includes the
powerful Keylight plug-in which allows you
| | 00:59 | to remove a greenscreen background,
giving you the freedom to put a subject in
| | 01:04 | any location imaginable.
| | 01:05 | Realistic effects are commonplace in
After Effects, allowing you to create such
| | 01:09 | things as lightning and lens
flares at the click of a button.
| | 01:12 | Powerful color adjustment tools can
help you make your footage far more
| | 01:16 | interesting, like the kind of
thing you'd see in the movies.
| | 01:18 | By utilizing these features, any
animator or designer can give their clients a
| | 01:22 | more visually engaging experience.
| | 01:25 | After Effects can also be a part of
the nonlinear workflow, producing complex
| | 01:28 | animation and video effects
for broadcast, film or the web.
| | 01:34 | After Effects is also one of
the industry's most powerful and
| | 01:37 | easy-to-use animation tools.
| | 01:39 | Its tools for animating
characters, specifically, are remarkable.
| | 01:42 | One of the next generation tools for
animating characters in After Effects is
| | 01:46 | the Puppet tool, which allows you
to take a single, flat, 2D layer and
| | 01:51 | organically bend it as if you
were controlling it like a puppet.
| | 01:54 | There are also a host of other
helpful animations tools as well, including
| | 01:59 | the ability to link objects, a
programming language called Expressions and a
| | 02:03 | graph editor that gives you
maximum control for lifelike animation.
| | 02:08 | Because After Effects is so
ubiquitous, you'll find it has the ability to
| | 02:10 | perform many visual tricks that
you'll recognize from your favorite t.v.
| | 02:14 | shows and commercials.
| | 02:16 | These effects are created with
brilliant tools, such as motion tracking, which
| | 02:19 | allows you to have objects move
along with other object in your scene,
| | 02:24 | and its painting tools, which allow
you to remove objects from a scene or
| | 02:29 | create growing vines.
| | 02:30 | After Effects also gives you total
control over how text comes to life.
| | 02:34 | It is the industry standard
choice for creating engaging titles.
| | 02:37 | Not only can you create and edit text,
but you can apply stylistic effects to
| | 02:42 | text and animate text characters in an
infinite combination of possibilities.
| | 02:47 | When you need to combine layers,
After Effects has all the tools you need.
| | 02:51 | You can create masks to
remove portions of layers.
| | 02:54 | You can use other layers as masks.
| | 02:57 | You can also control how
one layer blends into another.
| | 03:01 | The sky is the limit.
| | 03:03 | With all of its many features, After
Effects CS5 has the tools you need to take
| | 03:07 | your videos to the next level,
from raw footage to final delivery.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| How to use the exercise files| 00:00 | Folks, if you're a premium member of
the lynda.com Online Training Library, or
| | 00:05 | if you purchased this training on a
disc, then lucky you, because you have
| | 00:09 | access to the exercise files
that accompany this training.
| | 00:12 | Here's how they are laid out.
| | 00:15 | There is a series of Chapter
folders inside the Exercise Files folder.
| | 00:19 | The project files that you will need
to use are found in the corresponding
| | 00:24 | folder for that chapter.
| | 00:26 | There is a separate media that these
project files link to that are found in the
| | 00:31 | Media folder, such as images and video files.
| | 00:35 | You could use the files in the Media
folders just to kind of play around with.
| | 00:39 | But if you'd like to follow along,
all you really need to worry about are
| | 00:42 | loading up those project files
in the different Chapter folders.
| | 00:45 | Now, if you are a monthly or an
annual subscriber to the lynda.com Online
| | 00:49 | Training Library, then you won't have
access to these files, but you could
| | 00:52 | still just watch the training, or you
can actually make up your own assets to
| | 00:56 | follow along if you'd like.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Introductory ProjectAfter Effects workflow overview| 00:00 | In this chapter, we're just going
to jump into After Effects and get
| | 00:03 | comfortable with it.
| | 00:04 | We're going to start by going through
this little project here, and here is what
| | 00:08 | the completed project will look like.
| | 00:11 | (Video Playing)
(Female Speaker: You just can't beat Hansel and Petal.
| | 00:12 | (Video Playing)
(Female Speaker: I love this place. I absolutely love it!)
| | 00:20 | Very nice little commercial for Hansel and Petal
there, and we're going to go through that
| | 00:25 | in this chapter. But before we even we
jump into that, I wanted to give you one
| | 00:28 | little movie where we look at the
entire workflow in After Effects, just to give
| | 00:34 | you some reference for
where you are in the process.
| | 00:37 | The first step is, basically, we bring
in elements from our hard drive, and we
| | 00:42 | bring those into the Project panel here.
| | 00:45 | Now we'll talk more in depth about the
Project panel, as well as every step along
| | 00:50 | the way, deeper as we go
through this training series.
| | 00:52 | But I just want to get you acquainted,
so you have some frame of reference for
| | 00:56 | what's going to be going on in this chapter.
| | 00:58 | So, after we bring things into the
Project panel, we bring them into
| | 01:01 | compositions inside our projects and
add these elements to our compositions.
| | 01:07 | We can see the elements of our
composition in the Timeline panel, which is where
| | 01:11 | my little mouse is floating around now here.
| | 01:14 | We do most of our work on our layers.
| | 01:17 | We animate our layers.
| | 01:18 | We move them in time here in the Timeline panel.
| | 01:21 | We could view the results of our work in
the Composition panel up here, the Viewer.
| | 01:27 | We could also add effects
from the Effects & Presets panel.
| | 01:30 | After Effects comes with this huge
library of cool effects that do everything
| | 01:34 | from color-correcting to
adding lightning to distorting.
| | 01:38 | There's just hundreds of things.
| | 01:40 | So, after we're done fiddling with our
stuff, then we render it - or in other
| | 01:44 | words, we output it to a movie file
format or to an image or an audio file.
| | 01:50 | But basically, we need to get all of
these layers into some type of format that
| | 01:55 | other people can view.
| | 01:56 | That might be in a form of video for
a commercial or something like that.
| | 02:00 | So, again, the three things you need
to remember about the After Effects
| | 02:03 | workflow is that we, number one, bring
stuff in, number two, we mess with it and
| | 02:09 | adjust it, fiddle with it,
and number three, we output it.
| | 02:12 | Now, armed with that information,
we're ready to jump into our projects.
| | 02:16 | Let's go!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bringing elements into After Effects| 00:00 | The first step in any After Effects
project is that we want to bring stuff
| | 00:04 | into After Effects.
| | 00:05 | We call this process Importing.
| | 00:07 | Now there are many ways to import files.
| | 00:09 | We could go to File > Import > File,
or we could also right-click inside the
| | 00:15 | Project panel and choose Import > File.
| | 00:19 | We could also choose Multiple Files.
| | 00:20 | We could import recent footage.
| | 00:22 | But the easiest way to import is to
simply find a blank spot in the Project
| | 00:27 | panel, like this area down
here, and just double-click.
| | 00:30 | Now inside the Exercise Files, if you're
following along, there is a Media folder.
| | 00:35 | This contains all of the folders for the
different types of media that we'll use
| | 00:38 | throughout this training series
organized, sorted by category.
| | 00:42 | So, go to the Video folder, and
you'll find two files here: PRECOMP
| | 00:47 | background and PRECOMP video.
| | 00:49 | Now we could select one of them and click Open.
| | 00:52 | We could also double-click one of them
to bring things into the Project panel.
| | 00:56 | As you can probably see, there are
multiple ways to do most things in After Effects.
| | 01:01 | So, what I'm actually going to do
here though is click on one of these.
| | 01:05 | And since I know I need to import both
of them, I'm going to hold the Shift key
| | 01:08 | down and click the other one.
| | 01:10 | So, both PRECOMP background and PRECOMP
video are selected. Go ahead and click
| | 01:14 | Open to bring those in.
| | 01:16 | Now you can see that these
elements are in our Project panel.
| | 01:20 | We could use them in our Composition,
which is exactly what we're going to be
| | 01:23 | doing later on in this chapter.
| | 01:25 | For now though, before we move on to
that, this has started to look cluttery.
| | 01:28 | As you could tell, before we
imported these things were nice and orderly.
| | 01:31 | I've created folders, which we'll
talk about doing, but you can do with the
| | 01:35 | bottom of the Project panel by
clicking this little Folder icon here.
| | 01:38 | But for now, just go ahead and click
on these elements, the PRECOMP video
| | 01:41 | and background files we just imported, and
drag them into the Video folder, like this.
| | 01:47 | So, now if we open up the Video folder
by clicking this little sideways arrow,
| | 01:52 | we could open up that folder and see
that these are nicely stored in the Video
| | 01:56 | folder, all nice and tidy and organized.
| | 01:59 | Organization is something that
you'll hear me talk a lot about through
| | 02:01 | this training series.
| | 02:02 | It's not something that you're
probably super concerned about as a new After
| | 02:06 | Effects user, but trust me, if you want
to use this tool professionally, it gets
| | 02:10 | really big and hairy and scary
and overwhelming very, very quickly.
| | 02:14 | So, get in the habit of making good
workflow habits now, by getting and staying
| | 02:20 | organized with your projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding elements to the Timeline| 00:00 | So, now that we've imported some stuff
into our project, we're now ready to add
| | 00:04 | it to a Composition.
| | 00:06 | So, open up the Video
folder to reveal the assets here.
| | 00:09 | Now, a moment ago I referred
to this as stuff, generically, which is
| | 00:13 | not the technical term.
| | 00:14 | Typically, in After Effects, we
refer to anything that you bring into the
| | 00:17 | Project panel as assets or footage.
| | 00:20 | So, in the real world, footage refers
to video, but in After Effects, even if
| | 00:25 | it's a still image, it's footage.
| | 00:26 | If it's audio file, it's footage.
| | 00:28 | If it's a Photoshop document,
Illustrator document, it's all footage.
| | 00:31 | Again, the term asset is also a
synonym for this as well. So, either/or.
| | 00:35 | That's what I'm referring to.
| | 00:36 | So, what I'm going to do here.
| | 00:38 | I want to grab the PRECOMP background,
just click and drag it down to the
| | 00:43 | bottom of our layers here.
| | 00:46 | That becomes the background.
| | 00:47 | It's just as easy as that.
| | 00:49 | Now actually, it didn't
go where I wanted it to go.
| | 00:51 | So, what I'm going to do is just grab
it and drag it down to the layer stack,
| | 00:56 | until I get a solid black
horizontal line below everything else.
| | 01:00 | So, I should see this layer at the bottom.
| | 01:03 | I should see this flower here above it.
| | 01:06 | If you're not seeing that, you could
also click and drag or scroll to about the
| | 01:11 | 3 or 4 second marker here to be able to
see the flower a little bit better and
| | 01:16 | the background underneath it.
| | 01:18 | We're also going to add
the video to our Timeline.
| | 01:21 | Simply, grab PRECOMP video and drag it
until you get a horizontal black line
| | 01:26 | above the H and P text 2 layer.
| | 01:29 | Let go, and now that layer has
been added above all the others.
| | 01:33 | You'll notice also that this video has some
black in it that covered up what was already there.
| | 01:40 | For now, you don't have to worry
about anything other than the process of
| | 01:44 | dragging and dropping stuff from
the Project panel into the Timeline.
| | 01:49 | In the next movie, we'll talk about
working with layers a little bit more,
| | 01:52 | moving them around in
time and in stacking order.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with layers| 00:00 | So, now we've added some assets to our Timeline.
| | 00:03 | And let's talk about these assets a little bit.
| | 00:05 | We saw, in the last movie,
how when we added a layer,
| | 00:08 | it covered up the layers beneath them.
| | 00:11 | If we want to temporarily remove an
object's visibility, we can go ahead, over
| | 00:16 | here in the Timeline panel, all the way
in the upper left-hand corner and click
| | 00:20 | on the Eye icon for a layer.
And that removes its visibility.
| | 00:24 | Now we can click that again to bring
it back, so it's not anything permanent.
| | 00:28 | We haven't loss anything at all.
| | 00:29 | If we scrub in time with the current
time indicator, which is this little
| | 00:33 | yellow playhead with the red vertical line here,
which we use to change our position in time,
| | 00:38 | we could see that we have this cool video.
| | 00:40 | We're going to use this later, but for
right now, let's just go ahead and leave
| | 00:43 | it off by clicking the Eye
icon and leaving that empty there.
| | 00:46 | Now the layer is represented by this bar here.
| | 00:50 | Its horizontal length determines its duration.
| | 00:54 | So, this video layer goes from the
beginning of the composition to the end
| | 00:59 | of the composition.
| | 01:00 | As you can see over this
indicator, that's 10 seconds long.
| | 01:03 | So, this is a 10-second long layer.
| | 01:05 | Now some of these other
layers here aren't quite as long.
| | 01:09 | You can see, by this gray space
here, that they start later in time.
| | 01:13 | This last layer here, the background
layer, actually ends earlier in time.
| | 01:17 | Now, with this layer, we want it to
start later and to end with everything else.
| | 01:23 | So, to move it in time, just go ahead and
click on the layer and drag it to the right.
| | 01:29 | Now, as we do that, you could see that
we are actually making it start later
| | 01:34 | and end later as well.
| | 01:36 | Now what I've done is I've gone
ahead and added something called markers -
| | 01:40 | that's these little icons up here at
the top - so that we know where certain
| | 01:45 | layers stop and start.
| | 01:47 | So, in order to see this, because it
kind of looks like gibberish junk right
| | 01:50 | now, is we can go ahead and go to the
slider with these little tiny mountains
| | 01:54 | and then big mountains.
| | 01:55 | Go ahead and drag this slider to a
magnification - use the scrollbars if
| | 02:00 | necessary as well - until you can see
what is being said on these markers.
| | 02:06 | So, if we back up a little bit here, we
can see the Background Starts Here. Okay.
| | 02:11 | Good. Got that.
| | 02:12 | So, the H and P Text, the Ampersand layer
and the Flower Petals start at this marker.
| | 02:19 | So, we have the H and P Text and
the Ampersand, but the Flower Petals layer
| | 02:24 | does not start there.
| | 02:25 | So, go ahead and drag it to the right,
drag and drag and drag until the first
| | 02:33 | part of this layer matches up with this marker.
| | 02:37 | Markers, by the way, we'll talk
about later in this training series,
| | 02:39 | but markers are essentially are kind of
like little sticky notes that you could
| | 02:42 | put to yourself, or maybe somebody
else in the workflow that you're going to
| | 02:45 | pass the After Effects project along to,
| | 02:47 | just kind of little notes about what
supposed to happen at that exact time.
| | 02:51 | Now finally, we have
Filigree Core & Stems start Here.
| | 02:55 | So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to
select the filigree core layer and hold
| | 02:58 | the Shift key and click filigree stems.
| | 03:00 | So, now they are both selected.
| | 03:03 | Let's go ahead and drag these to the
right, continue to drag, which takes forever right now
| | 03:08 | because I'm zoomed in so closely.
| | 03:09 | But if I wanted to, I can just zoom out
by dragging this slider to the left.
| | 03:13 | I don't have to drag so vigorously.
| | 03:16 | So, I'm dragging filigree core and stems here.
| | 03:21 | Finally, the last marker says - if we
zoom in little bit more closely there -
| | 03:25 | that the Filigree Stem Tips
Start Here where that marker is.
| | 03:29 | So, let's grab the filigree stem tips
and drag this all the way over to the
| | 03:34 | Filigree Stem Tips Start Here marker.
| | 03:38 | With that, we now have our
project set up and ready to animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating animation with presets| 00:00 | So, now that we got the layers where we
want them, it is time to add some animation.
| | 00:05 | Now if you scrub the Current Time
Indicator - also abbreviated as the CTI - you'll
| | 00:10 | see that I've already animated some of
these elements for you, but I'm going to
| | 00:14 | show you how to do all these
things throughout this training series.
| | 00:16 | But for now, we're going to
animate this little flower here.
| | 00:21 | Now in the professional world, most of
the time when you animate, you're going
| | 00:23 | to animate things manually.
| | 00:25 | But After Effects has another way that
you can animate things by using something
| | 00:29 | called an Animation Preset.
| | 00:31 | In most professional projects in After
Effects, you really wanted to just sink
| | 00:35 | your teeth in and get a really detailed,
perfected animation, a real great final product.
| | 00:40 | But a lot of times, you might be doing
some kind of spec work where you just
| | 00:43 | kind of want to get a general idea.
| | 00:46 | Animation Presets, even after you've
mastered After Effects, are great for that.
| | 00:50 | So, here is what we're going to do.
| | 00:51 | Let's go over to the Effects & Presets panel.
| | 00:53 | If it's not showing, you go to the Window
menu at the top and choose Effects & Presets.
| | 00:58 | We're going to go to the Animation
Presets area at the top of the Effects &
| | 01:03 | Presets panel, which you can
get to by scrolling up here.
| | 01:07 | And let's go ahead and open that up.
| | 01:08 | By the way, if Animation Presets are
not showing, you can go the Effects
| | 01:12 | & Presets menu over here to the right,
click that and choose Show Animation Presets.
| | 01:18 | Now underneath Animation Presets,
you'll see a folder called Behaviors.
| | 01:22 | Open that bad boy up, and you can see
all these cool behaviors that we can
| | 01:25 | add to our animation.
| | 01:28 | Now I love these things like Wiggle -
gelatin, for example, or Scale Bounce
| | 01:33 | - random, would take some time to set up,
even if you knew exactly what you were doing.
| | 01:37 | So, again, what we can do here to save
ourselves some time is to Rotate Over Time.
| | 01:43 | Drag this down to the flower petals layer and
once it's highlighted like this, then let go.
| | 01:50 | Then as indicated by the name of the
Animation Preset, as we scrub this in time,
| | 01:55 | these flower petals will rotate over time.
| | 01:58 | Now, if we back up with our Current
Time Indicator, we'll see that when the
| | 02:04 | black fades away, the flower is
already there kind of waiting.
| | 02:09 | I'm not sure I like that so much.
| | 02:10 | So, I kind of want it to fade in as well.
| | 02:13 | So, let's scroll up here, and
let's choose Fade In+Out - frames.
| | 02:19 | Go ahead and click and
hold your mouse down again.
| | 02:22 | Drag and drop the Animation
Preset onto flower petals.
| | 02:26 | So, we can combine multiple
Animation Presets. No big deal.
| | 02:30 | Then as we see, this will fade in.
| | 02:33 | Now you might look at this and say,
"Well, it fades in, but maybe it fades in a
| | 02:37 | little bit too early."
| | 02:39 | If you don't like that,
which now that I'm looking at
| | 02:41 | I kind of don't like it that much,
| | 02:42 | I'm going to just click and
drag the layer to the right.
| | 02:45 | That will make the fade-in
happen a little bit later.
| | 02:49 | After the black goes away, then we'll
see the background, and then slowly the
| | 02:53 | flower petals will fade in.
| | 02:55 | I kind of like that better.
| | 02:56 | Thus, we see that Animation
Presets can save us tons of time.
| | 03:01 | It's great for new users, but even
when you're done with this training series
| | 03:05 | and you really know what you're doing in
After Effects, don't forget Animation Presets.
| | 03:08 | A lot of pro users just kind of neglect
these, because they are seeing this kind
| | 03:12 | of like this amateurish thing, that
they are above, but they can save you tons
| | 03:17 | of time, even if you know what you're doing.
| | 03:19 | Next, we're going to get into
the exciting world of effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying effects| 00:00 | And now we get to look at effects.
| | 00:02 | I love the effects that ship with After Effects.
| | 00:05 | It ships with over 200 effects.
| | 00:09 | Actually, we did a title a few years
back for lynda.com covering every single
| | 00:13 | effect in After Effects.
That is how much I love effects.
| | 00:17 | Effects do everything from correcting
color, as you could see here in Effects &
| | 00:21 | Presets panel, to distorting
layers and blurring and sharpening.
| | 00:25 | There are specialty filters.
| | 00:26 | There's even like Audio adjustments
that could happen, very cool stuff.
| | 00:29 | Now, what we want to do here is apply an
effect that will allow us to have these
| | 00:36 | little dots and the stems of the
flowers kind of animate on in a really cool
| | 00:42 | way. As you could see from
our original example video here,
| | 00:46 | if I scrub this when the petals and stems come on,
| | 00:50 | they kind of rotate in this really cool way.
| | 00:53 | And this would probably take you a long
time to do manually, but with the effect
| | 00:58 | that we are going to use, it's so
quick and easy. It's almost laughable.
| | 01:02 | So, go to the Effects & Presets panel, and
you can get the effect in one of two ways.
| | 01:07 | You can scrub down into the Transition
category and find the effect there, and
| | 01:15 | the effects we are looking for actually
is called Radial Wipe, or to make your
| | 01:18 | job way easier, you can go to the
search field here at the top of the Effects &
| | 01:23 | Presets panel and just start
typing Radial Wipe, r-a-d-i-a-l w-i-p-e.
| | 01:28 | By the time you start typing that
enough, you'll be able to get Radial Wipe.
| | 01:37 | This is the live search field, so as
you type, you get instantaneous results.
| | 01:42 | So, I am going to click and drag on
the Radial Wipe effect, and I am going to
| | 01:47 | drop the effect on to the filigree
stem tips layer, and I am going to drag
| | 01:54 | another instance of the
effect to the filigree stems layer.
| | 01:58 | So, now both layers have
the effect applied to it.
| | 02:02 | Now the way this works is that once
we've applied the effect from the Effects &
| | 02:07 | Presets panel, then we go to the
Effect Controls panel, which is, by default,
| | 02:13 | grouped with the Project panel over here
on the left-hand side of the interface,
| | 02:16 | and we have specific controls
to adjust and tweak the effect.
| | 02:21 | Now with the filigree stems layer
selected, we can go to Transition Completion
| | 02:28 | because basically what this is, this
effect allows you to transition things.
| | 02:32 | Don't follow along here, but I am
just going to give you a quick demo of what
| | 02:35 | this does and apply this to the correct layer.
| | 02:39 | Then when we do Transition Completion
and we adjust this value, it's almost kind
| | 02:43 | of like a clock-wipe type thing.
| | 02:45 | So, if you want to show like the
passage of time or something like that, it's
| | 02:49 | meant for transitioning away
video footage like that.
| | 02:51 | But we don't care what it was intended for.
| | 02:55 | This effect is going to allow us to do some
pretty cool stuff in terms of motion graphicsw.
| | 02:59 | So, if we go to the filigree stems
layer and then we adjust Transition
| | 03:03 | Completion, we can see that we have
this kind of cool animating on object here.
| | 03:09 | And what we want to have happen is
we want it to start completely off, so
| | 03:13 | Transition Completion will be 100% and then
reduce this value to 0 so that it animates on.
| | 03:21 | So, in effect, what we need to have happen,
we need to change these values over time.
| | 03:25 | We need to start at 100, then gradually
get to 0 and that is animation, which we
| | 03:32 | are going to talk about next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating animation without presets| 00:00 | And now we are going to look at
manually animating properties. And this is
| | 00:05 | kind of a complex topic.
| | 00:07 | Once you get the hang of it, it's
actually very easy. And everything in the After
| | 00:11 | Effects animates the same way, whether
you are animating something like fading
| | 00:13 | in or moving from side to side, or you
are animating some component of an effect
| | 00:18 | or whatever; everything animates the same way.
| | 00:19 | So, once you get the Zen of After
Effects animation, if you will, then it's
| | 00:24 | really, really an easy program because
everything, again, animates the same way.
| | 00:29 | But this isn't the time or the
place really to get into that.
| | 00:32 | We are going to save that for a little
bit later on in the training series, a
| | 00:35 | couple of chapters down the road.
| | 00:37 | So, for now, just kind of follow along
with me just to get the overall feeling
| | 00:41 | of the way animation works.
| | 00:43 | So, I am going to select the
filigree stems layer. That's layer 10.
| | 00:47 | I am going to click this little
stopwatch here next to Transition Completion,
| | 00:54 | and I am going to click and drag on
this property until it reaches 100.
| | 01:00 | The next thing I am going to do, and by
the way, I am at 3 seconds and 7 frames
| | 01:04 | in, so basically, 03:07 and if you
wanted to move your Current Time Indicator
| | 01:10 | to get there then you can follow along
exactly with me, but it doesn't have to be exact.
| | 01:14 | I am going to move to the right,
basically a little bit further in time, maybe
| | 01:19 | about a second so that it says 04:07.
| | 01:21 | The next I am going to change this
value to where we want it to end up, to 0.
| | 01:26 | So, basically the stopwatch says, "After
Effects remember what I am about to tell you."
| | 01:31 | So, then it will animate on if we
scrub the Current Time Indicator.
| | 01:37 | So, you could see these stems
animating on. It's very cool.
| | 01:43 | Now just for practice, let's do the same
thing with the filigree stem tips layer.
| | 01:47 | So, let's go out to about here
in time, and that's about 03:17.
| | 01:54 | So again, scrub your play head, your
Current Time Indicator, till you add about 03:17.
| | 01:59 | If you are a little bit above that,
like 3:19, 20 or a little bit behind
| | 02:04 | that like 3:14, 15,
| | 02:05 | it doesn't really matter,
not for this example, anyways.
| | 02:07 | So, I am going to go ahead and do the
same thing here where I am going to click
| | 02:11 | the stopwatch for a Transition
Completion, drag this value up to 100%, move in
| | 02:18 | time out to about another second, so
about 04:17 this time and click and drag on
| | 02:26 | Transition Completion the value to about 0%.
| | 02:30 | By the way, if you have a Photoshop
background and you are new to After
| | 02:34 | Effects, this concept of how you click
and drag on values, this is referred to
| | 02:39 | as a scrubby slider. And many Photoshop users
that don't know After Effects don't know this,
| | 02:44 | but in Photoshop, you can
do this all over the place.
| | 02:46 | So, if you are going to change a
layer's opacity or some other value, maybe a
| | 02:51 | text size or something, you could put
your cursor over a value, and you get this
| | 02:55 | icon indicating that you can scrub
left and right, which is really great for
| | 02:59 | getting instant live
feedback for what you are doing.
| | 03:03 | So, now, if we back up a little bit
and scrub our Current Time Indicator, you
| | 03:06 | could see that we have both of these cool,
little objects rotating on, which is really cool.
| | 03:12 | I love the way that looks - really easy as well.
| | 03:16 | One thing that I don't particularly
like about this is that both of these
| | 03:19 | objects are animating on in the same way.
| | 03:22 | They are both going counterclockwise.
| | 03:25 | It's kind of interesting that the
description of the Wipe is clockwise in both things.
| | 03:29 | It says it's clockwise, but really,
it's going counterclockwise because we
| | 03:33 | are doing it backwards.
| | 03:34 | So, what we are going to do is go to
the filigree stems layer and change the
| | 03:39 | Wipe type in this dropdown, just
click this, and choose Counterclockwise.
| | 03:44 | So, now when they animate on, they
animate on in opposite directions.
| | 03:49 | If you want the other one to go
clockwise, the other one to go
| | 03:51 | counterclockwise, feel free to change
that as you please. But for now, this is
| | 03:56 | what we got - pretty sweet.
| | 03:58 | Now, one another thing I want to do
while we are talking about this is kind
| | 04:00 | of like extra credit.
| | 04:02 | We have this video here
that comes on the beginning.
| | 04:04 | Let's go ahead and turn on the
visibility of this layer by clicking this Eye
| | 04:07 | icon for that layer.
| | 04:09 | As we move in time, the layer fades
to black, and then it just stays black.
| | 04:14 | It covers up all the work that we did,
so you can see this bar is on top of
| | 04:17 | everything. So, we can't see what we
have here because of that video layer.
| | 04:21 | So, let's move in time to when it fades
to black, and that's about two seconds
| | 04:26 | and ten frames in - and we'll explain
timecode a little bit more in the next
| | 04:28 | chapter, but for now, just
scrub this until it says 02:10.
| | 04:31 | Then I am going to open up this layer
by clicking the little arrow next to it.
| | 04:37 | Click the arrow next to Transform to
open that up, and these are the basic
| | 04:42 | animation properties of a layer.
| | 04:43 | Again, we are going to talk about this
very in-depth in a couple of chapters
| | 04:47 | down the road, but for now, just know that
we are going to adjust the Opacity parameter.
| | 04:51 | So, I am going to click
this stopwatch for Opacity.
| | 04:54 | I am going to move in time ever-so-
slightly, just one frame, maybe two frames,
| | 04:59 | just kind of one little notch
over and then drag this down to 0.
| | 05:06 | If you did this correctly, you
should have two little diamonds here right
| | 05:09 | next to each other.
| | 05:10 | You might have to zoom in by clicking
these little mountains. We'll talk about what
| | 05:13 | those diamonds mean and what
they indicate a little bit later on.
| | 05:15 | But for now, just know that we have
taken this video layer and faded it out so
| | 05:22 | that our other animation can
continue, which is pretty awesome.
| | 05:26 | So, if you've been following along,
congratulations now on being a full-fledged
| | 05:31 | animator and being able to bring
something to life from scratch.
| | 05:35 | It feels pretty good,
doesn't it? I love that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Previewing your work| 00:00 | Once you start doing a little bit of
work in After Effects, you'll want to
| | 00:03 | preview it, like really preview, not just
kind of like drag this little thing around.
| | 00:07 | That's not giving you an accurate
representation of what's going on.
| | 00:10 | But there is two ways to
preview stuff in After Effects.
| | 00:13 | One is with the Spacebar Preview and
if I hit the Spacebar, we will wait and you'll
| | 00:19 | notice this little flecks of green and
gray here. And basically, what that's
| | 00:23 | telling you is that After Effects needs
to load these frames into RAM before it
| | 00:29 | can give you an accurate preview.
| | 00:31 | So, the green frames, or the green little
bars over the frames in your video that
| | 00:37 | have been loaded into RAM
and will preview in real time.
| | 00:40 | The Spacebar Preview, which you can
actually use Spacebar to both play and pause your
| | 00:45 | video, kind of it just gives you the gist,
the overall basic idea of your project.
| | 00:52 | You might have too much going on in your
After Effects composition, or you might
| | 00:55 | not have enough RAM to be able
preview everything perfectly,
| | 00:59 | so the Spacebar Preview just kind of
gives you the basic idea. And that's why
| | 01:03 | you are seeing this little skips here
in gray, is because often times it will
| | 01:07 | just kind of not load every single
frame into RAM if it can't. So, the Spacebar
| | 01:13 | preview just tries to give you the gist.
| | 01:14 | As you could see here, the frame rate's
about 15 frames per second about out of 30.
| | 01:20 | So, it's not in real time.
| | 01:22 | That's not what the
Spacebar Preview is trying to do.
| | 01:24 | It's trying to give you the
overall gist of your project.
| | 01:27 | If I double-click the Preview Bar
here - actually, I am just going to
| | 01:30 | resize this window.
| | 01:31 | We'll talk more about the
interface in the next chapter.
| | 01:34 | We have some Play controls here and
basically, this little Play button does the
| | 01:37 | same thing as the Spacebar.
| | 01:39 | So, if you are not a keyboard shortcut
person, this might work for you. You can
| | 01:42 | just play it and pause it.
| | 01:44 | Now you'll notice though, as I am
playing this back, there is no audio.
| | 01:48 | The Spacebar Preview does
not allow you to preview audio.
| | 01:52 | So, if drag this back to the
beginning and I hit the 0 key on the numeric
| | 01:58 | keypad, alternatively you can hit this
little button right here, this arrow with
| | 02:01 | three little vertical
bars on the left side of it.
| | 02:04 | If I hit 0 on the numeric keypad -
| | 02:07 | (Female Speaker: You just can't beat
Hansel and Petal. I love this place!)
| | 02:12 | You are seeing that we are getting
audio, and we get a real time preview.
| | 02:15 | So, that's what the RAM Preview is for.
| | 02:18 | It's to give you a very accurate
idea of what your project is about.
| | 02:22 | If it could only give you a four or
five frame preview because that all the RAM
| | 02:26 | you have in your system, then that's
what it will do, but it will preview those
| | 02:29 | three, four, five frames
or whatever in real time.
| | 02:32 | So, again, to sum up, press the
Spacebar to just kind of get a general idea of
| | 02:37 | your project or your work. Hit the 0 on
the Numeric Keypad to get a RAM preview
| | 02:42 | to get a more accurate
idea and to play back audio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting content as a movie file| 00:00 | So, our project is looking good.
| | 00:02 | It's pretty much done.
| | 00:03 | Now we need to take all these layers
and animation that we've created and spit
| | 00:08 | this out into a video format
that everyone else can watch.
| | 00:13 | Because if just have this After Effects
project we pass around the office, most
| | 00:17 | people aren't going to be able to
watch it if they don't have After Effects.
| | 00:20 | So, let's say we wanted
to put this ad on the web.
| | 00:24 | So, I am going to select this composition.
| | 00:26 | You can tell it selected by
the yellow outline around it.
| | 00:29 | Go to the Composition menu at the top of
the screen and select Add to Render Queue.
| | 00:34 | Alternatively, you could choose Make
Movie, but I want to tell you about the
| | 00:38 | Render Queue really quickly.
| | 00:39 | This Render Queue panel, this is
where all the magic happens when you are
| | 00:43 | spitting out your video when you
are done, and you are outputting.
| | 00:46 | This is where you go.
| | 00:47 | This is a fairly complex system,
because if we click on these hypertext -
| | 00:52 | basically this gold text with the dotted
underline - this will open up the Settings.
| | 00:57 | So, there is the Render Settings,
and then there is the Output Module.
| | 01:01 | We could choose our
formats from the Format dropdown.
| | 01:05 | You could see we could output this for the web.
| | 01:06 | Let's say we are going make
an FLV, which is Flash video.
| | 01:09 | Now let's say FLV, click OK,
and we want to make sure
| | 01:12 | we'll check Audio Output to turn on the
audio. And then we could click this Output
| | 01:17 | To to determine where
we are going to save this.
| | 01:20 | And then once we are ready,
we can click the Render button.
| | 01:23 | And it will take a little while to render.
| | 01:25 | And once it's done, you'll hear a cute little
chime, and your video will be done and rendered.
| | 01:29 | Now as we'll learn about throughout
this training series, the Render Queue will
| | 01:33 | allow you to actually create a queue.
| | 01:35 | Let's say you wanted to create a high
quality version of this for television and
| | 01:40 | maybe a lower quality version of this
or a smaller version of this for the web.
| | 01:44 | You could actually set up multiple
tasks for the render queue, hence the name
| | 01:50 | Render Queue, and it will
actually render one after another.
| | 01:54 | So, that is our project.
| | 01:56 | That is how you get from point A to
point B. You bring in objects into to your
| | 02:01 | Project panel, add them to a composition,
adjust them in the Timeline panel in
| | 02:07 | a variety of ways, including adding Effects,
and then you output them via the Render Queue.
| | 02:13 | Now in the next chapter, we are going
to look at a few foundational concepts
| | 02:17 | that you are going to need before
really sinking your teeth into After Effects,
| | 02:20 | and then we are going to do the
animation a little bit more, explain that in
| | 02:23 | more detail and really start getting
into the fun aspects of After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Getting Started with After EffectsTouring the interface| 00:00 | Before we get much further, I want to give you
a little tour of the interface of After Effects.
| | 00:05 | Basically, you need to
know your way around here.
| | 00:09 | It really will help you become a
more efficient user of the program.
| | 00:12 | We have already talked about the
Project panel and few other panels, and
| | 00:16 | basically, that is the overall theme of
After Effects' Interfaces that we have
| | 00:21 | the series of Docked panels.
| | 00:22 | By Docked, I mean they are grouped together.
| | 00:24 | If you put your cursor in between two
panels, you'll get a little divider, like this.
| | 00:29 | This will allow you to resize panels,
either from left to right, or up and down here.
| | 00:36 | If you put your cursor in between a
spot where three or more panels meet
| | 00:40 | together, where they intersect,
you'll get one of these little icons.
| | 00:43 | It allows you just to resize
the interface however you'd like.
| | 00:48 | Now, when you put your cursor over
a panel, you'd hit the Tilde key.
| | 00:53 | That's the little squiggle that's above the Tab key,
to the left of the number one on your keyboard.
| | 00:58 | If you press that key, it will
maximize whatever panel your mouse happens to
| | 01:02 | be over at the time.
| | 01:04 | So, I'll put my cursor over the Project
panel, maximize it and then minimize it
| | 01:09 | again by using the Tilde key.
| | 01:12 | It may just going to
seem like a cool trick down.
| | 01:14 | But when you are actually working,
there's so much complexity to these panels
| | 01:18 | that to be able to maximize them like this,
| | 01:20 | you can see, for example, in the Project
panel, maximize that, and you could see
| | 01:24 | that's we have so much here as far as
like the File Path, even like the Name of
| | 01:28 | the file and the Type.
| | 01:30 | And sometimes, these things get
really long and so you need to be able to
| | 01:33 | resize, grab these little
dividers and resize them,
| | 01:36 | so you could actually
see, what's going on here.
| | 01:39 | Then you could just hit that Tilde key
again, to get back to where you were.
| | 01:42 | But being able to maximize panels is a
great asset to your arsenal of skills.
| | 01:47 | Now, there might be times
when you want to undock panels.
| | 01:50 | So, let's say for example, the
Composition panel, which is our Viewer here.
| | 01:54 | I am going to select it, and you could
tell it's selected because of the gold
| | 01:58 | outline around the edge of it.
| | 02:00 | That's how we know it's selected.
| | 02:01 | That's also going to become very
important as we go through the program,
| | 02:04 | because the keyboard shortcuts that
you will use will change based on which
| | 02:08 | panel is currently selected.
| | 02:11 | But getting back to the Composition panel
here, I have currently a two-monitor setup.
| | 02:16 | And so if I want to use this Composition
panel on my other monitor, I could hold
| | 02:21 | down the Command key on the Mac, or
the Ctrl key on the PC as I drag away.
| | 02:26 | Then let go off the mouse, then let go
off the Command or Ctrl key, and now I
| | 02:30 | have this floating window, and I could
put this over here on my other monitor,
| | 02:34 | which you can't see, just pretend it's
going to another monitor there, and we
| | 02:38 | have this now floating window
as opposed to a docked window.
| | 02:41 | You might want to do this with other panels.
| | 02:42 | You might have a panel that you want
to kind of like levitate over here,
| | 02:46 | over your Timeline panel while you are
working on at something, and then you
| | 02:48 | could re-dock it just by simply
grabbing these little grip things here on
| | 02:52 | the left-hand side.
| | 02:54 | When we drag this to re-dock this, we
get these things called Drop Zones, these
| | 02:58 | little geometric panels
that kind of like light up.
| | 03:01 | Basically, that tells us where this
panel is going to go, once we let go of it,
| | 03:06 | and when we have a side drop zone like that,
then it puts the panel to the right of that.
| | 03:11 | If we want to group panels together,
let's say we wanted the Info panel to be
| | 03:15 | grouped along with the Composition panel.
| | 03:18 | So, they are basically tabs next to each other.
| | 03:19 | You would use this center drop zone,
and that allows these two panels to be in
| | 03:25 | the same group called a Frame.
| | 03:28 | So, this one frame has these two panels in it.
| | 03:31 | I am going to put the Info panel back
with the Audio panel. Shift it over here,
| | 03:37 | because I want the Audio panel in front.
And that's basically what you need to
| | 03:40 | know about the interface.
| | 03:42 | If you are not seeing a particular
panel, let's say for example, I close
| | 03:46 | Effects & Presets panel, which you can do by
clicking little x that gets rids of it there,
| | 03:50 | I can go to the Window menu, and then
choose Effects & Presets to get it back.
| | 03:55 | Now, you may get the interface set up
the way you like it, which may take some
| | 03:59 | time, specially if you have like a two-
monitor setup, and you might want to save
| | 04:03 | your layout, you can using a
feature called the Workspace.
| | 04:06 | If you go here to the top of
the interface, you could see this
| | 04:09 | Workspace dropdown.
| | 04:10 | Right now, we are using the Standard Layout.
| | 04:12 | But if we wanted to do something with
text, we could choose Text, and that will
| | 04:15 | basically get us the Standard layout
except with the Character and Paragraph
| | 04:18 | panels, which allow us to
manipulate and adjust our text.
| | 04:22 | We could choose Motion Tracking or any
one of these other various workspaces
| | 04:26 | already created for you, or
we can go back to Standard.
| | 04:29 | What's kind of cool about After Effects
too is that it automatically remembers
| | 04:34 | the changes that you make.
| | 04:35 | So, this is the Standard Workspace.
| | 04:36 | Let's just say I do something super
crazy like this, and we'll go back to
| | 04:41 | Animation or something like that.
| | 04:42 | If we go back to Standard, then you
can see that it actually remembered the
| | 04:46 | quirky way we had it. And if we don't
like it like this and we want to reset
| | 04:50 | things back to their defaults, we can
go back down at the dropdown and choose
| | 04:54 | Reset "Standard" or whatever
the name of the Workspace is.
| | 04:57 | Here, we could also create a New
Workspace based on our current layout, and we
| | 05:01 | could also Delete a Workspace as well.
| | 05:03 | So, let's choose Reset
Standard, and I'll say Yes.
| | 05:06 | Now, this gets back to the way the
application shipped when we first got it.
| | 05:10 | Now, one other component of the
interface that's not really a component of the
| | 05:14 | interface, but this little Search
field in the upper-right here - this will
| | 05:17 | allow you to search After Effects'
help while you are here in the program.
| | 05:22 | So, let's say I have a question
about Motion Tracking or something.
| | 05:26 | I can click in this field and type in
motion tracking, and then I could hit
| | 05:30 | Enter, and it will launch my Internet
browser and take me to the spot in the
| | 05:33 | After Effects Help that
deals with Motion Tracking.
| | 05:37 | So, this is a handy feature.
| | 05:38 | Again, as you are a new user, this is critical.
| | 05:41 | The documentation for After Effects is
just fantastic as far as programs go.
| | 05:45 | A lot of times, those manuals are just
really confusing and overly technical,
| | 05:48 | but a lot of Adobe's manuals are fantastic.
| | 05:51 | But the ones for After Effects and
even for like Photoshop, just phenomenal,
| | 05:55 | wonderful documentation there.
| | 05:56 | So, that's the Interface Tour.
| | 05:58 | Let's now get back into the
program and figuring out how things work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| How After Effects projects work| 00:01 | Now we ready need to take a closer look
and see how After Effects projects work.
| | 00:05 | We know a little bit about the Project
panel, so I don't want to rehash that,
| | 00:08 | but we do need to talk about projects.
| | 00:10 | First of all, step one File > Save.
| | 00:14 | Beware of saving your project.
| | 00:17 | This is absolutely critical.
| | 00:18 | It goes without saying, but
make sure that you save often.
| | 00:22 | After Effects crashes.
| | 00:24 | It crashes all the time.
| | 00:26 | So, more than like regular programs
like Microsoft Word or something like that,
| | 00:30 | that might feel a little bit more
stable, even more than like Photoshop or
| | 00:33 | something, After Effects crashes very
frequently. And there are tons of things
| | 00:38 | that can make it crash.
| | 00:40 | So, always save your work.
| | 00:41 | As a matter of fact, what you could do
is go under the Preferences and set up
| | 00:44 | Auto Save, which I recommend doing as well.
| | 00:48 | Now when you create an After Effects
project, and you bring things into the
| | 00:51 | project like you import objects, you
import video or whatever like we have here,
| | 00:55 | - I've got tons of video and
images and audio files, even -
| | 00:59 | these are not actually
embedded in the project file.
| | 01:04 | So, what you are doing when you
import files in the After Effects is only
| | 01:09 | importing a link to the
source file on your hard drive.
| | 01:13 | Now if you have never worked in
Video before, this is kind of insane.
| | 01:16 | But if you work in Video,
this is how video programs work.
| | 01:19 | Because let's say you had a
video file that was 2GB in size.
| | 01:23 | If you imported that in your project
and embedded that into your project, well
| | 01:27 | now your project file is 2GB, and the
file on your hard drive is still 2GB.
| | 01:33 | So, now you have a total 4GB.
| | 01:35 | You could imagine having multiple
projects and having tons of video. That would
| | 01:40 | just fill up your hard drive a lot.
| | 01:42 | And because it's not being
embedded, you could bring in tons of
| | 01:45 | different footage elements.
| | 01:46 | You can bring in tons of different
audio clips to try out and test, tons of
| | 01:50 | different stock images, stock video,
just to kind of playing around with it and
| | 01:53 | see how you like things.
| | 01:54 | And it doesn't really change anything as
far as the size of the project is concerned.
| | 01:58 | So, that's the benefit.
| | 02:00 | The down side is that you have to be aware of
where that file is that is being it linked to.
| | 02:06 | So, let's say we are linking right now
to this PRECOMP left banner.mov file.
| | 02:11 | We need to be aware of that link.
| | 02:13 | We cannot move this file.
| | 02:15 | We cannot rename this file.
| | 02:16 | We cannot delete this file or when we
open up After Effects to work on this
| | 02:20 | project again, it's going
to say, "Hey! You know what?
| | 02:22 | We can't find the where this file is."
| | 02:25 | If that ever does happen to you, you
can just right-click on at the file or the
| | 02:29 | placeholder that will be there and
select Replace Footage and then choose File.
| | 02:34 | Now over here in the Project panel, I
want to mention, again, this idea about
| | 02:40 | organizing the Project panel.
| | 02:41 | Because you could bring in so many
assets, you just have an infinite supply of
| | 02:45 | assets, and it doesn't really
affect your hard drive very much,
| | 02:48 | it's oftentimes better to import more
than you need because then if it's there
| | 02:51 | and you need it, and it
doesn't really hurt anything.
| | 02:54 | But as a result, you need to keep your
project panel organized and again, you
| | 02:57 | could do that by clicking this little
folder icon here, which will make a new
| | 03:01 | folder, and you can title it whatever you want.
| | 03:03 | Then we can just drag and
drop elements into that folder.
| | 03:07 | We can even drag and drop
other folders into other folders.
| | 03:10 | So, just remember that.
| | 03:11 | Again, it's not anything that you are
probably too concerned about, being a
| | 03:14 | new After Effects user, but you'll
definitely you want to get some good
| | 03:18 | organization skills.
| | 03:19 | Finally, I want to talk about the
difference between importing and opening a project.
| | 03:23 | If we go to the File menu here,
| | 03:25 | we can see that there is an Import flyout
menu, and then there's also an Open Project.
| | 03:32 | So, there's opening and importing.
| | 03:34 | See, those are two different
things in After Effects language.
| | 03:37 | When you import something, it's when
you bring an asset into the Project panel
| | 03:42 | to use in your project.
| | 03:45 | When you open a project it opens a
complete different project, and you can only
| | 03:49 | have one project open at a time.
| | 03:52 | As a matter of fact, if I were to
choose File > Open Project right now, the
| | 03:55 | first thing that After Effects would
say is, "Do you want to save changes to this
| | 03:58 | After Effects project before closing it,"
because it's going to have to close it
| | 04:01 | in order to open up a new one.
| | 04:03 | Now, if there were some elements of an
old After Effects project that you liked
| | 04:09 | and you wanted to bring that into your
current project, then you could actually
| | 04:13 | import an old After Effects project.
| | 04:16 | So, if I double-click in the Project
panel to open up the Import File dialog box
| | 04:21 | and I go to the Enable dropdown, you
can see that there are just loads of
| | 04:26 | different footage and file types that
we can bring in and among them is the
| | 04:30 | After Effects Project.
| | 04:32 | We could bring that in.
| | 04:32 | It would create a folder for you with
all of the comps and all of the footage
| | 04:37 | elements from the other After
Effects project that you've just imported.
| | 04:41 | So, we've talked about projects, and
now in the next movie, we are going to
| | 04:45 | get to Compositions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| What is a composition?| 00:01 | Now we are ready to talk about
compositions, basically the foundation of
| | 00:05 | everything you do in After Effects.
| | 00:08 | A composition is kind of like a
storage container for all of your footage.
| | 00:13 | It's basically what you
are seeing here onscreen.
| | 00:17 | Think of them as little mini projects.
| | 00:19 | So, we have all this footage in the
Project panel, but we don't see it
| | 00:22 | onscreen until we add it to a composition.
| | 00:27 | To see what I am talking about, let's
get our fingers dirty and make a new
| | 00:31 | composition from scratch.
| | 00:32 | At the bottom of the Project panel, I
am going to click this little button, and
| | 00:36 | this little filmstrip icon
is the icon for Composition.
| | 00:41 | So, if we click that, we'll get the
Composition Settings dialog box in
| | 00:45 | preparation for making a new comp.
| | 00:47 | So, I am going to title this New Comp
and from this dropdown we could choose a
| | 00:53 | preset if we wanted to from a
series of very common formats, standard
| | 00:58 | definition up here, some web sizes here,
some high definition ones here, some
| | 01:03 | film resolutions here.
| | 01:05 | For right now, I am not going to worry
about any of these settings because we
| | 01:08 | are going to talk about
these later on in the chapter.
| | 01:10 | And I am just going to go ahead and hit OK.
| | 01:12 | And you'll see that we have a
New Comp here in the Project panel.
| | 01:17 | And it has the familiar Composition icon,
letting us know that it is a composition.
| | 01:23 | And it shows up here as a tab in the
Timeline panel. And we can go ahead and
| | 01:28 | again, take video or whatever our
footage is and add it to this composition.
| | 01:34 | Now you might have noticed that when we
created this - and then I kind of wasn't
| | 01:38 | paying attention whatsoever -
| | 01:39 | we made a high-definition sized composition.
| | 01:43 | If we want to see the actual resolution,
we could actually click it here in the
| | 01:46 | Project panel. And when you select
assets in the Project panel, the top of the
| | 01:51 | Project panel actually gives you
a run down of some basic specs.
| | 01:54 | This is telling us it's 1280
pixels wide by 720 pixels tall.
| | 02:00 | And its 1.0 here is referring to the
Pixel Aspect Ratio, which we'll talk about.
| | 02:05 | This little triangle
here indicates the duration.
| | 02:08 | It's 19 seconds in one frame, again
we'll talk about time code little bit later
| | 02:11 | and 29.97 frames per second, the
Frame Rate of the asset as well.
| | 02:18 | So, this composition, 1280x720 pixels, is
much bigger than the PRECOMP background
| | 02:24 | asset, which is only 720x480 pixels.
| | 02:27 | So, we have all this
extra space around the edges.
| | 02:31 | Now as I mentioned before, compositions are the
foundation of all that we do in After Effects.
| | 02:36 | As a matter of fact, when you go to
output, you don't output a project.
| | 02:41 | You only can output a composition.
| | 02:43 | Now let's say when we go ahead and
fiddle around with this background and do
| | 02:47 | some cool stuff with it. And we decide
that we want to add whatever we come up
| | 02:51 | with here, in the new composition,
let's say we want to add that to the main
| | 02:55 | composition in the Hansel and Petal Ad.
| | 02:57 | Well, you could actually take
compositions, like this New Comp for example,
| | 03:01 | drag this down and do what we just did here,
which is referred to as nesting a composition.
| | 03:08 | In other words, we have taken a
composition and made it a layer in
| | 03:12 | another composition.
| | 03:14 | That nested composition will act just
like any other layer in the composition.
| | 03:19 | Now, if we want to, we can double-
click this composition or that layer, the
| | 03:23 | nested composition, and it will
open up the New Comp composition.
| | 03:28 | It will open up that
composition, so we can play with it.
| | 03:30 | Now there's another way, a
shortcut, to creating a new composition.
| | 03:35 | Let's say, for example, this PRECOMP
background file was going to be the
| | 03:38 | background for our new
project, our new composition.
| | 03:43 | So, what I am going to do is I am
going to just drag this piece of footage to
| | 03:47 | the New Composition icon.
| | 03:49 | And what that does is that it
automatically makes a new composition, with the
| | 03:54 | same name as the asset, the same frame
rate, the same duration, the same pixel
| | 04:00 | aspect ratio, and basically the same
size, the same everything as the footage.
| | 04:06 | So, now, as you can see, we have
three compositions open in this project.
| | 04:10 | We have PRECOMP background,
New Comp and Hansel and Petal Ad.
| | 04:15 | Just like other panels, we can close one of
these compositions by clicking the little x here.
| | 04:19 | But it doesn't delete it, so the PRECOMP
background is still here in the Project panel.
| | 04:23 | To open it up, just double-click in the
Project panel, and the comp opens back up.
| | 04:27 | Now that's pretty much all we need to
know about compositions for right now.
| | 04:30 | Often they are called comps, by the way.
| | 04:31 | But be aware that oftentimes when people
are new to After Effects, this is one of
| | 04:37 | those areas that kind of
gives them the most challenge.
| | 04:39 | It's kind of like the toughest to get used to.
| | 04:42 | And then once you understand like
comps, once you have played with them for a
| | 04:44 | while, then it appears to make sense.
