1. Rigging a Character Arm for AnimationCreating the arm| 00:00 | Hey folks this is Chad Perkins, bringing
you a little many training series where
| | 00:05 | we're going to learn how to create
and rig an arm in After Effects.
| | 00:09 | Specifically we're going to create the
same exact arm from this little motion
| | 00:14 | graphics sequence that I created
for my web site, Movies & Computers.
| | 00:17 | (video playing)
| | 00:26 | Rigging, which should be more well
known to those in the 3D world, is when you
| | 00:31 | take and put kind of like a bone
structure in an arm. As we know in After
| | 00:35 | Effects, there is no such structure.
| | 00:37 | But if we use parenting expression
controllers and few other bells and whistles,
| | 00:41 | we can rig this so that we can just rig
these expression controllers like this,
| | 00:48 | so that we can move arms and even open
and close the hand with just the touch of
| | 00:54 | a single slider here.
| | 00:55 | So that's what we're going to doing
in this little mini training series.
| | 00:58 | So, we're going to start in this
tutorial by making the arm. Then in the next
| | 01:03 | movie we'll look at parenting, then
we'll look at rigging with expression
| | 01:06 | controllers. Then we'll look at
picking up objects. You'll notice that as this
| | 01:10 | moves down it kind of picks up that
camera. We'll talk about how to do that.
| | 01:13 | And then also as this arm comes up
from back behind the wall then goes in
| | 01:19 | front of the wall and then goes back behind it
again, we'll talk about how to do that as well.
| | 01:24 | So, I'm going to start by creating a
shape layer, again one of my favorite parts
| | 01:28 | of After Effects. I'm going to choose
the Pen tool and I'm going to click on the
| | 01:35 | word Stroke and make sure that it's set
to None, this far-left button here, and
| | 01:40 | click OK. Then I want to click on the
word Fill--make sure you don't click on
| | 01:44 | the awatch; click on the word Fill--and
click the second button from the left,
| | 01:48 | that's Solid Color, and click OK.
| | 01:51 | And then let's click in the
red swatch there, next to Fill.
| | 01:56 | Now let's go ahead and change this to
Movies & Computers green, and that color is
| | 02:02 | 0 in the Red, 255 in the
Green and 0 in the Blue.
| | 02:06 | So all the way green. It's the
color of life, so go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:10 | And what we do is make sure
that no layers are selected.
| | 02:14 | And then we're just going to click on
these points, just click and let go, and
| | 02:18 | then go ahead and click and let go here
and here and then back to the original point.
| | 02:24 | Now you'll notice that I have these
curved edges and that is because the
| | 02:28 | RotoBezier is checked.
| | 02:30 | So I actually want to undo that and
uncheck RotoBezier, and that way I will get
| | 02:35 | straight lines, which is
what I want. There we go.
| | 02:40 | So, now what I want to do, before
continuing on, is I want to come back down to
| | 02:44 | my composition and I want to hit the
Enter key, so I could rename this layer.
| | 02:50 | I'm going to call this index 2
and I go ahead hit the Enter again.
| | 02:56 | And then what I want to do is deselect
this layer. I could do that by clicking
| | 02:59 | somewhere like a blank spot here in the
Timeline panel or I can just press F2 to
| | 03:05 | do that, but you want to
make sure they're deselected.
| | 03:07 | If you have a layer selected and you're
using the Pen tool then you're actually
| | 03:09 | going to create a mask, not a shape layer.
| | 03:12 | So, what I'm going to do here again
is click again, click, click, click. And
| | 03:18 | again we're using all straight edges
here. Movies & Computers stuff is in the
| | 03:21 | style of the great graphic artist Saul
Bass, so it's all like flat lines, rough
| | 03:26 | shapes, and so there are no curves here.
