IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi, my name is Richard Harrington, and today
I'm going to share with you some of my favorite
| | 00:08 | techniques for designing
motion graphics that use photos.
| | 00:11 | Now, what I'm going to show you is
built upon a lot of years of practical use.
| | 00:15 | I was a History Minor in college and a
Journalism Major, and so I've always been enthralled by
| | 00:20 | photo journalism and telling stories.
| | 00:22 | I've also worked on a lot of documentaries
through the years, and I really enjoy taking
| | 00:26 | pictures and bringing history to life.
| | 00:29 | To do this, we're going to use photos
along with Photoshop and After Effects to layer
| | 00:33 | those photos, split them into 3D space,
and then move the camera through virtually.
| | 00:38 | There are a lot of cool techniques, and this
is definitely an advanced course that builds
| | 00:43 | upon a lot of other skills.
| | 00:44 | However, you're going to be able to jump in
as long as you've got a base understanding
| | 00:48 | of Photoshop and After Effects and
really get some powerful results.
| | 00:52 | We've got some real-world projects to show
you, as well as some techniques that are going
| | 00:56 | to be built upon different types of photos,
so there is lot to explore. Let's begin.
| | 01:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| What you should know before watching this course| 00:00 | If you've never opened up Photoshop or After Effects,
this probably isn't the best class to start with.
| | 00:06 | Fortunately, there's a bunch of great
training here on lynda.com that you can explore.
| | 00:10 | Be sure to try out the Essential Training
titles for both After Effects and Photoshop
| | 00:15 | before watching this course.
| | 00:16 | We also have a Documentary Photo Techniques
course using Photoshop and After Effects that
| | 00:20 | I produced that you can take
a look at here online as well.
| | 00:24 | Now we will take a lot of fundamental skills
and build them up, but again, if you've never
| | 00:29 | launched Photoshop or After Effects, don't
start here. We're going to go fast, and we're
| | 00:33 | going to move through a lot
of different features quickly.
| | 00:36 | I promise it's clear and understandable, but you're
going to want to come in with the foundation first.
| | 00:41 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If your lynda.com membership includes it,
we do have some hands-on lesson files that
| | 00:05 | you could download and play with.
| | 00:07 | Now I'm not able to include every single file in the
exercises, that's because of some copyright concerns.
| | 00:13 | Some of the projects we're going to be
working with come from real commercial productions,
| | 00:16 | so I can't give you all of the files,
plus some of them are really big.
| | 00:21 | But where possible, you'll find hands-on
exercise files, as well as some additional files that
| | 00:26 | you could play with on your own.
| | 00:28 | Hopefully, these will
bring the techniques to life.
| | 00:30 | If you don't have access to the lesson files,
just find some of your own photos and potentially
| | 00:35 | some footage to use as well, and you
could jump in and practice that way.
| | 00:40 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Introducing Motion Control 3DThe technique explained| 00:00 | What exactly is Motion Control 3D?
| | 00:03 | Well, it's a collection of techniques that
are all interrelated and have a common goal
| | 00:08 | in mind, and that is to step inside a
photo and bring it alive in three dimensions.
| | 00:14 | So, the process is fairly linear to begin with.
| | 00:18 | You're going to select images that have
adequate resolution as well as a sense of perspective
| | 00:23 | or action that you're going to bring to life.
| | 00:26 | You'll bring those images
into Photoshop and clean them up.
| | 00:29 | Now we're not to going to explore these cleanup
techniques too much here, but we do have several
| | 00:33 | classes available on lynda.com that
explore photo restoration techniques.
| | 00:39 | Once you've done that, you will start to
make accurate selections, mask layers and split
| | 00:44 | the photo up into multiple pieces.
| | 00:47 | You are really going to need at least two
layers, but preferably three or four.
| | 00:51 | This will create a sense of parallax as
you expand the layers in 3D space.
| | 00:56 | You'll bring this on into After Effects,
and once there, utilize 3D position to move the
| | 01:01 | layers across the Z axis. Once you've done this, a
camera can be added and then moved to the scene.
| | 01:09 | Most of the animation is caused by the
camera movement itself, and because the layers are
| | 01:13 | spread at different distances, the parallax effect
works well to create a sense of perspective and depth.
| | 01:20 | Once you've done that, you can go ahead and
enhance the animation using things like lights
| | 01:24 | or particles, shallow focus, Depth of Field.
There are lots of cool things that you can
| | 01:29 | do to really make it feel more cinematic.
| | 01:33 | When done, you render and
integrate into your final project.
| | 01:36 | So, we're going to explore all these
techniques through the subsequent lessons, and I invite
| | 01:41 | you to join us now as we jump in.
| | 01:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| How to use Motion Control 3D in your projects| 00:00 | The use of Motion Control 3D can be really
helpful for lots of different types of projects.
| | 00:06 | I'm particularly fond of documentaries; however,
you can adapt these techniques for commercials,
| | 00:10 | virtual sets, or just general motion graphics.
| | 00:15 | Today we're going to look at a lot of photos
that come from different documentaries, however,
| | 00:19 | one in particular is going to be spot lit.
| | 00:21 | We were taking a look at a documentary
called Bedford: The Town They Left Behind.
| | 00:26 | This is a town in Virginia that was heavily
affected by World War II, and the producers
| | 00:31 | of the film hired us to do
some real-world production.
| | 00:34 | We are going to share a few of the
pictures from this film, as well as some others.
| | 00:39 | Let's take a look at a couple of clips
from the movie and get some ideas on how these
| | 00:43 | techniques can be employed.
| | 00:46 | What you're seeing here is the use of 3D space,
and we're trying to bring the character to
| | 00:51 | life by taking a look at some of her snapshots.
| | 00:57 | What starts as a simple photo on the page
starts to get extruded into three dimensions,
| | 01:03 | and we'll move into some of these individual
photos and start to explore them in greater depth.
| | 01:11 | Notice the use of depth there, and as the
camera moves through, because things are at
| | 01:16 | different layers, you get a sense of perspective.
| | 01:20 | Here is a more dramatic scene using
vanishing point, and you get a sense of perspective.
| | 01:25 | The floor actually feels like
there's some real depth to it.
| | 01:32 | Layering multiple images and animating a
camera across is much more interesting than simple
| | 01:37 | pans and zooms on letters.
| | 01:40 | You can also enhance your animations using
particles, in this case Particular from Trapcode.
| | 01:48 | The sense of perspective, however, and controlled focus
really guides the viewer through the selected image.
| | 01:54 | That's just a few ideas, but we'll take a look
through several more throughout the rest of the lessons.
| | 01:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Choosing Photos for Motion Control 3DImage selection guidelines| 00:00 | What kind of photos are going
to work well for Motion Control?
| | 00:04 | This is incredibly subjective.
| | 00:06 | In some cases, it's going to be the pictures that
your client gives you and says please make these move.
| | 00:12 | However, you're probably being hired because
of your good judgment and artistic sensibilities.
| | 00:16 | So, if given a choice, you're
going to want to have some input.
| | 00:20 | Let's take a look at two pictures and talk about
some of the pros and cons of using these images.
| | 00:25 | I am in Adobe Bridge here, and this is a nice
way to browse photos. You notice you get all
| | 00:29 | the technical specs here on the right, and
we'll talk about resolution in our next lesson.
| | 00:33 | I'm just going to take this
image and View it Full Screen.
| | 00:38 | I've got a nice Slideshow here.
| | 00:40 | Notice I can move between the images, or if I
just want to see a single image, the spacebar
| | 00:44 | will open it up, and
that's nice, it's very quick.
| | 00:48 | This image has a lot of good things
about it. We have a sense of perspective.
| | 00:53 | What's nice here is that because we have an
angle, we could take advantage of vanishing
| | 00:58 | point exchange later to create a
sense of movement around this house.
| | 01:03 | Unfortunately, with this picture a lot of
the objects are cut off. The car in the right
| | 01:08 | here is chopped, so I'd likely need to
remove it or replace it with more of a vehicle.
| | 01:13 | There is also not a lot of head room in the
photo, so if I want to move down to this house,
| | 01:18 | we're going to have to replace the
sky and fill in additional details.
| | 01:23 | On the left here, it gets
pretty tight on this person.
| | 01:26 | Remember, with video you often need to
compensate for action safe and title safe, so you tend
| | 01:31 | to pad the edges a bit,
leaving room on the outside frame.
| | 01:35 | This person is going to get smushed right
up to the edge unless we extend the left edge
| | 01:40 | here through cloning or scene replacement.