And they really are just like little mini
| | 04:48 | projects inside your main project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tips for adding content to compositions| 00:00 | Because adding content from the
Project panel to your composition - in other
| | 00:04 | words, inside the Time Line panel
here - is something you are going to be
| | 00:07 | doing all the time,
| | 00:08 | I want to give you a few more tips on
how you can do that more effectively.
| | 00:13 | First of all, if you wanted to add a
layer, we are going to add this Hansel and
| | 00:16 | Petal flowers.psd layer to our Time Line.
| | 00:20 | If you want to add this layer quickly
and easily, at the top of the layer stack
| | 00:26 | and centered in the Composition panel,
in other words in your view, then you can
| | 00:30 | hit Command+Question Mark or Ctrl+Question Mark.
| | 00:33 | It's actually Command+Forward Slash or Ctrl+Forward
Slash, but that's the button with the
| | 00:37 | question mark on it.
| | 00:38 | And that adds it's, again, perfectly
centered and at the top of the layer stack.
| | 00:44 | It also makes it so that the
layer begins at the first frame.
| | 00:48 | And most of the time, this is
how you'll want layers to come in.
| | 00:52 | I am just going to undo that by hitting
Command+Z or Ctrl+Z on the PC, but there
| | 00:57 | are many times when you want specify
other attributes of the way that your
| | 01:01 | layers are brought into your composition.
| | 01:04 | So, you may want to put it at a different place.
| | 01:06 | You might want these just at the corners.
| | 01:07 | So, I can just drag these and instead
of bringing them down here to the Time
| | 01:11 | Line, I bring them here in my
Composition panel, my Viewer.
| | 01:14 | And this outline box, this bounding box
gives me a sense of where these will go.
| | 01:19 | So, I may just want them in the corner.
| | 01:20 | So, I'll just go over here and then
drag and drop and let go - and well,
| | 01:24 | that's a little bit too much in
the corner - but maybe just like that.
| | 01:26 | Now I am just going to undo that by
hitting Command+Z or Ctrl+Z. Or maybe I don't
| | 01:31 | really care where they are here.
| | 01:33 | Maybe I care where they are in time.
| | 01:36 | So, I might want to move in time. And
you'll see that as I move along the Time
| | 01:41 | Line with my layer here, as I am
moving around, I get kind of like a mock
| | 01:46 | Current Time Indicator telling me
where that layer is going to begin.
| | 01:50 | So, if I want it to begin at 4 seconds
here, in this case, I'll drag the current
| | 01:53 | time indicator to 4 seconds and let go.
| | 01:56 | And then our layer starts there at 4 seconds.
| | 01:58 | Again, I am going to undo that.
| | 02:00 | We could also control where in
the layer stack our layer comes in.
| | 02:04 | So, this thick black horizontal line
tells us where that layer will come in.
| | 02:08 | So, if we want it to under the black
solid, which is actually the vignette on
| | 02:11 | the corners, then we can put
that in between those layers.
| | 02:15 | And then the vignette would be going
over our flowers, darkening the edge or our
| | 02:20 | flowers, which is still hard to
see because it's a faint vignette.
| | 02:22 | But that's what's happening here.
| | 02:24 | So, again, a variety of ways to add stuff
from the Project panel to your composition.
| | 02:30 | You can add it visually in space.
| | 02:33 | You could add it here in time.
| | 02:35 | You could add it based on the layer
stack, or if you just want, again, to bring
| | 02:39 | things in at the top of the layer
stack at the first frame and center it in
| | 02:43 | composition, then you can use the
keyboard shortcut Command+Forward Slash or Ctrl+Forward
| | 02:47 | Slash or Question Mark.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the properties of video| 00:01 | In this movie, we're going to look at some
essential concepts when working with video.
| | 00:05 | Remember that After Effects is, at its
heart - even though it does all kind of
| | 00:08 | cool things - it really is a video program.
| | 00:12 | And so a lot of the challenges that you
will face and need to overcome and a lot
| | 00:15 | of the problems you'll need to
troubleshoot are related to this idea of video.
| | 00:20 | So, knowing about these factors, like
the Pixel Aspect Ratio, Frame Rate,
| | 00:23 | Timecode, all these different things
will really help you in your work.
| | 00:27 | That being said, and if I'm being
completely honest with you, this discussion is
| | 00:32 | not a particularly a interesting or a fun one.
| | 00:35 | So, if you need to use this movie as
kind of like the reference in this title
| | 00:38 | where you keep coming back as you get
stumped then please do that, but just
| | 00:42 | know these concepts are absolutely vital
even though they are a little dry and boring.
| | 00:48 | So, let's first talk about Timecode.
| | 00:50 | We could see this time display
here in the left side of the Timeline.
| | 00:54 | And as we move in time,
we see this value change.
| | 00:58 | So, here is how this is broken up.
| | 00:59 | There's basically four categories here
divided by colons or sometimes you might
| | 01:05 | see semicolons there.
| | 01:06 | Essentially, the way that
this is divided up is hours.
| | 01:09 | That's our first digit, hours, then
minutes, than seconds, then individual frames.
| | 01:15 | Now, if you're new to the world of video,
it's important to know that video is
| | 01:20 | nothing more than a series of still
pictures played back really fast, kind of like
| | 01:25 | those flipbooks you used to use when
you were a kid where you'd draw little pictures on
| | 01:28 | each page and then flip them
and make a little cartoon.
| | 01:30 | It's essentially what video is.
| | 01:32 | It's just a series of still pictures.
| | 01:34 | We call those pictures frames, and we
have a certain number of frames per second.
| | 01:39 | And we're going to get
into that in just a moment.
| | 01:42 | But that is what is the deal with timecode.
| | 01:44 | You can also click on the time
indicator here if you'd like to scrub time that
| | 01:48 | way, or if you have a list with some
timecode that you need to jump to a
| | 01:52 | particular frame, you can click this
here. And let's say I want to go to 5
| | 01:56 | seconds and 10 frames.
| | 01:57 | I can just type in 05:10 there, hit Enter and my
Current Time Indicator jumps to the exact time.
| | 02:04 | Now, we're actually going to use the
Composition Settings dialog box that's kind
| | 02:08 | of a visual aid as we go
through some of these settings.
| | 02:11 | But I don't want to create a new composition.
| | 02:12 | I want to adjust the
properties of the current composition.
| | 02:17 | The way to do that is to select the
composition, go to the flyout menu over
| | 02:21 | here on the far right-hand side of
the Timeline panel and then choose
| | 02:26 | Composition Settings.
| | 02:27 | Alternatively, you could use the
keyboard shortcut Command+K or Ctrl+K on the PC.
| | 02:33 | And actually, I find myself changing
Composition Settings like duration and the
| | 02:37 | things like that all the time.
| | 02:38 | So, it's a good one to memorize.
| | 02:39 | So, I'll open up Composition Settings here.
| | 02:41 | We've talked about Presets. And if
you're going to be doing something for a
| | 02:45 | particular medium, especially
television, then I recommend using one of
| | 02:49 | these settings here.
| | 02:50 | Now, it's a really good idea, no
matter what you're outputting to, like if
| | 02:54 | you're going to do something for the Web
or whatever, create a composition based
| | 02:59 | on your source material, your original footage.
| | 03:03 | So, for example, let's say you have a
really nice video camera or footage from
| | 03:07 | a really nice video camera that was shot
in HD, but you were putting it to the Web.
| | 03:12 | That's fine, but your
composition should still match our footage.
| | 03:15 | You should still have a high-
definition composition and your working
| | 03:19 | environment should be in HD.
| | 03:21 | And then when you output,
you'd output to a lower medium,
| | 03:25 | just kind of shrink it down on export.
| | 03:27 | Now standard video, if I go up to NTSC
DV, standard definition is 720 pixels
| | 03:32 | wide by 480 pixels high.
| | 03:35 | High-definition essentially has two flavors.
| | 03:38 | We have 720, which is 1280x1024, and
then we also have a full HD, which is 1080.
| | 03:47 | Oftentimes, this is 1920X1080.
| | 03:50 | The reason why this Preset is an HD
Preset and is 1080 high but only 1441 is
| | 03:58 | because of something called the Pixel Aspect
Ratio, and that is right here in this dropdown.
| | 04:04 | You see when you're working on
a computer, pixels are square.
| | 04:06 | They're just as tall as they are wide.
| | 04:09 | But when you're dealing with
television, pixels oftentimes are not square.
| | 04:14 | They are maybe a little bit wider than
they are tall and sometimes a little bit
| | 04:18 | more tall than they are wide.
| | 04:20 | So, if we're going to choose, for
example, NTSC DV, this is standard definition
| | 04:25 | television, and the Pixel Aspect Ratio is .91.
| | 04:29 | What that means is it's a
little bit more tall than it is wide.
| | 04:31 | If we were going to choose a
widescreen - so this is a standard definition but
| | 04:35 | Widescreen - you might think that there would be
more pixels to the Width, but there is not.
| | 04:41 | The only difference between regular
standard definition and widescreen standard
| | 04:45 | definition is the Pixel Aspect Ratio.
| | 04:48 | It's wider than it is tall for a widescreen.
| | 04:52 | As you move forward in your After
Effects career, you'll want to be careful
| | 04:56 | about Pixel Aspect Ratio.
| | 04:58 | If you do not match up correctly your
Pixel Aspect Ratios with your footage and
| | 05:03 | with your output device, then you
will oftentimes have footage that is
| | 05:07 | stretched too wide.
| | 05:08 | Oftentimes, if you stay up too late -
and I'm guilty of this quite often,
| | 05:11 | actually - you watch late-night TV, like
the homemade commercials from like Sam's
| | 05:16 | local car shop or whatever,
| | 05:17 | you will often have poor production
quality, and they won't get the Pixel
| | 05:21 | Aspect Ratios right.
| | 05:22 | So, it'll be weird.
| | 05:23 | It might be stretched a little bit
too wide, or it might be like stretched a
| | 05:26 | little bit too skinny and tall, and
that's oftentimes the result of not getting
| | 05:30 | the correct Pixel Aspect Ratio.
| | 05:32 | Frame Rate is basically as we've talked
about what frames are, Frame Rate is the
| | 05:36 | speed at which those frames happen.
| | 05:38 | Thankfully, there are some standards out there.
| | 05:41 | If you're dealing with standard
definition television, it's 29.97.
| | 05:47 | It's important to know that it's not 30.
| | 05:49 | For some reason video, it's
like a 100th of a percent.
| | 05:52 | I think my math is right on that.
| | 05:53 | It's like a hundredth of a
percent off from the exact Frame Rate.
| | 05:57 | So, this is 30 -.03.
| | 06:00 | Instead of doing 24, we would
do 23.976, which is 24 -.024.
| | 06:07 | Now 29.97 is the standard
Frame Rate for the NTSC system.
| | 06:12 | That's basically the broadcast standards
used in North America, Japan and few
| | 06:17 | other places as well.
| | 06:18 | A lot of the world uses the PAL system, P-A-L,
and that Frame Rate is 25 frames per second.
| | 06:26 | This is the standard in Europe and
in many other places around the world.
| | 06:31 | If you're dealing with film, 24 frames
per second is the standard. Or if you
| | 06:36 | are working with video that is
approximating film, then 23.976 is the Frame Rate there.
| | 06:44 | If you're dealing with HD, PAL HD goes
to 50 frames per second and NTSC Frame
| | 06:50 | Rates for HD video can go
up to 60 frames per second.
| | 06:54 | If you're doing something for the
web, you might want a slower Frame
| | 06:57 | Rate, because that's going to affect how
fast people are able to download your content.
| | 07:01 | If you have a full 30 frames per
second or 29.97 frames per second, then it's
| | 07:05 | going to be harder for your users
to download all of those frames.
| | 07:08 | So, it's better to have it a little bit
choppier, so the user has a better experience.
| | 07:11 | Oftentimes, 15 frames per
second is the way to go there.
| | 07:14 | Now one other thing here.
| | 07:15 | We've already talked about Timecode.
| | 07:17 | But here at the bottom of the
Composition Settings panel - this is in this
| | 07:19 | duration area - this is where you
set the length of the composition.
| | 07:23 | And right now, this
Composition is set to 54 seconds long,
| | 07:28 | so again, hours, minutes, seconds, frames.
| | 07:31 | Let's say I wanted to set
this to, I don't know, 15 frames.
| | 07:35 | You might think that I have to go like
this and just like select those little
| | 07:38 | things and just type 15.
| | 07:39 | But this little dialog box, or this
little area right here, this field is
| | 07:43 | actually pretty intelligent.
| | 07:44 | So, I'm going to select all of this.
| | 07:45 | I just type 15, and as you can see
here, that's translated to 15 frames.
| | 07:51 | It understands if you just type two numbers,
that you're talking about a number of frames.
| | 07:56 | If I type in 115, then it goes over
another place, and this turns into 1
| | 08:03 | second and 15 frames.
| | 08:04 | You don't have to constantly worry about
typing the colons or semicolons or what have you.
| | 08:09 | You can just simply type these three
numbers, and also let's say if you want to
| | 08:13 | make something that was five minutes
long, you can just type in 5 and then hit
| | 08:19 | the period key, and that
jumps you over one spot.
| | 08:23 | So, now where it was 5 frames is now 5 seconds.
| | 08:26 | And if you hit the period key
again, that becomes about 5 minutes.
| | 08:31 | So, there are some cool tricks with
creating the duration of your composition.
| | 08:36 | Now, this little video principles boot
camp certainly is not exhaustive as far
| | 08:41 | as video concepts that you'll need to know.
| | 08:42 | But these are kind of the basics, kind
of what you need to really be successful,
| | 08:47 | at least getting started, with After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Learning to AnimateImporting an Illustrator file| 00:00 | In this chapter, we are going
to have another sweet project.
| | 00:03 | We are going to take an Illustrator file,
| | 00:05 | as a matter of fact, this one right here,
and we are actually going to import this.
| | 00:10 | And actually, I have broken up this
Illustrator file into a series of layers.
| | 00:14 | And we are going to
animate the different components.
| | 00:16 | Now if you are not very familiar
with Adobe Illustrator, no big deal.
| | 00:19 | I'll be explaining Adobe Illustrator,
what it does and why you want to use this
| | 00:22 | as an After Effects user
later on this training series.
| | 00:24 | But for now, it's good to know that this is
the image that we are going to be importing.
| | 00:29 | It's a flat, dead image.
| | 00:30 | Illustrator is not like an animation tool.
| | 00:32 | It's just basically a flat art. And what
I wanted to show you here in this movie
| | 00:37 | is how to import Adobe Illustrator files.
| | 00:40 | When we import layered files from
Photoshop or Illustrator, we do so in kind of
| | 00:46 | a different way than we import regular files.
| | 00:49 | Let me show what I mean here.
| | 00:50 | Let's do this together.
| | 00:51 | In the Project panel, I am going to
double-click here somewhere, anywhere in
| | 00:54 | this gray area here to open
up the Import File dialog box.
| | 00:59 | Next, I want to go to the Graphics
folder inside the Media folder of the
| | 01:03 | Exercise Files, and I am going to choose
the Explore California Logo layered.ai file.
| | 01:11 | Now if this were a movie file or a
still image or an audio file, we would just
| | 01:16 | Open, and that's it.
| | 01:17 | But when we have a layered Illustrator
file or a layered Photoshop file, we have
| | 01:22 | additional options and choices.
| | 01:24 | Now we can import this as
Footage or as a Composition.
| | 01:28 | Now a Composition is actually what we
are going to eventually import this as,
| | 01:32 | but for now let me just
briefly explain what this is.
| | 01:35 | If you import as a Composition, then
all of the layers from the original file
| | 01:39 | will be brought into After
Effects, stored nicely in little folder.
| | 01:43 | And also, After Effects will create a
composition for you that has all of the
| | 01:48 | layers of the Illustrator or
Photoshop document as layers in the After
| | 01:52 | Effects composition it creates for you.
And again, we are going to see that in just a moment.
| | 01:56 | If you choose Footage and click Open,
this will allow you to Merge layers.
| | 02:01 | What this will do is it'll take all of
these layers and smush them together
| | 02:06 | into one file, or in other words, like one layer.
| | 02:10 | So, if you don't want to actually
break up pieces of this and animate
| | 02:13 | different components of this file,
then you could merge the layers, and it
| | 02:16 | could be just one file.
| | 02:17 | So, let's say you had a background file
or something like that that you made in
| | 02:20 | Photoshop with some cool texture or pattern, and
| | 02:22 | you just wanted to merge all those
layers, then you could just choose Merge
| | 02:26 | layers as long it's set to Footage here.
| | 02:28 | You can also choose an individual layer.
| | 02:31 | Going back to Illustrator, this sun image
here, the sun graphic, is on as on layer.
| | 02:37 | So, what we could do is go back to After
Effects and from this dropdown choose Sun.
| | 02:44 | If we only want to bring in the sun
from the Illustrator file, then that's
| | 02:48 | what we would choose.
| | 02:49 | This is really good.
| | 02:50 | Let's say you do a lot of work for a
client, and it may be they have given
| | 02:53 | files in the past that their logo is in, and
you might not want to import the entire document.
| | 02:58 | You just want to import their logo layer.
| | 03:01 | This is a good way to do that.
| | 03:02 | So, these are the choices.
| | 03:04 | You can either Merge the layers or
Choose a specific layer if you are going
| | 03:07 | as Footage, but we actually want to import
this as a Composition. And we have two choices:
| | 03:13 | Layer Size or Document Size.
| | 03:15 | This will make more sense later on.
| | 03:18 | But basically, this refers to where
the anchor point is, which, again, will
| | 03:23 | probably not too much sense until
we get later on in this chapter.
| | 03:25 | So, for now I am going to
choose Layer Size and click OK.
| | 03:30 | Here is what has happened here.
| | 03:32 | Here we have all of the
layers from the Illustrator file.
| | 03:36 | If I resize the Project panel by
clicking on this vertical divider bar
| | 03:41 | and moving to the right, we can expand
this little bit and see the names this layers.
| | 03:46 | So, it gives us the name of the layer
and then a slash and then the name of the
| | 03:50 | document that this layer is found in.
| | 03:53 | It puts them in order, and it names them
for us, all nicely stored in this folder.
| | 03:58 | And you could see even here the Sun layer.
| | 04:00 | And as I click on it, as with most
objects in the Project panel, you get a
| | 04:04 | thumbnail here the top that gives you
an idea of what's on that exact layer.
| | 04:09 | If this were a movie file or image,
we would also have a preview here.
| | 04:13 | And as mentioned, it did
create a composition for us.
| | 04:16 | So, if we want to open this
composition up, all we have to do is just
| | 04:20 | double-click it, and we'll see that all
of the layers from the Illustrator file
| | 04:24 | have come here into After Effects, and
we can take off the visibility, let's
| | 04:28 | say, for example, the Biker Body layer.
| | 04:30 | We can take off the visibility of this layer.
| | 04:32 | We can see that's a separate
component that we can then animate and play with.
| | 04:36 | So, that is what we were
going to do in this chapter.
| | 04:38 | We are going to take the various
components of this Illustrator file and animate
| | 04:42 | them here in After Effects.
| | 04:43 | It's actually very common use for After
Effects, to take a layered Photoshop or
| | 04:48 | Illustrator file and then play with it here.
| | 04:50 | So, now when we've got the Illustrator
file import out of the way, let's talk
| | 04:54 | about the basics of animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animation basics| 00:00 | So, now we are continuing on
with this logo from Illustrator.
| | 00:05 | I have done few little color embellishments here.
| | 00:07 | I'll teach you how to do that
later on in this training series.
| | 00:10 | But now, we finally get to this place where
the rubber meets the road and talk about
| | 00:14 | animation, how to bring
things to life in After Effects.
| | 00:17 | Again, the great the joy of After
Effects is that when you learn how to
| | 00:20 | animate anything, any one property in After
Effects, everything animates the same, exact way.
| | 00:26 | And as you go through this training series,
you'll see that, and it'll bring you joy.
| | 00:30 | So, let's go to this Explore layer, go
ahead and come over to left side of the
| | 00:35 | name Explore and click this right-facing
arrow to expand this layer and see its contents.
| | 00:42 | Every layer has this Transform area.
| | 00:46 | So, click the arrow next to
Transform to expand it, and you'll see
| | 00:50 | five different values.
| | 00:52 | Again, this is the same case on every layer.
| | 00:54 | It's not just this Explore layer.
| | 00:56 | It's every layer in After
Effects has the same five properties.
| | 01:00 | These are the key elements of animation
in After Effects, and we'll be talking
| | 01:05 | about these through this chapter.
| | 01:07 | Now just so we don't get confused here
I am going to select the Explore layer,
| | 01:11 | so it's highlighted.
| | 01:12 | You can see these layers are
not highlighted, and this one is.
| | 01:14 | Go ahead and press the letter R on your
keyboard to reveal the Rotation property only.
| | 01:20 | So, we have just Rotation, the
stopwatch next to Rotation and then its value.
| | 01:25 | Initially, this may look
confusing, because we 0x+0.0 degrees.
| | 01:31 | That may look a little off-
putting at first, but we will talk about
| | 01:34 | rotation specifically later on in this chapter,
and you will see it's not super confusing.
| | 01:39 | What I am going to do is I am going to
go the right value of the two different
| | 01:42 | zeros and just click and drag to the right.
| | 01:46 | Now you'll see that as we go left,
| | 01:49 | it rotates counterclockwise.
| | 01:50 | As we go right, it rotates clockwise.
| | 01:53 | And then let's say we'll twist a little
bit and then grab Current Time Indicator
| | 01:58 | and move around in time.
| | 01:59 | You can see that it just stays there.
| | 02:01 | It doesn't change in value.
| | 02:03 | So, if you change your property in
After Effects, After Effects will assume, by
| | 02:08 | default, that is the way
that you want things to be.
| | 02:12 | But see when you animate something,
you want it to change value over time.
| | 02:17 | The way that we do is with the
stopwatch and really, animation is a
| | 02:22 | three-step process.
| | 02:23 | I am going to go ahead and click this
value, and when we'll click that value
| | 02:27 | once, we'll get a field where
we can manually type in a value.
| | 02:30 | So, I am going to type in 0 and press Enter.
| | 02:33 | So, the three steps to animate
are, first click the stopwatch.
| | 02:37 | That tells After Effects we want
this property to change over time.
| | 02:43 | That action also After Effects to remember
the current value at this particular time.
| | 02:49 | So, it creates this little
diamond here in the timeline.
| | 02:54 | It's kind of like marker, an indicator
that at this particular place in time, at
| | 02:59 | 3 second and 13 frames in this case,
it'll be at this value, at (0,0).
| | 03:05 | So, all we have done so far
is to click the stopwatch.
| | 03:08 | Step two is to move in time.
| | 03:12 | Step three is to change the value and
again, a little diamond has been created
| | 03:18 | for us, and that's After Effects' way of
telling us that it remembers this value,
| | 03:23 | 36 degrees, at this time,
at 7 seconds and 6 frames.
| | 03:29 | Now folks, this is the magic of After Effects.
| | 03:32 | That's all you have to do.
| | 03:34 | If we scrub our Current Time Indicator,
we can see that the value automatically
| | 03:38 | changes to go from point A to
point B, and that's all we have to do.
| | 03:43 | We didn't have to tell it, "Okay, After
Effects. Those are the two values that you want.
| | 03:46 | Now you go animate."
| | 03:47 | It automatically did that for us.
| | 03:49 | Now one word of caution:
| | 03:51 | if I hit Command+Z or Ctrl+Z on the PC,
that will undo my last action, and that
| | 03:58 | is how you undo a keyframe.
| | 04:01 | You can also select it
and then hit the Delete key.
| | 04:04 | I will actually redo that
edit, redo value change.
| | 04:08 | And I could select it and then I'll hit Delete.
| | 04:11 | When they are not selected, they are gray.
| | 04:14 | Those of the two methods that
are okay for deleting keyframes.
| | 04:18 | If you were to click the stopwatch
again, basically deselecting the stopwatch,
| | 04:22 | that would erase all keyframes for that
property and whatever the current value
| | 04:27 | is, that will be the permanent value then.
| | 04:29 | So, be very careful with that.
| | 04:30 | A lot of students that I have taught,
that's like their first inclination when
| | 04:33 | they are playing around with a value
or with animation at first. They want to
| | 04:37 | click the stopwatch again when they
want to undo something, but that will wipe
| | 04:41 | the slate entirely clean.
| | 04:43 | Sometimes you might want
that, but be aware that
| | 04:45 | that's what you are doing
when you deselect the stopwatch.
| | 04:47 | Now we are going to go through a series
of these, actually all of these transforms.
| | 04:52 | If I close that layer, open it again
and see all these different transforms,
| | 04:56 | it works the same exact way
with Position, with Scale, Opacity.
| | 05:00 | It's the same exact thing.
| | 05:02 | I click the stopwatch, let's say, for
example, Opacity, which refers to the
| | 05:06 | transparency of the objects. And 100% is
completely opaque and not transparent.
| | 05:11 | So, I click the stopwatch, move
in time, and change the value.
| | 05:17 | I can drag this to the left to fade that out
a little bit, and it fades out automatically.
| | 05:23 | Now that's pretty much the end of the tutorial.
| | 05:25 | We are going to be practicing with these
five properties throughout this chapter.
| | 05:29 | So, if that's all you need,
you can just close this movie.
| | 05:31 | I wanted to give you some
artistic background for those of who that
| | 05:34 | are interested in kind of going
the extra mile as far as your
| | 05:36 | knowledge is concerned.
| | 05:37 | But this comes back from an
original Disney concept for animation.
| | 05:42 | What they were do, and actually
what's still done on shows like the Simpsons
| | 05:45 | and whatnot, they're hand-drawn animation.
| | 05:47 | What they'll do is they will have the
high-paid animators create the important
| | 05:51 | frames of animation, and then they'll
send the work off to maybe overseas or
| | 05:58 | somewhere where people are making less
money and the labor cheaper or maybe to a
| | 06:02 | junior animator, and they make the
frames in between the key, or in other words
| | 06:07 | the important frames.
| | 06:09 | Well, After Effects uses this analogy
as well, and that is what we are doing.
| | 06:14 | You and I, as users of After
Effects, we are the keyframe creators.
| | 06:19 | We say, "Okay, After Effects I want you to
here at this point and there at that point."
| | 06:23 | Then After Effects is kind of like our
grunt servant animator that goes in and
| | 06:28 | creates all the frames in between.
| | 06:31 | Now if you are brand-new to After Effects,
this concept may seen a little unusual,
| | 06:36 | but trust me by the end of this
chapter even, you'll be feeling so solid and
| | 06:40 | secure in this information that it'll
no longer seem like some weird theory.
| | 06:45 | It's just amazing.
| | 06:47 | Again, a few chapters down the road, we
are going to get into effects, and you'll
| | 06:50 | see that we animate effects in the
same way. If you're going to make a lightning bolt,
| | 06:53 | you animate it in the exact the same
way with this whole stopwatch deal.
| | 06:56 | So, it all works to same.
| | 06:58 | You learn this one concept of After
Effects - it's almost like you are now
| | 07:02 | familiar with the entire
program at once. So, phenomenal.
| | 07:04 | I just love it.
| | 07:05 | So, let's back up a little bit.
| | 07:07 | And we'll talk little bit more
animating opacities, specifically, in the
| | 07:10 | next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating opacity| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to
explore Opacity a little bit.
| | 00:04 | Let's start by zooming in to
this text, Explore California.
| | 00:07 | We are going to make both the
text Explore and California fade in.
| | 00:12 | Now the easiest way to do this is by
using the wheel on your mouse, if you have a
| | 00:15 | wheel mouse, and just roll it to zoom in.
| | 00:18 | You don't need to make sure that your
mouse is over the composition panel, but
| | 00:23 | you can use just use that wheel and zoom
in. Otherwise, you can use the keyboard
| | 00:27 | shortcut Command+Plus on
the Mac, Ctrl+Plus on the PC.
| | 00:31 | Alternatively, you could use these
navigational tools, such as the Hand tool,
| | 00:35 | which will allow you kind of move
things around, or the Zoom tool, which also
| | 00:39 | will allow you to click and zoom in.
| | 00:41 | But those, honestly, are kind of pain to
have to like go all the way up to the
| | 00:45 | toolbar and use those.
| | 00:48 | That's kind of annoying, just much
easier to use the keyboard shortcut.
| | 00:52 | Fo example, like I am going to hold down
the spacebar and while I'm holding it
| | 00:56 | down, I get the hand
tool, just like in Photoshop.
| | 00:59 | I move this to where I want to see it,
and then I let go, and I am back to using
| | 01:03 | the Arrow tool, which is what I want.
| | 01:05 | Now let's open up the Explore layer again,
as we did in last movie. Open up Transform.
| | 01:10 | We see the five basic transforms.
| | 01:12 | Again, these are the properties that
you'll probably animate more than any
| | 01:15 | other in After Effects.
| | 01:17 | Now, you might remember in the last movie,
we just selected the layer and press
| | 01:21 | the letter R to get rotation, and
actually, each one of these properties has its
| | 01:27 | own keyboard shortcut that allows you
to see just that property on that layer.
| | 01:32 | For Anchor Point, it's A.
Position, it's P. Scale it's S.
| | 01:37 | Rotation it's R, and
Opacity is the only weird one.
| | 01:41 | For Opacity, the shortcut is the letter T.
Now, the way a lot of people remember
| | 01:45 | this is that the five basic
transforms shortcuts spell the word TRAPS, T-R-A-P-S.
| | 01:54 | So, I am going to select the layer and
press T for Opacity to just see opacity.
| | 01:58 | We talked about it in the last movie.
100 percent is the 100 percent opacity, meaning
| | 02:02 | that it's completely opaque.
| | 02:03 | And as we click on this property and
drag it to the left, we are actually
| | 02:07 | reducing the opacity, or in other
words making this layer more transparent.
| | 02:12 | So, if we want to want to fade out,
then what we could do, as we did in the last
| | 02:16 | movie, is click the stopwatch for opacity,
move in time, and that changes to a lower value.
| | 02:21 | We actually want this to fade in.
| | 02:24 | So, what I'm going to do, and there is
actually a couple different ways to do
| | 02:28 | this, but what I'm going to do is I'm
going to click the stopwatch and then
| | 02:32 | change the value to zero.
| | 02:36 | So, it will be at zero
percent opacity and then move in time.
| | 02:40 | You are noticing that I'm not being a
super specific about the timing here, as
| | 02:44 | long as you have like a gap in between.
| | 02:46 | It doesn't really matter. We are not
going for precision at this point.
| | 02:50 | And then I am going to go back to
opacity and increase this value from zero to
| | 02:55 | 100 percent, and now our text
stays off and then fades on.
| | 03:01 | Now you'll notice that I was a little
bit further out from the first frame.
| | 03:06 | I was about here, about eight frames
in when I started creating animation by
| | 03:10 | clicking the stopwatch, and there is
not really any keyframes before this so
| | 03:14 | everything before this keyframe has
that same value so this keyframe has a
| | 03:19 | value of 0 percent opacity. And everything else
before this will also then be 0 percent opacity.
| | 03:25 | As a matter of fact, after this last
keyframe there are no more changes.
| | 03:29 | So, it will stay at 100 percent opacity.
So, we're just seeing the changes here
| | 03:34 | from 0 percent to 100 percent.
| | 03:36 | Now I am going to move my Current
Time Indicator back to the first frame.
| | 03:41 | I am going hit the Spacebar to preview this.
| | 03:42 | And that was pretty cool, but
depending on the style of animation we're going
| | 03:48 | for, that might be a little bit too
fast. Maybe its too slow, but I am just
| | 03:53 | going to say it too fast
for what we are going for.
| | 03:54 | So, what I could do is grab one of
these keyframe values and spread it apart.
| | 03:59 | Now keep in mind that each one of these
little keyframes retains the value that
| | 04:04 | it was created with.
| | 04:05 | So, if that has a value of 100 percent
here by moving it in time, it still has a
| | 04:09 | valuable 100 percent, but now we've
spread out that animation, and thereby we
| | 04:14 | have made it slower.
| | 04:16 | So, see how that was a little bit slower?
| | 04:18 | Maybe I'll exaggerate it, so we can
really see what's going on here - much slower.
| | 04:25 | If we were to drag these very close
together, then it would be a very quick fade in.
| | 04:30 | Figure it like this. Picture this
keyframe being Los Angeles and this
| | 04:35 | keyframe being New York.
| | 04:36 | If we spread these far apart - let's
pretend this is the space and time that we
| | 04:41 | had to go from one place to another.
| | 04:43 | Let's say we have like three months to
get from Los Angeles to New York - well
| | 04:46 | then we can go very slowly
because we have a long time.
| | 04:51 | If we have a really short time to
get there, then we're got to have take
| | 04:54 | an airplane because it's a very short
duration so we're going to have go much faster.
| | 04:59 | Now, I'm going to let you play
around with how you'd like the Explore text to
| | 05:03 | animate on because this is your project, and
you could put here own artistic spin on it there.
| | 05:09 | I am going to close up the Explore layer.
| | 05:11 | I am going to select the California layer,
and we are going to do the same thing
| | 05:15 | but in a different way.
| | 05:16 | I am going to press T, for opacity, and
what I'm going to do because I know I
| | 05:20 | want this text to fade on as well,
| | 05:23 | I am going to click this stopwatch for
opacity, but I don't want it to remember
| | 05:28 | what this value is here, so I am
actually going to move this keyframe over in
| | 05:33 | time to where I want it to be.
| | 05:35 | So, let's say I want it to be
completely faded in at this point, right here.
| | 05:39 | But my current time indicator is still here, so
now I can take this down to 0 percent here.
| | 05:46 | So, now and then, this will fade in as well.
| | 05:52 | Now we might want to grab this first
keyframe, move it down little bit,
| | 05:55 | move the next keyframe down little
so that the fading in is staggered.
| | 06:00 | So, it says Explore and then
California. Let's try that.
| | 06:07 | Very cool!
| | 06:08 | So, you've seen two different methods to
animate from 0 percent to 100 percent.
| | 06:13 | Alternatively, you could actually move in time
and actually, I'll just go ahead and do this.
| | 06:16 | I am going to click stopwatch for
Opacity, so we have no more keyframes. And
| | 06:21 | let's say I wanted to fade in at this point.
| | 06:23 | Well, then I'll click the
stopwatch for Opacity there.
| | 06:26 | Then I could move earlier in time and
then drag this to the left to 0 percent
| | 06:31 | so we could see it fade on there.
| | 06:34 | So, now we have a staggered, cool
animation of the Explore and California
| | 06:38 | fading in.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding anchor points| 00:00 | When you are dealing with the five
basic transforms, one of the most important
| | 00:03 | concepts is the Anchor Point.
| | 00:06 | It is the center around which most
of these transformations take place.
| | 00:10 | So, let's look at that a little bit here.
| | 00:13 | I am going to scroll down and again, I
can do that using the wheel on my mouse.
| | 00:17 | As you can probably tell us, it pays
to have a three-button wheel mouse when
| | 00:21 | working with After Effects.
| | 00:22 | If you don't have that, you could use
the scroll-bar, all the way around the
| | 00:25 | right-hand side of the Timeline panel here
to scroll down, and get to the Sun layer.
| | 00:30 | Now what I want you to do is to, the left
of the Sun layer you'll see this column
| | 00:35 | underneath this circle, I
want you to click that circle.
| | 00:38 | This is the Solo button, and this
allows you to solo a layer so you could
| | 00:43 | see only that layer.
| | 00:45 | Now right now, you're seeing this white and gray
checkerboard in the background, kind of like in Photoshop.
| | 00:49 | This is the Transparency Grid, letting
me know that there is transparency here,
| | 00:53 | but that's visually distracting to me.
| | 00:55 | So, I am going to come down to
the bottom of the Composition panel.
| | 00:58 | You'll see a button that looks like that
background. It says Toggle Transparency Grid.
| | 01:01 | Go ahead and click that to get rid of it.
| | 01:03 | We'll have a nice black background.
| | 01:05 | Now when you have a layer selected,
you can see its Anchor Point, and that is
| | 01:09 | this little circle with the plus outside of it.
| | 01:12 | This is the Anchor Point.
| | 01:14 | And again, this is the center point
around which all transformations happen.
| | 01:19 | So, when we go to rotate this, it's
going to rotate around that center.
| | 01:24 | Now here is the 'gotcha.'
| | 01:26 | Open up the Sun layer, and open up its
transforms, and we have Anchor Point here.
| | 01:31 | So, you might think the best way to
adjust that Anchor Point to move it
| | 01:35 | somewhere else is to adjust this value,
but as we do so, it seems like we're
| | 01:41 | moving the layer, and not the
Anchor Point. It's so screwy.
| | 01:45 | So, I am going to undo that by hitting
Command+Z on the Mac, or Ctrl+Z on the PC.
| | 01:49 | And I am going to move this
in a much more intuitive way.
| | 01:53 | I am going to select this tool, which
would actually be pretty hard to guess,
| | 01:57 | but it's called the Pan Behind tool.
| | 01:59 | It's kind of like the Swiss Army
knife of tools in After Effects.
| | 02:01 | It does a lot of different things in
a lot of different situations, but for
| | 02:04 | now, we're going to use the Pan
Behind tool to move the Anchor Point.
| | 02:09 | So, what I can do is click on this
and drag and move this, I don't know,
| | 02:13 | any arbitrary point.
| | 02:14 | But I want you to know is the
difference of what happens when I change the
| | 02:18 | Anchor Point here, and
then adjust some other value.
| | 02:20 | Let's say I adjust Scale.
| | 02:22 | You can see that now the sun scales
from that Anchor Point, and when we rotate
| | 02:27 | it, it rotates around that Anchor Point.
| | 02:31 | If I were to move the Anchor Point
back to the center, then you can see
| | 02:34 | the difference when we scale, scales from
that point, and it rotates from that point.
| | 02:39 | Now the Anchor Point can
be somewhere else entirely.
| | 02:44 | It doesn't have to be on the object,
even within the boundaries of the
| | 02:47 | layer, this bounding box right here
that tells us where the layer's extremities are.
| | 02:51 | We can even put it outside this layer, and watch
what happens now when we scale. It kind of moves.
| | 02:56 | It's still scaling from that Anchor
Point. And when we rotate, it's rotating
| | 03:01 | around that Anchor Point.
| | 03:03 | So, even though you might not fiddle
with the Anchor Point that often in After
| | 03:07 | Effects, it is critical to know how
to adjust it, so that all these other
| | 03:12 | properties make sense.
| | 03:14 | Now one quick tip here;
| | 03:16 | it is a very important tip.
| | 03:18 | I am going to undo this until our
Anchor Points back in the center.
| | 03:21 | And I am going to select V for the Move tool.
| | 03:24 | You can press V on your keyboard, or
just go ahead and click the arrow in the
| | 03:27 | upper left-hand corner of the Tools panel.
| | 03:29 | This is the tool that you'll be
wanting to use most of the time when you're
| | 03:32 | working in After Effects that allows
you to do all kinds of things that I won't
| | 03:36 | get into now, but that's a very
handy tool. And this is what you'll use 99%
| | 03:41 | of the time when you're
working in After Effects.
| | 03:43 | And going all the way up here to the
Toolbar, again, if you're new to After
| | 03:46 | Effects, if you don't work in a production
environment, that may seem like no big deal.
| | 03:50 | But when you have deadlines, and
you work in a professional production
| | 03:53 | environment, like that is an annoyance.
| | 03:55 | So, what you could do,
| | 03:57 | if you put your cursor over the Pan
Behind tool, you can see the keyboard
| | 04:01 | shortcut in Parentheses.
| | 04:02 | That's the letter Y. So, if I were to
push the letter Y, I would use that tool.
| | 04:07 | That's pretty self explanatory, right?
| | 04:09 | But there is a better use
of that keyboard shortcut.
| | 04:11 | I am going to press V on the
keyboard to get back to the Selection tool.
| | 04:14 | Then what I am going to do is I am
going to push down the Y key, but I am
| | 04:17 | going to hold it down.
| | 04:19 | So, I am going to push and hold down
Y. Then I can move the Anchor Point
| | 04:25 | to wherever I like.
| | 04:27 | Then when I let go of Y, it goes back
to using the regular Selection tool.
| | 04:32 | Talk about efficient.
| | 04:34 | That is a way to save you
tons of time and headache.
| | 04:37 | So, I hold down Y, move the Anchor Point,
let go of Y, and I am back to where I was.
| | 04:43 | By the way, this is referred
to as a spring-loaded shortcut.
| | 04:47 | You'll find these now in Photoshop as well.
| | 04:50 | So, with that out of the way, we're
now ready to move on and talk about
| | 04:54 | Position, Rotation and Scale.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating position| 00:00 | Position is probably the thing that I
find myself adjusting and animating more
| | 00:04 | than any other single property in
After Effects on a regular basis.
| | 00:09 | What we're going to do here is we're
going to animate on the front hill, kind of
| | 00:14 | growing and then the back hill
behind that, and then the sun after that.
| | 00:18 | So, let's go to the Front Hill, open up
the layer. Go to Position map. Matter of fact,
| | 00:22 | when you just select the Front Hill
layer and hit the letter P for position.
| | 00:26 | Now the first thing you'll notice
about Position is that it actually has two
| | 00:30 | values, a left one and a right one.
| | 00:33 | This refers to the X position, in other
words the left and right position of the
| | 00:37 | layer, and the vertical position, the
up and down, or Y position of the layer.
| | 00:44 | Now these numbers may seem
arbitrary, but they are not.
| | 00:48 | They refer to the Anchor Point here and
its distance from the upper left-hand corner.
| | 00:55 | So basically, this is telling us
this is 305 pixels over from the left
| | 01:01 | edge, and 487.4 pixels down from the top.
| | 01:06 | Just like other values, we can
click and drag, left and right.
| | 01:11 | I am going to undo that by hitting
Command+Z or Ctrl+Z. I can also do that with
| | 01:16 | the Y axis as well, which is kind
of what we're going to be doing here.
| | 01:20 | Now one of the things I haven't
talked about yet is that After Effects is
| | 01:23 | actually kind of a calculator.
| | 01:25 | When we have these hot text fields, notice
there is four decimal points, by the way.
| | 01:30 | This is super-accurate.
| | 01:31 | I am just going to click in here,
actually with everything highlighted.
| | 01:35 | I can just type in, let's say, +13,
then I hit Enter, and it goes to 500.4.
| | 01:42 | It does the math for me.
| | 01:44 | I am just going to undo that.
| | 01:45 | Let's say I'm going to click here, and
then on the numeric keypad, I am
| | 01:49 | just going to do Forward Slash, the
symbol for divide. And I'll say divide by 2.
| | 01:54 | I hit Enter, and then it's twice as
close to the top line here as it was.
| | 02:01 | So, it cut the distance between the
top-edge in half by dividing by two.
| | 02:05 | I am just going to undo that here.
| | 02:07 | Most properties in After
Effects have that capacity.
| | 02:10 | You can add, subtract, multiply, and
divide in these fields, so you don't have
| | 02:14 | to do all that work yourself.
| | 02:16 | Now, here is the secret for
animating things kind of coming on.
| | 02:20 | Let's see, for example, I want it to be
onscreen and be in its final place here.
| | 02:25 | I actually want to start with the end,
because let's say I wanted to start like
| | 02:31 | animating like right here the hill to come up.
| | 02:34 | Then I might click the Position
stopwatch, and then adjust the Y value.
| | 02:39 | Notice I am increasing the Y
value to increase the distance from the
| | 02:43 | top edge, but I'll start it
with it down, which is fine.
| | 02:46 | But then when I move in time, then I
don't really remember exactly where it was,
| | 02:51 | and that's a good way to mess up your design.
| | 02:54 | So, what I am going to do is undo that
until I get it back to its original spot.
| | 02:59 | Then I am going to move in
time to when I want it to end up.
| | 03:02 | Then click the stopwatch for position.
| | 03:04 | Now let's move earlier in time, and
now we can click and drag to the right on
| | 03:10 | the Y value to hide that behind the sign.
| | 03:14 | And now the hill pops up.
| | 03:18 | Now, let's go to a little bit later
in time where we want the back hill to
| | 03:24 | animate on, and go to the
Back Hill. Hit P for Position.
| | 03:28 | Let's click the stopwatch, so that
we remember where it is in time at
| | 03:33 | this particular point.
| | 03:35 | Then let's move a little earlier and
move this up on the Y axis, so it goes
| | 03:42 | down below the sign.
| | 03:47 | And so now, we have this cool
staggered animation. Our text fades in.
| | 03:50 | We have a hill moving up, and then
the junior hill behind it moves up after
| | 03:55 | the fact, as well.
| | 03:57 | Now at this point, we are
ready to animate the sun coming up.
| | 04:00 | So, let's go ahead and go to
the Sun layer. Hit P for position.
| | 04:04 | Notice that sometimes it's good to
have your keyframes out and exposed for
| | 04:07 | other layers, so you could use that
as a reference for the layer you're
| | 04:10 | currently animating.
| | 04:11 | You don't have to do that.
| | 04:13 | And if you know exactly what you're
doing, you don't really need to at all.
| | 04:15 | But if you are kind of improvising, playing
around a little bit, it's a good reference.
| | 04:20 | So, I am going to click the Position
stopwatch, and go a little earlier in
| | 04:24 | time, and then again on the sun, we're
going to increase the Y axis to hide it
| | 04:30 | behind the front hill.
| | 04:32 | Now, what I am doing here is I am
looking at the top of the layer, these little
| | 04:36 | points here called the Bounding Box.
| | 04:38 | And I am looking to see, because as I
do this, at this point in time, the front
| | 04:43 | hill has already come up.
| | 04:45 | So, if were to leave it here - so it's
hidden for right now - then when I back
| | 04:49 | up in time, I could actually still see the sun.
| | 04:51 | It's kind of hanging out there.
| | 04:53 | So, what I am going to do is I am going
to back to the frame that the sun is on.
| | 04:58 | We'll talk more about this a little bit
later in this chapter, but you want this
| | 05:00 | to make sure there is a gold diamond,
not a gray diamond here on the left-hand
| | 05:04 | side, indicating we are, in fact,
on the exact correct layer.
| | 05:08 | And I am going to increase the Y value
until the top of the bounding box, these
| | 05:13 | top little dots right here,
submerge beneath the sign.
| | 05:16 | So, they are constantly hidden throughout the
duration of the animation up until this point.
| | 05:21 | So, we can back this up. Hit the Spacebar.
| | 05:24 | All right!
| | 05:28 | Now let's back up, and actually do a
RAM preview, so we could really see the
| | 05:31 | timing of what's going on here.
| | 05:33 | I am going to hit 0 on the
numeric keypad. All right!
| | 05:38 | So, kind of a fun little
animation with not too much work.
| | 05:42 | Now it may take a while for you to feel
comfortable with the whole X position, Y
| | 05:47 | position thing, so take a
minute and play with it.
| | 05:49 | That's how you're going to learn.
| | 05:51 | Just experiment with adjusting the X
position, and then Y position. After a
| | 05:55 | while it will become second nature to you.
| | 05:57 | And hopefully at this point, you will
start to be more familiar with using
| | 06:00 | keyframes and creating your own animation.
| | 06:03 | So, let's take it to the next step,
and create some rotation for our sun.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating rotation| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to explore
and animate rotation, but we are also
| | 00:03 | going to do something we haven't
done so far, and that is we are going to
| | 00:05 | animate two properties on the same layer.
| | 00:08 | The good news is that they are
completely independent, and they should not be
| | 00:12 | confusing, hopefully.
| | 00:13 | So, let's go ahead and select the Sun layer.
| | 00:15 | And I know I can hit the letter R to
reveal the Rotation Property, but let's say
| | 00:21 | you wanted to look at Position
and Rotation of the same layer.
| | 00:24 | Well, what I could do is instead of
pressing R, which will actually replace
| | 00:28 | Position and will only show Rotation -
| | 00:30 | go back to hit P to hit Position again -
| | 00:32 | I could hit Shift+R, and that
will reveal both the Position and the
| | 00:37 | Rotation properties.
| | 00:39 | Now, actually, I don't need Rotation
and Position open at the same time.
| | 00:43 | I just need Rotation, so I am going to
hit either R or P to get rid of those
| | 00:47 | properties visually. And I
will hit R to get that back.
| | 00:50 | Now, here is the way Rotation works.
| | 00:52 | We have two values here.
| | 00:54 | We have a 0, another 0, and what this
is saying, if I click on the right one
| | 00:58 | and move to the right, we
have the number of degrees.
| | 01:02 | So, we basically added a
49-degree rotation here.
| | 01:07 | And when it's a positive
value, it's rotating clockwise.
| | 01:10 | And when we go to the left, and it
goes to a negative value, we are rotating
| | 01:14 | this counterclockwise, in
other words, to the left.
| | 01:17 | And it might be a little confusing on
your own if you start playing around here,
| | 01:20 | because this first number, it's a 0.
| | 01:22 | And as we move this, it
doesn't seem to be changing anything.
| | 01:26 | Well, this is a property
only used for animation.
| | 01:30 | And this refers to how many
complete revolutions the object will do.
| | 01:35 | So, if were animating this, and let's
say I said 2 15, then this will go a full
| | 01:43 | two revolutions plus an extra 15 degrees.
| | 01:47 | And so that's what this is telling us here.
| | 01:49 | I am actually going to zero
out both of these values, 0, 0.
| | 01:52 | And what I want for the sun is I
want it to be rotating slowly but
| | 01:58 | constantly throughout.
| | 01:59 | So, as it rises, it is spinning, and
even at the end of the animation after it's
| | 02:04 | popped up, it's still
continuing a slow gentle spin.
| | 02:08 | So, what we can do is start at this
first frame, click the stopwatch for
| | 02:11 | Rotation, and then we will move in time
to the end of the animation, and let's
| | 02:17 | maybe add a Rotation or two.
| | 02:20 | I will just say two Rotations.
| | 02:21 | So, two complete revolutions over the
course of our four-second animation.
| | 02:26 | So, as I drag this, you can see that
it's spinning, and because Position is
| | 02:32 | animated, it continues to spin as it moves.
| | 02:36 | So, you can see, they are
completely independent properties.
| | 02:38 | We can rotate stuff as we move
it, move stuff as we rotate it.
| | 02:41 | It really doesn't matter.
| | 02:43 | Now, as I am looking at this and just
scrubbing it, I am starting to think that
| | 02:46 | it might be a little bit too fast. Yeah.
| | 02:48 | That's way too fast, actually.
| | 02:51 | Let's go ahead and go to that last keyframe.
| | 02:53 | Drag your Current Time Indicator back
to the end of your composition, and then
| | 02:56 | we will take this value from 2 to 1,
and see if that helps anything.
| | 03:01 | I will go to the beginning, hit the
Spacebar, and it's still way, way too fast.
| | 03:08 | So, what I am going to do is take this
value to 0, making sure, again, that I am
| | 03:13 | on the last frame of the composition.
| | 03:15 | It's important that you are on that
last frame of that composition or wherever
| | 03:18 | that keyframe was, because if you are
not on that exact frame, you will not
| | 03:23 | change that keyframe.
| | 03:24 | You will create a new one.
| | 03:26 | And that is a good way to get really
terrible, terrible animation mistakes.
| | 03:30 | So, you want to make sure that when
you want to adjust a keyframe value,
| | 03:34 | you are on that exact frame, and this
little diamond right here is the indicator
| | 03:39 | that you are currently on a frame
with a keyframe for that property.
| | 03:44 | So, now what I am going to do is,
let's maybe take this even lower here,
| | 03:48 | maybe somewhere around 90, between 80
and 95 degrees, something like that,
| | 03:53 | and now let's play with it.
| | 03:54 | It looks like it might be a little bit too slow.
| | 03:57 | No, actually, I kind of like
that now that I am looking at it.
| | 04:00 | That's kind of nice. It's kind of nice.
| | 04:04 | Now, you may find that to
be a little bit too slow.
| | 04:09 | You may find it to be a little bit too fast.
| | 04:11 | I actually think it's a little bit too fast.
| | 04:12 | I am looking at it again.
| | 04:13 | But we can fiddle with it outside of
this movie, but just customize everything,
| | 04:18 | the fading in of the text, the animation up of the
hills, and the sun, and the rotation of
| | 04:22 | the sun according to your liking.
Not be too esoteric and creepy and weird, but
| | 04:28 | how does this project speak to you?
| | 04:30 | How do you feel that things would move?
| | 04:32 | What would be the speed and the pace?
| | 04:34 | So, that is what you need to know
about Rotation, and now onto our final
| | 04:38 | animation property, Scale.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating scale| 00:00 | The last of the five
transforms is Scale, basically resizing.
| | 00:04 | So, what we are going to do is open up
the Sun and go ahead and press S for Scale.
| | 00:10 | So, as you can see here, we can click
and drag this up or down, or in other
| | 00:15 | words, to the right, we can increase in Scale.
| | 00:17 | So, now, for example, it would
be 241% of its original size.
| | 00:22 | We can also drag it to the left to
make this smaller than it initially was.
| | 00:26 | So, this is 45% of its original size.
| | 00:28 | Typically, you would not want to
increase an object or a layer above 100% unless
| | 00:35 | you know what you are doing.
| | 00:36 | In the case of Illustrator files, and
this is part of the magic of why it's
| | 00:41 | so important to work with
Illustrator in After Effects, but when you are
| | 00:44 | working with Illustrator files, you
can scale them up beyond 100% and it
| | 00:49 | still remains crisp.
| | 00:51 | That's part of the relationship
between After Effects and Illustrator and the
| | 00:55 | nature of Illustrator itself.
| | 00:57 | So, I am going to change this;.
Just click in here and type 100%.
| | 01:00 | Now, you will notice that there are
two values here, just like Position.
| | 01:04 | And like Position, they
represent the same thing:
| | 01:07 | the X axis and the Y axis.
| | 01:10 | In other words, the X Scale, the left to
right Scale, and the vertical Scale, the
| | 01:15 | Y Scale on the right here.
| | 01:18 | By default, there is this little
chain-link, which means that the
| | 01:21 | proportions are constrained.
| | 01:23 | So, if you adjust X or Y, then
both dimensions move equally.
| | 01:28 | But if you were to click this to
uncheck it, then you can scale width and
| | 01:34 | height independently.
| | 01:36 | Now, in the case of the Sun,
that looks just terrible.
| | 01:39 | So, I take this back to 100%.
| | 01:40 | And actually what I am going to do for
Scale, to animate it, is I want to start
| | 01:44 | at the beginning before the Sun even
animates on, maybe like right here.
| | 01:49 | I want to take this down slightly
smaller, maybe 75%. We will start there and
| | 01:54 | see how that goes, and
click the Stopwatch for Scale.
| | 01:57 | We want to animate this.
| | 01:58 | I am going to drag my Current Time
Indicator to the end of the composition and
| | 02:03 | make this a little bit above 100%.
| | 02:06 | Maybe that's too big, maybe around
115, 120, somewhere around there.
| | 02:13 | Then if we preview this,
we have a sun that comes up
| | 02:18 | that scales and gradually increases.
| | 02:21 | Now, that's way too heavy-handed for my liking.
| | 02:24 | So, I am going to actually
take this back to maybe 110%.
| | 02:30 | Also, I am going to take this other
value, again, making sure that I am seeing
| | 02:34 | a gold diamond here.
| | 02:35 | So, I am actually on the
frame with this keyframe.
| | 02:37 | Take this up to 85%.
| | 02:38 | So, this is going a shorter distance,
only from 85 to a 110, rather than 75% to 117%.
| | 02:48 | So, now if we preview this,
the sun comes up and slowly grows on.
| | 02:54 | That's kind of what we are looking for here.
| | 02:56 | Oftentimes I will use Scale for this
kind of like brooding, slowly coming
| | 03:00 | towards you, in your face thing.
| | 03:02 | Something about it is very engaging.
| | 03:03 | Actually, if you want to go over to the
other Composition in this project here,
| | 03:08 | the Hansel and Petal Ad, which we saw
earlier on in this Training Series -
| | 03:12 | we didn't talk about this, because it
was a little bit too much to get into,
| | 03:16 | but for the final components of the
logo, all I did was I animated the Scale
| | 03:21 | value of this Hansel and Petal text.
| | 03:23 | So basically, what it's doing is
it's scaling up, and it appears to be
| | 03:27 | coming towards you.
| | 03:29 | Again, it's getting your attention more
because it is kind of coming towards you like that.
| | 03:33 | And then also, we have a basic rotation
on the flower petals and the ampersand
| | 03:37 | on the right here is just
slowly moving to the right.
| | 03:39 | So, I basically just animated the basic
parameters here, the five basic transforms:
| | 03:44 | we have Rotation, Scale on the
text, and Position on the ampersand.
| | 03:49 | As a matter of fact, if you look
closely in the background, you will see this
| | 03:51 | kind of cool texture here.
| | 03:52 | And basically, that's just position on
these textures overlay on the background.
| | 03:57 | So, again, it's just the five basic
transforms, but those five basic transforms can
| | 04:01 | do so much together.
| | 04:02 | Again, you see in the
result of Scale here on the text.
| | 04:05 | It's kind of the same thing
I was going for with the Sun.
| | 04:08 | Now, one other kind of interesting use for
Scale - I am going to turn on the Bridge layer.
| | 04:12 | This might not work, but I want
to show you the principle here.
| | 04:15 | I am going to hold the letter Y, and I
am going to move the Anchor Point over to
| | 04:20 | the bottom left-hand corner of the bridge here.
| | 04:24 | Now, as we hit Scale for the Bridge
and we scale this up, you will see that it's
| | 04:29 | scaling from that point.
| | 04:31 | That's kind of a cool look as well.
| | 04:33 | So, it looks like the bridge is coming
towards you, but still coming towards
| | 04:36 | you in perspective.
| | 04:38 | You may also want to unlink these
values and Scale them independently.
| | 04:42 | So, you will notice as I am doing this,
it almost looks as if we are panning a
| | 04:46 | virtual camera around in three dimensions.
| | 04:50 | So, Scale can be good for faking
those 3D perspective effects as well.
| | 04:54 | Now, we can't go all the way over here,
because the graphic cuts off along the
| | 04:58 | edge, and oftentimes little technical
issues like that, you need to be aware of.
| | 05:03 | Sometimes, like in the case of this
Bridge here, there really aren't any fixes.
| | 05:08 | You just have got to come up with
some kind of bubblegum, duct tape,
| | 05:11 | hackneyed solution.
| | 05:12 | But I am going to play with this a little bit.
| | 05:14 | I am going to Scale this
along the X axis actually.
| | 05:20 | Let's actually start here, where it's completed.
| | 05:26 | Actually, let's go a little bit farther,
and the Stopwatch for Scale and move in time.
| | 05:33 | With these values unlinked, we are just
going to animate this along the X axis,
| | 05:38 | so it appears to kind of grow
on and go to the right there.
| | 05:44 | That's kind of cool.
| | 05:45 | What we can also do is
animate the Position of this.
| | 05:48 | So, we might want to animate it so
that I will select the layer and hit P for
| | 05:52 | Position, and we might want it to like,
I don't know, end up right about there.
| | 05:58 | And then, move it a little bit earlier,
and increase the Y axis until the Bridge
| | 06:04 | hides underneath the signage here.
| | 06:07 | So, then as we go scrub this in
time, we could see these different
| | 06:11 | components animate on.
| | 06:15 | Now again, it's a little bit too
intense and distracting with the Bridge.
| | 06:18 | That's way too much, so I am going to
hit S for Scale, go back to the last
| | 06:22 | keyframe, and I will take this down to
something a little bit more modest, maybe 110.
| | 06:28 | So, now as we take this back
and play it, that's kind of cool.
| | 06:33 | So, just take some slow, gradual movement here.
| | 06:37 | This kind of makes this still feel
alive even after the elements have
| | 06:41 | animated on the screen.
| | 06:42 | Now, you can see we haven't done
anything with the hills, and then the hills
| | 06:45 | seem now painfully boring, because
they come up, and they are fun. And if
| | 06:50 | everything else just came up and just
stood still, then it wouldn't be that big
| | 06:54 | of a deal, but everything else is
still kind of full of life and breathing.
| | 06:58 | So, to have the hills there, I guess
the contrast is kind of interesting.
| | 07:02 | But anyways, that's our little
project so far. Pretty cool!
| | 07:06 | Now, we do have kind of a main character,
a protagonist, in this project, if you
| | 07:11 | will, and that is the biker.
| | 07:13 | We have not really touched the biker
yet, but we will, in a major way, in
| | 07:17 | the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Puppet tool| 00:00 | Folks, in this movie we're going
to be looking at the Puppet tool,
| | 00:04 | one of the most genius tools in any
software application that I have ever come across.
| | 00:10 | If you are new to the world of
After Effects, this will absolutely blow
| | 00:13 | your mind, guaranteed.
| | 00:15 | Now let's first talk about our dilemma here.
| | 00:18 | We've animated all of the other
components of our project, but we have
| | 00:22 | this biker left over.
| | 00:24 | There is really no degree of position,
rotation, scale and opacity that can
| | 00:30 | help us to bring this still image of
this girl on a bicycle to life, in any kind
| | 00:36 | of real, believable way.
| | 00:38 | In real life, she would have flesh
and joints that would bend and move and
| | 00:43 | react in a certain way.
| | 00:45 | And because she is just a still image,
that's going to be almost, if not,
| | 00:49 | completely impossible to duplicate in an
animation program, and that is the case,
| | 00:54 | if it were not for the Puppet tool.
| | 00:56 | So, go ahead and select the Biker Body layer.
| | 00:59 | That's layer number 6 and that is basically
if I turn off the visibility of this layer.
| | 01:05 | Actually, I can turn the solo back on if I
turn that off, but that's what that looks like.
| | 01:10 | Now with this layer selected, go select this
pushpin up here in the Tools panel at the top.
| | 01:16 | This pushpin is the Puppet Pin tool.
| | 01:18 | So, what we're going to do is we're
going to click on our biker lady here, and
| | 01:25 | we are going to click on
areas where joints would be.
| | 01:29 | So, let's call the Puppet tool.
| | 01:30 | So, think of her as a puppet, like a marionette.
| | 01:33 | If you had to click on certain joints of the
puppet, as it were, where would you click that?
| | 01:40 | I think I would click one on her ankle,
perhaps one on her knee, one on her
| | 01:49 | hindquarters, one may be on her back,
one on her shoulders, one on her elbow,
| | 01:58 | and one on her hand.
| | 02:00 | If it was important that we animated
her head, I might place one there as well,
| | 02:04 | but for now that's good.
| | 02:06 | So, we have placed these joints along her body.
| | 02:09 | If her other leg was on the same layer,
which it's not, it's actually a separate
| | 02:13 | layer. That's the Biker Right
Leg layer here. It's that one.
| | 02:18 | So, we're not worried about that one
because we can only work right now on one
| | 02:21 | layer, but watch this.
| | 02:23 | Now put your cursor over one of these
points that you've already laid down, and
| | 02:28 | your cursor will go from a push-pin with
a Plus or a White Arrow to a Move icon.
