IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(music playing)
| | 00:07 |
Hi, I'm Angie Taylor, author, Illustrator
and motion graphic designer.
| | 00:09 |
I use Adobe After Effects on a daily
basis for creating animations and motion graphics.
| | 00:18 |
As a freelance designer, I have to be
flexible enough to produce artwork and
| | 00:22 |
animations of varying styles.
Subsequently, I've developed some great
| | 00:27 |
techniques, for creating quick, but
compelling 2D animation.
| | 00:32 |
And I'll be sharing those techniques with
you, in this workshop.
| | 00:35 |
Topics include how to set up after
effects for creating 2D character
| | 00:39 |
animation using input devices to capture
motion, and apply it to you characters.
| | 00:45 |
You'll also learn how to use audio files
to create animation and lip-syncing and
| | 00:50 |
use expressions and scripting to make the
process easier.
| | 00:55 |
You'll find out about grouping techniques
and usingUNKNOWN to create hierarchical animations.
| | 01:02 |
And I'll also walk you through the best
working practices for outputting your
| | 01:06 |
animations for the web, TV and mobile
devices.
| | 01:10 |
With this comprehensive workshop, you can
simply sit back and watch as I
| | 01:14 |
demonstrate each of the steps for you.
If you feel like following along with me,
| | 01:19 |
all the files required to do so are
provided for you.
| | 01:23 |
Now, these videos are short and easily
digested, so you won't get bogged down
| | 01:27 |
with technical jargon either.
As I like to explain difficult concepts
| | 01:32 |
and easy to understand, real world
terminology.
| | 01:36 |
So, what are you waiting for?
Jump right in and become the greatest
| | 01:41 |
animator who ever lived.
(music playing)
| | 01:45 |
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1. Best Practices for Importing Source FilesImporting options| 00:00 |
In this tutorial, we're going to look at
the best practices for importing files
| | 00:04 |
into After Effects for character
animation.
| | 00:07 |
And we'll look at all the different
options for getting files into After Effects.
| | 00:13 |
Now, the first thing you want to do is
either open a project or start a new project.
| | 00:18 |
We don't to open a project here so we're
just going to click and close on the
| | 00:21 |
Welcome screen, and there will be a
project, as a default, open in the background.
| | 00:27 |
If you don't see the Welcome screen,
that's not a problem.
| | 00:29 |
You have probably just selected not to
see it.
| | 00:31 |
If you want to see it, you can go to the
Help menu and choose Welcome, and tip the
| | 00:34 |
date to show it.
If you never want to see this again, you
| | 00:38 |
can deselect Show Welcome Screen, and
click on close, and then it won't appear
| | 00:42 |
every time you open After Effects.
Now, to import file, we can go to File >
| | 00:47 |
Import File, and my particular favorite
is either to use Cmd + I or Ctrl + I on
| | 00:52 |
the PC.
Or even simpler, just double-click in the
| | 00:57 |
Project panel and that opens up the
Import File dialog box.
| | 01:03 |
Now, there are several ways of getting
files into After Effects.
| | 01:06 |
And in the Import File dialog box, you
have certain amounts of control over how
| | 01:09 |
you bring these files in.
The first file that we're going to bring
| | 01:13 |
in is this one here, which is a simple
graphic of what we call a Talent Wheel.
| | 01:18 |
I'm doing an animation of John Logie
Baird who invented the television.
| | 01:22 |
And when he invented the television, he
made it out of old hat boxes and things.
| | 01:26 |
It was quite amazing.
And one of the things that he had to make
| | 01:29 |
was called a tilt wheel, with these holes
and things that would project different
| | 01:32 |
frames of the picture.
So, I've made one of these in Illustrator.
| | 01:38 |
Now, if I select that file, it's telling
me it's an Illustrator file and I can
| | 01:41 |
choose to import it as footage.
I can also override that, and we'll have
| | 01:46 |
a look at the Composition Settings in a
minute.
| | 01:48 |
I'll click on OK.
And again, it gives me another dialog box
| | 01:51 |
saying, do you want to bring this in as
footage or as a composition?
| | 01:55 |
I just want to bring it in as a single
footage file, and I'm going to chose to
| | 01:58 |
merge the layers together.
If you want to, you could select from the
| | 02:02 |
different layers that exist within that
Illustrator file, but I'm going to choose
| | 02:06 |
Merge Layers.
Click OK, and it brings it in as a single
| | 02:10 |
image file.
If I want to view the file, I can
| | 02:13 |
double-click it, and it will open it up
in the Footage window, ready for me to
| | 02:16 |
examine it.
We can have a look at the transparency
| | 02:19 |
that came through with that, and you'll
see that the alpha channel has also been supported.
| | 02:24 |
Okay, so let's continue and bring in
another file.
| | 02:27 |
So, I'm going to double-click in the
Project panel, and I'm going to bring in 3DTV.AI.
| | 02:32 |
And again, this is another footage file
that has multiple layers.
| | 02:36 |
This time, again, I'm going to choose
Merged Layers and click OK to bring in
| | 02:39 |
the merged footage file.
Again, double-click on it if I want to
| | 02:43 |
have a look at it in the Footage panel
and see the transparency that's been
| | 02:47 |
brought in using the alpha channel.
Now, the next trial I'm going to bring in
| | 02:52 |
is multi-layer character that I've
created in Illustrator.
| | 02:57 |
And this time, I want to bring in all of
the layers.
| | 02:59 |
But if I choose Layer, I can only choose
one individual layer from the list.
| | 03:04 |
So instead, what I"m going to do is
choose Composition.
| | 03:07 |
And I choose Composition, it will build a
composition that includes all of the
| | 03:11 |
layers from the Illustrator file.
And each of those layers will become a
| | 03:16 |
layer in After Effects.
Now, there's a couple of choices for
| | 03:19 |
footage dimensions, and there's a couple
of little considerations you need to make
| | 03:23 |
when deciding whether to bring in footage
at document size or at layer size.
| | 03:29 |
But we'll have a look at those options a
little bit later.
| | 03:32 |
So, I'm just going to click OK.
Now we see something different here.
| | 03:36 |
Instead of seeing an Illustrator file, we
see what looks like an After Effects
| | 03:39 |
composition and it's accompanied by a
folder.
| | 03:42 |
And if I open that folder, you can see
lots of Illustrator files within that.
| | 03:47 |
And these are basically all of the
individual layers from my Illustrator file.
| | 03:51 |
And again, I can double-click if I want
to open up one of those and have a look
| | 03:54 |
at it.
So, there's my arm layer.
| | 03:56 |
Let's have a look at the upper arm, and
there's all different body parts of the
| | 04:00 |
layer, of the character, rather, on
individual layers.
| | 04:04 |
Now, if I double-click the composition,
that's going to open up the Composition panel.
| | 04:09 |
Now, at the moment, we're in the Footage
panel.
| | 04:11 |
If I double-click, the composition opens
up the Composition panel.
| | 04:15 |
And we can see our full character within
the composition, and down in the timeline
| | 04:20 |
here are all the layers from the
Illustrator file.
| | 04:24 |
And I can (UNKNOWN) them one by one to
see that all the layers have been brought
| | 04:28 |
in and translated to layers in After
Effects.
| | 04:32 |
So, really fantastic for all the layers
are supported from one application to another.
| | 04:36 |
Now, there's one other option we're going
to have a look at here, and that's to
| | 04:39 |
bring in a sequence of images.
I'm going to double-click inside the
| | 04:43 |
Project panel, and then I'm going to go
into this file here.
| | 04:46 |
Now, here is the original file, it's
called Export Artboards.
| | 04:50 |
And this is a single file in Illustrator
with multiple artboards.
| | 04:54 |
And I can actually look through the
artboards by using the backwards and
| | 04:57 |
forwards arrows here.
Now, what I have done is I've actually
| | 05:01 |
export to that to a sequence in
Illustrator, so we've got to Save As and
| | 05:05 |
just choose an EPS sequence.
If I jump back to Illustrator, we can
| | 05:10 |
have a look at how that was done.
Here's the file in Illustrator, and you
| | 05:14 |
can see that this consists of multiple
artboards with a single character on each frame.
| | 05:20 |
Now, when I go to Save As, I choose EPS
sequence and use art boards and the
| | 05:25 |
result is it outputs each artboard as a
separate EPS file.
| | 05:31 |
So then, when I bring it into After
Effects, what I can do is rather than
| | 05:34 |
import the Illustrator file itself, I go
into the Artboard Sequence folder, choose
| | 05:37 |
the first one in the sequence, and you'll
see it automatically chooses to import
| | 05:41 |
this as a sequence.
Because it recognizes that there's an
| | 05:46 |
alphanumerical order in that folder.
Click on Open, and you'll see that it's
| | 05:51 |
brought in an individual file.
And if I double-click that file, this is
| | 05:55 |
called a Sequence file.
And if I play that, I can see the frames
| | 06:00 |
of my stop frame animation playing back,
as if it was moving footage.
| | 06:06 |
So, that's how to bring in files to After
Effects to start animating.
| | 06:12 |
Various different options that you may
want to use when doing character
| | 06:18 |
animation in After Effects.
| | 06:22 |
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| Browsing files in Bridge| 00:00 |
So, here we are in the
browsingandbridge.aeb project which you
| | 00:04 |
can find in the Importing Source Files
folder.
| | 00:09 |
Now, another option for bringing files
into After Effects is to browse in Adobe Bridge.
| | 00:15 |
And to do that I go to File > Browse in
Bridge and that will open up Adobe Bridge
| | 00:19 |
for me, where I can go into my After
Effects Training Files folder and have a
| | 00:23 |
look at, for example, the images that I
want to bring in to my project.
| | 00:30 |
So, if I want to bring this one in, I can
open it in After Effects by saying Open
| | 00:34 |
with and finding After Effects in the
list or, my preferred method, is to
| | 00:37 |
switch to compact mode by clicking on
this button here.
| | 00:43 |
And that switches to compact mode, so
that Bridge floats above the other Adobe applications.
| | 00:48 |
You'll see if I go to Illustrator, and
back to After Effects, Bridge is always
| | 00:52 |
floating there on top of them.
And that makes it easy for me to drag and
| | 00:56 |
drop files from Bridge into After
Effects.
| | 01:00 |
Now, once I've done that, I'm going to hide
Bridge.
| | 01:03 |
And you'll see that I'm greeted again
with a dialog box asking how I want to
| | 01:07 |
bring this file in.
Again, I'm going to choose Composition
| | 01:11 |
and I'm going to choose Layer Size from
this menu here.
| | 01:15 |
And we'll have a look at those options a
little bit later.
| | 01:19 |
So, I'm going to click okay.
And there we go.
| | 01:21 |
Our puppet character is in After Effects.
And again, we have the layers, all the
| | 01:27 |
individual body parts from Illustrator,
and they've already been put together in
| | 01:32 |
a ready-made composition, ready for us to
start animating.
| | 01:38 |
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| Dragging and dropping from the Finder or Explorer| 00:00 |
So, here we are in the Dragondrop.aet
project which you can find in the
| | 00:03 |
Importing Source Functions files folder.
And what we're going to do here is we're
| | 00:08 |
going to import by dragging and dropping
files from the Finder.
| | 00:13 |
So, I'm going to jump to the Finder.
Now if you run the PC, you will be
| | 00:17 |
jumping to the Explorer.
Now if you're on the Mac, you'll be able
| | 00:21 |
to use Cover Flow to be able to preview
your files.
| | 00:24 |
I've got a WAV file here and I've got an
8 file, so you can choose whichever
| | 00:28 |
flavor you'd prefer to use.
And you just drag and drop the file into
| | 00:32 |
After Effects, and it will appear in the
list with all the other files.
| | 00:37 |
Now instantly, if we go back to the
Finder and I decide I want to bring in,
| | 00:41 |
say Multi-layered Illustrator file, when
I drag that in, it would just bring in,
| | 00:45 |
and this is just a flattened file unless
I adjust the preferences.
| | 00:51 |
If I go to the Preferences, which on the
Mac is in the After Effects menu, on the
| | 00:55 |
PC that should be in the Edit menu.
So, we go to Preferences > Import, and
| | 01:00 |
down at the bottom here, you can see this
preference for how drags effect multiple items.
| | 01:06 |
So, if you import items individually or
groups of items, you can say, bring them
| | 01:10 |
in as footage files, in which case it
will flatten them.
| | 01:14 |
Or, you could say, bring in as a
composition, and you can even ask it to
| | 01:18 |
retain the layer sizes when you drag and
drop the files.
| | 01:22 |
So, from now on, when I drag and drop
file into After Effects, it will come in
| | 01:28 |
as a ready made composition.
| | 01:32 |
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2. Sorting and Interpreting FootageSorting files| 00:02 |
So, here we are in the sortingfiles.aep
project, which you can find in the
| | 00:06 |
sorting and interpreting footage folder.
Now, what we're going to do is spend a
| | 00:11 |
little bit of time organizing our
footage.
| | 00:14 |
And this will pay off later in the
project.
| | 00:17 |
Makes it much easier for us to be able to
find and manage our footage if we take a
| | 00:20 |
little bit of time at the beginning to
sort the footage into folders.
| | 00:26 |
It will really pay off.
Now, we're going to create some folders to
| | 00:29 |
organize our footage with.
And you can create a new folder by
| | 00:32 |
clicking on this button here.
Create a new folder button.
| | 00:36 |
So, click on that and we'll create a
folder called images.
| | 00:39 |
So, I'm going to type the word images in.
If you accidentally deselected the folder
| | 00:44 |
before you had a chance to rename it,
what you can do is select the folder and
| | 00:48 |
hit the return key on the keyboard to
make it editable again.
| | 00:53 |
And just type in images.
Okay, now, it's unlike the finder of the exploder.
| | 00:59 |
You can't just click on a name to make it
editable.
| | 01:01 |
You need to actually hit return on the
keyboard to make the text editable.
| | 01:06 |
Now that we have our images folder, what
we can do is select the 3D Talent Wheel.
| | 01:11 |
And then, I'm going to hold down the Cmd key
on the Mac or the Ctrl key on the PC.
| | 01:17 |
And the reason that I am holding down the
Cmd and Ctrl key, rather than the Shift
| | 01:22 |
key, is because I want to select
non-contiguous items.
| | 01:27 |
If I held down the Shift key and click
down here, I would select everything in
| | 01:32 |
between those two elements.
If I hold down the Cmd key or the Ctrl
| | 01:37 |
key on PC, I can select elements that are
non-contiguous.
| | 01:41 |
So, I'm skipping out the character here
and just going for the folder of
| | 01:46 |
Illustrator files.
The image sequence also, I think, counts
| | 01:50 |
as an image.
So, I'm going to select that.
| | 01:53 |
And also, the puppet layers.
So, I'm leaving out the character
| | 01:57 |
composition, the puppet composition, and
the hammer sound.
| | 02:01 |
And I'm now going to drag them into the
Images Folder.
| | 02:05 |
And you'll see already, it's really
simplified, my project panel.
| | 02:09 |
I made it a bit easier to understand.
And I've got one folder containing all of
| | 02:13 |
my image files.
And we'll do that once more.
| | 02:16 |
We're going to create another folder and
this time, we're going to call it audio.
| | 02:20 |
Now, at the moment, I've only got one
audio file.
| | 02:23 |
I'm just going to drag and drop the hammer
sound into there.
| | 02:27 |
Now, if I open that up, I can actually
preview the hammer by double-clicking it.
| | 02:32 |
And you'll notice that if I'm in the
footage panel and I hit spacebar,
| | 02:36 |
nothing's happening.
But if I hit the period key on the number
| | 02:41 |
pad, you'll see that you can hear the
sound.
| | 02:46 |
So, opening out the footage window, and
then hitting the period key on the number
| | 02:51 |
pad will allow you to listen to the
sound.
| | 02:55 |
Okay, you can also do that by using the
preview commands up here, preview audio
| | 03:00 |
here forward will also preview the audio.
So, that's a little bit about file
| | 03:08 |
organization in After Effects.
| | 03:13 |
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| Interpreting footage options for transparency and gradients| 00:00 |
Now, here we are in the
Interpretfootage.ep project, which you
| | 00:03 |
can find in the Sorting and Interpreting
Footage folder.
| | 00:08 |
Now, what we're going to do here is have
a look at how After Effects deals with
| | 00:13 |
image files, and how you can change that
interpretation.
| | 00:18 |
If I double-click this 3DTV file, that's
going to open it up in the Footage window.
| | 00:24 |
Now, for some reason gone way off the
side here.
| | 00:28 |
So, if I want to pull that in, I can just
hold down Space Bar, and just pull that
| | 00:32 |
back up here.
Now, you can see that the footage has an
| | 00:36 |
alpha channel, and we can see the
transparent areas behind it.
| | 00:41 |
Now, the way that the off channel is
interrupted is determined in the
| | 00:45 |
Interpret Footage dialog box, and there
are two ways that you can get to that.
| | 00:51 |
You can either get to that by
right-clicking and going to Interpreting
| | 00:55 |
Footage Main or by going to the File menu
and choosing Interpret Footage Main.
| | 01:02 |
And here, we have the Interpret Footage
dialog box which gives us access to
| | 01:06 |
various different options for our file
and how the file is interpreted when
| | 01:11 |
imported into After Effects.
Now, at the moment, we've interpreted
| | 01:17 |
that as a straight unmatted alpha file,
which indeed it is.
| | 01:21 |
If I switch off Ignore and click OK, I
can actually ignore the alpha channel,
| | 01:26 |
and you'll see that now the alpha channel
is replaced with a solid black background.
| | 01:32 |
If I want to bring back the alpha
channel, Interpret Footage Main, keyboard
| | 01:37 |
shortcut for that is Option > Cmd > G on
the Mac, or Alt > Ctrl > G on the PC.
| | 01:44 |
Okay, if I want to bring that back, I can
say it's a straight alpha channel.
| | 01:49 |
Click OK, and we're back to where we
were.
| | 01:52 |
You can even do things like interpret the
alpha channel in reversed.
| | 01:56 |
So, if I invert the alpha channel and
click OK, we now get a black background
| | 02:00 |
with a hole punched in it.
So, various different things you can do
| | 02:05 |
with the alpha channel in here.
Now, there are also other options in
| | 02:10 |
here, for example, your Pixel Aspect
Ratio settings are here.
| | 02:15 |
But down at the bottom, you may see more
options, and we're going to have a look
| | 02:18 |
at that in a second.
But first of all, let's click OK and
| | 02:22 |
apply the alpha changes to this layer,
and we're going to open up this layer
| | 02:26 |
here, 3Dtiltwheel.ai.
Again, double-clicking, it will open it
| | 02:31 |
in the Footage panel.
Now, I'm going to right-click on that
| | 02:34 |
again and go to Interpret Footage Main,
and this time I'm going to click on More Options.
| | 02:41 |
And here are my EPS options.
If you're working with Illustrator files
| | 02:46 |
or EPS files, you can choose how the
anti-aliasing works.
| | 02:51 |
Now, the default is the anti-aliasing
will be done as fast as possible.
| | 02:55 |
Meaning, that the workflow will be quick
and responsive in After Effects.
| | 03:00 |
But if you're finding that the gradients
aren't looking smooth enough, you can
| | 03:04 |
choose more accurate.
And you'll get more accurate
| | 03:08 |
anti-aliasing for your color gradients.
So, if you see anti-aliasing problems
| | 03:13 |
with your gradients in working in After
Effects, this is where you can change the
| | 03:18 |
Anti-aliasing options.
And then, click OK, and then we know that
| | 03:24 |
this is rendering as best quality as
possible.
| | 03:29 |
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3. Traditional Layer-Style AnimationSetting up anchor points| 00:00 |
Okay, we're doing Anchorpoints.aep, which
you can find in the Layer Animation folder.
| | 00:08 |
Now, what we have here is one of my main
characters.
| | 00:11 |
And I want to start animating the body
parts, and I'm going to start by
| | 00:14 |
animating the arm.
Now, when I select the arm, you'll notice
| | 00:18 |
that the layer handles are at the edge of
the composition.
| | 00:23 |
And that's because when I imported this,
I choose to import it at document size so
| | 00:27 |
it places the handles at the edge of the
composition, and it places the anchor
| | 00:30 |
point in the middle of the layer.
It doesn't matter which layer I select
| | 00:36 |
from this composition.
Every single layer has the same settings.
| | 00:40 |
It has the handles on the edge, and the
anchor point in the middle.
| | 00:43 |
However, if I open up the Puppet
Composition, I brought that in and
| | 00:47 |
imported it, choosing to bring the layers
in at Layer Size, and you'll see that
| | 00:51 |
that looks quiet different.