Let's take a look at the next photo.
| | 01:45 | Now this image has a lot of action in it, which
is good. We definitely have the sense of motion
| | 01:51 | and which direction we're
going to tell the story.
| | 01:54 | I envision that the camera pans down
from the sky here into the walking soldiers.
| | 02:00 | What's nice is we have a definite sense of
movement, and the camera can match that going
| | 02:05 | ahead and panning across the action here to
give you a sense of motion and perspective.
| | 02:12 | Up front here, we have some stray action from
the previous scene, and because that's not
| | 02:16 | going to resolve, I'd likely
crop the image or clone them out.
| | 02:21 | There are some flaws in this picture, here is
soft focus, and that's indicative of the timeframe.
| | 02:26 | So, make sure you give some thought as
to where you're going to put your focus.
| | 02:31 | With Bridge you can click and zoom to 100%,
and this make it very easy to pan around the
| | 02:36 | image and view the actual
pixels, so you can evaluate.
| | 02:41 | If dealing with historical photos, there is
little guarantee that they're going to be tack sharp.
| | 02:45 | In fact there's pretty much
a guarantee that they won't.
| | 02:49 | But even within a picture like this, some parts
have better focus than others, and we'll have
| | 02:53 | to keep that in mind as we
choose to frame the shot.
| | 02:57 | So, evaluate the sources you have.
| | 03:00 | To summarize, I always
look for a sense of motion.
| | 03:03 | This is going to help me tell what way the
camera is going to move through the scene.
| | 03:07 | Ideally, there's also some perspective. It
might be an angle or just a sense of multiple
| | 03:13 | layers stacked with foreground,
mid-ground, and background.
| | 03:17 | You're going to need that stacking if you
really want to create a sense of movement,
| | 03:21 | and you need that depth, hence Motion Control 3D.
| | 03:25 | If you don't have any depth, that it's just
simple pan and scan like a traditional
| | 03:29 | Ken Burns style effect--and we've covered that in
an earlier video here on lynda.com:
| | 03:36 | Documentary Techniques with Photoshop and After
Effects, and we go well into it there.
| | 03:39 | So take a look.
| | 03:41 | For 3D Motion Control,
perspective and depth are key.
| | 03:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Resolution guidelines| 00:00 | People get confused when it
comes to the topic of resolution.
| | 00:03 | They will throw out the term DPI.
| | 00:06 | DPI is Dots Per Inch, and it doesn't
really mean much if you're not printing.
| | 00:11 | With Photoshop you're really looking at
pixels per inch, but again, what do you need?
| | 00:16 | Well, it all comes down to
what you have to deliver.
| | 00:19 | So, if you're producing video for the web,
that's typically a lower resolution than say
| | 00:23 | HD or digital cinema.
| | 00:26 | What you're looking at is the total pixel
count, and you can view that information right
| | 00:30 | inside of Bridge or Photoshop.
| | 00:33 | This particular image is about 6000x4800
pixels tall, and if I look at this next one,
| | 00:39 | you see it's about half the
size at 3200 pixels by 2100 pixels.
| | 00:45 | Again, what resolution do you need?
Well, it depends upon your delivery format.
| | 00:50 | If I was going to be delivering this image
at 1920x1080, I only have about 50% more
| | 00:57 | resolution than I need.
| | 00:59 | That means I could zoom the image
slightly and pull out without any pixelization.
| | 01:05 | On the other hand, this first
image is much higher resolution.
| | 01:09 | If I need 2000 pixels to fill the screen
across, I've got almost 6000. That's going to allow
| | 01:15 | me quite a bit of zooming.
| | 01:17 | So, if the image were full screen here,
and you zoomed into 100%, you'd notice that
| | 01:22 | you have the ability to really see the action.
| | 01:26 | Now we're recording this screen at 1280x720, and
that's another flavor of HD that's very popular.
| | 01:34 | Notice that this image is
almost five times higher resolution.
| | 01:38 | This means we could start on a framing like this,
which is 100% magnification, and pan across this group.
| | 01:46 | Now the preview quality is just dropping
temporarily during the pan, but that gives you an idea
| | 01:50 | of how much room there is. Or maybe we start
on this group of children, and we zoom out
| | 01:57 | to see more of the photo.
| | 01:58 | So, hopefully that gives you
an idea of how resolution works.
| | 02:02 | What I typically say is this: take the
delivery resolution that you're planning on making,
| | 02:08 | for example, 1280x720, and
multiply it by a zoom factor.
| | 02:14 | Typically, you're going to deal with zooms
with a factor of two to five times, depending
| | 02:19 | upon how close you want to crop.
| | 02:22 | This will give you a good sense
of how many total pixels you need.
| | 02:26 | If you're scanning the photos, you can set
the target resolution in the scanner itself.
| | 02:31 | If you're dealing with digital files, make sure you
try to get the proper resolution from the client.
| | 02:37 | These days with modern digital cameras, it's
possible to get many more pixels than you actually need.
| | 02:43 | If you're dealing with high resolution, say
40 megapixel digital images from a DSLR,
| | 02:48 | you might actually need to downsample those
before you bring them into After Effects.
| | 02:53 | Having too few pixels is a
problem, but so is having too many.
| | 02:57 | Always think about the delivery format that you need
to make and the level of zoom you need to achieve.
| | 03:02 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Planning the MoveIdentifying planes| 00:00 | One of the first things you're going to
need to accomplish when you open up an image is
| | 00:04 | determine the number of planes that exist.
| | 00:06 | This could be thought of as foreground, mid-ground,
and background or the number of subjects that
| | 00:13 | you're going to isolate.
| | 00:14 | Each plane is going to have a different depth along
the Z axis, and this creates the sense of perspective.
| | 00:21 | For example, in this
image here, I see three planes.
| | 00:26 | We have our statue, and a few feet behind it are
the pillars, several feet behind that is the forest.
| | 00:34 | Now, in this case, the different
planes also have different lighting.
| | 00:40 | The statue could be casting a shadow onto
the pillar but isn't likely casting a shadow
| | 00:46 | onto the trees, nor do the pillars cast
shadows onto the trees because they're so far way.
| | 00:52 | So we have to give it some thought.
| | 00:55 | Let's take a look at one more
example, and we have the same issue here.
| | 01:00 | In this case, our foreground
is the shrubbery in the front.
| | 01:04 | This creates a sense of perspective where we can have
the fronds of the plants overlapping with our subject.