| | 02:35 | This is what we want.
| | 02:37 | With this icon, click on one of these
points and move it around and look at.
| | 02:43 | Look how organically our characters move.
| | 02:46 | Even as I bend her knee, look at
how her shoe responds so organically.
| | 02:54 | That is unbelievable.
| | 02:57 | I could grab her back, and
notice how it affects her hair.
| | 03:01 | Her whole body responds the system
of joints just like a real character
| | 03:08 | would, just amazing.
| | 03:11 | So, now what we can do is we can move
her legs as if she were riding the bicycle.
| | 03:19 | Now this is very complex and so
it's kind of like this horrible challenge
| | 03:24 | that I'm torturing you with, because
even an experienced animator, there is no
| | 03:29 | book on how to animate with the Puppet tool
if a character is riding a bike or something.
| | 03:34 | This is something you just have to
artistically study somebody riding a bike and
| | 03:37 | figure out which components of the
body are moving and that type of thing.
| | 03:41 | So, we're not actually
going to animate that here.
| | 03:44 | But if we were a little more skilled, and we
had some more time to discuss this, we
| | 03:48 | can look at how to animate a
character with the Puppet tool.
| | 03:53 | Now the one thing I do want to show you
is that when you apply this effect that
| | 03:59 | you'll notice that here in the layers,
if close the layer, open it up again, we
| | 04:05 | could see that under Effects -
| | 04:06 | so you open that up -
| | 04:08 | there is a Puppet that has been added.
| | 04:12 | If we open up Mesh 1 and then Deform,
and you can see that there are all
| | 04:18 | these Puppet Pin categories, and not
only have pins been placed for us, but
| | 04:23 | After Effects has automatically added
keyframes at that frame that we added these points.
| | 04:29 | So, now all we have to do is just
move in time and change the value.
| | 04:33 | We don't have to worry about
setting keyframes or any such thing.
| | 04:36 | We just have to move.
| | 04:38 | I'm doing a terrible job at this.
| | 04:43 | I'm sure once we animate, this is
just going to be the worst animation
| | 04:46 | that anyone's ever seen.
| | 04:49 | But still you get the point that
this is how the Puppet Pin tool works.
| | 04:54 | So, now as we move, so she
moves in a very, again, organic way.
| | 05:00 | So, you have to work with it to be
able to make it work so that it looks like
| | 05:04 | she is riding the bicycle.
| | 05:06 | Realistically, I'm might want to go
out in Time here, and probably push her foot
| | 05:10 | down, push her knee down,
bend this back, like so
| | 05:16 | so she has not twisting her leg there
and maybe she might arch her back a little
| | 05:23 | bit, which is pushing that down.
| | 05:24 | There we go. And then we might move out in Time.
| | 05:30 | Then she puts her -oops! Undo that.
| | 05:33 | I've actually added an extra pin. But
she might move up her leg and bring it back up
| | 05:38 | again, and change her back and her shoulders.
| | 05:44 | As we drag it, we kind of
see what's going on there.
| | 05:48 | Now if you have an exact method that you
would like your character to move, here
| | 05:55 | is an amazing trick with the Puppet tool.
| | 05:58 | What I can do is, say, for example, I
want her to do a little dance with this
| | 06:02 | leg, which is easier to
animate than her riding a bike.
| | 06:05 | I'm going to hold down the Command key
on the Mac or the Ctrl key on the PC, and
| | 06:09 | you notice that my
cursor changes when I do that.
| | 06:11 | Instead of a Move tool,
it's now this little Stopwatch.
| | 06:14 | So, let's say, for example, I want her dancing.
| | 06:18 | So, I'm going to click this.
| | 06:20 | When I click it, it's going
to be recording what I'm doing.
| | 06:23 | Okay, so now if I play this, she kind
of kicks around in this kind of crazy way
| | 06:31 | here, just like I made it happen
with my mouse. It looks terrible.
| | 06:37 | I realize that, but that's not the point.
| | 06:39 | The point is is that - I am just going to
click outside of this layer to deselect it
| | 06:43 | so we can have a better
view of what's going on here -
| | 06:46 | it did exactly what I told it to do.
| | 06:48 | So, if you had a character, again, that
was dancing, or I've seen other people
| | 06:52 | use like bird that was pecking.
| | 06:54 | I've also used the duck where you grab
the bill, and you just have liked make it
| | 06:58 | pack, so much easier than animating by hand.
| | 07:01 | You just actually move it with your
mouse, where you want it to go, even the
| | 07:04 | speed you want it to go, After Effects
will remember and animate it accordingly.
| | 07:08 | Ladies and gentlemen, that is
the wonder of the Puppet tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Copying and pasting keyframes| 00:00 | Hello, folks! Since we've last worked together, I
have taken the liberty to go through to our
| | 00:06 | little biker girl here.
| | 00:08 | I have animated a little bit of a pedal cycle.
| | 00:12 | I realized that if you are a
master animator, this might seem cheesy.
| | 00:16 | I would agree with you, but
her scale's off a little anyways.
| | 00:20 | so it's a little bit cartoony and kind of fun.
| | 00:22 | So, this is me doing one little pedal
around. But I didn't keep doing this
| | 00:28 | because that's really laborious.
| | 00:29 | What I can choose to do instead is
simply copy and paste keyframes, but there is
| | 00:34 | a trick to it that I want to show.
| | 00:35 | I'm going to select the Biker Body layer.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to press the letter U,
and that's going to show me all of the
| | 00:42 | keyframes applied to this layer.
| | 00:45 | Actually, what I'm going to do is
resize my Timeline panel a little bit
| | 00:48 | because I really don't need to see what's going on.
| | 00:50 | I just need to see this
content, all of these keyframes.
| | 00:55 | So, here's what we can do.
| | 00:56 | If we want to select some keyframes,
we know that we can just click on a
| | 00:58 | keyframe to make it gold,
and that one is selected.
| | 01:01 | But what we can also do is click and drag a
marquee to select multiple keyframes in a row.
| | 01:07 | We can also select multiple
keyframes across multiple properties.
| | 01:12 | So, with all this selected, I'm going
to hit Command+C on the Mac or Ctrl+C on
| | 01:16 | the PC to copy those.
| | 01:18 | Then I'm going to move in time
about where the next keyframe should be.
| | 01:22 | So, you could see that there are sets
of keyframes that are kind of equally
| | 01:27 | spaced, and not too much.
| | 01:28 | These guys are kind of little bit
different, and these guys are moved over
| | 01:32 | little bit, but about right here
is where I think they should go.
| | 01:35 | So, here is what's going to happen.
| | 01:37 | I'm going to paste these, but
the first copied keyframes,
| | 01:40 | in other words this row of
keyframes right here, will be pasted where the
| | 01:45 | Current Time Indicator is.
| | 01:47 | So, I'm going to hits Command+V or Ctrl+
V on the PC to paste those keyframes and
| | 01:54 | again, where the first copied
keyframes came in when I pasted where my
| | 02:00 | Current Time Indicator was.
| | 02:01 | Now what I could do if I want to keep
repeating this action, and then I probably
| | 02:05 | should preview before I
copy and pasted it again.
| | 02:08 | But just for the sake of argument,
let's go ahead and copy these. Command+C
| | 02:11 | or Ctrl+C to copy again, and then move over
in time and Command+V or Ctrl+V to paste these.
| | 02:18 | Actually, we only needed one of those.
| | 02:20 | But if had a long series,
this is a good way to do it.
| | 02:23 | Then we can see what we
have here, our moment of truth.
| | 02:27 | Did our copy and pasting
pay off? We preview that.
| | 02:30 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 02:32 | I'm actually pleasantly surprised that
I had no idea how that was going to turn
| | 02:36 | out, but it worked great.
| | 02:38 | Thank you to copying and pasting for
allowing me to not have to manually animate
| | 02:44 | every single cycle of that.
| | 02:47 | So, copying and pasting, it seems very simple.
| | 02:50 | In Microsoft Word, it is very simple.
| | 02:52 | But in After Effects, it's a little bit
more complex because of that caveat that
| | 02:57 | the first copy keyframe is pasted
where the Current Time Indicator is.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animation shortcuts| 00:00 | Before we leave this chapter on
animation, I really want to give you some
| | 00:03 | important shortcuts as
you're working in the Timeline.
| | 00:06 | These shortcuts don't just speed things up.
| | 00:08 | They make things infinitely easier as
you work in After Effects, especially as
| | 00:13 | you are working in the
Timeline and with the animation.
| | 00:15 | Before you do that, I want to show you
just what we have done for this final project.
| | 00:20 | I have kind of put everything together here
and so I am going to maximize this window.
| | 00:23 | Let's just play back our little
animation here. Not too shabby for so early in
| | 00:28 | the training series. Pretty cool stuff.
| | 00:30 | We have our biker girl.
| | 00:32 | We have things coming on and animating.
| | 00:34 | There is a lot of like layers to this,
a lot of staggered animation, so it's
| | 00:39 | very visually appealing. Pretty nice work.
| | 00:43 | You should be proud of yourselves.
| | 00:44 | Okay, so let's talk about this.
| | 00:46 | First of all, most important
keyboard shortcuts, navigating the Timeline.
| | 00:50 | The Home key on your keyboard will jump
you to the first frame of the animation.
| | 00:55 | The End key will jump you to the
last frame of your composition.
| | 00:59 | By the way, some of you may be working on a
laptop, which is totally legal. You can do that.
| | 01:04 | You might wonder, "Well, I
don't have any of Home or End keys.
| | 01:07 | I don't have the 0 on the
numeric keypad for RAM previewing."
| | 01:10 | Well, if you look at your keyboard,
usually there is a Function key. On a Mac,
| | 01:15 | for example, that will say fn.
| | 01:17 | If you hold that, if you look closely
at the keys on the keyboard, you will see
| | 01:21 | tiny little numbers and
letters off to the side.
| | 01:25 | Those will tell you that if you hold
the Function key, and then use those
| | 01:29 | regular keys, you actually access
Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, 0 on the
| | 01:33 | numeric keypad, all those
features on a regular keyboard as well.
| | 01:37 | So, you are not left out in the cold.
| | 01:39 | Now, another important keyboard
shortcut - I am going to hit the Home key and
| | 01:42 | jump to the first frame.
| | 01:43 | If I hit Page Down, that will
advance me exactly one frame at a time.
| | 01:50 | If I hit Page Up, I go
backwards one frame in time.
| | 01:55 | If you add Shift to that, it
will add 10 to the increment.
| | 01:59 | So, if I hold Shift+Page Down,
I'll advance 10 frames at a time.
| | 02:03 | If I hold Shift+Page Up, I'll
go back 10 frames at a time.
| | 02:07 | Well, the other killer ones we've
already talked about. I'm just going to select
| | 02:10 | the Biker Body layer.
| | 02:12 | Press U to reveal all of
the keyframes on that layer.
| | 02:18 | I am just going to close it up.
| | 02:19 | I want to show you something else.
| | 02:20 | If you press U two times fast like U,
U, it will show you not only all the
| | 02:28 | keyframes, but it will also show you all of
the properties changed from their defaults.
| | 02:33 | So, if you move something, if you added
an effect, anything you've changed from
| | 02:39 | its default settings then it will
show you that, which is very helpful.
| | 02:42 | Now, I am actually going to
select the Sun layer, layer 15.
| | 02:46 | I am going to press the letter U to
reveal the keyframes. There are actually three
| | 02:51 | properties animated on this layer.
| | 02:53 | If I press the letter K, it will jump
to the next keyframe that is visible.
| | 02:59 | If I have multiple layers open,
let's say, I go to the Bridge layer.
| | 03:02 | I'll press U for the Bridge layer.
| | 03:04 | So, now there are multiple keyframes showing
both from the Bridge and from the Sun layers.
| | 03:10 | If I hit K, I will jump to the next
keyframe, no matter which layer it's on.
| | 03:14 | If the keyframes are visible, if I am
seeing them here in the Timeline, then K
| | 03:19 | navigates to the next one.
J navigates to the previous keyframe.
| | 03:23 | Now, this is not only helpful for
jumping to right where you want to go quickly,
| | 03:27 | which it is good for. It's helpful.
| | 03:29 | But it's also even more important to
make sure you are on exactly the correct
| | 03:35 | frame, if you are going to
adjust an existing keyframe.
| | 03:39 | So, say, for example, on this Bridge, let's
say I wanted to adjust the Position property.
| | 03:43 | If I was only one frame before or one
frame after, I am going to create a new
| | 03:47 | keyframe, and that's really bad.
| | 03:49 | But if I press the letter J, I make
sure that I'm on that exact keyframe.
| | 03:53 | Then this keyframe indicator here will
illuminate from gray to gold, letting us
| | 03:59 | know that we are on a
keyframe at that exact frame.
| | 04:03 | Now, one of the problems with this
project was that we have this biker girl and
| | 04:10 | she just kind of is there, and then she
starts biking, and then everything else
| | 04:15 | comes up around here.
| | 04:16 | Ideally, we'd like her to drive in.
| | 04:18 | She is kind of like the centerpiece here.
| | 04:20 | So, it would be great if she kind of
like rode her bike into the scene as it
| | 04:24 | were when everything else
is kind of coming in as well.
| | 04:28 | The problem with doing that, why we
didn't do that in this chapter, is because
| | 04:31 | she's spread out over multiple layers.
| | 04:33 | She is the Biker Body. She is the Bike.
| | 04:35 | There are rear tire curls, the extra little
accents in the back here, and there is a
| | 04:38 | bunch of stuff with the Pedals
and the Crank and her other Leg.
| | 04:42 | There is a lot going on here.
| | 04:43 | So, we'd have to animate the
position of all of these layers.
| | 04:46 | That's really frustrating.
| | 04:47 | So, in the next chapter, we are going
to look at a way to combine and group
| | 04:52 | these layers together, so we can
actually animate her coming on the scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Precomposing and Nesting CompositionsUnderstanding precomposing| 00:00 | In this chapter, we are going to look
at an important After Effects feature
| | 00:03 | called Pre-composing.
| | 00:05 | Basically, that is when you take a
series of layers and group them together into
| | 00:10 | another composition.
| | 00:12 | There is a few reasons why you'd want to
do that, and I have a few examples for you.
| | 00:15 | So, hopefully that idea will
crystallize as we go through these.
| | 00:20 | Basically, I want to reiterate the
problem we have with our last example.
| | 00:23 | We had this biker girl who is biking and
she's actually made up of several layers.
| | 00:29 | There is pedals and a crank and the bike
and she has two Legs, and there's a lot there.
| | 00:36 | So, animating her like kind of
driving on the screen is a little bit
| | 00:40 | more complex in that.
| | 00:41 | So, what we are going to do is we are
going to group these layers together
| | 00:45 | into a composition
| | 00:47 | that will be a layer in this composition.
| | 00:50 | So, click on layer #6, the Biker Body
layer - that's the topmost layer - and
| | 00:55 | then hold the Shift key down and click
on layer 12, the Biker Right Leg layer,
| | 01:01 | which is an extreme tongue twister.
| | 01:03 | With all of these layers selected, from
layer 6 to layer 12, make sure they are
| | 01:07 | all highlighted here, go to the
Layer menu and choose Pre-compose.
| | 01:11 | You could also use the keyboard shortcut,
Command+Shift+C or Ctrl+Shift+C on the PC.
| | 01:19 | If you are new to After Effects, you
might not need to worry about that.
| | 01:22 | But if you want to be a pro in After
Effects, this is one of those keyboard
| | 01:25 | shortcuts that you almost always will
use every time you open the program.
| | 01:30 | So, I am going to select Pre-
compose here, and I am going to call this
| | 01:34 | PRECOMP, in capital letters, just
so I know, visually, that this is a
| | 01:38 | pre-composed composition.
| | 01:40 | I'll call this bike girl for lack of
a more intelligent-sounding comp name.
| | 01:46 | I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 01:48 | Now, what that did was it compressed
all those layers or grouped all those
| | 01:52 | layers into one composition.
| | 01:54 | So, all those layers are still here
and if we were to visually preview this
| | 01:58 | composition, we wouldn't
see any difference, visually.
| | 02:01 | Just as far as organization goes,
these are all now grouped in one
| | 02:06 | nested composition.
| | 02:08 | The benefit of that is that now as we
open up this layer, we have access to all
| | 02:14 | of the Transform
properties for this entire group.
| | 02:17 | So, now we can go out to about here.
| | 02:21 | Actually, let's go ahead and
set a keyframe for right about there.
| | 02:27 | Let's click the stopwatch for position
because we want her to end up at about
| | 02:32 | two seconds and six frames in.
We want her to end up at this frame, at this
| | 02:36 | spot, then move a little
earlier, say about here.
| | 02:41 | We'll drag the X axis - that's the left
property of the position - to the right, and
| | 02:48 | that will drive her offscreen there,
exit stage right to you, bike girl.
| | 02:54 | Then as we preview this, the bike
girl comes on in and actually, she starts
| | 03:03 | animating a little bit earlier.
| | 03:04 | So, what I can do is just click on
this layer and drag it to the left, so her
| | 03:11 | animation starts a little bit earlier.
| | 03:16 | We just need to click and drag around
our keyframes, drag them to the right a
| | 03:20 | little bit and she comes
in pedaling, like a champ.
| | 03:29 | But the real point here is that we can
now operate all of these layers as if
| | 03:33 | they were one whole, so we could scale them all
together, and we can rotate them all together.
| | 03:40 | We could fade them out or
fade them in all together.
| | 03:43 | So, it really is a great way, not only
just to keep yourself organized, but to
| | 03:48 | be able to affect
multiple properties as one whole.
| | 03:52 | Here is another example
of how that's often used.
| | 03:55 | I have this knight here, some great art
from a buddy of mine named Will Kendrick.
| | 04:01 | He has this knife and he
kind of stabs there, very cool.
| | 04:04 | You could see all of the layers.
| | 04:05 | This is a very complex character, and
there are different layers for every
| | 04:09 | single piece and component of this knight.
| | 04:13 | So, as we scrub in time here,
he stabs, and that's really cool.
| | 04:17 | But what if we want to move this knight
around or treat him as one and complete whole?
| | 04:21 | Well, that's when we would pre-compose.
| | 04:24 | So, here is the difference between not precomposed,
and then here is the PRECOMPOSED (PRECOMP
| | 04:30 | knight) layer, just one layer in a composition.
| | 04:33 | So, we could go over to
like this castle scene here.
| | 04:36 | I could go into my Project panel,
find the PRECOMPOSED layer, which is the
| | 04:41 | PRECOMPOSED knight, and drag this in,
just as if it were some video element,
| | 04:47 | although it's not a video;
| | 04:48 | it's just a composition.
| | 04:50 | But After Effects will treat it like a video.
| | 04:52 | So, again, hit S for Scale and scale
this guy down, really small, maybe about
| | 04:58 | 10%, somewhere around there.
| | 05:00 | Click and drag and move him wherever
you'd like to put him in the scene and
| | 05:05 | maybe even like 8% ,because 10% is too big.
| | 05:08 | You could see that he is stabbing there.
| | 05:10 | He still has the same animation.
| | 05:13 | What we could do is select this layer
and hit Command+D on the Mac or Ctrl+D on
| | 05:18 | the PC, which will duplicate that layer.
| | 05:21 | We could click and drag and keep doing that.
| | 05:24 | Ctrl+D to duplicate, Command+D
on the Mac to duplicate. Oops!
| | 05:29 | The duplicate's over here.
| | 05:34 | If we wanted to, let me
make one more duplicate here.
| | 05:36 | I'll Command+D or Ctrl+D put this guy over here.
| | 05:40 | Open up S for Scale and if we unlink
Scale, and then we take like, let's say,
| | 05:45 | for example, the X axis to a negative value,
| | 05:48 | it will actually flip the layer.
| | 05:50 | So, if I type in -8, it flips this guy.
| | 05:53 | So, now he is a bad guy or maybe he is
defending the castle, and these guys are
| | 05:57 | bad guys or something.
He is on the opposing team.
| | 06:00 | Also, you could see if we scale this,
like one of the properties, too much,
| | 06:04 | this is what happens.
| | 06:05 | It kind of flips over on itself, which
is a little bit weird, but it does allow
| | 06:09 | you to completely flip a layer.
| | 06:12 | Now, I could then add a Color Affect,
I could play with these in time, and we
| | 06:16 | basically have a battle.
| | 06:18 | Right now, it's kind of like a
synchronized medieval knight stabbings.
| | 06:23 | But if we were to offset these in time,
play with colors a little bit, then we
| | 06:27 | would have an army made very
quickly through Pre-composing.
| | 06:31 | You could imagine taking all of these crazy
layers and putting them into this castle scene.
| | 06:37 | It would just be impossible, because
there will be too many layers, and we wouldn't
| | 06:41 | be able to control the entire knight at once.
| | 06:44 | So, Pre-composing does good for
organizing your scene, allowing you to apply
| | 06:48 | transforms to a group of layers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Navigating through compositions quickly| 00:00 | Now perhaps after the last movie your
brain started thinking there, and you
| | 00:04 | started thinking, "Well, if I could
grab a bunch of layers and group them
| | 00:07 | together into a precomp, could I group
a bunch of precomps and keep grouping"
| | 00:13 | those precomps into a precomp and group those
precomps into a precomp?" The answer is yes.
| | 00:18 | Until you fry your brain trying to
think of all the possibilities, you can get
| | 00:22 | that deep with After Effects,
continually grouping and nesting until you have
| | 00:27 | groups of precomps and the whole bit.
| | 00:30 | So, as you start working with After
Effects, you'll need to know this cool
| | 00:34 | shortcut and also how
to navigate through comps.
| | 00:37 | When you have a composition selected
that has a nested composition, what you
| | 00:40 | could do is just double-click it to open it up.
| | 00:42 | So, you could process the individual layer.
| | 00:45 | So, say, for example, we want to go
through and animate these little tire curls
| | 00:49 | coming out at the back of the tire.
| | 00:49 | Let me just double-click
that comp to open it back up.
| | 00:53 | If you need to navigate through comps,
what you can do is tap the Shift key, and
| | 00:59 | then you could use the arrow keys.
| | 01:01 | See right now we are in a
PRECOMP bike girl composition.
| | 01:04 | It's showing here that this is a child,
or in other words, a layer inside the
| | 01:10 | Explore California Logo
layered composition over here.
| | 01:14 | That's kind of what we
would call the parent comp.
| | 01:16 | So, what I could do is click on this
just to jump back to that composition.
| | 01:20 | You can also tap Shift, use the Right
arrow key to navigate back to the PRECOMP
| | 01:25 | bike girl comp, here in this little
mini flowchart view, and hit the Return or
| | 01:30 | Enter key to jump back to that composition.
| | 01:32 | Now, you might also remember from the
last movie that we looked to this example
| | 01:36 | where we had this knight composition
with tons of layers, and that was used in
| | 01:42 | that PRECOMPOSED composition.
| | 01:43 | Then we put this PRECOMPOSED
composition inside of the castle scene.
| | 01:48 | So, if we type Shift, we'll see
that there is the PRECOMPOSED layer.
| | 01:53 | So, if we want to jump into that, we
can type that here. Or if we type Shift
| | 01:57 | here, we can see that we can go to the
parent scene, which is the castle scene.
| | 02:01 | Or if we type Shift, we can hit
the Right arrow and go to the PRECOMP
| | 02:07 | composition as well.
| | 02:08 | So, if you are get in the habit of using
this little keyboard shortcut, it's very handy.
| | 02:12 | So, you hit Shift, go to the right, and
you could navigate through compositions
| | 02:16 | without actually having to like
open up tabs and do all that jazz.
| | 02:20 | Likewise, you could use this little
dropdown here, right here in the Timeline
| | 02:24 | panel, to get what you are after.
| | 02:27 | You can also go up here to the
Composition panel and jump through comps this way.
| | 02:32 | You could use the dropdown to get the
little flowchart view, or you could just
| | 02:35 | click on the comp that you want to go to.
| | 02:38 | Again, one of those things that's not
super critical until you start having a
| | 02:41 | professional workflow, but it's good to
be aware of these features now, so that
| | 02:45 | when you start using precomps
effectively, you're ready. You're there.
| | 02:48 | You've got the shortcuts
that you need to be efficient.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. The Power of EffectsA showcase of effects| 00:00 | In this chapter, we're going to
look at After Effects' effects.
| | 00:04 | It's going to be a very whirlwind super
-quick tour because there are hundreds
| | 00:08 | here, and we simply don't have the time
in this training series to cover them,
| | 00:10 | but effects are just so fun.
| | 00:12 | They do so many different things.
| | 00:15 | Here we have just a little
sample of what effects can do.
| | 00:19 | All of these patterns were created
from scratch by effects in After Effects.
| | 00:24 | And if I hit the Spacebar key, you'll
see that the fire, the lightning bolts,
| | 00:28 | the bubbles, the flag and the waving
of the flag and these cool little light
| | 00:32 | thingies in this little pattern, they're
all moving. They're animatable and all this
| | 00:37 | stuff happens from scratch in After Effects.
| | 00:39 | So, we're going to be looking at a few of these.
| | 00:42 | A good idea, when you're new to After
Effects, is to go to the Effects & Presets
| | 00:45 | panel and kind of scroll down and just
look at these different categories of
| | 00:50 | effects in the Effects & Presets
panel, just to get a feel for what After
| | 00:54 | Effects is capable of with effects.
| | 00:56 | For example, if you wanted to distort
an object, there is Distort effects and a
| | 01:00 | whole lot of them there.
| | 01:01 | And if you wanted to color correct something,
there's Color Correction. There's Blurs.
| | 01:05 | There's Audio effect.
| | 01:06 | There's stuff for
bringing things into Perspective.
| | 01:09 | There's stuff for playing
around with time and so forth.
| | 01:14 | Now one of the things that I come to
effects for most often is for Color Correction.
| | 01:19 | I love the tools that After
Effects has for Color Correction.
| | 01:22 | You'll find them in Photoshop as well.
| | 01:24 | And here's, for example, this Hansel &
Petal ad that we looked at earlier in
| | 01:28 | this training series, and
this was the final result.
| | 01:31 | The original result actually looked like this.
| | 01:34 | So, you could see that I increased the contrast.
| | 01:36 | I brought out some of the goldenness in her
hair here, give it kind of an ethereal look.
| | 01:42 | I have definitely made it more red,
and you could see the contrast that
| | 01:46 | was brought out here.
| | 01:47 | It's also more red,
| | 01:49 | kind of making it more warm and homey
and that type of thing is what I did with
| | 01:54 | that. But again, I used effects for that,
and we're going to be talking a lot
| | 01:57 | about Color Correction with effects in
After Effects, but we're going to save
| | 02:00 | that for a different chapter.
| | 02:02 | Now so far in this training series,
you've been looking at motion graphics, which
| | 02:05 | is a huge component of After Effects,
but many of you out there that use After
| | 02:09 | Effects probably won't be doing motion graphics.
| | 02:12 | That's not what everybody does.
| | 02:13 | The audience for After Effects is just huge.
| | 02:16 | You might be a compositor.
| | 02:17 | You might be a visual effects person.
| | 02:19 | You might do any one of a
number of things with After Effects.
| | 02:23 | So, effects, no matter what arena you are in,
whether it's motion graphics, compositing
| | 02:27 | visual effects, titling, something
else, you will probably find yourself
| | 02:31 | having a use for effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a layer for effects| 00:00 | So, we want to apply some effects;
| | 00:03 | however, we cannot do that in this project,
because we have nothing to apply the effect to.
| | 00:09 | So, I'm starting here in a blank,
fresh project. Go ahead and make a new
| | 00:12 | composition by clicking this icon here.
| | 00:15 | When this comes up, we'll go ahead and change
the preset. Just go ahead and go to NTSC DV.
| | 00:21 | This is Standard Definition, which is
quickly going out of style, but for right
| | 00:25 | now, I'm just going to go ahead and click OK.
| | 00:28 | That creates a composition for us.
| | 00:30 | But notice there are no layers in our
composition, and you need a layer to apply effects to.
| | 00:37 | Oftentimes, you don't want to apply the
effect directly to an important layer.
| | 00:42 | Let's say you have some video or something.
| | 00:44 | If you put the effect on that layer,
as we'll see, then it will completely
| | 00:48 | replace the contents of that layer.
| | 00:50 | So, what we need to do is come down
here to a blank area of the Timeline panel
| | 00:54 | and right-click and go to New.
| | 00:56 | Now, we're going to create
a different type of layer.
| | 00:59 | From this New flyout menu, below
this divider line anyways, we can create
| | 01:04 | different types of layers.
| | 01:06 | We can create a Shape layer,
Camera, a Light, a Solid.
| | 01:09 | We're going to talk about all of these
as we go through this training series,
| | 01:12 | but for now, I'm going to click Solid.
| | 01:14 | That will create a new Solid layer.
| | 01:17 | Now a Solid is simply an area of pixels.
| | 01:21 | That's all it is, basically, a
dummy layer or an area of color.
| | 01:25 | So, I can click this little swatch here,
and I could click in the color picker.
| | 01:29 | I could drag up and down here to change
the hue, and then as we go to the right,
| | 01:34 | we increase saturation. We go the left.
| | 01:36 | We decrease saturation.
| | 01:38 | As we go up, we increase brightness;
| | 01:40 | as we go down, we
decrease brightness. Watch this.
| | 01:44 | This is a cool trick.
| | 01:45 | As I move the colors around, you could
see, dynamically, that the name of the
| | 01:48 | Solid - if you don't choose to name it
- it's automatically going to name it
| | 01:52 | based on the color that you choose.
| | 01:54 | So, as you move these color swatches
around, it's pretty awesome like a box of
| | 01:58 | crayons or something.
| | 01:59 | It gets really specific about the colors
that you're choosing, which is pretty fun.
| | 02:03 | So, I'm going to go ahead and pick a
color. It doesn't matter. Click OK. Click OK.
| | 02:07 | Now we have a solid layer.
| | 02:09 | You'll notice, as I open this up, it
has its own set of Transform properties,
| | 02:13 | and just like with the regular
layer, we have a bounding box.
| | 02:15 | These little dots are kind of like
indicating the outside boundaries of the layer.
| | 02:19 | We could click on this to rescale the
layer, just like with a regular layer.
| | 02:24 | So, we can make this smaller if we wanted to.
| | 02:26 | We could make it spin around.
| | 02:27 | We could use these for geometric
shapes, not just for effects but anything.
| | 02:31 | I find that I use solids all the time
in my work, and you probably will as well
| | 02:35 | no matter what you're doing.
| | 02:37 | Alternatively, you can go to the Layer
menu at the top of the screen and go to
| | 02:40 | Layer > New, whatever,
whatever, choose the Solid.
| | 02:44 | The keyboard shortcut, by the way, is
Ctrl+Y, Command+Y. I don't know if you'll
| | 02:48 | be using Solids as much as I do, but
that's one of those keyboards shortcuts I
| | 02:50 | have memorized, because I use it so frequently.
| | 02:53 | So, moving along now.
| | 02:54 | Now that we have a Solid, a layer to
apply effects to, it's time to apply
| | 02:59 | effects, which we'll look at in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying effects| 00:00 | We're going to be continuing where we
left off here in the last movie with the
| | 00:03 | Solid and actually kind of
screw with the solid a little bit.
| | 00:05 | So, let's go ahead and open up the
layer and across from Transform, you'll
| | 00:09 | see this Reset button,
| | 00:11 | if you click that, it'll reset all
of these values to their defaults.
| | 00:15 | If you right-click on any property,
anywhere, even the Effect Controls panel
| | 00:19 | that we'll look at in just a moment.
| | 00:21 | If you click Reset, it'll reset that value.
| | 00:23 | So, go ahead for Transform, click Reset
to reset everything back to the way it was.
| | 00:28 | Now we're going to apply an effect.
| | 00:30 | Go to the Effects & Presets panel.
| | 00:33 | If it's not showing, you can go to the
Window menu and choose Effects & Presets.
| | 00:37 | Open up the Generate category of Effects.
| | 00:40 | At the top here, you'll
see an effect called Beam.
| | 00:43 | This is great for laser blasts and
light sabers and that type of thing.
| | 00:46 | We're going to be using it to
demo what it is to apply an effect.
| | 00:50 | Now there are a few ways to do this,
kind of like importing a layer to your
| | 00:53 | composition from the Project panel.
| | 00:55 | I can click and drag on this effect
to a layer in the Composition panel.
| | 01:01 | So, visually, I can do this.
| | 01:03 | If you have a simple project like this,
where's just one layer, then that's a
| | 01:06 | great way to do it, and it's probably
the fastest, because it's just right here.
| | 01:10 | But if you have a project with many
layers, sometimes that's a dangerous thing
| | 01:15 | because you might be looking at a
different layer and want to apply it to the
| | 01:19 | layer that you think you are, but you
applied to the wrong layer on accident,
| | 01:22 | and that's not a good thing.
| | 01:24 | You could also drag and drop it to
the Composition panel and when the layer
| | 01:29 | highlights, that's how you know that
you are on the correct layer, and it will
| | 01:33 | apply to that particular layer.
| | 01:35 | There's another way.
| | 01:36 | This is how I like to apply effects.
| | 01:38 | I select the layer that I want to
apply the effect to, before going to the
| | 01:42 | Effects & Presets panel.
| | 01:43 | Then once I find the effect like Beam, I
just double-click it, and it applies to
| | 01:47 | the currently selected layer.
| | 01:49 | Now in full disclosure, I should
point out that there is an Effect menu at
| | 01:52 | the top of the screen, and you could access
these same effects over here through this menu.
| | 01:57 | The problem with this is that you have to
know which category every effect falls under.
| | 02:03 | As you can see here, some of these
categories have many, many, many effects, so
| | 02:07 | you have to know your categories and
know your effects. But in the Effects &
| | 02:12 | Presets panel, there's the Search field.
| | 02:14 | So, I could just type in Beam.
| | 02:15 | If I didn't know what it was, I could
just type in bea, and by the time I get to
| | 02:19 | bea, I really don't have to type the m,
and it already comes up here as Beam.
| | 02:23 | That's the only effect with B, E and A in a row.
| | 02:25 | Make sure if you want to look for other
effects after that, that you click this
| | 02:28 | X to close out that search.
| | 02:30 | Now, you'll notice here in the
Composition panel that we have our Beam. The Blue
| | 02:35 | Solid is completely gone.
| | 02:37 | This is what I was talking about in the
last movie is that sometimes, like with
| | 02:40 | the Beam effect, it completely
replaces the layer the effect is applied to.
| | 02:45 | So, now we just have a Beam, no
hint of a Blue Solid whatsoever.
| | 02:49 | Now, there are some common parameters
here in Beam that we're going to see a lot
| | 02:54 | through many effects that
I want to explain to you.
| | 02:56 | Some effects have what are
called Effect Control points.
| | 02:59 | We're seeing these here at the
circles with the pluses inside of them.
| | 03:02 | These mean that you can click and
drag and manually move these wherever you
| | 03:07 | would like them to be.
| | 03:08 | So, if I want the beam to be coming
from a turret down here - shooting up into
| | 03:13 | outer space out here - I
can just click and drag that.
| | 03:16 | Now you could see as I move this
around that this Ending Point value is
| | 03:21 | changing accordingly.
| | 03:23 | So, we can move Effect
Control points in three ways:
| | 03:26 | one, we could just manually click and
drag on it to where we wanted to be.
| | 03:30 | Two, we could also use position.
| | 03:32 | There's an X axis and a Y
axis that we can adjust.
| | 03:36 | And third, there's this little target here.
| | 03:39 | This is the Effect Control point
cross hairs. We can click that.
| | 03:41 | Then we get these cross hairs, and we
could manually click wherever we wanted to be.
| | 03:46 | Now oftentimes, you'll have color swatches,
such as Inside Color and Outside Color.
| | 03:50 | We can click on the color itself to
get a dialog box, like we saw before, we
| | 03:54 | can tweak the colors.
| | 03:57 | We also have an eyedropper that we
can click, and we can use this to sample
| | 04:00 | colors from our project.
| | 04:02 | As a matter of fact, we even sample
colors from the After Effects interface, so
| | 04:05 | that's what we wanted to do.
| | 04:06 | It's just a really great eyedropper,
like if we had another scene going on -
| | 04:09 | maybe a cool background - and we
wanted to change this color to match the
| | 04:12 | background, we can use the eyedropper there.
| | 04:14 | Now when I first apply this effect, it
showed up automatically in the Effect
| | 04:18 | Controls panel. But while you're
working in After Effects, sometimes that
| | 04:21 | panel might disappear.
| | 04:22 | I might go back to the Project panel
and be working, and I might say, "Hey!
| | 04:26 | Where are my Beam Effect Controls?"
| | 04:28 | Well, the Beam Effect Controls
are in Effect Controls panel.
| | 04:32 | The keyboard shortcut for this
panel is F3 on your keyboard.
| | 04:36 | You could also go to the Window menu
as well and choose Effect Controls, but
| | 04:39 | it's down here below this line, not up
here with the Effects & Preset panel.
| | 04:43 | So, again, don't be confused.
| | 04:45 | We apply effects in the
Effects & Presents panel.
| | 04:48 | We adjust them once they've been
applied from the Effect Controls panel, usually
| | 04:52 | on the left-hand side.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating effect properties| 00:00 | Earlier in this training series, I
mentioned how you can animate every property
| | 00:04 | in After Effects the same way you
animate position, scale, opacity and all that
| | 00:07 | stuff. And I just wanted to show you
here how to animate effects, very similar
| | 00:12 | to what we've already seen.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to hold the Spacebar down to
center this California text in our screen
| | 00:18 | so this is kind of the focus here. And
I'm going to select the Banner Behind
| | 00:21 | California layer, and I'm going to go
to the Effect Controls panel so that we
| | 00:26 | can see stuff here that we have applied.
| | 00:30 | We've applied Hue/Saturation
effect here and also a Ramp effect.
| | 00:34 | Now at first this may look very chaotic
to you, but after a while, you'll start
| | 00:37 | to recognize that pretty quickly.
| | 00:39 | We can see on the far left
we have these little arrows.
| | 00:42 | So, I'm going to click this
to collapse those properties.
| | 00:45 | We're not changing anything here.
| | 00:47 | We're just basically making it
a little bit more organized.
| | 00:49 | So, as you can see here, we have two
different effects applied to this layer.
| | 00:53 | And you could apply as many effects on
top of one another to a given layer as
| | 00:58 | your RAM can handle.
| | 00:59 | You want to open up the Ramp effect
again by clicking the little triangle to the
| | 01:03 | left of its name to open up its
properties there. And we're going to be
| | 01:07 | adjusting and actually animating a
property of this Ramp effect. But before we
| | 01:12 | do that, I want to show you this real quick.
| | 01:14 | We've talked about how the Eye
icon is kind of like the visibility
| | 01:18 | controller for a layer.
| | 01:20 | Well the fx icon here is the
visibility controller for effects.
| | 01:26 | So, if I click this, I
will turn off the Ramp effect.
| | 01:29 | So, this is what the Ramp is doing.
| | 01:30 | Ramp is basically a very simple gradient.
| | 01:33 | So, this is off, and this is the effect on.
| | 01:36 | Likewise, you can see the effect of
Hue/Saturation by clicking the fx icon.
| | 01:40 | There is the before and the after
And actually, with the Ramp effect, the
| | 01:44 | Hue/Saturation effect is pretty much worthless.
| | 01:47 | If you ever want to turn off the
visibility of all effects at once, applied to
| | 01:52 | the layer, then you can come
down here at the Timeline panel.
| | 01:54 | And if you're looking at the Switches
view, you can actually click on Toggle
| | 01:57 | Switches/ modes to go back and forth.
| | 01:58 | And if you're looking at the
Switches view where you see all these little
| | 02:02 | doohickeys here, then you could click
this icon here, the fx icon in the layer in
| | 02:06 | the Timeline panel, and that
will turn off all effects at once.
| | 02:10 | This is great to see like a before and
after like with Color Correction, for
| | 02:13 | example, or if you're wanting to
work in one layer has tons of really
| | 02:17 | processor-intensive effects, you can
turn them all off while you're working
| | 02:21 | just by clicking that icon.
| | 02:23 | Now we've seen what this
effect looks like without Ramp.
| | 02:26 | It looks like this.
| | 02:27 | And with Ramp, it looks like this.
| | 02:29 | So, there's this value here
called Blend With Original.
| | 02:32 | If it's 0% then it's
completely the Ramp that we're seeing.
| | 02:37 | As we increase this value, we are
basically fading out the Ramp effect.
| | 02:45 | So, what I want to do is start out
with this dull and bland and at 100.0%.
| | 02:50 | And then what we're going to do is we're
going to Blend With Original reduce this
| | 02:53 | value so the Ramp effect kind of fades in,
| | 02:56 | so it looks like there's a light coming
from the bottom of his California banner.
| | 03:00 | So, as before, we want to end at 0,
so I think this might be a good spot
| | 03:05 | right there to end it.
| | 03:07 | So, I'll go ahead and at about 2
seconds 17 frames, somewhere around there, I am
| | 03:12 | going to go ahead and click the
Stopwatch for Blend With original it 0%.
| | 03:17 | So, again, the three components to
animation: we click the Stopwatch, move in
| | 03:21 | time, then change the value.
| | 03:23 | So, we've already clicked the Stopwatch.
| | 03:25 | Now I am going to move earlier in
time, and maybe there. And then we'll
| | 03:30 | animate this up to 100%.
| | 03:33 | So, again, if I were to click this
layer and press U, so we can see all
| | 03:37 | keyframes, we have the value at 100%,
which means the Ramp is completely off,
| | 03:41 | and then it kind of fades in here.
| | 03:45 | So, I'm going to now look at this and
press the Spacebar to get a preview, and
| | 03:51 | now that that's loaded into RAM, it looks great.
| | 03:53 | Let's watch it again.
| | 03:54 | So, let's go right there, beautiful.
| | 03:58 | It adds a nice little effect.
| | 03:59 | It just kind of fades in a little
from the bottom there. That's beautiful.
| | 04:04 | So, the point is, is that all of these
effects properties, every time you see a
| | 04:08 | Stopwatch, that is After Effects' way
of telling you, "Hey you could animate me.
| | 04:12 | I change over time, if that's what you want."
| | 04:15 | Now the purpose of this chapter to is to
show you kind of like a big showcase of
| | 04:19 | effects, that's not to go super in details.
| | 04:21 | You might not be animating them that
much. But still keep that in mind that every
| | 04:25 | time you see a Stopwatch
that property is animate-able.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Glow| 00:00 | No matter what your role is in the
world of After Effects, you'll probably find
| | 00:03 | yourself using glow quite often.
| | 00:06 | Glow does a lot of stuff.
| | 00:07 | If you're used to something like
Photoshop where glow creates an outer glow
| | 00:12 | around an object, it's kind
of like a very 1990s look,
| | 00:15 | still used, with tact, at certain
places or whatever, but this glow effect in
| | 00:19 | After Effects does much more than this.
| | 00:21 | We are going to look at a
couple of different examples here.
| | 00:23 | Our first example is this
cool footage. I love this shot.
| | 00:27 | I love the colors.
| | 00:28 | I love this biker guy. He's like
silhouetted, just beautiful footage.
| | 00:32 | But what we want to do is
exaggerate the beauty that's already here.
| | 00:37 | So, we're going to do that with the Glow effect.
| | 00:38 | Go to Effects and Presets, do a search for
Glow, and you might have some animation
| | 00:43 | presets that pop-up.
| | 00:44 | But we're looking for the Glow
that's in the Stylize category.
| | 00:48 | So, I'm just going to grab Glow
and drag and drop it onto my footage.
| | 00:52 | Now glow is one of those
effects that needs tweaking.
| | 00:56 | So, I want to give you, basically some
insight into the top three parameters here,
| | 01:00 | the ones at the top. And these are the ones
that you'll use most with the Glow effect.
| | 01:05 | The first one is Glow Threshold.
| | 01:07 | As we take this down, we are increasing
the amount of brightness that a picture
| | 01:13 | will need to have to have glow applied to it.
| | 01:16 | So, basically the higher the
number, the less stuff gets glowed.
| | 01:20 | If you had like a sparkle, like from
diamonds, or in this case, maybe, like the
| | 01:24 | sparkle of the top of the water.
| | 01:26 | In those cases, if you just want to
make those things come out a little bit
| | 01:29 | more, you might want to set the
Glow Threshold up pretty high.
| | 01:32 | If you wanted to add, like a diffused
glow, like a soft glow to everything in
| | 01:36 | your in image then you'd want
to take this down pretty low.
| | 01:40 | Now, before you start thinking that you will
never use this because it looks so terrible,
| | 01:44 | I'll just go ahead and click
in this field and type in 70.
| | 01:46 | That's the value we're going to use there.
| | 01:48 | I realize this is still far too overdone.
| | 01:51 | It looks terrible, but what we're going
to do is we are going to take the Glow
| | 01:53 | Radius up, and we are
going to increase that value.
| | 01:57 | The Glow Radius is the amount
of blur applied to the glow.
| | 02:02 | So, if we take this down to 0,
| | 02:03 | you see that we basically have added
glow to all these individual pixels, and
| | 02:08 | they've kind of basically lit up.
| | 02:09 | But it definitely looks better if we
add a little bit of Glow Radius, and you
| | 02:14 | could that that blur is being applied to the
glow, and the glow is just kind of softening out.
| | 02:19 | In our case, we're going to click in Glow
Radius and take this down to a value of 30.
| | 02:23 | Now, I actually like the way this
looked with a really high Glow value.
| | 02:26 | That looked pretty sweet.
| | 02:27 | So, if this the way you wanted to have
things, that's totally cool and even then
| | 02:31 | you can see the before, and the after -
definitely much more full of life after.
| | 02:37 | For me, this is still little heavy-
handed, a little bit too intense,
| | 02:40 | although I do like the way this guy
seems to have a halo of glow around him,
| | 02:44 | which is a very kind of realistic-
looking effect. But still, I'm going to
| | 02:48 | Glow Radius down to 30.
| | 02:49 | Next, we have the Glow Intensity.
| | 02:52 | Now this really is the key. And it seems
like it's set to a very low value of 1,
| | 02:58 | but for this parameter 1 is actually a lot.
| | 03:02 | So, if we took this down to like 0.3 - just
type in 0.3 on your keyboard and hit Enter -
| | 03:08 | you could see that this
takes it down considerably.
| | 03:10 | So, if you were to click and scrub on
this, even a Glow Intensity value of a 10th
| | 03:14 | of 1 value is still a lot.
| | 03:18 | So, again, take is down to 0.3 and
you'll see here that the result is much more
| | 03:23 | of a nice, subtle glow. A subtle
effect is what we're looking for.
| | 03:27 | And it almost seems like we didn't
even do anything to it, which is actually
| | 03:30 | usually when are processing an
image, and you want to look realistic.
| | 03:33 | That's what you're going for.
| | 03:34 | You want to make it look like you're
an invisible hand magically beautifying
| | 03:39 | your images and that no
one can tell what you did.
| | 03:43 | So, you click the fx icon. Here is
the before and after - what a difference.
| | 03:48 | So, this is still very beautiful, but
you add some glow, and it just adds a
| | 03:53 | great additional beauty to what you already had.
| | 03:56 | Now this is great, for
example, for visual effects.
| | 03:58 | If you have a volcano or a fire or
lightning or something like that, glow can
| | 04:03 | really bring out the vibrance,
the intensity of those colors.
| | 04:08 | If you had a woman with some soft
focus and some beautiful highlights in her
| | 04:11 | hair, glow can exaggerate that as well.
| | 04:14 | So, the possibilities are endless
with this effect if we switch over to the
| | 04:17 | More Glow composition.
| | 04:19 | Another example of what you can do
with Glow is to colorize motion graphics.
| | 04:24 | So, this is kind of like
this really intense look here.
| | 04:27 | But if I turn off the visibility of
this Adjustment layer, the top layer here,
| | 04:30 | which I'll explain what these are
later in this training series, but if you
| | 04:33 | click that Eye icon, this is what the
layers are initially- just some lines with
| | 04:39 | some blur. And with one copy of the Glow effect,
| | 04:44 | we bring this much life to it.
| | 04:46 | So, if we open up the Glow Effect, you
could see that we have this really cool
| | 04:51 | parameter here, Glow Colors.
| | 04:53 | If you select Original Colors, which is
basically the default setting, then it
| | 04:58 | will take the colors, like we did
with the Glow Start comp here,
| | 05:02 | it took the original colors, and it
added the glow based on whatever colors
| | 05:06 | were originally there.
| | 05:07 | In the case of the More Glow
composition, our Original Colors were just
| | 05:10 | black-and-white, so
Original wouldn't have worked.
| | 05:13 | So, we changed Glow Colors to A & B
Colors, and then we changed Color A to
| | 05:18 | orange and Color B to red, and that
creates this cool kind of fiery glow.
| | 05:23 | So, in this case, we use the Glow Effect
not only to add glow but also to add color.
| | 05:29 | Glow is perhaps one of the most
used effects in After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating patterns and textures| 00:00 | Another thing you'll probably find
yourself doing very often in After Effects is
| | 00:03 | creating patterns and textures.
| | 00:06 | There's actually a really cool tool for this.
| | 00:07 | I'm going to right-click in this
Start composition and create a New > Solid
| | 00:11 | layer. And we're going to be applying an
effect called Fractal Noise. And Fractal
| | 00:16 | Noise completely replaces
whatever is applied to it.
| | 00:19 | So, go ahead and click Make Comp Size,
and it doesn't matter what the color is
| | 00:24 | because it's going to be completely
gone once Fractal Noise is applied.
| | 00:27 | So, go ahead and click OK.
| | 00:28 | Then let's go over to the Effects &
Presets panel over here on the right, and
| | 00:32 | we'll do a search for Fractal Noise.
| | 00:34 | Now if I do a search for Fractal, there
is actually two different effects with
| | 00:38 | the word Fractal in their title:
| | 00:40 | Fractal and Fractal Noise.
| | 00:42 | Fractal is not all that awesome.
| | 00:45 | Fractal Noise is
extremely powerful and versatile.
| | 00:47 | So, that's the one we want. Go
ahead and apply that to the layer.
| | 00:51 | Now a lot of new users to After Effects
kind of frown on Fractal Noise at first
| | 00:57 | glance because it looks so much like
Photoshop Clouds, which is a really
| | 01:01 | pathetic filter in
Photoshop. But this does so much.
| | 01:05 | One of the things you need to keep in
mind, as we are playing around these
| | 01:08 | patterns, is that Fractal Noise
is a Grayscale pattern generator.
| | 01:13 | So, everything is in black and white.
| | 01:15 | So, you need to kind of have this eye
where you're kind of like coloring things
| | 01:20 | in your brain before you actually do
it to really see what its is capable of.
| | 01:24 | Now before we play around with this
too much I want to show you what is
| | 01:28 | possible with Fractal Noise.
| | 01:30 | With Fractal Noise, we can make fire,
like these cool explosions. As we scrub in
| | 01:35 | time here, we can see that these are blowing up.
| | 01:36 | That's kind of fun.
| | 01:38 | And I also made this water with
Fractal Noise, and that's going to take a
| | 01:43 | little while to render. There we go.
| | 01:45 | There's kind of like a rough quality
preview of what that looks like there, nice
| | 01:50 | little glassy water.
| | 01:52 | And then we have this
kind of interesting pattern.
| | 01:55 | Here is another a random grungy pattern that
could be used as the background for something.
| | 02:00 | And there's also this cityscape thing,
where it looks like you're kind of
| | 02:04 | zooming into a city and flying over
the city with some clouds and stuff.
| | 02:07 | So, that's pretty fun. And there's
this really popular animated bars look.
| | 02:13 | So, all of these things were done with
Fractal Noise and Fractal Noise alone,
| | 02:17 | just Fractal Noise, and that's it.
| | 02:20 | So, that's how powerful
and versatile this affect is.
| | 02:23 | So, let's go and talk
about this effect a little bit.
| | 02:26 | I'll tell you at the end this
chapter how you can get more information
| | 02:29 | on Fractal Noise, because we won't have time
to cover every single one of the settings.
| | 02:33 | Basically, Fractal Noise
creates layers of noise.
| | 02:37 | So, that's what giving us this look and
allows us to create these rich complex looks.
| | 02:43 | We change the Fractal type from Basic
to Turbulent Smooth, Turbulent Basic.
| | 02:48 | Let's say Dynamic, and Max, and you
could see how much this changes the way
| | 02:54 | that this effect looks.
| | 02:55 | So, on your own, you might want to
experiment with the different types of Fractals.
| | 02:59 | But I'm just going to choose
Dynamic Twist for our example here.
| | 03:02 | It kind of looks like some
Van Gogh painting or something.
| | 03:06 | I'm going to leave the Noise type to
Soft Linear, but you could also take this
| | 03:10 | to Linear, which makes it a little bit
more blocky, and then Block, which makes
| | 03:15 | it all the way blocky.
| | 03:16 | Or, you could take it up to Spline,
which takes longer to render but creates
| | 03:20 | much smoother textures.
| | 03:23 | For now, I'm going to leave it on the
default of Soft Linear, and I want to
| | 03:27 | increase the contrast.
| | 03:29 | So, if we drag this up, we
can increase the Contrast.
| | 03:34 | If we take this down, we are going
to decrease the Contrast, like so.
| | 03:39 | Actually, I want this up fairly high,
and this is a little bit too much here.
| | 03:43 | A value of 335 is where I've had it.
| | 03:46 | That's kind of an arbitrary value, but
we're seeing that the white highlights are
| | 03:50 | blown out so it's a little bit to bright here.
| | 03:54 | But this is okay because you can
Brightness down. And what that does is that it
| | 03:58 | takes the bright levels down. It
also adds more black to our pattern.
| | 04:03 | So, we're kind of getting this
fiery-looking texture here, like these
| | 04:07 | little sprinkles of fire. Open up Transform.
| | 04:11 | You'll see that this effect has
its own set of Transform properties.
| | 04:14 | So, we have Rotation and Scale and stuff
like that for our regular layer, but this
| | 04:20 | effect has its own Rotation and its own Scale.
| | 04:23 | Now this effect is based on patterns that
After Effects is generating from scratch.
| | 04:28 | So, you could go into Scale and scale
this up really, really high, and you're
| | 04:33 | not going to lose any quality.
| | 04:35 | It looks kind of blurry, but this is
the same level of blur that it was when it
| | 04:39 | was actually 100%, so
you're not losing any quality.
| | 04:43 | What I'm going to do here actually is
uncheck Uniform Scaling, which allows us
| | 04:47 | to scale Width and Height independently.
| | 04:50 | So, I might reduce the Width a little bit.
| | 04:54 | I might increase the Scale Height value
a lot to stretch out our texture, which
| | 04:59 | gives us this kind of cool, fiery look.
| | 05:02 | The Complexity value here controls the
number of layers that are being used to
| | 05:08 | make up this pattern of Noise.
| | 05:09 | So, right now, we have six layers.
| | 05:11 | If we took this down to one, it would look
very simplistic, just one layer of Noise.
| | 05:16 | Take this up to two, and you could
see we have multiple layers here.
| | 05:20 | And as we increase this value, our pattern
is getting more and more and more complex.
| | 05:25 | So, now you see we have a
lot more detail going on here.
| | 05:29 | You noticed a minute ago when we
scaled this up that it was a little blurry.
| | 05:33 | Adding Complexity is one way to increase the
amount of texture and contrast in the pattern.
| | 05:39 | I am going to take this back to a
value of, actually 5 I think will work just
| | 05:43 | fine for us right now.
| | 05:44 | And you'll notice that as you take this
value down more, there is less layer so
| | 05:49 | things render faster, but things do
start looking blurry pretty quick, depending
| | 05:54 | on the settings that you have for
Fractal type and other settings up here.
| | 05:58 | Now Evolution is one of the most
important properties in this whole effect.
| | 06:02 | It's the thing the thing
that brings this to life.
| | 06:05 | So, as we click and drag on this right
value here, this is just like rotation so
| | 06:08 | a number of complete revolutions
and then also additional degrees.
| | 06:12 | If you click and drag on this, we could see
that this effect is really coming to life.
| | 06:17 | Now as part of the nature of the beast
with this effect, because it's using your
| | 06:23 | hardware to accelerate so it goes faster,
| | 06:26 | when you click and drag on it to
mess with it, you'll often get these weird
| | 06:30 | artifacts that you're
seeing that are not correct.
| | 06:33 | That's just to make it so that
it renders faster in the long run.
| | 06:37 | So, that is normal.
| | 06:38 | My screen is not freaking out.
| | 06:40 | Your screen is not freaking out.
| | 06:41 | All is right with the world. But this
is the property that you want to animate
| | 06:44 | to bring this thing to life.
| | 06:46 | Now obviously, these patterns and
textures are pretty sweet, but in the next
| | 06:50 | movie, we're going to see how Fractal
Noise can be combined with other effects
| | 06:54 | to produce more than just backgrounds.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a fireball| 00:00 | In this video, we're going to look at
how to create a fireball coming out of the
| | 00:04 | mouth of this dragon here.
| | 00:08 | This effect is going to be created
with a combination of two effects.
| | 00:12 | One is Fractal Noise, which will
create the inside texture of the fireball.
| | 00:18 | The other one is the Roughen Edges effect,
which will give the actual edge texture
| | 00:24 | that we need, and both of these
together will create this cool fireball.
| | 00:28 | So, let's go over to Dragon fire START.
| | 00:31 | And I've gone ahead and created a layer for you.
| | 00:33 | This is basically just like a blob layer.
| | 00:35 | You can see I've just made a blob that
animates like in the shape of our fire here.
| | 00:40 | So, I'm going to go out to my Current
Time Indicator to about one second and 11
| | 00:44 | frames in, so I get a good view of what
the fireball is going to look like here.
| | 00:49 | Go ahead and apply the Fractal Noise effect.