And so you're going to get what you want
| | 03:30 | by just clicking and not dragging at all.
| | 03:33 | So I'm going to rename this layer
index 1. And I'm going to go through all of
| | 03:38 | these different pieces, naming them, so
like the middle finger would be middle 1,
| | 03:43 | middle 2, ring 1, ring 2, pinky 1,
pinky 2, thumb 1, thumb 2. And then there is
| | 03:48 | the palm and there is the forearm
and then there is the upper arm here.
| | 03:53 | So again, the workflow here is to
create the shape, rename the layer, then
| | 03:59 | deselect, then make the next shape.
| | 04:02 | Now what I'm just going to do is hold
down this super-magic-turbo-speed keyboard
| | 04:06 | shortcut, so I could go a little bit
faster, so you don't have to sit there and
| | 04:10 | watch me do this in slow motion. Whoa!
| | 04:15 | Now that is going fast. It almost hurts
to go this fast, but I'll survive. Woo, so
| | 04:24 | that just about does it.
| | 04:25 | Okay, so now that we have our little
pieces if we want to, we can go ahead and select
| | 04:28 | the Select tool and then we could bring
them closer together, if we so choose, if
| | 04:33 | that's where our heart takes us.
| | 04:36 | I bring these together. This is what
I chose to do, but again, you could do
| | 04:41 | whatever you want. Again, more of
stylistic choice than anything else. But I'm
| | 04:45 | just going to tidy this up just a
little bit, even though in the real thing I
| | 04:49 | tidied it up quite a bit.
| | 04:51 | And then the next step before we go
over to parenting is we need to change the
| | 04:55 | anchor point of each of these pieces.
And with shape layers it's kind of weird
| | 05:01 | that the anchor point is always in
the center of the comp, no matter where
| | 05:05 | you draw the shape.
| | 05:06 | And so that makes it so that the anchor
point's not typically where you want it to be.
| | 05:11 | So, what I can do is get this tool up
here, the Pan Behind tool, or you could take
| | 05:17 | advantage of a great feature of After
Effects, which is just to hold the letter Y
| | 05:21 | and I can use that tool.
| | 05:23 | So what I want to do, I have the palm
currently selected, but I'm going to hold the
| | 05:27 | Y key down, drag the anchor point to
where the joint should be, where I want the
| | 05:32 | pivot point around which this will rotate to be.
| | 05:35 | So I want to do that for each of these
pieces. So I put the forearm one over
| | 05:40 | here where the elbow would be,
actually not quite where the elbow would be, a
| | 05:44 | little closer to the forearm, and do
that with the upper arm. And again, this is
| | 05:49 | necessary to do before you start parenting.
| | 05:53 | For the fingers, I'm going to put it at
the base of each component of the finger,
| | 05:59 | so where it would--almost where it
would touch the preceding piece. And again
| | 06:03 | you don't have to watch me do all of
this stuff, because it is rather boring.
| | 06:07 | But just know that you'll need to
do this for all of the fingers before
| | 06:11 | advancing on to the next step, which is parenting.
| | 06:14 | Now as far as creating the arm, we're done.
| | 06:17 | We just need to go ahead and finish
up the anchor point adjustments there.
| | 06:21 | And then we can get on to
parenting in the next movie.
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| Parenting the arm components| 00:00 | So, in the last tutorial we actually
made this arm out of shape layers, and now
| | 00:05 | we're going to talk about parenting.
| | 00:07 | Now another thing we did in the last
movie that was very important--I recommend
| | 00:10 | you check it out if you haven't already--
is we've got the anchor point in the right
| | 00:13 | spot, which is important for parenting.
| | 00:15 | This video is intended for those that
are new to the concept of parenting.
| | 00:18 | If you're know about parenting, skip this; go to the
next movie on using expression controllers.
| | 00:23 | Basically, parenting allows you to
control multiple layers with just one layer, and
| | 00:29 | the parenting relationship controls four
attributes and four attributes only, and
| | 00:33 | that is scale, position,
rotation, and anchor points.
| | 00:39 | Now the way this works is we have
these shapes here, a bunch of different
| | 00:42 | random shapes, and all they are and
all After Effect sees them as are just
| | 00:46 | rectangles and triangles, and that's it.
| | 00:49 | We want to use this as an arm. So when I
move this upper arm we want the rest of
| | 00:55 | the arm to follow suit.
| | 00:57 | Now we don't want the same power going
to other direction. So if I were to move
| | 01:00 | this thumb, for example, we don't
want the whole arm moving, just the thumb.
| | 01:03 | So, we would want this little thumb
here to be what they call a child of this
| | 01:09 | part of there thumb, so that when this
part of the thumb moves, this part of the
| | 01:13 | thumb moves as well, but this part of
the thumb can move independently. So this
| | 01:17 | will be a child of this.