You'll see that the handles are at the
| | 00:56 |
edge of the layer.
Now, if I label that red, you'll be able
| | 01:00 |
to see that a little bit more clearly.
So, I'm selecting the Layer, and going to
| | 01:05 |
Edit Label red just made those handles
show up a little bit more clearly.
| | 01:10 |
Le'ts solo that as well.
Now, you can see the anchor point is in
| | 01:14 |
the middle of the layer.
And the handles surrounding that layer as
| | 01:19 |
close as they can be to the edge of the
layer.
| | 01:22 |
Now, if I solo the upper arm and select
that, notice the handles around that
| | 01:27 |
layer and the anchor point is in the
center.
| | 01:31 |
And we can go on and on, so there's the
right arm.
| | 01:34 |
The anchor point is in the center, and
the handle's around the edge.
| | 01:39 |
In fact, if I select all of them, you'll
notice that the layer handles are all
| | 01:42 |
over the place.
Now, both of these techniques have
| | 01:46 |
benefits, and I'm going to explain those
to you now.
| | 01:50 |
Importing compostion with the layers at
set to layer size tends to be a little
| | 01:54 |
easier to manage in terms of animation.
Because if I select the right leg, for
| | 02:00 |
example, you'll see that the anchor point
is in the center.
| | 02:04 |
And quite often, when I want to rotate
something, choosing the Rotation tool to
| | 02:08 |
do that.
I quite like the Animator in the center,
| | 02:12 |
maybe not in this situation, but often I
do want the Animator in the center.
| | 02:18 |
Also, the layer is small so it takes a
little bit less time to render than if we
| | 02:22 |
go to our other composition and select,
say, the upper arm and solo that.
| | 02:29 |
Because we're extending the handles to
the edge of the composition, it means
| | 02:33 |
there's a lot more pixels for after
effects to calculate.
| | 02:38 |
So, in terms of processing, it will take
a little bit longer to process if you
| | 02:41 |
bring it in at document size, then it
will at layer size.
| | 02:45 |
Having said that, it's fairly mimimal
difference between the two.
| | 02:49 |
The other benefits are if I was to create
a new compostion.
| | 02:53 |
So, I'm going to go to Composition > New
Composition, and click OK.
| | 02:58 |
And I wanted to drag, let me just put
that on to fit up to 100%.
| | 03:03 |
I wanted to drag the images that I'd
already imported into this composition.
| | 03:08 |
If I drag my Character Layers, which are
in this folder, into the Composition, it
| | 03:13 |
will place them in the right position
relative to each other.
| | 03:18 |
Now, it hasn't got the layer stacking
order correct because I didn't select
| | 03:21 |
them in the correct order.
But notice how they're all in the correct position.
| | 03:26 |
If I undo that and do that with the
Puppet layers, you'll notice that it's
| | 03:29 |
placed all the layers on top of each
other.
| | 03:33 |
Cuz basically, when you drag and drop, it
places the anchor point in the center of
| | 03:36 |
the comp, and all of the layers' anchor
points are in the center of the layers,
| | 03:40 |
so we lose the relative positioning.
So, if you want to keep relative
| | 03:46 |
positioning while you're working in After
Effects, bring it in at document size.
| | 03:51 |
If you don't want to do that, bring it in
at layer size.
| | 03:54 |
Now, however you bring in your character,
you're probably going to want to change
| | 03:58 |
the anchor points at some point.
So, if you double-click the character
| | 04:02 |
composition, and I'm just going to remove
solo from this layer so we can see all
| | 04:06 |
the layers.
Now, if we select the upper arm and I was
| | 04:10 |
to rotate that arm, that's just to open
up our rotation value by selecting layer
| | 04:15 |
and hitting R on the keyboard.
If I scrub that value, notice it's
| | 04:21 |
rotating around the wrong point.
So, it's rotating around this point here.
| | 04:26 |
Okay, so I don't want to do that.
I want to rotate it around this point here.
| | 04:31 |
So, what I can do is I can adjust the
rotation point by using this tool here,
| | 04:35 |
the Pan Behind tool.
I can just simply click and drag that up
| | 04:40 |
to the correct rotation point.
And then when I rotate, it rotates from
| | 04:45 |
the shoulder instead of from the elbow.
Now, I don't really want to rotate that
| | 04:51 |
yet because I need to attach these layers
to each other before I rotate that arm.
| | 04:56 |
But what I'm going to do is rotate this
arm.
| | 04:59 |
So, let's go down to the lower arm.
Now, if it's difficult to find the layer
| | 05:04 |
that you want to work with, you can
always go back to the Selection tool by
| | 05:08 |
hitting the V key on the keyboard, and
just clicking the layer in the composition.
| | 05:16 |
But you'll notice that because I've got
Document Size selected, it makes it more
| | 05:21 |
difficult to select layers.
This is another downside to bringing it
| | 05:25 |
in at document size.
If we go back to my puppet, it's much
| | 05:28 |
easier for me just to select individual
layers, because the layer handles don't
| | 05:33 |
extend across the whole composition.
So, with that in mind, I'm going to have
| | 05:38 |
to just scroll through and find the arm
that I want to use, and I'll have to
| | 05:42 |
toggle off visibility just to check
that's the right layer.
| | 05:47 |
So, here we have the right arm.
At the moment, if I open up rotation by
| | 05:50 |
hitting R on the keyboard and scrub it,
it's not too bad, actually.
| | 05:55 |
Coincidentally, that arm happens to be
right in the middle of the screen.
| | 06:00 |
So, the anchor point doesn't need much
adjusting, but it needs a little bit of adjusting.
| | 06:04 |
Now you might think, why don't we just
adjust the Anchor Point settings down
| | 06:08 |
here in the timeline?
But if I close that layer and open it up
| | 06:12 |
again, you'll see we have Anchor Point
settings.
| | 06:15 |
But if I scrub these values, notice that
the anchor point stays where it is.
| | 06:20 |
And the layer moves.
And that's what happens when you change
| | 06:23 |
or animate the anchor point value down
here in the timeline.
| | 06:28 |
So, using the Pan Behind tool avoids that
happening, and allows you just physically
| | 06:32 |
drag it to new place.
And now if I rotate, it rotates around
| | 06:36 |
the correct point.
Now, you'll notice the hammer is actually
| | 06:39 |
moving behind the glasses, which we don't
really want to happen.
| | 06:43 |
So, the next thing I'm going to do is
just drag that right arm layer up to the
| | 06:49 |
top composition so that when I rotate, it
rotates around that point.
| | 06:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Keyframing transform properties| 00:00 |
So, we're in the Keyframingtransform.aep
project, which you can find in the Layer
| | 00:06 |
Animation folder.
Now, we're going to start by animating
| | 00:10 |
the right arm of this character using the
basic transform properties, which can be
| | 00:16 |
found inside each of the layers.
Each of the layers, if you open them up,
| | 00:22 |
have a transform property group which
contains Anchor Point, Position, Scale,
| | 00:25 |
Rotation, and Opacity, the five basic
properties in After Effects.
| | 00:31 |
Which can be animated over time using
keyframes.
| | 00:34 |
Now, the term keyframes comes from
traditional animation where the animators
| | 00:38 |
would draw the frames of the animation.
So for example, if you imagine Walt
| | 00:43 |
Disney was doing an animation of this
character, he would actually draw the
| | 00:47 |
character in this position, and that
would be the first keyframe.
| | 00:52 |
And then, he would draw his character in
that position, and that would be the
| | 00:55 |
second keyframe.
And then the Tweener, who's the assistant
| | 00:59 |
animator, would have the job of filling
all the individual steps in between to
| | 01:03 |
create a smooth movement between there
and there.
| | 01:07 |
So that's where the term keyframing comes
from.
| | 01:10 |
And in traditional animation, it's
achieved by drawing the frames and then
| | 01:13 |
in-betweening the in-between frames.
After Effects is slightly different.
| | 01:18 |
After Effects is like your tweener.
So basically, you set the key moments of
| | 01:22 |
the animation, and After Effects will set
all the points in between.
| | 01:26 |
So, if you go back to a value of 0, and I
can either type in the value or just
| | 01:30 |
right-click and say Reset to go back to 0
on the rotation property.
| | 01:35 |
Then what we can do is start to animate
this property.
| | 01:38 |
So, I'm going to set a keyframe by
clicking on this Stopwatch.
| | 01:41 |
So, clicking on the Stopwatch actually
starts recording any changes you make to
| | 01:45 |
the property.
So, by clicking on the Stopwatch, I'm
| | 01:48 |
saying okay, start recording everything I
do from this point on.
| | 01:51 |
And it also creates keyframe at that
point.
| | 01:52 |
And the keyframe appears like a
diamond-shaped icon.
| | 01:58 |
And that's a basic linear keyframe which
is the default keyframe type in After Effects.
| | 02:03 |
If you think of it as if you're tying a
knot in the value at that point.
| | 02:07 |
So as I was saying, at zero seconds, I
want the rotation value to have a value
| | 02:10 |
of zero.
Then I'm going to move ahead a little bit.
| | 02:14 |
So, I'll click and drag the time marker
to roundabout the 1 second mark, thereabouts.
| | 02:20 |
And you can also get to that by clicking
in the, go to Time Box and just typing 1
| | 02:24 |
dot or 1 period, and hitting Enter, and
that will take you to the one second mark.
| | 02:31 |
And here, what I'm going to do is pull
the hammer back by scrubbing the rotation
| | 02:34 |
value here.
So, I'm going to pull the hammer back to
| | 02:37 |
where he would pull it before he's about
to hit the hammer on the head.
| | 02:41 |
And then, I'm going to move forward a
little bit.
| | 02:44 |
Not quite as much of a gap between
hitting the wall and the beginning of the
| | 02:48 |
animation because actually, as he moves
the hammer forward, he's going to be
| | 02:52 |
moving it a lot more quickly.
So, a shorter distance between keyframes
| | 02:57 |
means a faster movement.
So, I'm now going to move the rotation
| | 03:01 |
forwards 'til he hits the nail on the
head.
| | 03:05 |
And if we preview that, you'll see that
we've created an animation.
| | 03:10 |
Now, you do a preview in After Effects by
clicking on this button here, the Ram
| | 03:14 |
Preview button, or you can hit 0 on the
number pad to do exactly the same thing.
| | 03:20 |
And then, the thing is it's far too slow
so we need to speed it up a bit.
| | 03:25 |
Now, a quick way of speeding up an
animation but keeping the relative timing
| | 03:28 |
is to select all the keyframes first of
all, by clicking on the word Rotation.
| | 03:33 |
And that makes all the keyframes yellow,
which means they're selected.
| | 03:37 |
Holding down the Alt key, and then
pulling the keyframes together.
| | 03:41 |
And that keeps a relative timing.
If I zoom in by hitting the Period key
| | 03:45 |
next to the Question Mark on the
keyboard, sorry, I'm zooming into the
| | 03:49 |
Composition panel there.
Of course, the keyboard shortcut for the
| | 03:54 |
timeline is to hit the Plus key on the
numbers at the top.
| | 03:58 |
I'm just going to do that again.
So, if we zoom in by hitting the Plus key
| | 04:02 |
on the keyboard, we can see the keyframes
have exactly the same timing.
| | 04:08 |
But we preview that, you'll see it's a
lot quicker.
| | 04:12 |
So, that's how to do basic animation of a
property in After Effects.
| | 04:17 |
Now, if you want to loop that animation
so you can see it over and over again,
| | 04:20 |
what I suggest you do is place the time
marker at the one second mark, and you
| | 04:24 |
can do that by clicking on the Time Ruler
here.
| | 04:28 |
And then, what we want to do is trim our
work area to this area here so that we're
| | 04:32 |
only previewing the work area.
And the keyboard shortcut to do that is
| | 04:37 |
to hit the N key on the keyboard.
And now when I hit Run Preview, it will
| | 04:45 |
only preview that small section and it
will loop for me.
| | 04:51 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Keyframe types| 00:00 |
We're now going to have a look at
Keyframe Types.
| | 00:04 |
Now, we're in the Keyframe Types project,
which you can find in the Animating
| | 00:08 |
Layers folder.
Here, we have a very basic animation,
| | 00:11 |
which I'm just going to preview by
hitting the Ram Preview button, or
| | 00:14 |
hitting 0 on the number pad, to activate
a Ram Preview.
| | 00:19 |
And you'll see this little guy's moving
his arm backwards and forwards, hammering
| | 00:23 |
a nail on the wall.
Now, we've done a little bit of timing on that.
| | 00:28 |
We've made the time where he draws the
hammer back a bit longer.
| | 00:32 |
From the time where he pulls the hammer
forward, and I can adjust the timing a
| | 00:35 |
little bit by dragging the keyframes
together.
| | 00:38 |
So, if the keyframes are selected, like
the bar there, you basically just click
| | 00:42 |
away from them to deselect them, and then
click on the keyframes and pull it closer
| | 00:46 |
to the other keyframe.
That reduces the gap and makes that
| | 00:51 |
section a little faster.
So, if we preview that, you'll see that
| | 00:56 |
now the action of hitting the nail on the
head is now a bit faster.
| | 01:03 |
But in After Effects, there are other
keyframe types which help you adjust the
| | 01:07 |
timing a little bit.
At the moment, we're using linear
| | 01:11 |
keyframes, as I said.
But speed between one keyframe and the
| | 01:14 |
next will be completely even.
But what we can do is we can use
| | 01:18 |
different kinds of keyframes so that the
speed builds gradually between one
| | 01:21 |
keyframe and another.
And that way we create a more fluid movement.
| | 01:26 |
As I said, there are various different
types of keyframes.
| | 01:29 |
So, I'm going to run through some of them
for you.
| | 01:31 |
So, these are linear keyframes, which
animate gradually from one point to another.
| | 01:35 |
You can also use what are called Toggle
held keyframes, which will hold on one
| | 01:39 |
value until it meets the next keyframe.
So, if I right-click on this keyframe, I
| | 01:45 |
can choose Toggle Hold Keyframe from that
menu, and now the keyframe changes to
| | 01:49 |
have a square edge, which means it's held
in value.
| | 01:54 |
So if I preview that now, you'll notice
that, this time by using Space Bar, that
| | 01:58 |
the value, if we have a look at that
again, the value holds until it meets the
| | 02:01 |
second keyframe.
In fact, it's so quick we can hardly see it.
| | 02:07 |
So, I'm going to step through my
animation one frame at a time by hitting
| | 02:11 |
the Page Down key repeatedly.
Now, you'll see it only changes when it
| | 02:16 |
hits that keyframe.
So, if you ever want a value to suddenly
| | 02:20 |
change from one thing to another, you can
use a Toggle Held Keyframe.
| | 02:25 |
Now, if I make that linear again, which I
can do by holding down the Cmd key and
| | 02:29 |
clicking on it, you'll see that now,
again, it gradually changes from one
| | 02:34 |
value to the other.
So, you've got linear and held keyframes,
| | 02:39 |
so those are two keyframe types.
Now, a third keyframe type is called
| | 02:44 |
Continuous Bezier, and this might not be
that easy to see the difference between
| | 02:48 |
this and a regular keyframe, but let's
have a go at it.
| | 02:53 |
So, I'm going to hit Ran Preview again by
hitting 0 on the number pad.
| | 02:57 |
We have a look at the timing.
Looks pretty rigid.
| | 03:00 |
Now, if I select all the keyframes either
by dragging a marquee around them or by
| | 03:04 |
clicking on the word rotation, what I can
do is hold down the Cmd key on the Mac,
| | 03:08 |
or the Ctrl key on the PC and click on
one of them.
| | 03:14 |
And they will all change to circular
keyframes, and this circular keyframes
| | 03:18 |
are Continuous Bezier keyframes.
And if I preview that by hitting 0 on the
| | 03:23 |
number pad, you'll see we get a slightly
smoother movement.
| | 03:29 |
Okay, it's just a little bit smoother
where it changes from one speed to another.
| | 03:33 |
Okay, now, if you really want to adjust
the speed the other keyframe types that
| | 03:38 |
you can use, and I've just undone that.
So I just did Cmd > Z or Ctrl > Z on the
| | 03:44 |
PC to undo so I am back to linear
keyframes.
| | 03:48 |
Now, the third keyframe type we are going
to use are eased keyframes, and eased
| | 03:52 |
keyframes allow you to gradually
accelerate or deaccelerate the speed in
| | 03:56 |
between the keyframes, and there are
three different kinds.
| | 04:02 |
So, we're just going to move the time
marker out of the way for a second.
| | 04:06 |
Deselect the keyframes, and I want you to
right-click on the first keyframe and go
| | 04:10 |
down to the Keyframe Assistant menu and
choose Easy Ease Out.
| | 04:14 |
What that's going to do is it's gradually
going to build speed coming out of the
| | 04:18 |
keyframe, and then stop at the next
keyframe.
| | 04:22 |
Now, at this keyframe, what we're going
to do is say Easy Ease Completely.
| | 04:27 |
Now, Easy Ease will ease on both sides.
Now, if you have a look at the first
| | 04:31 |
keyframe, notice it's still linear on the
way in but it's eased on the way out.
| | 04:37 |
The middle keyframe is eased on both
sides, and that's why it's curved on each side.
| | 04:43 |
Now, I'm not going to ease the last
keyframe because I want the animation to
| | 04:46 |
be quite sharp and fast at the end.
So, let's just preview that and see how
| | 04:52 |
the eased keyframes have helped the
timing of my animation.
| | 04:56 |
So, I'm just going to hit 0 on the number
pad again to preview that.
| | 05:01 |
And you'll see we get a slightly slower
pull back and a nice fast hammer.
| | 05:08 |
And again, if we want to make that even
faster, we can just pull that last
| | 05:13 |
keyframe in a little bit tighter, preview
it again, and you'll see we're starting
| | 05:19 |
to get the timing right for the hammer.
| | 05:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fine-tuning animation with the Graph Editor| 00:00 |
Okay, so now we're going to have a look at
how you can use the graph editor in After
| | 00:04 |
Effects to fine-tune your animations to
improve the speed and the dynamism of the animation.
| | 00:11 |
Now we're in the graph editor project
which you can find in the layer animation
| | 00:15 |
folder, and we're gonns use the graph
editor to retime these existing keyframes.
| | 00:22 |
Now just be aware that if you click on
the graph editor button, you won't
| | 00:26 |
actually see anything except an empty
graph.
| | 00:31 |
So in order to be able to see the key
frames, you need to either select a key
| | 00:34 |
frame or select the rotation property.
And then when you go into the graph
| | 00:38 |
editor, you'll be able to see a graph
representing the movement that's being made.
| | 00:43 |
By, in this case, his arm.
Now I'm going to preview that by clicking
| | 00:48 |
the Run Preview button.
You can also hit zero on the number pad.
| | 00:52 |
And you can see the movement represented
by this graph.
| | 00:56 |
And the rotation values what's being
animated.
| | 01:00 |
So what we can see here if we zoom in a
little bit, so let me just stop playback
| | 01:04 |
and we'll zoom in a little bit tighter
just by using the zoom slider at the top
| | 01:08 |
of the screen here.
And I'm going to pull my work area in a
| | 01:13 |
little bit more so we're not previewing
as much.
| | 01:16 |
Let's preview that once more.
So what you can see here it's gradually
| | 01:20 |
speeding up.
And then it's coming into the second key
| | 01:24 |
frame, so this is the speeding up and
pulling back section, and then it's
| | 01:28 |
hitting the nail on the head, moving
forward very, very quickly.
| | 01:33 |
So basically what it's doing it's
gradually speeding up, then it's getting
| | 01:36 |
to an optimum speed and then it's
gradually tailing off into the middle keyframe.
| | 01:41 |
And that's because we've eased these two
keyframes.
| | 01:44 |
And you'll notice that when you ease a
keyframe if you select it, you'll see
| | 01:47 |
handles coming out from either side of
it.
| | 01:51 |
And these are Bezier handles and they
allow you to adjust the curve which
| | 01:54 |
represents the speed between the key
frames.
| | 01:57 |
So if I want this to hold a little longer
on the middle keyframe, what I can do is
| | 02:01 |
I can actually adjust this so that it
gets to this point.
| | 02:07 |
And then it kind of holds for a little
longer, as he pulls back the hammer
| | 02:10 |
before he hits it forwards.