| | 01:11 | We also have our man and woman, and they
are relatively close to the brick wall.
| | 01:17 | So any movement here is going to be very subtle,
because there's not a lot of depth between them.
| | 01:22 | Once you've identified the planes, it's a
good idea to think about mapping this out
| | 01:27 | into an actual diagram to help you
understand the relationship between Z space.
| | 01:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a staging diagram| 00:00 | When you first get started, you're
going to want to be very deliberate.
| | 00:04 | Now this could be because you have to
build a relationship with the producer, or you
| | 00:08 | might just be new to thinking in three dimensions,
and you want to map out your plans on paper.
| | 00:14 | I'm a big fan of creating a staging diagram.
| | 00:17 | In the photo you see here, we have our
foreground, our subject, and our background.
| | 00:23 | This is going to help
dictate what we're going to see.
| | 00:26 | Now looking at the photo in a flattened
view, it's difficult to understand the relative
| | 00:31 | distance between the subjects, so I went a step
further and identified how things are going to fall.
| | 00:38 | What you see here is a simple staging diagram,
identifying where the camera is going to be
| | 00:44 | placed as well as the relationship in distance.
| | 00:48 | I've decided to set the camera slightly off
axis here, and that's going to help emphasize
| | 00:53 | the sense of depth and perspective.
| | 00:56 | The grass and our subject are pretty close
together because they are standing in the grass.
| | 01:00 | However, I'm still going to split them
slightly apart so there is a small sense of depth.
| | 01:06 | I've placed those further forward from the
background to give it a sense of perspective.
| | 01:11 | Now the yellow here is indicating the field
of view, and I'm going to set the focus point
| | 01:16 | right here on the subject.
| | 01:18 | As you adjust the Depth of Field controls in
the camera, you can control what stays in focus.
| | 01:23 | In fact, you can even pull a Rack focus if
you'd like to animate between one subject and another.
| | 01:31 | Making a diagram like this is a good idea
because it helps you firm up your thought
| | 01:34 | process before you waste time animating.
You want to plan before you start to implement.
| | 01:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding parallax| 00:00 | We're going to jump ahead right
now to a nearly completed project.
| | 00:04 | Now we're going to break all these
techniques down in greater depth later, but I'd like
| | 00:08 | you to see how that planning
document becomes a real animation.
| | 00:13 | In this case, I've brought in the three layers
from our file, and if you look at this, you'll
| | 00:18 | see there's the Brick, the Couple,
and the trees or the Bush in front.
| | 00:23 | There they all are, the background, our
subject, and the plants in the foreground.
| | 00:32 | Here is the After Effects camera, and notice
that as I drag through, the camera has been
| | 00:38 | animated, so it's moving up from the ground,
revealing our subject, and because the brick
| | 00:46 | is further away, you get a
different rate of movement for those.
| | 00:51 | It really feels like there's some depth.
| | 00:55 | Enhancing that depth is the fact that we've
actually added some lights, so we have a spotlight
| | 01:00 | pointed at our subjects, creating a shadow on
the back wall, and that's definitely helping.
| | 01:06 | This is just a low resolution, simple file
from a standard definition production here,
| | 01:11 | but it's one that you can continue to play with
on your own to wrap your head around the technique.
| | 01:17 | Because we've got some distance here, as we animate the
camera you'll notice that we can get some flexibility.
| | 01:25 | So let's just go ahead here and move the
camera through a bit, and you see that you get that
| | 01:30 | sense of movement where the objects really
close to the camera are moving at a different
| | 01:36 | rate than the wall that's further away.
| | 01:39 | I'll just choose Undo to reset that,
and let's preview that in real time.
| | 01:48 | There is your sense of parallax, and now we're
going to explore all the techniques that will
| | 01:52 | get you to a completed animation.
| | 01:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Layering the ImageThe Quick Selection tool| 00:00 | Let's take a quick look at some of the most
essential techniques you'll use inside Adobe
| | 00:04 | Photoshop in order to produce
layered files for animation.
| | 00:09 | This particular image is about ready to go,
but I'm going to do a little bit of cleanup
| | 00:12 | to remove some of the problems.
| | 00:14 | Let's start by going ahead
and making a basic selection.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to split this into three major pieces, our
subjects upfront, the tent, and then the background layer.
| | 00:27 | I'll start with the Quick Selection tool.
| | 00:30 | This allows me to click on the image and start to
detect edges, and it's much better than the Magic Wand.
| | 00:37 | I'll go through and attempt to
find most of the subject here.
| | 00:45 | I can click and drag or just
single click to pick up an area.
| | 00:51 | Now this particular image lacks some contrast
in the difference there with the sky, so it's
| | 00:56 | not going to be perfect.
| | 00:58 | With smaller clicks I could
pick up smaller areas. There we go.
| | 01:04 | You see by a little bit of Alt-clicking or
Option-clicking there you could subtract things
| | 01:08 | you don't need, and you essentially
just click to build the ultimate selection.
| | 01:14 | Now this tool is doing really well considering
there is not that much color or contrast difference
| | 01:19 | between our subjects, and
that's made a decent first selection.
| | 01:24 | The Quick Selection tool works very well to go through
and build a fast selection without a lot of effort.
| | 01:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Quick Mask mode| 00:00 | Once we've made a basic selection, we can
refine it a bit using the Quick Mask mode.
| | 00:05 | This takes the selection and turns it into
a visible mask that can be touched up with
| | 00:10 | any of the painting tools.
| | 00:13 | You'll see here the rough
selection made in the previous movie.
| | 00:16 | If you skipped that movie, go back and
learn how to use the Quick Selection tool.
| | 00:21 | I'll press the Q key for Quick Mask, and
you'll see that a Rubylith Mask is generated.
| | 00:27 | Rubylith is the color that was used in
traditional printing and masking for the print industry
| | 00:31 | for several years, and
Photoshop uses that color by default.
| | 00:35 | If you don't like it, a quick double-click
there will bring up the Quick Mask Options
| | 00:40 | and allow you to assign
the Opacity and the Color.
| | 00:45 | I'll go ahead and turn that on again,
or press the Q shortcut to load it.
| | 00:50 | Let's go ahead and zoom in here a bit, and this is
actually a great time to bring up the Navigator panel.
| | 00:56 | I'll just tear that off and leave it up here
in the corner, and this let's me zoom in and
| | 01:00 | start to massage the mask.
| | 01:03 | That looks pretty good there, and I'm just
going to grab the Blur tool and feather that
| | 01:12 | edge a bit by brushing it.
| | 01:14 | When the Quick Mask mode is on, tools like Blur
simply blur the mask. They don't blur the image.
| | 01:21 | Useful shortcuts here include the Left
Bracket and Right Bracket keys to change the
| | 01:26 | size of the brush, Right Bracket bigger,
Left Bracket smaller. Shift+Right Bracket
| | 01:33 | makes the brush have a harder edge,
while Shift+Left Bracket feathers it out more.
| | 01:38 | I tend to find that I'll do a soft feather,
or I could click up here and manually
| | 01:43 | dial in the Hardness settings that
I need and adjust the size to taste.
| | 01:49 | Let's just continue to work through here at
the image, and we're looking for the right
| | 01:54 | tool to touch that up.
| | 01:57 | Shift-clicking will draw straight strokes
which can be useful, I need to pick up a little
| | 02:03 | bit of the hat here and just
paint in that area that was missing.
| | 02:10 | Now up here, we have a bit of
the tent pole that we don't want.
| | 02:13 | So I'll press X to toggle my default colors of black
and white. D will load them, and X will toggle them.
| | 02:21 | A simple mnemonic is Devil's Xylophone.