| | 01:21 | So, basically what I'm going to do is
I'm going to select the child layer--you
| | 01:23 | always start with a child layer--and
then I'm going to make sure the Parent
| | 01:26 | column is showing here in the Timeline panel.
| | 01:28 | If it's not, you could right-click,
go to Columns, and then choose Parent.
| | 01:33 | I believe you can also choose Shift+F4 and
that will hide that and make it reappear.
| | 01:40 | So, I'm going to select the thumb 2
layer. I'm going to drag the pick whip for
| | 01:45 | the parent to thumb 1.
| | 01:48 | And now when I select thumb 1, hit R for
rotation, and I rotate this around, you
| | 01:53 | could see that thumb 2 is going
along for the ride, and we have this cool
| | 01:59 | little working thumb here.
| | 02:01 | Now I could also go to thumb 2 and hit
rotation, and you'll see that thumb 2
| | 02:05 | rotates independently still.
| | 02:07 | So the way that the parent-child
relationship works is that the child can still
| | 02:10 | have its autonomy--it could whatever
it wants to do--but as soon as the parent
| | 02:14 | does something with one of those for
attributes for the position, anchor point,
| | 02:17 | rotation, and scale, then
the child has to follow suit.
| | 02:21 | So, we want to do is make this thumb 1,
is what I'm calling this layer--and
| | 02:26 | actually all of the ones, so I could
actually Shift+Click these if I want to,
| | 02:31 | so all of these ones here--and I could
use the pick whip again if I want to or I
| | 02:36 | could just use the dropdown if I so
choose, and with all of this layers selected,
| | 02:40 | I could just choose palm, because I want the
palm to be that parent of all the ones.
| | 02:45 | And actually I should have chosen thumb 1--
use the pick whip and drag it to palm here.
| | 02:50 | So, select palm, hit rotation, and now when
I rotate the palm all of those ones go
| | 02:56 | along for the ride as well.
| | 02:58 | So you are starting to see
the beginnings of a hand here.
| | 03:01 | Now I want pinky 2 to be parented to
pinky 1 and ring 2 to be the child of ring
| | 03:10 | 1, middle 2 to go to middle 1,
and index 2 to go to index 1.
| | 03:18 | And finally, what we need to do is we
need to parent the palm that seems to be
| | 03:22 | the child of the forearm, and the
forearm needs to be the child of the upper arm.
| | 03:29 | And now we have the upper arm being
the great grandpa, as it were, for all of
| | 03:33 | these layers, and so on and so forth down the road.
| | 03:37 | So, now if go to upper arm and we hit R to
reveal the Rotation property and adjust
| | 03:41 | this, you can see the whole arm going
along for the ride, but then if we just go
| | 03:45 | to the forearm, hit R for Rotation, and
rotate just that, then you could see that
| | 03:50 | the upper arm doesn't move, but
everything below in the hierarchy does.
| | 03:55 | So that's all we need to do, as far as
parenting goes, for this little arm rigging.
| | 04:00 | In the movie we're going to look at
the world of expression controllers.
| | 04:03 | Now if you're new to the world of
expressions, or even if you're familiar with
| | 04:05 | expressions, you should know the
expression controllers are very easy to use.
| | 04:09 | You don't have to know any math or
any kind of programming or anything like
| | 04:11 | that to make them work.
| | 04:13 | But it's going to allow us to open and
close this hand with just the touch of a
| | 04:17 | slider, so it's a very handy thing to
know, so check this out. And we'll see
| | 04:22 | you in the next movie.
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| Using expressions to control the arm| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to use
expression controllers to make this thing work
| | 00:05 | a little bit easier.
| | 00:06 | We're going to make the arm move
and bend and then grip with just three
| | 00:13 | simple little controllers.
| | 00:14 | So the first thing we need
to do is create a null object.
| | 00:17 | We can right-click in the blank spot here in
the Timeline panel and create a New > Null Object.
| | 00:23 | I prefer using the keyboard shortcut,
Command+Option+Shift+Y, so basically all
| | 00:28 | the modifier keys, plus the letter Y;
| | 00:31 | on a PC that would be Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y.