And I can do that by pulling this handle
| | 02:15 |
out, just clicking on that handle and
pulling it out.
| | 02:19 |
If I want to, I an hold down Shift after
I start dragging to constrain it so that
| | 02:23 |
we don't accidentally move it up or down
the screen.
| | 02:28 |
So that's a really nice way of just
holding that animation for a little bit
| | 02:31 |
longer before he pushes the hammer
forwards.
| | 02:34 |
And we can have a little look at that by
doing another RAM preview.
| | 02:38 |
And you'll see we're starting to get a
much more dynamic movement now.
| | 02:43 |
He pulls it back and really whacks it
forward.
| | 02:46 |
Now we can also change the angle going
out of of the keyframe.
| | 02:51 |
If I do the same here pull the handle you
can see that I can move it up and down.
| | 02:56 |
But holding down Shift allows me to
constrain it, and we can have a look at
| | 03:00 |
what that does as well.
And that's going to hold for a little bit
| | 03:04 |
longer this way which makes that movement
going into the nail a little bit faster.
| | 03:10 |
So let's preview that.
And now we've got a really good animation.
| | 03:15 |
It really looks like he's whacking that
nail on the head.
| | 03:18 |
instantly we're just going to have a little
go at adjusting the first one just to
| | 03:23 |
show what that does.
So if I pull this one out, again holding
| | 03:27 |
down Shift, as far as it will go.
And preview it.
| | 03:31 |
Now you'll notice that that's a little
bit wobbly.
| | 03:34 |
And that's because we've created this s
shape here.
| | 03:38 |
Which kind of creates a little bit too
much of a jump between one speed and another.
| | 03:43 |
So I don't really recommend that you
adjust this keyframe too much.
| | 03:47 |
Let's undo it so we're back at the
beginning.
| | 03:49 |
Can maybe I adjust it a little bit
further so it takes a little bit longer
| | 03:52 |
to start moving his arm back and then
we'll preview that again.
| | 03:57 |
Okay, you know what I preferred it as it
was, I'm just going to do a simple undo by
| | 04:03 |
hitting Cmd+Z or Ctrl+Z on the PC.
I'm going to play it again and I'm going to say
| | 04:11 |
that I'm quite happy with that.
'Kay, a really good, dynamic animation of
| | 04:18 |
a guy pulling back the hammer and hitting
the nail on the head.
| | 04:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Creating a Grouping Structure for Body PartsPrecomposing to create groups| 00:00 |
Okay, I have created this little
animation of a guy hammering a nail in
| | 00:04 |
After Effects, and what I want to do now
is start to animate his other body parts.
| | 00:12 |
If we have a look at the timeline, and
I'm just going to do that by hitting the
| | 00:16 |
tilde key or the accent key.
Which on the British keyboard is next to
| | 00:21 |
the zed key on the keyboard.
And I believe on the American keyboard
| | 00:25 |
it's next to the number one key at the
top of the keyboard.
| | 00:29 |
Now we're going to open up our timeline and
you'll see that we've got lots and lots
| | 00:33 |
and lots and lots of layers.
We've got different layers for each of
| | 00:37 |
the body parts.
So if I just close up the right arm
| | 00:40 |
there, and we hit the tilda key again or
the accent key to come back out of it.
| | 00:45 |
If I solo the layers you can see that
each layer represents different body
| | 00:49 |
parts, we've go the hair, the eyebrows,
the mouth, the eyes, the head.
| | 00:55 |
All on separate layers.
Now if we were to animate them all in
| | 00:58 |
this composition, we're going to be kind of
finding it a little bit tough moving up
| | 01:03 |
and down and having to figure out which
layers which.
| | 01:08 |
Not only that, if I move the head layer,
for example.
| | 01:12 |
And I just decide to use the arrow keys
on the keyboard to move the head.
| | 01:18 |
Notice the head moves without all the
other features, which is not really what
| | 01:21 |
I want.
I want the features to move with the head.
| | 01:25 |
So there's a couple of ways of attaching
layers together in After Effects, and
| | 01:29 |
we're going to have a look at them, one of
them, now, which is pre-composing.
| | 01:34 |
Pre-composing is a process of being able
to select layers, and nest them into
| | 01:39 |
separate compositions.
But still retaining their position within
| | 01:44 |
this composition.
and I'll show you how that works, so for example.
| | 01:48 |
If we're to start with the arm layer.
We can solo the layers just to check
| | 01:52 |
which ones which.
So let's solo that layer so that's his
| | 01:55 |
left arm.
We want his right arm so we want the
| | 01:59 |
upper arm layer and the other layer that
we want is at the top, which is the right
| | 02:03 |
arm layer.
So if we want these both in this
| | 02:07 |
composition called arm, that contains the
upper arm and the lower arm so it can
| | 02:11 |
then rotate these as a group, what we do
is select them, so we'll select the upper
| | 02:15 |
arm, move up to the top, hold down the
command key or control key on PC, to
| | 02:19 |
select non-contiguous items, and click on
the right arm layer.
| | 02:27 |
Now, with both of those selected, I can
go to the layer menu, and choose
| | 02:30 |
pre-compose down at the bottom.
Now you're going to want to learn the
| | 02:35 |
keyboard shortcut for pre-composing,
because it's something that you do a lot
| | 02:38 |
in After Effects.
And as you can see, it's way down at the
| | 02:42 |
bottom of the layer menu, so it's a
hassle to go there with there with your mouse.
| | 02:47 |
Then you can just type in Shift, Command,
C, or Shift, Control, C on the PC.
| | 02:52 |
And when you do that, it will open up the
precomposed dialog box.
| | 02:56 |
And we'll give it a name.
So we're going to call it arm comp.
| | 03:00 |
Now we want to say which arm it is, and
if it's the way that I do this is if it's
| | 03:04 |
on the right side of composition I call
it the right arm.
| | 03:09 |
So we'll call it the right arm comp, and
I'm going to click okay, and you'll notice
| | 03:13 |
that we've now got a comp called right
arm comp, and it soloed if I switch on
| | 03:17 |
all the other layers by clicking off the
solo button, you can see it integrated
| | 03:21 |
with the other layers.
But now, I have a single layer which has
| | 03:28 |
transform properties that I can move,
rotate And do whatever I want to with as
| | 03:32 |
a group.
OK, so I can start to treat this arm as a
| | 03:36 |
group, which makes it a little bit easier
to control.
| | 03:40 |
So I'm going to go ahead and do that with
some other layers.
| | 03:44 |
So I'm going to select all the layers
that I would want to be in the head.
| | 03:49 |
So, we have the ears, the glasses, which
are the spectacles, the hair, the
| | 03:54 |
eyebrows, the mouth, the pupils, the
eyes, the head itself, and let's take
| | 04:00 |
well, we'll leave the neck, actually.
We'll leave the neck where they are.
| | 04:06 |
And this time, we're going to go to layer
precompose again just so you can see
| | 04:08 |
where it is.
But remember shift command c, or shift
| | 04:12 |
control c on the PC precompose, and we'll
call this head comp.
| | 04:17 |
This time, I'm going to say open new
composition, and when I click okay, it's
| | 04:22 |
going to open my new head comp composition
with all of my head layers in it.
| | 04:29 |
Now if I want to jump back to the main
composition, I'm not sure which one it
| | 04:33 |
was, I can click on this little
composition mini flow chart button and I
| | 04:37 |
can see that my parent composition if you
like, the composition that contains this
| | 04:41 |
is character composition and when I go
back there I can see the head comp.
| | 04:48 |
If I open up my transformed property
group.
| | 04:51 |
And go to position, you'll notice that I
can move that as a single group now.
| | 04:55 |
So, we want to continue doing that, so
let's do the left arm as just a single layer.
| | 05:00 |
The body we don't need to do.
The bottom we don't need to do.
| | 05:04 |
And we can actually delete that layer at
the bottom.
| | 05:07 |
We don't need that one.
So what we're going to do is we're going to
| | 05:11 |
go into the head comp, and make some
separate compositions for the eyes.
| | 05:16 |
And this is what you want to do.
So even within the head comp if I double
| | 05:19 |
click it to open it up, and if your using
CS4 then you'll have to hold down the alt
| | 05:22 |
button when you double-click to open up
the nested composition.
| | 05:27 |
Been CS5 just double-clicking a
composition will open it up.
| | 05:31 |
Now in here you've got ear glasses, hair
right eyebrow, left eyebrow, and the
| | 05:36 |
pupils I want to group with the eyes, so
that I can move the eyes in here and the
| | 05:40 |
pupils will move with them.
So I'm going to choose the left eye hold on
| | 05:46 |
the command key or control key, choose
left pupil.
| | 05:49 |
And then go to Lair precompose, or as we
know, it's command shift C or control
| | 05:54 |
shift C on the PC.
We'll call it left I comp.
| | 05:59 |
And I'm going to remove the new
composition because I don't want to open
| | 06:03 |
it at the moment.
And then right eye and right pupil,
| | 06:07 |
command shift C, control shift C.
We're going to write eye comp.
| | 06:14 |
Okay, so I've got two separate comps for
the eyes.
| | 06:18 |
Now I may want to move them individually
and if I do, then it's probably best to
| | 06:22 |
keep them in separate comps.
Otherwise, I could group these together
| | 06:26 |
in a single compo, it's up to me really.
But I'm, what I'm going to do is to show you
| | 06:29 |
the position moving.
Now, to adjust the position value,
| | 06:32 |
normally I would open up the transform
property group.
| | 06:36 |
But this keyboard shortcuts for all the
basic properties, so hitting p on the
| | 06:39 |
keyboard with the layer selected will
bring up the position properties, and
| | 06:42 |
there you can see the eyes moving.
Okay.
| | 06:46 |
I'm going to keep them in separate comps.
'Cuz there may be a time where I want to
| | 06:50 |
move 1 down a little bit, and 1 up a
little bit.
| | 06:53 |
to kind of create a comedy effect.
So I'm going to keep them as separate layers.
| | 06:57 |
Okay.
I could also go and group the eyebrows
| | 06:59 |
together if I wanted to, but I think
that's enough for now.
| | 07:03 |
So we've got our eyes grouped inside the
head.
| | 07:06 |
Okay?
So there's my right eye and left eye comp.
| | 07:08 |
There's my head comp, and there's my
character comp.
| | 07:12 |
So I'm starting to build up a hierarchy
of structure, making it easier for me to
| | 07:16 |
control the layers and also making it
easier for me to create animation.
| | 07:22 |
Now, if we want to access the
compositions, or the pre-comps another
| | 07:26 |
way, We can go up here to our project
panel and double-click them here to open
| | 07:30 |
them up.
So there we have the right eye comp, the
| | 07:35 |
right arm comp, the head comp, the
character comp.
| | 07:39 |
Now if you want to, you can create a
folder called precomps and keep them
| | 07:43 |
separate from the main comp.
So I would select my right arm, my right
| | 07:48 |
eye, my left eye.
and my head, and I'll pop them into the
| | 07:53 |
precomps folder, keeping them nice and
tidy.
| | 07:58 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using parenting to create hierarchical animation| 00:02 |
After Effects often provides more than
one way to do a job, and sometimes it's
| | 00:05 |
difficult to know which is the best way.
So what I like to do is show you all the
| | 00:09 |
methods, and then you can choose which
one you prefer.
| | 00:13 |
There's no right way or wrong way to work
when you're a creative person.
| | 00:17 |
Sometimes the best work is created by the
weirdest, most contrived techniques.
| | 00:21 |
So don't let anyone bully you into
thinking that you have to work a
| | 00:24 |
particular way in After Effects or you're
basically wrong.
| | 00:28 |
Just work the way the you want to work,
but there are things that will trip you
| | 00:32 |
up if you work particular ways, and the
reason that I'm showing you as many
| | 00:35 |
techniques as I can is so that you can
make an educated choice about which
| | 00:38 |
technique you want to use.
So here we're going to have a look at
| | 00:43 |
parenting, and I've got the parenting
project open which you can find in the
| | 00:48 |
grouping folder.
And what we're going to do here is use
| | 00:52 |
parenting to join these body parts
together.
| | 00:54 |
Now, if I select the left upper arm layer
here and I'm just going to zoom in so we can
| | 00:59 |
see that a bit better.
So I'm going to hit the period key on the
| | 01:03 |
keyboard, which will zoom in to the
composition panel.
| | 01:07 |
The comma key next to it will zoom out.
So let's zoom in to 200% and then I'm
| | 01:11 |
going to hold down spacebar to toggle to
the hand tool, and just move down a
| | 01:15 |
little bit so that I can see his arm more
clearly.
| | 01:19 |
Okay.
Now I don't have a separate layer for the
| | 01:22 |
hand, I just have the left upper arm
which is that one and the left lower arm
| | 01:25 |
which is that one.
Now, what I want to do is, I want to
| | 01:30 |
animate the upper arm and what I'm going to
do before I animate is just move the
| | 01:33 |
anchor point by using the pan behind
tool.
| | 01:38 |
Up to here so that when I choose the
rotate tool to rotate it, it rotates
| | 01:42 |
around the correct point.
But you'll notice as I rotate it this
| | 01:46 |
other part of the arm doesn't move with
it and it should do.
| | 01:50 |
As I move this, this should move so what
I'm going to do is I'm going to use
| | 01:54 |
parenting to join the lower arm to the
upper arm and this is how easy it is.
| | 01:59 |
You can either choose.
The upper arm as the parent from this menu.
| | 02:04 |
Or a much more fun way of doing this same
thing is to use the pick whip on that layer.
| | 02:09 |
Now I'm a bit pick whip crazy.
I love using it.
| | 02:12 |
Now if you click on it nothing happens.
What you need to do is you click and drag.
| | 02:16 |
And then you select the layer that you
want to be the parent.
| | 02:19 |
So I'm clicking and dragging it onto the
left upper arm.
| | 02:22 |
You have to make your own sound effects
here, so my sound effect is (sound playing)
| | 02:27 |
And you'll see that the left upper arm is
now selected as the parent for the left
| | 02:31 |
lower arm.
So now if I select my left upper arm and
| | 02:34 |
hit r on the keyboard to open up
rotation, and rotate it, you'll notice
| | 02:38 |
that the lower arm moves with it.
Not only that, if I select the lower arm
| | 02:44 |
and again I'm going to use the pan behind
tool to move the anchor point up to here
| | 02:48 |
and then select the rotation value of the
lower arm.
| | 02:53 |
You'll notice that now I can animate the
lower arm as well.
| | 02:56 |
And that's quite in the right place so
I'm going to just adjust the pan behind tool
| | 02:59 |
a little bit more.
Let's move it up to there.
| | 03:02 |
Okay, so I've now got a real hierarchical
animation.
| | 03:05 |
I'm going to zoom out a little bit by
hitting the comma key, and we'll create a
| | 03:09 |
little bit of animation using this
parenting structure.
| | 03:14 |
Now, before we do I'm going to also
parent the arm to the body.
| | 03:18 |
So we'll do the left upper arm will be
joined to the body.
| | 03:22 |
The right lower arm will be joined to the
right upper arm.
| | 03:25 |
The right upper arm will be joined to the
body.
| | 03:28 |
Now if you've got trouble knowing how to
do this, just think about that song.
| | 03:33 |
The hand bone's connected to the arm
bone.
| | 03:35 |
The arm bone's connected to the body
bone.
| | 03:37 |
The body bone's connected to the head
bone, and you just think about which part
| | 03:41 |
follows which.
So when the body moves, the head and the
| | 03:45 |
arms will follow, so that's what you need
to think.
| | 03:48 |
So we need to make the head and the arms
follow the body so let's make the head
| | 03:52 |
follow the body as well.
And then the body will follow the legs so
| | 03:56 |
wherever the legs go the body will follow
so let's follow the right leg with the body.
| | 04:02 |
Okay so what we can do now is if I select
the body and hit the rotation tool I can
| | 04:08 |
rotate the body.
Okay.
| | 04:12 |
Now at the moment, it's rotating around
its center point, which is in the middle
| | 04:16 |
of the layer, so we'll just move that
down a little bit to here.
| | 04:21 |
And I'm going to rotate the body from side
to side a little bit, so we'll just key
| | 04:25 |
frame that going from one side to the
other.
| | 04:29 |
Okay.
I'm going to easy ease them, so Animation >
| | 04:32 |
Key Frame Assistant > Easy Ease.
I'm also going to just do some very quick
| | 04:37 |
animation on the upper arm.
So let's rotate that down and then up,
| | 04:44 |
and then down again.
And we'll also do the lower arm.
| | 04:51 |
Now if I select all my layers and hit u
on the keyboard it will show me all of
| | 04:54 |
the keyframes and that makes easy for me
to jump between keyframes hitting the j
| | 04:57 |
and the k keys.
So now I need to deselect all the other layers.
| | 05:02 |
So hold down the Cmd key or the Ctrl key
and click to deselect and then click
| | 05:07 |
again to select.
And I'm going to open out the rotation value.
| | 05:11 |
And move that a little bit too so we're
getting a little bit of rotation movement
| | 05:15 |
in there.
Okay, remembering to keyframe it of course.
| | 05:20 |
Okay, so we're starting to get this kind
of puppet style animation going, and of
| | 05:24 |
course it doesn't have to be rotation
that you animate, it can be position.
| | 05:30 |
So if I get the head, for example, and do
a little bit of keyframing with that.
| | 05:37 |
Hit p for position and we can move that
up and down.
| | 05:41 |
Okay, maybe not up because we can see the
neck starting to show so I'll move it
| | 05:45 |
down a little bit and then up a little
bit and we can add some scale to that.
| | 05:50 |
So hold down Shift and hit s to open up
scale.
| | 05:55 |
And as it moves down it kind of moves
back so it makes it look smaller and then
| | 05:59 |
up again.
Now I'm just doing this arbitrarily and
| | 06:03 |
I'm going to trim the work area by
hitting the n key and just preview that,
| | 06:06 |
that not the best animation in the world
but you get the idea of how you can start
| | 06:10 |
to create.
This hierarchical animation by linking
| | 06:18 |
the body parts together.
| | 06:21 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Animating with the Puppet ToolRecording animation with the Puppet tool| 00:00 |
Okay, so the time has come for us to look
at one of my favorite tools in After
| | 00:04 |
Effects, the puppet tool.
And if you want to follow along with
| | 00:09 |
this, step by step, you can open
puppet.aep from the puppet tools folder.
| | 00:15 |
Now in here we have my thug character.
And you'll notice if we have a look over
| | 00:20 |
here that this is a nested composition,
called thug.
| | 00:24 |
And you'll notice if I scrub the position
value, this is just one single layer,
| | 00:28 |
that has one single set of properties.
I'm using a nested comp, but equally you
| | 00:34 |
could use say a flattened Photoshop file,
but you'll need to have an alpha channel.
| | 00:39 |
So, if you're saving a Photoshop file,
you can save the individual layers and
| | 00:43 |
they'll contain their own alpha channels.
Or if you're selecting to save a picked
| | 00:48 |
file or a TIFF file, make sure that you
save it with an alpha channel, so that
| | 00:52 |
After Effects can see the transparency.
The reason for that is the puppet tool
| | 00:57 |
looks at areas of opacity and
transparency.
| | 01:00 |
And it creates a grid over your
character.
| | 01:03 |
And I'm going to show you how that works.
If I select the puppet tool, you'll
| | 01:06 |
notice there are three tools under there.
And I'm going to select the puppet pin tool.
| | 01:11 |
Which can also be selected by hitting,
Cmd+P on the Mac, or Ctrl+P on Windows.
| | 01:16 |
Now if I click on my character, I'm going to
click on his head and just create what's
| | 01:20 |
called a puppet pin.
And you'll notice a little yellow dot
| | 01:23 |
appearing there.
Now what's it doing in the background is
| | 01:27 |
it's actually placing a mesh over my
character.
| | 01:30 |
Now the default behavior is you can't see
the mesh.
| | 01:33 |
But if you click on show under the mesh
controls you'll see the mesh that's been
| | 01:36 |
placed over the character.
And you'll notice that it stops at the
| | 01:41 |
edges of the alpha basically so.
It places it over the solid areas of the
| | 01:46 |
alpha channel.
And if I click on my transparency grid
| | 01:50 |
again, it's easier for you to see that
mesh.
| | 01:54 |
So it places a mesh over the character
and what that mesh allows you to do is
| | 01:57 |
move the points around and the mesh moves
with the points.
| | 02:02 |
Now if you only got one point, you just
get the whole body moving around.
| | 02:06 |
If I add another point on his stomach.
And then move the head around.
| | 02:11 |
You'll notice, that it now looks for the
difference between those two positions.
| | 02:16 |
If I continue doing that, and add a
couple to the feet, one to the left, one
| | 02:20 |
to the right, and now move the head,
notice I'm not getting, what looks much
| | 02:25 |
more like a deformation of the mesh.