And we can go in here and clean up our strokes.
| | 02:29 | Now I don't want this tent, that's going to
be a separate object, so I need to do a little
| | 02:34 | bit more brushing here.
| | 02:37 | And remember, you could toggle in between
the two colors of black and white quite easily.
| | 02:42 | There we go, and we're just touching that up.
| | 02:48 | Let's pick up his chopped off arm there, drag
on through, and this doesn't have to be perfect.
| | 02:59 | We still have the Refine Edge
command, which we'll utilize in a second.
| | 03:03 | I'll occasionally drag through with the Blur
tool to soften up areas, particularly around
| | 03:08 | heads and hair to create a
more believable transition.
| | 03:13 | And we're just cleaning that up.
| | 03:16 | Now this is a relatively time-consuming
process and probably the most time consuming part
| | 03:21 | of prepping the files, but you really want
to take the time here to get it right because
| | 03:26 | this is what makes the effect believable,
and a little bit of painting goes a long way.
| | 03:33 | Notice, by zooming in it becomes easier to
make good judgment about what part of the
| | 03:38 | pixels you're keeping and
which you're discarding.
| | 03:42 | Little bit of that ear and pick up the bit of
the shoulder, and it looks like we've got it.
| | 03:51 | I'll press Ctrl+Zero to zoom on out, and
looking at the Quick Selection there I feel pretty
| | 03:56 | confident that we've made a good edge.
| | 04:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The Refine Edge command| 00:00 | Now that we've got a pretty good selection
that's been painted by hand, I'm going to
| | 00:04 | turn to Photoshop and let
it do some assistance for me.
| | 00:07 | The Refine Edge command is a very useful command
that will analyze the image and do some intelligent
| | 00:13 | behind-the-scenes math for you.
| | 00:16 | Let's press the Q key to exit,
and we've got our basic selection.
| | 00:20 | I can now choose Select > Refine Edge, this
will show me the selection, in this case over
| | 00:27 | the transparent pixels, but you could
choose to see it over white or black to make it a
| | 00:32 | bit easier to detect your edges.
| | 00:35 | Where necessary, just paint and draw over an
edge, and it will re-analyze that to clean it up.
| | 00:42 | I'll typically start though with the Smart
Radius command and adjust the Threshold,
| | 00:46 | and this will automatically analyze the edges
and does a pretty good job on hair and soft folds.
| | 00:53 | You can also Smooth out any bumps
and manually Feather if you need it.
| | 00:59 | This works really well, and when ready, you
could choose to convert that to a layer Mask.
| | 01:06 | Now I'm going to actually make a new layer
with the layer mask so it cuts this out to
| | 01:10 | its own layer and click OK.
| | 01:13 | You'll notice that the soldiers have
now been removed to their own layer.
| | 01:18 | Let's just name that, and now we
can go on and pull out the tent.
| | 01:24 | Couple things here: I need to extract the
tent to its own layer, and then I'm going to
| | 01:30 | need a clean background plane.
| | 01:32 | Let's quickly select the tent and extract it on its
own, and then we'll move into some cloning and healing.
| | 01:39 | You've already learned about selection,
so we're going to do this pretty quick.
| | 01:43 | Quick Selection tool, drag through to make
the basic selection, there we go, and now
| | 01:50 | I'll take the Polygonal Lasso
to select the rest of the tent.
| | 01:55 | I have to guess approximately where it's
going to be because we'll need to do a little bit
| | 02:00 | of cloning to fill in that area back there.
| | 02:03 | Quick Selection tool will
fill in the rest, looks good.
| | 02:09 | Q for Quick Mask, and I'll actually
paint in a soft transition zone here.
| | 02:16 | Because this is not a hard
edge, I want a gentle transition.
| | 02:20 | This is where using the Blur tool or the
Paintbrush will allow for a gradual selection.
| | 02:27 | So I'll actually paint some white in here at a lower
opacity, and that will create a transition zone. There we go.
| | 02:41 | Little bit of the Blur tool, we'll just
soften that edge up heavily, there we go.
| | 02:49 | Q to exit the Quick Mask mode, refine the
selection, and that radius works nicely.
| | 02:58 | Little bit of feathering on the bottom,
and you see we've got the tent pretty well.
| | 03:02 | Obviously, there's going to have to be some
cloning there, but we'll get to that in our next lesson.
| | 03:08 | I'll go ahead and turn that into a new layer with the
layer Mask, click OK to add it, and we'll name that Tent.
| | 03:17 | I'm going to go ahead and duplicate the
background one more time, and we'll call that Field.
| | 03:25 | Now that we've got everything split out on
its own, it's time to do some selective healing,
| | 03:30 | cloning, and patch filling to
create independent layers from each other.
| | 03:35 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Filling in the holes| 00:00 | Now that we've created separate layers,
we need to do a little additional cleanup.
| | 00:04 | We've got to take the pieces and
essentially remove them from the background.
| | 00:08 | To do this, we're going to take advantage of some
cloning techniques as well as some Content-Aware Fill.
| | 00:13 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:16 | I've got our Field shot here, and we
need to remove our subjects and the tent.
| | 00:21 | The good news is that we
basically have these selections already.
| | 00:24 | So if I Ctrl-click or Command-click on the
existing layer masks, you see we could load those in.
| | 00:30 | Press Q for the Quick Mask mode, and I'll
just paint in this other tent back here that
| | 00:35 | I'm going to eventually remove. There we go.
| | 00:40 | Got a nice basic selection, Q to exit,
and we need to expand that a bit.
| | 00:48 | This is going to create a bigger selected area.
Well, that's going to work well.
| | 00:54 | Now that I have that we need
to delete this area from here.
| | 00:58 | Now this is a very big area to do Content-Aware
Fill on, but I'm a bit adventuresome, and
| | 01:03 | we'll see how well it works.
| | 01:04 | I'm going to expect that we have to do some
filling in here, but we'll try Content-Aware Fill.
| | 01:11 | Edit > Fill, and I will
choose Content-Aware and click OK.
| | 01:20 | It'll analyze the surrounding area and
attempt to generate a new pattern fill.
| | 01:25 | It's not going to be perfect,
but it is a starting point.
| | 01:28 | We're going to need to do some
cloning here, but that's not too bad.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to clone to an empty
layer to make this a bit easier.
| | 01:38 | Choose the Clone Stamp
tool and get a nice big brush.
| | 01:43 | By choosing Current & Below, I could sample and paint
downwards, and we're just painting in the background. There we go.
| | 01:57 | And we're just cloning this in.
| | 02:00 | I need to get a little bit of
the shadows here for the tent.
| | 02:03 | This is a good time to turn on the
tent and sort of see where it's falling.
| | 02:06 | It gives me a pretty good idea.
| | 02:08 | So Alt-click up here on the skyline,
line that up, and just paint that in.
| | 02:19 | Now this doesn't have to be perfect,
because in most cases the subjects that we cut out
| | 02:25 | are going to obscure the other material, and
I'm just doing some short strokes to fill that in.
| | 02:35 | Let's turn on the Tent layer for a second.