Now, a null layer is just a nothing layer,
| | 00:37 | nothing on it whatsoever.
| | 00:38 | And expression controllers, or
expression controls as they're called here in the
| | 00:42 | Effects & Presets panel--if we just
open this up we can see these--they are
| | 00:45 | applied as effects, and as such,
they need to be applied to a layer.
| | 00:51 | And just so I know where things are, so
I don't get mixed up, I like to apply
| | 00:55 | these to a null layer. And I could go ahead
and rename this just by hitting the Enter key.
| | 01:00 | I'm going to call this CONTROLLER.
| | 01:03 | Maybe even I'll call it
ARM CONTROLLER, even better.
| | 01:07 | And what I'm going to do is I'm
going to apply an expression controller.
| | 01:11 | Now, there are a few different things.
| | 01:12 | So for example, the checkbox control,
which you can check on and off and
| | 01:18 | animate that or whatever.
| | 01:20 | I find myself using the
slider control quite a bit.
| | 01:23 | But what we're going to be doing here
is we're going to be controlling the
| | 01:25 | rotation of certain properties--the
fingers, the arms--and so we want something
| | 01:31 | that's the most like rotation,
which is the angle control.
| | 01:34 | So I'm going to call this Angle Control.
And again, I'm going to hit the Enter
| | 01:37 | key and I'm going to rename this GRIP CONTROL.
| | 01:42 | Now, because we've already set up the
parenting, if I click on this layer right
| | 01:46 | here, which is pinky 1, hit R for rotation,
| | 01:49 | if I rotate this, then the
pinky, the entire pinky rotates.
| | 01:54 | So what I want to do is I want to link
up all of the fingers to be controlled by
| | 02:02 | this controller here, by this GRIP CONTROL.
| | 02:05 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
create a simple expression. And this is
| | 02:09 | so, so, so easy, so don't be
frightened if you're intimidated by expressions.
| | 02:14 | I'm going to open up ARM CONTROLLER here
in the Timeline panel, open up Effects,
| | 02:18 | open up GRIP CONTROL, Angle.
| | 02:20 | I want to be able to see this property.
| | 02:22 | So that way when I go here to, let's say
for example, pinky 2, and I press R for
| | 02:26 | eotation, and then I Option+Click, or
on the PC I'd Alt+Click that stopwatch to
| | 02:31 | create an expression--don't type
anything here, don't touch anything, just grab
| | 02:35 | this pick whip, and drag this to Angle.
And then click anywhere on these blank
| | 02:40 | areas here to go ahead
and accept the expression.
| | 02:44 | Now, what you want to do is do
this for all of these layers here.
| | 02:47 | So Option+Click, drag the pick
whip to Angle, and click to deselect.
| | 02:53 | And I'm going to do that really quick
here, and we'll speed through, through the
| | 02:56 | magic of editing so you don't have to
sit here all bored while I'm doing this.
| | 03:00 | So zip through it. Okay.
| | 03:08 | With all of that done, we go back up
to our GRIP CONTROL here, and now when
| | 03:13 | I move the angle, I'm basically going to be
rotating all of these fingers, which does this.
| | 03:20 | Pretty cool!
| | 03:24 | Now, what I want to do is actually make
this grip though, because these fingers
| | 03:27 | are kind of like swaying in the breeze
a little bit, and we're losing the magic
| | 03:31 | of the opposable thumb.
| | 03:32 | That's what makes it so
great to be a human being.
| | 03:35 | And so what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go over to thumb 1, down here to this
| | 03:40 | expression. I'm going to modify it a little bit.
| | 03:42 | I'm just going to click at the end, put
my cursor at the end of the expression.
| | 03:46 | And what I want this to do is move in
the opposite direction as the other one.
| | 03:50 | So as we move that angle controller, I
want these things, these fingers, to go
| | 03:56 | in, and I want this one to go in as
well and not go off in the other direction.
| | 04:00 | So I'm just going to multiply this, which
I'm going to put the asterisk, times -1.
| | 04:06 | And so basically as these numbers go to
a negative, like -7, this will be a positive 7.
| | 04:13 | So when I go to Angle and I move
this, look at that. That's great!
| | 04:20 | And actually, I realized I need
to do that to thumb 2 as well.
| | 04:24 | So let's go ahead and select the thumb
2 layer. I'm going to type E two times
| | 04:29 | fast to open up the expression, and
we will multiply this times -1 as well.
| | 04:36 | Now, as I play with this, this looks
really cool, but it does kind of look like
| | 04:42 | the whole arm is--or the whole hand--
is gripping something. The whole hand is
| | 04:47 | gripping, and I actually want it
to be more of like a pinch motion.