| | 00:51 | Actually, apply it to the Fire layer,
and the settings here are pretty much good.
| | 00:59 | What I want to do is I want to take
Contrast up a little bit more so we can
| | 01:04 | kind of see the texture. And I want to
open up Transform and maybe take down
| | 01:10 | the Scale a little bit, so that it's little
bit more concentrated what's happening here.
| | 01:15 | In other words, if we were have zoomed
in too close, it's going to get a little
| | 01:19 | bit soft and fuzzy, and that's
just not very fireball-esque.
| | 01:23 | So, as we zoom out by reducing the
Scale, then what we're doing making
| | 01:29 | everything tinier and finer.
| | 01:31 | So, now as we scrub this, we can see
that we have Fractal Noise. That still
| | 01:36 | looks really terrible.
| | 01:37 | So, what are missing are these edges here.
| | 01:40 | Now we could also animate the Evolution
value if we wanted to so that the fire
| | 01:44 | in the fireball looks better, and
that's actually what I did in the previous
| | 01:48 | example that I showed you. But we're
not going to take the time to do that now.
| | 01:51 | But if you wanted to animate
Evolution, you could do that.
| | 01:54 | Let's go ahead and apply the
Roughen Edges effect to this layer.
| | 01:59 | Roughen Edges shares a lot in
common with Fractal Noise, actually.
| | 02:04 | So, in this tutorial,
there's a method to the madness.
| | 02:07 | You'll notice that there is an
Evolution property for example.
| | 02:10 | But first of all, before we really get
into this, let's change the Edge Type
| | 02:14 | from Roughen to Roughen Color.
| | 02:16 | That basically roughens up the edges a
little bit, but put some of this Edge
| | 02:21 | Color around the edge.
| | 02:24 | Let's go ahead and click on the color
swatch for the Edge Color and change
| | 02:28 | this to a full-on red.
| | 02:30 | To do this, I'm just going to take this -
because the default is like this orange color -
| | 02:33 | I am just going to take
the color picker in the hue bar,
| | 02:35 | take this down to red.
| | 02:37 | The color picker is really cool,
because it tells you on the bottom what your
| | 02:40 | previous color was, and it tells you
on the top what your current color is.
| | 02:44 | So, you kind of compare and contrast
the color that had coming into the color
| | 02:48 | picker versus the color
that you are now choosing.
| | 02:51 | I am going to go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:53 | Now by default, the Roughen Edges effect
creates a very thin, rough edge, which a
| | 02:58 | lot of times is exactly
what you are looking for.
| | 03:00 | In this case, we want a very defined, rough edge.
| | 03:02 | We want to increase the Border.
| | 03:04 | So, as you increase that, you could
see the edge of the Border kind of
| | 03:08 | encroaching upon the rest of the layer.
| | 03:11 | So, I want to take this to a value of
around 50 or so - looking pretty awesome.
| | 03:17 | Let's go ahead and take Edge Sharpness to .5.
| | 03:21 | Leave Fractal Influence at 1, and
we're going to increase the Scale value to
| | 03:27 | about 120. And as we saw in the last
video, Complexity refers to the layers of
| | 03:34 | noise making up these roughened edges.
| | 03:37 | Just like in Fractal Noise, if we take
this down lower, it's going to have a
| | 03:41 | more soft look. And right now
it's looking a little soft.
| | 03:43 | We want it to be a little bit
tighter, a little bit more sharp.
| | 03:46 | So, we're going to increase
this Complexity value to 3.
| | 03:49 | Now those edges become a little bit more sharp.
| | 03:51 | Now again, there is an Evolution value.
| | 03:53 | And we could see that here as we
increase this. That just looks awesome.
| | 03:59 | That just kind of brings
this whole thing to life.
| | 04:01 | Now another way to bring this to life
is with the Offset Turbulence parameter.
| | 04:05 | Offset Turbulence we saw in Fractal Noise.
| | 04:07 | We didn't really talk about it too much.
| | 04:09 | Basically, what that does is allows you
to take the layers of noise and move them.
| | 04:14 | It's almost like the
Position parameter for the noise.
| | 04:18 | So, if I grab the X axis, the left value
here and click and drag this to the left,
| | 04:23 | we could see the noise on the
edges moving to the left.
| | 04:27 | If we grabbed the Y value and clicked
and dragged it to the left, we could
| | 04:31 | see the fire rising.
| | 04:33 | So, if we had like a bonfire effect,
you could see that the edges would
| | 04:37 | be perfect for that.
| | 04:39 | Now one of things that's kind of
distracting is that we have black-and-white
| | 04:43 | fire with a red edge.
| | 04:44 | It's looking really cheesy.
| | 04:45 | It's almost like hard to work in that.
| | 04:47 | Even knowing that we are going to
colorize it, it's still just distracting to work.
| | 04:51 | So, I'm going to go ahead and click
this X to close out of that search, and I'm
| | 04:55 | going to type in Colora short for
Colorama, and we're going to apply this effect
| | 05:02 | to our other effects.
| | 05:05 | So, now we have a series of three
effects going on at the same time.
| | 05:09 | We'll leave Colorama here for now.
| | 05:11 | I want to open up the Output Cycle
area in the Colorama effects, so we get this
| | 05:16 | little color wheel here.
| | 05:18 | Then we have all these series of
Presets. Colorama is basically an effect
| | 05:23 | to colorize layers.
| | 05:25 | It is a very complex, powerful effect.
| | 05:28 | So, we're not going to really get in
detail in it at all here, but it does have
| | 05:32 | this Use Preset palette function. And all
of these presets are a series of preset
| | 05:37 | colors we can use to colorize layers.
| | 05:39 | So, I'm going to choose Fire from this dropdown.
| | 05:42 | Again, in the Colorama effect, open
up Output Cycle and in the Use Preset
| | 05:46 | palette dropdown, choose Fire.
| | 05:49 | And now things are looking much more fiery.
| | 05:52 | Now what I'm going to do actually, and
this is something we haven't talked about
| | 05:55 | yet, but the order in which you apply
effects matters, or the order in which
| | 06:01 | effects happen matters.
| | 06:03 | So, what I'm going to do is I'm going
to click and drag on Colorama and drag it
| | 06:07 | in between Fractal Noise and Roughen Edges
until you see a horizontal black line there.
| | 06:11 | Let that go, and you can see the
difference that it made to our fireball here.
| | 06:16 | Again, this is before if we have
Colorama processed after Roughened Edges, and
| | 06:21 | this is if we drag it above, or in
other words processed before Roughen Edges.
| | 06:27 | So, what was happening before was
that Colorama was colorizing these
| | 06:31 | semitransparent edges created by Roughen
Edges, and it was making them more harsh.
| | 06:37 | So, it's taking them, and there's not
really any semi-transparency with Colorama.
| | 06:42 | So, everything was full red.
| | 06:44 | So, what we're doing here now is we're
just colorizing the Fractal Noise and
| | 06:48 | then Roughen Edges is
applying the color to the edges.
| | 06:52 | So, now we have a great-looking
fireball and what we need to do now to bring it
| | 06:56 | to life, which I'll let you do, is by
animating the Evolution values of both
| | 07:01 | Fractal Noise and Roughen Edges.
| | 07:04 | All in all, though, a pretty sweet
effect for how little work went into it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Cycore effects| 00:00 | As if the 200 plus effects that ship
with After Effects weren't enough, After
| | 00:05 | Effects actually includes a series of
third-party plug-ins with every version of
| | 00:09 | After Effects. And the plug-ins
included with the current version of After
| | 00:13 | Effects CS5 are just astounding.
| | 00:16 | Let's first talk about the Cycore collection.
| | 00:18 | Go to the Effects &
Presets panel and type in cc.
| | 00:22 | You will see a list of effects and
actually, I'll just go ahead and press the
| | 00:25 | Tilde key to maximize this panel.
| | 00:27 | You can see these effects that start with cc.
| | 00:30 | All of these affects are
part of the Cycore collection.
| | 00:33 | These ship with After
Effects CS5 free of charge.
| | 00:37 | Now one of the reasons I want to point
these out to you, in this movie, is that
| | 00:41 | a lot of you that maybe work for
government agencies, or go to a school, a lot
| | 00:46 | of times these third-party effects
that come with After Effects there are
| | 00:48 | separate installations.
| | 00:49 | So, often times when you have like
an IT department that is doing your
| | 00:53 | installations for you, they will miss this.
| | 00:56 | So, if you have the power and authority,
you might want to go back to whoever is
| | 01:00 | in charge at whatever institution
you're at and make sure they install the
| | 01:05 | Cycore effects, as well as the other
effects I'll be showing you in this movie,
| | 01:08 | because a lot of time
people will miss out on these.
| | 01:10 | And there is a lot of really juicy stuff here.
| | 01:12 | I'll go ahead and hit the
Tilde key to un-maximize that.
| | 01:15 | Generally speaking, the Cycore effects
do a lot of cool tricks and generally,
| | 01:19 | they render very fast, and
they are very easy to use.
| | 01:23 | They don't always look as great as
some other After Effects counterparts, but
| | 01:27 | generally speaking, they are very easy to use.
| | 01:29 | Let's say, for example, I'll go down here in
the Simulation category, and there is CC Rain.
| | 01:34 | This is a very easy rain effect.
| | 01:36 | If you just want a quick, simple, it does
not be perfect even cartoony. It's perfect.
| | 01:41 | It's already autoanimated, and we have a
few parameters if we want to adjust this.
| | 01:45 | If we wanted to reduce the Amount of rain,
if we wanted to increase the speed or
| | 01:51 | decrease the speed, we
have some of that flexibility.
| | 01:54 | But we are not going to get
completely the professional results we would,
| | 01:57 | say from, like a 3-D program, or something
like that, but still all-in-all great affect.
| | 02:02 | There is also a CC Snow, which
does the equivalent, except with snow.
| | 02:06 | So, if I press the Spacebar here,
we have nice little snow flurries.
| | 02:10 | A little bit big and not
enough depth for my taste,
| | 02:14 | but we can take this away with the
Amount or add more snow if we wanted to.
| | 02:19 | But it's a very quick, easy way to
just make an effect happen very quickly.
| | 02:23 | Now, there is a lot of other
interesting effects in the Cycore collection.
| | 02:27 | And as you can see, there are
many effects in many categories.
| | 02:30 | So, I just want to points out
one here, like CC Ball Action.
| | 02:34 | This might be like indicative of the
variety that you will find in the Cycore effects.
| | 02:38 | Now, first this looks like
just a basic mosaic plug-in.
| | 02:40 | I mean it just seems like a basic, you
know, it just turns your stuff into a mosaic.
| | 02:45 | But if you adjust the Rotation value,
you will see this is, in fact, turning
| | 02:51 | your layer into a series
of three-dimensional balls.
| | 02:55 | And if we go to Twist Angle and click
and drag on the Twist Angle, we can see
| | 03:01 | that we are actually creating a three
dimensional twist to our mosaic ball
| | 03:08 | pattern structure thingie that the CC
Ball Action effect has created for us.
| | 03:12 | So, obviously, if you want to create
some 3 dimensional DNA, this would be great.
| | 03:17 | You can scatter this and then gather it.
| | 03:19 | Keep in mind you could also animate
all of these properties as well, so we can
| | 03:24 | have things spinning, moving,
scattering, gathering, and variations thereof.
| | 03:28 | Now there simply isn't time to go
through all of these Cycore effects.
| | 03:32 | There is over 60 of them.
| | 03:33 | I am just going to go ahead and
click the X to close out of that.
| | 03:36 | I am actually going to took over the
Effect Controls panel and select this
| | 03:39 | effect by clicking on it, making sure
it's highlighted here with this little
| | 03:43 | light color box. And then go ahead and hit
the Delete key on your keyboard to remove that.
| | 03:47 | Some other great effects included with After
Effects in the Synthetic Aperture category.
| | 03:52 | There is one called Color Finesse. This
creates kind of like its own plug-in window.
| | 03:56 | It's a very high-end color correction effect.
| | 03:59 | If you go open the Keying
category, we will see Keylight.
| | 04:02 | Keylight, when it's sold separately,
retails for like $1,000 just by itself.
| | 04:08 | It's really a tremendous bargain.
| | 04:09 | It's great for removing green screen,
probably the best green screen removal
| | 04:13 | tool in all of After Effects, and we will be
looking that later in this training series.
| | 04:17 | New in After Effects CS5 is
this Digieffects Free Form.
| | 04:21 | The Digieffects is the After Effects
plug-in company, and they have this
| | 04:25 | FreeFormAE plug-in, which is now included,
for the first time, with After Effects.
| | 04:29 | So, I am going to apply that
real quick and show you this effect.
| | 04:32 | If I go to Grid, and I am going to
take Rows and Columns to 9, click in here,
| | 04:37 | change this to 9, open up up 3D Mesh
Controls and take the Rotation Y value to a
| | 04:45 | negative number, about -70, -72 or so.
| | 04:48 | What I am going to do is I am going
to click about where our castle is, and
| | 04:52 | then I am going to just drag this out, and what
I've done - it's kind of hard to see with the grid.
| | 04:58 | But if I fiddle around with the
rotation Y - you can see that I have made the
| | 05:01 | castle just kind of stick out.
| | 05:03 | Let's click outside here to deselect the
layer, but almost as if I have been able
| | 05:06 | to mold and sculpt the layer.
| | 05:08 | So, it's kind of like what we just saw
with the CC Ball Action effect, except
| | 05:12 | that here with the FreeFormAE effect,
we can actually have manual control over
| | 05:18 | how we want these pieces to be
shaped and be formed in 3D space.
| | 05:23 | So, it's definitely the most control
that After Effects gives you in 3D by
| | 05:28 | having this plug-in here.
| | 05:29 | We could actually even
rotate this along the X axis.
| | 05:31 | I'll just click 0 for the Rotation Y axis.
| | 05:34 | Now, we have like a little Matterhorn.
So it's kind of a cool plug-in, a lot of
| | 05:38 | potential for experimentation here.
| | 05:41 | So, those are the nuts and bolts of
the 3D plug-ins that ship for free
| | 05:45 | with After Effects.
| | 05:46 | Again, they might be on a separate
installation on the disc, or it might be
| | 05:50 | a separate download if you purchase that
stuff on the Internet, but they are there.
| | 05:54 | They do ship it for free, so
make sure you install that stuff.
| | 05:56 | It's good.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding blur| 00:00 | For most After Effects
workflows, blur comes in real handy.
| | 00:04 | And I am going to show you a few
different blurs that you can apply here.
| | 00:07 | You might think it's just kind of
like a simple softening of the edges,
| | 00:10 | which can come in handy.
| | 00:11 | I will show you how do that. But
there are variety of ways to do that here.
| | 00:15 | One the way that we apply blur in
After Effects, one of the most intelligent
| | 00:18 | ways is actually not an effect.
| | 00:20 | It's kind of built into the program.
| | 00:22 | I have this knight animation here,
this hacking knight, but this looks very
| | 00:27 | cartoony because he's moving very fast,
and it's not blurring. And we are so
| | 00:32 | used to the way film cameras work
that we see a movie or something, and
| | 00:36 | there's fast action.
| | 00:37 | Our eye just kind of expects it to be blurry.
| | 00:39 | This is kind of like a
problem for a film cameras.
| | 00:42 | It's like a deficiency, but that's just
the way it's been and that we've adapted to.
| | 00:46 | So, when we see a fast action like this,
it looks very robotic when there's no blur.
| | 00:51 | So, what we can do is we
can turn on Motion Blur.
| | 00:55 | The way to do this is to make
sure we are looking at the Switches.
| | 00:57 | Again, if you are not seeing that, you can
either right-click and go to Columns > Switches.
| | 01:02 | You could right-click on this bar right here.
| | 01:04 | You could click Toggle Switches/ modes.
| | 01:07 | This is the modes area.
| | 01:08 | This is the Switches area.
| | 01:10 | And then we want to come over here at
the top a Timeline panel and click this
| | 01:14 | Motion Blur icon, and that looks like this:
| | 01:17 | a little circle with a bunch of
little circles that's fading out behind it.
| | 01:20 | You'll see that same icon here in the layer.
| | 01:23 | So, what we need do is click and drag
down, or you can manually just click the
| | 01:27 | Switches for every layer there.
| | 01:28 | And what that's doing is turning it on
for the layer, whereas this button here
| | 01:31 | turns it on and off for the entire composition.
| | 01:34 | So, now with Motion Blur enabled both
for every layer and for the composition,
| | 01:39 | you can preview this with Motion Blur.
| | 01:40 | And you could see, even as
it's paused, the difference here.
| | 01:44 | It automatically blurs the sword
and the moving objects based on how
| | 01:48 | fast they're moving.
| | 01:50 | Now the sword is at the end of the fulcrum.
| | 01:52 | It's moving the fastest, so it
has the most blur applied to it.
| | 01:56 | The upper arm here is moving the least.
Actually, the shoulder is moving the
| | 02:00 | least, but it didn't have too
much blur at all applied to it.
| | 02:03 | And as we go up the arm, we have less
and less blur applied because there is
| | 02:07 | less and less movement.
| | 02:09 | We don't even have to think about it.
| | 02:10 | We don't have to animate anything.
| | 02:11 | We don't have to plan for anything.
| | 02:12 | It automatically blurs it
based on how fast it's moving.
| | 02:15 | And as you can see, as it's moving,
it's very blurry. You don't see it.
| | 02:20 | You don't necessarily feel like hey!
| | 02:22 | It's all blurred out. But because
After Effects' treatment of that is so
| | 02:26 | organic, we just sense it. We feel it.
| | 02:29 | So, again, here is with the blur;
| | 02:31 | it just feels like its moving fast;
| | 02:34 | it feels realistic.
| | 02:35 | And then here is without the Motion Blur;
| | 02:38 | it's just too crisp.
| | 02:39 | We can see the sword the
entire time, every frame.
| | 02:42 | It's just too much.
| | 02:43 | So, soften that out with the Motion Blur.
| | 02:45 | It's great when you're manually
animating thing, and then you want characters to
| | 02:48 | be moving around or
whatever enabling Motion Blur.
| | 02:51 | Again, it does slow things
down when you are rendering a lot.
| | 02:55 | So, it's good to enable it for the
layers that you want to enable it for, and
| | 02:58 | then until it's time to render, just
leave it off for the composition, and then
| | 03:02 | you turn it on the whole composition
again when you are ready to render.
| | 03:04 | Let's go over to the Stars composition here.
| | 03:06 | I have what's called the particle
systems, which we'll be talking about later.
| | 03:09 | But it's basically spitting out
all of these little flowered things.
| | 03:14 | This looks terrible, but we can make
it look really kind of cool with blur.
| | 03:18 | And that's the real secret, to me, of
After Effects, is that there's so much power here.
| | 03:23 | There are so many creative tools here.
| | 03:25 | You could take something that really
wasn't meant for a given purpose and kind
| | 03:28 | of re-purpose it because
After Effects is so awesome.
| | 03:31 | So, I'll go to Blur & Sharpen, the basic
blur effect in After Effects is Fast Blur.
| | 03:36 | So, I am just going to go ahead and drag
and drop and apply Fast Blur to these stars.
| | 03:41 | Fast Blur is very simple.
| | 03:42 | There is just a Blurriness slider, so we can
click and drag on Blurriness and increase that.
| | 03:46 | If we preview this, we have these
kind of, I don't know, this faint little
| | 03:50 | background or something like that.
| | 03:51 | You can't really tell what it is
because of the blur, but the movement is cool.
| | 03:55 | So, we have something interesting.
| | 03:57 | I don't know, an organic background
maybe we're looking at glistening water of
| | 04:00 | the waterfall or something. Maybe we
can even had the Glow effect to this and
| | 04:03 | sees how it brings these
little particles to life.
| | 04:05 | I am just going to delete Fast Blur.
| | 04:07 | Fast Blur does render very quickly though,
| | 04:10 | so it's a great effect to use.
| | 04:12 | Directional Blur is another
one that's very interesting.
| | 04:15 | It causes blur in a given direction.
| | 04:18 | So, I am increasing the blur length a
lot, and you could see that we have, by
| | 04:23 | default, the blur is vertical.
| | 04:25 | So, we create these kind of like wispy
vertical little edges here, and so as
| | 04:30 | things spit out, we have, again, an
entirely different background. And no one
| | 04:35 | would look at this and say oh!
| | 04:36 | This probably came from a
cheesy animation of flowers.
| | 04:39 | So, again, with After Effects, it's
not about what things look at face value.
| | 04:43 | It's about what you can turn them into.
| | 04:44 | Now in Directional Blur, there,
obviously, is a direction.
| | 04:48 | So, we can change the angle here, and
we can maybe move that to the right a
| | 04:51 | little bit so it's diagonal.
| | 04:52 | We can make it horizontal if we wanted to.
| | 04:55 | So, there is a lot of
choices and options in our blurs.
| | 04:59 | One other blur that I think is kind
of fun to play with is a Cycore effect
| | 05:01 | called CC Radial Fast Blur.
| | 05:04 | So, I am going to double-
click to apply that to this layer.
| | 05:06 | What that does is it kind of makes
this look, like it's kind of zooming out at
| | 05:09 | you like the blur is coming towards you.
| | 05:11 | I'll increase the Amount
value, and we can see that.
| | 05:15 | So, that's kind of fun.
| | 05:16 | Now there is a different way.
| | 05:17 | If you go down to the Zoom dropdown, we
can do Brightest, which causes these to
| | 05:21 | overlap and causes them to be bright
so you could see every piece, and we can
| | 05:25 | also do the inverse to that where we
choose Darkest where they appear to kind of
| | 05:28 | disappear and vanish.
| | 05:30 | As we take down the blur Amount, we
actually see more of them here, but still
| | 05:34 | kind of interesting effect,
no matter which one we choose.
| | 05:36 | You know, obviously, there are loads
more of blur effects, but these are the
| | 05:41 | ones that I tend to use the most.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a galaxy scene from scratch| 00:00 | This tutorial is going to be a
little mini project of sorts.
| | 00:03 | We're going to creating key elements
of this galaxy scene here from scratch.
| | 00:08 | We're going to be creating the stars and
this planet from scratch using a series
| | 00:12 | of effects that we have not touched on just yet.
| | 00:16 | So, let's hop on over the Galaxy START
composition, and we'll see the sun, and
| | 00:21 | the ring's already in play
here, the sun and the ring.
| | 00:24 | That's already been done for us, but
we're going to create the stars, and we're
| | 00:26 | going to create the planets.
| | 00:27 | So, I'm going to right-click
in the Timeline panel here.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to create New > Solid, and we're
going to start with the Stars. And there we go.
| | 00:37 | I'm going to apply a Cycore effect.
| | 00:39 | The Cycore effect is called CC Star Burst.
| | 00:42 | Now you could just type in Star, close up
Animation Presets, and there we go: CC Star Burst.
| | 00:48 | As a matter of fact, if this gets
annoying for you - and actually it's annoying
| | 00:50 | for me so I'm going to turn it off now -
| | 00:51 | but in the Effects & Presets panel, you
can go to the flyout menu here right to
| | 00:55 | the right of the name of the panel.
| | 00:57 | So, Effects & Presets, just to the
right there, and then go ahead and turn off
| | 01:01 | Show Animation Presets to get rid of those.
| | 01:04 | Now all we have left is the
Effects, and we do searches.
| | 01:07 | And they're just much cleaner.
| | 01:08 | So, I'm going to apply CC Star Burst.
| | 01:11 | This is okay looking, but it looks
really terrible because of the blues.
| | 01:16 | So, the stars are okay, but the
blueness is really disgusting.
| | 01:19 | This effect actually replaces whatever
is on the layer that you applied it to,
| | 01:24 | but it also picks up the
color of the original layer.
| | 01:27 | So, because our solid was blue, now our
stars are blue, and we don't want that.
| | 01:32 | So, I'm going to select this layer, and I
want to go back into the Solid Settings.
| | 01:37 | So, what I'm going to do is hit Command+
Shift+Y; that would be Ctrl+Shift+Y on the PC.
| | 01:44 | That gets me back to my Solid Settings.
| | 01:46 | I can click this blue color swatch, and
I'm going to drag down and take this to
| | 01:51 | oh not black - white. Stars are white.
| | 01:53 | Okay, so I'm going to go
ahead and click OK here.
| | 01:55 | Then we have our stars.
| | 01:57 | Now if I hit the Spacebar to preview this,
we see we have some kind of cool star
| | 02:01 | type action going, but
these stars are way too big.
| | 02:05 | They're also too many of them.
| | 02:07 | If I were going to combine this with
an effect like CC Radial Fast Blur, for
| | 02:11 | example, my guess is that this would be
kind of a cool star trekkie-type effect.
| | 02:17 | So, as you play this, it's
almost like we're going to warp speed.
| | 02:20 | Actually, I have to take
up that blur a little bit.
| | 02:22 | So, this could be kind of cool for that
I guess, but I am just going to go ahead
| | 02:25 | and select CC Radial Fast Blue and hit Delete.
| | 02:28 | I want a more realistic
star field in the background.
| | 02:31 | So, I'm going to change
this Scatter value to 300.
| | 02:34 | That's going to spread things out quite a bit,
| | 02:36 | so already looking a little bit better.
| | 02:37 | The speed is way too fast for this like
subtle, realistic thing in the background.
| | 02:43 | So, I'm going to take Speed down 0.01.
For little tiny values like that, it's better to
| | 02:49 | just manually type in.
| | 02:51 | Finally, for Size, the
default is 100, way too big.
| | 02:54 | I am going to take this
down to 30 and press Enter.
| | 02:57 | Now we have something that's a little
bit more realistic. And from frame to
| | 03:01 | frame, we don't see too much movement.
| | 03:03 | So, as I hit Page Up, Page Down, and
go back and forth between the frames,
| | 03:06 | we're really not seeing too much movement
there. But again, over time, it's like this
| | 03:10 | slow kind of more realistic growing
on of the stars. I'm liking that.
| | 03:16 | Next, let's create our planet.
| | 03:17 | I'm going to right-click and go to New > Solid.
| | 03:22 | Let's pick a color for our planet.
| | 03:25 | This is totally a matter of personal choice.
| | 03:27 | I'm just going to go ahead and pick like an
earthy green color, but that's kind of boring.
| | 03:32 | Whatever you want to do, go ahead and do.
| | 03:34 | I'm going to so a search for
Fractal Noise. There she is.
| | 03:38 | I'm going to go ahead
and apply that to my layer.
| | 03:40 | I want to check the Fractal
Type from Basic to Terrain.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to take down the
Contrast considerably here, maybe there.
| | 03:51 | I also might take down the Brightness,
| | 03:54 | so we have like a more subtle effect there.
| | 03:57 | I'm thinking that this might a little
bit complex for what I'm looking for.
| | 04:00 | Maybe we could take down a little bit.
| | 04:04 | Let's also come down here to the
bottom of the effect, and there is this
| | 04:07 | Blending mode dropdown.
| | 04:09 | Blending modes are a key
feature of After Effects.
| | 04:11 | We're going to be talking about
that later on in this training series.
| | 04:14 | For now, just know that it's a way that
we can take Fractal Noise and blend it
| | 04:17 | into the original layer.
| | 04:19 | So, the green of the solid is
what we are going blending it into.
| | 04:22 | So, I am going to take the Blending mode from
Normal to, let's say, Soft Light. Looking good.
| | 04:27 | I'll take down Opacity.
| | 04:29 | So, it's just kind of like a
faded, nice little texture there.
| | 04:33 | I have a feeling that I might want to go back and change
this layer, but for right now, let's move on.
| | 04:38 | I'm going to go to the Effects & Presets panel,
and I am going to do a search on CC Sphere.
| | 04:44 | It's another Cycore effect.
| | 04:45 | What this does is it takes your
layer, and wraps it around a 3D sphere.
| | 04:51 | This 3D sphere is going to be our planet.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to go ahead
and close up Fractal Noise.
| | 04:56 | Then we have out planet here.
| | 04:57 | So, I'm going to shrink it down little
bit till it looks about planet size, and
| | 05:03 | then we can use Offset to
move this planet into place.
| | 05:09 | Now, I kind of already made a mask on
the rings, as you could kind of see here by
| | 05:14 | this edge of the rings.
| | 05:16 | So, that way we can reorder the layers
and place this planet behind the rings.
| | 05:21 | Right now, the planet is on top of the
rings, and so the rings are behind the planet.
| | 05:25 | We can't see this part of the
rings, and it looks really fake.
| | 05:27 | So, the rings layer is actually here.
| | 05:30 | We can't see it because it is what we call shy.
| | 05:32 | So, go ahead and click this little dude,
looks like he is hiding behind a wall.
| | 05:36 | Now we could see all the
layers in our composition.
| | 05:38 | You see when we're in the switches area
of the Timeline panel, there is a little
| | 05:42 | mini version of that shy guy.
| | 05:44 | When we click these switches, they
become shy layers, which mean that once
| | 05:49 | we click this button for the entire
comp, those shy layers become hidden.
| | 05:53 | So, I've actually used this a lot
throughout the training series, just so we
| | 05:57 | don't get distracted.
| | 05:58 | So, you might notice that there is
tons of layers on the screen, visually. You
| | 06:01 | could see them, and then the Timeline
panel might only show like one or two
| | 06:04 | layers or no layers at all, just so I can keep
things kind of clean. So unshy those layers.
| | 06:10 | What we're going to do is we're going to
take the Ring, and we're going to put it on top.
| | 06:13 | We're going to grab it and drag
it on top of the planet layer.
| | 06:18 | Now right now this layer that we're
using as a planet is called Medium
| | 06:21 | Gray-Green Solid 1, or whatever your color
happens to be, not a very descriptive name.
| | 06:26 | So, what I'm going to do is
I'm going to select the layer.
| | 06:29 | I'm going to press the
Return key or the Enter key.
| | 06:31 | I'm going to type Planet to
name this layer and press Return.
| | 06:35 | That's the way we name things in After Effects.
| | 06:37 | We hit the Return key.
| | 06:38 | This works in the Project panel as well.
| | 06:40 | If I want to rename one of this
compositions, like rings Comp 1, I can press
| | 06:44 | Enter and then just type
in rings and Enter again.
| | 06:47 | Now getting back to our Planet here, we
could make some fine-tune choices here.
| | 06:51 | We could take the Radius down a little bit.
| | 06:53 | Again, play with the Offset and
tweak that until we get it just right.
| | 06:59 | I'm not sure if we really need to
take the time to do that or not as we're
| | 07:03 | playing with Offset and Radius, but
that looks about good for me right now.
| | 07:07 | If we open up Light and Shading, we can
play around with the lighting and the shading.
| | 07:11 | So, right now, the lighting is coming
from the side, and our light source is
| | 07:15 | coming from the upper left
-hand area of our screen.
| | 07:18 | So, what we could do is change the
Light Direction so it's changing where the
| | 07:21 | light is coming from.
| | 07:22 | We have light coming from the bottom.
| | 07:24 | We have the light coming from the top.
| | 07:25 | We're actually wanted to kind of
diagonal over from the side here.
| | 07:29 | We can also adjust the Light Height.
| | 07:30 | So, maybe we can want this to
be like not super bright planet.
| | 07:34 | That looks actually very cool.
| | 07:35 | You can see a little bit of that
backlit edge right there, and that's
| | 07:38 | looking really nice too.
| | 07:39 | Now we go up to the Rotation
area at the top of CC Sphere,
| | 07:43 | you'll see this Rotation Y value.
| | 07:45 | This is the value that's going to allow us
to rotate our planet around like a planet.
| | 07:51 | So, I'm going to go ahead and hit the
Home key, press the Stopwatch for the
| | 07:55 | Rotation Y property in the CC Sphere
effect, hit End and increase the Rotation
| | 08:01 | just a little bit. A little dab will do here.
| | 08:03 | We don't want to rotate this really fast
because that would not look very realistic.
| | 08:08 | But if we do a RAM preview here by hitting 0
on the Numeric keypad, I'll hit 0 again there.
| | 08:13 | That's much too fast, but you get the
idea that this is a nice little planet scene.
| | 08:19 | We could go back to Fractal Noise and tweak it.
| | 08:22 | I really wasn't happy with that pattern.
| | 08:24 | That's a little bit too bit, and it
draws too much attention to itself.
| | 08:27 | It doesn't look very realistic, but
I'm actually liking the way with the
| | 08:30 | lighting the way it is.
| | 08:31 | It's not bothering me as much anymore.
| | 08:33 | So, there is that nice, little planet
scene and the few new effects we learned.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Distorting objects with effects| 00:00 | Some effects help us to distort layers,
and that's what we're going to look
| | 00:03 | at here in this movie.
| | 00:05 | I'm going to show you a really boring
example, just so to work here what's
| | 00:08 | happening. And then we're going to
look at a more fun example with this cool
| | 00:12 | wizard, this illustrator art, and we're
going to make his beard to distorting wave.
| | 00:16 | So, first, what I'm going
to do is do a search on wave.
| | 00:19 | You'll see there are actually several
wave-related After Effects effects, and there is
| | 00:25 | two that sound very similar:
| | 00:26 | Wave World and Wave Warp.
| | 00:28 | So, think of the warping that we're doing.
| | 00:30 | We're distorting something.
| | 00:31 | It's actually in the Distort category.
| | 00:33 | So, we do not want the Wave World;
| | 00:34 | we want the Wave Warp.
| | 00:36 | So, go ahead and apply that to this Solid layer.
| | 00:39 | And you could see, instantly, that
there is this waviness created.
| | 00:42 | Actually, if you hit the Spacebar, you'll
see that this is an auto-animating effect.
| | 00:46 | It's a little slow to render.
| | 00:47 | It takes its time, but you can see
that there is still animation built in.
| | 00:52 | So, we don't really have to set
keyframes to set the waves in motion.
| | 00:54 | We change the speed with the Wave Speed value.
| | 00:58 | We could increase the Wave Height.
| | 00:59 | We can increase the Wave Width.
| | 01:02 | We can also the change
the Direction of the waves.
| | 01:04 | Maybe they're slanted.
| | 01:05 | Maybe they're horizontal.
| | 01:06 | So, there are a lot of
different directions that we have here.
| | 01:09 | So, now that we're clear, and
we could see what it's doing,
| | 01:12 | let's go over to the wizard hair
composition. And basically, again, this is a
| | 01:17 | wizard from Illustrator, more sweet art
from my buddy Will Kendrick who works on
| | 01:21 | the TV show Yo Gabba, Gabba.
| | 01:23 | I've animated the mustache and the
eyebrows so it looks like he is chanting some
| | 01:27 | kind of spell incantation wizard-magic-thing.
| | 01:30 | We're going to apply Wave
Warp to the wizard beard layer.
| | 01:35 | And as we play this back,
it feels very mechanical.
| | 01:39 | It's a little bit too intense.
| | 01:41 | So, here is what we're going change it to.
| | 01:43 | We're going to take the Wave Height value.
| | 01:45 | I am going to take this down to 3.
| | 01:46 | We're going to take the Wave Width value,
just click in that field and type 50.
| | 01:51 | Bump it up just a little bit. And still,
if were to preview this, we would see
| | 01:55 | that the Wave Speed is
still significantly too fast.
| | 01:59 | So, we're going to take the
Wave Speed value down to 0.5.
| | 02:04 | So, now as we go back and we preview
this, and this is going to take just
| | 02:09 | a second to preview.
| | 02:11 | But when this is done rendering, we won't
wait for the animation to load into memory.
| | 02:15 | When we do preview it, you'll see there
is a nice, soft warping going on, on the
| | 02:20 | beard, just to kind of bring this wizard to life.
| | 02:23 | So, as we back this up and preview it,
you can see the waving wizard beard
| | 02:27 | and also the mustache, and the eyebrow and
his beard is brought to life by Wave Warp.
| | 02:33 | Now earlier on this training series,
we looked at the Puppet tool, and the
| | 02:37 | Puppet tool is another great way to
bring something to life, but this kind
| | 02:42 | of like smooth, flowing, windblown look would be
very hard to create, even with the Puppet tool.
| | 02:47 | So, knowing these distort effects that
allow you to go in and kind of play with
| | 02:50 | things a little bit, warp them
around. It's really helpful to know.
| | 02:53 | One final thing here:
| | 02:54 | if we zoom in, you'll notice that the
quality around the edges is a little lacking.
| | 02:59 | If we zoom out, you could see that this
makes it a little bit soft, a little bit blurry.
| | 03:03 | That's because this Antialiasing
setting is, by default, set to Low.
| | 03:07 | So, we can take this up to High, and
then these edges become much more crisp.
| | 03:12 | But be aware, again, we do take a hit to
the render time and things go much more
| | 03:16 | slowly because of that.
| | 03:17 | So, you might want to just wait until it's
render time befor bumping that from Low up to High.
| | 03:21 | I should also point out, if we just
close this by clicking the X, that there are
| | 03:25 | just loads of effects in this Distort
category that warp, and turn, and smear
| | 03:30 | your layer all over the place
that are kind of fun to play with.
| | 03:33 | Actually, if I maximize this with the
Tilde key, one of the things I like to do
| | 03:37 | when I'm just kind of playing around
and looking for cool motion graphic
| | 03:40 | elements or I'm looking for cool backgrounds or
whatever, is I'll go into the Generate category.
| | 03:45 | These usually creates something
from nothing, something from scratch.
| | 03:48 | If you apply this to a solid,
you'll just have something.
| | 03:50 | And I'll take the Generate stuff and
apply a distort effect to it and then kind
| | 03:55 | of distort that and come up with some
kind of cool geometric shape, objects,
| | 04:01 | background, what have you.
| | 04:02 | It's kind of fun like path where I
like to go down when I'm playing around
| | 04:05 | with effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and using lens flares| 00:00 | One really common visual element that
you see all over the place - it's really
| | 00:04 | trendy, it actually was trending a
long time ago, and it wasn't in trend, but
| | 00:07 | now it's coming back in style again
- is something called a Lens Flare.
| | 00:11 | Let me show you what this looks
like, and then we'll talk about it.
| | 00:14 | My layers are pretty full right here,
so instead of having a blank area in the
| | 00:17 | Timeline - which is what I usually have
- I was just going to go to like a blank
| | 00:20 | spot to right-click, like right here.
| | 00:23 | This works, right to the left of the
layers name and icons. I'll just right-click here
| | 00:27 | to get the pop-up menu, or we
could say New > Solid there.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to Make Comp Size, and I'm going
to click and make sure the Color is black.
| | 00:36 | You can tell that's pure black
if the RGB values are 0, 0, 0.
| | 00:39 | So, I'm going to go ahead and click OK and OK.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to apply the Lens Flare
effect from the Effects & Presets panel to
| | 00:48 | this Black Solid layer.
| | 00:50 | This, my friends, is a Lens Flare.
| | 00:53 | You can see, basically, there is the
main flare, and then this kind of like
| | 00:58 | stuff that kind of comes off of the
lens flare. And as we grab the effect
| | 01:02 | control point here and click around,
you could see that all the way that the
| | 01:06 | light is hitting the
virtual lens changes as well.
| | 01:10 | What this is doing is it's a mimicking
the phenomena that happens when a camera
| | 01:16 | looks at a very bright
light source, like the sun.
| | 01:19 | It kind of likes with motion blur. Our
eyes are just so adapted to the way that
| | 01:25 | a video camera takes in light,
| | 01:26 | that we're used to seeing all these
extra little bells and whistles - all these
| | 01:30 | little squiggles of light - from lens flares.
| | 01:33 | So, people will use these all
the time for compositing,
| | 01:36 | if you want to create like a fake sun,
if you want to create some kind of
| | 01:39 | powerful star or something. And we're
going to use it on top of the wizard as
| | 01:44 | if he is going to create a big bolt
of lightning. And the lightning, we're
| | 01:48 | actually going to create in the next video by
this big bolt of lightning out of these hands.
| | 01:52 | The problem, of course, is that
we have this black background.
| | 01:56 | Unlike other effects, Lens Flare does
not replace the layer it is applied to.
| | 02:01 | Now we can blend with the original,
see this Blend With Original value and
| | 02:05 | increase this, but this is
just going to blend it with black.
| | 02:07 | That's not going to do any good. Oh.
| | 02:08 | Be aware, also, that we can
play with the Flare Brightness,
| | 02:11 | take this down and up, which
we'll do momentarily, as well.
| | 02:15 | There are different types of Lens
Flares based on different types of lenses.
| | 02:18 | So, 50 to 300mm Zoom Lens would
create this type of lens flare.
| | 02:23 | 35mm Prime would create this type of
lens flare, approximately. And there is a
| | 02:29 | 105mm Prime that would
apparently create this type of lens flare.
| | 02:33 | I don't find this to be exact, but this
will give you ballpark idea of what these
| | 02:37 | flares give you a play with.
| | 02:38 | Now here is how we're
going to get rid of this black.
| | 02:41 | It's through something called Blend
modes, which we looked at in the Galaxy
| | 02:45 | tutorial a little while back, and which
we will, again, look at little bit later
| | 02:48 | on this training series.
| | 02:49 | But first, a quick sneak peek at them,
| | 02:51 | go ahead and click this Toggles
Switches/Modes button until you see the mode,
| | 02:55 | T, Track Matte area.
| | 02:58 | In the Normal dropdown - click that -
this gives you a list of all the
| | 03:02 | different blend modes.
| | 03:03 | These are the way that we can take
this layer and blend this layer with
| | 03:08 | the stuff beneath it.
| | 03:10 | The mode that we're going
to use is the Add Blend mode.
| | 03:13 | The Add Blend mode will remove black,
and it will also make everything that's on
| | 03:18 | the flare brighter as it
mixes with the layers beneath.
| | 03:21 | So, go ahead and click Add, and there we go.
| | 03:24 | So, it's little bit more of a subtle
effect, as far as like seeing all the
| | 03:27 | details of the rings and circles, but
still a very cool happening that we have here.
| | 03:34 | We're getting these rings, and this
wizard definitely is ready for his
| | 03:38 | powerful lightning strike.
| | 03:40 | Again, we can take down the
Brightness if that's little bit too much for
| | 03:43 | you, which is fine.
| | 03:44 | It's all matter of personal taste here.
| | 03:46 | We can also increase the Brightness
above 100% if we want to go that route, and
| | 03:50 | of course, just like most
properties in After Effects, it's animatable.
| | 03:53 | So, we can change it over time if we
wanted to, but that's very cool little
| | 03:57 | wizard apocalypse there.
| | 03:58 | I want to this back down to around 100%.
| | 04:02 | We have some cool rings
| | 04:03 | that are kind of popping off here.
| | 04:05 | If you didn't like that, you can
change to one of the other lens types that
| | 04:09 | don't have as much of the rings as
the default 5300mm Zoom does, but
| | 04:14 | looking pretty good.
| | 04:16 | Now let's go to create some of the
lightning coming out of his hands.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating lightning bolts| 00:00 | So, now we're going to give
our wizard some lightning.
| | 00:03 | Now an interesting trick here:
| | 00:04 | if you go to the Effects & Presets panel
and you do a search on Lightning, there
| | 00:09 | are two different Lightning effects;
| | 00:11 | There is Advanced Lightning and
then just regular old Lightning.
| | 00:15 | You can probably tell which one we're
going to be using, because the regular
| | 00:18 | Lighting one is in the
Obsolete category of Effects.
| | 00:21 | So, it is gone to do Effects
home of broken souls there.
| | 00:25 | So, we're going to use Advanced Lightning.
| | 00:27 | So, let's go ahead and right-click in
a Timeline panel in a blank spot here.
| | 00:30 | Create a New > Solid, and we'll go ahead
and just call this Lightning. Hit OK.
| | 00:35 | Then we'll apply Advanced
Lightning to this layer.
| | 00:41 | Now unlike Flare, our Lens Flare,
| | 00:43 | as you can see, Advanced Lightning
completely replaces the content, removes
| | 00:47 | whatever content was there,
and just shows you the Lightning.
| | 00:51 | So, what we're going to do - there
are two effect control points here.
| | 00:54 | There is the starting point and
actually you can see that here it's the Origin.
| | 00:57 | Then also the Direction point, the ending point.
| | 01:00 | So, I'm going to move the Direction
over here, and you can see how cool
| | 01:03 | that looks as we - just let me zoom in
little bit so you can see - as I move this
| | 01:07 | effect control point.
| | 01:08 | This lightning is just moving very organically.
| | 01:10 | There is forking here.
| | 01:11 | It's a very complex,
little structure of lightning.
| | 01:13 | So, I put this at the end,
put the Origin in his hands.
| | 01:18 | One other thing that's kind of
cool with this is that we can change
| | 01:20 | the Lightening type.
| | 01:21 | There is Direction Lightning.
| | 01:22 | That's the default.
| | 01:23 | So, it starts here, and
then it goes in that direction.
| | 01:26 | Then there is also a Strike Lightning.
| | 01:29 | There is also Breaking. That's just
kind of like lightning everywhere.
| | 01:33 | There is also Bouncey,
and Bouncey is very unusual.
| | 01:36 | It creates these big balls of
electricity, which are really cool.
| | 01:40 | There is also like a Two-Way Strike.
| | 01:43 | So, if you want to have like two things
shooting lightening to each other like
| | 01:46 | the Emperor & Luke Skywalker at the
end. Actually, it's pretty much just like the
| | 01:50 | Emperor just shooting directly at
Luke Skywalker, but you get the ideas.
| | 01:54 | It's like lightning going back
and forth between two points.
| | 01:57 | So, I'm just going to change
this back to the default, direction.
| | 02:00 | If we want to animate this, it
doesn't animate, by default, on its own.
| | 02:03 | So, we need to change something, the
Conductivity State is one way to animate this.
| | 02:08 | So, if we animate this parameter, and
you're going to get this, where it's pretty
| | 02:11 | much every frame is different.
| | 02:13 | We can also change the Core, and that's
part of the terminology of this effect.
| | 02:18 | The main line of lightning is referred
to as the Core, and these little tiny
| | 02:24 | offshoots are referred to as
Forks, and then we also have the glow.
| | 02:28 | So, here, we could set the Core. Maybe we
want it to be like a little bit thinner,
| | 02:31 | so we can take that down little bit.
| | 02:33 | So, the Core is little bit thinner.
Or if we want to make that thicker, we
| | 02:35 | can bring this value.
| | 02:36 | I'm just going to take is to about 1.5.
| | 02:38 | We can also change the Opacity of the
Core and the Core Color and also the Glow.
| | 02:44 | So, by default, it's like this blue Glow.
| | 02:46 | What I'm going to do is I'm
going to click on the eyedropper.
| | 02:48 | I want to sample one of the colors from
our background, probably like a purple
| | 02:51 | from like right around here or
something, or maybe even from like the wizard's
| | 02:55 | outfit or something.
| | 02:56 | That blends little bit more
with what we're doing here.
| | 02:59 | We can also control how many
offshoots of this lighting there is with
| | 03:02 | the Forking parameter.
| | 03:03 | So, as I increase this, we have more
splits and offshoots, which are looking very
| | 03:08 | cool with how it's
blending with the light behind it.
| | 03:11 | You take this down, so there is less
forking and more just like kind of one main
| | 03:15 | point there if we want to do that.
| | 03:16 | I kind of like it high, I don't know.
| | 03:18 | It's looking pretty cool to me.
| | 03:20 | One of the things that I'm not really a
big fan of is that we had this big lens
| | 03:23 | flare, this big burst of light, and that's
supposed to be kind of like what he is
| | 03:26 | using to send out this lightning
bolt like a big bolt out of his hands.
| | 03:30 | The lightening is on top.
| | 03:32 | So, we're not really seeing like
the full brightness of the Lens Flare.
| | 03:35 | We're seeing some of the darker glow here.
| | 03:37 | That's looking not very realistic.
| | 03:39 | So, what I'm going to do is I'm going
to grab the Lightning layer, and I'm
| | 03:41 | going to drag it beneath the Flare layer,
so that the Flare is on top of the Lightning.
| | 03:46 | That gives us a more realistic look there.
| | 03:49 | Now there are many more settings here.
| | 03:51 | So, feel free to experiment and play
around. As we'll talk about later on in
| | 03:55 | this chapter, at the end,
| | 03:57 | there are ways that you can learn all
the details about what these settings do.
| | 04:00 | I'll be explaining those to you later.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Viewing random variations with Brainstorm| 00:00 | As we come to the end of this chapter
on Effects, I would imagine that a few of
| | 00:04 | you might be feeling a little
overwhelmed with all the have to learn with the
| | 00:08 | 200 Effects, natively in After
Effects, add to that dozens and dozens of
| | 00:12 | third-party effects included with After Effects.
| | 00:14 | There's just a whole lot to learn here -
not that you have to master all of it.
| | 00:18 | But still just to feel that there
is that much content, it could be
| | 00:20 | little overwhelming.
| | 00:21 | So, in this movie and then the next one,
I am going to give you a few things
| | 00:24 | that will help you feel a
little more comfortable and at ease.
| | 00:26 | The first one I want to talk to you
about is a feature called Brainstorm.
| | 00:29 | If we select this Later, you could see in the
Effect Controls panel here I have two Effects:
| | 00:33 | Fractal Noise and Color Balance.
| | 00:35 | I've animated Fractal Noise.
| | 00:37 | It's just a simple Fractal Noise.
| | 00:38 | And all I've done is just animated the
Evolution property, so that these blocks
| | 00:42 | kind of swirl around a
little bit, nothing too complex.
| | 00:46 | Color Balance adds some color
tinting here, and we're good to go.
| | 00:49 | Now what I am going to do is select
Fractal Noise, hold the Shift key down and
| | 00:54 | select Color Balance, so
that they are both selected.
| | 00:56 | And then I'm going come down here to
the Timeline panel and click on the
| | 00:59 | Brainstorm icon. It looks like a
thought bubble with a light bulb in it.
| | 01:03 | Click that to open up Brainstorm.
And already we get several variations on our
| | 01:08 | original, which is actually up
here in the upper left-hand corner.
| | 01:11 | Now they're not too different, so let's
go ahead and take Randomness up to 100%.
| | 01:15 | And what's going to happen when we
click this Brainstorm button is that After
| | 01:19 | Effects is going to give us nine variations,
based on those two Effects that we selected.
| | 01:24 | So, it basically just rolls the dice on all of
the properties, and we see we come up with.
| | 01:29 | Now I really liking this like red-black thing.
| | 01:31 | That's very awesome. So, if I'm
looking for a particular effect, and I don't
| | 01:35 | know how to get there,
| | 01:36 | I can keep doing Brainstorm.
| | 01:38 | Just keep hitting this
button as many times as I want.
| | 01:40 | When I find something that I like, I can
hit this button, which will Maximize the Tile.
| | 01:45 | I get a better look at it, and I could say,
yeah that's really cool-looking actually.
| | 01:49 | So, what I can do is click this button,
which is Include in the Next Brainstorm.
| | 01:54 | This tells After Effects, "You know what?
| | 01:55 | You're getting close to After Effects."
| | 01:57 | I like what you are doing there."
| | 01:58 | So, when we find something we like, we
usually take down the Randomness value,
| | 02:02 | so that we now have
variations on this one thing.
| | 02:06 | And now our variations look
very much like that original thing.
| | 02:11 | Now I think this is perfect.
| | 02:12 | This is what I'm going for.
| | 02:14 | We talked about this
button, Maximizing the Tile.
| | 02:16 | We talked about this button, Including
in the Next Brainstorm, but there are
| | 02:19 | these two options when you find what you like.
| | 02:21 | Number one, you can Apply
this to the Composition.
| | 02:23 | If I click this now, it will
change my Composition settings.
| | 02:26 | It will change this instance of
Fractal Noise and Color Balance to match what
| | 02:30 | the pattern is here.
| | 02:32 | But if I find a pattern that I like
- that I don't like for this current
| | 02:35 | project, but I'd like to use it
eventually maybe - I can click this button,
| | 02:39 | which is Save it as a New Composition.
| | 02:41 | In this case, I can click this
button and notice nothing really changed,
| | 02:45 | nothing really happened.
| | 02:46 | But what's going to happen is that
After Effects create a Composition that we
| | 02:49 | will see in just a moment in our
Project panel, with the new layer, with this
| | 02:52 | texture already applied to it.
| | 02:54 | That way, again, we have it for later,
but it doesn't interrupt our current project.
| | 02:58 | Now we can bring this up to 100%,
click Brainstorm and continue searching
| | 03:02 | for random variations.
| | 03:04 | The cool thing is if we click the
Play button, then After Effects will load
| | 03:07 | into Ram the Preview for all nine of these
titles, with my current animation settings.
| | 03:14 | So, I've animated the Evolution
parameter in the Fractal Noise effect.
| | 03:17 | So, if I click the Play button here,
it's going to play back all of these, with
| | 03:22 | the Evolution parameter animated.
| | 03:24 | So, that way I know, before apply
it, what it's going to look like.
| | 03:27 | Now what's cool about Brainstorm is
that it's not just about an effect.
| | 03:32 | I mean if you wanted to, you could just
select Fractal Noise Only and just see
| | 03:35 | what you can come up with, with just
Fractal Noise, or you can select 10 Effects
| | 03:39 | and see what it comes up with, with 10 Effects.
| | 03:42 | Or you could select the Position
property, or the Rotation property, or anything
| | 03:45 | else in After Effects, and it will
roll the dice and give you tons of Random
| | 03:49 | Variations at one glance.
| | 03:52 | And as soon as you click Brainstorm again,
it gives you another set of variations.
| | 03:56 | It's a very cool tool to play with,
whether you're new to After Effects, or very
| | 04:00 | experienced with it.
| | 04:01 | No doubt, all the random mathematical
computations that are going on here are
| | 04:05 | going to produce patterns and ideas
| | 04:07 | that you've never thought of.
| | 04:08 | I love is bloody gauze
looking thing. That's crazy.
| | 04:11 | So, anyways, I am going to hit Cancel here.
| | 04:13 | I am going to go back to my Project
panel, and you will see a Comp 2 here.
| | 04:16 | Notice that the Comp we've
been working on is Comp 1.
| | 04:18 | Well, Comp 2 is the Comp
that brainstorm created for us.
| | 04:22 | Double-click that to open it,
and now we have this Comp.
| | 04:25 | And it still has our Evolution
Animation settings that we had before, all set
| | 04:30 | up from Brainstorm.
| | 04:31 | Brainstorm is a great way to get
familiar with individual Effects and
| | 04:35 | After Effects as a whole.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Working with VideoShortening the duration of layers| 00:00 | We are now going to look at basic video
editing, also referred to as Trimming.
| | 00:04 | I have Imported a movie clip here, and we
are going to make a Composition out of this.
| | 00:09 | Be aware that it is 54 seconds long.
| | 00:11 | That's what this triangle means here.
| | 00:13 | Zero hours zero minutes,
54 seconds and zero frames.
| | 00:17 | So, go ahead and drag this piece of
footage to the New Composition icon, down
| | 00:23 | here at the bottom of the Project panel.
| | 00:25 | To add this to a new Composition, if
you need to, go ahead and put your mouse
| | 00:30 | over the Composition panel, the Viewer.
| | 00:32 | And use the mouse to zoom out of this, so
that you can see all of this if you need to.
| | 00:37 | And this clip basically starts with
some ocean waves, right in the middle.
| | 00:42 | And a lot of times, when you cut to something,
it's good to kind of have it in a neutral state.
| | 00:47 | So, I might prefer to start this clip here,
| | 00:49 | because it is kind of like a bird going
on in a scene right up here in the front.
| | 00:53 | But I like that the water
is a little bit more neutral.
| | 00:56 | And then as the scene
progresses, then waves come in.
| | 00:59 | I like that little better.
| | 01:00 | So, I'm going to go, actually, to about
four seconds and eight frames in.
| | 01:04 | And this is where I want to start the video.
| | 01:07 | So, here is how we Trim video.
| | 01:08 | We want to make sure that the
Selection tool shows in the black arrow.
| | 01:11 | Make sure that's Selected
in the tools panel here.
| | 01:13 | Again, that's going to allow us to do a
lot of little tricks like we are about
| | 01:16 | to do here, that we
couldn't do with other tools.
| | 01:18 | So, what I am going to do is put my
Cursor at the beginning of the clip, so that
| | 01:21 | I have a double-sided arrow.
| | 01:23 | It's facing left and right.
| | 01:24 | That indicates that if I click and drag
on this point, I'll actually Trim or Cut
| | 01:30 | those parts of the video.
| | 01:32 | Once you do that, there will be a
faded version of the color of that clip.
| | 01:36 | In his case, it is like this aqua color.
| | 01:38 | There will be a faded area that
indicates that there is content there,
| | 01:42 | but we are just not seeing it.
| | 01:43 | If I were to click and drag on this clip
and move it to the right, you would see
| | 01:48 | that there is this gray area here.
| | 01:50 | And we will be able to see the
line where the clip would run out.
| | 01:54 | So, we could extend it back to that
point, but we couldn't go any further,
| | 01:59 | because there is no original content there.
| | 02:01 | So, again, this faded area tells us
that there is source material there, if we
| | 02:05 | wanted to expand this point.
| | 02:08 | Now I'm going to Undo what I did.
| | 02:09 | But instead of using Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
to back up, what I am going to do is I am
| | 02:13 | going to press Option+Home on the
Mac or Alt+Home on the PC, to take the
| | 02:18 | beginning of our layer and make it
start at the first frame of the Composition.
| | 02:23 | Now again, my Current Time Indicator is
still at four seconds and 8 frames in.
| | 02:27 | So, I am going to Trim, and while I
Trim, I am going to hold the Shift key.
| | 02:30 | That will cause your Trimming to
Snap to the Current Time Indicator.
| | 02:35 | So, in case you are worried about
getting exactly to that exact frame,
| | 02:38 | you could hold the Shift
key down and fix it that way.
| | 02:41 | Now you can also Trim the end of clips.
| | 02:45 | So, if you want to chop off
some of the end here, same thing.
| | 02:48 | We could see the leftover
footage that we've Trimmed.
| | 02:51 | And we can go and Undo that at
any time if you want to as well.
| | 02:55 | But this is a way of shortening Layer
Duration of Trimming off the beginning and
| | 02:59 | Trimming off the end of clips.
| | 03:01 | Now technically, this is not Trimming.
| | 03:03 | But if you're working with video editing,
and you find yourself wanting to split a layer,
| | 03:07 | you could select the layer and hit
Command+D or Ctrl+D on the PC, to
| | 03:13 | Duplicate the layer.
| | 03:14 | And then you can Trim.
| | 03:16 | So, in other words, if you want to use
the beginning of the clip at one spot,
| | 03:19 | and the end of it later, we could
Trim this so that, like here we have the
| | 03:23 | beginning of the clip at one spot.
| | 03:25 | And then later on, we have the
end of the clip in another spot.
| | 03:29 | And we can Trim and expand these as well.
| | 03:32 | But what we can also do is go to the
Edit menu and choose Split layer, and that
| | 03:37 | will split the layer at
the Current Time Indicator.
| | 03:40 | So, basically, Duplicate the layer
and everything before the Current Time
| | 03:43 | Indicator will go on one layer, and
everything after it will go on another layer.
| | 03:46 | Now I strongly recommend that you
only use the video editing tools in After
| | 03:52 | Effect as a last-ditch measure, only when you
need to get things exactly the way you want them.
| | 03:58 | After Effects is not meant
to be a video editing program.
| | 04:01 | When you play back video, it has to load
into RAM before you could see it in real speed.
| | 04:05 | It's not meant to be a video editor.
| | 04:08 | So, the techniques I am showing you
here in this movie and in this chapter,
| | 04:11 | they are for using in
conjunction with other techniques.
| | 04:14 | So, while you're working on
Compositing, while you're working on Motion
| | 04:17 | Graphics, you need to be able to
kind of fine tune things a little bit -
| | 04:20 | then you could use these skills and features.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Trimming in the Footage panel| 00:00 | In the last movie, we saw how to
trim footage in the Timeline panel.
| | 00:04 | There are lot of times, such as the last movie,
as a matter of fact, where we had a 54 second long clip,
| | 00:09 | and this one we have 19 second long clip.
| | 00:11 | But these clips are just way too long to
put in the average After Effects Timeline.
| | 00:15 | In it's entirely, usually you just
want one little snippet from that clip.
| | 00:19 | So, what we can do is actually double
-click a clip in the project panel.
| | 00:23 | This won't add it to a composition.
| | 00:25 | This will open it up in
what we call the Footage panel.
| | 00:28 | You can tell the difference between the
Composition panel and the Footage panel
| | 00:31 | by the colors of these swatches
here, and also because of the name.
| | 00:34 | It will say, Composition here,
showing us our composition.
| | 00:37 | And this will say Footage,
showing us just this footage.
| | 00:39 | Now what we can do is skim this clip.