That's looking pretty good.
| | 02:43 | There's our Soldier's pretty
good so far. There we go.
| | 02:49 | And I want to just blend this a bit more.
| | 02:51 | So I'm going to take a
selection and use the Patch tool.
| | 02:57 | This allows me to start to blend a bit.
| | 03:05 | Doing this we can make some rough
selections and just mix the textures up. Good.
| | 03:16 | Now I'm a big fan of dropping the opacity
of the Clone Stamp a little bit lower and
| | 03:23 | then sampling textures to mix them in.
| | 03:25 | So using several strokes will make
this feel less repetitious. Good.
| | 03:32 | There's our tent, there's our soldiers.
| | 03:37 | Now I need to do a little bit of additional
cleanup, and the tent is really the problem area.
| | 03:43 | So I'll select that layer and zoom in.
| | 03:49 | Here's the cloning we've done on top of the
previous layer, and I can also see the original
| | 03:55 | background if I want to check
for reference. There's our Field.
| | 04:00 | There is the Blending.
That looks pretty good.
| | 04:04 | I'll go ahead and merge the field and the
new layer together, and we'll rename that
| | 04:12 | field, and then let's come over to
the tent here and zoom in a bit.
| | 04:23 | With the Clone Stamp tool selected, get a
nice small brush, we'll say only the Current
| | 04:30 | layer, Alt-click to set our sample point,
and start to fill in the rest of the tent.
| | 04:40 | Now you need to use smaller
brushes sometimes to pull this off.
| | 04:44 | So try to not be too
aggressive with your strokes.
| | 04:55 | I'll turn on the layer on top, and I just
get an idea of how much I need to clone out.
| | 05:00 | So this is going to take just a little bit.
| | 05:02 | So I'm going to work on this on my own, and
when we come back we'll have this resolved,
| | 05:07 | and you could practice
cloning as well with your image.
| | 05:10 | I finished the cloning.
| | 05:12 | A little time intensive, but this is
really the slowest part of this technique.
| | 05:15 | If you look at the image here, you'll see
we've got all of the major layers, and I've
| | 05:19 | done my cloning, and if I turn on the
Soldiers there, you see it fills in, so that's going
| | 05:24 | to block most of that stuff.
Then we have our field in the background.
| | 05:27 | Let's just zoom out so we see all
the pieces, and there they all are.
| | 05:33 | That works out pretty nicely.
We've got all of the major elements.
| | 05:36 | Now I'm just going to finesse this a bit.
| | 05:38 | We've got a little of
garbage up here in the sky.
| | 05:41 | Let's make sure the right layer is selected,
and with the Patch tool I could just lasso
| | 05:45 | around some of these
blemishes and just clean them up.
| | 05:51 | It's really quick way to get
a rid of some problem areas.
| | 05:56 | We got a nasty little scratch here.
| | 06:00 | That will work well with the Spot Healing Brush,
and we'll just paint over that crack. There we go.
| | 06:11 | We get these few little specks of
dust and the picture is just about ready.
| | 06:19 | All we're going to do now is make sure our layers
are properly organized for import into After Effects.
| | 06:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Organizing the CompFinalizing your photo for 3D animation| 00:00 | Once you think you've finished all the
cloning and healing, you're going to want to do some
| | 00:04 | cleanup of the file to
optimize it for After Effects.
| | 00:08 | Here are some of the
essential things I look for.
| | 00:11 | First off, I'm going to check the canvas size, and
one of things I want to do is set this to Pixels.
| | 00:19 | Now I find odd pixels to be problematic.
| | 00:22 | It's going to offset things and could lead
to subpixel resampling over in After Effects.
| | 00:27 | So I am going to make this a nice even number there for the
height and crop off a couple of pixels. That's looks good.
| | 00:35 | And looking at all my layers here,
they seem relatively organized.
| | 00:39 | I've got the Field, the Tent, and the Soldiers.
| | 00:42 | If I toggle those off and on, I
could see all the individual pieces.
| | 00:46 | It seems to be just about right.
| | 00:48 | At the very bottom, I have a background layer here,
and I'm going to duplicate that and call it Original.
| | 00:56 | This is going to make it very easy as I
work to have a point of reference between what
| | 01:00 | I modified and the new scene.
| | 01:03 | Now you see there's been a few
changes there, and that's fine.
| | 01:06 | Let's just load the Soldiers as a selection, and
we will inverse that and then deselect the sky.
| | 01:13 | With the Marquee tool I'm just going to Alt-drag
to remove a little bit there. There we go.
| | 01:21 | That gives me some of the grass, and I'm
just going to blend that in. There we go.
| | 01:27 | It looks pretty good.
| | 01:30 | We'll duplicate that layer, got it, mask it,
and let's just mix it in with the background.
| | 01:40 | That's one of the advantages of keeping the
original around is it makes me a bit easier
| | 01:43 | to see what you're doing. That looks good.
| | 01:47 | We'll merge that back and just do a
little more cloning to finalize. There we go.
| | 01:56 | Remember, the Clone tool with a
lower opacity tends to work nicely.
| | 02:01 | And we're just going through and looking for
any problem areas, trying to smooth that out.
| | 02:11 | Now it's difficult here because we do have some hard
shadows, but it's working pretty well. I got my layers.
| | 02:30 | I've got my original.
There is all my pieces, and we are about set.
| | 02:34 | Let's take a look at one more image here,
and this is the one we worked with earlier.
| | 02:39 | You see we've got the background layer.
| | 02:40 | There has been a little bit of cloning,
there's the couple, and there's the stuff in front.
| | 02:46 | I'm going to put a layer up on top, and
holding down the Alt key I am going to choose Layer >
| | 02:52 | Merge Visible, and that's going to
merge a copy, and I'll call that Reference.
| | 02:59 | That's going to just give me something to
spot check with as I animate in After Effects,
| | 03:03 | and I want to make sure that
things are lining up pretty critically.
| | 03:07 | All right, everything is done and prepped,
and we can send this on in to After Effects.
| | 03:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Build the CompositionImporting a layered PSD file| 00:00 | Now that we've prepped the files in
Photoshop, we're ready to go into After Effects.
| | 00:04 | The integration between Photoshop
and After Effects is excellent,
| | 00:07 | so we can go ahead and
bring these in as layered files.
| | 00:11 | Let's go ahead and see how that works.
| | 00:13 | I'll double-click inside the Project panel,
and that brings up the Import dialog box.
| | 00:18 | I'll just navigate to
the Photoshop files I need.
| | 00:21 | These are the two documents that we
just finished prepping over in Photoshop.
| | 00:24 | So I'll lasso those, and I'll
choose to bring them in as Composition.
| | 00:29 | Now it's very important that you choose the regular
Composition and not the Composition Retained Layer Sizes.
| | 00:37 | You're going to want it bring this in as
a normal Composition and then click Open.
| | 00:43 | This brings in both files with a comp,
and that's going to work really well.
| | 00:48 | What I'll now do is duplicate those comps so I
can go back to the original if I make a mistake.
| | 00:54 | I'll just press Ctrl+D, or Command+D, for
Duplicate, and then we'll rename these, and that will
| | 01:01 | help us know where we're
at in the design process.
| | 01:05 | Now this a good point to save the project,
because anytime you see the phrase Untitled
| | 01:12 | Project, you should be very afraid.
| | 01:15 | I'm just going to navigate to
the Lesson Folder and press Save.
| | 01:23 | I'll go ahead and open up those two comps, and
you'll see that all the layers came across in both cases.
| | 01:30 | I could turn off the reference layer since
that's just there for reference, and I'll
| | 01:35 | set this to a single view for now as we work.
| | 01:40 | Now that we've brought the comps in and
set them up, we are just about ready to begin
| | 01:45 | animating by adding a
camera and setting the stage.
| | 01:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a 3D camera| 00:00 | This whole technique is
based on using a 3D camera.
| | 00:04 | You're essentially filming the scene.
| | 00:06 | To do this, you're going to want to add a
camera that kind of simulates the real camera
| | 00:11 | used to take the original photo.