Basically, because I've got more than
| | 02:32 |
three points, it's deforming the mesh to
try and stretch the shape between those points.
| | 02:38 |
So it's like creating a deformation mesh
on your character.
| | 02:42 |
And it's fantastic.
I can move any of the body parts around
| | 02:45 |
to create sort of custom fluid movement
on my character.
| | 02:51 |
Okay, so we're going to add another
couple of points, one to each of the
| | 02:54 |
hands and of course if I select them and
move them, you'll see that I can move the
| | 02:58 |
hands around.
Now there's all sorts of amazing
| | 03:02 |
animation you can do with this.
But what I'm going to do is show you my
| | 03:07 |
favorite methods of animating using the
puppet tool.
| | 03:10 |
Now, we could animate by hand quite
easily, as you saw there if I move this
| | 03:14 |
hand the hand moves in and out and you'll
see that the body does a nice little hip
| | 03:19 |
wiggle to go with it.
So let's start by animating by hand.
| | 03:25 |
Let's open up our mesh settings and our
deformation settings and you'll see in
| | 03:29 |
here we have pins.
Okay, and each of these pins is animatable.
| | 03:34 |
Now this is the head pin.
You can see that when I select it down here.
| | 03:39 |
It becomes selected up here.
This is the body pin.
| | 03:43 |
So what I'm going to do is go ahead and
rename these.
| | 03:45 |
So I'm going to hit enter to make it
renameable.
| | 03:49 |
I'm going to call this head and I'm going
to select this one and call it body.
| | 03:55 |
And this one is leg 1, we'll say.
Leg 01 and this one is leg 02.
| | 04:05 |
And then this is hand 01, and this is
hand 02, whoop's there we go.
| | 04:15 |
So we've got all of our pins named so
that it makes it easier for us to animate.
| | 04:19 |
Now you'll notice that if you look
carefully down in the timeline, you can
| | 04:23 |
see these little dots indicating that
these properties are already keyframed.
| | 04:28 |
So if I hit u on the keyboard, it will
open up just the keyframed properties.
| | 04:32 |
So that I'm ready to animate.
So what we are going to do is just zoom in
| | 04:36 |
to the timeline a little bit by hitting
the plus key on the keyboard.
| | 04:40 |
And what we are going to do is just move
to frame say 9, okay.
| | 04:44 |
And at frame 9 what I'm going to do is
move this hand across there, and this
| | 04:49 |
hand across there.
Now you'll notice something strange
| | 04:53 |
happens one moves behind his body, the
other moves in front of his body.
| | 04:57 |
Okay, we're going to have a little look at
why that happens a little bit later, but
| | 05:01 |
for now all we're going to do is just have a
preview of that.
| | 05:05 |
So I'm just going to hit spacebar, and you
can see his hands move over his body.
| | 05:09 |
And two new keyframes have appeared
where we have done that, or if I move
| | 05:13 |
ahead another nine frames.
So let's just type in plus 9 to move
| | 05:18 |
ahead another nine frames and what we're
going to do is copy and paste those first
| | 05:22 |
keyframes.
So copy and paste.
| | 05:25 |
If I hit n on the keyboard, just to
define my work area, and then hit 0 on
| | 05:30 |
the number pad, we can see that looping.
Okay, so you can animate by hand like
| | 05:36 |
that, but it becomes a little bit tedious
if you want to keep animating by hand.
| | 05:43 |
If, say, you've got this whole time line
to record, and you'll see there there's
| | 05:47 |
like 30 seconds of animation.
And you want to do, say, him dancing, it
| | 05:51 |
would take quite a long time to record
that, so what I'm going to do is show you
| | 05:54 |
how you can automate the animation.
Now if I select a group of keyframes,
| | 05:59 |
and I'm going to turn off the mesh so
that we can see our character more clearly.
| | 06:04 |
I could select his stomach, both his
hands and his head.
| | 06:07 |
And then if I move up and down, you'll
notice because his feet is still anchored
| | 06:12 |
on the ground, I can create this kind of
dancing animation.
| | 06:16 |
I'm going to pick up my Wacom tablet,
because at this point I want to really
| | 06:20 |
use a pen and a tablet to capture
movement.
| | 06:24 |
I've been using a mouse up until now but
really to get really precise movement, to
| | 06:28 |
capture movement and apply it to the
puppet tool you're better off using a
| | 06:31 |
Wacom tablet and a pen.
You can get much more subtle movement
| | 06:36 |
from using that, than you can with a
mouse.
| | 06:39 |
So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to move
over this central point here, puppet pin
| | 06:44 |
point, and hold down the Cmd key, or the
Ctrl key on PC.
| | 06:49 |
And you'll see as I do a little stop
watch appears, and that indicates that
| | 06:53 |
once I click and start moving it's going to
record the movement I make, and watch
| | 06:57 |
what happens.
I click and drag, and then I can just
| | 07:02 |
record a little dancing movement.
Now the nice thing about this is if you
| | 07:07 |
got the same track it will play the same
track while you're recording and you can
| | 07:11 |
make sure that he dances in time with the
music.
| | 07:15 |
So I'm going to do about 15 or 20 seconds of
his movement.
| | 07:18 |
And then I'm going to stop.
And if you look down in the timeline,
| | 07:22 |
you'll see that all these keyframes have
been created.
| | 07:25 |
And if I hit 0 on the number pad, you'll
see I've got my little dancing character.
| | 07:30 |
Okay, so really easy to create that kind
of fluid dancing animation.
| | 07:35 |
Now I want to get his arms and his head
moving, but it's going to be difficult if I
| | 07:39 |
go back and trying record his hands
moving now.
| | 07:43 |
What I want to do is show you how that
works first of all, so let's deselect
| | 07:47 |
this point and I do that by
Shift-clicking on it, and then let's
| | 07:50 |
select it again.
Now what I'm going to do is use the same technique.
| | 07:56 |
So I'm going to use the recording
technique of holding down the Cmd key.
| | 08:00 |
But you'll notice what happens is, I'm
kind of having to struggle against the
| | 08:04 |
movements of the rest of his body.
Which can be quite difficult.
| | 08:09 |
So what I'm going to do is show you a way
of switching off the body animation, so
| | 08:12 |
that we can continue moving the hands as
separate items.
| | 08:16 |
And this is how you do it.
You add an expression to the property
| | 08:20 |
that you want to halt if you like.
And all we're going to do, is we're going
| | 08:25 |
to make it stay at the original value
here.
| | 08:28 |
Which is 488 by 316.
And to do that, I put square brackets and
| | 08:33 |
I type in.
488 comma 316 close square brackets and
| | 08:37 |
that's going to override the expression, so
now you'll see that, that hand doesn't
| | 08:43 |
move at all.
Now we don't want to do it with the hand
| | 08:47 |
so I'm going to remove that expression
from there.
| | 08:50 |
The hands we want to animate again.
The ones that we don't want to animate
| | 08:54 |
are these points here, the body and the
head.
| | 08:57 |
So I'm going to Alt-click.
This time I'm going to type in square
| | 09:01 |
bracket 293 comma 350 close square
brackets.
| | 09:06 |
So I'm basically saying override the key
frame value and just keep that at that
| | 09:10 |
value for now.
So, I'm going to move down and I'm going to do
| | 09:14 |
the same for this one the head.
Open square brackets, type in 277 comma 124.
| | 09:21 |
Close square brackets.
And now if we preview it, you'll see that
| | 09:26 |
the head and the body stay still.
Meaning, it's going to be easier for us to
| | 09:30 |
go in and animate the hands.
Okay, so what I can do is I can just
| | 09:35 |
delete these keyframes for the hands for
now.
| | 09:37 |
And I can move over here and just start
to animate those.
| | 09:44 |
So I'm going to do a swinging hand
movement like this throughout my animation.
| | 09:48 |
And you'll see that we're getting a nice
little hip sway there as well.
| | 09:52 |
Okay and let's do the other hand.
Okay and there we go.
| | 10:03 |
We could also do the feet if we want to
do a little bit of animation with the feet.
| | 10:17 |
And again on this one.
Okay, and once we've done that and we
| | 10:21 |
want to see how it looks with the body
and the head animating, what we can do is
| | 10:27 |
just switch on these.
By clicking on this button here.
| | 10:34 |
And this is the toggle on and off
expression button.
| | 10:37 |
So by switching the expression off, we're
going back to our keyframed values.
| | 10:41 |
And we now have him dancing away.
Doing a very cool move.
| | 10:45 |
(LAUGH) Okay, now you'll notice something
weird's happening with his hands.
| | 10:51 |
Notice they're getting all mushed up with
his body.
| | 10:55 |
Sometimes moving behind, sometimes moving
in front.
| | 10:58 |
So, I'm going to show you some ways of
fixing that in a little while.
| | 11:00 |
But before we do that, the other thing
that I want to do is you'll notice here
| | 11:05 |
that I've captured some hand information,
but not quite enough to fill that whole
| | 11:09 |
time there.
So what I can also do is do things like
| | 11:14 |
copy and paste keyframes.
All the things that you would do with
| | 11:17 |
regular layers.
I can also use things like the smoother
| | 11:20 |
to smooth out the motion.
And if I go down to the smoother and
| | 11:24 |
bring that up, I can select the key
frames and maybe give that a tolerance
| | 11:28 |
path of say, 5.
And that way smooth out the animation a
| | 11:33 |
little bit.
So we can do with both his hands, maybe
| | 11:37 |
do with his body as well.
As well as using the smoother we can also
| | 11:41 |
use other techniques to smooth out the
animation.
| | 11:44 |
We could convert the keyframes all to
continuous Bezier, that way smoothing our
| | 11:49 |
the paths.
So that will also give us a smoother type
| | 11:53 |
of animation.
Okay so lots of different ways of
| | 11:58 |
smoothing out the animation and by the
way, the way that I am converting all of
| | 12:02 |
these to continuous Bezier, is by
selecting the keyframes holding down the
| | 12:06 |
Cmd key on Mac or Ctrl key on PC, and
just clicking on the keyframes will
| | 12:10 |
convert them.
And if we preview that you'll see that,
| | 12:16 |
that smoothed out our animation a little
bit more.
| | 12:21 |
Now we are going to continue working on
this, now we've just captured that motion
| | 12:25 |
very, very quickly.
So what we going to do is refine the motion
| | 12:30 |
a little bit and also change the way that
the layer interacts with itself, so
| | 12:34 |
that's a little bit about the puppet
tool.
| | 12:39 |
And have to use it to make your
characters boogie on down like this one is.
| | 12:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating the Overlap tool| 00:00 |
Okay.
So, we're now going to have a look at the
| | 00:02 |
overlap tool.
And we're in Overlap.ap project which you
| | 00:06 |
can find in the puppet tools folder.
And what we're going to do here is start to
| | 00:12 |
control how these arms move in front or
behind the body.
| | 00:15 |
Now, you'll notice that one of them's
moving behind, the other one is moving in front.
| | 00:19 |
But we're also getting this really mushy
intersection that we need to fix.
| | 00:24 |
So, with the overlap tool, we can
determine how After Effects deals with
| | 00:27 |
this instead of leaving it to do a best
guess.
| | 00:30 |
Now, what you want to do is, first of
all, select the layer, and then, go up to
| | 00:34 |
the toolbar and click and hold on the
puppet pin tool and you'll see that
| | 00:37 |
you'll have the choice of free tools.
I want you to choose the puppet overlap tool.
| | 00:44 |
Now, the puppet overlap tool, when your
layer is selected, will show you an
| | 00:48 |
outline of your original character,
represented by this gray line here.
| | 00:53 |
Now, notice that my character has changed
position from its original position.
| | 00:59 |
So, the pixels representing the
character, if I just switch on my
| | 01:02 |
transparency grid, are actually outside
of that outline.
| | 01:06 |
Now, you want to be careful, if you want
to control this arm.
| | 01:09 |
We want to put overlap tool point on it,
so that we can control whether it moves
| | 01:13 |
behind or in front.
But it's important that you don't click
| | 01:17 |
on the hand here in terms of its pixels,
but over here.
| | 01:21 |
And this is its original position.
So, what you want to do is click on the
| | 01:25 |
hand and that will place this white kind
of a highlight over the hand.
| | 01:30 |
Now, at the moment, it's just over the
hand.
| | 01:33 |
So, at the moment, we're only controlling
the in front value, if you like, of the
| | 01:37 |
hand as far as that concerned.
So, if we want to control more of the
| | 01:42 |
arms, so we're actually controlling up
here as well, you can click and drag the
| | 01:46 |
point and move it or what you can do is
you can adjust the extent settings.
| | 01:53 |
And the extent settings will grow the
area that is being controlled.
| | 01:57 |
So, even if I drag this down here to the
hand, I can extend it up the arm, so that
| | 02:01 |
its whole arm is now moving in front of
the body.
| | 02:06 |
So, basically, you're saying, do you want
to move it in front or behind?
| | 02:10 |
We're saying in front.
And the extent value is saying, well, how
| | 02:13 |
much of it do you want in front.
And we want the whole arm.
| | 02:16 |
Now, if we select this one, so I'm going
to click on here to create a new overlap tool.
| | 02:21 |
And you'll notice now that both hands are
moving in front of the body and that's
| | 02:24 |
'cause both have got an in front setting.
So, if you want that, if you want them
| | 02:29 |
always to be in front, you can just leave
it as that and both hands will always be
| | 02:33 |
in front of the body.
But I might want this one to be behind
| | 02:37 |
the body.
So, what I can do is change this one to
| | 02:40 |
minus 50.
And now, that one will always be behind
| | 02:43 |
and that one will always be in front.
Now, you can even animate between that,
| | 02:48 |
so you could say, okay.
At this point, I want the hands to be behind.
| | 02:54 |
And the thing that we're going to animate,
if we go into our mesh settings, close up
| | 02:58 |
the form and open overlap, is the in
front setting.
| | 03:01 |
So, we set a keyframe for in front.
And then, we move to the point where we
| | 03:05 |
want it to change.
Okay.
| | 03:07 |
So, let's keep it there.
So, we'll add another keyframe there.
| | 03:12 |
And then, at this point, we'll maybe have
it changing.
| | 03:15 |
So, it's important that you have it
changing where there's a crossover.
| | 03:19 |
So, we'll may be moved to where there's a
crossover point that we can use.
| | 03:24 |
So, around about there.
And then, we'll change it to in front.
| | 03:27 |
So, what we can do is just copy this key
frame and paste it into this value.
| | 03:32 |
And do the same copy this keyframe,
select this value, paste it in.
| | 03:37 |
So, we've now got the moving in front,
and then behind.
| | 03:40 |
Okay, now, obviously you would keyframe
it, so that it doesn't just suddenly jump
| | 03:45 |
like that.
But you'll see how you can switch from
| | 03:48 |
one being in front, to one being behind.
And create that kind of seesaw dance
| | 03:53 |
there, where he's moving one hand in
front, the other hand behind.
| | 03:57 |
So, that's the overlap tool and you can
have lot's of fun animating that and
| | 04:01 |
creating different effects, by choosing
how the layers overlap.
| | 04:05 |
You can, maybe, also choose the feet and
decide how they overlap as they cross
| | 04:11 |
each other.
| | 04:13 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Starch tool to control deformations| 00:00 |
So now, the final tool that we're going
to have a look at in the Puppets tools
| | 00:03 |
section, is the Starch tool.
And we're in starch.aep if you'd like to
| | 00:08 |
follow along.
And what I've done here is I've selected
| | 00:11 |
the Starch tool.
And I do that by clicking and holding on
| | 00:15 |
the Puppet tool, and moving down to
select the Puppet Starch tool.
| | 00:20 |
Now, what the Puppet Starch tool is good
for is controlling certain areas.
| | 00:25 |
So, when you animate using the Puppet
tool, you get this great fluid
| | 00:28 |
deformation happening, which is great in
most cases.
| | 00:32 |
But there may be some areas like the
boot here, for example, that I don't want
| | 00:35 |
to be deforming too much.
You'll see how there it's squishing
| | 00:39 |
together a little bit too much.
Or the face.
| | 00:42 |
You'll notice the face is quite badly
deformed, and so I may want to control
| | 00:46 |
how much deformation is happening, and I
do that by using the Starch tool.
| | 00:52 |
So, with the Starch tool selected, and
select your layer, and select the Puppet
| | 00:56 |
tool, in the timeline, you'll notice you
can see an outline of your character
| | 01:00 |
represented here by this gray line.
So, let's start with the boots.
| | 01:05 |
Let's select boots and let's figure out
how to control them so they are not
| | 01:09 |
deforming as much.
What we are going to do is move to a
| | 01:13 |
place where we can see the deformation
happening.
| | 01:16 |
Okay, you see that they are quite
squashed there.
| | 01:18 |
So, what I am going to do, I'm going to
click on the boot.
| | 01:21 |
And you'll notice that as I do, it places
a highlight over this area.
| | 01:26 |
And the extent setting is what controls
how much of the brute is controlled by
| | 01:30 |
the starch.
And you'll notice that as I move the
| | 01:33 |
extent up the leg, more of the leg is
frozen if you like, and, and not moving.
| | 01:39 |
Now, you'll notice if I scrub through
now, that leg is looking really stiff,
| | 01:42 |
whereas the other one is looking quite
fluid.
| | 01:45 |
Now, I don't want quite as much of that
so I'm going to move that down so it's
| | 01:48 |
just the bottom of the leg really that
we're keeping frozen.
| | 01:52 |
And you can also, you know, say, okay, I
want it slightly fluid but not quite as
| | 01:56 |
fluid as it was.
So, we can bring that down to 30, and
| | 01:59 |
then we get a little bit of fluidity in
it.
| | 02:02 |
We're also going to move to this boot and
do the same.
| | 02:05 |
And if I preview that now, you'll see now
that the boot doesn't deform as much,
| | 02:08 |
they're staying more rigid.
Okay, as the rest of the body moves, and
| | 02:13 |
that's quite a nice amount of a
distortion on there, it's an acceptable amount.
| | 02:19 |
A couple of other things I'm going to do,
I'm going to also add a Starch tool to
| | 02:23 |
the head.
Now, you notice how his face gets
| | 02:26 |
deformed as his head stretches up
further, and the neck area as well.
| | 02:30 |
You'll see that we're getting some
pixelation here because we're deforming
| | 02:34 |
it a little bit too much.
If I add a point to the head, you'll
| | 02:38 |
notice it makes the head nice and back to
its original shape and size.
| | 02:43 |
Now, we've also got it extending down
here.
| | 02:45 |
Let's remember the Extend setting from
the boot.
| | 02:48 |
I'm going to bring that back down a bit
so it's the head and the shoulders.
| | 02:51 |
And we'll bring the amount down a little
bit as well so we're getting a little bit
| | 02:54 |
of fluidity in there.
And if I preview that, you'll see now the
| | 02:58 |
head is no longer deformed, the boots are
no longer deformed, but everything in
| | 03:02 |
between is deformed.
Now, another little thing I need to do
| | 03:07 |
there, you'll notice this slightly
Overlapping area happening every now and
| | 03:11 |
then there.
So I would also go in there, go back to
| | 03:15 |
my Overlap tool and just adjust that
Extend setting a little bit higher there
| | 03:19 |
just to get rid of that.
So, you jump between different tools
| | 03:23 |
depending on what you want to do.
If I want to go back to the Starch tool,
| | 03:27 |
control how much of his head is being
animated or deformed, I can choose that
| | 03:30 |
tool, select the point, and then adjust
the settings.
| | 03:35 |
So, we'll have a little preview of that.
And there we go, with a few clicks and a
| | 03:40 |
few keyframes, I've created this rough
animation of a dancing character.
| | 03:46 |
Now obviously, you could spend a lot more
time tweaking the keyframes, hand
| | 03:50 |
adjusting it just to improve it a little
bit more.
| | 03:53 |
And my advice would be to use the Graph
Editor on these keyframes, go in there,
| | 03:57 |
make the adjustments you need to make,
smooth out any movements that are unnecessary.
| | 04:03 |
You'll see there I've got an extra
keyframe, I could just delete that,
| | 04:06 |
smooth the motion by doing that, just
fine tuning the animation.
| | 04:11 |
But there we go.
The Puppet tool is a really good way of
| | 04:14 |
creating some really quick, easy, fluid
motion.
| | 04:17 |
Now remember, you can always combine the
Puppet tool with some of the other tools
| | 04:21 |
we've looked at.