| | 04:49 | Because what's going to happen is this
arm is going to come down and it's going
| | 04:53 | to pinch that little movie camera to
pick it up. So I don't want the whole arm
| | 05:00 | to grip necessarily, even though that
looks pretty freaking sweet actually.
| | 05:04 | So what I'm going to do is I'm
going to change the value on these
| | 05:08 | different layers here.
| | 05:10 | So for example, let's go down to index
1, press EE to reveal its expression.
| | 05:16 | If I play with this a little bit--
let's say, for example, I type *1.5, so
| | 05:23 | that will make that move a little bit
differently here, so it will basically
| | 05:28 | move a little faster.
| | 05:30 | And what I might want to do is also
subtract, let's say for example, subtract 3,
| | 05:36 | so it's not moving quite as much.
| | 05:39 | And I could play around with
the rotation of all of these.
| | 05:44 | It kind of looks like he is going to a
little tea party with his pinky extended
| | 05:47 | a little bit like that.
| | 05:48 | So we might want to fiddle
around with that on each layer.
| | 05:51 | I don't want to take the
time to do that now though.
| | 05:53 | Really what we need to do
is go down to the fingertips.
| | 05:56 | So for example, the index 2 layer here,
I want to go down and fiddle with that.
| | 06:01 | And let's say that this is just -3,
so basically it's this value minus 3.
| | 06:10 | And if I do that to all of the points
here--so I could go here, that's * -1 and
| | 06:18 | then just -3 there--it's
not going to move as much.
| | 06:24 | And actually with the thumb, I think
because it's a negative value, it went the
| | 06:27 | opposite way, so I need to go to
thumb 2 and then do +3. There we go!
| | 06:34 | And then same thing with these other
points here. I want these to come in a
| | 06:37 | little bit without having to close the
hand, and that's going to make things
| | 06:43 | look a little better here.
| | 06:44 | So if we go to Angle and we move that
here, now we have a little bit more of a
| | 06:50 | pinch because these fingers don't
close up quite as much, so a dainty little
| | 06:56 | pinch there instead of gripping the entire hand.
| | 06:59 | Now, what I could do, I don't have to
do this, but what I could do to make
| | 07:02 | things a little bit easier, add a
couple of more angle control effects. Snd I
| | 07:08 | can control the other parts
of the arm with these as well.
| | 07:10 | So I'm going to close up these other
layers. And actually I could do that by
| | 07:14 | clicking one, Shift+Clicking the bottom,
and pressing Shift+Tilde to close those up.
| | 07:20 | And then what I want to do is--I'm not
going to worry about the palm actually,
| | 07:24 | just the upper arm and the forearm.
| | 07:26 | So I'm going to go to this angle
control and I'm going to press Return or
| | 07:30 | Enter to rename this.
| | 07:32 | I'm going to call this ELBOW CONTROL, and
then I'll call this next one ARM CONTROL.
| | 07:40 | And I will select the forearm layer.
I don't know why I'm talking like that for.
| | 07:45 | I'm going to press Option+Click to
create an expression there, drag the pick
| | 07:51 | whip to the angle of the ELBOW CONTROL
on the forearm layer, and do the same
| | 07:57 | thing for the upper arm, except do
the ARM CONTROL. Option+Click your
| | 08:01 | expression, drag a pick whip to Angle.
| | 08:04 | And now, the magic here is that
I've got tons of layers with tons of
| | 08:08 | properties, and it's all confusing, but
I could control it all with this simple
| | 08:13 | layer, just with this expression controller.
| | 08:15 | So I could raise the arm, I could bend
the elbow, and I could make the grip.
| | 08:21 | And I realize that this is a lot of
extra work, that you could have easily
| | 08:24 | just set keyframes and animated those
principles here, but this is so much more flexible.
| | 08:30 | If you wanted to change things later,
it's so easy just to go in there and open
| | 08:35 | up the hand, rather than going to each
one of these fingers and changing its
| | 08:38 | rotation value and then the elbow.
| | 08:40 | So if your client said, "Oh, actually I
want the hand to come down later, or move
| | 08:43 | more like this, or bend at the elbow
more," it's just so much easier once you
| | 08:48 | have a rigged set up like this. Teally
easy, thanks to expression controllers.