Now, this is a modern image.
| | 00:14 | You might be able to match it exactly by
setting up a virtual lens with the same Millimeter
| | 00:19 | and Throw and Settings that you would put
into the physical lens that you shot it with.
| | 00:24 | If you're using a historical photo without that
metadata, you may just have to guess and try
| | 00:29 | to apply good judgment.
| | 00:31 | To add a camera, I'll just
choose Layer > New > Camera.
| | 00:37 | This brings up the
ability here to add the camera.
| | 00:40 | You've got the choice between a
One-Node and a Two-Node camera.
| | 00:44 | You're going to want to stick with a Two-Node
camera so you can access it and go ahead and
| | 00:49 | animate the position and
point of interest separately.
| | 00:53 | This will create a greater sense of parallax and
allow you to move the camera more fluidly to the scene.
| | 00:58 | You will then see presets
for different focal lengths.
| | 01:02 | Now, if the image is shot with a wide-angle,
go ahead to something like 20 millimeters
| | 01:06 | or 28, or if it was a telephoto,
you might come down here to 200.
| | 01:11 | But as a starting point, a 50-millimeter lens
is usually pretty good for this type of photo.
| | 01:17 | I'll enable the Depth of Field option, and
these default values are fine for now, and click OK.
| | 01:24 | Now, once you do that, you need 3D layers.
| | 01:29 | So you'll go ahead and play with your
switches here, clicking the Toggle Switches and Modes
| | 01:35 | button, and make all of those layers 3D,
with the exception of the original layer which
| | 01:42 | you can leave on top.
| | 01:45 | For now I'm going to click the little
Kilroy icon here and mark that as Shy.
| | 01:50 | And this allows me to just
hide that layer from view.
| | 01:54 | Comma key will zoom this out, and I
see the whole scene so that worked great.
| | 01:58 | Let's prep the other one just
for practice, Layer > New > Camera.
| | 02:04 | In this case, it's a bit
more of a wide-angle lens.
| | 02:06 | So, I'll go with something like a 28-millimeter,
enable the Depth of Field, and click OK. Lens is added.
| | 02:16 | Toggle the switches and modes and make
those 3D, put the reference photo up on top, and
| | 02:22 | mark it as Shy for now so it's out of the way.
| | 02:26 | That looks great! We've added the 3D cameras,
and now we're ready to create some depth.
| | 02:31 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting the initial depth| 00:00 | Once you've set up the initial comp with the
layered files and you've added the 3D camera
| | 00:05 | into the scene, it's time to
start to extrude layers into 3D space.
| | 00:10 | Essentially, you're using the Z axis, and in 3D
animation terms, it's often explained like this.
| | 00:17 | We've got our X axis that can move things
along horizontally, the Y axis, which does
| | 00:23 | vertical, and the Z axis, which goes in and out.
| | 00:28 | I've actually seen animators label their
fingers to make this easier, but that's essentially
| | 00:32 | all it is, is a three-axis movement.
| | 00:34 | We're going to go ahead and start to move
these layers along the Z axis to expand them,
| | 00:39 | and this will create the sense of depth that
leads to parallax once the camera is animated.
| | 00:44 | Now, I'm going to duplicate these layers here
and press Ctrl+D, and now I've got a new stage.
| | 00:50 | Let's just open those up, and
we'll close these Stage 1 Files.
| | 00:55 | This is a good idea as you first start to
design because it creates a safety net or
| | 00:59 | a series of breadcrumbs, so you can go
backwards in time and look at what you've been doing.
| | 01:04 | So if I mess up Stage 2, I can resume my work
with Stage 1, and I'll just save the project.
| | 01:10 | All right, let's start with
this nice, simple file here.
| | 01:14 | I've got my camera and my layers.
| | 01:17 | What I need to do is set this to
2 Views to make this a bit simpler.
| | 01:22 | And on the left, I see the view from the Top,
and the right is the Active Camera View.
| | 01:28 | If these don't match on your system, you have
the ability to change them with the pop-up menu.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to take this one labeled Top and choose
Custom View 1, which many refer to as a God view.
| | 01:41 | It's about 45 degrees to the left and 45 degrees up,
and it lets you look down on your set like the director.
| | 01:47 | And with the layer selected,
I could press P for Position.
| | 01:54 | We have the X, Y, and Z axis.
| | 01:56 | Now, what's going to happen is is
you're going to push layers further away.
| | 02:03 | So as I move the brick
further away, it goes back in space.
| | 02:09 | However, looking at the
image here, it doesn't look right.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to now press Shift+S to add
the Scale Property and scale that back up.
| | 02:21 | And you know you've scaled it to the right
size when it touches the edge of the frame.
| | 02:27 | Let's go ahead in this case and pull the bush
forward towards the camera, and then Shift+S
| | 02:34 | for Scale, and I can scale that
down just a little bit, there we go.
| | 02:43 | Okay, we've adjusted the size of those.
| | 02:46 | Now, when you move something closer to the
camera, you have to scale it down so it looks right.
| | 02:50 | When you move it further away,
you have to scale it up.
| | 02:55 | This is where that Reference layer comes in.
| | 02:57 | You could toggle that Reference
layer off and on to compare it.
| | 03:02 | In this case, it's pretty close.
| | 03:03 | It looks like the background layer
needs to be maybe one pixel bigger.
| | 03:08 | So I'll go ahead and select the Scale Property,
and I'll hold down the Alt key here as I drag,
| | 03:13 | Option on a Mac, just to scale that down a bit.
| | 03:17 | That looks good! Turn the Reference off and
on, and notice there, very minimal difference
| | 03:23 | between the two, that's good enough.
| | 03:25 | Once satisfied, I could throw away the
Reference layer or leave it around, it's up to you.
| | 03:32 | I'll just go ahead and hide it
there, and that looks pretty good.
| | 03:36 | Let's repeat that process
for this other document.
| | 03:41 | We'll go with 2 Views, change
one of the views to Custom View 1.
| | 03:48 | Using the Comma keys I could zoom in and out, and
I'm going to go ahead and push the field further away.
| | 03:56 | Now, this should be really far
away, because it is really far away.
| | 04:04 | As for scale, scale that
up so it touches the edge.
| | 04:12 | Now, the tent should be a
little bit farther back.
| | 04:16 | So P for Position, I'll move it back a small
amount, and then holding down the Shift Key,
| | 04:22 | press S for Scale, and scale that up.
| | 04:27 | That looks pretty good! If I look at the virtual
set here, I can get a good idea what's happening.
| | 04:32 | You also may decide to change the colors here,
and this makes it easier in certain views
| | 04:38 | to see what you're doing.
| | 04:40 | For example, if you set this to Top View and zoom
out, you get a good idea of the different layers.
| | 04:50 | For example, the yellow layer here is the
field, the red layer is the tent, and the
| | 04:58 | purple layer is the soldiers, and this helps
you understand the relative distance between
| | 05:03 | the different objects as you
position them along the Z axis.
| | 05:08 | When satisfied, I'll just flip that back to Custom
View 1, and I could zoom in and take a look at my set.
| | 05:14 | Remember, the Comma key and the Plus key
are useful because you could zoom in and out.