So, you may want to animate the walk
| | 04:24 |
cycle by animating the legs by hand, and
you may want to combine that with the top
| | 04:28 |
half of the body that's animated with the
Puppet tool.
| | 04:33 |
So, have a think about how you can
combine these different techniques
| | 04:37 |
together to create some really convincing
and compelling character animation.
| | 04:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Creating Stop-Frame-Style AnimationAnimating paint strokes with the paintbrush| 00:00 |
After Effects allows you to create a
stop-frame style animation by painting on
| | 00:04 |
layers with brushes.
Now, here, I have my brush tool in the
| | 00:07 |
control panel.
So, we're going to select our brush tool and
| | 00:11 |
start painting in After Effects.
If you want to follow along, you can open
| | 00:15 |
the stop-frame project from the
stop-frame style folder.
| | 00:20 |
And then, you can follow along with me.
Now, when you select the brush tool, it
| | 00:24 |
will open up the brushes and paint
pallets here for you, so that you have
| | 00:26 |
easy access to the tools that you'll
need.
| | 00:29 |
Now, if I click on the composition panel
with the paintbrush, you'll notice
| | 00:32 |
nothing happens.
Because I don't actually have anything in
| | 00:36 |
there and you can't paint on nothing.
You need to create a layer.
| | 00:39 |
So, we'll go to Layer, New, Solid, to
create a new layer.
| | 00:43 |
And we shall make it black solid.
And make it the comp size by clicking on
| | 00:47 |
the comp size button.
If you need to change the color, just
| | 00:51 |
click on the color swatch and choose
black from there, and then click OK.
| | 00:55 |
So, here we have our black solid layer.
Now, you may think you can just start
| | 00:59 |
painting, but watch what happens.
If I try and click on here, it actually
| | 01:03 |
reverts back to the selection tool and I
just move my layer around.
| | 01:07 |
So, I'm going to undo that and what I
have to do if I want to paint on a layer
| | 01:10 |
is open up the Layer panel.
Now, with a solid layer, I just double
| | 01:14 |
click on it and it will open up the Layer
panel.
| | 01:17 |
Now, when I'm painting, I quite like to
create a new work space for it.
| | 01:22 |
And what I'm going to do is I'm just
going to close some of the other panels
| | 01:25 |
while I'm painting.
I don't really need the timeline open
| | 01:28 |
while I'm painting.
And I'm going to take the paint panel and
| | 01:31 |
I'm going to move it up where the info panel
is.
| | 01:35 |
So, I've now got my brushes and my paint
in close proximity to each other.
| | 01:39 |
I can extend the Paint panel, so that I
can see all of the settings as well.
| | 01:45 |
And I'm just going to close the preview
panel as well, cuz I don't really need
| | 01:47 |
that open.
So, I've got my brushes and my paint.
| | 01:51 |
So, I'm just going to extend this a little
bit.
| | 01:53 |
Just so that I can see more brushes
without having to scroll.
| | 01:56 |
Okay, once I'm happy with that, I can
save this work space.
| | 01:59 |
So, we'll just make this a little bit
bigger.
| | 02:03 |
And we shall go to Fit Up to 100%.
In fact, when you're painting, you best
| | 02:08 |
paint at 100%.
So, put that one 100% and we can just use
| | 02:11 |
spacebar to move around if we need to
see the bounds of the layer.
| | 02:16 |
Okay, so we can save this as a workspace.
So, I could call it Angie Paint, because
| | 02:20 |
there's already a default paint in there.
So, if I put in Angie Paint, I know
| | 02:25 |
that's my version of the paint.
Okay, so I'm ready to start painting.
| | 02:29 |
I've got a nine-pixel soft round brush
chosen and white is my foreground color,
| | 02:33 |
and I'm just going to draw a little stick
figure in here.
| | 02:38 |
Just a little stick man.
Okay, so we draw the head, the body, the
| | 02:42 |
legs, very short arms and legs and the
arms.
| | 02:47 |
Okay and I'm using a brush stroke for
each of those body parts.
| | 02:52 |
And I'm now going to switch back to my
animation mark space and you will see if
| | 02:56 |
we have a look down in the timeline,
let's just readjust that slightly, that
| | 03:01 |
we have paint applied to the layer and we
have these brush strokes on our layer.
| | 03:09 |
And as I select each of the brush
strokes, you may notice up here that it's
| | 03:13 |
indicated by a gray line when it's
selected.
| | 03:17 |
What I'm going to do is take a minute to
rename these.
| | 03:19 |
So, this is the head.
So, I'm going to select the brush one and
| | 03:22 |
hit Return on the keyboard to make it
active and type in head.
| | 03:27 |
Brush two was the body, so hit Return,
type in body.
| | 03:30 |
Brush three, I think, was the right leg.
Yep, so hit Return, right leg.
| | 03:39 |
Brush four must have been the left leg.
Brush five was the right arm.
| | 03:48 |
And brush six must be the left arm.
A simple process of elimination.
| | 03:52 |
So now, we've got six brushes and what
we're going to do is animate those brush strokes.
| | 03:58 |
So, to animate the brush strokes, you
need to select all of them, first of all.
| | 04:02 |
So, just click on one, and then
shift-click to the bottom.
| | 04:06 |
Make sure that all selected.
Then if we open up one, we should see a
| | 04:09 |
path setting with a stop watch next to
it.
| | 04:12 |
Click on that for one of them and it will
set keyframes for all of them.
| | 04:16 |
Now, if you want to tidy up the timeline
make it sort of a bit narrower.
| | 04:19 |
If you hit the U key on the keyboard,
that will close any of the other
| | 04:22 |
properties that aren't being animated and
just keep the animated properties open.
| | 04:28 |
So, to create our animation, all we
really need to do is move to a new point
| | 04:31 |
in time.
So, I'm going to move to 1 second.
| | 04:35 |
Very important, deselect the layers,
first of all.
| | 04:38 |
And if you scroll down and just select
the head layer.
| | 04:42 |
Now, if you have a layer selected, if I
have nothing selected and I draw another
| | 04:46 |
paint stroke, it just draws a second
paint stroke.
| | 04:51 |
Okay?
So, I'm going to undo that.
| | 04:53 |
If instead, I select the head layer
first, and then draw another paint
| | 04:56 |
stroke, it replaces the old paint stroke
with the new one and it animates in
| | 05:00 |
between those two points.
It's amazing.
| | 05:04 |
Okay, so I'm just going to draw it a little
bit bigger.
| | 05:07 |
So, let's make it a little bit bigger.
And then, I'm going to do the same with the body.
| | 05:11 |
Select the body, and then redraw it into
a new position.
| | 05:17 |
And then, I'm going to select the right leg.
I need to scroll down a little bit here.
| | 05:22 |
And I'm going to swap that over to that
side.
| | 05:24 |
And the left leg will swap over to that
side.
| | 05:27 |
Okay, that foot's a bit big, but we're
not going to worry too much about that.
| | 05:31 |
The right arm will swap over to the
position of the left arm and the left arm
| | 05:34 |
will swap over to the position of the
right arm.
| | 05:38 |
Now, obviously, when you're doing this,
you can take a little bit more time over it.
| | 05:42 |
So, I'm going to just redo that one a little
bit.
| | 05:44 |
But I am just doing this very, very
quickly, so you can see what's happening.
| | 05:48 |
I'm not having to keep you around for
hours to see me redraw it over and over again.
| | 05:52 |
And you can see what happens, it animates
between those two points.
| | 05:55 |
Now, you'll notice that in between, you
get this kind of squiggly, horrible kind
| | 05:59 |
of mosh happening.
So, what you can do, the head and body
| | 06:02 |
are okay, but the legs and the arms
really need redrawing at that point.
| | 06:07 |
So, what I would do is move in between,
and then just redraw those legs and arms.
| | 06:13 |
So, the arm, I'm just going to do
straight down.
| | 06:15 |
And the other arm, straight down and the
legs too.
| | 06:19 |
So, if we do just the legs kind of a
little bit straighter.
| | 06:22 |
Okay, and the right leg.
Okay, so we've got one step for walk there.
| | 06:28 |
Now, there are various ways of making the
walk longer.
| | 06:32 |
I'm going to open this one here, 07 stop
frame end, where I have a little
| | 06:36 |
character that I've spent a little bit
more time over making the walk loop.
| | 06:43 |
So, that's a little bit about how you can
use paint to create a looping walk cycle animation.
| | 06:50 |
Now, the loop can be created by copying
and pasting keyframes or there are other
| | 06:55 |
methods that you can use to loop which
we'll be having a look at a little bit later.
| | 07:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sequencing hand-drawn layers| 00:02 |
In After Effects, just like any other
application, there's more than one way to
| | 00:05 |
approach a job.
And sometimes it's not easy to know which
| | 00:09 |
is the best approach.
Now, as I always say, there's no right or
| | 00:12 |
wrong way, but some ways are better than
others in certain situations.
| | 00:17 |
So, I'm going to run through all your
options for sequencing layers in After Effects.
| | 00:22 |
Now I'm going to just extend the timeline
a big so you can see we have 13 layers
| | 00:27 |
here of this little dog character.
And it's a walk sequence and I want to
| | 00:33 |
sequence those layers so that I can see
them play back over time.
| | 00:38 |
Now at the moment the clips are two
seconds long, so if I'm to sequence this,
| | 00:42 |
each frame of the animation is going to
be two seconds long, which is too much
| | 00:46 |
for me.
I need each of these to be one frame long
| | 00:50 |
each, if you get my drift.
So if you've already brought the layers
| | 00:54 |
in and you need to trim them.
Best thing to do is just click on the
| | 00:59 |
current time, and type in 1, which will
take you to frame one.
| | 01:03 |
Then select all of the files, and to trim
them, hold the Alt key and hit the right
| | 01:08 |
bracket tool, and that way you will trim
them to one frame long.
| | 01:13 |
So each of these now is one frame long.
Now if I select them, and go to
| | 01:18 |
animation, keyframe assistant I can
choose to use the sequence layers key
| | 01:22 |
frame assistant to automatically place
them in sequence.
| | 01:28 |
Now I'm not going to overlap them.
I'm just going to click OK so that they sequence.
| | 01:32 |
So we'll click OK and you'll see indeed
they do play in sequence.
| | 01:37 |
But if I preview that.
You'll notice he's actually walking
| | 01:40 |
backwards, which is not what I want.
I want him walking forwards.
| | 01:44 |
And that's because sequenced layers works
in the order that you select them.
| | 01:50 |
So if you want to make sure I'm selecting
from 1 up to 13, I need to click on them
| | 01:54 |
in that order, and then go to keyframe
assistance, sequence layers.
| | 01:59 |
And now, if I just trim my work area to
the end, by hitting the End key on the keyboard.
| | 02:07 |
If we preview that, you'll see that he's
now walking forwards, which is much better.
| | 02:13 |
Okay, but, if you're bringing these
layers in, and you don't want to have to
| | 02:18 |
go through the process of trimming in the
timeline.
| | 02:23 |
What you can do, is before you import
them, go into the preferences which on
| | 02:27 |
the Mac is in the After Effects menu.
On the PC is in the Edit menu, and go to
| | 02:32 |
the Import preferences.
And in here, you can choose the length of
| | 02:37 |
still footage when it's brought in.
It defaults to the length of the comp.
| | 02:43 |
So when I brought that footage in the
comp was two seconds long.
| | 02:47 |
I can override that.
i can say bring in my frames at one frame each.
| | 02:51 |
And I'm also going to, while I'm in there,
change the sequence footage settings to
| | 02:56 |
25 cause I'm in Europe so when I bring in
an image sequence I want it to have 25
| | 03:00 |
frames per second.
Okay so that's ready to go.
| | 03:06 |
And from now on, if I select files, so
I'm just going to scroll down to the images folder.
| | 03:12 |
Now if I select the images folder and
then go to File > Import File, any files
| | 03:16 |
that I import will go into that folder,
so I want to go to the head shots folder,
| | 03:19 |
which is inside the images folder.
And I'm going to select all of these files.
| | 03:26 |
So all of these Photoshop files should be
selected.
| | 03:29 |
And then click on Open.
Now you'll notice, if I just make this
| | 03:34 |
project panel a little bit bigger.
You'll notice that all the files are selected.
| | 03:40 |
And If I just bring them down to the
comp.
| | 03:43 |
And drop them into the comp.
You'll notice that they're all one frame
| | 03:47 |
long, okay?
Or one frame in duration, rather.
| | 03:50 |
Now, again, if I want to sequence them, I
can go to animation keyframe assistant's
| | 03:55 |
sequence layers.
I'm not going to put overlap on.
| | 03:59 |
Overlap is great if you want to create a
fade from one layer to another.
| | 04:04 |
I don't want to do that here so I'm going to
click on okay.
| | 04:08 |
And there we have if I move through page
down one frame at a time you'll see that
| | 04:13 |
I have a different file on each frame of
my footage.
| | 04:19 |
So you can also, if I drag those instead
to the new comp from selection button.
| | 04:26 |
I can create a new composition and I can
actually override the default still
| | 04:30 |
duration in here.
So what I could do is I could I say, okay
| | 04:34 |
I actually want them to be one second
long so I'm going to type in 1 and then
| | 04:37 |
period which is next to the zero key on
the number pad.
| | 04:42 |
And again I've got sequence layers on.
Click OK.
| | 04:45 |
And now, I have them lasting for one
second each.
| | 04:50 |
So lot's of different ways of
controlling, how long your footage stays
| | 04:54 |
on screen for.
So that's a little bit about sequencing layers.
| | 04:59 |
Of course you can bring the file in, as
an image sequence.
| | 05:04 |
If I go to File > Import File.
So if I wanted to bring this in as a
| | 05:08 |
sequence, because they're non
alpha-numerically ordered, I would have
| | 05:12 |
to click on this button here.
If we go back to the Images folder, and
| | 05:18 |
go into the Art board sequence folder.
Cuz these are numbered alpha-numerically,
| | 05:23 |
if I select one it should detect that
it's a sequence and automatically put
| | 05:27 |
this on.
Sometimes it doesn't, so you need make
| | 05:31 |
sure to do that if you need to.
If I wanted to bring these in as a
| | 05:35 |
sequence instead of bringing them in as
an individual files then what I could do
| | 05:39 |
is select one and force it to bring it in
as a sequence.
| | 05:44 |
Okay.
And then once I click on OK, it will
| | 05:49 |
import the files for me.
| | 05:53 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Expressions and ScriptingLinking properties| 00:00 |
So now we get to the really exciting bit
where we learn about expressions and
| | 00:04 |
scripting that can make animation,
particularly character animation, a lot easier.
| | 00:11 |
So you don't have to figure out things
like angles and have to animate every
| | 00:15 |
single body part individually.
After Effects provide you with two
| | 00:20 |
features, expressions and scripting that
will help with these.
| | 00:25 |
Now, If you want to follow along we're in
the expression and scripting project
| | 00:28 |
Which is in the expression and scripting
folder.
| | 00:32 |
Okay, so here I have a little character
and I've done some animation in here, in
| | 00:36 |
time with audio.
What I've done is I've created markers in
| | 00:40 |
time with the beats of the audio, just by
hitting the asterrix key as I preview the
| | 00:44 |
audio every time a beat happens.
And then if I zoom in, you can see I
| | 00:49 |
created a marker for each beat of the
audio and I can jump between those
| | 00:52 |
markers by hitting the j and k keys on
the keyboard.
| | 00:57 |
And now set up some animation to go in
time with the markers and if we just
| | 01:03 |
preview that you can see a little bit of
that animation.
| | 01:11 |
Okay so lets preview a small section.
(music playing)
| | 01:17 |
Okay.
And what I've done is I've rotated the
| | 01:20 |
body in time with the music and because
I've set up a parenting structure where
| | 01:24 |
nearly everything is attached to the
body, when the body rotates everything
| | 01:28 |
else follows.
Now I'm going to show you how we can take
| | 01:34 |
that initial rotation keyframing.
And use it to control all the other layers.
| | 01:40 |
So we only have one set of keyframes to
worry about.
| | 01:43 |
Now to do this I'm going to use expressions
and those of you who are a bit nervous of
| | 01:47 |
programming and scripting may be thinking
oh no I'm never going to be able to learn that.
| | 01:53 |
Well don't worry because I was exactly
the same.
| | 01:56 |
I'm a creative person I'm not
mathematically gifted in any way.
| | 02:01 |
And when I first saw expressions and
After Effects I couldn't envisage myself
| | 02:05 |
ever learning how to use them now, and if
I can do it anyone can do it.
| | 02:10 |
So don't worry about it being to
complicated.
| | 02:13 |
In fact here's how easy it is.
If I want to get the left arm say,
| | 02:18 |
animating in time with the body.
Then what I do is I select the left arm
| | 02:24 |
and then choose the property that I want
to animate, in this case, rotation.
| | 02:29 |
And there we go.
That's what we want to get animating in
| | 02:32 |
time with music.
I select the property by clicking on the name.
| | 02:37 |
And then I go to animation, add
expression, okay.
| | 02:40 |
And there's a small expression in the
expression field at the moment.
| | 02:45 |
I don't relaly want you to worry about
that because After Effects will write the
| | 02:49 |
expression for me.
So at the moment don't worry about that.
| | 02:53 |
Just go straight to this area here where
you'll see some buttons.
| | 02:56 |
And this button here is a pick whip
button.
| | 03:00 |
You may remember seeing the pick whip in
parenting, when you looked at parenting.
| | 03:04 |
The pick whip button for expressions can
be used to link properties together and
| | 03:08 |
this is how easy it is for me to take the
rotation from here to here.
| | 03:13 |
All I need to do is click and drag that
pick whip and pick up the rotation from there.
| | 03:18 |
After Effects writes the expression for
me.
| | 03:20 |
And to activate I can either click on
this grey area here or hit the Enter key
| | 03:24 |
on the number pad not to the return key
on the keyboard because the return key
| | 03:28 |
will add another carriage return in
there.
| | 03:33 |
And once I've applied that and preview
it, you'll see there's a small amount of
| | 03:37 |
rotation happening to the arm.
{MUSIC} Okay, I want a little bit more
| | 03:42 |
animation, so the time comes for me to go
in and edit the expression.
| | 03:49 |
But it's very easy to do that so, even
with no experience I can very easily
| | 03:54 |
multiply the amount of Rotation say by 3
times just to give me more rotation and
| | 03:58 |
this is how it's done.
First of all, I'm going to explain what the
| | 04:04 |
expression is saying, so that you can
understand what I'm doing.
| | 04:08 |
The expression is saying, take the
rotation of this value from this comp,
| | 04:12 |
which means this composition layer body
which is the body layer.
| | 04:16 |
Tranform property group, and if close and
open that you'll see transfrom porperty
| | 04:21 |
group rotation value.
So it's like giving it an address to take
| | 04:25 |
it from.
And that represtent the value that we
| | 04:28 |
have now.
So the values match.
| | 04:30 |
Basically when this one is 2.1, that one
is 2.1.
| | 04:33 |
If that one's 6.8, that one's 6.8.
So they just follow each other.
| | 04:38 |
But if I go to the end of the expression
and make it editable, I can type in
| | 04:43 |
asterisk 3, and that's going to take the
value that's provided from that and
| | 04:47 |
multiply it by 3.
And if we click away from the expression
| | 04:54 |
and preview it again, you'll see I've got
three times as much rotation.
| | 04:58 |
(music playing) Now I can continue adding,
subtracting, multiplying and dividing,
| | 05:03 |
there are other ways of creating values,
but we're going to stick with this just now.
| | 05:11 |
So, if I want to maybe.
Bring it up a little bit I could add, you
| | 05:16 |
know, a value and degrees to that, so I
could put plus 20 and that will move it
| | 05:22 |
round by 20 degrees.
So basically we've got the same rotation
| | 05:28 |
value as this multiplied by three and
then 20 added to it.
| | 05:33 |
Okay, and I can continue doing that.
I could go to my left fore arm now, open
| | 05:42 |
up pitch rotation value and the keyboard
shortcut for writing an expression is
| | 05:48 |
hold down the alt key and click on the
stop watch.
| | 05:55 |
And then I just drag the pick whip to
this one, the left arm rotation, and if
| | 06:01 |
we activate that, we'll see that that
arm's moving as well, okay?
| | 06:09 |
So the forearm and the upper arm are
moving together.
| | 06:14 |
(music playing) Now, what if I want to get the
right arm moving as well?
| | 06:20 |
Let's open up the right arm.
So we'll leave the left arm's rotation
| | 06:26 |
value open.
We'll open up the right arm, if I can
| | 06:29 |
find it down here.