| | 08:53 | And as we see in the next move, when
we talk about picking up objects, it's
| | 08:56 | going to be so much easier, more
flexible down the road as well to be able to
| | 09:01 | do things that way.
| | 09:02 | So this is all about efficiency and
doing things the best way. And also kind of,
| | 09:06 | isn't this the funnest thing in the
world to be able to, like, drag this little
| | 09:09 | slider and have this little monster hand,
which is really just a bunch of shape
| | 09:13 | layers, just a bunch of like triangles
and rectangles? But we've kind of brought
| | 09:16 | it to life with this one little slider here.
| | 09:18 | Love it!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Picking up objects with the arm| 00:00 | So we've created this arm
and we've set up the rigging.
| | 00:04 | Now we are going to look at
how to make it pick up an object.
| | 00:08 | And I wanted to really focus on just
that, so I've already gone ahead and
| | 00:13 | animated this arm for you.
| | 00:15 | So this arm comes down, grabs the
camera, and we need to pick it up.
| | 00:19 | Well, it could just be a matter
of parenting, and actually, it is.
| | 00:23 | But if we take the camera in a Tripod
layer and parent it to, let's say the
| | 00:27 | palm of this hand, which is what we're going to
be doing, then it would follow it the entire way.
| | 00:32 | So right here it would be connected to the palm.
| | 00:34 | So we need it to not to be connected to
the palm and then be connected to the palm.
| | 00:38 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to find one of the frames where it's
| | 00:42 | holding. That should work.
| | 00:44 | And I'm going to select the regular
camera and regular tripod layers. I'm going
| | 00:48 | to hold the Shift to select both of
those. Then I'm going to press Option+Right Bracket to
| | 00:56 | trim these layers where these layers end.
| | 01:00 | So basically these are un-parented--
the regular camera and the regular tripod--
| | 01:04 | and then what we're going to do is we're
going to make duplicates of those layers
| | 01:07 | that actually are parented and
that begin on the next frame.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to press Command+D--
that would be Ctrl+D on the PC--to
| | 01:15 | duplicate these layers.
| | 01:17 | And let's rename them. The regular
tripod 2 I'm going to rename PARENTED. Put
| | 01:22 | that in all caps so I don't lose my place
there and I can spot that a little bit easier.
| | 01:28 | Parented Tripod and Parented Camera,
and then I am going to use the Command key
| | 01:34 | to select both of those,
or the Ctrl key on the PC.
| | 01:37 | Press the page down key to advance one frame,
and then I'm going to press just the Left Bracket
| | 01:49 | key, and that will make the endpoint of
those layers jump to my current time indicator.
| | 01:49 | So the regular layers will go and then the
parented layers will begin at that point.
| | 01:55 | Now what I want to do--I could just
parent these to the palm, but I prefer to do
| | 01:59 | this with a null object, and then parent
these two layers to the null object and
| | 02:04 | then parent the null to the palm.
| | 02:06 | So I'm going to create a null object,
as we talked about in the last movie, by
| | 02:09 | pressing Command+Option+Shift+Y;
that's Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y on the PC. And I'll
| | 02:15 | lower this and I'll call it Camera Controller.
| | 02:21 | As you can tell, I like to use all caps.
I like when my layers scream at me for
| | 02:24 | some reason apparently, but whatever.
| | 02:26 | So press the Command key, select both
of these layers, parent both of them
| | 02:30 | to the camera controller, and then
we're going to parent the camera
| | 02:35 | controller to the Palm layer.
| | 02:39 | So basically, these first two layers,
when the arm is coming in, are parented to
| | 02:44 | nothing--they're just regular old layers--and
then once the hand grips the camera, then
| | 02:51 | these parented layers take over and
then as we move in time, hopefully if
| | 02:55 | everything works out, bada bing!
| | 02:57 | The camera is parented to that hand.
| | 03:01 | Now you'll also see, if we go back up
here to our expression controllers and we
| | 03:06 | move that around here, the elbow joint,
that the camera is still parented to the
| | 03:10 | hand no matter what we do. So we've
create a really flexible system here.
| | 03:14 | So in the next movie, we'll look at how
to get the arm in front of, and behind, the wall.