And there is a lot going on here in this clip,
| | 00:43 | if I were to scrub it.
| | 00:44 | There is this initial jump that's
really cool, and then it turns into like the
| | 00:49 | equivalent of a skateboarding real slide.
| | 00:51 | And then there is almost like a 720-degree
flip here, and let's say that's what we want.
| | 00:57 | So, I am going to back up right
before this, and it's good to get a little
| | 01:00 | extra, a little buffer on both sides, just
in case you decide to use some of that layer.
| | 01:05 | I want to click this left little button here.
| | 01:07 | That's going to click and set the
In point of this clip, and I'm going to go out
| | 01:12 | until the snowboarder lands the clip
right about there. And I'll go ahead an
| | 01:19 | click an Out point for it.
| | 01:21 | And we'll click this button there to do that.
| | 01:23 | And as you could see, that's almost
like trimming in the Timeline, where we
| | 01:26 | have cropped this to -
| | 01:27 | this is the In point, and this is the Out point.
| | 01:29 | And again, just like in the Timeline
panel, as we saw in the last movie, you can
| | 01:31 | extend this if we want to after the
fact. We haven't destroyed anything.
| | 01:36 | So, it's still there.
| | 01:37 | And then we want to add it to our Timeline.
| | 01:38 | We can click this button here to
perform an overlay edit, or click this button
| | 01:43 | here to perform the ripple insert edit.
| | 01:45 | Now let me go back to the
Footage panel here and show you those
| | 01:48 | buttons, again, a little bit more
closely. The one here on the right is
| | 01:50 | the Overlay button.
| | 01:51 | That's going to replace
whatever layer is selected.
| | 01:54 | And if you select this button, the
Ripple Insert Edit, what that's going to do
| | 01:58 | is it's going to move a space, or
create a space for this clip, and then move
| | 02:02 | everything else to the right.
| | 02:03 | I should also point out that once you
have created your In point of your footage
| | 02:07 | that where it actually starts
from, any Out point of your footage.
| | 02:10 | You'll see that here.
| | 02:11 | You'll see the In point, the Out point,
and then the clip duration as it stands.
| | 02:16 | Let's see where we take the
Out point, and make the Out point longer.
| | 02:20 | You can see that the Out point is
extending here, and it's also increasing the
| | 02:23 | duration of the clip.
| | 02:25 | Notice that as I go back to the
Footage panel, it's not adjusting what we've
| | 02:29 | already added to the Timeline panel.
| | 02:31 | But now if we go back to the
Composition panel, you'll see that, in our
| | 02:34 | composition, we have this clip, and
we don't have anything else before it.
| | 02:38 | So, if we go to the beginning of our
composition, we'll see the beginning of the
| | 02:41 | snowboarding clip, and the Out point
will be when the snowboarder lands, and
| | 02:46 | nothing else from the video.
| | 02:47 | Now again, we have this faded area here.
| | 02:50 | So, if we wanted to extend it, we could.
| | 02:52 | So, it would match
what is in the Project panel.
| | 02:55 | But that is a good way to make sure that
you don't have these huge 20-second, 50-
| | 02:59 | second long clips in your
Timeline panel trying to trim them here.
| | 03:03 | It's usually best to get what
you need in the Footage panel
| | 03:06 | and then bring that to your composition, so
you have a small amount to work with.
| | 03:10 | Now, let's see that you do add a
really long clip to your Timeline.
| | 03:14 | I'll just go ahead and drag this
clip into our Timeline panel here.
| | 03:18 | So, we're seeing now the shortened
clip, and then we're also seeing the
| | 03:21 | full-length clip on top.
| | 03:23 | What I can do is double-click that clip,
and it will open in yet another window,
| | 03:28 | which also looks like the
Composition panel, and the Footage panel.
| | 03:31 | It's called the Layer panel.
| | 03:33 | And this Layer panel will allow you to
preview just this layer without any of
| | 03:37 | the effects you might have applied to it.
| | 03:39 | And then you could go ahead and set an
In point, set an Out point, if you wanted to.
| | 03:43 | And you could see that the clip in
the Timeline panel changes accordingly.
| | 03:48 | So, it's just kind of like the Footage
panel, but for layers that are already
| | 03:51 | in your composition.
| | 03:52 | And this is why it's good to remember
that when you want to rename a layer,
| | 03:55 | you press the Return key, and you
don't double-click the layer, which is a
| | 03:59 | tendency for a lot of people.
| | 04:00 | Also, know that once you make edits in
the Layer panel, or the Footage panel,
| | 04:04 | you don't need to keep it open.
| | 04:05 | You can click the little X to the
right of the name and get back to the
| | 04:09 | Composition panel if you want to.
| | 04:10 | So, just a couple of extra places to trim video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Slowing and accelerating video speed| 00:00 | One of things that we After Effects
users do on quite a regular basis is to
| | 00:05 | play around with the speed of clips.
| | 00:07 | We slow them down, or speed them up.
| | 00:09 | So, I want to show you a little
bit about how to do that here.
| | 00:11 | We have two different clips
that we're going to be looking at.
| | 00:13 | The first one is this dancing girl clip.
| | 00:15 | This is actually my little daughter
Natalie. And the footage is blurry, but
| | 00:19 | still adorable nonetheless. And she is
dancing around here, having a good time
| | 00:23 | to Frosty the Snowman.
| | 00:25 | And so what I am going to do is go
over here to the column in the Timeline
| | 00:28 | panel, maybe next where it says, Parent,
or one of mode switches areas, whatever.
| | 00:32 | Right-click on this bar, and then go to Columns.
| | 00:35 | These are different columns that we
can access here, just like Parent is a
| | 00:39 | Column, and layer Name is a Column.
| | 00:41 | We'll go to Columns, and choose Stretch.
| | 00:43 | This allows us to control
the stretch of the clip.
| | 00:47 | So, if we took this down, it
stretches to maybe only, like 50% of the clip.
| | 00:52 | Then it's basically making
this 50% of the duration.
| | 00:55 | So, by making it 50% of the
duration, it has to speed it up.
| | 00:59 | So, if we now hit the Spacebar to
preview this, we can see, and actually, it's
| | 01:04 | kind of loading in to RAM, so
it's not previewing in real-time.
| | 01:07 | I'll just go ahead and stop that, hit the
Home key to backup, and now play this back.
| | 01:13 | And there we go.
| | 01:13 | It's going twice the speed.
| | 01:16 | Now, but opposite is also true.
| | 01:18 | We can click and drag this to the right
and take this all the way up above even
| | 01:22 | 100%, let's say 200% for right now.
| | 01:25 | And that will make this clip twice as long.
| | 01:28 | So, as we play this now, we have this
very beautiful slow motion rendition of my
| | 01:35 | little girl dancing.
| | 01:36 | So, I'm going to go ahead and render
this, and we'll see what it looks like.
| | 01:42 | Now, you'll notice how fast
that rendered, very, very quickly.
| | 01:46 | And you'll also notice that this is
a little bit jagged. Here is why.
| | 01:49 | Let me actually just play that back for you,
0 on the numeric keypad is the RAM Preview.
| | 01:53 | See it's going in slow
motion there. Very, very pretty.
| | 01:57 | But again, you'll notice that with the
RAM previews, the green bar here, that
| | 02:01 | it's really staggered.
| | 02:02 | Now, what's going on here
when you stretch something,
| | 02:05 | if I hit Page Down to go from frame-to
-frame, you'll see that we have a new
| | 02:09 | frame, and I hit Page Down again.
| | 02:11 | I go to a duplicate frame,
and then I go to a new frame.
| | 02:14 | And then the next frame is just a copy,
and the next frame is a new frame.
| | 02:18 | So, really what it's done, in
order to stretch it to 200%, is it has
| | 02:22 | duplicated every frame twice.
| | 02:24 | Now this looks pretty, but it's a very
like circa 1990s slow-motion, because
| | 02:30 | it's a little choppy.
| | 02:31 | It's not completely smooth.
| | 02:32 | Again, it's copying every single frame.
| | 02:35 | It's still a cute effect, but
there is a better way to do this here.
| | 02:38 | I am going to take that stretch, and I
am just going to click in this field and
| | 02:42 | click 100 in the Stretch
Factor field here and click OK.
| | 02:45 | I'll take it back to our original speed.
| | 02:48 | I am going to apply the Timewarp effect.
| | 02:52 | And the Timewarp effect is a more
intelligent way to play with time.
| | 02:58 | And because it's a more intelligent way to
play with time, it takes a lot longer to render.
| | 03:02 | When I am talk about lot longer to
render, I mean a lot longer to render.
| | 03:06 | So, be aware of that.
| | 03:07 | By default, the Speed value here is
set to 50, which means 50% of the speed, so
| | 03:13 | the numbers are kind of backwards.
| | 03:15 | With the Stretch column, when we take
something to 50, it means we're speeding
| | 03:19 | it up, because it's only half of the duration.
| | 03:21 | But in the Timewarp effect,
speed refers to the actual speed.
| | 03:26 | So, 50 will actually slow it down,
cut the speed in half, and 200 would be
| | 03:31 | making it twice as fast.
| | 03:33 | So, we're going to hit the Home key
| | 03:34 | and back up here. I am going
to do a RAM Preview of this.
| | 03:36 | But because it take so long, we're just
going to go ahead and edit this out, so
| | 03:40 | you could see the final result.
| | 03:43 | So, with that long render, this is what we have.
| | 03:48 | So, it's just more smooth, and more fluid.
| | 03:51 | If we're going to pause this here, After
Effects is intelligently figuring out what
| | 03:55 | comes in between the new frames.
| | 03:58 | So, if we hit Page Down, we could
see that After Effects is actually
| | 04:01 | synthetically creating every other frame.
| | 04:05 | It's really amazing, and it creates a
very, very smooth slow-motion effect.
| | 04:10 | Now this is no replacement for in-
camera slow motion, like when you over
| | 04:15 | crank footage on your video camera.
You record at a faster frame rate, so
| | 04:19 | that when you bring it into the
main Timeline in your system here, it's
| | 04:22 | actual true slow motion. That's the best.
| | 04:25 | But in a pinch, if you cannot get
that, then this works quite well.
| | 04:30 | Of course, slow-motion
stuff is always fantastic.
| | 04:33 | If we go to the Project panel,
there is this clip of me doing a little
| | 04:36 | improv sappy piano. And if we play this back
with the piano, it's kind of a touching effect.
| | 04:42 | (Piano playing)
| | 04:56 | Pretty fun.
| | 04:57 | Let's go over to the Clip05,
the snowboarding clip we have seen before.
| | 05:01 | Now this clip is actually
already in slow motion a little bit.
| | 05:05 | Again, this is the in-camera slow
motion I was talking about, that when they
| | 05:08 | filmed it they filmed it in slow motion.
| | 05:10 | And it looks pretty good here.
| | 05:13 | In this case, what I would do is I
would just avoid the Timewarp effect
| | 05:17 | completely, unless you were going to
slow it down even more, which you could do.
| | 05:21 | If you go to the Columns area, we'll go
to Stretch, and we stretch this, I don't
| | 05:25 | know, to maybe 50% or so. And then as
you preview this back, it renders very
| | 05:30 | quickly - in contrast to what we just saw
with Timewarp. And it appears to almost
| | 05:35 | bring this back into full
speed, which is very interesting.
| | 05:38 | So, I'll preview this back and look how fastly
that rendered, and I did just say fastly.
| | 05:45 | Go ahead and apply the
Timewarp effect to this clip.
| | 05:49 | I want to show you something else.
| | 05:50 | If we go back to the dancing girl,
sometimes you will have occasional artifacts.
| | 05:56 | There isn't artifact right there.
| | 05:57 | They are just kind of like this little
like thing that flies off like a little
| | 06:00 | tentacle, or something that's not
there in the frame before, or in the frame
| | 06:03 | after, but in the process of
synthetically creating these frames, sometimes
| | 06:08 | After Effects will do really weird things.
| | 06:10 | There is another thing too.
| | 06:11 | That's not really what her hand was
doing in the clip, but that's just what
| | 06:14 | happens with Timewarp.
| | 06:15 | For whatever reason, this exact clip
of my daughter dancing here, this is
| | 06:19 | probably the worst case I've seen of it.
It usually doesn't artifact that much. But just
| | 06:23 | to show you that it can actually work very well,
| | 06:26 | I apply the Timewarp effect.
| | 06:28 | We'll take Stretch back to 100%, and
then with the Speed value at 50%, we know
| | 06:32 | that After Effects is actually
creating every other frame from scratch.
| | 06:35 | So, it's slowing down the slow-motion,
and it's still just looks fantastic,
| | 06:40 | every frame, after frame, after frame,
even in an action shot like this, it's
| | 06:44 | still just looks fantastic.
| | 06:46 | So, again, just to sum up, if you're looking
for quick rendering, you stretch in the Timeline Panel.
| | 06:51 | If you have the render time, and you're
looking for a little bit more quality,
| | 06:54 | then go ahead and use the Timewarp
effect, But unless you know exactly what
| | 06:59 | you're doing, and you've mastered the
Timewarp effect, typically only use the
| | 07:02 | Timewarp effect to slow down footage.
| | 07:04 | You typically want to speed up
footage still using the Stretch panel here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying video transitions between clips| 00:00 | Like most other video programs,
After Effects has ability to add
| | 00:04 | transitions, which is basically what
happens when you go from one video clip
| | 00:07 | to another video clip.
| | 00:09 | In most dedicated video editing programs,
such as Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro,
| | 00:14 | the animation that happens is automatic.
| | 00:16 | But here in After Effects we need to,
typically, manually transition from
| | 00:20 | one clip to the next.
| | 00:21 | So, to set this up, what I have
done is I have got two clips here.
| | 00:24 | One are these clips of these
flowers moving from right to left.
| | 00:29 | Then we can remove the visibility of this
top layer, and we could see that we have
| | 00:32 | these candles that were
moving from left to right.
| | 00:35 | So, it's kind of like a similar
motion here. The camera is basically going
| | 00:39 | from left to right.
| | 00:41 | So, what we are going to do is we are going
to transition from one clip to the other clip.
| | 00:45 | For that to happen, you
need to have overlapping clips.
| | 00:48 | But basically you could see here we have
one clips stacked on top of the other clip.
| | 00:51 | So, what I am going to do is go to
Effects and Presets panel, and I am going to
| | 00:54 | go to the Transition category.
| | 00:56 | These are where you'll
find the video transitions.
| | 00:58 | Some of these, like the Cycore ones, they
are a little bit over the top, but also
| | 01:02 | can be quite interesting
like CC Jaws, for example.
| | 01:04 | You see that we have this Completion parameter.
| | 01:08 | This is pretty much common to
most or all of the effects in the
| | 01:11 | Transitions category.
| | 01:12 | It's basically determines how complete the
transition is. By default, it's set to 0%, usually.
| | 01:18 | We can animate this to go from 0-100,
to reveal the clip beneath it.
| | 01:23 | Now, I definitely don't want to go
through all the settings in this effect, and
| | 01:27 | I don't want to go through every affect.
| | 01:28 | I kind of want to just give you a
basic idea of what's possible here in the
| | 01:31 | Transition category.
| | 01:32 | What's cool about these effects
is that they can often be used for
| | 01:36 | unconventional methods, like for example,
earlier in the strings here, we have
| | 01:39 | looked at that project with Radial Wipe.
| | 01:41 | We use this as kind of like a
motion graphics tool to animate some dots
| | 01:45 | coming on the screen.
| | 01:46 | So, that's cool for stuff like that.
| | 01:48 | You might use this as a kind of like a border.
| | 01:50 | Maybe you don't want to
animate the Completion value.
| | 01:52 | You just leave it as a border.
| | 01:53 | So, like, as you play these clips, then
you have kind of like this cool border
| | 01:58 | going on, and you don't animate the Completion.
| | 02:00 | We could change the direction here, so
maybe it's on like the left and right side.
| | 02:04 | Maybe this some other type of like animated
texture in the background here or something.
| | 02:09 | We could change the height.
| | 02:11 | We could change the width of these Spikes.
| | 02:13 | We could even change whether they are
Spikes or whether it's RoboJaw, which is
| | 02:16 | like flat Spikes or Blocks, or what have you.
| | 02:18 | So, a lot of parameters
here with the CC Jaws effect.
| | 02:22 | You could see that it's not
just for Transitions necessarily.
| | 02:26 | I am going to select this effect,
in the Effect Controls panel, hit the
| | 02:28 | Delete key to delete it.
| | 02:30 | There is a few other standard
effects, such as Linear Wipe.
| | 02:33 | This is very simple here.
| | 02:34 | Basically, the Linear Wipe
does exactly what it says.
| | 02:37 | It just sweeps one clip away
with a line to reveal the next clip.
| | 02:41 | Very simple parameters here:
| | 02:43 | we have the Wipe Angle, and we can Feather that
| | 02:46 | so it's a little bit more of a soft edge.
| | 02:48 | Again, this can allow you to create
some interesting effect that you might
| | 02:51 | not want to animate.
| | 02:52 | You might not want to use this as a
Transition, but just use it as kind of a a
| | 02:55 | nice like soft feathered texture
in the corner or something like that.
| | 02:58 | So, you could see, as we're
removing in time, what that looks like.
| | 03:01 | Now one of these effects
is just ridiculously cool.
| | 03:05 | I am going to select Linear Wipe and delete it.
| | 03:06 | I'm going to play the Card
Wipe effect to that top layer.
| | 03:10 | Now first thing we know is that Card Wipe
is very complex compared to the others.
| | 03:15 | The other thing we notice is that it
looks terrible in its default settings.
| | 03:17 | If I move around Transition Completion,
we can see that basically it kind of is
| | 03:21 | like this blocky 1980s-
looking texture that goes through.
| | 03:25 | However, if I take this Transition
Completion to around 40, 50, 60% somewhere
| | 03:30 | around there, then we go down to the
Camera Position category of parameters.
| | 03:35 | Open that up, and adjust Y Rotation.
| | 03:38 | We will see that what's going on here
is that After Effects is turning the top
| | 03:43 | layer into a series of three-
dimensional flipping cards.
| | 03:48 | So, when we adjust Transition
Completion, what we are actually doing is
| | 03:51 | flipping these cards around.
| | 03:54 | If we wanted to, we could change the
Back layer, in other words what's on the
| | 03:57 | back of the cards, to the Merch_Candles layer.
| | 04:00 | That's the Candle layer. So, we can
transition to that layer behind it if we wanted to.
| | 04:04 | Actually, the purpose of the effect is
that it create that stadium look, where
| | 04:07 | it looks everyone in the stadium is
holding a certain card, like for a cell
| | 04:10 | phone company or something.
| | 04:11 | They flip it upside down to
reveal a logo or what have you.
| | 04:14 | So, you could see, we have one side of the
layer and through Transition Completion
| | 04:19 | we could flip the cards over
and flip to the other layer.
| | 04:23 | Now, another thing, too, is we go
down here to position Jitter, and we could
| | 04:26 | increase Z Jitter Amount.
This is the position, Z position.
| | 04:30 | So, there is X is left or right, Y is
up and down, and Z is towards you and
| | 04:36 | further away from you.
| | 04:37 | So, as we increase the Z Jitter Amount,
we are increasing the distance between
| | 04:42 | the cards and the camera,
which is really kind of cool.
| | 04:46 | So, now as we move the Y Rotation
on, again, we have this series of 3-
| | 04:50 | dimensional cards, very cool stuff.
| | 04:52 | I might even want to just like take off
the visibility of the Candles layer, and
| | 04:56 | just play around with what I can
come up with, with Card Wipe, without a
| | 05:01 | Background, or some other kind of
textures of background - maybe not use this as a
| | 05:03 | Transition, but just as a way to
create cool cards or something.
| | 05:07 | One other thing that I have also
used this for is starting a Transition
| | 05:10 | Completion at a different spot.
| | 05:12 | Let's say I take down to 0%, I guess.
| | 05:15 | Then with the Z Jitter Amount values
really, really high, maybe even X Jitter
| | 05:20 | Amount and Y Jitter Amount really, really high,
| | 05:22 | so it looks like just like a series
of crazy pictures all over the place.
| | 05:25 | Then what we could do is animate these,
so that these elements that the values
| | 05:30 | reduce drastically here, and
animate to have no Jitter Amount.
| | 05:36 | So, they kind of gather back
together, and then flip at the same time.
| | 05:40 | So, it's almost like a logo gathering together.
| | 05:43 | A very cool effect with this awesome
Card Wipe effect it's kind of stowed away
| | 05:47 | in the Transition category, which is not
typically where you would find a lot of
| | 05:50 | really powerful effects.
| | 05:51 | But this just happens to be one that you
might want to experiment and play around with.
| | 05:56 | Again, as with all other effects,
there is that After Effect effects Training
| | 05:59 | Series on lynda.com that goes into
great detail about all that you ever want to
| | 06:03 | know, and probably more, about Card Wipe.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with image sequences| 00:00 | Pretty much every time I teach a
video training series here at lynda.com, I
| | 00:04 | include a movie about using Image Sequences.
| | 00:07 | I don't think anyone ever watches them or cares,
| | 00:10 | but I use Image Sequence all the time.
| | 00:12 | They are so helpful.
| | 00:14 | Give them a chance.
| | 00:15 | What am I going to do is go to the
Project panel, double-click in the Project
| | 00:18 | panel to open up the Import File
dialog box and then go to the Media folder
| | 00:22 | inside the Exercise Files.
| | 00:23 | Go to Images/robot render.
| | 00:26 | You'll notice a series of tga files.
| | 00:29 | TGA is short for Targa.
| | 00:31 | So, these are Targa files, which
are a series of still image files.
| | 00:35 | Now, what I am going to do is uncheck
Targa Sequence, so this is not checked.
| | 00:40 | If I bring this in and go ahead and just
leave this at Straight Unmatted, click OK,
| | 00:46 | we could see here that we have a still image.
| | 00:48 | We could double-click on this to
open this up in the Footage panel.
| | 00:51 | This is just one still image.
| | 00:54 | There is no Timeline here.
| | 00:55 | There is no movie to speak
of, just one single image.
| | 00:58 | Now, if I go back, double-
click in a Project panel again.
| | 01:01 | Go back to that same folder.
| | 01:03 | Select that first file, which
is the eddie technology0000.tga.
| | 01:09 | This time, check Target Sequence. And as
you'll notice, that I've numbered these,
| | 01:13 | 0000 and in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, on
until we get to the end, which is a 120.
| | 01:18 | So, we actually have 120 images in this folder.
| | 01:22 | When we check Target Sequence,
After Effects is going to look at all of
| | 01:26 | these images in order.
| | 01:28 | It's going to notice the numeric sequence.
| | 01:30 | It's going to import all
these images as one file.
| | 01:35 | Notice that it says here,
eddie technology0000-0120.
| | 01:40 | So, now if I double-click this to open it
up, it's going to be a series of images.
| | 01:46 | I mean, after all, isn't that what video
is, just a series of images played back?
| | 01:50 | So, now we have this movie clip, essentially.
| | 01:53 | It's not really a movie clip.
| | 01:54 | It's just a series of
images, played one after another,
| | 01:57 | but After Effects treats it like a movie.
| | 01:59 | Now, why is that important to you?
| | 02:00 | I'm glad you asked.
| | 02:02 | I use image sequences all the time,
and I use these for a few reasons.
| | 02:06 | Number one, oftentimes, in this day and
age of the Internet and whatnot, a lot
| | 02:10 | of the business I do is across the web.
| | 02:13 | Even 10 years ago, it was the case that
if you are going to be working on a big
| | 02:16 | video project, you had to be
in the same city as your client.
| | 02:19 | Now, you could be across the world
from them, and you could upload files, go
| | 02:22 | back and forth through the power of the web.
| | 02:25 | If you render out a movie file, it
might be a colossal movie file that's
| | 02:29 | really hard to transport.
| | 02:31 | But if you use image sequences, you
can actually break up those images into
| | 02:35 | groups and then send them a few at a time.
| | 02:38 | Also, if you get some kind of
corruption inside of your video file, then the
| | 02:42 | whole file is toast.
| | 02:43 | But with an image sequence, you can
just toss out that one file and replace it.
| | 02:47 | Also too, when I do work and I have image
sequences, it is so much more convenient
| | 02:51 | because if I need to, let say, for
example, I did a commercial one time and
| | 02:55 | the client gave me a series of still images.
| | 02:58 | It was just like this folder.
| | 02:59 | I am actually was going to right-click,
and choose Reveal in finder, to show you
| | 03:02 | what I am talking about here.
| | 03:04 | So, here are these images in my Finder here.
| | 03:07 | Basically, let's say, for example,
this was a special effects shot.
| | 03:10 | These were still images from
a movie file that I was working on.
| | 03:13 | It only needed this group of files.
| | 03:16 | So, I was only working on these few frames.
| | 03:18 | Well, I could take all the rest of
these frames and just delete them.
| | 03:21 | It's almost like doing video editing
before you even bring it into a system
| | 03:24 | because I can just select these images and
delete them, or just not even bring them in.
| | 03:27 | Also, as I'll show you how to do later
on in this training series, when you are
| | 03:30 | rendering to movie, when you are
outputting something like this, you can choose
| | 03:34 | to output to a series of still images.
| | 03:36 | And that will make it so that if
After Effects crashes on one frame, you
| | 03:40 | don't lose everything, which is what
you'd do if you're rendering out one
| | 03:43 | solitary movie file.
| | 03:45 | If there is one corrupt frame in there,
and it crashes, then you've got to start
| | 03:49 | all over again the rendering process.
| | 03:51 | But if it is the still image sequence,
then you only have to throw away that one
| | 03:54 | image that it crashed on, and you
continue rendering from that spot.
| | 03:57 | Now, one final benefit that's very
important about image sequences is that they
| | 04:02 | are much more compatible with everything.
| | 04:05 | Chances are some of you watching
this training series will have some
| | 04:08 | problem whatsoever,
| | 04:10 | probably if you are on Windows,
with some of these video files.
| | 04:12 | There is just something in
Operating Systems or whatever.
| | 04:16 | There's just issues when it
comes to compression in video.
| | 04:19 | Just not everybody can read
or view every format of video.
| | 04:23 | However, almost anyone can
open a Targa file or a JPEG.
| | 04:27 | So, if you make a series of JPEGs or
Targa files or TIFFs or what have you,
| | 04:31 | then chances are almost everybody
on any platform is going to be able to
| | 04:35 | open up and use those files without any
kind of compression or codec issue whatsoever.
| | 04:40 | So, you can choose to work how you want,
but personally, I use image sequences
| | 04:45 | as often as possible.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing footage with an alpha channel| 00:00 | You may have noticed in the last movie
when we imported the robot files, which
| | 00:04 | we can do right now,
| | 00:04 | actually. Go in the Project panel.
Double-click. Go back to the robot render
| | 00:08 | folder, inside of the Images folder.
| | 00:10 | I believe it's called Images.
| | 00:12 | And that's inside the Media
folder of the Exercise Files folder.
| | 00:15 | Go ahead and click on the first eddie
technology Targa file with Targa Sequence
| | 00:19 | checked and click Open there.
| | 00:21 | You might have noticed this little
dialog box, which is largely important, and
| | 00:26 | what this says, this "item
has an unlabeled Alpha Channel."
| | 00:29 | Alpha Channels are a huge component
when working with After Effects, whether
| | 00:34 | you're working with motion graphics,
like files brought in from Photoshop and
| | 00:37 | Illustrator, or whether you are
working with files brought in from a 3D
| | 00:41 | program, maybe for compositing,
whether you're working with green screen
| | 00:45 | footage or what have you.
| | 00:46 | This is largely importantly.
| | 00:47 | Basically, what an Alpha Channel is,
it's a component of a file that tells it
| | 00:51 | about transparency information.
| | 00:54 | Now, what I'm going to do is I'm
going to, in the Alpha Channel area, I'm
| | 00:57 | going to click Ignore.
| | 00:59 | This will basically make it as if there
were no Alpha Channels, just regular old files.
| | 01:04 | We're going to ignore that. Click OK.
And then what I'm going to do is I'm going
| | 01:08 | to drag this footage to my Composition here.
| | 01:11 | Now you'll notice, if I click this Eye
icon for this layer and turn this layer
| | 01:15 | off and on, we could see that there was
a background here, and we wanted to put
| | 01:20 | our robot on top of that background.
Instead, we get the robot and the black
| | 01:25 | background, which we don't want.
| | 01:26 | What we really want to do is bring in
this robot with the Alpha Channel, so
| | 01:31 | there's transparency here, so we
could see the background around the robot.
| | 01:35 | There are some ways to remove this
black background, but that's a huge step.
| | 01:40 | It's tedious, and it doesn't always
work that great, especially on footage
| | 01:44 | like this that it's not intended to be used on.
| | 01:46 | So, what I'm going to do is, instead of
re-importing this, which is one option,
| | 01:50 | what we could do is select this
footage and then come down here to the bottom
| | 01:53 | left-hand corner of the Project panel.
And there's this little icon right here
| | 01:56 | that says Interpret Footage.
| | 01:58 | So, if we click that, this gives us a bunch
of options for how to interpret our footage.
| | 02:02 | So, if there's problems with
interlacing and some other video issues, the
| | 02:05 | frame rate or whatever, we could go
in here and choose to change how After
| | 02:10 | Effects views this footage.
| | 02:12 | In this case, we're going to change the alpha.
| | 02:13 | So, by default, it's set to Ignore.
| | 02:16 | We're going to change
this to Straight - Unmatted.
| | 02:18 | By the way, by just clicking that, you
could see now that we have our robot, and
| | 02:22 | our black background is gone.
| | 02:25 | It is exactly what we wanted.
| | 02:26 | We could also Invert the alpha, which
basically makes a hole where our robot
| | 02:31 | was, but we don't want that.
| | 02:33 | I'm just going to uncheck that here.
| | 02:34 | You might be wondering what the difference is
between Straight - Unmatted and Premultiplied.
| | 02:38 | Here's the difference.
| | 02:38 | It's a little complex, a little
technical, but for those of you that are
| | 02:41 | interested here we've go.
| | 02:42 | A premultiplied Alpha
Channel has semi-transparent edges.
| | 02:47 | This is so if you're rendering
something from one program with an Alpha
| | 02:51 | Channel, and you know the background
that it's going to be on, like eventually -
| | 02:55 | let's say, for example, we know this guy is
going to be on this bluish type gray background.
| | 03:01 | So, what we could have done is if we had
him on this background in a 3D program,
| | 03:06 | we could have made him with a
premultiplied Alpha Channel, which would put some
| | 03:09 | semi-transparent edges around his
edge mixed with this blue-gray color.
| | 03:14 | That would make it so that when we
blend him in onto this background now, that
| | 03:18 | it blends in a little bit smoother,
because in reality, having a soft edge like
| | 03:22 | that or a slightly soft edge like that,
aids in the look of compositing.
| | 03:27 | But for simplicity's sake, you might want to
choose Straight - Unmatted if you have a choice.
| | 03:31 | That means that everywhere where
you see transparency, it's completely
| | 03:34 | transparent Everywhere where you
see opacity or an object, then there is a
| | 03:38 | more defined line there.
| | 03:40 | If from your source program, you
create a Premultiplied Alpha Channel,
| | 03:43 | you'll need to know what color
it's matted with and choose that here.
| | 03:47 | If you're going to create Alpha
Channels from Photoshop, which is another
| | 03:50 | subject entirely, but if you know how to
do that, you can choose Straight - Unmatted.
| | 03:54 | That's the kind of Alpha Channels that
Photoshop creates for you, and this file
| | 03:58 | is created with a Straight
- Unmatted Alpha Channel.
| | 03:59 | So, there you have it.
| | 04:01 | We have a nicely composited robot here
because we used the Alpha Channel.
| | 04:06 | It saves you a lot of headache, and
it will come in handy later on when we
| | 04:10 | talk about compositing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Color-Correcting FootageBrightening dark footage| 00:00 | Folks, I am really excited about this chapter.
| | 00:03 | We're going to be covering Color
Correction, which is such a huge deal in After
| | 00:07 | Effects. Whether you're selling a
product, like making a commercial or something,
| | 00:10 | or whether you're making just like a
cool animation or whether you're working on
| | 00:14 | a film - no matter what you do in After
Effects, color-correcting it with the
| | 00:17 | tools that we'll be going through in
this chapter, it really has the ability to
| | 00:21 | take your work from just kind
of okay to absolutely phenomenal.
| | 00:25 | First, in this movie, we're going to be
talking about brightening dark footage
| | 00:28 | and also darkening shadow areas,
which may be a little bit too bright.
| | 00:32 | I'm also going to give you some
artistic warnings here as we're going.
| | 00:36 | So, what I'm going to do is go to
this arrangingFlowers composition, select
| | 00:39 | the arrangingFlowers layer, and then what
we're going to do is search on the Levels effect.
| | 00:45 | So, go ahead and double-click the
Levels effect, with that layer selected,
| | 00:49 | to apply the Levels effect.
| | 00:50 | The Levels effect now in CS5 has kind
of two categories, or two ways of looking
| | 00:56 | at this little diagram called a Histogram.
| | 00:59 | This bottom button shows us the
Brightness information. And when we click on
| | 01:03 | this top button, it shows the color
information for each color channel.
| | 01:07 | For right now, it doesn't really
matter which one you choose, although I'm
| | 01:10 | going to leave this selected at the
bottom circle here so we can just see this
| | 01:13 | one gray histogram.
| | 01:15 | Now the histogram looks pretty complicated.
| | 01:17 | It's actually not very complicated.
| | 01:19 | What this is showing us here is the
shadow values on the left-hand side and the
| | 01:23 | highlights on the right-hand side,
and the middle values in the middle.
| | 01:27 | The height of the chart is comprised of
pixels or content in the footage that is
| | 01:35 | of that brightness level.
| | 01:36 | So, right now, what this is telling us
is there is a lot of shadow area and dark
| | 01:40 | midtone stuff, but even of regular
midtones and of highlights - there is nothing.
| | 01:45 | This line is flat.
| | 01:46 | So, there really are no highlights.
| | 01:48 | So, what we're going to do here is
grab this right triangle, which indicates
| | 01:52 | our highlights, and we're going to
drag it to the current brightest point of
| | 01:57 | the image, which is right about
there. And then that tells us that that
| | 02:02 | bright-gray is now white.
| | 02:04 | And look at our scene.
| | 02:04 | It looks fantastic.
| | 02:05 | We could also go to this Midtone
slider and click and drag to the left to
| | 02:10 | make the midtones brighter and drag to the
right to make the midtones darker if we wanted to.
| | 02:15 | But the cool thing about levels is that
Shadows and Highlights stay where they are.
| | 02:21 | When you adjust any one of these
triangles, the other two do not move.
| | 02:24 | So, it looks like we're brightening
the entire thing and darkening the entire
| | 02:27 | thing by adjusting this
middle triangle, but we're not.
| | 02:30 | Highlights and Shadows stay exactly the same.
| | 02:33 | That is really why I like
using the Levels effect.
| | 02:36 | If we were to use, say, for example,
the Hue/Saturation effect, I'm going to
| | 02:39 | type in Hue, to get the Hue/
Saturation effect and apply that really quick.
| | 02:43 | You have to follow along with this.
| | 02:44 | I just wanted to show you this as an example.
| | 02:46 | And actually, we'll be looking at the
Hue/Saturation effect in the next movie,
| | 02:49 | but this is one thing that you
probably wouldn't want to do with that.
| | 02:52 | If I increase Master Lightness, what
that's going to do is it's going to
| | 02:55 | universally lighten every pixel.
| | 02:58 | So, you see the difference? Even
the shadow areas and the midtones.
| | 03:01 | Everything is lightened.
| | 03:02 | Likewise, if I take this to a
negative number, I'm darkening everything.
| | 03:06 | So, the highlights get dim.
| | 03:09 | So, this is bad brightness correction.
| | 03:11 | This is not what we want.
| | 03:12 | See, this is really bad.
| | 03:13 | We started losing the contrast,
losing the shadows, as opposed to Levels,
| | 03:17 | whereas we move the slider around, the shadows
stay where they are and only the midtones move.
| | 03:22 | Anyway, I am just going to delete Hue/
Saturation by selecting it and hitting the Delete key.
| | 03:27 | We're going to come back to
this example in just a moment.
| | 03:29 | I'm not done with this yet.
| | 03:30 | There's a warning I want to tell you about this.
| | 03:32 | But for now, go over to the yummy
doughnuts Composition. And here we have some
| | 03:36 | yummy doughnuts, probably the
greatest doughnuts I've ever been to, Voodoo
| | 03:39 | Doughnuts in Portland, Oregon.
| | 03:41 | This is footage that I took with my new
Canon 7D camera, and it was brand-new.
| | 03:46 | This is like the first
video that I took with it.
| | 03:48 | So, the focus is - we were just
kind of playing around with it.
| | 03:50 | But it's still beautiful footage of
some really awesome-looking doughnuts.
| | 03:54 | So, let's apply the Levels effect
here, and go ahead and apply that.
| | 03:59 | The histogram looks a little bit different.
| | 04:00 | So, let's examine what this is telling us.
| | 04:02 | Remember that the height represents the
amount of that value in the image, and
| | 04:08 | right now, there is some bright
midtones, but not any pure highlights.
| | 04:11 | There is not pure white here, and
we really don't have any pure black,
| | 04:15 | nothing in the Shadows.
| | 04:17 | So, what we do here is drag this left
slider to the right. At the first sign of a pixel,
| | 04:23 | so the first little, tiny bump here is
what we want to line up that arrow with.
| | 04:26 | And then on the right-hand side,
we want to bring this into the left.
| | 04:29 | And you'll notice, if you look at the
highlight areas in this footage, you'll
| | 04:32 | see that those areas are
becoming a little bit brighter as well.
| | 04:36 | So, now we have kind of a well-balanced
image. At least we have a pure white and
| | 04:39 | a pure black in our image.
| | 04:41 | We have good shadows and highlights.
| | 04:42 | Then we could adjust this
midtone slider as we see fit.
| | 04:45 | We can darken things by moving it to
the right, brighten things by moving it to
| | 04:49 | the left, base it according to your taste.
| | 04:51 | Now we really didn't move the
triangles that much, and the footage may look
| | 04:54 | very similar to you.
| | 04:55 | But if you click this little fx icon,
seeing the before and after, you'll see a
| | 04:59 | pretty significant difference.
If you zoom in here a little bit,
| | 05:01 | maybe you could see this a little bit
better, but look at the contrast of the
| | 05:05 | colors in the back and the depth of the
shadows are the dark-colored doughnuts on
| | 05:11 | the right-hand side here.
| | 05:12 | If we turn this effect back on,
things just appear so much more rich.
| | 05:16 | So, again, before and after.
| | 05:19 | So, essentially then, the same process
that we use to brighten dark footage is
| | 05:24 | the same process that we use to darken
rich shadows as well, the same effect.
| | 05:28 | That's basically how you
brighten dark footage or darken shadows.
| | 05:32 | So, if that's all you understood in this
movie, go ahead and close this movie now.
| | 05:34 | But for those of you that are interested
in learning a little bit more about the
| | 05:37 | art behind things, then I
invite you to keep watching.
| | 05:40 | You might have noticed that I shot
this very washed-out, like the colors
| | 05:43 | were not very rich.
| | 05:45 | When I'm shooting video, I like to do
this intentionally, because it gives
| | 05:49 | me more dynamic range.
| | 05:50 | A lot of times with cameras, they force
everything to be really high contrast,
| | 05:54 | so you get like a sexy-
looking image right out of the gate.
| | 05:57 | I don't like to shoot this way.
| | 05:58 | I like a washed-out,
what they call a flat image.
| | 06:01 | So, that way you have more
control over in postproduction.
| | 06:04 | So, if I have a flat image like this,
where the highlights are not too bright
| | 06:07 | and the shadows are not too dark, then
I have more leverage that I can use when
| | 06:11 | I come back in here in After
Effects and play with the colors.
| | 06:15 | I could do a little bit more to it.
But oftentimes, when you get really,
| | 06:18 | really bright highlights and really,
really dark shadows built into the image
| | 06:21 | that the camera takes in, then it's very hard
to come back into After Effects and fix that.
| | 06:26 | As a general rule when you're shooting
video, film is kind of like the great
| | 06:30 | standard that everyone aspires to.
| | 06:32 | You always want to try to get
your stuff to look as much like film is
| | 06:34 | possible, because of the dynamic
range of the film is so beautiful.
| | 06:38 | And basically, film does have this
kind of like washed-out look, which gives
| | 06:41 | you a lot more
flexibility to play with in post.
| | 06:44 | Now another artistic tip: going
back to this flowers shot here.
| | 06:48 | It's beautiful what we did to this, I think.
| | 06:50 | We really like brought out the
brightness and restored a lot of this.
| | 06:53 | Again, if we take off the Levels effect
here, we have the before and the after.
| | 06:57 | No question, it looks a lot better afterwards.
| | 06:59 | However, there is a little bit of a
caveat here you've got to be careful with.
| | 07:03 | This image singularly looks great.
| | 07:06 | But if we play this back,
especially zoomed in, I want you to pay close
| | 07:09 | attention to the wall in the background here.
| | 07:11 | As we play this, notice the
jitter that's happening here.
| | 07:15 | Hopefully, you're seeing that on the Internet.
| | 07:17 | But if you look all over the place,
especially in the dark areas, you'll see
| | 07:20 | tons of jitter from the
noise that's going on here.
| | 07:24 | When you shoot something that's
underexposed, it is possible, like we just saw
| | 07:29 | with the Levels effect, to bring some
of that back to lighten it up. But the
| | 07:32 | problem with that is that the extra
noise that comes from shooting underexposed,
| | 07:38 | where it's a little bit too dark like that,
| | 07:40 | it just creates all this noise.
| | 07:42 | It's almost impossible to get rid of.
| | 07:45 | The challenge there is that when you cut
this next to a shot that does have less noise,
| | 07:51 | that is well-lit, like these candles here,
| | 07:53 | we're still seeing some noise in the
wrappers and other dark areas, but it's
| | 07:56 | not nearly significant.
| | 07:58 | So, then when we cut these two shots
together, it's jarring to the viewer,
| | 08:02 | because this shot would look so clean,
and this shot that we've color corrected
| | 08:06 | would look so dirty.
| | 08:07 | So, my point is, is that while you
can go in and lighten footage, and After
| | 08:12 | Effects is amazing in what it has the
capacity to do, you need to be aware of
| | 08:17 | the way that it is shot. Sometimes it
dictates whether a shot is really,
| | 08:21 | ultimately usable or not.
| | 08:22 | And truth be told, I actually
learned about this the hard way.
| | 08:25 | In 2009, I directed a music video.
| | 08:27 | I am not a cameraman by any
stretch of the imagination,
| | 08:29 | but I decided I would shoot it myself.
And I shot a lot of underexposed shots
| | 08:34 | knowing that in After
Effects, I can just fix it.
| | 08:36 | I can just fix it in After Effects with
these same color lightening tools we've
| | 08:39 | covered in this movie.
| | 08:40 | But what I realized is there
were shots that I exposed well.
| | 08:44 | When you cut those next to the shots
that were underexposed and really grainy,
| | 08:49 | it just looked really terrible side by side.
| | 08:52 | Again, just looking at still images,
it's not that bad, but when you actually
| | 08:55 | play these back, the difference is
really shocking how clean this looks on the
| | 09:00 | left and how really noisy and
grainy this looks on the right.
| | 09:04 | So, be aware that the quality of
the source footage really does play a
| | 09:08 | significant role in the quality of the output.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing colors in footage| 00:00 | Just like you will want to adjust
luminance, or in other words brightness often,
| | 00:04 | you'll also probably
want to adjust colors often.
| | 00:08 | So, we're going to start looking at that here.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to apply the Hue/Saturation
effect to this layer, just drag-and-drop
| | 00:16 | onto these flowers here.
| | 00:18 | We've got a bunch of cool colors of flowers.
| | 00:19 | If we're adjusting luminance, it's
fairly simple, because typically that's
| | 00:24 | something that we want to do on a global scale.
| | 00:26 | We want to make everything
brighter, everything darker.
| | 00:29 | But oftentimes with colors, we
want to isolate those things. Say, for
| | 00:32 | example, in this case, we might
want to take these take these blue-ish,
| | 00:35 | purple-ish, violet-ish flowers here and
tone that color down, or we might want
| | 00:40 | to change that to a different color, and the
Hue/Saturation effect will allow us to do that.
| | 00:46 | First, let's talk about the
Channel Control dropdown at the top.
| | 00:49 | This is where it all boils down to.
| | 00:51 | By default, the Channel
Control is set to Master.
| | 00:54 | In other words, everything that we
do here with the Master Hue, Master
| | 00:57 | Saturation, Master Lightness values,
| | 00:59 | is going to affect all
colors in the entire image.
| | 01:03 | If we adjust the Master Hue, Hue being
basically like the color family, we're
| | 01:07 | going to adjust the color family of all
the colors in the image, which creates
| | 01:12 | these kind of weird psychedelic looks,
which I don't find are very helpful
| | 01:16 | unless you're doing some kind of
like psychedelic thing or whatever.
| | 01:20 | But I'm just going to take this down this to 0.
| | 01:22 | One of the things I do find to be
very useful is this Master Saturation.
| | 01:26 | You can click and drag left on
this value to reduce saturation.
| | 01:30 | So, if you're doing something for like maybe
a flashback or something and we want
| | 01:35 | some kind of antique look, we can take
this saturation down almost all the way.
| | 01:39 | If we take it to -100,
| | 01:40 | it will be all the way. It'll be
perfectly black-and-white, which we may want.
| | 01:44 | And we can take this up a little
bit to add just a little bit of color.
| | 01:48 | We could also take this to a
positive value and increase the color
| | 01:51 | saturation, in other words the
vibrance of the colors. And I recommend not
| | 01:56 | taking this too far above 17.
| | 01:59 | Sometimes you can get away with more
than that. From my experience, 17 is where it
| | 02:04 | just starts looking
cartoony in almost every case.
| | 02:07 | You might think that that
looks pretty good as-is,
| | 02:09 | but if we click the Effects icon and
see the before and the after, it does kind
| | 02:14 | of look like a Wes Anderson movie a little bit.
| | 02:16 | But it's still kind of pushing it.
| | 02:17 | So, in this case, 10 might be the
highest acceptable level that I would go to.
| | 02:22 | As we've talked about in the last movie,
we probably want to stay away with the
| | 02:24 | Master Lightness control in most
situations because it universally lightens, or
| | 02:29 | if dragged to a negative value,
universally darkens every single pixel
| | 02:34 | uniformly and that's
just not good visual stuff.
| | 02:37 | So, I'm going to take
Master Lightness back down to 0.
| | 02:40 | So, we've increased the
saturation of all colors
| | 02:44 | and we've decreased the saturation of all
colors. But what about our little violet
| | 02:49 | flowers over here? How can we change just those?
| | 02:52 | What I am going to do now is take the
Channel Control from this dropdown here,
| | 02:56 | let's just take it to Blues. And under the
Blue Hue, I can click and drag this to the right.
| | 03:02 | And you can see that we've changed the color
value of just those flowers and nothing else.
| | 03:08 | As we drag this to the left, we can
make these maybe a bluish green or just
| | 03:13 | maybe this just a little bit more of a
green blue, and if we adjust the saturation now,
| | 03:18 | we're not adjusting the
Master Saturation for all colors.
| | 03:21 | We're adjusting only the saturation of
the blues, which in this case, pretty
| | 03:25 | much only applies to these two
flowers so I can draw the saturation down to
| | 03:29 | the left, make these just like black-and-
white flowers. Increase them to look ridiculous.
| | 03:35 | I could also play with the Lightness,
which is now okay, because we're only
| | 03:39 | fiddling with the blues
and not the entire image.
| | 03:43 | So, as you could see here we have a
lot of control and flexibility. We might
| | 03:46 | want to enhance these two colors.
| | 03:48 | We might be telling a story where the
color of these two flowers is significant
| | 03:52 | or they may stick out too much
and we want to deemphasize them and
| | 03:55 | Hue/Saturation gives us easy control over that.
| | 03:58 | And separately we could go to say the
reds and we could adjust the red hue and
| | 04:02 | we could see the hue of all the red
flowers anyway is changing and also
| | 04:07 | saturation, and we could play so
much with all these different values.
| | 04:10 | We could go into the greens
and adjust the hue of the greens.
| | 04:14 | Oftentimes when I'm dealing with a lot
of green, it's important to pay attention
| | 04:19 | to those greens because it says a lot.
| | 04:21 | If you have a big wide-open field,
if that green is a little bit on the
| | 04:25 | yellow side of green, it will give a sense
that every thing is kind of dead and wiped out.
| | 04:29 | It's on your lawn.
| | 04:31 | If your lawn starts dying, it goes to yellow.
| | 04:33 | That's how you know that it's dying.
| | 04:34 | When you have something that's full of
life it will go towards blue and that's
| | 04:39 | how you know that it's alive, because
bluish-green looks much more alive and
| | 04:43 | vibrant than yellow-green.
| | 04:45 | So, I'm not saying make it look cartoony blue.
| | 04:48 | But if it is looking a little dead,
or you want to look a little bit more
| | 04:50 | vibrant, add a little bit of blue in
there and you could get that by playing
| | 04:54 | with this green hue slider.
| | 04:55 | Again, if you take it too far,
you're going to make it look like that.
| | 04:58 | That's again not very desirable.
| | 05:01 | Just a little push in that
direction to get a little bit of blue in
| | 05:04 | there and it just makes it look so
much more alive and vibrant. Here's the
| | 05:08 | before and the after.
| | 05:11 | So, I'm actually not liking the reds,
so at any time I could go back to
| | 05:13 | the reds, and I could take the saturation
back to 0 and the red hue back to 0 as well.
| | 05:19 | So, again, the moral of the story is
that we're allowed to go in to different
| | 05:24 | color families independently and
adjust those colors, saturation and
| | 05:30 | lightnesses as well.
| | 05:31 | I should also point out one final
note that I often use Hue/Saturation in
| | 05:35 | conjunction with the Levels effect
that we looked at in the last movie.
| | 05:38 | Oftentimes, when we use the Levels
effect, it shifts the colors in an
| | 05:43 | undesirable way. Let's say we've
brighten up this footage like we just did here.
| | 05:46 | That might have a tendency to wash
those colors out so you may need to
| | 05:49 | increase saturation.
| | 05:51 | Or in the case here, it's looking a
little bit too vibrant so I would go to the
| | 05:54 | Master control, and we would take the
saturation down to kind of balance out the
| | 05:59 | adjustment we just added with Levels.
| | 06:01 | So, again, it's kind of like this push-
pull thing where as you add one effect it
| | 06:06 | might be a little bit too intense, so
you add another effect to kind of dial it
| | 06:09 | back and balance it out.
| | 06:10 | At the end of the day maybe this is
little bit too much desaturation, maybe -5.
| | 06:14 | So, at the end of the day we have a
really beautiful image and if we click the
| | 06:18 | fx icon in the Switches area of the
Timeline panel we could see it without all
| | 06:22 | of the effects applied to it.
So that total before and the total after.
| | 06:26 | It's a really nice effect and all that
control that Hue/Saturation gives you
| | 06:30 | with the Channel Control dropdown
is just too powerful to pass up.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating cinematic color treatments| 00:01 | Now we're going to look at
creating cinematic color.
| | 00:05 | Folks, movies have a certain color
to them and it adds so much of the
| | 00:10 | experience of watching a
movie, so different than video.
| | 00:14 | I've recently worked on a film called White.
| | 00:17 | And what I was challenged to do was
to take this film, which was about a
| | 00:22 | post-apocalyptic Seattle.
| | 00:24 | And so here we have a little girl running.
| | 00:27 | And this is her dad here and
they are running past a dead body.
| | 00:30 | And this is supposed to look like this
wasteland and everybody is dead and
| | 00:34 | it's all that kind of stuff.
| | 00:37 | But the problem is this
doesn't look very much like a movie.
| | 00:39 | This looks like a photo
that someone took outside.
| | 00:41 | So, the mood isn't really set.
| | 00:44 | And in a film that's what you're
trying to do. You're trying to tell a story.
| | 00:48 | And so my challenge was to take it and
what I did is I made it look like this.
| | 00:53 | So, you can see the difference between
the bright vibrant pinks and just kind
| | 00:57 | of the random color palette and all
those things brought together to make one
| | 01:02 | cohesive dark scary visual effect.
| | 01:07 | So, again, you could see the difference
in the way each one makes you feel and
| | 01:11 | this one just doesn't feel very cinematic.
| | 01:14 | When you look at it instantly,
you're not really exactly sure what story
| | 01:17 | it's trying to tell you.
| | 01:19 | But this you can tell that it is a dark
scary world because of the color palette.
| | 01:25 | This is a very exciting subject of
discussion for me personally and that is
| | 01:30 | what we're going to make now.
| | 01:32 | I have here this footage, this shot
from the Hansel and Petal flower shop, and
| | 01:38 | the colors are just kind of as-is.
| | 01:40 | This is just the way the place looks.
| | 01:42 | It doesn't really tell us a story and
when you are creating cinematic color
| | 01:47 | you want people to be able to feel a certain
way based on the instant they look at an image.
| | 01:53 | So, we want to kind of shape our
viewer's perception of this flower shop.
| | 01:58 | Are they supposed to love it and feel like home?
| | 02:00 | There's already some kind of like
warm color tones here happening, and it
| | 02:03 | definitely feels like this eclectic
homey vibe, but we could enhance that with a
| | 02:08 | cinematic color treatment.
| | 02:10 | The way I prefer to do this in After
Effects is by using the Color Balance effect.
| | 02:16 | So, I'm going to do search on that here,
and we don't want Color Balance (HLS).
| | 02:20 | We want just regular old Color Balance,
so I'm going to drag-and-drop this
| | 02:23 | effect on to our footage.
| | 02:26 | And let's first try to
make this all warm and homey.
| | 02:30 | The way that we do that
is by adding warm colors.
| | 02:33 | We add oranges and yellows and reds.
| | 02:35 | Those are safe, friendly,
warm, and inviting colors.
| | 02:39 | So, when we're playing around with
the Color Balance effect, we really have
| | 02:43 | three different color choices
in three different categories.
| | 02:47 | We have Shadows, Midtones and
Highlights and within each of those Shadows,
| | 02:52 | Midtones and Highlights we have
a slider for Red, Green and Blue.
| | 02:56 | Now this is where you need to know
your colors a little bit, because there
| | 03:01 | isn't a yellow slider.
| | 03:02 | There isn't an orange slider, so you
kind of got to be able to play around with
| | 03:05 | these to get what you want.
| | 03:07 | So, for example, if we want to add red
to the shadows, I can click and drag and
| | 03:11 | move to the right to increase the red amount.
| | 03:13 | I'm just going to exaggerate this
so you could see where that's going.
| | 03:15 | So that goes up to 100 there.
| | 03:17 | You could see the difference in the red shadows.
| | 03:20 | If we wanted to add yellow to that,
there isn't a yellow slider, but we get to
| | 03:26 | yellow by subtracting blue.
| | 03:27 | Blue and yellow are opposites.
| | 03:29 | So, as we increase this to 100, we
add blue, as we decrease this to 100 you
| | 03:35 | could see that we've actually added yellow.
| | 03:37 | Now this is way too yellow.
| | 03:38 | It's actually making me a little
nauseous, so dial that back a lot.
| | 03:42 | And you could see when you are playing
with Color Balance, it really is kind of
| | 03:45 | this juggling act where you might add
something to the highlights, and then you
| | 03:49 | might go back to the shadows, and then
you might add some midtones and then go
| | 03:51 | back to the highlights and so on and
so forth, just kind of playing around.
| | 03:55 | There are no hard and fast rules about
what colors to add, so I am going to add
| | 03:59 | a little bit of red balance here.
| | 04:00 | And I might add a little bit more red
to the midtones and maybe subtract some
| | 04:06 | blue from the midtowns to add a little bit
of yellow. Not too much though because
| | 04:10 | again it starts looking
like that, where it's too yellowy.
| | 04:13 | That might be cool if you are creating
an effect like 1970's stuff, but it's
| | 04:17 | not really what we're going for here.