And again, Alt-click on the stopwatch,
| | 06:33 |
hold down Alt, click on the spotlight,
drag the pic wick up to the left arm and
| | 06:38 |
preview it.
So, now I've got both arms moving in time
| | 06:42 |
with the audio.
But what if I want this one to move in
| | 06:46 |
the opposite direction?
Well, there's aMUSIC little trick there
| | 06:51 |
as well, which I'm going to share with you.
If I click to the end of the expression
| | 06:56 |
and multiplying by minus one, I will get
the opposite result and now you'll see
| | 07:00 |
that the arm is moving in the opposite
direction to the other one, which gives
| | 07:03 |
me a much nicer effect.
Now while I'm in there, I'm also going to
| | 07:09 |
go to the hips, and put an opposite
rotation as to the one that's happening
| | 07:13 |
to the body.
And that will make the legs stay still,
| | 07:17 |
because the legs are pinned to the hips.
So lets alt-click on the stopwatch for rotation.
| | 07:24 |
Drag the pickwhip down to the body
rotation value, and then multiply it by
| | 07:30 |
minus one, hit enter, and now we have
still legs, while the rest of the body animates.
| | 07:39 |
(music playing) Now before we look at the whole
thing I've also added some expressions to
| | 07:46 |
the other layers which you can turn on.
If I select all the layers and double hit
| | 07:53 |
e on the keyboard you'll see I've already
added some other expressions.
| | 07:58 |
Now, to switch them on, you click on the
enable expression button for each of the layers.
| | 08:06 |
So we'll scroll down, switch those on,
and then preview our final animation.
| | 08:13 |
Now, the nice thing about this is, if we
preview a little bit.
| | 08:18 |
(music playing).
If we want to speed up or slow down the animation.
| | 08:22 |
Let's just zoom in a bit there.
All I need to do is go back to the
| | 08:26 |
original keyframes, so that select all,
hit r on the keyboard for rotation and
| | 08:30 |
just adjust the timing of those key
frames, and then all of the other layers
| | 08:35 |
will update.
So really fantastic, quick way of
| | 08:41 |
animating by linking properties together
using expressions.
| | 08:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the linear and ease expressions| 00:00 |
Okay.
What I'm going to do now is share an
| | 00:02 |
expression with you that I use a lot.
And it converts one range of values to
| | 00:06 |
another, making it easier to create links
between layers without having to do
| | 00:10 |
mathematical calculations to figure out
how much you need to change something by,
| | 00:15 |
in order to get it to work.
Now, you'll see what that means as we
| | 00:21 |
start to move through the exercise.
And if you want to follow along with it,
| | 00:26 |
you can open up expressions and scripting
project from the expressions and
| | 00:30 |
scripting folder.
Now, here, we have my dancer.
| | 00:34 |
And I've done some animation of this
dancer, but what I want to do now is I
| | 00:38 |
want to get the legs also animating.
And I'm going to turn off the audio just
| | 00:43 |
now, just while we preview it.
So let's just do a quick run preview.
| | 00:49 |
So, we've got her body animating.
And basically, the way that I've animated
| | 00:54 |
is by creating expressions to link the
body parts together.
| | 00:59 |
And if I hit the Shy button, you'll see
here are all the body parts.
| | 01:03 |
They're all linked together using a
parenting structure.
| | 01:06 |
So, for example the left shin, rather is
connected to the left thigh and the left
| | 01:11 |
thigh is connected to the hips.
The lower arm is connected to the upper
| | 01:16 |
arm and the upper arm to the body.
So that, when I move one of the files, in
| | 01:20 |
this case, the body layer, all the other
files are connected using expressions.
| | 01:26 |
Now, I've done Math to kind of convert
values at the moment.
| | 01:30 |
But that relies on me, having to work out
how many times do I need to multiply by,
| | 01:34 |
this by to get the value that I want.
So, I want to do an answer way of dong it.
| | 01:40 |
So, I'm going to show you a much easier
way.
| | 01:42 |
Now, with these showing, if you can't see
those layers, you click on the Shy button
| | 01:47 |
to toggle them on and off.
And while they're on, what I want you to
| | 01:52 |
do is click on the Body Layers Shy button
which is this one here, just to release
| | 01:56 |
it from being shy.
And when you click the Shy button, you
| | 02:02 |
should see the body layer and the thigh
layers and the shin layers.
| | 02:07 |
And what we're going to do is use the body
layer keyframes to control the rotation
| | 02:11 |
values of these.
So, I want to select this, hit R on the
| | 02:15 |
keyboard for rotation to open up those
values.
| | 02:19 |
Okay.
So, what I'm going to do is start with
| | 02:21 |
the right thigh layer.
I'm actually close these layers because
| | 02:24 |
it just makes it a bit easier for you to
see what's happening.
| | 02:27 |
And I'm going to all click on stopwatch
to create a basic expression.
| | 02:31 |
And then, I'm going to use to
take the value from the rotation value of
| | 02:36 |
the body.
Now, if I preview that, you'll see what's happening.
| | 02:42 |
I'm getting a little bit of rotation in
the leg.
| | 02:46 |
But there's two problems.
One, it's not rotating enough, and two,
| | 02:49 |
it's rotating between here and here.
Really, I want it to rotate between, say,
| | 02:54 |
here and here.
So, going around that way.
| | 02:57 |
So, instead of having to work out, well,
what angle it's at, how many times do I
| | 03:01 |
have to multiply it to get that value?
What I can do is use an expression called
| | 03:06 |
the linear expression.
Now, the first thing I want to do is
| | 03:09 |
setup what's called a variable here.
And I'm just going to make that a little bit smaller.
| | 03:14 |
So, we've got a bit more space.
So, I'm going to edit this expression.
| | 03:17 |
And a variable, basically, is short hand
for your expressed value.
| | 03:22 |
So, if I say, A equals this expression,
then it means that when I continue to
| | 03:26 |
write a second line of my expression, if
I want to refer to this value, I just
| | 03:30 |
need to type in the letter A.
So now, I can add a semicolon and add a
| | 03:36 |
new line to the expression.
And I'm going to use the Expression Language
| | 03:40 |
menu to go up to the Interpolation
Setting and choose the second linear that
| | 03:44 |
has four values in parentheses.
Okay.
| | 03:48 |
So, it says linear, which is the
expression, and then in parentheses are
| | 03:52 |
these four values.
What you need to do is replace these
| | 03:56 |
values with what it's asking you for
there.
| | 03:59 |
So, T is the value at the current time
and I need to replace that with whatever
| | 04:03 |
the value is at the moment.
And that's represented by our variable,
| | 04:08 |
the letter A.
So, I'm going to type that in.
| | 04:11 |
And then, I need to find out what my
minimum and maximum values are.
| | 04:14 |
And here's a little tip on how to do
that.
| | 04:17 |
Now, if I click away from the Expression
at the moment, I'm going to get an error
| | 04:21 |
because I haven't replaced these values
yet.
| | 04:24 |
But if you get that error when you click
away, just click OK, and it leaves the
| | 04:28 |
expression switched off while we go and
get the information we need.
| | 04:32 |
What you need to do is you need to select
the rotation value down here in the timeline.
| | 04:38 |
And if you select that rotation value and
then go to the graph editor and then
| | 04:41 |
click on the graph, it will tell you up
here, the current minimal and maximum
| | 04:45 |
value for that graph.
And I'm very proud to say that it was me
| | 04:51 |
that asked for that feature and it's
really nice to see something that you
| | 04:54 |
asked for in there.
The reason I asked for it is because I
| | 04:59 |
often need to see the minimum and maximum
value.
| | 05:03 |
And at one time that wasn't listed in
here, it was listed down in the timeline.
| | 05:08 |
When they introduced the graph editor,
that was removed, so I asked if they
| | 05:13 |
could put it into the info palette.
So, we can see that we're working with a
| | 05:18 |
minimum value for this whole duration of
minus 999 or minus 10.
| | 05:24 |
We'll round it up.
And the maximum value it get to is 5.85.
| | 05:30 |
Now, you could guess the values by
looking at the graph.
| | 05:32 |
But this makes it more precise.
So, we'll say it's between minus 10 and 6.
| | 05:36 |
So, we can come out of the graph editor
and go back in here and start editing.
| | 05:42 |
So, my minimum value is minus 10 degrees
and my maximum value, TMax is 6 degrees.
| | 05:49 |
And then, we need to say, for value one
and value two, what we want the rotation
| | 05:55 |
values to be.
So, I want it to be, maybe a value of 0
| | 05:59 |
for minimum.
So, it's not going to move from here.
| | 06:03 |
And then, a maximum value of, let's say,
30 degrees.
| | 06:08 |
So now, instead of moving between minus
10 and 6 degrees, it's going to move between
| | 06:13 |
0 and 30 degrees.
Now, if I click away from the Expression
| | 06:18 |
and it automatically activates it and if
we preview that, you'll see we have it
| | 06:23 |
going between 0 and 30 degrees.
Okay, now, I've made an obvious mistake there.
| | 06:31 |
It should be 0 and minus 30 because I
want it going in the opposite direction.
| | 06:36 |
So, easy to change that.
I just go in and change the 30 to the
| | 06:40 |
minus 30.
And now, we have her leg moving in the
| | 06:44 |
correct direction.
Okay, so I got the leg moving.
| | 06:48 |
And then, it's a simple case of
connecting up the other legs and if you
| | 06:53 |
open up all three final dancer too,
here's one that I have completed.
| | 06:59 |
So, let me just preview that for you.
So, there you see here legs starting to move.
| | 07:04 |
And what I've done there is I linked the
shin to be the opposite rotation of the
| | 07:11 |
upper leg and that creates that effect of
her bending her knees.
| | 07:19 |
So, we'll have a look at those
expressions.
| | 07:24 |
(music playing) Okay, so if we just make the
timeline a bit bigger, and I'm just going to
| | 07:30 |
select these and double hit E on the
keyboard, you can see the expressions
| | 07:37 |
that have been written.
Now, you'll notice that some of these
| | 07:44 |
instead of saying linear, say ease, and
that's because I've used different
| | 07:48 |
expression to create different movements.
Now, linear will give you a very rigid
| | 07:54 |
kind of movement, whereas ease will give
you a much smoother movement.
| | 07:58 |
So, depending on which part of the body I
wanted to move and what kind of movement
| | 08:02 |
I wanted, I used linear or ease.
And you can have a look through that,
| | 08:07 |
break it down and see how the whole thing
was constructed.
| | 08:13 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying loop expressions| 00:02 |
Now, there's an expression that's really
useful to every animator in nearly every
| | 00:06 |
situation called the Loop Expression.
And that's what we're going to have a
| | 00:10 |
look at here.
If you want to follow along, you can open
| | 00:13 |
up the Expressions and Scripting Project,
and that's in the Expressions and
| | 00:16 |
Scripting folder.
Now, we're going to start with this one
| | 00:20 |
here, 058 dog walk cycle.
And I'm going to open that, and you'll
| | 00:25 |
see that I have this layer in here.
And if I preview that, you'll notice I
| | 00:30 |
have a dog walk cycle, but it only lasts
for a few frames.
| | 00:34 |
If we have a, step through frame by
frame, you'll see we've got a few frames
| | 00:38 |
of it, and then it stops.
Now, what I want to do is I want to loop
| | 00:43 |
this so that he continues walking, okay?
And this is a composition, a nested composition.
| | 00:49 |
If it was a piece of footage, or a
sequence, I could loop it by going into
| | 00:53 |
the Interpret Footage dialog box, and
choosing Looping Options in there.
| | 00:58 |
But this is a nested comp.
If I double-click it, you'll see all it
| | 01:01 |
is is a series of frames stacked on top
of each other.
| | 01:05 |
So, how do I loop it?
Well, I've applied Time Remapping to this.
| | 01:09 |
And I apply Time Remapping, going to
Layer > Time > Enable Time Remapping.
| | 01:14 |
And we'll have a look more at Time
Remapping a little later.
| | 01:18 |
And basically, what time remapping has
done is it's added keyframes for the
| | 01:23 |
active frames of my animation.
So basically, that's going from the
| | 01:28 |
beginning to the end of the animation.
Now, when you first apply Time Remapping,
| | 01:33 |
it will be trimmed up like this.
So, I've just trimmed out the end to
| | 01:37 |
continue all the way to the end.
Now, the last frame is black so I don't
| | 01:41 |
really want that frame included.
So, the key to making this work is move
| | 01:45 |
one frame back from the last keyframe,
zoom in to the timeline, and add a
| | 01:49 |
keyframe there.
So, if you want to add a keyframe of the
| | 01:54 |
existing time, you click on the Add or
Remove Keyframe at Current Time button.
| | 02:00 |
And then, if we delete this keyframe, the
black one, we'll now hold on that frame
| | 02:04 |
all the way to the end.
So basically, what we've got is we've got
| | 02:08 |
the moving frames between here and here,
and then we've got static frame all the
| | 02:12 |
way to there.
So basically, what we want to do is we
| | 02:16 |
want to repeat the values between these
two frames over and over again to create
| | 02:21 |
a walk cycle.
And to do that, I'm going to Alt click on
| | 02:25 |
Stop Watch and I'm going to add the loop
expression, which is in the Property menu.
| | 02:31 |
So if we choose Loop Out, Type Cycle,
okay?
| | 02:35 |
Now, there's an extra thing in there
called Num Keyframes.
| | 02:38 |
We don't need that so I'm going to delete
the comma and the num keyframes equals
| | 02:42 |
zero, and basically we've done it.
If I preview that, basically what it's
| | 02:47 |
doing is it's looping that section over
and over again using a cycle loop.
| | 02:52 |
And a cycle loop just keeps going
forwards.
| | 02:55 |
Now, you'll notice there's another black
frame in there.
| | 02:58 |
If we go back to the beginning, you'll
notice there was a black frame at the beginning.
| | 03:03 |
So again, step forward by one frame, zoom
in, add a keyframe there, and then remove
| | 03:08 |
that last keyframe at the beginning.
And now, we should have a perfect looping
| | 03:14 |
dog walk with no black frames in between.
Okay, and if we have a look at that
| | 03:20 |
property graph by clicking the Graph
button for the expression and the Graph
| | 03:24 |
Editor, we can see what cycle it does.
It just keeps going forwards, keeps going forwards.
| | 03:32 |
Okay, so that's a cycle loop allowing us
to loop an animation forever, basically.
| | 03:39 |
So, the second loop expression we're
going to have a look at is Ping Pong.
| | 03:42 |
So, I want you to open up 05B Stick Man
Ping Pong.
| | 03:46 |
And in here, we have a layer which is
basically doing half a walk cycle.
| | 03:51 |
So, in order to make him walk, I'm going
to have to go forwards, backwards,
| | 03:54 |
forwards, backwards as opposed to the
last one, which just wanted to keep going forwards.
| | 04:00 |
Now, I've applied Time Remapping and I'm
going to stretch the layer out to fill
| | 04:04 |
the whole gyration, and then I can add an
expression to the Time Remap property.
| | 04:10 |
And again, click on my Expression
Language, choose Property > Loop Out.
| | 04:15 |
And this time, I'm going to edit it and
instead of cycle, we're going to type
| | 04:19 |
Ping Pong, and the Ping Pong loop will go
forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards,
| | 04:24 |
and it should create the effect we want
for this walk cycle.
| | 04:31 |
And if I preview that, see, we now have
our character walking forwards,
| | 04:35 |
backwards, forwards, backwards.
Again, if you get the black frame in
| | 04:40 |
there, you just need to go to your last
frame, zoom in, move one frame before,
| | 04:44 |
add the keyframe there, and then just
delete that black keyframe.
| | 04:49 |
And now, we should have our character
walking for as long as we want, going
| | 04:53 |
backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards.
And let's have a look at the Expression Graph.
| | 05:00 |
And if I zoom out, you'll see basically,
it's moving forwards, backwards, forwards
| | 05:05 |
to create that kind of loop, which is a
ping pong loop.
| | 05:10 |
Now, the third and final looping
expression.
| | 05:13 |
If you open up 05C Stick Man Continue, is
the continue expression.
| | 05:18 |
Now, here we have a character getting
bigger over time.
| | 05:22 |
And what I want to do is make him walk
across the screen.
| | 05:25 |
So, what I'm going to do is use motion
sketch.
| | 05:27 |
I'm going to click on the character.
I'm going to get my pen and my Wacom
| | 05:30 |
tablet because that's the best thing to
use for capturing motion and applying it
| | 05:34 |
to your characters.
Click on the Start Capture button, and
| | 05:38 |
now all the movement that I make with my
pen on my tablet will be captured and
| | 05:41 |
applied to the character.
But sometimes, you'll find that you
| | 05:45 |
accidentally let go at one point, or
something goes wrong with it, and I'm
| | 05:49 |
going to show you how the loop expression
can help with that.
| | 05:53 |
So, here we go.
He's walking towards the screen.
| | 05:55 |
And then, I run out of time or I run out
of space on my Wacom tablet.
| | 06:01 |
And I've got a nice movement.
But as I said, I ran out of time.
| | 06:07 |
So, what do I do?
Well, I could capture the whole thing again.
| | 06:11 |
Or if I just want him to continue walking
in that direction at the same speed, and
| | 06:15 |
what I can do is apply the continue loop
expression.
| | 06:19 |
So, Alt click on the Stopwatch, go down
to the Property section of the Expression
| | 06:24 |
Language menu, and loop out again.
And this time, what we're going to do is
| | 06:30 |
type in, continue.
Okay, so make sure I spell it correctly, continue.
| | 06:36 |
Spelling is not by big strong point.
And then, delete the text that we don't need.
| | 06:42 |
And now, if we preview that, we should
see he walks along, and then he continues
| | 06:47 |
moving at the same speed in the same
direction until he goes off screen.
| | 06:55 |
So, if you've done a motion path and it's
slightly short and you just want to keep
| | 06:59 |
someone going at the same speed, then you
can use continue expression to do that.
| | 07:04 |
Okay, so if we have to look at the end
composition, here we see it again.
| | 07:10 |
Okay, I have't quite got my timing right
by that one, but you get the idea of how
| | 07:15 |
that works.
So, those are the three looping
| | 07:21 |
expressions, cycle, ping pong, and
continue.
| | 07:27 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using audio to control animation| 00:02 |
Okay, so we're going to have a look at
how you can use an audio file to create
| | 00:05 |
animation for you.
And we're in the Expressions and
| | 00:09 |
Scripting project, which is in the
Expressions and Scripting folder.
| | 00:14 |
If you want to follow along, you can open
that and open 04 using Audio Composition.
| | 00:20 |
And in here, I have my little character,
and you'll see that I've created some
| | 00:24 |
animation of him hammering.
Now, I've only done a very short piece of
| | 00:28 |
animation, okay?
And I'm looping that over and over again
| | 00:32 |
if I extend the work area.
So, you can see the whole thing.
| | 00:37 |
You'll see I've only done a couple of
taps of the hammer.
| | 00:40 |
So, what I'm going to do is go into the
right arm comp where the animation is
| | 00:44 |
taking place.
So, double-click the right arm comp, and
| | 00:48 |
in there you can see the animation.
Now, instead of using painstaking
| | 00:52 |
keyframe techniques, what I want to do,
I'm going to trim the work area back to
| | 00:57 |
there actually, is remove those
keyframes.
| | 01:01 |
And instead, what I'm going to do is use
an Audio layer.
| | 01:05 |
This is how it works.
Go over to the Project panel and open up
| | 01:08 |
the Audio folder.
And in there, you should see a couple
| | 01:12 |
files called Hammer.
Now, one of them's an AIFF file and one
| | 01:16 |
of them's a WAV file.
I've put both in there just in case you
| | 01:20 |
need one over the other.
Perhaps on some systems, AIFF won't work,
| | 01:24 |
or perhaps on others WAV won't work.
So, I've put two alternatives in there so
| | 01:29 |
that you have a choice.
I'm going to pull that a file into my
| | 01:33 |
project and place it the bottom.
And if we go back to the beginning and
| | 01:39 |
just run preview that you'll see that I
have the sound of tapping.
| | 01:45 |
And I'm just going to extend the work
here to encompass that and preview again.
| | 01:52 |
Okay, I've literally just recorded this
by (SOUND) tapping the table.
| | 01:56 |
And what I'm going to do is use that to
control the rotation of his arm.
| | 02:01 |
So I select the Audio layer and go to
Animation > keyframe Assistant > Convert
| | 02:06 |
Audio to Keyframes, and that will convert
the audio to keyframes.
| | 02:13 |
And it creates a null object.