| | 05:19 | Holding down the spacebar you could pan the window
to frame it up how you need to, to design your frames.
| | 05:26 | Now that we've got all the layers positioned
and the cameras placed, we just need to size
| | 05:31 | the composition for proper output.
| | 05:36 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting the composition size| 00:00 | Now that we've properly staged the comps, I need
to adjust the size of the composition for output.
| | 00:06 | Now, one of these pictures is very low
resolution, so I'm going to have to settle with standard
| | 00:11 | definition, and that's okay for this
particular project. I knew that going in.
| | 00:15 | The other picture, much higher res, so I have a
little more flexibility in designing the output module.
| | 00:21 | Here we go, Stage 3.
| | 00:23 | I'll just go to the Composition Settings,
and I could choose from my Presets.
| | 00:28 | Now, this is a very low-res photo.
| | 00:30 | This is just a small practice image, but
I'll stick with NTSC D1 for standard definition
| | 00:37 | broadcast and click OK.
| | 00:40 | That's fine, and this
would work for the web as well.
| | 00:43 | In this particular case, we're going to end
up scaling up the pixels a bit, but that's all right.
| | 00:47 | It's just a practice image.
| | 00:50 | Our main output here has much higher resolution,
so by choosing Composition > Composition Settings,
| | 00:55 | you'll see we have adequate
resolution to deliver for HD.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to stick with the 720P, and in this case
I'll set the Frame Rate to match what we need, 23.976.
| | 01:09 | And I can also adjust the Duration of the shot.
| | 01:11 | In talking with the producer, we determined
that we needed a 10-second animation, so I
| | 01:16 | might as well set that here.
I'll click OK, and it adjusts.
| | 01:20 | Notice it's indicating the cropped area,
and you see that it punches in, as opposed
| | 01:26 | to here where we didn't
have a high resolution source.
| | 01:29 | You see why it's really important to lobby to
get those high-res source materials; otherwise,
| | 01:35 | you end up with gaps or pixel upsampling.
| | 01:38 | I'll just adjust the Comp Settings here
real quick, and we'll do a similar Duration of
| | 01:42 | 10 seconds for this project and click OK, and
it adjusts the total Duration. These are all set.
| | 01:51 | I'm just going to save my work to capture the progress,
and then we'll come back and animate the camera.
| | 01:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Animating the CameraUsing multiple views| 00:00 | As you begin to animate the After Effects
camera, it's important to know how to navigate
| | 00:05 | through the views and the user
interface to properly frame things.
| | 00:09 | I've opened up the two pieces we worked with,
and I've brought in another new project, just
| | 00:14 | to help illustrate a few points.
| | 00:16 | Now normally, you only have a single view,
and remember, the comma key pulls it out,
| | 00:21 | and the period key zooms in.
This makes it easier to see what you're doing.
| | 00:25 | I am going to go ahead and animate this camera here
and just make sure that everything is set up correctly.
| | 00:33 | Check my composition settings for size, as
well as the total duration for the clip itself.
| | 00:41 | Now, in this case, I've got these clouds,
and I want to play with their position.
| | 00:47 | I am going to push them backwards.
So it's quite a large layer.
| | 00:53 | But what I want to do is
actually rotate those in space.
| | 00:57 | Let's start by framing the camera here.
You see that I'm not seeing enough of the view.
| | 01:02 | So, with the transform controls, the
camera, I am going to start to pull it back.
| | 01:06 | But you see that gets kind of
confusing. Well, where is it?
| | 01:09 | I can play with all these sliders.
| | 01:12 | Well, if I just change my view here and go
to two views, and I'll set this one to Custom
| | 01:18 | View 1, watch how easy this becomes.
| | 01:22 | You want to move your camera just select it,
and you can come right here and grab it.
| | 01:28 | Notice you can actually see the handles here.
I will zoom in really tight.
| | 01:34 | There is the Y, the X, and the Z axis.
| | 01:37 | So, I can just pull that right
back on the Z axis to frame my shot.
| | 01:42 | That makes it much easier to move the camera when
you're literally just grabbing the camera and moving it.
| | 01:49 | Now, I've got that positioned, and what
I want to do now is adjust these clouds.
| | 01:55 | I am going to go ahead and take the
orientation here and adjust this a little bit on the
| | 02:00 | Y axis to match the angle and on the X axis,
so they look like they're coming overhead a bit.
| | 02:11 | Now, this is pretty cool, because you'll
notice that we could animate those clouds moving
| | 02:17 | forward towards us, or from side to side.
| | 02:24 | That's going to allow us to create a pretty
cool sense of motion within this individual photo.
| | 02:28 | All right! I've got the camera
basically positioned for that one.
| | 02:32 | Let's check our other two shots.
There is our camera.
| | 02:35 | We are going to start in a bit and adjust it.
| | 02:43 | I also have the ability
within the camera controls to zoom.
| | 02:52 | Notice adjusting the playback
quality here makes a big difference.
| | 02:56 | And even though we've zoomed in,
this is really holding up pretty well.
| | 03:00 | I could adjust the zoom there to frame the
shot, and grabbing the handles of the camera
| | 03:08 | make it very easy to reframe.
That works pretty well.
| | 03:15 | So we've done a good basic
framing position there to start.
| | 03:18 | Let's do our last one for final practice.
I'll grab the camera there.
| | 03:22 | We are really zoomed in
because of the lens length.
| | 03:24 | I am going to twirl that down and
take a look at some of my options.
| | 03:30 | Let's pull the zoom out a little bit.
| | 03:32 | There we go! And adjust
the framing of the camera.
| | 03:39 | I want to start on this group of guys here.
| | 03:42 | Remember, sometimes you need to zoom in to
make it easier to see what you're doing, so
| | 03:46 | you can grab those camera
handles and frame it up.
| | 03:50 | That looks pretty good! So, we've set a
good starting position for every one of these,
| | 03:57 | and we are going to animate
the cameras in just a moment.
| | 04:00 | Now, this particular image is a bit unique.
| | 04:02 | I don't have three layers like I was talking
about for parallax, but I do have these cool
| | 04:07 | layer of clouds here that I can animate.
It's a really large photo of clouds.
| | 04:11 | I am going to turn on the keyframe here for
position, and I'll just go to the beginning
| | 04:18 | and the end and adjust that a bit.
| | 04:22 | We're going to have those clouds coming over the
top of the mountain like they're blowing towards us.
| | 04:29 | There we go! That looks pretty good.
| | 04:33 | This is going to have a feeling
of a bit like a time lapse shot.
| | 04:39 | I'll zoom in here to frame that up, and let's
just do a quick RAM preview just about right.
| | 04:47 | There is a little bit of a problem on
that first frame there, a little bit of seam.
| | 04:51 | So we will just adjust that.