Add a little bit more red and that's
| | 04:22 | looking pretty good.
| | 04:23 | Now what I can do here as
well is add another effect.
| | 04:28 | In this case, I'm going to add Hue/
Saturation because what I want to do is I
| | 04:31 | like this color palette, but
it's a little bit too saturated.
| | 04:35 | It takes me out of the scene, so I'm
going to take the saturation down a little
| | 04:39 | bit so that it still a believable color palette.
| | 04:43 | So, this looks kind of
similar to what we started with.
| | 04:46 | However, if we go down here at the
Timeline panel, go to the Master fx icon for
| | 04:50 | the layer and click it, here is
the before and here is the after.
| | 04:54 | So, again, very different.
| | 04:56 | We might also want to go and add
maybe a Levels effect and we could
| | 05:01 | apply Levels to this.
| | 05:03 | So, you could see the cinematic color
is not really like just one effect or one
| | 05:07 | button that just kind of gives us what you want.
| | 05:09 | I've kind of got to play with it a
little bit, but that's part of the fun.
| | 05:11 | We could enhance this.
| | 05:13 | We could drag the Midtones slider to
the right to make the colors a little bit
| | 05:16 | darker, or we can lighten it up by
dragging this to the left and make it seem
| | 05:20 | kind of more angelic and
maybe nostalgic a little bit.
| | 05:24 | But again, we have definitely
guided our viewers from this to this.
| | 05:28 | It feels just a little bit more warm
and inviting and again, we could play
| | 05:32 | around with these colors a little bit more
and make this more warm, but you get the idea.
| | 05:36 | Now let's go on a different direction.
| | 05:38 | Let's try to make this dark and
creepy, which is kind of going to be hard
| | 05:42 | because it really isn't a
dark and creepy place at all.
| | 05:44 | But it's a good exercise in what's
possible and how to shape an audience's
| | 05:48 | perception by the use of color.
| | 05:51 | So, I'm going to go to the Color Balance
effect at the Effect Controls panel and
| | 05:54 | right in Color Balance I'm going to go
to this Master Reset button and once we
| | 05:57 | click this, it's going to completely
reset all of the values for the Color
| | 06:01 | Balance effect back to its default,
which is to have no adjustment whatsoever.
| | 06:05 | Now our first order of business in
making this look dark and evil is to get rid
| | 06:10 | of that red that is so warm and inviting.
| | 06:13 | So, I'm going to go to Shadow Red
Balance, click, and drag this all the way
| | 06:16 | to the left to -100.
| | 06:17 | Midtone Red Balance, click on this,
drag this all the way to -100.
| | 06:21 | Highlight Red Balance, same
thing, all the way to -100.
| | 06:23 | Just get rid of all of that red.
| | 06:26 | Now if we're going to make
something scary, blue is good. Blue is cold.
| | 06:31 | And then we add a little touch of
Green in there to kind of add some just
| | 06:35 | nausea, just to make this
feel like a little bit uneasy.
| | 06:38 | Blue is cold and unfriendly, but blue
with a little bit of green is a little bit
| | 06:42 | more sinister. But here we
have a little bit too much green.
| | 06:46 | So, what I'm going to do is maybe
subtract a little green from the Highlights,
| | 06:51 | Midtones and Shadows.
| | 06:53 | We could also add a little blue to the Shadows.
| | 06:56 | I am going to add a little bit of blue to
the Midtones, and that's looking pretty good.
| | 07:00 | Add a little blue to the Highlights, okay.
| | 07:03 | So, I'm liking where this is going,
but we do have some problems for sure.
| | 07:07 | I'm going to add some Levels here,
and let's make this really dark.
| | 07:11 | Let's take this Midtone slider to
the right to darken things up quite a bit.
| | 07:16 | And if we zoom out here to get a
good look, oh, looking pretty creepy.
| | 07:20 | The big problem here now is, of
course, saturation. So let's go and add
| | 07:24 | Hue/Saturation effect to this, drag-
and-drop it on ther,e and take Master
| | 07:29 | Saturation down to about there, and now
maybe we need to lighten this back up a little bit.
| | 07:37 | So, now if we see this here,
this is starting to look pretty creepy.
| | 07:41 | I want to add a little bit more saturation
to make sure those blues are looking creepy.
| | 07:45 | I'm looking at this wall, this balance
of textures between the original warm
| | 07:49 | wall and now the blue and green that is crept
in, just looks very unsettling and delicious.
| | 07:56 | So, if I go to this fx icon here in the
layer in the Timeline panel, click this.
| | 08:01 | This is before. This is after.
| | 08:04 | So, again, we've really changed
how the viewer should feel about this
| | 08:09 | environment based on our color choices.
| | 08:11 | Now we're going to actually continue
from here in the next movie where we're
| | 08:14 | going to talk about adding a vignette.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a quick vignette| 00:00 | Another element of cinematic color--
| | 00:03 | It's actually nothing to do with color
at all, but as far as like colorizing the
| | 00:06 | frame and shaping the frame, one of the
thing that's really popular is creating
| | 00:10 | a vignette, basically darkening the edges.
| | 00:13 | And it's another way to draw in focus.
In the same way that cinematographer
| | 00:16 | might use depth of field to maybe make
this tree in focus or this shrubbery in focus
| | 00:23 | and then make the background out of focus,
to basically focus your eye somewhere,
| | 00:27 | we can kind of do the
same thing with the vignette.
| | 00:30 | The look is very cool.
| | 00:31 | So, here is what we are going to do.
| | 00:32 | We are going to be doing some steps.
| | 00:33 | We are going to be talking about
masks a little bit, but really, we are not
| | 00:36 | going to have the masks discussion until
a little bit later on this training series.
| | 00:39 | So, a lot of these steps I just want you
to follow along, but you might not know
| | 00:42 | what we're doing just yet, but that's okay.
| | 00:44 | I am going to right-click in a blank
area of the Timeline panel to create a new
| | 00:49 | solid, and we want this to be the
comp size, so click Make Comp Size, click
| | 00:53 | the color swatch, make sure this
is black, and that's R 0, G 0, B 0.
| | 00:58 | That's how you know it's pure black,
click OK, click OK to make it solid, and
| | 01:02 | then go up here in the toolbar at the
top of the interface, and then find the
| | 01:08 | shape here and hold this icon
down and select the Ellipse tool.
| | 01:13 | And then once you select the Ellipse tool,
you'll see that there in the Tools panel.
| | 01:17 | This is a little unconventional, but
this is what I want you to do anyways.
| | 01:20 | Go ahead and double-click this icon in
the Tools panel and that will create a
| | 01:25 | full-sized ellipse inside our area,
and actually what that's done is create a mask
[00:01:30.1]
so that this black solid
is now masked off in this ellipse.
| | 01:35 | Also opened up a Mask area.
| | 01:37 | If you are not seeing that, you can
press the letter M on your keyboard with
| | 01:40 | the Black Solid layer selected, or you
can close the layer, open up Masks, and
| | 01:44 | then get to Mask 1.
| | 01:46 | Over to the right of Mask 1, the mask
we just created, there will be a dropdown
| | 01:50 | that says Add. Change this from Add
to Subtract, which will invert this so
| | 01:55 | that the edges are dark.
| | 01:57 | Next select the layer and press the
letter F. We'll get the Mask Feather property.
| | 02:02 | We are going to soften the edges of our mask.
| | 02:04 | So, I am going to click
and drag this to the right.
| | 02:06 | And I am going to drag this pretty high,
probably about 200 or so, give or take
| | 02:11 | about 10 or 20 pixels maybe or
whatever you feel like you would like to do.
| | 02:15 | And then I am going to select the
layer and press the letter T for Opacity.
| | 02:19 | And I am going to drop the opacity of this
layer down to taste, maybe to about 50% or so.
| | 02:26 | And then I can resize this, click away
in any blank spot in the Composition
| | 02:31 | panel or Timeline panel to deselect it, and
now we have our final project, our vignette here.
| | 02:37 | And to see the before and after of the
vignette, I want you to look at the corners.
| | 02:42 | So, we have-- I am going to turn
the Black Solid layer off. And so here is
| | 02:45 | the original and then
here is with the vignette.
| | 02:47 | Now notice that the leaves here and the
couch really aren't affected very much,
| | 02:52 | but our focus wants to go there
more after applying the vignette.
| | 02:56 | So, the vignette, the darkening of
the edges, basically tells the viewer,
| | 03:00 | "Hey, don't look here.
| | 03:01 | There is nothing of import here for
you to be worried about right now.
| | 03:04 | Focus on the center of the
screen where the action is.
| | 03:07 | There are just too much to focus on here."
| | 03:09 | A lot of filmmaking is basically
directing the viewer's attention and focus and
| | 03:14 | when everything is in focus like this
and everything is giving an equal amount
| | 03:17 | of weight, the viewer kind of gets fatigued
looking around trying to figure out where to look.
| | 03:22 | So, we guide the viewer's eye by
creating this vignette saying, look here in the center.
| | 03:27 | Don't bother with these edges.
And the viewer might not pick up on this.
| | 03:30 | They might notice the vignette, probably
won't and shouldn't, but they will sense it.
| | 03:34 | This is naturally where
their eyes will be focused.
| | 03:37 | So, if you want to add that extra
element to create that vignette,
| | 03:40 | that's how you do it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Colorizing black-and-white objects| 00:00 | As we saw earlier in Chapter 6, there
is lot of times like with Fractal Noise
| | 00:04 | and a few other effects where you
have a grayscale pattern, and you need to
| | 00:08 | add some color to it.
| | 00:09 | So, I kind of want to give you a whiz
bang tour through several ways to do that,
| | 00:13 | and I am going to kind of feel like
Wizard of Oz here because you've had the
| | 00:16 | "power to colorize" all along.
| | 00:18 | Well, let's first start with Hue/
Saturation and apply that to-- what do we have here?
| | 00:22 | And basically, this is Cell
Pattern effect what you're seeing here.
| | 00:25 | This is very much like Fractal Noise.
| | 00:27 | We have the Evolution property.
| | 00:29 | You can click and drag on this and
that brings these cells to life, kind of
| | 00:33 | like what we saw with Fractal
Noise, again via similar properties.
| | 00:37 | And with the Hue/Saturation, if we
play with Master Hue and Saturation, there
| | 00:41 | aren't any hues here.
| | 00:42 | There is no saturation here so
it won't have much of an effect.
| | 00:45 | So, we need to do is check the Colorize
box down at the bottom and that allows
| | 00:49 | us to add one color into the mix.
| | 00:52 | So, we could change what that color
is by changing the Colorize Hue value.
| | 00:56 | And we can adjust the saturation of that
color by using the Colorize Saturation value.
| | 01:02 | And then we also have the Colorize
Lightness and I don't recommend using this
| | 01:06 | because it's for the same reason why
we don't use Master Lightness, because it
| | 01:09 | brightens every pixel and darkens
every pixel, and even with the grayscale
| | 01:13 | pattern a lot of time you don't want to do that.
| | 01:15 | You're probably better off using Levels or
something like that, but that's one way to colorize.
| | 01:19 | I am going to select Hue/
Saturation, delete that.
| | 01:21 | Another way to colorize is by
using another effect we've been using.
| | 01:25 | That's Color Balance.
| | 01:27 | We could apply that.
| | 01:28 | We don't have direct control over
the colors of blacks and whites.
| | 01:31 | It's same as Hue/Saturation, but we
can control those colors in the middle.
| | 01:36 | All the grayscale colors. We can use these
Balance values to change the midtone colors.
| | 01:42 | So, again, white and black see the same,
but we could colorize those mid values.
| | 01:45 | I am going to select Color Balance
and hit Delete to get rid of that.
| | 01:47 | Think about some new
effects. Tint is the simple one.
| | 01:50 | If I apply the Tint effect, basically
what it allows us to do is change what
| | 01:55 | black is mapped to and change what
white is mapped to. Very simple effect.
| | 02:00 | So, let's say we wanted black to be
mapped to-- I'll just click on that color
| | 02:03 | swatch and let's say red, and then
we could map white to some other color.
| | 02:08 | Maybe black or a different shade of
red, or maybe a blue or what have you.
| | 02:13 | Spiderman's DNA or something.
| | 02:16 | So, we have some different choices here
of how white and black are mapped together.
| | 02:21 | Now I am just going to go ahead and
select Tint and hit Delete on that.
| | 02:25 | A little bit more powerful than Tint
is an effect called Tritone and that
| | 02:31 | allows us to adjust, the same thing as
Tint, the highlights and the shadows.
| | 02:35 | It also gives us midtone values
as well that we can play with.
| | 02:40 | So, we'll click on the
color swatch for Highlights.
| | 02:43 | And we can take that to something very
extreme, maybe like a vibrant green I guess.
| | 02:49 | And then we could go to the Midtones
color swatch, the brown swatch, and we
| | 02:54 | could play around with that color,
maybe take this to a deep blue, open up Cell
| | 03:01 | Pattern here, and as we adjust the
Evolution you could see how now that kind of
| | 03:04 | looks like cells under some kind of
radioactive microscope. I don't know.
| | 03:09 | I am not a scientist, but it looks kind of cool.
| | 03:11 | Now the final colorizing effect that
I want to show you is one that we have
| | 03:14 | looked at briefly before and it is
very powerful, but I want to cover it a
| | 03:19 | little bit better and that is Colorama.
| | 03:22 | Go ahead and apply Colorama to these
cells and watch them freak out a little bit,
| | 03:27 | 60s style, and then open up
the Output Cycle area in Colorama.
| | 03:32 | And we'll get the Use Preset palette dropdown,
where there is a series of preset colors.
| | 03:36 | And basically, I didn't mention this
before, but essentially what the very
| | 03:40 | complex Colorama does is that it
converts all colors of your original layer to
| | 03:47 | black and white and then remaps
those color values to a different color.
| | 03:52 | Now it's all based on this Output Cycle
wheel so we could actually grab these
| | 03:57 | values and move them around manually.
| | 04:00 | And we could click and add new
colors, but again, this is a very
| | 04:03 | powerful complex deal here.
| | 04:06 | So, for new users I recommend just using
this Preset palette. A lot of cool stuff here.
| | 04:09 | You've looked at fire before where it
remaps the colors to these cool fiery
| | 04:14 | colors and again, as we move these
Evolution values for Cell Pattern, we could
| | 04:17 | see fiery cells coming to life.
| | 04:20 | We could also change this
to something like Old Glory.
| | 04:23 | There is more intense color schemes
like Caribbean and the Golden ones.
| | 04:28 | There is also like Moldy and Mossy and
stuff like that, so these would go good
| | 04:32 | for mold and fungus, that type of stuff
that you can create with the Cell Pattern
| | 04:36 | effect, but in a nutshell those are
the four or five ways to colorize.
| | 04:41 | We have Hue/Saturation, Color
Balance, Tint, Tritone and Colorama.
| | 04:45 | I am sure there are others, but
those are the five that I use primarily.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using adjustment layers| 00:00 | Adjustment layers are basically
kind of dummy layers that affect
| | 00:04 | everything beneath them.
| | 00:06 | So, for example, in this scene here,
what we are looking at, if I toggle the
| | 00:10 | visibility of these layers, is a
composite, which we will be looking at in
| | 00:13 | detail later on in this training
series, composite of this video of moving
| | 00:17 | scenery in the background.
| | 00:19 | And then we also have a 3D rendered
subway and then we have a few shots of
| | 00:24 | me that was originally shot against a
green screen background with the green
| | 00:28 | screen removed, and all kind of smooshed
together to form this subway scene here.
| | 00:32 | The problem is that all these
things look okay together, but they don't
| | 00:36 | really seem like they belong together as much.
| | 00:39 | So, what we can do is use an
adjustment layer to apply the same color
| | 00:43 | adjustment to every layer so that
they all kind of look like they belong
| | 00:47 | together a little bit more.
| | 00:48 | So, what I am going to do is go down to
the bottom of the Timeline panel and in
| | 00:51 | the blank area here, I am going to right-
click and go to New > Adjustment Layer.
| | 00:55 | And by default, that does nothing
because. Again, it's kind of just like
| | 00:58 | an empty dummy layer.
| | 00:59 | But when I apply the Color Balance
effect to this, you will notice that when I
| | 01:04 | adjust, let's say I will remove some
of the red balance to make this a little
| | 01:07 | bit more cyan here, all of the
layers are affected the same.
| | 01:12 | They all receive the same adjustments.
| | 01:14 | So, I might remove some of the red
from shadows, midtowns, and highlights.
| | 01:18 | I might remove some of the green
balance from the shadows a little bit.
| | 01:22 | And it's looking a little bit saturated,
so I might add some Hue/Saturation.
| | 01:26 | And you know the drill,. Go under Master
Saturation, click that and drag that to
| | 01:30 | the left a little bit to
remove some of that saturation.
| | 01:33 | And what we have now is a
much more believable composite.
| | 01:37 | So, again, here is without the
adjustment layer, just remove the visibility of
| | 01:41 | the adjustment layer. Before and after.
| | 01:43 | So, the color adjustment uniformly
applied to every single layer in the same way
| | 01:48 | makes them look like they belong together more.
| | 01:50 | And now again, just like in
Photoshop, adjustment layers affect
| | 01:55 | everything beneath them.
| | 01:57 | So, if I were to drag the adjustment
layer down below in the layer stack,
| | 02:03 | beneath the layers of me and my
reflection in the window here, you can see
| | 02:08 | that the color adjustment still affects
the subway layer and the moving scenery
| | 02:12 | in the background here, but it now
does not affect the subject in question
| | 02:18 | reading the newspaper here.
| | 02:19 | So, again, adjustment layers affect only
things beneath them in the layer stack.
| | 02:24 | Now, this is kind of a mind blowing
cool trick I am about to show you, but you
| | 02:27 | could actually kind of play with
things in a creative way because of this.
| | 02:31 | I am going to add a little-known
effect called the Transform effect.
| | 02:35 | This effect seems completely worthless
because it basically just adds the same
| | 02:40 | transforms that we have in the layer,
so basically Position, Scale, Rotation,
| | 02:45 | Opacity, all that kind of stuff.
| | 02:46 | But what we can do is apply this to
an adjustment layer so that we can then
| | 02:53 | adjust a series of layers
without pre-composing them.
| | 02:56 | So, if we wanted to scale down all of
these layers at once, or if we wanted to
| | 03:00 | rotate all these layers at once, we can
do so by using the Transform effect on
| | 03:06 | to an adjustment layer, and you could also
do that with the Opacity property as well.
| | 03:10 | If you want to fade out the entire
composition, you could just animate the
| | 03:14 | Opacity value on the Transform
effect applied to an adjustment layer.
| | 03:19 | And if that totally just melts
your brain, for now that's okay.
| | 03:23 | This is a little early on in the
training series to burst out the Transform
| | 03:26 | effect applied to adjustment layer
mumbo-jumbo, but just be aware that the
| | 03:30 | adjustment layer can be used to
control all the layers beneath them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Creating and Animating TextCreating and editing text| 00:00 | One of the more common uses of After
Effects is to create titles for movies and
| | 00:04 | TV shows and also to create cool text
when you are working with motion graphics.
| | 00:09 | So, that's what we are going to
be looking at in this chapter.
| | 00:11 | This movie specifically is going
to be on creating and editing text.
| | 00:15 | I am going to go ahead and we are
going to be making this Hansel and Petal
| | 00:18 | text and I want to use this as a template.
| | 00:21 | I want to try to emulate this
text as closely as possible.
| | 00:24 | So, what I am going to do, because I am
using all these layers as templates,
| | 00:27 | I don't want to inadvertently click
to select one of them, like that.
| | 00:30 | I want to go to the Timeline panel and
there is this column here that has this lock
| | 00:34 | and what I am going to do is
click and just hold the mouse down and drag
| | 00:38 | down to lock all of those
layers. That makes them unselectable.
| | 00:42 | So, now I can click and drag as much as
I please and I cannot select these layers.
| | 00:46 | Now what I am going to do is go to the
Horizontal Type tool, which is here in
| | 00:49 | the toolbar at the top of the interface,
and we can create text in two ways.
| | 00:54 | We can click to create type and
then just start typing like that.
| | 00:59 | That's referred to as point type.
| | 01:01 | If you continue to type, we would just
make one long horizontal line of text
| | 01:05 | until you hit the Return
key and jump to the next line.
| | 01:08 | You'll notice also that you don't
need to select a layer to apply text to.
| | 01:13 | Text is its own layer.
| | 01:14 | Once you start creating text,
it makes what's called a text layer for you.
| | 01:17 | Now I am just going to
delete that by pressing Escape.
| | 01:20 | I want to show you the other type of
text you can create. It's the textbox.
| | 01:23 | I am going to click and drag a
box roughly around hansel & petal.
| | 01:28 | We are just going to ignore the
ampersand in the background here.
| | 01:31 | So, I am going to type hansel and
then hit the Return key and type petal.
| | 01:35 | Now to accept my text, I am going to go
and click the Selection tool, the black
| | 01:39 | arrow again, and that again accepts my text.
| | 01:42 | If I want to go back into it, I can just
double-click the layer if I want to or
| | 01:46 | I can select the Type tool again and
then click in this text area to select it.
| | 01:50 | And when you are working with a
textbox, you could resize this.
| | 01:53 | So, if I shrink this textbox so it's too
small for that text, I get a little
| | 01:57 | plus in the bottom right-hand corner
here and again that indicates that I
| | 02:01 | have what they call overset text, text
that I am not seeing that is within this box.
| | 02:05 | So, basically we create a textbox so
that text will stay in a given field.
| | 02:10 | I might also resize this horizontally
and then shrink this vertically and my
| | 02:15 | text will automatically be
taken to the previous line.
| | 02:19 | Of course, I do have a carriage return here.
| | 02:21 | That's why it's not working exactly correct.
| | 02:23 | So, if I deleted that, you
could see what's going on there.
| | 02:27 | But again, if I were to resize this and
select the Selection tool and move this
| | 02:32 | over so you can see it a little better,
and then double-click to adjust it.
| | 02:35 | But if I were to resize this, then it
would automatically drop the next line,
| | 02:39 | if that's what I had to do, but it's not
going to let text go outside of this box.
| | 02:43 | Now I am going to move this text over.
| | 02:45 | Let's click and drag and we can't
see it too great, but that's okay.
| | 02:49 | I want to make sure this text is selected.
| | 02:50 | If you need to, you could select the
Horizontal Type tool again and then click
| | 02:53 | and drag to highlight certain characters.
| | 02:55 | We are going to select all of them.
| | 02:56 | So, just click and drag as you would in
Microsoft Word, and then the Character
| | 03:00 | and Paragraph panels open up.
| | 03:01 | These are the two ways that we
adjust text that we have created.
| | 03:04 | If they are not showing, you can
click this little button here, which
| | 03:07 | will actually hide and show the
Character and Paragraph panels.
| | 03:10 | Very convenient little button.
| | 03:12 | If it's not showing you probably don't
have the Horizontal Type tool selected.
| | 03:15 | So, make sure that is selected and you
get that fancy little button there, and
| | 03:19 | the Character panel, which is
actually the one I use far more often than the
| | 03:22 | Paragraph panel, but this
top dropdown is our font.
| | 03:25 | So, we can click one of those fonts.
| | 03:26 | You can also click up and down
with the arrows, which will help you
| | 03:29 | scroll through my fonts.
| | 03:30 | I can also put my cursor,
| | 03:32 | if I have a mouse-wheel, over this field.
Notice how it's selected with the gold
| | 03:36 | outline around it, and I could use my
mouse-wheel to kind of scroll through
| | 03:39 | fonts as well, until I find one that I like.
| | 03:43 | Now you may not have the same font as me,
but that's okay because I don't know
| | 03:45 | what the font was originally used anyway.
| | 03:47 | So, that doesn't matter.
| | 03:49 | Just pick a font that you would like
to use and another thing too that's
| | 03:52 | important is the font size.
| | 03:53 | Down right below here, we have the font
style, like whether it's Regular, Italic
| | 03:58 | or Bold. You are not going to have
this for every font, but that's where you
| | 04:00 | find those options and then
the font sizes are below that.
| | 04:03 | We just click and scrub, then we have
this font size so we could make our font
| | 04:08 | about the same as the original.
| | 04:10 | Now let's talk about the color of our text.
| | 04:12 | We have here a Fill swatch
and then also a Stroke swatch.
| | 04:16 | So, now the Stroke swatch is
active, now the Fill swatch is active.
| | 04:20 | So, Fill is the basic color of the text,
and the Stroke is the outline around it.
| | 04:24 | So, if I double-click this swatch,
then I can select a color and that works.
| | 04:29 | We click OK and now I have that as an outline.
| | 04:34 | If you want to change the weight, or
in other words the thickness of the
| | 04:36 | stroke, come down here to the middle
of the Character panel and we can click
| | 04:40 | and drag this left or right. You can
see that I have a thin stroke and then
| | 04:44 | I drag it to the right
and I have a very thick stroke.
| | 04:46 | So, you can play with that option.
| | 04:48 | By default, we have Stroke Over Fill.
| | 04:50 | We could also change this to Fill
Over Stroke, which makes the strokes
| | 04:54 | happen behind the text.
| | 04:56 | So, it's not really
encroaching upon the fill itself.
| | 05:00 | Now let's talk about a few
of these other options here.
| | 05:02 | We can adjust our text by
adjusting say, for example, the leading.
| | 05:06 | The leading is the vertical space between lines.
| | 05:10 | So, if we look at our original text,
hansel and petal are very close to each other.
| | 05:14 | So, this is what you want from these two lines.
| | 05:16 | By default, it's set to Auto.
| | 05:17 | But if we click and drag on this,
we can adjust the vertical height here.
| | 05:23 | We also can adjust the tracking, which is
the space between all characters on a line.
| | 05:28 | Now this looks kind of cool because
you see this effect in the movie trailers
| | 05:31 | a lot, where it's like "coming this summer"
and the text like will spread out horizontally.
| | 05:36 | This is not where you'd want to animate.
| | 05:37 | There are no stopwatches here.
| | 05:39 | But you can animate tracking and we'll talk
about how to do that later on in this chapter.
| | 05:43 | Now if I really wanted to line this text up,
what I could do, I have a couple of options.
| | 05:47 | I could hit the Spacebar to space out
this text and actually I might want to
| | 05:52 | go to the Paragraph panel
and center align the text.
| | 05:55 | Right now, it's left aligned.
| | 05:56 | Then you could center align it like that.
| | 05:58 | Notice that it goes to
the center of the text box.
| | 06:01 | I could also right align it.
| | 06:03 | I could also justify it so
it spreads out over the field.
| | 06:07 | I could center all lines, or justify all lines.
| | 06:10 | They all spread out for
the width of the entire box.
| | 06:13 | For now, I am just going
to go ahead and center this.
| | 06:15 | Another thing, and actually what I
would probably do is make this two
| | 06:19 | separate words of text.
| | 06:21 | So, that way I have total control of
where I want to put hansel and where
| | 06:24 | I want to put petal.
| | 06:26 | Now one other quick thing.
| | 06:27 | If you want to play around with
the colors of your text, you do that
| | 06:31 | really easily here.
| | 06:32 | I'd actually want a black fill and no stroke.
| | 06:36 | The very quick way to do that is I
can make sure that the stroke is active,
| | 06:39 | and make sure it's in front of the
fill swatch, and then click the No button
| | 06:43 | right here, which will eradicate the
stroke and make it so that there is no
| | 06:46 | stroke on our text.
| | 06:48 | I might need to select that first,
then click that button. Very good.
| | 06:52 | And then let's make the fill color
active, and then because black-and-white are
| | 06:55 | such common colors, we have a
black and a white swatch right here.
| | 07:00 | If we wanted to use the Eyedropper,
we could click the Eyedropper and then
| | 07:03 | select a color from our scene, like this blue.
| | 07:05 | We could do that if we wanted to, but again,
we could also just click and use that black.
| | 07:09 | And that way if I click the Selection tool,
just select this selection and move it around.
| | 07:13 | There we have text that closely kind of
resembles the original hansel & petal
| | 07:18 | and it's black, like we like it.
| | 07:20 | And also again, we are not lining things
up here because this probably should be
| | 07:25 | two separate lines of text.
| | 07:27 | But now that we are in the ballpark
ready to start talking about bringing this
| | 07:30 | to life with some animation, there are
some very advanced and complex ways to
| | 07:34 | do that, but actually, we are going to
look at some very quick and easy ways to
| | 07:37 | do that as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying text animation presets| 00:01 | As we'll see in the next movie, text
animation can be a pretty daunting task.
| | 00:05 | But it doesn't have to be if you're
going to use text animation presets, and
| | 00:09 | they are tons of them and they
are again easy and quick to use.
| | 00:13 | What we are going to do is select the
hansel text and we are going to go to the
| | 00:19 | Effects & Presets panel.
| | 00:20 | Then we are going to go to the flyout
menu of the Effects & Presets panel and
| | 00:23 | we are going to choose
the option Browse Presets.
| | 00:28 | Now what that's going to do is
it's going to open up Adobe Bridge.
| | 00:32 | I am bringing this over from another
monitor, so the resolution is little different.
| | 00:35 | But this opens us up to the Presets
folder inside of the After Effects folder
| | 00:41 | on your hard drive.
| | 00:42 | And After Effects ships with a load of presets.
| | 00:45 | Some of these we use at the beginning
of this training series for our sample of
| | 00:48 | Hansel and Petal project
in the Behaviors folder.
| | 00:51 | We actually access these from
the Effects & Presets panel.
| | 00:54 | But what we are looking
for here is the Text folder.
| | 00:58 | Now while we are here, I should point
out that if you open up the Backgrounds
| | 01:01 | folder, there are a lot of
really cool backgrounds here.
| | 01:04 | A lot of this is made in Fractal Noise.
| | 01:06 | But a lot of cool backgrounds that we
could use for inspiration and to apply one
| | 01:10 | of these presets, all you
have to do is double-click.
| | 01:13 | As you are seeing here on the right,
once we select one of these presets,
| | 01:15 | we are getting a preview of it on the right-
hand side. Some really cool stuff going on.
| | 01:19 | I am just going to go ahead and go to
the top of the Bridge area here and click
| | 01:22 | on the word Presets to
get back the Presets folder.
| | 01:25 | Then I am going to double-click the Text
folder to open up the presets made for text.
| | 01:30 | Now as you can see here, there is tons
of categories of text animation presets.
| | 01:35 | So, if you want to animate text
coming in there is a folder just for that.
| | 01:39 | And once these all load, you can
click on one to see like a Slow Fade On.
| | 01:44 | You can have Pop Buzz
Words, Fly In A With A Twist.
| | 01:48 | Some of these are very simple and
get the job done very easily and then you
| | 01:51 | have some that are like
the Flying With A Twist
| | 01:53 | that are a little bit more complex.
| | 01:55 | This Matrix-like raining in of
characters pretty cool stuff.
| | 01:59 | Now I want to go back to the Text and
we are going to go to Organic and some of
| | 02:04 | these are some of the most
amazing text animation presets.
| | 02:07 | They have so much character and
personality, like Flying Formation and Chewing
| | 02:12 | Gum that's kind of all
bouncy and stuff, Fish Bait.
| | 02:15 | Now any of these will do.
| | 02:16 | I'll just go ahead and click on the
Leapfrog one and to apply this to our text,
| | 02:20 | actually that's a little bit spazzy for
what we're going for, but it will work.
| | 02:24 | I am just going to go ahead and just
double-click this and then if you didn't
| | 02:28 | select you text layer before you
went into Bridge, it applies that text
| | 02:33 | animation preset to your text.
| | 02:34 | It doesn't appears that anything has changed.
| | 02:37 | But if I hit the Spacebar and play this,
you can see that our text now animates
| | 02:42 | on as we just saw from this Leapfrog preset.
| | 02:47 | Notice that it did not apply to that
petal text because I put that on a separate
| | 02:50 | layer, but that is the case here.
| | 02:53 | One word of warning is that when you
apply a text animation preset from Adobe
| | 02:58 | Bridge that wherever your Current Time
Indicator is becomes the first frame of the animation.
| | 03:05 | So, if my Current Time Indicator
would have been here at 22 frames in--
| | 03:09 | I will move it will bit further, let's
just say one second-- then the animation
| | 03:13 | would have started at one second, and for the
first second there would have been no animation.
| | 03:17 | So, if we select this and push the
letter U, we can see keyframes that were
| | 03:22 | created and if we wanted to, we can go
in here and just click and drag and move
| | 03:27 | these around if you wanted to lengthen
something out, or have it start later, or
| | 03:31 | go faster, or whatever, we can do that.
| | 03:34 | So, these gaps in between, in between
this keyframe and that keyframe, I realize
| | 03:38 | that these are little bit oddly shaped.
| | 03:40 | We'll be talking about that later in
the training series, but nothing happens
| | 03:43 | from here to here and because I move
this two keyframes closer together,
| | 03:47 | the movements are a lot faster in between them.
| | 03:50 | Now quite honestly, the text animation
presets that you can access via Adobe
| | 03:54 | Bridge are so complex and so just
organic, like this Ocean Tide for example,
| | 04:02 | to be able to create this on your own
would require a lot of knowledge of what
| | 04:06 | they call After Effect expressions,
which are kind of a programming language
| | 04:10 | inside of After Effects.
| | 04:11 | Again, very complex stuff.
| | 04:13 | So, if I'm looking for something very
complex like the Loose Line, like the
| | 04:17 | Rubber Floor stuff like this it would
just be easier to use text animation
| | 04:21 | preset even if you were
experienced in After Effects.
| | 04:24 | So, if you're going for more simple
stuff, if you want manual controls we are
| | 04:27 | going to look at in the next
movie, then fine, do it by yourself.
| | 04:30 | But if you are looking for super complex
stuff-- even if when you get experience
| | 04:34 | in After Effects, you might still find
yourself coming back to these very well
| | 04:38 | done presets for text.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating text manually| 00:00 | This movie is going to be kind of an
introduction to how to animate text manually.
| | 00:04 | We have our Hansel & Petal text here.
| | 00:06 | Again, let's go to the Hansel layer and
open this up by clicking the triangle to
| | 00:10 | the left of its name here.
| | 00:11 | And we have the basic transform
properties and we could animate this the same
| | 00:16 | way we animate everything else.
| | 00:18 | I am just going to hit Command+Z to undo that.
| | 00:20 | But if you can actually use the text
animation power that's built into every
| | 00:25 | text layer, we'll have much more control and
flexibility with the animation of this text.
| | 00:30 | If we close up Transform, open up
Text, you will see that we have certain
| | 00:33 | properties here that we don't find on
regular layers, but the real power in text
| | 00:37 | animation comes to the right of that.
| | 00:39 | We'll see this Animate with a flyout menu.
| | 00:42 | Let's choose a property to
animate and talk about how this works.
| | 00:47 | I am going to choose Scale.
| | 00:49 | Now what this does, it creates two things.
| | 00:51 | It creates an animation property, Scale,
which is what we just chose, and it also
| | 00:56 | creates something called a range selector.
| | 00:59 | And you notice that the property
Scale and the range selector are grouped
| | 01:04 | within one animator.
| | 01:05 | This is going to be important in just a moment.
| | 01:07 | Just know that the action that we just
did by going to Animate and creating a
| | 01:10 | Scale created an animator, which contains
the range selector and the property. Okay.
| | 01:15 | So, let's go ahead and click and drag
on the right for Scale to scale up our
| | 01:19 | text and you will notice a very
different scale than if we were to scale this
| | 01:23 | text up with the layer.
| | 01:25 | If I were to select this layer and hit
Shift+S so that you could see the layer's
| | 01:29 | Scale property, it's actually not
showing it to us here so I am going to open
| | 01:32 | up Transform, increase the Scale.
| | 01:35 | It's scaling up everything.
| | 01:37 | It's scaling up all of the characters uniformly.
| | 01:39 | I am just going to take this back to
100%, but the Scale here for Text is
| | 01:43 | scaling up each character individually.
| | 01:46 | So, again, much more power and control here.
| | 01:49 | But the scaling is only taking
place within the range selector.
| | 01:54 | If you see this vertical line here
with a little triangle next to it, this is
| | 01:58 | the left side boundary of the range
selector, and this is the right side
| | 02:02 | boundary of the range selector.
| | 02:04 | And the way this works is that only
what is within the range selector gets this
| | 02:10 | attribute applied to it, so
everything else is just normal.
| | 02:13 | So, if I click and drag this range
selector and move it in, you could see that
| | 02:17 | now this is the range that is being selected.
Everything outside of it is just a regular scale.
| | 02:23 | So, you notice that 195% scale here,
only these characters that are now in the
| | 02:28 | range selector have that
extra scale up applied to them.
| | 02:31 | Now, let's open up the range
selector area for one second here.
| | 02:34 | We have a start, which is the left side
and we have the end value, which is the
| | 02:39 | right side of the range selector.
| | 02:41 | And I am actually going to go and
change this, so that only the letter N
| | 02:47 | is increased in scale.
| | 02:49 | It could be a little bit of A and S if
you want, but basically 35-50% for my
| | 02:54 | start and end values respectively, so
that only one character is selected.
| | 02:56 | Now, you may want to have kind of like
a shuffle through your text where like
| | 03:01 | one character, it's kind of like the
wave at a baseball stadium or something,
| | 03:05 | and we can adjust the offset property,
so that that one character kind of
| | 03:10 | waves through your text.
| | 03:11 | And what we are doing here is we are
taking the entire range, which is only
| | 03:16 | about one character big, and the Offset
value moves that range throughout your text.
| | 03:22 | And you could see here that
it's not exactly 1 character big.
| | 03:26 | It does get a little bit of
the extra character next to it.
| | 03:28 | But if we want to, we could refine
that by bringing in these values.
| | 03:32 | But you get the idea. So we can
shuffle through these different character
| | 03:36 | attributes with the range selector.
| | 03:39 | Now, if we go over to the Animator,
you'll notice the animator is still here, so
| | 03:42 | if we wanted to, we could add like
another animator for rotation. What that
| | 03:46 | would do is it would add a new range
selector and a new property to animate.
| | 03:51 | So, if we wanted to use the same
range selector and maybe have the
| | 03:55 | characters rotate a little bit,
then we would go to the Add menu right
| | 03:59 | across from Animator 1.
| | 04:00 | So, we go to the Add menu.
| | 04:01 | We could go to Property.
| | 04:03 | We could go to Rotation, and so maybe
we could rotate this a few degrees, maybe
| | 04:08 | 25 degrees positive so it's clockwise.
| | 04:12 | So, now as we move this range selector,
the characters not only scale up, but
| | 04:17 | they rotate as well.
| | 04:18 | So, again, I realize it's probably a
little complex, because there is a lot of
| | 04:22 | stuff going on with the animators and
the range selectors and the properties
| | 04:26 | that are added to the range selectors.
| | 04:28 | It's definitely a complex subject.
| | 04:30 | But you could also see the fun and power
being able to manually control how this works.
| | 04:34 | There really isn't another program that
I am aware of on the market that allows
| | 04:38 | you to have so much control over text animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying layer styles to text| 00:00 | Layer styles are a fantastic feature of
After Effects that allow you to add cool
| | 00:04 | effects to not just text, but any type
of layer, and we will see this at work.
| | 00:09 | I should preface this by saying that
layer styles can be used in a way
| | 00:14 | that's too overdone.
| | 00:15 | So, make sure that you're very
careful and artistic about your choices.
| | 00:19 | The layer styles here that we are
going to be talking about are just like
| | 00:21 | we find in Photoshop.
| | 00:23 | So, to access them, I am going to
select the Hansel layer, right-click on it,
| | 00:27 | and on any layer you are going to
have this Layer Styles option when you
| | 00:30 | right-click on the layer.
| | 00:31 | And these are all the effects that we can add.
| | 00:33 | So, we could for example add Bevel and
Emboss, which creates kind of like this
| | 00:37 | three-dimensional look to our text or
whatever the layer is by giving it like a
| | 00:41 | highlight and also shadows, which we
can't really see because it's black text,
| | 00:45 | but it does give it this kind of chiseled look.
| | 00:47 | We can also add more effects to this.
| | 00:49 | We can right-click on this and go to
Layer Styles and choose Drop Shadow to add
| | 00:53 | a very simple drop shadow.
| | 00:55 | You could right-click and continue to add
another effect, let's say an Outer Glow.
| | 00:59 | Now, we typically wouldn't have an
Outer Glow and a Drop Shadow on the same
| | 01:03 | object at the same time, but just to show
you that you can't stack these effects up.
| | 01:08 | Let's say we are going to adjust the Outer Glow.
| | 01:09 | Let's go down into the layer here
and we could open up Outer Glow and you
| | 01:14 | could see all of the layer styles.
| | 01:15 | We have Drop Shadow here and Bevel and Emboss,
and you could open them to get their options.
| | 01:20 | And let's say for example
that we want to change the color.
| | 01:23 | So, here for the color of the glow,
I can click the eyedropper and maybe go
| | 01:26 | to a brighter color of pink, like the
background, and we could increase maybe the spread.
| | 01:31 | As you can see, it becomes kind of
like a thicker stroke almost around it.
| | 01:35 | We can also increase the size.
| | 01:37 | And now that the size is bigger, I
might dial back the spread a little bit.
| | 01:40 | So, we just have like this
faint soft glow behind the text.
| | 01:44 | It might just be a little bit of too much.
| | 01:45 | We can dial back to the opacity a little
bit, just click and drag on the Opacity
| | 01:48 | for that layer style for that Outer Glow.
| | 01:50 | And none of the other attributes like the Drop
Shadow or the Bevel and Emboss are affected.
| | 01:55 | But it makes it stick out a
little bit, which is just kind of cool.
| | 01:58 | Also, the Outer Glow and all these
layer styles have their own independent
| | 02:01 | visibility controls, so I can click the
eye icon and see it before and after.
| | 02:05 | And so it is a very subtle effect, but
it does make a big difference without it
| | 02:08 | and I think it looks better with it.
| | 02:09 | So, you can see tons of cool
opportunities for cool effects here, but also
| | 02:13 | you can probably see how
it can easily be overdone.
| | 02:16 | I am going to go to
actually the background layer.
| | 02:18 | First, I am going to unlock it by
clicking the lock icon for layer 16 here and
| | 02:23 | I am going to right-click on this,
and I'm going to choose a layer style.
| | 02:26 | I am actually going to add a gradient overlay.
| | 02:29 | This is going to put a gradient over our layer.
| | 02:31 | This is kind of like the Ramp
effect,so you might be saying,
| | 02:34 | "Well, we have already done that.
Look, what's the big deal?"
| | 02:36 | Well, the cool thing here is if we
open up Gradient Overlays options in the
| | 02:41 | layer area, then we could get
to the options for the gradient.
| | 02:44 | And what I'm going to do actually is
change the blend mode, which will change
| | 02:49 | the way that this gradient
blends in with the background.
| | 02:53 | Again, we haven't quite
talked about blend modes yet.
| | 02:55 | We will, but for right now just go
take this dropdown from Normal to Overlay.
| | 03:01 | And so now the darkness is making the
background darker where the black was,
| | 03:05 | and the bright areas of the gradient,
the white part, is making the bottom part
| | 03:09 | of our background a little bit light.
| | 03:11 | Here is this really nice dark to light
overlay or enhancement of the background.
| | 03:16 | I actually might want to flip that,
so we can come down here to the Reverse
| | 03:19 | option and it says Off. Just go ahead
and click it once to make it On, so it's
| | 03:23 | flipped so now the gradient goes from
bright at the top to dark at the bottom.
| | 03:28 | Kind of a nice effect here.
| | 03:29 | Now again, it might be a little bit too
much of an effect, so we could take down
| | 03:33 | the opacity of the effect as we see fit.
| | 03:35 | And now the brights are not as bright
and the darks are not as dark, but still
| | 03:38 | looking pretty cool I think.
| | 03:40 | So, again, there's that, and we could
take the visibility off of the Gradient
| | 03:43 | Overlay to see the before, and
just all standard, top to bottom.
| | 03:48 | And then there is the after, with a
slightly brighter top and slightly darker bottom.
| | 03:51 | I like that effect a lot.
| | 03:53 | So, oftentimes when I want to give a
background some character or maybe just
| | 03:57 | some text some character, just bring it to life,
| | 03:58 | so it's not just this solid flat color,
| | 04:01 | layer styles, if used appropriately,
could be a great way to do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
10. Becoming More EfficientLet's get better| 00:00 | I wanted to take this movie to introduce
this chapter because it's going to be a
| | 00:03 | little different than the others.
| | 00:05 | We've covered some great stuff, and it's
been a little intense and a lot to take in,
| | 00:09 | and there's going to be even more
to take in as some of After Effects' most
| | 00:13 | powerful and exciting features
will be covered in the chapters ahead.
| | 00:16 | So, in this chapter were going to take a
little break from the tough stuff and just recharge.
| | 00:21 | We're going to get better with After
Effects, more efficient and comfortable, so
| | 00:25 | you feel in control of this program.
| | 00:27 | In this chapter are some of the
shortcuts and features and tricks I think
| | 00:30 | that you will benefit
from the most going forward.
| | 00:33 | So, let's get to it and get better.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using work areas| 00:00 | When your projects are becoming more
complex kind of like this motion graphics
| | 00:04 | project here, where there's a bunch of
like swirly lines in the background and
| | 00:07 | some gradients going on, and then as I
drag my current time indicator here,
| | 00:11 | you can see that these
lines are all moving around.
| | 00:13 | And then a whip of light comes in and
makes this text appear and there is a
| | 00:17 | bunch of sparkles and stuff, and then
the text kind of drifts and glows a little
| | 00:22 | bit and then fades away or something.
| | 00:23 | A lot going on here, and when you have a
project this complex previewing can be a real chore.
| | 00:29 | Once my Current Time Indicator lands on
a single frame, you could that it took a
| | 00:32 | several seconds to render just this one frame.
| | 00:35 | And so if I were to do a RAM Preview
of this, it would start from the very
| | 00:38 | beginning when there was nothing
onscreen and take several frames and then get
| | 00:43 | to the real meat of what's going on.
| | 00:45 | Well if I wanted to focus on this
critical part where this whip of light comes in
| | 00:50 | and makes this text appear then I
would want to use something called a work area,
| | 00:54 | so I could preview just this
space and not a bunch of stuff before and
| | 00:58 | after it, that I don't
really care about right now.
| | 01:01 | So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to
back up to about right here and that's
| | 01:05 | frame 28 and I'm going to
drag this bar right here now.
| | 01:09 | This kind of disguises itself as
part of the interface, but it's not.
| | 01:13 | If I grab this yellow bar at the left-
hand side and to drag this in, you can
| | 01:18 | see that it's now showing us that
there is this highlighted area and a
| | 01:20 | non-highlighted area and so that gives
us an indication throughout the timeline
| | 01:25 | of where the work area starts and
where there's an area before the work area.
| | 01:29 | So, I'm going to drag over here, and I
might find a place in time, right about
| | 01:34 | there is after the whip has already
hit the text on, so I can grab the end of
| | 01:38 | this bar and drag it to
my Current Time Indicator.
| | 01:41 | Now when I press zero on the numeric
keypad in order to create a RAM Preview,
| | 01:47 | you'll notice that it's not starting
from the beginning of a composition.
| | 01:49 | Only from the beginning of the work area.
| | 01:52 | And once it's finished loading all
these frames into RAM, then it previews just
| | 01:57 | that area in the work area
and all this is cached into RAM.
| | 02:01 | And I could really focus my time and
effort and attention on just this one
| | 02:05 | little segment of my animation.
| | 02:06 | Again, as with most features in this
chapter, if you're brand new to After Effects,
| | 02:10 | it may seem like this is
really an unnecessary feature, but I don't
| | 02:14 | think I've ever worked a day in After
Effects or even an hour in After Effects
| | 02:18 | and not used the Work Area bar.
| | 02:21 | So, this is one you'll
definitely want to be familiar with.
| | 02:23 | Here's some shortcuts to make working with
the Work Area bar little bit more efficient.
| | 02:27 | If we double-click the Work Area bar,
it resets itself and makes itself the
| | 02:31 | entire area of the composition again.
| | 02:33 | And if I go to the spot right here,
and I know that I want to start my
| | 02:36 | Current Time Indicator here, and
press the B on the keyboard for the
| | 02:40 | beginning of the work area.
| | 02:43 | Likewise, the keyboard shortcut is the
letter N to set the end of the work area.
| | 02:47 | And so that's where you could like
while you are working, if you decide, oh,
| | 02:50 | you know this is the frame that I
want to set as the end of my work area,
| | 02:53 | just press the letter N, and the Work Area bar
will jump to the Current Time Ibdicator there.
| | 02:57 | Now earlier in this training series
we have talked about how the Home key will
| | 03:00 | take you to the first frame of the
composition; the End key will jump you to the
| | 03:03 | end of the composition.
| | 03:04 | If you hold the Shift key then
that will apply to only the work area.
| | 03:08 | So, Shift+Home will take you to the
beginning of the work area and Shift+End
| | 03:13 | will take you to the end of the work area.
| | 03:14 | Now one other cool aspects of the Work
Area bar that we'll see at the end of this
| | 03:17 | training series when we talk about
Rendering and Output is that you can actually
| | 03:20 | choose to render just the Work Area bar.
| | 03:23 | So, if you want to kind of do a test
render just to see how things are or just
| | 03:26 | to test something on a monitor or
screen or a DVD, you don't have to render
| | 03:29 | the entire composition.
| | 03:31 | You could render just the Work
Area bar, which again makes this
| | 03:34 | feature extremely useful.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating markers| 00:00 | Markers are a way for you to create
notes for yourself or if you work in a team
| | 00:04 | to make notes for other people on your team,
| | 00:07 | so you know where things are happening.
| | 00:08 | We saw this earlier in the training
series in the beginning when we did this
| | 00:11 | Hansel and Petal ad and I put
these little comp markers here.
| | 00:15 | That's what these are in the Work
Area bar here, and you could put notes on
| | 00:18 | them if you want, or you could just
have the marker there if you'd like, and
| | 00:21 | they indicate certain things like the
"Filigree Core & Stem Start Here," and the
| | 00:25 | "Stem Tips Start Here."
| | 00:27 | So they are marked in time, so I know
later on that this is what's happening at
| | 00:31 | that particular time.
| | 00:32 | Now there's actually two
different types of markers:
| | 00:34 | there are markers for the layer,
and there are markers for the
| | 00:37 | entire composition.
| | 00:38 | Now we'll talk about why
you'd want both in just a moment.
| | 00:42 | When I go back over to this Clip05-
tahoe clip, and this is a very long clip.
| | 00:47 | If we click here in the Project panel
to see this clip, this is 19 seconds long,
| | 00:50 | which is actually really long, and nobody
wants to look at one solid clip for 19 seconds.
| | 00:55 | Your eyes just get fatigued.
| | 00:57 | You would want to use bits and pieces of this
but not one solid cut of this for 19 seconds.
| | 01:02 | So, what I might want to do is go
through and get the juiciest bits.
| | 01:05 | Let's say, for example, there is like
the start of the trick right about there.
| | 01:09 | So, what I am going to do is select this
layer and I could go to the Layer menu
| | 01:12 | at the top of the screen
and then choose Add Marker.
| | 01:15 | That's a little tedious though, so what
I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the
| | 01:18 | Asterisk key on the numeric keypad,
and that will add a layer marker.
| | 01:23 | This little marker right there, and
then I'll move out in time and wait until
| | 01:28 | the Snow Boarder lands the trick. Boom!
| | 01:30 | Right there.
| | 01:31 | And then I want to press the
Asterisk key again for when the trick ends.
| | 01:35 | So, I could double-click on these layer markers.
| | 01:37 | I'll double-click on that one.
| | 01:38 | And I'll just say Trick Start and then
click OK and then I could double-click
| | 01:44 | on this one and click Trick End.
| | 01:48 | Now while we're in this window,
let me explain this really briefly.
| | 01:50 | The Time is where the marker is going
to be placed and you could actually
| | 01:54 | choose to have a Duration for the marker.
| | 01:57 | This is a little bit advanced, so
I actually never use this Duration value.
| | 02:01 | There's this Chapter and Web Links area.
| | 02:03 | This is also something that I don't
use very often, but with certain formats
| | 02:06 | mostly QuickTime, you can embed certain
information, such as the chapter or a URL.
| | 02:11 | So, if somebody is playing the video
in QuickTime, QuickTime will recognize a
| | 02:16 | web link and then can launch a
browser and go to a certain web page.
| | 02:20 | So, let's say you have like a video
for a commercial product and somebody is
| | 02:23 | watching it and when they get to the
end of the video, you want their web
| | 02:26 | browser to launch to take them to
your web page to see your product,
| | 02:29 | you can do that there, but they have to
be viewing it with QuickTime, and this
| | 02:32 | is not something that's
typically done very often.
| | 02:34 | It's not very popular, and
there's also a Flash Cue Point.
| | 02:37 | So, if you work with Flash and
you're going to export this as an FLV,
| | 02:40 | you could set this up as an Event or a
Navigation Cue Point to be used by Flash later.
| | 02:45 | You could even set up a parameter name
and value here for this Cue Point as well.
| | 02:49 | For now, I'm just going to go ahead and
click OK so that this says Trick Start,
| | 02:52 | Trick End, and I could go through this
footage and go to when the next trick
| | 02:57 | starts, maybe like right here
and add another marker, etcetera.
| | 03:01 | Now another cool thing about marking
footage is that this works when you're
| | 03:05 | previewing footage as well.
| | 03:06 | So, if I hit the Spacebar key and
I was previewing and then once this
| | 03:10 | slide stopped I could hit the
Asterisk key again and it would make another
| | 03:14 | layer Marker there.
| | 03:15 | Usually, what it do is I RAM preview
footage and if I have like an audio track,
| | 03:19 | a lot of times I'm syncing my motion
graphics to an audio track and so I'll RAM
| | 03:23 | preview while I am listening to the
music and then I hit the layer marker,
| | 03:26 | that Asterisk key, when there is
certain beats in the music or something.
| | 03:29 | And I can use this a guide while I am
editing to make cuts happen at certain
| | 03:34 | times or certain like animation bits to
happen with those triggers using those
| | 03:38 | layer markers as kind of
like cues for what's going on.
| | 03:41 | Now I mentioned that there are
two different types of markers.
| | 03:44 | There are layer markers, which we've
been looking at, and also xomp markers,
| | 03:47 | which we saw on the Hansel & Petal Ad comp.
| | 03:49 | So, what I can do is to create a comp marker
| | 03:51 | is go over here to the shield on the
right-hand side of the Timeline panel.
| | 03:54 | Click and drag this over to the left.
| | 03:56 | As you can see, we have a
number on these by default.
| | 03:59 | Now we could double-click
these to put a comment in it.
| | 04:02 | You could see the Composition Marker dialog box.
| | 04:04 | It was just like the Layer Marker dialog box.
| | 04:06 | But if we leave them as they
are, then they are numbered.
| | 04:10 | What's cool about these, they
create kind of navigation points.
| | 04:13 | If you don't rename them they become
numbered comp markers and if I push 1 on
| | 04:16 | the main area of the keyboard I jump to
the first comp marker and 2, I jump to
| | 04:21 | the second comp marker and so on.
| | 04:23 | Now you might be wondering, why
would I ever want to use layer markers as
| | 04:26 | opposed to comp markers?
| | 04:27 | Well here's the deal folks.
| | 04:29 | If I click and drag on my layer to
move it, then the layer markers come
| | 04:33 | along for the ride.
| | 04:35 | I would not want to put the Trick Start,
Trick End and all that kind of stuff
| | 04:39 | because then if I move this layer,
then those comp markers are still going to
| | 04:42 | stay there, but the layer
markers are going to move with it.
| | 04:46 | So, the difference between layer
markers and xomp markers as far as workflow
| | 04:49 | goes is that you put layer markers on
things that are specific to that layer.
| | 04:53 | And then you put comp
markers for that overall program.
| | 04:57 | So, let's say for example you are
working on a project for a client and they
| | 05:00 | said, "Okay, at two seconds and 13 frames in,
| | 05:03 | we want music to come in, and
we want to see these graphics.
| | 05:06 | We want to see like the name of our company."
| | 05:08 | So, you might want to go to 2 seconds
and 13 frames right about there and then
| | 05:14 | I would put a comp marker there
because this is something that's going to affect
| | 05:17 | the entire program not just one layer.
| | 05:20 | So, again, layer markers define
content on that particular layer and comp
| | 05:24 | markers define content or important
points for the entire composition.
| | 05:29 | Now again, because you can double-
click on these and add whatever comment you want,
| | 05:33 | they become great sticky notes.
| | 05:35 | So, you could put notes to yourself or
if, again, you going to pass this on to
| | 05:38 | somebody else, you might be
able to put something like, "Hey,
| | 05:41 | on this frame, I was thinking doing
such and such," and as you could see
| | 05:44 | this dialog box is huge.