And if I hit U with that selected, you'll
| | 02:16 |
see it creates keyframes for the left
channel and the right channel, because
| | 02:20 |
it's stereo, and also both channels.
Now, we don't need the left channel and
| | 02:25 |
right channel.
So, I'm going to select Left Channel, and
| | 02:27 |
hit Backspace to delete it.
And then select the Right Channel and hit
| | 02:31 |
Backspace to delete that.
So, I'm left with a value for both channels.
| | 02:36 |
And if I go to the Graph Editor and
select that value, you can see if I
| | 02:41 |
preview that, the taps of the hammer
represented by this graph.
| | 02:48 |
Now, I want this to control my rotation.
So, how do I do that?
| | 02:52 |
Well, let's come out of the Graph Editor
and let's add an expression.
| | 02:56 |
So, Alt-click on the right arm.
Now, just very quickly going to check
| | 03:01 |
that I've got the right one, yep, we've
got the correct arm.
| | 03:04 |
So, we're going to Alt-click on the
stopwatch.
| | 03:08 |
Drag the pick quip over to the slider
value, so we're saying take the rotation
| | 03:12 |
value from the slider value and it writes
an expression for me doing that.
| | 03:19 |
Say, clear rotation value from this comp
layer audio amplitude, effect both
| | 03:24 |
channels, slider value.
And if we preview that, we should see the
| | 03:29 |
arm is indeed moving.
Now, the only thing is, it's moving in
| | 03:34 |
the wrong direction and by the wrong
amount.
| | 03:38 |
So, what I'm going to do is use the
linear expression to convert it.
| | 03:43 |
We've done this already, so I'm going to
go through it fairly quickly.
| | 03:46 |
8 equals this comp blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah expression.
| | 03:51 |
A semicolon at the end, and then on the
second line, I'm going to type in linear
| | 03:55 |
open parenthesis.
And then, I'm going to say A, now I need
| | 04:00 |
to find out what those values are.
So, I'm temporarily going to switch off
| | 04:05 |
my Expression and then I'm going to
select this property and go to the
| | 04:09 |
Property Graph.
And look in my info palette to find a
| | 04:15 |
minimum value of 0.17, maximum value of
20.
| | 04:20 |
So, I really want this to reverse, so I
probably want a minimum value of zero and
| | 04:24 |
a maximum value of maybe 30.
Should we try that?
| | 04:30 |
Okay.
So, what we're going to do is go down to
| | 04:31 |
our expression.
So, it's zero and 20 we need to remember.
| | 04:35 |
And I'm going to say, take values between
zero, and 20 and convert them to values
| | 04:42 |
between now.
If I want to be precise, I would say 0.17
| | 04:49 |
and 20.17.
So, I get all the values and convert it
| | 04:55 |
to values between zero and it should be a
minus value.
| | 05:00 |
So, let's say minus 30 close parenthesis.
And if we preview that, you'll see now I
| | 05:06 |
have the arm tapping.
Now, if I switch on Motion Blur for those
| | 05:10 |
layers, don't really need it for the
Audio Amplitude layer.
| | 05:17 |
And then, click on my mini flow chart.
I can go back to this composition and
| | 05:22 |
switch on Motion Blur in here.
And hopefully, see a nice animation.
| | 05:29 |
(SOUND) Okay, so you can use audio files
to create animation for you, rather than
| | 05:33 |
have to work that all out yourself.
So, let's have a look at that once more.
| | 05:38 |
(SOUND) Okay.
So there we go, using audio to control
| | 05:49 |
animation properties.
| | 05:51 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up control layers| 00:00 |
'Kay when you're animating layers
individually it can become quite tedious.
| | 00:05 |
Now what I want you to do if you want
follow along is open up expressions and
| | 00:09 |
scripting projects from expressions and
scripting folder.
| | 00:13 |
And then open all eight all control
layers composition and then there you'll
| | 00:17 |
see my little fog figure.
Now if I'm to start animating these body
| | 00:22 |
parts, just by using the properties down
in the time line, it can become quite tedious.
| | 00:28 |
You'll see here I've set up a parenting
structure, so that if I open up the
| | 00:32 |
rotation of the upper arm, I can move the
arm.
| | 00:36 |
And then open up the rotation of the
lower arm, and I can animate that
| | 00:40 |
individually, okay.
So the lower arm will follow the upper
| | 00:45 |
arm but the upper arm can animate
individually.
| | 00:49 |
Similarly with the legs, if I animate the
thigh, you'll see that moves and then I
| | 00:53 |
can animate the shin, although the shin
moves with the thigh it can still animate
| | 00:58 |
independently from the thigh.
And we can even animate the boot independently.
| | 01:05 |
Okay now, the boots.
Anchor points should actually be up here,
| | 01:08 |
so let me just move that while I have a
minute and you can also do that as well.
| | 01:14 |
Just select the boot layers, choose the
pan behind tool, and just move the anchor
| | 01:18 |
points up here so when we rotate the
boot, it rotates around the correct point.
| | 01:24 |
Now you can see how fiddly that is.
I'm having to scroll through lots of layers.
| | 01:30 |
So one solution is to work with control
layers which can control all the body parts.
| | 01:35 |
So I'm going to go to Layer > New > Null
Object, and we're going to call that control there.
| | 01:41 |
So I'm going to hit Enter on the keyboard or
Return other and type in control layer.
| | 01:46 |
Okay, and then what I'm going to do is
apply an effect to the control there and
| | 01:50 |
it's one of the expression control
effects.
| | 01:54 |
And these are like empty interface items
that you can attach to expressions to
| | 01:58 |
help you control them.
For example, I have an angle control
| | 02:02 |
which I use to control rotation.
So say for example we'll start with the
| | 02:07 |
head, and open up the rotation value of
he head, and basically what I want to is
| | 02:10 |
link this rotation value to this effect.
Now you'll notice when I select head
| | 02:16 |
glare, the effect disappears from here.
So when you're working with control
| | 02:21 |
layers what you probably want to is just
click on the lock here in the effect
| | 02:25 |
control panel.
So that when you select the other layers,
| | 02:29 |
the effects remain here.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to Alt
| | 02:33 |
click on the rotation stop watch and I'm
going to drag it up to the angle value of
| | 02:38 |
the controller and now, when I adjust
this control, it adjusts his head.
| | 02:45 |
Now really I should rename these, so I
should rename that head rotation.
| | 02:52 |
Okay, now rename it by selecting the name
and hitting return on the keyboard.
| | 02:59 |
Now you'll notice that the expression
updates when I do that.
| | 03:02 |
Okay, so it's updated the expression with
the new name, so no problem renaming
| | 03:06 |
those after the fact.
So I've now got something to control the
| | 03:10 |
head rotation.
What I want to do now is add another one,
| | 03:14 |
so let's go to Effect and Angle Control
should be here, cuz it was the last
| | 03:17 |
effect used.
This time I'll hit return.
| | 03:22 |
And I'll call it upper arm one.
Upper arm o one rotation.
| | 03:28 |
Okay.
And then I'm going to select upper arm o
| | 03:33 |
one, alt click on the stopwatch.
Drag this to the angle control.
| | 03:41 |
And now I have a controller for the angle
of that arm.
| | 03:44 |
You can see how it works.
So basically you adjust these until you
| | 03:48 |
get them exactly where you want them.
Now, as well as having rotations, you
| | 03:53 |
have other affects as well.
So if you're going to expression
| | 03:57 |
controls, slider control I could use a
slider, to control, maybe the, I don't
| | 04:02 |
know, the position, of his stomach.
Make it wobble up and down.
| | 04:08 |
So we'll call this stomach, position, and
we will take the position.
| | 04:15 |
Now let's just go down and get the
stomach, where is it.
| | 04:21 |
Okay, so we're going to get the position
value, and we're going to add an expression
| | 04:27 |
to that, and we're going to link to the
stomach position slider.
| | 04:33 |
Okay, now you'll notice something weird
happens when I do that.
| | 04:38 |
Because the value is zero of the slider,
when I type in zero.
| | 04:42 |
Or when I attach it first of all, the
position value for the x and y is going
| | 04:46 |
to go to zero.
Now you'll notice that if I pull that
| | 04:50 |
down I can pull him back into the center
of the comp again.
| | 04:54 |
Now the only thing about that is it means
that my wobble is going to affect the x and
| | 04:57 |
the y axis and I don't really want that
to happen.
| | 05:01 |
So I am going to do is go down to this
expression and edit it slightly.
| | 05:07 |
So what we're going to do is we're going
to say, A equals that expression.
| | 05:14 |
So I am going to use A as my variable here
and of course that's not going to work to
| | 05:17 |
begin with but we don't need to worry
about that.
| | 05:21 |
The reason is because I've changed the
variable from the word temp to a.
| | 05:25 |
Now the x value we don't want to change
we want that to remain as it was
| | 05:30 |
originally which was 258 pixels so I'm
going to type in 258.
| | 05:35 |
And then on this side I'm going to take
the slider value.
| | 05:42 |
So that means the slighter value is only
going to control this side.
| | 05:46 |
Now I don't have to actually type all of
that in by linking.
| | 05:51 |
What I can do is just type in the letter
a, which represents that value.
| | 05:56 |
And now I have a slider that only
controls the up and down values.
| | 06:01 |
So if I want to, I can wiggle that.
So let's have a look at that.
| | 06:07 |
I can open up the stomach position value
and add a wiggle effect to it.
| | 06:13 |
Now, wiggle effect will randomize the
value.
| | 06:17 |
So, I'll type in wiggle, open
parenthesis.
| | 06:21 |
Now, we need to say how often do we want
it to wiggle.
| | 06:27 |
So let's say three times per second.
Add in a comma.
| | 06:31 |
And then say by how much do we want it to
wiggle.
| | 06:32 |
So, let's say 10 pixels close the
parenthesis.
| | 06:33 |
Nope, that's maybe a bit too much.
So, wiggle 3 comma 10 and if I preview
| | 06:39 |
that, you'll see we've now got a random
wiggle value on position.
| | 06:45 |
So, what I want you to do is play with
these expressions.
| | 06:50 |
And if you want to you can look at O8B
control layers end as a reference.
| | 06:56 |
And if we open up the control layer in
here.
| | 06:59 |
So let's hit E for effects, and then
double-click the left leg to open it up,
| | 07:03 |
and you'll see here we have control for
the left leg, and we need to attach the
| | 07:08 |
boot there.
The right leg, okay, if you want to
| | 07:13 |
attach the boot, all we have to do is
just take the boots and attach them to
| | 07:17 |
the shins, so boot one to shin one.
Boot two to Shin two.
| | 07:23 |
And now when we scrub that the boot
should move with it.
| | 07:27 |
And this is a really good way of creating
a walk cycle so rather than have to go
| | 07:31 |
down to the layers themselves, you can
just use the control layers to create
| | 07:35 |
controls for your puppet.
Okay, and of course you can put things in
| | 07:41 |
for scale and position and all those
other values as well.
| | 07:45 |
So that's a little bit about control
layers.
| | 07:51 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scripts that aid in inverse kinematics| 00:00 |
Now, I want to talk a little bit about
inverse kinematics.
| | 00:04 |
Inverse kinematics is a system where, in
animation, you can move an object like a
| | 00:09 |
hand, for example here, and the IK
system, or inverse kinematics system,
| | 00:14 |
will work out the rotation and angles of
all the pieces in between, say, the
| | 00:18 |
shoulder and the hand, so that you don't
have to animate those individually.
| | 00:27 |
Now you can do certain amounts of faking
IK using the techniques we've had a look
| | 00:32 |
at, where you use sliders and control
errors and expressions.
| | 00:37 |
And if you're an expressions genius,
however, like Dan Ebberts is and Brian
| | 00:42 |
Maffitt is, then you can write
expressions that will completely create a
| | 00:48 |
reliable inverse kinematic system.
And indeed they've done that, and they've
| | 00:54 |
very kindly provided it on the website
here.
| | 00:57 |
So, it's a combination of work between
Brian Maffitt, who originally designed
| | 01:01 |
the technique, and Dan Ebberts, who's
used some of his fancy expressions to
| | 01:04 |
improve it.
Now you can go to MotionScript.com and
| | 01:09 |
download those to apply to your layers.
Now, another tool that I've discovered,
| | 01:14 |
which is absolutely amazing, is this tool
here.
| | 01:17 |
And so, it's called DuDuF IK tools for
After Effects and you can download it
| | 01:21 |
free from this website.
Now, I recommend if you download it that
| | 01:26 |
you do donate a little bit or at least
give some feedback because this guy
| | 01:29 |
donates his software free and its good to
support people that are creating software
| | 01:34 |
just for the love of it rather than to
make money.
| | 01:39 |
So, once you download it, you can install
it.
| | 01:41 |
And this is how you install it.
Basically, you have a folder that
| | 01:44 |
contains the icons and the script GUI
panels.
| | 01:47 |
What you need to do is go into the After
Effects CS5 folder on your hard drive,
| | 01:52 |
and you need to take the contents of JUIC
icons And place that into the script
| | 01:57 |
folder, so you can place that directly in
the scripts folder.
| | 02:05 |
And then open up the script UI panels,
and you need to drag this into the script
| | 02:10 |
UI panels folder.
Okay.
| | 02:13 |
And once you've done that, if you then
open up After Effects, you should be able
| | 02:18 |
to access the controls that you want to
access.
| | 02:23 |
Now, it installs in the form of a panel,
so it's very easy to operate.
| | 02:29 |
And what I'm going to do is just open up
a project, where we've taken advantage of this.
| | 02:34 |
And I'm going to show you very quickly how
to use this script.
| | 02:41 |
Okay, so I want you to go to 09IK and
double-click that to open it.
| | 02:47 |
Now, this is the basic setup that you use
for this.
| | 02:51 |
Now once you've installed this script,
you should see this appear down at the
| | 02:56 |
bottom of the window panel.
If you don't see that, you need to go to
| | 03:01 |
your After Effects > Preferences, which
on the Mac will be in the After Effects
| | 03:04 |
menu, on PC it will be in the Edit menu
and go to General.
| | 03:09 |
And you need to make sure that this is
selected, Allow Scripts to Write Files
| | 03:13 |
and Access Network.
And once you've clicked on that, you need
| | 03:17 |
to actually restart After affects.
So, if you haven't done that already,
| | 03:22 |
restart After affects again, and then
come back and join me.
| | 03:27 |
Okay, so I'm presuming that you've now
got that installed and you're ready to go.
| | 03:32 |
So, you should see at the bottom of this
window menu, Duik.jsx, and I'm going to open
| | 03:37 |
that up.
And you'll see it appears as a floating panel.
| | 03:41 |
Now, it's quite a big panel, so I'm just
going to make that a bit smaller.
| | 03:46 |
And of course, it's like any other panel.
I can drop it in beside the info panel here.
| | 03:50 |
Now the first thing that you need to do
is set up your layer structure.
| | 03:54 |
And if we go down here, there's a really
good tutorial online by a guy called, I
| | 03:58 |
think it's Steven Amos, his name?
His pseudonym is Famos.
| | 04:04 |
Famos.
And he's on Vimeo and has some really
| | 04:07 |
great tutorials.
In fact, they're on, if I remember
| | 04:12 |
correctly, they are on DuDuf's website.
So, if you go to Tutorials in there,
| | 04:19 |
you'll see Famos' fantastic trading
movies on DuDuf.
| | 04:25 |
Okay.
So, in After Effects, I'm going to go to my
| | 04:29 |
Side panel Comp Workspace which I've set
up.
| | 04:33 |
You could take a minute to set up one
like this if you want.
| | 04:37 |
I find it really useful for character
animation cuz it means that I can have
| | 04:40 |
the timeline here and my character can
still be fairly large over here.
| | 04:46 |
So, what we've done already is set up a
parenting structure the way we normally
| | 04:51 |
would set it up.
So, for example, the lower arm is
| | 04:55 |
connected to the upper arm.
The upper arm is connected to the body.
| | 05:01 |
The body is connected to the hips.
The boot is connected to the shin, which
| | 05:05 |
is connected to the thigh, which is
connected to the hips.
| | 05:10 |
So, the usual painting structure that you
would expect.
| | 05:13 |
Once you've done that, then what you do
is you select the body parts, for
| | 05:17 |
example, the boot, and then with the
panel open, which is this one here, and
| | 05:21 |
this is the installed Duik.jsx Palette
I'm opening again.
| | 05:28 |
And I'm just going to drag it again into the
info panel.
| | 05:32 |
Now, because I reset my workspace, I've
lost all the set up that I had earlier,
| | 05:37 |
but there we go.
And basically, with that selected, you
| | 05:42 |
just click on Controller.
And it will create a null for you, named
| | 05:46 |
after boot one, and you just go through
creating Controllers for the different
| | 05:50 |
body parts.
Now, I've done that already.
| | 05:54 |
So, I am going to delete that and I'm going to
hit the Shy button and show you my
| | 05:57 |
Controllers that have already been
created.
| | 06:01 |
So, one each for the boots, one each for
the lower arms.
| | 06:05 |
If you've got hands, it would be the
hands.
| | 06:07 |
But I've only got upper arms and lower
arms.
| | 06:10 |
You can either create a three-way IK rig
or a two-way IK rig and my arms have only
| | 06:14 |
got two parts, upper and lower, whereas,
the legs have got three.
| | 06:19 |
They've got the boot, the shin and the
upper leg.
| | 06:22 |
Okay, you also creates ones for the hips,
the body and the head.
| | 06:26 |
And then, create a master controller
which can be used to move the whole body
| | 06:30 |
backwards and forwards, or indeed in any
other way.
| | 06:34 |
So, the next thing you need to do, is set
up a parenting structure for these.
| | 06:38 |
So, the head, the controller head, is
connected to the controller body.
| | 06:44 |
Okay.
The body is connected to the master
| | 06:46 |
controller, so whatever that moves, it
follows, as are the boots.
| | 06:52 |
The lower arms are connected to the body
as well.
| | 06:55 |
And this is how to set it up.
Once you've set it up, it's a process of
| | 07:00 |
creating the IK.
And this is how you do it.
| | 07:03 |
So, if I want to do it for one of the
legs, for example.
| | 07:07 |
Now, the moment, if I adjust that boot
position value just to preview nothing is
| | 07:12 |
happening at the moment, you'll see
nothing happens, if I select boot 2 and
| | 07:16 |
then I need to go in the order which they
would go in the chain.
| | 07:22 |
So, if he go to the boot, to the shin, to
the thigh, and then to the Controller.
| | 07:28 |
And this is how easy it is.
I click on IK creation.
| | 07:33 |
And now, if I bring up the position value
of the boot, and adjust the boot, you'll
| | 07:37 |
notice the leg bends correctly.
So, it's absolutely amazing just being
| | 07:43 |
able to do that.
So, let's go down again, boot 1, shin 1,
| | 07:49 |
and thigh 1, and boot 1, IK creation.
And now we have boot 1 also being
| | 07:57 |
controlled by the null.
Okay?
| | 08:00 |
And then we'll do the same for the hands.
So, we'll select our lower arm 1, upper
| | 08:07 |
arm 1 and lower arm 1 Controller, IK.
And now, if I move the lower arm position
| | 08:16 |
value, you'll see it controls either it
works and bends.
| | 08:24 |
And of course, you can use the control
layer to control all of these as well.
| | 08:28 |
Now, if you have a look at term IK end,
you'll see the controllers are in full
| | 08:33 |
action there.
So, if I just open up the position values
| | 08:37 |
of all of these.
So, lets choose the body and we can start
| | 08:42 |
to see what happens when we make
adjustments to them.
| | 08:46 |
So, if I adjust the body I can make him
jump up and down like that quite easily.
| | 08:52 |
So, let's do a little jump.
So, I'll set a keyframe for position and
| | 08:57 |
then let's move ahead a little bit in
time and we'll just make him bend down a
| | 09:03 |
little bit and then spring up in the air
and then back down.
| | 09:12 |
And as he comes back down his knees bend
a little bit before he settles. Okay. Now, the timings probably completely
| | 09:19 |
wrong on that, but there you get an idea
of how easy it is to create something
| | 09:21 |
like a jump, just with a few keyframes.
Now it's a really cute set of expressions
| | 09:23 |
and scripting.