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| Working with obscuring objects| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to solve the
dilemma of getting this arm to come out
| | 00:04 | from behind the wall, over the wall,
and then go back behind it again.
| | 00:09 | And this is a little bit more tricky
than it seems because of a number of things.
| | 00:14 | And oftentimes when you work in the
real world, you have the little challenges
| | 00:17 | like this that you have to overcome that
| | 00:19 | you can't really prepare for, so here's
what I did, just for the sake of completion.
| | 00:24 | Basically what I need is I need
everything to be behind the wall up until this
| | 00:30 | point. Up until the hand is above
the wall and it's cleared here, I need
| | 00:34 | everything to be behind the wall.
| | 00:37 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to select all these layers. Now you
| | 00:41 | might think well, why don't you just
precompose it and then you can just trim
| | 00:44 | the precomposed layer? And that's my
first instinct as well, but here's the problem.
| | 00:52 | We have this expression controller
that controls many of these layers, and so
| | 00:57 | that would have to be part of the
precomposed, the precomposition as well.
| | 01:03 | And we also have to have this wall
and this upper arm because these are
| | 01:08 | connected and need to stay connected
because this upper arm needs to stay behind
| | 01:12 | the wall, and then we also have a
forearm that--it goes in front of the wall.
| | 01:16 | So all of these things we have to see
in our composition anyway, so we really
| | 01:20 | don't safe too much by
precomposing in this instance.
| | 01:22 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
click the first layer, that's the Pinky
| | 01:26 | 2, Shift+click the forearm
layer so they're all connected here.
| | 01:30 | And then what I'm going to do is press
Command+D or Ctrl+D to duplicate those.
| | 01:35 | That's a lot, I realize.
| | 01:36 | And I'm going to hit the Page Down key to
advance one frame, and I'm going to press Option+Left Bracket
| | 01:44 | to chop all of the layers right there. It then
trims them so the animation stays the same from the previous layers.
| | 01:52 | And then just select the ones, the original layers.
So I'm going to Command+click all the layers with one and two in them.
| | 01:58 | And the duplicates have three and four,
so it's a little bit easier. If you want to do it like that,
| | 02:03 | you could also do it visually over here,
but I already start doing this way, so why stop now?
| | 02:09 | I'm going to hit Page Up to back up one frame
and I'm going to press Option+Right Bracket to trim that.
| | 02:15 | Again, we don't want just push the
Left Bracket or the Right Bracket
| | 02:18 | without the Option key or the Alt key
on the PC, because just pressing the Left
| | 02:23 | Bracket or Right Bracket key
by itself will actually move the layer.
| | 02:26 | We don't want to move it; we just want to trim it.
| | 02:27 | So with these little stubs selected, I'm
going to drag these below the precomp wall.
| | 02:34 | So now what we have is we have the arm
and things going--and actually, let me
| | 02:40 | press F2 to deselect that.
| | 02:42 | We have the arm coming up from behind
the wall and then we do a quick presto-
| | 02:47 | change-o behind the scenes, and now we
quickly switch to the other layers, and now
| | 02:53 | the arm could go in front of the wall.
| | 02:55 | So there it goes. It come from behind
the wall and then once it goes over,
| | 02:59 | then it'll go in front.
| | 03:02 | Now we have to do the same thing to the
back side of this, because we have to--and
| | 03:07 | we have to do the same thing with
the camera and the tripod as well--
| | 03:09 | we have to split that up so
everything can go back behind the wall.
| | 03:15 | Now one of the things I did in the
final version is that I created a mask.
| | 03:20 | If we go over to the final version here,
I created a mask so that way when the
| | 03:27 | upper arm goes back down, it's masked
off, and it looks like it's kind of just
| | 03:33 | sinking into nothingness.
| | 03:35 | So now that we're done, let's go ahead and
play this back and see this arm in action.
| | 03:39 | (video playing)
| | 03:48 | Well that is the tutorial series.
| | 03:50 | I thank you so much for watching this.
| | 03:52 | I hope that you've learned a little
bit about how to, first of all, play with
| | 03:55 | shape layers. That's kind of fun.
| | 03:57 | And then just with these simple shapes in
After Effects, without using any extra file,
| | 04:01 | we're able to create this arm and rig
it up so it's live and controllable--
| | 04:06 | simple to control with these expression
controls--and then also make this arm
| | 04:10 | do some cool tricks.
| | 04:11 | And again, I'm Chad Perkins.
Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see
| | 04:15 | you next time.
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