| | 05:46 | You could put a huge
comment to somebody in there.
| | 05:48 | So, you can give them a basic idea of
what's happening. Or let's say you're
| | 05:52 | about to close out work for the day, and
you don't want to forget where you are,
| | 05:55 | but you do want to clock out and
go home and relax a little bit.
| | 05:57 | So, you make a comment that says, Okay!
| | 05:59 | This is what I was thinking
about doing blah blah blah, whatever.
| | 06:02 | So, when you come in to work the next day,
you know where you were in the work process.
| | 06:06 | You don't have to start from scratch again.
| | 06:07 | Markers are perhaps the best way for
you and the other people you work with to
| | 06:12 | be familiar intimately with your project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Replacing layers| 00:00 | Very often, when you are working in
After Effects, your producer or manager,
| | 00:03 | client or whatever, will come back
to you and say, "I know you have been
| | 00:06 | working on this a lot, but what I want
to do is swap out the footage you have
| | 00:11 | been working on with something different."
| | 00:13 | Now, that can pose a lot of challenges.
| | 00:15 | In this case, I have been
working on this olive sorting 01 clip.
| | 00:19 | I've added a mask to it and
created a vignette with it.
| | 00:22 | I've also created this like texturing
effect and I have also-- If I go to the
| | 00:26 | Effects Controls panel, you'll see
I have also applied little bit of Levels.
| | 00:30 | So, there is before and after
Levels, a little bit of contrast.
| | 00:32 | And I have also de-saturated a little bit.
| | 00:34 | So, before and after the saturation.
| | 00:37 | So, I have already done a lot of work to this.
| | 00:39 | I have even come down here to the
Timeline panel and I've cropped this in time.
| | 00:43 | So, it's only five seconds long
as opposed to 40 seconds long.
| | 00:46 | So, I have been doing a
lot of work with this thing.
| | 00:47 | So, if my client or boss or whatever
came back to me and said, "I need the
| | 00:50 | same stuff you have been doing, but with a
different clip," it would be very frustrating.
| | 00:54 | At least it would be, if it weren't for
After Effects' Replace Footage feature.
| | 00:58 | So, I could go here into the Project panel.
| | 01:00 | And just so we are clear on what we're
working with, if I double-click these clips,
| | 01:02 | here is the original clip in
the Footage panel. Double-click the other
| | 01:06 | clip that the boss wants us to
replace this with, and this is that clip.
| | 01:09 | So, the coloring is different and just
the angle is different and it's jsut much
| | 01:13 | closer in on the olive.
| | 01:15 | So, again, we can use the dropdown to
see the first clip and then what we need
| | 01:19 | to use to replace that, and
that is the new clip here.
| | 01:21 | So, I am going to go back to the
Composition panel and what I am going to do
| | 01:24 | is I am going to select this layer in the
Timeline panel, the layer I want to be replaced.
| | 01:30 | And then what I am going to do is I am
going to hold down the Option key on the
| | 01:33 | Mac or the Alt key on the PC.
| | 01:35 | I am going to drag the clip that
I want to be the replacing clip.
| | 01:38 | So, drag this with the Alt or
Option key held down and let go.
| | 01:43 | And you will notice that the clip has
been completely replaced, but all of the
| | 01:46 | work I did to the clip is still intact.
| | 01:49 | So, the mask that I created, the
vignette that I created, the desaturation,
| | 01:53 | the increased contrast, even the rocky
texture here in the background, and even be
| | 01:57 | cropping in time, shortening the
layer's duration to five seconds, all of that
| | 02:01 | has been maintained.
| | 02:03 | So, if you're working with like stock
video that has like a watermark over it,
| | 02:07 | or a lower resolution clip, for
example, because you're maybe working
| | 02:11 | with 4K red footage or something and
it's really beefy and it's hard for
| | 02:14 | your system to process,
| | 02:15 | you can work with a lower quality
version of the same size and add all the same
| | 02:19 | effects that you would normally and
then when it comes time to render,
| | 02:22 | just swap out the bad stuff for the good stuff.
| | 02:25 | While it might not be a feature you
use every time you use After Effects,
| | 02:29 | when you do need to use this, it
will save your life and your sanity.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mastering Timeline navigation| 00:00 | One of the things that will help you
become a lot more proficient in After
| | 00:03 | Effects is being able to navigate
your way around the Timeline efficiently.
| | 00:07 | Now, we have already talked
about how to zoom into the Timeline.
| | 00:10 | Let's say we have this clip here.
| | 00:11 | It's 28 seconds long, and you probably won't
use the clip that's this long in most projects.
| | 00:17 | But it's very feasible you
have a composition this long.
| | 00:20 | So, we talked before about how you can
drag this slider to zoom in to where the
| | 00:24 | Current Time Indicator is,
and that's one way to do it.
| | 00:27 | But we could also click these little
mountains here to zoom out and zoom in.
| | 00:32 | But this is not a good way to do it.
| | 00:34 | I don't like using this method.
| | 00:36 | Again, we could also use the
scroll bar and stuff like that.
| | 00:39 | But I prefer to use
keyboard shortcuts if possible.
| | 00:41 | For example, I could use the plus key
on my keyboard to zoom in to where the
| | 00:45 | Current Time Indicator is.
| | 00:46 | And I could use the minus on my
keyboard to zoom out, for example.
| | 00:50 | Probably the best way to zoom in and
zoom out is by holding down the Option
| | 00:54 | key on the Mac or the Alt key on the
PC, and if you have a wheel mouse it's
| | 00:58 | just scrolling in with the wheel, and that
will actually zoom in to wherever your mouse is.
| | 01:03 | So, if I have my mouse over the five-
second mark and then I zoom in, I am going
| | 01:07 | to zoom into the five-second area, and
I could hold the Option/Alt key and then
| | 01:12 | wheel downwards to zoom back out.
| | 01:15 | And I could also likewise, let's say,
zoom into the 25-second mark by using
| | 01:19 | again the Alt and Option
key and the wheel again.
| | 01:22 | Now, once I am zoomed in very closely
here, I can use the Shift key with the
| | 01:26 | scroll wheel mouse to scroll in time.
| | 01:29 | And that's just again a much
faster way of zooming around.
| | 01:32 | If you ever get lost, say for example
right now I'm not sure where I am in time.
| | 01:36 | I am kind of disoriented because I zoomed into
a different spot, or because I scrolled around.
| | 01:40 | You can press the D on the keyboard,
and that will center the Current Time
| | 01:44 | Indicator in your view, so you
will be able to see where you are.
| | 01:47 | Now personally for my money, nothing
beats those two scroll wheel keyboard
| | 01:52 | shortcut, both Shift and Option or Alt,
because that's just the fastest way to get around.
| | 01:58 | But a lot of people like using this
Time Navigator up here at the top.
| | 02:00 | This bar indicates where
you are in the Timeline.
| | 02:04 | So, about 25% into the entire timeline
we are zoomed into here. We also get a
| | 02:09 | red vertical slash indicating
where the Current Time Indicator is.
| | 02:12 | But we can move the Current Time
Indicator from there, or we can resize the
| | 02:17 | window by increasing this Time
Navigator area, maybe also click and drag on it
| | 02:21 | if we wanted to move let's say
the end of our timeline, or to the
| | 02:25 | beginning of our timeline.
| | 02:26 | And again, by clicking and dragging
on this we can change our view of
| | 02:30 | what we're looking at.
| | 02:32 | The wider this Time Navigator bar, the
more of the timeline we are looking at.
| | 02:35 | So, the farther zoomed out we are
and the more specific we are as we make
| | 02:39 | this tinier and smaller. So, there is that.
| | 02:42 | Again, I don't prefer using this method.
| | 02:44 | It doesn't feel very
intuitive to me, but that's just me.
| | 02:47 | It is another way to do that.
| | 02:49 | Now don't let this feel overwhelming.
| | 02:51 | You don't have to learn all of these techniques.
| | 02:53 | Whichever one you like the most,
practice with that method, get really good at that,
| | 02:57 | so that you feel very
comfortable zipping around the timeline.
| | 03:00 | You shouldn't have to spend time going
down here to these tiny little buttons
| | 03:04 | and these little sliders where they
are all awkward and backwards trying to
| | 03:07 | maneuver your way about the timeline.
| | 03:10 | Those that are professionals at After
Effects, they know how to zip around the
| | 03:13 | timeline, like it's nobody's business.
| | 03:14 | And so again, it's a good skill to master.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Aligning and distributing layers| 00:00 | Here is a great feature for those of
you that work in motion graphics or
| | 00:03 | titling: the ability to
align and distribute layers.
| | 00:07 | I have here a series of diamonds on
this cool little weird background.
| | 00:11 | And basically we have the pink,
green, teal, and purple diamonds.
| | 00:16 | Now, after I applied some color
adjustments to these, these colors don't exactly
| | 00:20 | match the names of the layers, but it
doesn't really affect our purposes here.
| | 00:24 | Now I am going to go to the Window menu
and open up the Align panel and that's
| | 00:28 | where we are going to be
doing all of our work here.
| | 00:30 | I am just going to restructure these panels,
so we could see this a little bit better.
| | 00:34 | Now if you only have one layer selected,
I will go ahead and select this layer,
| | 00:38 | layer 1, the pink diamond.
| | 00:40 | A new feature here is you got to
align these layers to the composition.
| | 00:44 | So, if we want to put this halfway up
in the composition, so vertically align this,
| | 00:49 | the composition, we can click
this button which changes the vertical
| | 00:52 | center of the object to match the
vertical center of the composition.
| | 00:56 | We could also do this
with the horizontal center.
| | 00:59 | And so by clicking these two buttons,
the horizontal center alignment and the
| | 01:02 | vertical center alignment buttons,
we now place this object dead in the
| | 01:06 | middle of the composition. That is amazing.
| | 01:08 | We could also align this up with
the left edge or the right edge.
| | 01:13 | And so you notice the rightmost edge
of the layer is butted up against the
| | 01:16 | rightmost edge of the composition.
| | 01:17 | We could also use the top of the
composition or the bottom of the composition.
| | 01:21 | So, you can see that if we want to a
align things to one of these edges of the
| | 01:26 | composition, this is absolutely amazing.
| | 01:28 | Now what happens when we have a bunch of
objects like this and we want to group
| | 01:32 | them in a more attractive way?
| | 01:34 | Well, what I am going do is I am
going to select the first layer and hold
| | 01:37 | down the Shift key and click the purple layer,
so that all of these diamonds are selected.
| | 01:42 | Now we can change the Align Layers To
dropdown from composition, because we
| | 01:46 | really don't care about
the composition right now.
| | 01:48 | We want to align these things to the
selection, in other words relative to one another.
| | 01:52 | The first thing I want to do is align
the vertical centers of these layers so
| | 01:57 | one is not above another one.
| | 01:59 | So, if I click this button, Vertical
Center Alignment, again it align all of
| | 02:02 | these to the center of one another.
| | 02:05 | Now the next thing I'd like to
do is align them horizontally.
| | 02:09 | Right now, we have one that's on the
far left and one that's on the far right,
| | 02:13 | but I want them to be spaced equally.
| | 02:15 | So, to do that, I go to Distribute Layers.
| | 02:18 | I am going to select this button,
which is Horizontal Center Distribution.
| | 02:22 | Click that and that distributes these
layers evenly and then we can click and
| | 02:25 | move these around because they are all selected.
| | 02:27 | And now we have a nice even row of
diamonds, which looks really cool.
| | 02:31 | With these diamonds still selected,
we go to the Align Layers To dropdown,
| | 02:35 | take this back to Composition, and now we
can actually align these to the composition.
| | 02:40 | So, now that they are centered to
each other vertically, but they are also
| | 02:44 | vertically centered to the composition.
| | 02:46 | They are in the middle.
| | 02:48 | So, as you're working with motion
graphics, oftentimes you will want to line up
| | 02:52 | circles and squares and
geometric patterns, like this.
| | 02:55 | So, now you'll want to align them to the
top edges, bottom edges, side edges, to
| | 02:59 | each other, and the Align
panel has all the ways to do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting layers quickly| 00:00 | When you start having comps with
tons of layers like this it could become
| | 00:03 | really tedious trying to find the
layer you want to select it, to say to add
| | 00:07 | effects or to adjust it or something,
and adjusting the Timeline panel like
| | 00:11 | this every time you want to access the
layer is really annoying and takes away
| | 00:15 | from your workflow.
| | 00:16 | So, I am going to give you two quick tips
for selecting layers quickly. Number one,
| | 00:20 | you will notice that in the Timeline
panel there is a Number column here, and
| | 00:23 | it gives you the number of the layer.
| | 00:26 | And each layer is
assigned a number in that order.
| | 00:29 | And if you were to click and drag to
reassign these, obviously the numbers would change.
| | 00:34 | But if you wanted to select a certain
layer and you knew the number of the
| | 00:37 | layer, you could simply type
that number on the numeric keypad.
| | 00:40 | So, if I want to apply, for example,
an effect to the sword layer, I could
| | 00:44 | simply type 5 on the numeric keypad,
and then just double-click the effect in
| | 00:48 | the Effects and Presets panel.
| | 00:49 | To select a layer with a two or three
digit number, just type the number quickly.
| | 00:53 | So, 14, for example, I'll just type
just type 1-4 and it gets me there.
| | 00:57 | Make sure again that you are on the
numeric keypad of your keyboard and not
| | 01:01 | the main numbers on your keyboard,
because as we saw earlier in this chapter,
| | 01:04 | those main numbers will go to numbered
markers and not select different layers.
| | 01:09 | So, be aware of that.
| | 01:10 | Now when you have a layer selected,
if you want to bump up to the next layer
| | 01:14 | above it or below, you could do the
Command key and the Up Arrow key on the Mac
| | 01:18 | or Ctrl+Up Arrow, Down Arrow on the PC.
| | 01:21 | So, if I hold Command+Up Arrow, you
could see that I navigate to these different layers;
| | 01:26 | Down Arrow I go back
down to select different layers.
| | 01:28 | So, a lot of times, I will want to
select or apply the same effect to multiple
| | 01:33 | layers, so I could just select one
and then apply it and then just do
| | 01:36 | Command+Down Arrow or Ctrl+Down Arrow on the
PC and apply that and keep going that way.
| | 01:41 | So, between these two keyboard shortcuts,
Command+Up and Down Arrow or Ctrl+Up
| | 01:46 | and Down Arrow and also the numerical
selection of individual layers, these
| | 01:51 | really add a lot when you have
complex projects with tons of layers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cropping layers| 00:00 | In this movie, I'm going to show
you how to crop layers in time.
| | 00:03 | In the process, I'm also going to show
you several really key keyboard shortcuts
| | 00:07 | that I find myself using all the time.
Maybe it's just my workflow, maybe it's just me,
| | 00:11 | but they are ones that I use very frequently.
| | 00:13 | So, first of all, here's the trick.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to move out in time and
let's say I want to start at about five
| | 00:20 | seconds in, once we zoom
out and then zoom back in.
| | 00:23 | This is where I want to start my layer.
| | 00:25 | What I can do with this layer selected
is hit Option or Alt on the PC and then
| | 00:30 | the Left Bracket key.
| | 00:32 | That is the key directly to the
right of the letter P on your keyboard.
| | 00:36 | So, Option+Left Bracket or Alt+Left Bracket.
| | 00:39 | And you can see that it actually crops
the layer to the Current Time Indicator.
| | 00:43 | This saves you from having
to drag this to that spot.
| | 00:47 | It gets it exactly right there instantly.
| | 00:50 | By the same token, if I drag this a
little bit later on in time, let's say,
| | 00:53 | to about 20 seconds out, if I hold Option+Right
Bracket or Alt+Right Bracket, then it's going to crop
| | 00:58 | the end of the layer.
| | 01:00 | Now, what I'm about to tell you next,
and actually everything in this video
| | 01:03 | might be a little confusing.
| | 01:03 | You might want to write it down and
keep this as a reference until it becomes
| | 01:07 | like old standard memory to you.
| | 01:09 | Here's another few keyboard shortcuts.
| | 01:11 | Let's say for example I chopped this
at five seconds and I want this start
| | 01:15 | point here to be the new first frame.
| | 01:18 | So, I can drag this until
it goes to the first frame.
| | 01:21 | But there is a keyboard shortcut I
can use next. Option+Home on the Mac
| | 01:25 | or Alt+Home on the PC.
| | 01:27 | That'll make it so that the first frame
of the layer will jump to the first
| | 01:32 | frame of the composition.
| | 01:33 | Now, here's another couple of great shortcuts.
| | 01:35 | If I press the Right Bracket key by
itself-- no Alt, no Option, just that key by itself--
| | 01:40 | it will jump the outpoint, in
other words, the endpoint of the layer to
| | 01:44 | the Current Time Indicator.
| | 01:45 | Likewise, if I want to start this layer,
let's say at some random time, let's
| | 01:49 | say three seconds and 11 frames.
| | 01:51 | I press the Left Bracket.
| | 01:52 | It will jump the endpoint of the
layer to my Current Time Indicator.
| | 01:56 | Now, what if you want to not move the
layer, but you want to move the Current
| | 02:00 | Time Indicator to the
endpoint and outpoint of the layers.
| | 02:03 | Well, you could use the keyboard
shortcuts I and O. So, if I press the letter O,
| | 02:08 | I'm going to jump the Current Time
Indicator to the outpoint of the layer.
| | 02:11 | If I press I, I'm going to jump the
Current Time Indicator to the endpoint of
| | 02:14 | the currently selected layer.
| | 02:16 | Now, using one of the keyboard shortcuts we
learned in the last movie, here's a cool trick.
| | 02:20 | Oftentimes when you have layers
you want to stagger them so that one
| | 02:23 | layer follows another.
| | 02:25 | What I'm going to do to do that is select this
layer. Hit Command+D or Ctrl+D to duplicate it.
| | 02:31 | And let's say I want these two
layers to come right after one another.
| | 02:35 | What I can do is I'm going to hit Command
+Down Arrow to select this bottom layer.
| | 02:40 | I'm going to press the letter O
to get to the outpoint of layer 2.
| | 02:45 | Then I'm going to advance 1 frame by
pressing Page Down, because this is where I
| | 02:50 | want the next layer to start,
1 frame after the last frame of layer 2.
| | 02:55 | And then what I'm going to do is I'm
going to hit Command+Up Arrow to select
| | 02:59 | layer 1, and then I'm going to press the
Left Bracket key to jump the start point of
| | 03:06 | that layer to the Current Time Indicator.
| | 03:09 | Then through that series of shortcuts,
you could see that I end on 1 frame and
| | 03:14 | then there is no gap and the very
next frame I start the next layer.
| | 03:18 | So, basically what we've done
here is we've sequenced these layers
| | 03:22 | without having any extra gaps or
any extra overlap, and all through the
| | 03:26 | power of keyboard shortcuts.
| | 03:28 | If you were to do this manually,
it would take you a long time.
| | 03:31 | And again, there is a
big chance for error there.
| | 03:33 | So, these core keyboard shortcuts we've been
discussing, again might not come in handy at first,
| | 03:38 | but if you keep a record of
these and you learn them, they really
| | 03:40 | are invaluable.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting comp resolution| 00:00 | As much we love our dear beloved
computers, sometimes they just can't keep up
| | 00:04 | with all the stuff that we
throw at them in After Effects.
| | 00:07 | So, in this movie, I want to give you
a couple of tips in how to work with
| | 00:10 | After Effects when your computer is
really struggling to get the job done.
| | 00:13 | The first one is the Composition
panel magnification dropdown here on
| | 00:17 | the left-hand side.
| | 00:18 | We can choose which magnification we
want. The smaller the resolution,
| | 00:23 | let's say we got 25%, the easier it's going to
be for your computer to process what's happening.
| | 00:28 | And especially when you're dealing with
HD and now with the Red Camera, we have
| | 00:31 | 2K and 4K files becoming very commonplace,
| | 00:35 | this can really help you out.
| | 00:36 | With After Effects, if it's shrunk
down really small like this, After
| | 00:41 | Effects doesn't have to actually
render every single pixel and you want to
| | 00:45 | make sure that when you are zoomed to a small
resolution like that, that you do set this to Auto.
| | 00:50 | If it's not, then you could have
it set to and inadvertently to say something
| | 00:54 | like to Full, for example.
| | 00:55 | And what this is going to do is it's
going to render every single pixel.
| | 00:59 | Even though we can't see it,
we are only seeing 25% of the pixels,
| | 01:03 | if this is set to Full, it means that
it's going to render every single one of
| | 01:07 | those pixels even though we can't see them.
| | 01:08 | So, if we leave this set to Auto, then
you could see that it's set to Quarter
| | 01:12 | automatically, so it's only rendering a
quarter of the pixels anyways and so
| | 01:16 | things go much more efficiently.
| | 01:17 | By the way, in this Magnification
dropdown, you also might want to try checking
| | 01:21 | out Fit and Fit up to 100%.
| | 01:22 | If you choose Fit up to 100%, it will
make sure that you can see the entire video.
| | 01:27 | For example, we are looking at this
86.3%, and as we resize our panels then it
| | 01:33 | automatically resizes our
view of the composition.
| | 01:38 | By the way, if we select Fit other
than Fit up to 100%, then if we keep
| | 01:41 | stretching this above 100%, then it will
resize accordingly and get extra blocky.
| | 01:47 | So, I usually set this on Fit up to 100%.
| | 01:50 | You want to be careful though when you
get to one of these like weird fractional
| | 01:52 | values, like 80.2%, oftentimes you
can see these little problems with the
| | 01:57 | resolution, something with like
the video card or how it's processed.
| | 02:00 | But it makes things very blocky sometimes.
| | 02:02 | I shouldn't say very blocky, but you
definitely see along the edges that that's
| | 02:06 | not as crisp as it would be.
| | 02:08 | If we were going to take this to
something like 50% or even 100%, things will
| | 02:12 | look much more smooth.
| | 02:14 | So, again Fit up to 100%
is great. It's very dynamic.
| | 02:18 | But again, the downside is
that the quality is not perfect.
| | 02:22 | Now, the other thing you could do in
this Resolution dropdown here is to force
| | 02:26 | this to a lower resolution. So as we
talked about, the correspondence between the
| | 02:31 | zoom factor and then the quality, but
even when we were zoomed in, let's say to
| | 02:36 | 100%, we could also take this
resolution dropdown to a Quarter.
| | 02:40 | And again, that will render every
fourth pixel and it does make it look
| | 02:44 | a little bit blocky.
| | 02:45 | But it's amazing how much faster After
Effects can render this footage when you
| | 02:50 | drop the quality down.
| | 02:51 | Now oftentimes, like when you're
dealing with animation timing, like a ball
| | 02:54 | bouncing or characters moving, you
don't really need to see things perfectly.
| | 02:58 | You are not like look looking for
like a pixel-by-pixel perfect view.
| | 03:02 | You just kind of want to get a
sense of the animation, the timing.
| | 03:04 | And again, if you are dealing with
the 2K footage or 4K footage or even if
| | 03:08 | you're working with HD and your
computer is having a hard time with it, you can
| | 03:11 | go to this dropdown.
| | 03:12 | You can even choose Custom.
| | 03:14 | And you could choose the Custom
resolution so you could render every, let's
| | 03:17 | say, 10 pixels horizontally and every 10 pixels
vertically, which creates a very blocky image.
| | 03:24 | But again, when you're zoomed out you
could still tell what's going on and
| | 03:27 | it allows you to just preview
your video so much faster.
| | 03:31 | Now, of course, this is not ideal.
| | 03:33 | And before you do a full render of
something, especially if you have effects
| | 03:36 | applied, you want to preview things at
full resolution just to make sure that
| | 03:41 | you have got all of your
virtual i's dotted and t's crossed.
| | 03:45 | But this can help you definitely
while you are working if your computer
| | 03:49 | is chugging along.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
11. PaintingUsing the paint tools| 00:00 | Whether your workflow is more motion
graphics-based or whether it's more visual
| | 00:04 | effects and compositing-based, After
Effects has some really cool paint tools
| | 00:08 | that work well in both arenas.
| | 00:10 | First, we're going to look at how
the basic Brush tool works and how that
| | 00:14 | applies to motion graphics.
| | 00:16 | Then we'll move on to see how it can help
you to do visual effects and compositing.
| | 00:19 | I have here this motion graphics
background that I've created and I have this
| | 00:23 | solid layer, which just says Paint On Me.
| | 00:25 | So, we can't miss that.
| | 00:26 | What we're going to do is select the Brush tool.
| | 00:29 | But in order to paint on this layer,
we actually have to open this layer up
| | 00:33 | in what's called the Layer panel, which we
looked at earlier in this training series.
| | 00:37 | So, I'm going to double-click this
layer to open up the layer panel.
| | 00:40 | Back in the old school days of After
Effects you just had to do everything in
| | 00:43 | the Layer panel. Now pretty much only painting.
| | 00:45 | What I'm going to do is I'm just going to
ignore for right now the Brushes and Paint panels.
| | 00:50 | These are kind of like the equivalent
to the Character and Paragraph panels for text,
| | 00:53 | but this is the two panels
that we used when we were painting.
| | 00:56 | If you're not seeing them, you could
click this little icon right here as long
| | 00:59 | as the Brush tool is selected.
| | 01:00 | You can click this to close the
Brushes and Paint panel or open them.
| | 01:05 | What I'm going to do is ignore this for
right now, because we can change these later.
| | 01:08 | I'm just going to click and drag
a cool little paint squiggle here.
| | 01:13 | Now this is the cool part
about painting in After Effects.
| | 01:16 | If I go down to the Layer panel and
open up Effects and then Paint and then I
| | 01:20 | open up Brush 1, and you could
see I have Stroke Options here.
| | 01:23 | You see most of the parameters and
control that we have in the Brushes and
| | 01:26 | Paint panel show up here in the Stroke
Options area in the Timeline panel now,
| | 01:31 | including Start and End, which we can animate.
| | 01:34 | So, if I went to the End value,
change this to zero, if you start and enter
| | 01:38 | now at zero, and then increase the End value,
it's like the paint stroke is drawing itself on.
| | 01:43 | So, if we want to create and animate
stroke of some type of line or something,
| | 01:47 | let's say for example like Indiana
Jones or what have you and we were wanting
| | 01:50 | to trace the path of an
airplane flying or something,
| | 01:53 | this would be a great, easy way to do that.
| | 01:56 | We could change the diameter after
the fact. Click and make this paint
| | 01:59 | size bigger or smaller.
| | 02:01 | Right now, if we zoom in there, we could
see that this paint edge is a little bit hard.
| | 02:04 | So, we could take down the hardness
and actually make this a soft edged paint stroke.
| | 02:08 | Make it fuzzy if we wanted to.
| | 02:10 | We'll leave it at 100%.
| | 02:10 | One of the first things I want
to do is change the color here.
| | 02:15 | I'm going to click the Eyedropper and I'm
actually going to sample the color of the solid.
| | 02:19 | So, now we have kind of like this
golden paint stroke on a golden background.
| | 02:24 | What I want to do is actually remove
the background, so that when we go over
| | 02:28 | here to our main composition, I want to be
able to see the paint stroke on our composition.
| | 02:33 | So, what I'm going to do is I could
actually go into the Effect Controls panel
| | 02:37 | and check Paint on Transparent or come
down here to the Timeline panel and where
| | 02:40 | it says Paint on Transparent Off,
click it once to turn this to On.
| | 02:44 | In the Layer panel,
we just now see no background.
| | 02:47 | But if we go to the Composition panel,
we could see paint on the background.
| | 02:51 | Actually, now that we have painted our
stroke here, we actually don't even need
| | 02:54 | to use the Layer panel too much anymore.
| | 02:56 | So, I'm going to scroll down.
| | 02:57 | We've already talked about Diameter
and we've already talked about Hardness,
| | 03:00 | and I want to talk about Roundness a little bit.
| | 03:02 | If we take this down, we can create an
interesting kind of calligraphy effect as
| | 03:06 | this kind of gets flattened a little bit.
| | 03:08 | Now we could use the Angle to kind of
move the angle of the paint stroke around.
| | 03:12 | I'm going to take Angle back to zero and
I'm going to take Roundness back up to 100%.
| | 03:18 | One of the interesting things about
painting in After Effects, and it's the same
| | 03:21 | way it is in Photoshop actually, is
that you have these brushes that you can
| | 03:25 | use and they kind of basically look
like little circles or maybe little flat
| | 03:28 | shapes or something.
| | 03:30 | Really what paint strokes
are is a series of those shapes.
| | 03:34 | So, if we increase the spacing, we'll
see the little paint dots that make up our
| | 03:40 | paint stroke, really just a series of circles.
| | 03:43 | So, as we decrease spacing, we're
actually just bringing those closer together.
| | 03:47 | So, what seems like a solid paint
stroke is really just a series of
| | 03:50 | consecutive circles.
| | 03:51 | The cool thing about this is
we could use this to create some
| | 03:54 | interesting patterns.
| | 03:55 | So, I might want to take down
Diameter a little bit so we have these
| | 03:57 | cool little dots here.
| | 03:58 | If we adjust the End value, we can have
these cool animated dotted line patterns
| | 04:03 | that were created with really not much
effort on our part at all, really cool for
| | 04:08 | motion graphics and you could imagine
if you have these little dots how long
| | 04:11 | it would take you to animate them one by one.
| | 04:12 | But with this effect, it kind
of makes it quick and simple.
| | 04:15 | One other thing that I want to point
out is that I intentionally started
| | 04:20 | painting on this frame that was not the home
frame and you can see where our paint started.
| | 04:26 | It started at the current frame.
| | 04:28 | So, if we played our composition now,
it actually wouldn't start having the
| | 04:33 | paint on until the frame we started painting on.
| | 04:35 | We could just trim this, and we could
crop this, just as we would with a regular
| | 04:40 | layer, but just be aware of that.
| | 04:42 | The paint does not come on and tell the
frame in which we started painting by default.
| | 04:48 | Now, let's look at painting from a
visual effects compositing point of view.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to double-click this layer here.
| | 04:54 | This is a cool shot of our flower shop.
| | 04:57 | See how it's squished a little bit?
| | 04:59 | This is because the pixel aspect
ratio of this footage is a little bit off.
| | 05:03 | So, I'm going to click this button
right here, which is a little rectangle with
| | 05:06 | a double-sided arrow.
| | 05:07 | This is the Pixel Aspect Ratio
Correction, which shows us what the footage will
| | 05:11 | actually look like if played back on the screen.
| | 05:14 | Let's say I'm going to remove this tree.
| | 05:15 | From a composition point of view,
I'm not the biggest fan of this palm
| | 05:19 | tree sticking up here.
| | 05:20 | What I can do is use this Eyedropper
tool here in the Paint panel to sample the
| | 05:26 | paint color from around the sky and
then I'm going to actually hold down the
| | 05:30 | Command key on the Mac or the Ctrl key
on the PC and drag up to resize my brush.
| | 05:37 | Once I let go off the Command key, then
my brush will stop resizing and I could
| | 05:41 | go ahead and paint this out.
| | 05:43 | Now, I'm doing this
poorly to illustrate a problem.
| | 05:48 | It's a problem no doubt
you've already caught on to.
| | 05:50 | If I just paint out objects like
this, we're going to start to see a
| | 05:54 | problem once we zoom in.
| | 05:56 | In some little areas in this it
looks okay, but what happens is that video
| | 05:59 | actually creates noise.
| | 06:01 | So, as we play this back,
we're getting noise in the sky.
| | 06:04 | We're getting noise all over the place,
in the building, everywhere, except
| | 06:08 | where we painted, which is an
obvious blunder on our part.
| | 06:11 | It makes it very obvious that this is fake.
| | 06:13 | We don't want that.
| | 06:14 | So, what I can do is select the
Paint effect in the Effect Controls panel
| | 06:17 | and delete it to get rid of all of the
paint strokes that I have applied to this layer.
| | 06:22 | Now I'm going to actually select the
Clone Stamp tool, which is the tool right
| | 06:26 | next to the Brush tool.
| | 06:27 | What the Clone Stamp tool allows us to
do is to sample areas around an object
| | 06:32 | and paste it over the object.
| | 06:33 | So, we're actually taking video
pixels and pasting them on top of the tree.
| | 06:38 | So, all of the live noise from the areas that
we sample, we paste it into where the tree is.
| | 06:43 | So, I could zoom in here.
| | 06:45 | And again, I'm going to hold the Command
key and click and drag upwards to resize this.
| | 06:49 | And I'm going to sample pixels from
the sky around the palm tree by holding
| | 06:53 | the Option key on the Mac or the Alt
key on the PC and clicking in an area of sky
| | 06:57 | and then I'm going to simply come over
here and click to paint over the palm tree.
| | 07:03 | Now you'll want to do some continuous
resampling, because believe it or not,
| | 07:07 | the blue on this side is not the
same color as the blue on this side.
| | 07:11 | The blue over here is not the
same as the blue on the top.
| | 07:15 | Even though they look
very similar, they are not.
| | 07:17 | So, we want to keep resampling,
keep repasting and keep working this,
| | 07:22 | working this, over here on this side.
| | 07:27 | So, you see we're getting a really smooth
blend, which is exactly what we need here.
| | 07:33 | I'm continuing to resample and actually
sometimes you get stuff like that where
| | 07:37 | you get cloning artifacts, where you
get extra pieces of things that you didn't
| | 07:41 | intend, like that roof.
| | 07:42 | So, you need to be careful of that.
| | 07:45 | I'm going to just get rid of this.
| | 07:48 | Now the softness of my brush
is becoming a problem here.
| | 07:51 | So, I'm going to increase the hardness
a little bit more and that way we don't
| | 07:57 | have such a soft edge, which makes
easier for us to create a better clone around
| | 08:01 | where the roof is here.
| | 08:03 | Okay, so that's good enough for our
purposes right now and we could back up.
| | 08:08 | And you can see that there
are some issues right around here.
| | 08:11 | I made it little bit too dark.
| | 08:13 | So, what we might want to do is sample
and paste over those areas until we get a
| | 08:17 | smoother transition.
| | 08:19 | That looks much better.
| | 08:20 | So, if we hit the Spacebar to preview this,
then from faraway it looks pretty good.
| | 08:25 | And from zoomed in close, we could see
that there is noise because again we
| | 08:29 | sampled live video data to paste over the tree.
| | 08:32 | So, whether you zoomed in close or from
faraway people, chances are, are not going
| | 08:37 | to notice the digital fakery
that we just purported on them.
| | 08:41 | Also, what you might want to try to do
is to go in here and try this as an extra
| | 08:45 | exercise after this movie is over.
| | 08:47 | Go in and try to remove this flower
area by using the bricks and the street
| | 08:52 | texture to try to replace that,
so that we have a clean slate here.
| | 08:56 | And oftentimes, like on "The Fellowship
of the Ring", Peter Jackson noticed in
| | 08:59 | theatrical release there was a
Volkswagen Bug in one of the scenes.
| | 09:02 | So, you can use this feature to go in and
remove objects that you don't want in your scene.
| | 09:08 | Sometimes, as noted here, it's kind of
like a compositional thing where you just
| | 09:12 | kind of like don't like the way something looks.
| | 09:14 | But a lot times, it might be like a
visual effects thing where you might have
| | 09:17 | wires or cables connected to something
that are kind of giving it away, or
| | 09:21 | something like in "The Fellowship of
the Ring", where it's kind of like a
| | 09:23 | historical thing, where it
throws off the vibe of the movie.
| | 09:27 | So, just be aware that these tools
are here to help you to fiddle with your
| | 09:30 | footage and create cool
motion graphics elements as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Roto Brush tool| 00:00 | There is a powerful new type of brush in
AfterEffects CS5 called the Roto Brush.
| | 00:05 | And what this does this allows you to
go in and select certain objects and
| | 00:09 | remove them from the background.
| | 00:11 | So, I have here this motion
graphics back on, for example, with this
| | 00:14 | snowboarder over it, but this is the
same photo you were looking at before,
| | 00:17 | which looks like this.
| | 00:18 | So, what we're going to do in this movie
is we're going to use the Roto Brush to
| | 00:20 | take regular footage, and isolate the
snowboarder so that he appears to jump off of
| | 00:26 | our motion graphics background and
then go back to the regular snowy
| | 00:31 | environment to which he feels accustomed.
| | 00:33 | So, kind of a cool feature to be
able to isolate objects like that.
| | 00:37 | So, let's go over to the Start
composition and see how this works.
| | 00:40 | I've created some comp markers here for
you so we know where to begin and where
| | 00:44 | to end the Roto Brush.
| | 00:46 | Go ahead and double-click this
layer to open it up in the Layer panel.
| | 00:49 | Just like every other brush, we need to
be in the layer panel to use it, select
| | 00:53 | the Roto Brush tool, which is merely
to the right of the Brush tool, which we
| | 00:56 | looked that in the last movie.
| | 00:57 | Oh, yeah also, before you get started, make
sure that the resolution is in Full resolution.
| | 01:03 | The Roto Brush really needs to be
in full resolution to work properly.
| | 01:06 | I am going to zoom in here and I am
just going to do a rough drag around this
| | 01:13 | object at one second and 12 frames in and
actually I might want to be a little bit before then.
| | 01:18 | We are kind of creating our master
reference frame we can go back and change
| | 01:23 | this if we want to-- I'll show you how
do that momentarily, but what I'm doing
| | 01:26 | here is I am clicking the areas that
I want to be selected by the Roto Brush.
| | 01:32 | Now you'll notice that I am not going
exactly to the area, say for example,
| | 01:36 | right here where we have this purple
outline that tells us where the Roto Brush is
| | 01:40 | seeing our selection.
| | 01:41 | You will notice that it's very much
like the Quick Selection tool in Photoshop
| | 01:45 | and right here at the edge of the
snowboard is not being selected.
| | 01:48 | So, I'm just going go ahead and click outside.
| | 01:50 | You'll notice that as I zoom in here
that my cursor is not going to the edge.
| | 01:54 | Just a little part of my
cursor is going that way.
| | 01:56 | But if I click here, then it automatically
just kind of guesses where I want that to go.
| | 02:01 | So, you don't have to go right to the
edge and it's probably better that you don't,
| | 02:04 | so you better let AfterEffects
kind of guess where we are going to go.
| | 02:07 | So, I could click over here, for example,
and then it kind of guesses where it
| | 02:11 | wants it. So again best not
to go all the way to the edge.
| | 02:15 | Now right here, I want to select the
glove, but my cursor is a little bit too big.
| | 02:18 | So, just as we saw in the last movie,
hold the Command key on the Mac or the
| | 02:21 | Ctrl key on a PC and drag downwards to
reduce the size of the brush. Likewise
| | 02:26 | you could drag upwards to increase
the size of the brush and just click
| | 02:29 | anywhere to be able to resize that.
| | 02:33 | This is looking pretty good here.
| | 02:36 | Now there are going to be some rough
edges here. Do the best that you can to
| | 02:41 | smooth those out, but there are some
auto smoothing features built into this
| | 02:45 | feature that we'll be
looking at in just a moment.
| | 02:48 | So, I am just going to go around the
edge, get a good selection, as good as I'm
| | 02:51 | able to at the moment.
| | 02:52 | It looks pretty good.
| | 02:55 | Now one of the things that we want to
do is we want to use the Page Down and
| | 03:00 | Page Up keys one at a time so we can go
to the next frame, and we could see if
| | 03:04 | there's any problems.
| | 03:05 | So, there are a few problems here.
| | 03:07 | So, I am just going to click here to
reselect those areas that kind of got lost
| | 03:11 | for whatever reason.
| | 03:12 | Usually these occur around the edges
and so they're some of the shirt and back
| | 03:17 | that didn't quite get covered.
| | 03:19 | That's looking pretty good. So, Page Down.
| | 03:22 | At first, this will seem like a tedious
process, although if you have ever done
| | 03:26 | any rotoscoping, which is typically
what they call when you have to mask out
| | 03:29 | something frame by frame.
| | 03:31 | That's extremely tedious, and
this is a great timesaver for that.
| | 03:35 | You don't have to do every single pixel by hand.
| | 03:37 | It's a great start.
| | 03:38 | And because this is such an
intelligent tool, you really don't have to go and
| | 03:42 | make that many changes frame by frame.
| | 03:44 | It seems like after a while the Roto
Brush starts to anticipate your very move
| | 03:48 | and so it seems like you've to adjust
less with every frame that you go to.
| | 03:51 | It's not going to be perfect.
| | 03:53 | I'm going to show you some things
in a just second and it will make things
| | 03:55 | go even faster for you, but there
this frame is almost perfect as is.
| | 03:58 | There is a little bit of a problem
around the edges, almost don't even need to
| | 04:02 | worry about that, but with each
frame we have less and less to correct.
| | 04:05 | It seems like that frame looks
pretty good and a little bit here on the
| | 04:08 | snowboard needs to be fixed.
| | 04:10 | So, what I am going to do is hit the
Page Down key and keep advancing frame by
| | 04:13 | frame until each frame looks pretty decent.
| | 04:18 | Now, right here starting so that there
is part of the helmet that's not covered
| | 04:22 | so you could zoom in here and make
sure that that's not getting covered.
| | 04:27 | Page Down. It's kind of getting the gist of it.
| | 04:31 | So, I can just keep doing Page Down and
I'll let you master this, but I want to
| | 04:36 | pay attention to this.
| | 04:37 | There is a kind of little mini
timeline that's been created for us here in
| | 04:40 | the Layer panel when you are working
with the Roto Brush, and there's this
| | 04:43 | first frame when we started Roto
Brush, and that's where this little like
| | 04:46 | orange dot is here.
| | 04:47 | And we actually want to move the
Current Time Indicator to where the Begin
| | 04:52 | Roto Brush Marker was.
| | 04:53 | And what am I actually going to do is
trim this from the left edge, so that the
| | 04:57 | Roto Brush starts at this frame.
| | 04:59 | Then I am going to move out to where our
end Roto Brush is right about there and
| | 05:05 | actually there are some pieces that I
don't want here. And when you want to get
| | 05:09 | rid of a piece of something that the
Roto Brush is selected you hold the Alt key
| | 05:13 | down the PC or the Option key on the
Mac and just click, and it will remove
| | 05:18 | stuff that the Roto Brush tool has selected.
| | 05:21 | So, this looks pretty good, so I am
going to trim the end of the Roto Brush
| | 05:25 | selection, and now we have
this little tiny Roto Brush area.
| | 05:30 | You can compare them with these
icons down on the bottom left-hand corner.
| | 05:34 | You could see our man little bit better
so there is a white/black showing of our
| | 05:38 | transparency where white is the opaque
parts of our mask, and the black is stuff
| | 05:42 | that will be removed.
| | 05:43 | You could also see the original
alpha boundary. We could also see it with
| | 05:47 | like a quick mask type selection with
this red overlay if we preferred that.
| | 05:52 | Now I am going to go to the black-and
-white selection, the alpha channel.
| | 05:55 | Now what we once thought was a fairly
decent mask is really a not very good mask at all.
| | 06:00 | So, what we could do is go over to the
Effect Controls panel and notice that
| | 06:03 | that there is a Roto Brush effect.
| | 06:04 | And so we could do is we could check
Refine Matte and just by checking that
| | 06:10 | even without adjusting any other settings,
we see a great improvement to what's going on.
| | 06:14 | There's even been some motion blur
automatically added for us, which is really
| | 06:18 | getting clean things up a bit.
| | 06:19 | We could also increase the smooth value
if we want to smooth out the mask even more.
| | 06:23 | We take it up to four or something.
| | 06:25 | You want to be careful with this though
because sharp corners will no longer
| | 06:28 | be sharp if Smooth is high,
so be careful about that.
| | 06:31 | If you want a softer edge, you could
increase Feather to something like 40%.
| | 06:35 | Increasing the Choke value will
actually restrict the edge pixels bringing them in.
| | 06:39 | I don't want to do that.
| | 06:41 | I also want to show you this Reduce
Chatter property, which is really cool.
| | 06:45 | A lot of times when you are working
with these automatic keying tools where
| | 06:48 | you trying to remove a background,
the noises will kind of jitter and shake
| | 06:51 | from frame to frame.
| | 06:53 | So, if you increase this value--
let's take all the way to 100 percent--
| | 06:55 | it's going to reduce the chatter. You might
not see that much of a difference on the
| | 06:59 | given frame that you are on, but from
frame to frame, it's going to be a little
| | 07:02 | bit more of a smooth edge.
| | 07:04 | Once you got everything the way you
want it for the Roto Brush tool and you
| | 07:08 | have the timeline correct here,
| | 07:10 | what I am going to do is click the
Freeze button that kind of lock this in place.
| | 07:15 | So, now that we've frozen this
selection, if we wanted to unfreeze it we could
| | 07:19 | click this button to unfreeze it and
basically when that's done it's cached our
| | 07:24 | little segment of the Roto Brush time span.
| | 07:26 | And so if we to adjust this what
we want to do is unfreeze this.
| | 07:29 | But if we go back to our composition here,
we'll see that for the Roto Brush span
| | 07:35 | the background has been removed. So here it
is with the background and once we've started
| | 07:40 | with the Roto Brush, then our
snowboarder is now over nothing basically.
| | 07:45 | If I take off these layers, we could see
that he's over a black background and these
| | 07:49 | are the layers that I
created as the background here.
| | 07:51 | But this opens up a lot of
possibilities. One, it's cool for motion graphics.
| | 07:54 | We can put maybe some titles
up here, something like that, maybe like
| | 07:58 | outline this guy or create some of
the motion graphic elements around him,
| | 08:01 | which is a very cool effect.
| | 08:03 | But it also is good for color
correction and that type of thing where if we
| | 08:06 | wanted to maybe just bring out this
guy and maybe not necessarily isolate him
| | 08:11 | and remove the background.
| | 08:12 | Let me just go ahead and select this
and hit Command+D to duplicate the layer,
| | 08:16 | Control+D on the PC. On this back clip,
what I'm going to do is I'm going to
| | 08:21 | select it and then delete the Roto Brush effect.
| | 08:24 | So, basically, we have the
snowboarder and then we have the regular
| | 08:28 | background, but because he is
isolated on the top layer we could do something
| | 08:32 | like maybe invert.
| | 08:34 | I'll apply the Invert effect to the top
layer here and so we've inverted him for
| | 08:39 | that time where he's flipping.
| | 08:41 | So, we could add a color correction.
Maybe we could just lighten him or darken
| | 08:44 | him or something a little bit more
subtle, but I just want to show you that if
| | 08:47 | you wanted to perform some kind of extra
color correction on just one isolated object,
| | 08:51 | this is a great feature to use for that.
| | 08:54 | Now be careful that you don't over-
estimate the power of the Roto Brush feature.
| | 08:58 | For things like this like a little
wispy hair or semi transparent objects,
| | 09:03 | you're much better off
using a keying tool to do that.
| | 09:06 | So, don't think that the Roto Brush
is like this be-all, end-all, cure-all
| | 09:10 | problem for all things that you
might run across with AfterEffects.
| | 09:14 | But it can get you a majority of the way
there and for times when the edge does
| | 09:18 | not have to be perfect, like a lot of
times when you are doing color correction,
| | 09:21 | you really can't beat the new Roto
Brush feature in AfterEffects CS5.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating growing vines| 00:00 | One of the most common uses for
After Effects' Paint arsenal is to create
| | 00:04 | these cool growing vines, this type
of effect, sometimes you'll see it with
| | 00:09 | vines or ink spatter or whatever, but
basically the effect is done pretty much the same way.
| | 00:15 | It's really a beautiful ornate effect,
and it's not super hard, although it is
| | 00:20 | little time-consuming.
| | 00:21 | So, here's what we're going to do.
| | 00:22 | We have one vine, because actually in
the final result, one of the things that
| | 00:26 | makes this look a lot more ornate and
beautiful than it really is is you animate
| | 00:30 | one vine and you just
duplicate it a bunch of times.
| | 00:33 | So, it seems like you have tons of
crazy stuff going on and really you've
| | 00:36 | animated one vine, but
duplicated it like three times.
| | 00:40 | So, it seems like you have tons of
stuff going on, but really you don't. So, one
| | 00:43 | of the things that you need to do
before this trick is to break up one vine
| | 00:48 | into a series of layers.
| | 00:50 | So, for example, in Illustrator, I cut
this up so that there is a main vine and
| | 00:55 | then there is one offshoot there, an
offshoot there, an offshoot there, and a
| | 00:59 | fourth offshoot there.
| | 01:01 | The same trick that we're going to
apply to the main vine, you'll need to apply
| | 01:07 | on your own to each of these offshoots.
| | 01:09 | Again, it is time-consuming, so
we're not going to go through this whole
| | 01:13 | entire project. It probably take a good, I don't
know, 30 minutes or so, maybe longer to do this.
| | 01:17 | But you'll get the idea of
how to do this on your own.
| | 01:20 | Actually, I'm going to take up the
visibility of that bottom layer as well.
| | 01:23 | So, we're just going to select the Main
Vine and we're actually going to use a
| | 01:26 | painting feature of After Effects that
we haven't covered so far and that is an
| | 01:29 | effect called Write-on, with a W.
| | 01:32 | So, I'm going to apply Write-on to
this vine and first you'll see this
| | 01:38 | Brush Position value.
| | 01:39 | So, I'm going to click the effect
control point for this and then click right at
| | 01:43 | the bottom of this effect.
| | 01:45 | By default, the Brush Size
is a very tiny two pixels.
| | 01:49 | So, click and drag this to the right to
resize this stroke so you could see this value.
| | 01:54 | There we have our paint and make
sure you're at the first frame.
| | 01:58 | What we're going to do is click the
value for Brush Position,and we're going to
| | 02:03 | move in time a little bit and
then move Brush Position a little bit.
| | 02:09 | Again, you want to make sure that the
stopwatch is clicked for Brush Position.
| | 02:12 | Otherwise you will not actually be
creating a long paint stroke; you'll just be
| | 02:15 | moving one little paint dot around.
| | 02:18 | So, again, the key is to move in time
and continue to paint this entire vine.
| | 02:23 | Now the paint here works kind of
like the Brush tool that we saw before.
| | 02:28 | Where we're now painting with
this color on top of our layer.
| | 02:32 | So, the key to this trick really is in
this Paint Style dropdown at the bottom.
| | 02:35 | So, right now, we're
painting On the Original Image.
| | 02:37 | That's the default setting.
| | 02:38 | You could also paint On Transparent,
which is what we saw with the paint
| | 02:42 | settings as well, where we could get
rid of the layer and just have our paint.
| | 02:45 | But what makes this effect unique and
special is this value down at the bottom,
| | 02:49 | and that is Reveal Original Image.
| | 02:52 | That will make it so it doesn't matter
what the color of the Write-on paint is.
| | 02:56 | You'll actually be using
the paint to reveal the image.
| | 02:59 | So, basically what you would be doing
is be moving in time, changing the value,
| | 03:03 | and revealing the vine that is there.
| | 03:07 | Now, one of the things that you'll want
to do-- and I want to take Paint Style back
| | 03:10 | to On Original Image for a moment.
| | 03:11 | We need to change Brush Time
Properties from None to Size.
| | 03:16 | The reason why is that we're going to
need to animate the size of the brush.
| | 03:19 | As we go up this vine, you'll notice
that it gets smaller and more treacherous,
| | 03:23 | like a mountain road.
| | 03:25 | And then at the top, it curls.
| | 03:26 | It gets very small.
| | 03:27 | So, we're going to want to
be able to animate Brush Size.
| | 03:30 | However by default, Brush Size, when
you animate it, and let's say I take this
| | 03:34 | down is going to change the brush
size for the entire stroke for everything
| | 03:38 | that we've drawn so far.
| | 03:40 | But actually we don't want that.
| | 03:41 | We want this to be big and then to
taper and get smaller towards the end.
| | 03:45 | So, the way that this happens is by
changing Brush Time Properties to Size so
| | 03:50 | that as we move in time, as we
continue to change the value, and then we
| | 03:53 | animate Brush Size.
| | 03:54 | Actually let me back up and we'll
start there. Click the stopwatch for Brush
| | 03:58 | Size and then I move in time.
| | 04:01 | Now, because I've animated both
Brush Size and I've changed Brush Time
| | 04:04 | Properties to Size, then when I
change the Brush Size it only changes the
| | 04:08 | current spot's brush size and not
the brush size of the entire stroke of
| | 04:12 | everything that we've done.
| | 04:13 | So, that is essentially the trick.
| | 04:15 | We paint on the entire vine and
then we change the Paint Style to Reveal
| | 04:19 | Original Image, so that we are
uncovering whatever we want to reveal, and then
| | 04:25 | we do that to each of these vines
and then we duplicate that whole vine.
| | 04:29 | Now you can see that
I did that via pre-composing.
| | 04:33 | So, if I double-click this, you
could see my vines are all animated here.
| | 04:36 | Here's what that looks like.
| | 04:38 | Then I duplicated those precomps,
added some Glow, scaled them, flipped them a
| | 04:43 | little bit, changed them so they
staggered in time a little bit, and then put
| | 04:47 | them together, and you have this
really beautiful vine animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
12. Working with Masks and Shape LayersCreating and using masks| 00:00 | In this movie and throughout this
chapter we are going to be examining one of
| | 00:04 | the key features of After Effects,
and that is working with masks.
| | 00:09 | Masks do quite a bit, but mainly
they remove pieces of the layer.
| | 00:14 | Let's look at this simple example here.
| | 00:16 | I have these two video clips and if I
take off the visibility of the top one,
| | 00:19 | we have this guy talking about olives
and then we also have a shot of some
| | 00:24 | olives with some olive sorting.
| | 00:26 | What we are going to do is create an
effect, kind of like a screen split
| | 00:29 | effect like they have on the TV show
'24', where we have the hand over here
| | 00:34 | doing some sorting of the olives and
then we also will isolate this guy so
| | 00:40 | it will just be him talking.
| | 00:42 | So, we are going to get rid of this
other stuff around the background and we
| | 00:45 | are going to focus on only this little
piece over here on the right-hand side.
| | 00:48 | So, first let's select the olive
sorting O2 layer and then we will go open the
| | 00:53 | toolbar here and we are going to
select the Rectangle tool at the top.
| | 00:57 | What we are going to do is, again,
making sure that this layer is selected,
| | 01:01 | we are going to click and drag in the
upper right-hand corner of the screen and
| | 01:08 | that looks about right there.
| | 01:10 | So, instantly you will
see what we have done here.
| | 01:14 | We have isolated just this
one little piece of the layer.
| | 01:17 | Now, this is not like keying.
| | 01:19 | This is not like the Roto Brush tool,
where we were isolating just the hand itself.
| | 01:22 | We are just creating a section of that
layer and now you can see the rest of
| | 01:26 | the layer is transparent,
showing through to the layer beneath.
| | 01:29 | Now, we are going to come
back to this layer here.
| | 01:31 | I am going to turn off its visibility
temporarily, close it up, and then select
| | 01:35 | the TourRon_Intro_B_02 layer and what
we are going to do is move to a section
| | 01:40 | where both of his hands are in frame.
| | 01:42 | Unfortunately, for the design of this
particular project, we are going to have
| | 01:45 | to chop off a little bit
of his hand. Sorry Mr. Ron.
| | 01:48 | But we are going to select that layer
and with the Rectangle tool selected,
| | 01:52 | we're going to click and
drag again on this layer.
| | 01:57 | And we are getting a black background
now because now there's nothing else
| | 02:00 | behind this layer, so we are
just seeing the transparency.
| | 02:03 | So, what I am going to do is now turn
on both layers and we see that we have
| | 02:08 | some issues here, some overlap,
so we need to do some designing.
| | 02:11 | So, I am going to select the
Selection tool in the toolbar.
| | 02:14 | I am going to click and drag
these layers to now move these around.
| | 02:19 | And I am also going to come down here
to the Timeline panel,and with the layer
| | 02:24 | selected, press S to reveal their
Scale properties, so we can adjust them.
| | 02:28 | So, I will take the olive sorting,
scale this down to, maybe put this up in the
| | 02:34 | corner, somewhere around there.
| | 02:35 | And we will select Ron and we
will Scale him down just a little bit.
| | 02:40 | Let me take this olive sorting one down a
little bit more and then spread them out, like so.
| | 02:47 | I don't trust my eyes to
be a good judge of distance.
| | 02:51 | So, what I am going to do
is open up the Align panel.
| | 02:55 | If it's not showing, go to Window > Align.
| | 02:57 | And then what we are going to do is
click on one of the layers and then
| | 03:00 | Shift+Click the other layers so they
are both selected, and then in the Align
| | 03:05 | panel on the right-hand side we want
to align the top. Vertical top alignment
| | 03:10 | button, go ahead and click that.
| | 03:11 | Now they are both aligned and we could
maybe move this over just a little bit.
| | 03:17 | And then we have this kind of '24'
like scenario, where we have two different
| | 03:22 | clips playing at the same time.
| | 03:24 | And while he is talking about olive sorting,
you are actually seeing it go on at the same time.
| | 03:29 | Now, we could have just scaled the layer
down rather than cropping it with the mask.
| | 03:34 | But the point of the mask is that
we can focus on the part of the layer
| | 03:37 | that really matters.
| | 03:39 | So, we don't have to worry about
all the extra trees in the scene.
| | 03:41 | We don't have to worry about the
extra pair of hands in the scene.
| | 03:44 | We just see like just the olives and
just the hand, that makes the action seem
| | 03:49 | a little bit more intense when we
are really focused in on it like this.
| | 03:52 | Now, let's look at another
example of what masks are good for.
| | 03:54 | I am going to go to the picture frame
composition and in this composition we
| | 03:58 | have just the little graphic of a picture frame.
| | 04:01 | Kind of cheesy a little bit, but it
will illustrate our point perfectly.
| | 04:05 | So, here's our picture frame.
| | 04:07 | And underneath this picture frame,
we have a layer of this beautiful photo here,
| | 04:12 | this couple longingly
looking at each other on the beach.
| | 04:15 | So, what we are going to do is we are
going to actually use a mask, not to
| | 04:19 | isolate a certain subject here or part
of the frame, but actually to cut a hole
| | 04:23 | through this center section so
we can see the layers beneath it.
| | 04:26 | So, with the picture frame layer
selected, I am going to select the
| | 04:29 | Rectangle tool once more.
| | 04:31 | In the upper left-hand corner,
I am going to click and drag down.
| | 04:36 | I realize this is kind of weird looking.
| | 04:38 | I will explain that in just a second.
| | 04:39 | But click and drag down to
the bottom corner of the frame.
| | 04:42 | If you go too far outside, you are
actually going to see some of the frames.
| | 04:45 | So, actually we are going to come down
here and make sure that our mask here
| | 04:50 | is about the exact same size, as close as we
can get it, to the black area inside the frame.
| | 04:55 | Now, there are different mask modes.
| | 04:58 | In the olive oil composition we just
looked at, the masks revealed part of the layer.
| | 05:03 | But what we want do here is not to
reveal part of the layer but to conceal
| | 05:08 | this part of the layer.
| | 05:09 | So, what I can do is come down here to
the picture frame comp and this layer,
| | 05:13 | and we can open up Masks and across for
Mask 1 will have this dropdown that says Add.
| | 05:18 | That's the default mask mode, meaning that
whatever is in the mask we'll add to the layer.
| | 05:25 | But we actually wanted the
opposite. Whatever is in the mask,
| | 05:27 | we want to subtract from the layer.
| | 05:30 | So, in this dropdown change it from
Add to Subtract, and we will remove that
| | 05:36 | part of the layer, allowing the layers
beneath to show through, thereby creating
| | 05:41 | a true picture frame.
| | 05:42 | Now, these are vector masks.
| | 05:44 | If you are familiar with Illustrator,
it's pretty much the same thing.
| | 05:46 | What we can do is go back and get our
Selection tool and we could click on the
| | 05:51 | mask and we could actually
move components of the layer.
| | 05:54 | I am actually going to undo that.
| | 05:56 | We could click individual points.
| | 05:58 | I shall click away to deselect and then
click back to select one of these points.
| | 06:03 | And we can move these points around.
| | 06:05 | They are again vector and
fully controllable and adjustable.
| | 06:10 | We could even click a
line segment and move that.
| | 06:14 | So, we have total control
over what this mask is like.
| | 06:19 | Again, I am not going to go too
far into it in this training series.
| | 06:22 | But if you are familiar with
Illustrator, again we can add additional points
| | 06:25 | to create some curvature, have Bezier curves
that we adjust and scale and all of that as well.
| | 06:31 | So, that's kind of like
the introduction to masks.
| | 06:34 | Now let's go on into the next movie.