Really, really clever.
| | 09:24 |
And I really recommend that you play with
that cuz it will really help you.
| | 09:26 |
And it's really good to support these
plugin developers and software developers.
| | 09:44 |
They're really pushing the software
forward.
| | 09:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Animating Using Time RemappingKeyframing facial expressions| 00:00 |
There's a couple of really simple
techniques you can use for animation when
| | 00:03 |
doing things like animating facial
expressions.
| | 00:07 |
Rather than have to animate all the
different facial aspects, for example the
| | 00:11 |
mouth, the eyes, etcetera.
you can just create some preset shapes
| | 00:15 |
for the facial expressions and then
animate between them using time remapping.
| | 00:21 |
Now, I've created a composition here that
contains Image files of all the different
| | 00:25 |
expressions that my character will have
throughout the animation.
| | 00:29 |
And I'll sequence them into a
composition.
| | 00:32 |
Now, if you want to follow along with
this, this is in the Time Remapping
| | 00:35 |
Project, which is in the Animating Using
Time Remapping Folder.
| | 00:40 |
And I'm in the 01 Facial Expressions
Composition.
| | 00:43 |
So, what I"m gong to do is just try and
decide which facial expressions, first of
| | 00:47 |
all, I want in which places.
And you'll see that I've laid down some
| | 00:52 |
markers here already.
And I did that by listening to the audio
| | 00:56 |
and laying down markers in time with the
audio.
| | 00:59 |
You see there, I can see the audio levels
if I select the right arm comp.
| | 01:04 |
And double hit the L-key on the keyboard.
I can see where the facial expressions
| | 01:08 |
need to happen.
So basically, each time he hits the
| | 01:11 |
hammer, I want his head to go up and
down, like this.
| | 01:15 |
And his eyes to close.
Now, if we have a look at the nested comp
| | 01:18 |
you'll see the eyes closed is at the
beginning.
| | 01:21 |
Then they're open.
Then they're sideways.
| | 01:23 |
So, how can we select those different
facial expressions?
| | 01:27 |
Well, we can do it using time remapping.
So I'm going to select that composition and
| | 01:32 |
go to layer, time, enable time remapping.
Now time remapping allows me to move
| | 01:37 |
forwards and backwards in time.
So rather than scrubbing the time marker
| | 01:41 |
to do that I scrub a value to do that.
So baiscally, if I know I want this
| | 01:46 |
expression to be like this at this point,
I set a keyframe at that point.
| | 01:51 |
If I move to the next facial expression,
I also want them to be having that facial
| | 01:55 |
expression at that point.
Okay, here, I want them to be having the
| | 02:00 |
closed eye facial expression again.
So I'm going to scrub the timely mapping
| | 02:04 |
value till I'm back to that facial
expression.
| | 02:07 |
And then here again, so I can either
Scrub or Copy and Paste that last one.
| | 02:12 |
So I know now that his eyes are going to
be closed when the hammer hits.
| | 02:15 |
But what about in between?
Well, in between, I want him to have his
| | 02:19 |
open eyes face, which is that one.
So one way of doing it would be to move
| | 02:24 |
the time marker there, create a keyframe
at that point, and then just drag that to
| | 02:28 |
where I want his face to be regular.
And again, I want it to be like that
| | 02:33 |
before the keyframe, so I'll just Copy
and Paste it.
| | 02:36 |
Okay.
So now his eyes are closed here so I'll
| | 02:39 |
just open them by removing that key
frame.
| | 02:42 |
And now as we move through, his eyes are
open, then they go closed, then they open again.
| | 02:47 |
And now you see they're gradually closing
again.
| | 02:50 |
I don't really want that to happen.
Okay.
| | 02:52 |
So, I'm going to correct another keyframe
here.
| | 02:54 |
Now, the alternative would be to Toggle
Hold this keyframe.
| | 02:58 |
And then it will hold on that value until
it meets that next value, okay.
| | 03:02 |
And then what we can do here is just Copy
and Paste that first Toggle Held key
| | 03:07 |
frame and then, again, Toggle Hold here.
And then the last one.
| | 03:13 |
Okay, so, now we have him closing his
eyes, when the hammer hits.
| | 03:17 |
Opening them again.
Closing his eyes again, when the hammer hits.
| | 03:20 |
Opening them again.
Closing his eyes, when the hammer its.
| | 03:23 |
Opening again and exactly the same there.
Now, at this point, I want him to have a
| | 03:27 |
sudden realization that something's
happening.
| | 03:30 |
So, at two seconds, what I'm going to do
is move forwards in time till I get to
| | 03:33 |
that expression.
Now this time I don't want to toggle
| | 03:37 |
hold, I want it to be a gradual change.
So I'm going to change that, take off toggle
| | 03:42 |
hold keyframe so that gradually changes
from there to there.
| | 03:46 |
Okay.
So he starts to look around and sees that
| | 03:48 |
somethings up.
Again I want to take toggle hold off this
| | 03:51 |
one as well because then a few frames
later what I want him to do is for him to
| | 03:54 |
put his eyes back where they were at the
beginning.
| | 03:59 |
Okay, so let's Set the end of the work
area to there and let's Preview it.
| | 04:04 |
Now, you'll notice that the time that his
eyes are shut isn't really long enough
| | 04:09 |
here because we don't have time to
actually register it.
| | 04:14 |
So I'm just going to make that a little
bit longer.
| | 04:18 |
Okay, increase the time when his eyes are
shot.
| | 04:24 |
And now we've got a much better effect.
So sometimes just creating a few simple
| | 04:33 |
keyframes of Time Remapping are much
easier than actually going through the
| | 04:36 |
process of actually animating the eyes,
the eyebrows, the mouth, all separately.
| | 04:41 |
Just create the facial expressions.
Save them in the project and use Time
| | 04:46 |
Remapping to animate between the facial
expressions.
| | 04:51 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Automatically lip-syncing to audio| 00:00 |
Now, there's an easy way to lip-sync
animation using time remapping and the
| | 00:04 |
convert audio keyframe assistant.
If you want to follow along with this,
| | 00:10 |
open time remapping project from the
animating using time remapping folder,
| | 00:14 |
and open up O6A talking dog start.
Now what I have here is a couple of
| | 00:20 |
seconds of a dog talking.
(music playing) And some audio in the background.
| | 00:27 |
(music playing) Now the audio is from a friend of
mine, Jason Levines, so thank you Jason
| | 00:33 |
Levine for providing that music.
What I've done with the music is, I've
| | 00:40 |
stripped out the musical instruments from
the audio, and I've done that using a
| | 00:45 |
center channel extract tool, in an old
copy of Edition that I had. (music playing) >> I don't need to know your Business.
| | 00:53 |
>> So you'll see that the vocals go on
for a long time, but the clip is only a
| | 00:57 |
few seconds long, In fact, the animatable
bit of it is only really, how long, two seconds.
| | 01:05 |
Now, my idea was that if I move time
backwards and forwards, It kind of looks
| | 01:09 |
like the dog's talking.
So, it's just opening and closing the
| | 01:13 |
mouth by moving time backwards and
forwards, and if I do it while I'm
| | 01:17 |
talking, it kind of looks like the dog's
saying what I'm saying.
| | 01:21 |
Okay, so that was my idea.
So, I applied time remapping to the
| | 01:24 |
layer, and of course, that creates two
keyframes, a beginning keyframe and an
| | 01:28 |
end keyframe.
And it also allows me to stretch the
| | 01:32 |
layer out, for the whole duration of the
comp, which is what I did.
| | 01:36 |
Now if I pull the keyframe to the end,
we now stretch that animation to last
| | 01:39 |
(music playing) for the whole duration of the
comp.
| | 01:43 |
So we've (music playing) basically just slowed
down the animation (music playing)
| | 01:46 |
Now, what I want to do is I want to get
the audio levels, which I'm going to
| | 01:50 |
reveal by double hitting the L key, to
control the time remap value.
| | 01:55 |
So again, I'm going to go to Animation,
Keyframe assistant, Convert audio to keyframes.
| | 02:00 |
I'm going to open the keyframes by
hitting the U key on the keyboard, and
| | 02:04 |
then deleting the left channel and right
channel effects, so that I'm only using
| | 02:08 |
the both channels effect.
I'm going to Alt Click on the stopwatch
| | 02:13 |
for time remapping, and drag the Pic Quip
over to the slider value, so that we're
| | 02:17 |
taking the time remap value from the
slider value.
| | 02:21 |
And we can tell that's happening, cause
if we read the expression it's saying,
| | 02:25 |
take the time remap value of this layer
from this comp, which means this
| | 02:29 |
composition, Layer Audio Amplitude, which
is the audio amplitude layer, Affect Both
| | 02:34 |
Channels, both channels, slider value,
slider value.
| | 02:39 |
So, that's all it's doing, it's taking
the value from there.
| | 02:43 |
Now if we preview that, you'll see
something's happeningSOUND that's not
| | 02:47 |
quite right.
>> (music playing).
| | 02:50 |
To know your.
>> And that's because the range of
| | 02:52 |
values is wrong.
So what we're going to do is we're going to
| | 02:56 |
use the ease expression to take 1 range
of values, and convert them to another.
| | 03:01 |
So I'm going to say a equals that value.
So a now becomes a variable to represent
| | 03:05 |
this value, and I'm going to add a semicolon
at the end, and add a new line to the expression.
| | 03:11 |
And I'm going to type in and I'm going to type
in Ease, as in ease in and ease out.
| | 03:16 |
Then I'm going to open parentheses, and I
need to enter values now, but I don't
| | 03:20 |
know what the values are yet.
So I'm going to disable the expression and
| | 03:24 |
use my old technique of selecting the
keyframes in the graph editor, and going
| | 03:29 |
to the Info palette to find out what my
minimum and maximum values are.
| | 03:34 |
So, what I need to put in here, is 0 and
15.
| | 03:38 |
They're my minimum and maximum values,
currently.
| | 03:41 |
So, first of all, I put the letter a to
represent my current value, which at the
| | 03:46 |
moment is at 12.
Then I'm going to say what my minimum and
| | 03:50 |
maximum value in the range is, and at the
moment it's between 0 and 15.
| | 03:55 |
And then I'm going to say well, I want to
take keyframes between, say 0 and 1
| | 03:59 |
second, because remember his mouth only
opened and closed between 0 and 2 seconds.
| | 04:06 |
So I think 0 and 1 second is probably
going to be enough.
| | 04:10 |
And that will sample frames from the
first one second of the talking dog
| | 04:14 |
animation, which means that when I set a
value of 15 it will put the time remap
| | 04:18 |
value to one second to round about there.
When the values at zero, it will go back
| | 04:25 |
to zero, so in fact your just opening and
closing his mouth in time with the audio settings.
| | 04:30 |
And if we have a quick preview of that,
we should see him talking.
| | 04:34 |
>> I don't need, to know your business.
I'm not interested in you, bringing me down.
| | 04:46 |
(CROSSTALK) And we could have him singing
for as long as we want, using that technique.
| | 04:55 |
We've only have to render a few frames of
3D animation and we have him singing for ever.
| | 05:03 |
Okay, now if I open the O6B talking dog
end, I've actually switched on the
| | 05:07 |
instruments again and I've also added
some other things to the mix.
| | 05:14 |
I've done a bit of smoothing on the
expression, so I've just refined the
| | 05:18 |
expression a little bit and decided that
I only needed to take values between 7
| | 05:23 |
and 13 and go between 0 and 0.9.
Now I did that just through trial and
| | 05:29 |
error, really.
And if we have a look at the keyframes,
| | 05:32 |
I'll smooth them out by making them
continuous Bezier keyframes.
| | 05:37 |
And we'll just preview that before we
finish.
| | 05:40 |
(MUSICMUSIC)
>> I don't need, to know your,
| | 05:43 |
business, I'm not interested, in you,
bringing me down.
| | 05:48 |
Okay, now, the other thing that I've
added there, is frame blending.
| | 05:53 |
And frame blending, if you watch as we
preview it, it gives us that nice little
| | 05:59 |
blended effect, as the mouth is opening
and closing.
| | 06:05 |
(music playing) It kind of looks like a bit of a
realistic Motion blur
| | 06:10 |
(music playing)
| | 06:12 |
>> I don't need, to know your business, I'm
not, interested, in you, bringing me
| | 06:20 |
down, do I, wouldn't I, phone booth,
mean't for talking da da da da da.
| | 06:30 |
>> So, thank you for that wonderful
performance Jason Levine, and thank you
| | 06:36 |
Mr talking dog.
So, timely mapping allows you to do lots
| | 06:42 |
of clever little techniques.
So, just try practicing and playing with
| | 06:48 |
timely mapping, and I'm sure you'll come
up with some of your own unique
| | 06:54 |
techniques too.
| | 06:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Output OptionsExporting files for Flash| 00:00 |
Okay, so we're almost there, ready to
output our animation.
| | 00:05 |
Now, what I've done here is I've placed
my little character inside the TV.
| | 00:11 |
And the idea is, he's John Logie Baird,
he's making repairs to the TV.
| | 00:16 |
And his tilt wheel, which is notoriously
wobbly, is starting to retain, is about
| | 00:21 |
to fall off.
Now, this was for a kids TV series.
| | 00:25 |
And the idea was that, this would explode
and then take you through to the second
| | 00:29 |
part of the TV program.
So, what I wanted to do was to render out
| | 00:33 |
with an alpha channel and put some other
effects on in the background, an
| | 00:37 |
explosion and fire, and such like.
So, I applied some more effects to it,
| | 00:42 |
and then output it.
And I'll show you the final movie in a second.
| | 00:45 |
But what I want to do here is show you
how your choices for output basically.
| | 00:49 |
So, if you wanted to output as, for Flash
for example, you wanted to continue
| | 00:53 |
working at Flash.
Well, it's all vector-based so that's
| | 00:57 |
perfectly possible.
Now, if you want to follow along, we're
| | 01:00 |
on Output Project which is in Output
Options.
| | 01:03 |
And if you want to output this for
Flash, the best option to use is to go to
| | 01:07 |
the File menu, Export, and you can either
choose Flash Player, which will create a swift.
| | 01:13 |
But if you want to go to Flash and do an
Exchange file so that you can actually
| | 01:17 |
open this as a layered document in flash,
choose Adobe Flash Professional XFL.
| | 01:23 |
And if you do that, it will give you a
few choices.
| | 01:26 |
So, at the moment, everything that we've
done is supported for Flash.
| | 01:30 |
We haven't added any motion blur yet, so
it's vector-based files, so it should be
| | 01:34 |
vector-based when it goes into Flash.
However, if you were to add some motion
| | 01:39 |
blur, for example.
So, if I was to switch on Motion Blur,
| | 01:43 |
and that was to apply the motion blur
from the nested comps, then when you go
| | 01:46 |
to Export and Choose Flash as an output
option, it will rasterize any of the
| | 01:50 |
layers that have motion blur.
Or have effects that are not supported
| | 01:56 |
and it will rasterize to everyone, to
either a PNG sequence or FLV, and you can
| | 02:00 |
choose your format options in here to
decide on the quality.
| | 02:05 |
If you don't, then it will open in Flash
as layers, and you'll see down here that
| | 02:09 |
tells you this it export will allow you
to recreate a composition in Flash.
| | 02:15 |
Layers with supported file types and
properties will be handled natively in Flash.
| | 02:20 |
Layers with unsupported properties will
be rendered based on the settings above.
| | 02:23 |
So, I click on OK, and we'll just save
that into the Movies folder.
| | 02:28 |
And that's just going to take a little
bit of time to render, and then we can
| | 02:32 |
have a look at how that looks in Flash.
Okay, so here's the file open in Flash.
| | 02:39 |
We've just opened the XFL file in Flash,
and you can see that my layers have been
| | 02:44 |
brought into Flash so that I can add
interactivity or do anything else that I
| | 02:49 |
want to do whilst in Flash.
So, great interaction between After
| | 02:57 |
Effects and Flash.
| | 02:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making movies via the render queue| 00:01 |
Okay so, the time has come for me to
render out this movie.
| | 00:06 |
And maybe I want to render out some test
movies for a client, so that they can
| | 00:08 |
have a look at it before I finish it off.
Or maybe I want to archive some of it or
| | 00:14 |
output it for an iPod or to have on my
website.
| | 00:19 |
Well, the render queue is usually
powerful cause it allows you to output
| | 00:22 |
for multiple purposes.
So, all I need to do is go to Make Movie
| | 00:25 |
and that adds it to the Render Queue.
Now for the render settings, I'm going to
| | 00:29 |
choose best settings.
I do advise setting up various templates
| | 00:32 |
but there are lots of templates already
in here that I can use and best settings
| | 00:36 |
is fine for me for now.
But when it comes to our output module
| | 00:41 |
settings, it's more important that you
start to build up your own custom
| | 00:44 |
settings in here, and it's so easy to do
that.
| | 00:48 |
So, what we're going to do is create a
preset for PNG with alpha, so that I
| | 00:52 |
could output this as a PNG sequence with
a supported alpha channel.
| | 00:57 |
So, we'll go to our Output Module and
we'll say Make Template and we'll call it
| | 01:01 |
PNG Alpha.
Okay?
| | 01:03 |
So, go to Edit.
And in this dialog box, first of all, we
| | 01:07 |
want to choose the format.
So, I'm going to choose PNG Sequence.
| | 01:12 |
And here, I'm going to choose to output
RGB and Alpha.
| | 01:16 |
So, that's going to support the Alpha
channel as well.
| | 01:19 |
Now, you have PNG options.
So, if you want to, you can interlace
| | 01:23 |
compression, add into using the PNG.
I'm going to leave compression switched off
| | 01:29 |
and I'm going to click OK.
So that's now my PNG preset.
| | 01:33 |
I could also add a new preset.
So, let's add another one which is a
| | 01:37 |
QuickTime, but let's not add a Quicktime.
Let's add an iPod setting cuz it doesn't
| | 01:41 |
want it in there.
So, H264 is what we need for iPod.
| | 01:46 |
And we go to Format options and in the
Multiplex settings, we're going to choose iPod.
| | 01:52 |
I'm going to click OK and then I'm going to say
OK again.
| | 01:55 |
I'm going to put audio with this one as
well.
| | 01:58 |
And now I'm going to type in iPod and
that's going to be my new setting.
| | 02:03 |
Once I click okay, if I come out here,
you'll see that now PNG with Alpha and
| | 02:07 |
iPod both appear in this list.
So, I'm going to output one PNG and I can
| | 02:12 |
also choose to name it by Comp and Output
Module, which we'll put that in the title.
| | 02:19 |
Best if I create a folder, if I'm going to
be creating a sequence.
| | 02:24 |
So, let's call it, JLB sequence, and save
it in there.
| | 02:28 |
And then, if I want to add another one, I
don't need to create another movie, all I
| | 02:32 |
need to do is just go to Composition >
Add Output Module.
| | 02:36 |
And instead of creating another movie
item in the render queue, that's just
| | 02:39 |
going to render it twice.
So, it's just basically rendering the
| | 02:43 |
pixels once and formatting it twice
rather.
| | 02:46 |
So, the pixels are only rendered once,
but the movie is formatted twice.
| | 02:50 |
And this, time I'm going to choose iPod for
that one.
| | 02:53 |
Again, I'll change my Output Module to
reflect the Comp and the Output Module name.
| | 02:58 |
And all I need to do now is click Render
and it's going to render one copy with the
| | 03:01 |
alpha channel, which I can then composite
on other footage, and the other copy will
| | 03:05 |
be for the iPod.
You'll see that it renders very, very
| | 03:10 |
quickly and then formats twice.
Now, you'll notice it doesn't go through
| | 03:15 |
the whole render process twice.
It renders once and then it just
| | 03:18 |
doesSOUND two formats and we have the
joyous sound of After Effects finishing rendering.
| | 03:24 |
Now, I'm just going to open up the finished
movies to show you these.
| | 03:27 |
So, here we have my final JLB movie and
what I am going to do rather than show you
| | 03:31 |
an After Effects is just say Reveal in
Finder, which is going to allow me to open
| | 03:36 |
it up in the QuickTime player and just
play that for you.
| | 03:43 |
(sound playing)
Okay.
| | 03:44 |
And you can watch that movie yourself.
It's on the disk in the Movies folder.
| | 03:49 |
I have also got another one here, the
dancers that we worked on earlier.
| | 03:55 |
Again I am going to say reveal in finder.
Double-click it to open it up in QuickTime.
| | 03:58 |
Okay.
So, there we have our dancers dancing
| | 04:03 |
away in a lovely disco scene.
So, I hope you've had lots of tips and
| | 04:09 |
tricks that will help you with your
animation.
| | 04:13 |
Your animation may be completely
different style from my animation, but I
| | 04:16 |
hope that there's some tips and tricks in
there that will really help you make the
| | 04:19 |
most of your working with After Effects.
And all that's left for me to say is
| | 04:26 |
goodbye and happy keyframing.
| | 04:30 |
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