We are going to look at a few more of
| | 06:37 | the options that we have with
masks in the Timeline panel here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring mask options| 00:00 | Simple masks like the ones we looked
at in the last movie are very helpful,
| | 00:04 | and they do come in handy, but when
you understand mask options, the options
| | 00:08 | that you have with masks, they just
really unlocks a whole new world with them,
| | 00:12 | become much more powerful.
| | 00:14 | So, we have here this
cute little fishy animation.
| | 00:16 | And there are some bubbles here.
| | 00:17 | By the way, these bubbles are created
with an After Effects effect called Foam.
| | 00:21 | So, we have these cute little bubbles here.
| | 00:23 | And if we click on this Orange Solid
layer, really this is an orange solid with
| | 00:27 | a mask applied to it.
| | 00:29 | And also, by the way, this shape was
created by copying and pasting a path from
| | 00:35 | Photoshop onto this layer,
and this is what was created.
| | 00:39 | If I press the letter M, I can reveal
basic properties about the mask, including
| | 00:45 | the Mask Path, which is what
we are going to animate here.
| | 00:48 | If I go out to, I don't know, maybe
about a second in here, I am going to click
| | 00:51 | the stopwatch for Mask Path and we can
animate the shape of this mask path the
| | 00:57 | same way we would animate
anything else in After Effects.
| | 01:01 | So, we can click the
stopwatch here, move in time.
| | 01:04 | Sometimes when you want to select one
of these points, it's kind of tricky.
| | 01:07 | You kind of have to actually
deselect it and then select it again.
| | 01:10 | Because once you select it initially,
then all the points are selected and you
| | 01:14 | can move the entire mask as one whole.
| | 01:16 | So, if you actually want to adjust
individual points, you kind of have to click
| | 01:19 | away to deselect it and then
click back on to select these points.
| | 01:23 | So, I can move these masks points.
| | 01:25 | Let's say I want to bring that fin down
and maybe bring this one up a little bit.
| | 01:30 | I could even Shift+Click
multiple points to move them at once.
| | 01:35 | Let's do that and I am just going to
click and drag a marquee around all of
| | 01:40 | these tail fin points.
| | 01:43 | And then move that in.
| | 01:45 | And then I can move in time and
bring these back out. Bring this back in.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to make it like a little bit smaller.
| | 01:57 | Actually, let's exaggerate this a
little bit, take this out a little bit
| | 02:00 | farther than it was.
| | 02:02 | And bring this back down here.
| | 02:05 | If I scrub in time now, you can
see that we have some movement to our
| | 02:10 | cute little fishy here.
| | 02:11 | And what I can do is I actually kind of
want it to rotate between these points, so
| | 02:16 | I can click and drag a
marquee around these three points.
| | 02:19 | Hit Command+C or Ctrl+C on the PC to copy it.
| | 02:23 | And we will move in time to about
here and then we will paste them.
| | 02:27 | And now we have a cute little fishy animation.
| | 02:30 | We can move this entire layer,
because we really don't have any
| | 02:33 | Position keyframes.
| | 02:34 | If I press P, no Position
keyframes, so we can move it over here.
| | 02:39 | Press the stopwatch for Position.
| | 02:42 | Move it somewhere over
here and move it offscreen.
| | 02:44 | And we have created a
cute little fishy animation.
| | 02:49 | It's actually a little bit too fast,
because we can't really see that it's
| | 02:53 | moving, but start there and there we go.
| | 02:58 | So, the fish is moving and it's moving.
| | 03:03 | While it moves from left to right,
it also flaps because its mask points
| | 03:08 | are moving as well.
| | 03:09 | Now, this is cool for motion
graphics and stuff like this.
| | 03:13 | But also in the last movie, when we
looked at the '24' style picture in picture thing,
| | 03:17 | if you want it to expand one of
the dimensions of those points or reshape
| | 03:22 | the mask, then you can do that there as well.
| | 03:25 | Here's another really cool option
for mask, and that is mask expansion.
| | 03:29 | We have here this logo that we
animated earlier in this training series here.
| | 03:33 | All these pieces come on and
our little bicyclist comes in.
| | 03:36 | The one thing I didn't like about
it is that there is this really cool
| | 03:39 | filigree coming off of this back
tire, these really cool swirls, and
| | 03:42 | everything else is moving and full of
life, but these cool gradient curls are
| | 03:45 | just kind of sitting there.
| | 03:47 | So, what we are going to do is use masks
to bring those to life in a really easy way.
| | 03:51 | So, I am going to double-click the
layer that these curls are on, which is
| | 03:54 | actually part of this whole bike
girl thing, so it's PRECOMP bike girl.
| | 03:59 | So, double-click this precomp to open it up.
| | 04:01 | And this layer, the Auto-traced rear
tire curls, is what we are going to
| | 04:05 | be bringing to life.
| | 04:06 | I have already created a composition
marker for you here, the Start Curl Animation.
| | 04:11 | So, we will move over to that marker.
| | 04:13 | And then I mentioned before
that you press M to reveal masks.
| | 04:18 | As you can see here, there are
multiple masks applied to this one layer,
| | 04:22 | which is totally legal.
| | 04:23 | And if I press M twice, I will reveal
not only the masks and the Mask Path
| | 04:29 | option here, but also
I will reveal all mask options.
| | 04:33 | So, again, you press M two times fast.
| | 04:35 | Now, we have a couple of
pretty simple options here.
| | 04:38 | We have Mask Opacity.
| | 04:39 | So, if we wanted to lower the opacity
of one of the masks, we can do that.
| | 04:43 | So, we can actually have different
opacity values for different parts of the
| | 04:48 | same layer, which is pretty cool.
| | 04:50 | We could also increase the feather of a mask.
| | 04:52 | I am actually going to go to this left most
curl, which is the most obvious curl right here.
| | 04:57 | If I increase the Feather, then we
kind of soften the edge of that mask.
| | 05:01 | If I click away to deselect that, you could
see what that looks like, kind of nice wispy.
| | 05:06 | Maybe in another project, this would
be a beautiful thing to use. Love that.
| | 05:10 | So, I am going to take this back down to 0.
| | 05:11 | And what I am going to
focus on now is Mask Expansion.
| | 05:15 | If we click and drag Mask Expansion
to the right, we can actually expand
| | 05:19 | the area of the mask.
| | 05:21 | This comes in real handy.
| | 05:22 | Let's say you make a border, kind of
like we did in the last movie, with the frame,
| | 05:24 | and you decided that you made
it a little bit too small or not quite
| | 05:28 | small enough, you can actually just use
Mask Expansion to make that smaller or larger.
| | 05:35 | So, what we are going to do here is
that we are going to start at this Start
| | 05:38 | Curl Animation, and we are going to take all of
the Mask Expansion values to a negative number.
| | 05:44 | It doesn't have to be all the way. Let's see.
| | 05:47 | For this, I am going to take this to -5.
| | 05:49 | For the upper-right curl, I will take
that to -5 and it looks like we got a trend here.
| | 05:57 | About -5, -6 or so should get
rid of everything that we need it too.
| | 06:03 | So, we are going to remove all of
this stuff by-- this one needs to be -7,
| | 06:09 | the main curl body.
| | 06:11 | But I am going to click the stopwatch for
Mask Expansion for each of these masks here.
| | 06:18 | And then we are going to move in time a
little bit, probably to about 03:07, and
| | 06:24 | we are going to take this back to 0
for each of these Mask Expansion values.
| | 06:29 | So, basically by animating the Mask
Expansion, we subtracted it so that the Mask
| | 06:34 | Expansion basically
eroded away the entire layer.
| | 06:38 | And then by animating Mask Expansion to
go back to 0, we are like un-eroding the
| | 06:44 | layers so they appear on like this.
| | 06:46 | It's a very cool effect.
| | 06:48 | It kind of has like this growing on effect.
| | 06:50 | It's really not growing on, but
because these are curls, they are growing
| | 06:53 | out from the inside.
| | 06:56 | I have a feeling it's going look pretty awesome.
| | 06:58 | So, I am going to tap the Shift key
and that brings up this little like mini
| | 07:02 | comp navigator here.
| | 07:03 | And I am going to hit the Left Arrow to
get back to the Explore California Logo
| | 07:07 | layered comp there and then
press Return to actually go there.
| | 07:10 | I am going to press B to begin the work area.
| | 07:13 | Let's do a RAM preview of this to see
what it look likes when these curls come on.
| | 07:17 | And that looks absolutely beautiful.
| | 07:19 | Let me actually zoom in so that we
are at 100% here and we can see these
| | 07:23 | curls animating on. Look at that!
| | 07:28 | Just beautiful!
| | 07:29 | So, again, you can see it
a little more clearly now.
| | 07:31 | We have these masks that were eroded
away because of Mask Expansion and then by
| | 07:36 | taking it from a negative value until
they were all the way gone, until a 0
| | 07:40 | value, they disappear to just
bloom on in a really beautiful way.
| | 07:45 | So, looks like we did a lot of work there,
but really it was just Mask Expansion.
| | 07:50 | So, again, as if masks weren't
powerful enough, but these mask options make
| | 07:54 | them much more valuable.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating masks with Auto-trace| 00:00 | When I was preparing the Exercise
Files for the last movie, I used a very
| | 00:04 | important feature of After Effects
that I want to share with you here.
| | 00:07 | Now, you will notice that with the rear
tire curls layer, if I press the letter M,
| | 00:11 | there is no mask here.
| | 00:14 | So, in other words, I can't use Mask Expansion.
| | 00:17 | So, I need to make a mask out of
these layers so that we can use the
| | 00:22 | Mask Expansion feature.
| | 00:24 | Now, there are two ways of doing this.
| | 00:25 | One, we can go in manually and use a
tool like the Pen tool and click, click
| | 00:32 | and drag, and then manually go through,
laboriously go through I should add,
| | 00:40 | every single spot here and trace
these curls, clicking and dragging,
| | 00:45 | clicking and dragging.
| | 00:46 | But this is such a pain.
| | 00:48 | So, what I am going to do is just
delete that and show you what I really did.
| | 00:53 | I selected this rear tire curls layer,
then go to the Layer menu at the top of
| | 00:56 | the screen and then choose from the
bottom of the Layer menu, Auto-trace.
| | 01:01 | This will go through and
automatically trace and create a mask for your
| | 01:08 | currently selected layer.
| | 01:09 | I am going to check the Preview box
here so we could see what's going on.
| | 01:12 | This is kind of a preview of what's happening.
| | 01:14 | I want to make sure this
is set to Current Frame.
| | 01:17 | If I set this to Work Area, what's
going to happen is that After Effects is
| | 01:20 | going to trace every single frame
and create new masks for every frame.
| | 01:25 | We don't want that.
| | 01:26 | So, I want this to be Current Frame only.
| | 01:28 | Although I should point out, if I had a
moving layer then you might want to set
| | 01:33 | this to be the Work Area.
| | 01:34 | I am also going to set this to be the Alpha.
| | 01:36 | It's going to look at the transparency of the
layer and draw masks around the transparency.
| | 01:41 | And we could adjust these
values, such as Tolerance.
| | 01:44 | I could increase that if I wanted to.
| | 01:46 | And you could see the effect
that's having on my mask here.
| | 01:50 | But I think default value of 1
is going to be just fine here.
| | 01:55 | And actually, the mask doesn't
look all that great right now.
| | 01:58 | But when we actually click OK with
these settings, it's going to look better
| | 02:02 | than the preview is suggesting that it will.
| | 02:04 | Although, if I was picky, I could come
over here to some of the other values,
| | 02:07 | Corner Roundness, Threshold, Minimum
Area and play with these a little bit to
| | 02:11 | get the value that I like.
| | 02:12 | I am actually going to take this
back down to 50 or so for right now.
| | 02:16 | And again, I am just going to leave
this pretty much at their defaults.
| | 02:18 | But if you wanted to tweak this, you could.
| | 02:21 | So, I am going to go ahead and click OK here.
| | 02:23 | And basically, what that
did is it made a new layer.
| | 02:26 | See the curls look much better
than they did in the preview.
| | 02:29 | So, it created a new solid layer
and applied the mask to that solid.
| | 02:34 | So, what I need to do and what I did
is to select the rear tire curls,
| | 02:38 | the original one, and go to the Ramp
effect on the original rear tire curls.
| | 02:44 | Hit Command+C to copy or Ctrl+C to copy on the PC.
| | 02:48 | Select the new solid layer, the Auto-
trace Solid, and hit Command+V or Ctrl+V to
| | 02:52 | paste the Ramp effect so that our
swirls look similar to what we had.
| | 02:57 | I will select the Selection tool here,
click away to deselect, and I will turn
| | 03:01 | off the visibility of the
rear tire curls original layer.
| | 03:04 | Now, you will notice that, and this is the
way it is with Auto-trace a lot of times.
| | 03:08 | There are some weird little glitches.
| | 03:10 | So, what I had to do in the last movie
was to go in and select certain points
| | 03:14 | and maybe delete them.
| | 03:16 | And in this case, there is a
kind of a little bump right here.
| | 03:18 | I could just click and drag these
points up to get back the original
| | 03:22 | curvature of the curls.
| | 03:24 | It's just kind of the nature of
the beast, but what's easier for me,
| | 03:26 | in my own opinion, is to go through
and tweak this rather than to fiddle with
| | 03:31 | those Auto-trace settings and just
try to guess the right thing to do.
| | 03:35 | So, it's easier for me, again, because
I like playing with these Bezier curves.
| | 03:38 | It's easier for me just to do that than to
get the settings right, right out of the gate.
| | 03:42 | And actually, I need to drag this down
below the Bike layer, so it's in the back now.
| | 03:48 | So, the movie would be there.
That's the Auto-trace feature.
| | 03:51 | But I want to show you some
other benefits of having a mask.
| | 03:55 | Not only do we get access to cool
features like the Mask Expansion and Mask
| | 03:59 | Opacity and all that kind of stuff,
where we could selectively choose the
| | 04:03 | opacity of these different curls.
| | 04:04 | But one of the other benefits is
there are a lot of effects that use masks.
| | 04:10 | One of the most basic ones is Stroke.
| | 04:12 | So, if I were to apply this, then
what we could do is you will see that the
| | 04:17 | Stroke effect applies a
stroke to one of our masks.
| | 04:20 | And we can't apply the stroke
to just our regular tire curls.
| | 04:24 | At least we don't
have this much flexibility.
| | 04:26 | So, Stroke works with masks.
| | 04:28 | And I could choose selectively which mask
I want to apply this to. So, there's that.
| | 04:36 | Or as I am going to do in this
case, I could check All Masks.
| | 04:40 | And so now all masks have a stroke.
| | 04:42 | Now, you will notice that it's a little
bit pixilated because I am zoomed into 200%.
| | 04:46 | This is the regular zoom ratio.
| | 04:48 | And as you zoom in above 200%, you are
going to get that pixilation, even though
| | 04:51 | these are Illustrator files.
| | 04:53 | If we were to scale these up to
above 200%, then it'd be fine.
| | 04:56 | It would look great.
| | 04:57 | But because we are zooming in above 200%,
that's what is making this not look so great.
| | 05:03 | Now, what's cool about this is that
I can animate the Start and End values.
| | 05:07 | It's kind of like we saw with Paint.
| | 05:09 | So, I could take End down.
| | 05:11 | And so basically what its doing is
it's tracing on this paint or this
| | 05:16 | stroke, in other words.
| | 05:17 | So, what I am going to do is I am
going to set End to 0%, beginning of the
| | 05:21 | composition or 7 frames in as in
the case here, some time towards the
| | 05:25 | beginning of the comp.
| | 05:27 | Move out in time a little bit and
then we will take the End value to 100%.
| | 05:30 | And so now, if I click away to
deselect this, zoom out to 100%, then preview this,
| | 05:35 | we get a really cool animation of
our curls being drawn on, at least the
| | 05:42 | Stroke being drawn on.
| | 05:44 | But what we can do is we can go back
to our effect here, and just like with
| | 05:47 | painting, we can increase the
spacing so we have a series of dots.
| | 05:51 | So, now when it is being painted on,
it's a series of cool little dots.
| | 05:55 | And we can go down to the Paint Style
parameter at the bottom of the Stroke
| | 05:59 | effect and change this from On
Original Image, so it is basically making the
| | 06:03 | Stroke on the original image to On Transparent.
| | 06:06 | So, now we just have a series of
dotted curls and look how cool that is.
| | 06:12 | Also, it looks like some marquee or
something that you might find at a
| | 06:15 | Broadway show or something.
| | 06:17 | Take Paint Style to Reveal Original Image.
| | 06:19 | And what this is going to do, it's
going to be just like On Transparent except
| | 06:22 | it is going to take the
original color from the original layer.
| | 06:26 | So, now we have this really cool effect
of these dots being animated on with the
| | 06:32 | original color of the curls.
| | 06:34 | Very cool effect with again minimal work.
| | 06:37 | And this was done for us by the
Stroke effect, and there are several other
| | 06:40 | effects as well that use masks like this.
| | 06:43 | So, this Auto-trace feature does become
much more powerful when we realize all
| | 06:48 | that masks bring to the table.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Masking objects with other objects| 00:00 | So, we've looked at
creating masks from scratch.
| | 00:02 | But After Effects also allows
you to use other layers as masks.
| | 00:08 | To show you what I'm talking about here,
I have some great Artbeats footage.
| | 00:12 | Artbeats is a company that provides
stock video and I have two really
| | 00:15 | beautiful clips from them.
| | 00:16 | We're going to be using those here.
| | 00:18 | So, this is what we're looking at here,
one of those Artbeats clips, really
| | 00:22 | cool motion graphics.
| | 00:23 | It's an angry motion graphics, if I may say so.
| | 00:26 | Then we also have this
text here that says CHAOS.
| | 00:31 | And ideally, what I'd like is I'd like
to use the CHAOS text as kind of like a mask,
| | 00:35 | and I'd like the Artbeats movie
to fill in the text, so the text would
| | 00:41 | basically be the Artbeats clip.
| | 00:44 | Then we also have a black
background behind everything.
| | 00:47 | Here's what I'm going to do.
| | 00:48 | I'm going to go and make sure that I could
see the Modes area of the Timeline panel.
| | 00:53 | If I'm not seeing, I can click the
Toggle Switches/Modes button, or I could
| | 00:56 | right-click and go to
Columns > Modes if I wanted to.
| | 01:00 | What we're going to do is select the
CDA102, that's the Artbeats clip, and
| | 01:05 | then in the Track Matte area of the
Modes column we're going to select to use
| | 01:10 | the CHAOS Outlines as a mask by
going to the dropdown and choosing Alpha
| | 01:16 | Matte "CHAOS Outlines".
| | 01:19 | What that's going to do is it's
going to do exactly what we wanted it to.
| | 01:22 | It's going to have the CHAOS Outlines.
| | 01:26 | There is our outline and then the
Artbeats clip is completely gone, except that
| | 01:31 | it now shows up masked within the outlines.
| | 01:35 | So, now as we play this, it says
CHAOS and it's all cool and chaotic.
| | 01:40 | Actually, that's a little hard to see.
| | 01:43 | Maybe I need to add some glow to the text
or I could also go back to this solid
| | 01:47 | background layer and open up its
properties by pressing Command+Shift+Y on the
| | 01:53 | Mac or Ctrl+Shift+Y on the PC.
| | 01:56 | Click the color awatch and maybe we
can make this a little bit brighter, maybe
| | 02:00 | a dark chaotic gray.
| | 02:02 | We'll click OK and that's pretty easy
to see what's going on here. I like it.
| | 02:08 | Now from this dropdown, you'll
notice that the CHAOS Outlines, the text,
| | 02:13 | is actually invisible.
| | 02:14 | We made this alpha matte as it's called.
| | 02:16 | Basically, matte means mask and alpha
is referring to transparency of the layer.
| | 02:20 | So, we're using the transparency of the top
layer, the text, as a mask for the Artbeats clip.
| | 02:26 | So, it automatically removes
the visibility of that layer.
| | 02:29 | We could also change this
to Alpha Inverted Matte.
| | 02:32 | What that's going to do is it's going
to use the transparent area of the CHAOS
| | 02:37 | Outlines as the mask.
| | 02:39 | So, now we're seeing through to
the gray layer beneath at the bottom.
| | 02:44 | The Artbeats clip is now around the text.
| | 02:46 | But for this example, that's not really
that impressive, because it just looks
| | 02:48 | like we have gray text there.
| | 02:50 | So, I'm going to choose
Alpha Matte. It looks pretty good.
| | 02:53 | Now, I'm going to go over
to this luma matte comp.
| | 02:55 | This is a little bit more of a mind-
bender, because we cannot only use the alpha
| | 03:01 | channel as a mask, but we could also
use the luminance, or in other words, the
| | 03:05 | brightness as a mask.
| | 03:08 | This looks really, really cool, but
again it is a little bit of a mind-bender.
| | 03:11 | The bottom layer is a white solid.
| | 03:13 | And then on top of that white
solid, I have the same Artbeats clip.
| | 03:17 | On top of that, I have this other
Artbeats clip, these cool grayscale textures,
| | 03:23 | like these rectangles flipping around here.
| | 03:28 | So, in this instance, kind of like
how we saw with the alpha mMatte example,
| | 03:32 | we're going to be using this layer that
you're seeing here as the mask, in other
| | 03:38 | words, as the CHAOS text in this example.
| | 03:41 | That's what we're going to be using here.
| | 03:42 | But there is no transparency.
| | 03:43 | I mean we can't see
anything to the layer beneath it.
| | 03:45 | There is nothing transparent.
| | 03:47 | So, instead of using the transparency
of this grayscale layer to create the mask,
| | 03:51 | we're going to use the
brightness of this layer to create the mask.
| | 03:56 | So, I'm going to go down to this
CDA102 layer and we're going to make the
| | 04:01 | brightness of this layer a
mask by choosing Luma Matte.
| | 04:07 | So now, what we've done again is
we've used the brightness of the layer as
| | 04:11 | the mask and this CDA102, the chaotic
motion graphics, are now showing up where
| | 04:17 | there once was white on the top-layer.
| | 04:21 | It's showing through the rest of
the layer as white, because that's
| | 04:23 | this background solid.
| | 04:24 | So, really what we have is this, and
then I've added the white solid in the
| | 04:28 | background so we could
really see what's going on.
| | 04:30 | But the results are just
absolutely spectacular. I love this.
| | 04:38 | Just beautiful!
| | 04:38 | So, again, the whiteness of the top
layer is a mask that reveals the second
| | 04:44 | layer and then it gets rid of everything else.
| | 04:46 | So, all we have is this transparency
and that's what we're seeing, the white
| | 04:49 | solid beneath all of that.
| | 04:50 | And again, as before, we can go to
Luma Inverted Matte so that the white
| | 04:55 | actually cuts a hole and the black
area is what shows through the layer
| | 05:00 | beneath it as well.
| | 05:02 | So, using this Track Matte dropdown
right here, again the layer beneath it
| | 05:06 | is the one that we want to have the
content show up of and the mask is the
| | 05:10 | layer that we put on top.
| | 05:12 | That's why there is no dropdown for
Track Matte here on this top layer, because
| | 05:16 | there is no layer above it to use as a mask.
| | 05:18 | So, that top layer becomes the
stencil, which shows the layer beneath it.
| | 05:23 | So, track mattes are another way
that we can basically use masks.
| | 05:26 | We can use the outline or the
brightness values of a layer as a mask as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making shape layers| 00:00 | Shape layers are one of my
personal favorite areas of After Effects.
| | 00:05 | I don't find that many people love
them as much as I do, but I just love this
| | 00:09 | ability that shape layers give you to
create and play with shapes as we'll see
| | 00:14 | in this movie and the next one as well.
| | 00:16 | It's kind of like having a mini built-in
Adobe Illustrator where you just create
| | 00:20 | and play with and animate
shapes in really cool ways.
| | 00:24 | Now this is very similar to masks or
at least that process of creating shape
| | 00:29 | layers is very similar to masks.
| | 00:31 | I have this background here.
| | 00:33 | We know from masks that if I were to
select let's say, for example,
| | 00:36 | let's select the Star tool.
| | 00:38 | If I were to click and drag on the Star tool,
| | 00:42 | I would create a star shaped mask and
basically, because Add is the default
| | 00:47 | Mask mode, then all we see is the star shape and
then the layer content filling that star shape.
| | 00:54 | That's how we create masks.
| | 00:55 | I'm just going to select this mask and
hit Delete to get back to square one here.
| | 00:59 | The process of creating shape layers is
exactly the same, except we need to have
| | 01:04 | no layer selected when
you create our shape layer.
| | 01:07 | So, if one layer is selected while we
create the star, then we make a mask on a layer.
| | 01:11 | If no layer is selected and we click and drag
and create a star, then we make a shape layer.
| | 01:18 | So, that's basically what I've done
here is I've created a new shape layer,
| | 01:22 | which is its own thing.
| | 01:23 | Now at first, this probably seems very simple.
| | 01:25 | It could maybe, even at the end of this
movie before we get into the next movie,
| | 01:28 | it will seem artificially
simple, but it is quite cool.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to actually delete that,
and click and drag to make another one.
| | 01:36 | In the case of the Star tool, when we
press the Up Arrow key, we add more points
| | 01:41 | to the star and the Down Arrow
key removes points from the star.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to go ahead and create that
many points. However many points that is.
| | 01:49 | I actually want to put
that in the different spots.
| | 01:51 | So, I'm going to hold the Spacebar down,
and I can move this around to different parts.
| | 01:55 | Put this in the bottom
right-hand corner of the screen here.
| | 01:59 | We have the Fill area and the Stroke
area up at the top with this shape layer.
| | 02:04 | We can click Fill and choose what type of fill:
| | 02:07 | either a solid or a linear
gradient, a radial gradient or no fill.
| | 02:12 | Actually, I'm just going to
choose Solid Color and click OK.
| | 02:16 | If I want to choose the color of the
fill, I'm going to click this color swatch
| | 02:20 | here, actually click the eyedropper,
and let's get one of the dark pink tones
| | 02:24 | from the corner and click OK.
| | 02:27 | We can click the word Stroke to open
up our Stroke Options and just like Fill,
| | 02:31 | we can choose to have no stroke,
a solid color stroke, or a linear, or
| | 02:36 | radial gradient stroke.
| | 02:38 | I'm just going to leave this set
to Linear Gradient and click OK.
| | 02:41 | I'll increase the stroke size by clicking
-and-dragging on the pixel count there.
| | 02:46 | So, now we have a white to black gradient.
| | 02:49 | If we click on the stroke swatch here,
we'll get to the Gradient Editor where we
| | 02:53 | can move the swatches
around to adjust that gradient.
| | 02:58 | I might want like let's say a soft blue.
| | 03:02 | When I'll click this other gradient stop over
here on the bottom, not the ones on the top.
| | 03:05 | We want the ones in the bottom.
| | 03:07 | The ones in the top, by
the way, are opacity stops.
| | 03:09 | So, if we click here and then took this
to lowered opacity, you could see that
| | 03:13 | the stroke actually fades away.
| | 03:15 | So, we don't want that.
| | 03:16 | Although that is kind of cool.
| | 03:18 | Click this bottom color stop, and then
I'll get another light blue-ish color
| | 03:25 | I guess and click OK.
| | 03:27 | There we have some simple star.
| | 03:30 | Now the real power again of shape
layers is to be found in all the cool things
| | 03:35 | that we can do to this shape layer.
| | 03:38 | So, we're going to continue where
we leave off now in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying shape layers| 00:00 | This is where shape
layers start to get really fun.
| | 00:03 | We're basically continuing where I left
off in the last movie where I had this star.
| | 00:07 | I got rid of that nasty blue
stroke though and added this pretty little
| | 00:10 | gradient in the inside.
| | 00:12 | What we're going to do is make this
look a little bit more flowery.
| | 00:15 | Right now it's not blending in with the rest of
this ensemble, so we're going to remedy that.
| | 00:20 | Oh, by the way, if you click here with
this object selected and then this will give
| | 00:26 | you the Fill and the Stroke options
and then we click in our Gradient Editor.
| | 00:29 | And I'm just going to go ahead and hit OK.
| | 00:31 | But once you do that, you get this cool
little Gradient Editor and we can click
| | 00:36 | and drag here on these little icons here
to change where the gradient happens in
| | 00:44 | our shape, which is pretty cool.
| | 00:45 | I'm kind of going with a standard
gradient here, just a plain old, start from the
| | 00:50 | center and go out to about the edge type thing.
| | 00:52 | But feel free to play with
this as much as you like.
| | 00:54 | It's actually kind of a cool
tool for playing with gradients.
| | 00:57 | Now what I'm going to do is I'm going
to come down here to my Timeline panel.
| | 01:00 | Open up the shape layer.
| | 01:01 | Then I'm going to open up Contents,
and then this is where I see all of the
| | 01:05 | shapes applied to the shape layer.
| | 01:07 | And you can actually have multiple
shapes, and then I'm going to come over here
| | 01:10 | and open up Polystar 1.
| | 01:12 | And we could change a lot of
the parameters about this star.
| | 01:17 | So, initially, remember in last
movie we used keyboard shortcuts,
| | 01:21 | the up and down arrows, to add and delete points.
| | 01:22 | Well, I can actually change that after
the fact and even animate this right
| | 01:27 | here in the Timeline panel, which is very cool.
| | 01:30 | I'll take this back to 10.
| | 01:32 | Just click in here and type 10.
| | 01:33 | We can also change the Position,
Rotation, Inner Radius and Outer Radius of the
| | 01:39 | points of the star and here's
something that we haven't played with yet:
| | 01:43 | the Inner Roundness and the
Outer Roundness of this star.
| | 01:47 | So, the Inner Roundness refers to the
roundness of these points on the inside.
| | 01:52 | So we could make those very round,
and we don't have to stop at 100%.
| | 01:55 | We could keep going.
| | 01:56 | So, we can create some very interesting shapes here.
| | 01:59 | Take this back to 100% - excuse me.
| | 02:00 | I will take that to 0%, and then I
could increase the Outer Roundness, which
| | 02:06 | is the roundness around the tips, and
now we have something that actually kind
| | 02:09 | of resembles the star.
| | 02:11 | And again, we could keep going if we wanted
to until we had some crazy behemoth thing.
| | 02:17 | I'm just going to actually take
this back down to a more wieldy number.
| | 02:22 | Let's try 100% and see how that looks.
| | 02:24 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 02:25 | Keep a little bit of roundness on
those edges, and if you wanted to, a little
| | 02:28 | bit of Inner Roundness to taste.
Up to you, looking pretty good there.
| | 02:33 | Now I'm going to close up Polystar 1.
| | 02:36 | The real magic of shape layers, folks,
comes from this little Add flyout.
| | 02:40 | You will find it at the top
here with the shape layer selected.
| | 02:44 | You will also find it
here in the Timeline panel.
| | 02:46 | We have a few things we could add.
| | 02:48 | We could add additional
Fills, additional Strokes.
| | 02:50 | We could add additional shapes to this
layer, but below this second line here,
| | 02:55 | or the third line, are the Path Operators.
| | 02:58 | And this is where things start getting fine.
| | 02:59 | Let's select Pucker & Bloat.
| | 03:02 | And when we add Pucker & Bloat,
it automatically adds some bloat to our shape.
| | 03:08 | If we click away to deselect this,
you could see some nice little tips here.
| | 03:13 | You could open up Pucker & Bloat.
| | 03:14 | It only has one value.
| | 03:15 | We can click and drag this upwards,
and we could even, again, take this
| | 03:19 | beyond 100%. So this starts like freaking out
on itself in very interesting geometric shapes.
| | 03:25 | We can also take this to a negative
value and make this a little bit more
| | 03:29 | spiky, look at that.
| | 03:31 | And as you'll notice about the stopwatch
here, that this property is an animatable.
| | 03:35 | So, we can just have it being going back
and forth like this, freaking out if we
| | 03:39 | wanted to. A little too psychedelic
for this Hansel & Petal ad but we could.
| | 03:44 | I'm just going to select Pucker &
Bloat in the Timeline and hit the Delete
| | 03:49 | key on the keyboard. Go back to Add.
| | 03:50 | See what other kind of
trouble we can get into here.
| | 03:53 | I'm going to come back to the Repeater.
| | 03:54 | The Repeater is the real powerhouse
of shape layers, but we have some other
| | 03:59 | simple ones, like Round Corners, where
we can just open this up and basically
| | 04:03 | just increase the roundness of the corners.
| | 04:05 | And because we already have some curving
on the Inner and Outer Roundness values
| | 04:11 | of the polystar, we're not seeing too much here.
| | 04:13 | But if you had a rectangle, that could help out.
| | 04:15 | If we go to the Add
flyout here, we also have Twist.
| | 04:19 | So, we can create a nice little Twist
here, and we can twist it clockwise,
| | 04:25 | we go positive, or
counterclockwise if we go negative.
| | 04:28 | And we could also animate between the two,
so if we wanted our little shape here
| | 04:32 | to be dancing the hula or
something, we can do that.
| | 04:35 | I'll just select that and delete it.
| | 04:37 | There's also a couple of Wiggles here.
| | 04:39 | There's Wiggle Paths and Wiggle Transform.
| | 04:42 | So, if I selected Wiggle
Transform-- and most of the times in Adobe
| | 04:45 | language when you see the word
Wiggle, it kind of means a little bit of
| | 04:48 | random value changes.
| | 04:50 | So, if we were to hit the Spacebar,
actually let's go ahead and open this up a
| | 04:53 | little bit so we can see this a
little better, let's go ahead and open up
| | 04:57 | Transform and maybe we'll increase
Scale a little bit inside the Transform.
| | 05:03 | It's important, with shape layers
there are many different transforms.
| | 05:07 | There's like a Transform here for the Polystar.
| | 05:09 | There is a Transform here underneath
Wiggle Transform 1, and there's a Transform
| | 05:13 | here which is the basic layer Transform.
| | 05:16 | So, there's multiple Scales, multiple
Rotations, multiple Positions, etcetera for the layer.
| | 05:22 | So, we want the Transform
properties that are within the Wiggle
| | 05:25 | Transform operator.
| | 05:28 | So, as I increase Scale to 40% and
then now as we preview this, we could see
| | 05:32 | that the Wiggle Transform is basically
animating the randomness of this shape.
| | 05:38 | So, we don't have to animate Scale.
| | 05:40 | If we say 40%, it's going to
animate this between 0% and 40%.
| | 05:46 | We could also rotate this a little bit,
and we'll see that rotation will also be
| | 05:51 | randomized as well, without having to
have us set any keyframes whatsoever.
| | 05:56 | Now that's Wiggle Transform.
| | 05:57 | I am just going to select that and delete that.
| | 05:58 | If you go back to the Add menu and go to Wiggle
Paths, it'll actually wiggle the shape itself.
| | 06:04 | So, we have like this weird like crinkly.
| | 06:07 | I should just go ahead and play that.
So weird kind of like it's in water or
| | 06:10 | something like that.
| | 06:11 | It's a little bit too harsh though.
| | 06:13 | So, I'm going to open up Wiggle
Paths and we could adjust the Size.
| | 06:16 | If we can increase that, it
makes it even more crinkly.
| | 06:19 | We could adjust the Detail.
Increasing that again adds the static.
| | 06:22 | If we change the Points from Corner to
Smooth, it will smooth things out quite a bit.
| | 06:26 | So if we took this down now, down
its Size and the Detail, then we'd have
| | 06:31 | again a little bit more of a smooth,
like it was floating in water type look.
| | 06:36 | And actually let me click outside of
this layer to deselect the layer so we
| | 06:40 | could see what that looks like.
| | 06:41 | It's a very cool effect.
Typically with wiggling effects,
| | 06:45 | we don't have to keyframe things and
so we adjust the speed by adjusting the
| | 06:49 | Wiggles/Second value.
| | 06:50 | So, if we want it slow, we'll take it down.
| | 06:52 | If we wanted more Wiggles/Second,
something like really insane and chaotic then
| | 06:57 | we could increase that value, and maybe
we'll take this to Corner, increase the
| | 07:01 | Size, increase the Detail, and then
we have a really, again, a very spazy
| | 07:06 | animation. Very cool.
| | 07:09 | Now I'm going to delete Wiggle Paths,
and let's talk about the real powerhouse
| | 07:12 | here and that is the Repeater.
| | 07:15 | The Repeater allows you to make multiple
copies of a shape and play with those copies.
| | 07:22 | So, let's make a bunch of different copies here.
| | 07:24 | We're only seeing three because they're
being duplicated by default to the right.
| | 07:28 | But we can offset these so that
they move through the original shape.
| | 07:35 | So, by default, the original
shape is on the left-hand side.
| | 07:39 | But again, Offset will make it so
that that original shape moves along down
| | 07:42 | the road and we're seeing multiple copies.
| | 07:44 | Now open up Transform Repeater 1 and
again make sure that's Transform Repeater
| | 07:49 | 1 and not one of the other Transforms here.
| | 07:52 | But if we take let's say Scale, I'm
going to click and drag down on Scale, see
| | 07:56 | what that's doing here?
| | 07:57 | It's playing with the
Scale of all of these shapes.
| | 08:02 | So, now shape layers are
starting to look a little cooler.
| | 08:07 | So, basically what's happening is is
that it's going to the original shape and
| | 08:12 | it is scaling down
proportionately each little flower, each shape.
| | 08:17 | And so like let's say we scale this
up to 125% and then we could adjust
| | 08:22 | offsets so that these flowers
kind of go through like this.
| | 08:26 | We have like a little arch almost.
| | 08:29 | And if we wanted to, we could adjust
the Anchor Point, which can give us this
| | 08:34 | like almost three-dimensional effect,
as these flowers kind of wrap around here.
| | 08:40 | We could adjust the Anchor
Point vertically, look at that.
| | 08:43 | So, we are almost like creating
like a little whip of these flowers.
| | 08:47 | Again, we could adjust the Rotation
and because we tweaked the Anchor Point
| | 08:51 | already, Rotation makes these move all
over the place and we could adjust the
| | 08:56 | opacity, the End Opacity let's say.
| | 08:59 | So, now we're creating these
interesting opacity effects as these flowers kind
| | 09:03 | of go on top of each other.
As we adjust the Offset,
| | 09:06 | it's a very unique effect.
| | 09:10 | So, as you can see,
there's a lot to play with here.
| | 09:13 | We could even add multiple Repeaters to this.
| | 09:15 | We continue to add other shapes and
other repeaters to this same shape layer even,
| | 09:19 | let alone what we could
achieve with multiple shape layers.
| | 09:22 | So, this is one of the reasons I
really love shape layers, because like the
| | 09:26 | possibilities are just insane.
| | 09:28 | I mean you can sit here and play with
shape layers for hours upon hours to
| | 09:32 | see what you can come up with.
| | 09:33 | And so I recommend doing that.
| | 09:35 | Just sit around it.
| | 09:36 | If you're into motion graphics, or
into playing with shapes, you're in Adobe
| | 09:38 | Illustrator, see what you can come up
with by playing with these shape layers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
13. Working in 3DTurning 2D layers into 3D layers| 00:00 | Folks, this chapter represents
almost like a transition of sorts in
| | 00:04 | this training series.
| | 00:06 | We're going to be going from kind of
initiatory After Effects features to more
| | 00:12 | significant, complex, and advanced ones,
starting with, in this chapter, 3D.
| | 00:17 | We're going to take this map of this
olive farm, and we're going to bring this
| | 00:22 | to life by making these elements 3D.
| | 00:25 | This is a significantly more
complex project that we've seen before.
| | 00:28 | It's much more like a real-
world After Effects project.
| | 00:31 | There are 42 visible layers in this.
| | 00:34 | So, there is a lot to play with, and
what we're going to do is we're going to
| | 00:36 | take some of these layers -
| | 00:37 | again, this is just from a flat
Illustrator file, just a regular old
| | 00:41 | run-of-the-mill graphics file -
| | 00:43 | We are going to make this come alive by
moving these pieces of this map in 3D space.
| | 00:51 | So, what I'm going to do is I'm going
to select this Icon 2. Let's select.
| | 00:55 | This is layer number 6.
| | 00:57 | Go ahead and select that layer.
| | 00:58 | What we're going to do is
hit the letter P for Position.
| | 01:02 | We want to make sure that we're seeing
the switches area, these little icons here.
| | 01:06 | If not, you can go ahead and click
on the Toggle Switches/modes button.
| | 01:10 | If you look over here, there is a cube.
| | 01:12 | This column indicates the ability
to make a layer three-dimensional.
| | 01:18 | Now, if you're familiar with like
'Shrek' and stuff like that, in other
| | 01:21 | words, 3D objects, you might be a little bit
confused by what's going on with After Effects.
| | 01:27 | In After Effects, we don't really
create 3-dimensional objects, typically.
| | 01:31 | With the 3D in After Effects, usually what
we mean is the 3D world, the 3D environment.
| | 01:37 | So, the object itself remains
flat, like a piece of paper.
| | 01:41 | But when we make a regular old 2D layer
3-dimensional, what that gives us is
| | 01:47 | the power and ability to move that in 3D space.
| | 01:50 | If you can move things in 3D space,
then you could simulate three dimensions,
| | 01:55 | which is very powerful.
| | 01:57 | It sounds like very amateurish,
just to move flat things in space,
| | 02:01 | but if done correctly, the
result is really powerful.
| | 02:04 | So, we're going to go to this Cube check
box on Icon 2, and we're going to check that.
| | 02:09 | Now, not very much seemed to happen -
the layer looks the same - but really what
| | 02:15 | has happened is that we now - if you
see what happened with Position - it
| | 02:19 | added a third dimension.
| | 02:20 | We know about X, left and right.
| | 02:23 | We know about Y, up and down.
| | 02:25 | And now that the layer is 3D, we have Z.
In other words, it is closer to us, and
| | 02:31 | farther away from us.
| | 02:34 | Now until you have multiple three-
dimensional layers in your scene, then it's
| | 02:38 | going to look like you're just
scaling up and down an object.
| | 02:41 | When you move it along the Z axis, it is
coming closer toward you and farther apart.
| | 02:46 | It's basically just going to look
like you're scaling it up and down.
| | 02:49 | But if we combine that with other
layers, let's say, for example, this tree
| | 02:53 | right here, behind it.
| | 02:54 | This tree is the tree
frontmost layer, layer number 15.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to go ahead and make this a
three-dimensional layer by clicking its
| | 03:02 | Cube icon, and hit P for position.
| | 03:05 | Then we play with position here. Adjust that.
| | 03:09 | Maybe bring that up closer to Icon 2.
| | 03:12 | What I'm going to do now is I'm going
to change the view using this dropdown.
| | 03:16 | It says Active Camera, by default.
| | 03:18 | I'm going to change this to the top view.
| | 03:20 | So, now we're seeing the top view of the layers.
| | 03:23 | These views are only good
for three-dimensional layers.
| | 03:25 | So, we're only seeing two of the lines
here, but we could see that we now have
| | 03:30 | this relationship between these two layers.
| | 03:33 | Just for a reference, let's go
ahead and put Icon 3, 4 and 5 in
| | 03:38 | three-dimensions as well.
| | 03:39 | So, we see that they are aligned
with the ground plane, the initial place
| | 03:43 | where all objects are.
| | 03:45 | We've aligned Icon 2 and the tree
layer, which we can adjust here.
| | 03:52 | We could click and drag on these
little arrows to adjust along this axis.
| | 03:56 | But we could see that we have adjusted
them in space now, so that the tree that
| | 04:00 | we created in 3D is now in front of Icon 2.
| | 04:05 | So, because this is the top view,
think of the viewer as sitting right here,
| | 04:10 | almost as if we were in a movie theater,
and this is the movie screen, and the
| | 04:14 | audience would be down here
at the bottom of this screen.
| | 04:17 | So, this view is to help you
kind of get situated in 3D space.
| | 04:22 | If it's more helpful for you - I'm
going to take this back to Active Camera -
| | 04:25 | you can go to the dropdown to the right of
that, and change this from 1 View to 4 Views.
| | 04:31 | So, now you can see
different views of the objects.
| | 04:33 | So, now we are seeing our
three-dimensional objects.
| | 04:35 | We're seeing the icons.
| | 04:37 | I could zoom in here and
see the icons and the tree.
| | 04:40 | Here we're seeing the right view.
| | 04:42 | So, we have the regular icons, and then we
have the tree, and then the main icon back here.
| | 04:49 | You could see also, if we zoom in here,
that even though in the original design,
| | 04:53 | the tree was behind the icon.
| | 04:56 | Now because we've arranged them in 3D
space, so that the icon is behind the
| | 04:59 | tree, the tree is
obscuring the view of the icon.
| | 05:02 | So, we can grab this along the right
edge, again, using our movie theater now,
| | 05:07 | just almost like we're looking at the
side of the movie theater where the right
| | 05:10 | side is the movie screen point it to the
left, and the audience would be here on
| | 05:14 | the left watching the screens to the right.
| | 05:17 | So, we can grab the arrow in Z space
here, and move this in front of the tree.
| | 05:22 | You could see the difference in the
front view of what that looks like.
| | 05:26 | So, here is the icon in front.
| | 05:28 | Move it behind the tree.
| | 05:29 | You could see it in back.
| | 05:30 | So, we're basically, again,
staggering these layers in three dimensions.
| | 05:34 | I'm going to take this back to 1 View here.
| | 05:36 | A piece like this - and I separated
this into tons of different layers.
| | 05:40 | Every tree is its own layer.
| | 05:42 | That's what will create the most 3D
depth is that each of these trees are its own
| | 05:46 | layer, and they move in three dimensions.
| | 05:49 | It will add a lot to the realism.
| | 05:50 | But the problem is, is we that when we have a layer
this complex, or a project this complex,
| | 05:54 | it is very time-consuming to arrange
all of these objects in 3D space, but that
| | 06:01 | is just what you need to do.
| | 06:03 | That is the name of the game.
| | 06:04 | But once you have arranged these
objects in 3D space, and then what we could
| | 06:09 | do is create a camera, and move around this
scene in a very realistic and lifelike way.
| | 06:16 | One rule I want to point out before we
get into talking about that in the next
| | 06:19 | movie is that there are some rules
with 2D and 3D layers, and one is that 2D
| | 06:26 | layers don't play the 3D game.
| | 06:30 | So, for example, I have
this Frame layer at the top.
| | 06:32 | I'll go ahead and take off the visibility,
so you could see this outline of this frame.
| | 06:37 | If the Frame layer is 3D - and let's
go down to the Choo Choo Tracks layer -
| | 06:43 | it's like the railroad tracks.
| | 06:45 | I called it Choo Choo Tracks.
| | 06:47 | So, I'm going to make the Choo
Choo Tracks layer 3D as well.
| | 06:50 | So, the Frame is 3D, and
the Choo Choo Tracks are 3D.
| | 06:54 | I'm going to select Choo Choo Tracks
and press P to reveal its position.
| | 06:58 | If I adjust this in Z space, I can, at
some point, bring this layer in front
| | 07:04 | of the Frame layer.
| | 07:07 | In other words, the 3Dness allows layers
to go in front of each other, even above.
| | 07:13 | It, like, overrides the layer stacking order.
| | 07:16 | So, as we saw with Icon 2 and the tree,
even though the Icon 2 layer is on top,
| | 07:21 | we're able to go back and forth, between
those two layers, because they exist in 3D space.
| | 07:25 | I'm going to go ahead and try to -
let's actually go to a 4 View here, and we
| | 07:31 | have our railroad track.
| | 07:34 | If we were to move this around, at some
point, the Choo Choo Tracks - for some
| | 07:41 | reason, that's not working,
because the stacking order is too high -
| | 07:45 | but at some point, the
railroad tracks can overlap the Frame.
| | 07:50 | They can go in front of this frame.
| | 07:52 | So, if we wanted to make sure that the
frame was always in front, then we would
| | 07:57 | make it a two-dimensional layer.
| | 07:59 | We'd make sure that it stayed 2D,
same thing with the background.
| | 08:02 | Usually, when you have a background
like this - take this back to 1 View here -
| | 08:05 | when you have a background like a solid
color like this, you typically want to
| | 08:09 | keep that in two-dimensions.
| | 08:10 | So, that way nothing goes behind it.
| | 08:13 | So, basically, if you have a 3D
layer, then layer order doesn't matter.
| | 08:18 | It will go in front of and back of
whatever objects are in 3D space.
| | 08:23 | But if you have 2D layers,
they cannot defy the layer order.
| | 08:27 | So, what is in front will always
remain in front, what is in back will always
| | 08:31 | remain in back, if those layers are 2D layers.
| | 08:34 | So, what I'm going to do between now
and when I see you in the next movie, I'm
| | 08:38 | going to arrange these objects in 3D space.
| | 08:41 | I'm just going to go, let's say,
for example, the Left Barn BIG.
| | 08:45 | I'm going to hit P. I'm
going to make this a 3D layer.
| | 08:48 | I'm going to adjust this in Z space,
and then I could go to the Left Barn SMALL
| | 08:54 | layer, again, make this a
3D layer, adjust the Z space.
| | 08:58 | As you could see, they can override
the layer order, because of the fact that
| | 09:03 | they are both 3D layers.
| | 09:04 | But I'm going to adjust everything
staggered in three-dimensional space, so that
| | 09:09 | we have, again, a series of layers in 3D.
| | 09:13 | I'll show you what that
looks like in the next movie.
| | 09:15 | We'll also add some light and cameras
to increase the realism and give some 3D
| | 09:20 | movement to this scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating lights and cameras| 00:00 | So, now we are going to bring this
to life by using a light and a camera.
| | 00:04 | Before we do that, I just wanted to share
with you what I did since the last movie here.
| | 00:07 | Negative Z values actually bring
objects closer to the camera, closer to you,
| | 00:14 | closer to your view.
| | 00:15 | And so what I did is I took these icons,
and I gave them negative values, as you
| | 00:20 | could see towards the top here, like
-165 for Icon 5, and so on and so forth.
| | 00:26 | And then there are kind of like key plain,
like zero plain objects, and the path
| | 00:31 | is kind of one of those ones I
don't really want to move very much.
| | 00:34 | Same thing with the Bridges.
| | 00:35 | So, I kind of want those to be at zero.
| | 00:38 | So, if we go down to the path, it's about -7.
| | 00:42 | So, it's a little bit closer to the viewer.
| | 00:44 | We have just got a little
bit of depth. That's okay.
| | 00:46 | But then I put like the shadows
underneath the trees and actually, these trees
| | 00:50 | way, way, way back here.
| | 00:51 | Right here, the faded background
tree layer if I turn this off and on,
| | 00:55 | those layers have a high positive value,
which pushes them farther away from the camera.
| | 00:59 | So, the shadows and these little
curvy lines here, those things, again, are
| | 01:04 | farther in the background.
| | 01:06 | So, we have things staggered in 3D space.
| | 01:09 | If we look at the 4 View, we
can see that the Right View,
| | 01:15 | we have a lot of things staggered here.
| | 01:16 | The Top View again, and this is where the
audience is looking this way in the Top View.
| | 01:22 | And so we have a lot of different
layers here, a lot of different Z depth
| | 01:27 | dimension objects, which is really good.
| | 01:29 | That's what we want.
| | 01:30 | So, I am going to take this back to 1
View, and now to see all the glory that
| | 01:35 | we've created - actually first
let's cramp our layers a little bit.
| | 01:37 | I am going to select one layer, hit
Command+A or Ctrl+A to select all, and then
| | 01:41 | hit Shift and the Tilde key,
| | 01:43 | the little squiggle next
to the 1 on the keyboard.
| | 01:46 | Shift+Tilde to collapse all these
layers to shrink them down so it's a little
| | 01:49 | bit more manageable.
| | 01:50 | And then we are going to right-click in
some blank area of the Timeline panel,
| | 01:54 | like right here, usually to the left of
a layer's name, to get this pop-up dialog
| | 02:00 | box when you right-click.
| | 02:01 | And I am going to choose New > Camera.
| | 02:03 | I am just going to go ahead
and set the default settings.
| | 02:06 | If you're familiar with camera work,
you will notice a lot of the similar
| | 02:10 | settings here, such as
your Angle of View, your Zoom.
| | 02:14 | There's even like different Lenses.
| | 02:16 | And what you can try to do is try to
match up, if you are going to do some
| | 02:20 | compositing, you try to shoot up your
virtual camera here in After Effects with
| | 02:24 | the actual lens that you used in the field.
| | 02:27 | Now, that how it works in theory.
| | 02:28 | There is actually a little bit
more in terms of variables to it.
| | 02:31 | So, it doesn't always work like that.
| | 02:33 | But as a general rule, that's how things go.
| | 02:36 | Regardless, I am just going to
leave all settings as is and click OK.
| | 02:40 | And by default, you won't notice too
much because the default lens, the 50
| | 02:44 | mm lens, and the 50 mm lens is
very similar to the way After Effects
| | 02:48 | naturally renders things.
| | 02:50 | So, to really see the depth that we have
in our scene, we are going to use this tool.
| | 02:54 | This is the Unified Camera
tool, which is pretty cool.
| | 02:58 | If you click and drag left and right,
you'll orbit around the scene with your camera.
| | 03:04 | And actually, let me zoom in here so you
could see this a little bit more closely.
| | 03:08 | Click and drag, you zoom around.
| | 03:10 | And so we are getting a three-
dimensional view of our scene.
| | 03:14 | And you could see the faded
background tree in the background here and the
| | 03:17 | shadows moving more in one direction,
and then the icons in the front,
| | 03:22 | and even the houses moving
in a different direction.
| | 03:25 | You can move up, and you can move down.
| | 03:27 | So, by staggering these flat layers in
three dimensions, we have created a real
| | 03:32 | three-dimensional scene.
| | 03:33 | Of course, if we were to keep orbiting
the camera, then the joke would be up,
| | 03:38 | because we would be able to
totally see what's going on.
| | 03:41 | And as we turn to the side, you could see,
again, these are just a series of flat layers.
| | 03:47 | But assuming you don't do that,
this illusion is a very cool look.
| | 03:52 | Now, with the Unified Camera tool, if
you have a three-button mouse, you can hold
| | 03:56 | down the middle mouse button to pan around.
| | 03:59 | And you could hold the right mouse
button down to zoom in and zoom out.
| | 04:05 | So, you have all three of these functions
available to you in one Unified Camera tool.
| | 04:10 | Now, if you've done any work on a film
set, or if you have worked in photography
| | 04:15 | at all, then you know that lighting
makes all the difference and whether
| | 04:20 | something looks good or
whether something doesn't.
| | 04:22 | So, I'm going to go and right-click in
the same way we created a new camera, and
| | 04:27 | I am going to create a New > Light.
| | 04:30 | And I am just going to keep this
is a spotlight because they have the
| | 04:33 | most dramatic effects.
| | 04:34 | So, I am going to go ahead and click OK.
| | 04:36 | And by default, the light is zoomed in in
such a way that we can't see the light really.
| | 04:42 | Most of our objects are in darkness.
| | 04:45 | Actually, let me show you
what this light looks like here.
| | 04:47 | I am going to go to the Top View.
| | 04:50 | And really, what this
Light is, it's a light source.
| | 04:52 | And then we have a little point that
shows us the direction of the light.
| | 04:56 | So, we could actually move the light
and the light source at the same time,
| | 05:01 | or we could move just where it's being
pointed and leave the light actually where it is.
| |
|
|