Oh! That's interesting there.
| | 04:57 | Notice the intersection.
| | 04:59 | What's happening is because this is an
angled layer, the 3D layers are colliding.
| | 05:05 | That wasn't an accident, this is to help you understand
that when you start to rotate layers, they can intersect.
| | 05:11 | Let's take a look at the
camera view here, and we'll see it.
| | 05:14 | Here is my Layers, and you can see that
they've actually crossed the intersection point there.
| | 05:22 | If we view this from the side,
you might see it as well.
| | 05:24 | So, there is the quarter-angle view, here
is the left-hand view, and let's just zoom
| | 05:32 | out a bit, and you see
there is a definite intersection.
| | 05:35 | So, what's necessary is to move these
backwards until it no longer crosses the plane.
| | 05:46 | Let's check this here as well. It looks good.
| | 05:53 | So, there is the clouds moving
through the frame with no intersection.
| | 06:00 | Notice, having multiple views really comes in
handy as you're trying to understand the relationship.
| | 06:06 | You can go ahead and switch those views
between different angles, and it makes it easier
| | 06:11 | to see what's happening as you drag.
| | 06:14 | That looks good! Let's just do a quick RAM
preview, and we have the time lapse effect
| | 06:21 | of the clouds going over the frame.
| | 06:26 | Let's adjust our camera position for a little
more headroom, and in this case, we are going
| | 06:34 | to adjust it separately.
| | 06:36 | Instead of grabbing the handle, which moves
both the position and point of interest at
| | 06:40 | the same time, I'm just going to drop
the position value, and it tilts up.
| | 06:47 | Notice, you could independently frame the shot.
| | 06:50 | This is helping me create the same sense of
perspective of the camera being lower angle,
| | 06:56 | and shooting up into the rocks.
| | 07:01 | That looks good! And now with all three
shots properly framed for the starting positions,
| | 07:07 | we are ready to animate our cameras.
| | 07:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding keyframes| 00:00 | Now that we have placed the camera,
we can go ahead and animate it.
| | 00:03 | This will create the parallax effect.
| | 00:05 | Think of it this way, objects in the
mirror are closer than they appear.
| | 00:09 | If you're driving down the highway, and you
see things, the car next to you passing you
| | 00:14 | seems to be moving very, very fast, while
that horizon of the mountain sitting way out
| | 00:20 | there just seems to stay stationary forever.
| | 00:23 | And the sun doesn't appear to move very much,
when in fact it's moving much faster than
| | 00:28 | the earth or the car itself.
It's all the matter of perspective and distance.
| | 00:34 | So, now that we animate the cameras,
you're going to get that sense of depth, or that
| | 00:38 | this has become a 3D scene.
Let's take a look at how it works.
| | 00:42 | Let's animate the position
and the point of interest.
| | 00:45 | The position property is where the camera
is currently at, while its point of interest
| | 00:50 | is what it's looking at.
Think of it this way.
| | 00:54 | The position is where the camera is
physically located, moving on the X axis, moving on the
| | 01:01 | Y axis, or the Z axis, or a combination
of all of those axes at the same time.
| | 01:08 | However, the point of interest
is what the lens is pointed at.
| | 01:12 | So, as I move, I could still keep this lens
pointed at the same subject, even as I move
| | 01:19 | my body or the physical
camera or the virtual camera.
| | 01:24 | So it's all about
understanding those two properties.
| | 01:27 | When you grab one of the control handles, you're
moving both position and point of interest at the same time.
| | 01:32 | When you use the scrubby sliders,
you're adjusting them independently.
| | 01:37 | Let's turn on keyframes for
position and point of interest.
| | 01:41 | I'll now drag forward in time, and I
want to go ahead and move this over.
| | 01:47 | So, we are going to drag to the
right and pull backwards a bit.
| | 01:55 | That's working pretty well.
Let's just reframe here.
| | 01:59 | I am going to independently adjust the point of
interest to pan up a bit to our main subject there.
| | 02:08 | I also can move the position
independently, and you see it starts to angle.
| | 02:16 | And notice here that we are
adjusting the pan and the tilt separately.
| | 02:23 | Let's take a quick preview there.
| | 02:26 | There is the parallax effect where the tent appears to
be sliding behind them a bit because of the movement.
| | 02:35 | Let's view that full-screen, drop that to 1 View,
and we will check the full-screen box and preview it.
| | 02:44 | You see the sense of motion.
| | 02:54 | There is parallax in action.
| | 02:57 | Notice how the tent is moving at a different rate
than our subjects which are closer to the camera.
| | 03:03 | I'll press the Escape key here, and I will
just come to the middle, and I am going to
| | 03:07 | add another keyframe.
| | 03:09 | In this case, we are going to pull the position
up a little bit and adjust the Point of Interest,
| | 03:14 | so it's looking upwards, and we will do a
new preview, and that looks really good.
| | 03:31 | All right. Let's do that for two more cameras.
| | 03:34 | I'll switch down over here to another graphic,
twirl down, and turn on my keyframe for Position
| | 03:41 | and Point of Interest, and what I
want to do is start down in the grass.
| | 03:45 | I am going to come about
halfway through and lift straight up.
| | 03:54 | We will go a little lower there and adjust
the point of interest independently, so it
| | 04:02 | tilts upwards looking at them, and
notice there the parallax effect in action.
| | 04:11 | That looks good! I am going to go forward
in time, pull the position up, but still keep
| | 04:18 | my subjects framed, and
move the camera backwards.
| | 04:25 | Let's preview that.
| | 04:29 | Camera lifts from the bottom, reveals our
subjects, tilting upward, and then is going
| | 04:41 | to pull out and start to tilt downward.
| | 04:49 | Notice how you have total
control over the environment.
| | 05:01 | If we drag through, you could see the
physical camera moving in the other window, and that
| | 05:07 | makes it really easy to tell what's happening.
All right! One more time for good practice.
| | 05:16 | There is our camera, let's adjust
the Position and the Point of Interest.
| | 05:21 | I am going to have this start tighter,
tilt down a bit to start on Montezuma's Castle
| | 05:31 | there, drag later in, and pull this outward.
| | 05:41 | Let's swing it a little bit to the right along
the X axis, and adjust the Point of Interest to pan.
| | 05:50 | There we go! And a quick
RAM preview will show us that.
| | 06:04 | There it is in real time with the move.
| | 06:11 | If I drag through, you could see the absolute path
of the camera and the movement being illustrated.
| | 06:18 | On the left, you're seeing your overhead view,
and on the right, you are seeing the actual
| | 06:24 | viewfinder or looking through the lens.
| | 06:28 | These paths are pretty good, but we can make
them better with a few simple modifications.
| | 06:33 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying camera paths| 00:00 | Because camera paths are generated with
keyframes, you can take advantage of several different
| | 00:04 | options inside of After Effects to improve them.
| | 00:07 | We can add Ease, we can add Bezier handles, all
sorts of things to make this scene more natural.
| | 00:14 | Let's start with this first image here, and as I drag
through you see that there are three sets of keyframes.
| | 00:20 | This middle keyframe was randomly
placed to add some motion and have this tilt up.
| | 00:26 | Well, that's going to feel like a bit of a
bump in a camera move, because the smoothest
| | 00:29 | way to make a curved line is just two points.
| | 00:33 | If I right-click on this keyframe, I could
tell it to Rove Across Time, and what that's
| | 00:39 | going to do is naturally determine where
that keyframe should be placed so it doesn't
| | 00:44 | feel like a bump in the
camera path, and that's important.
| | 00:46 | It will smooth out the motion, and as we continue
to make additional adjustments that works really well.
| | 00:53 | For example, if I want to have a little
resolution at the end of the shot, I could pull that
| | 00:57 | in, and you see that we've got 2 seconds of pad at the end
here and the roving keyframes automatically adjusted.
| | 01:05 | I'm now going to right-click and choose Keyframe
Assistant > Easy Ease In, and that will create a gradual stop.
| | 01:15 | If we look at the Velocity here,
you see it ramps down slowly.
| | 01:19 | Similarly, we will add a little bit of resistance
up front, and we will tell that to do an easy Ease Out.
| | 01:27 | So looking at your Velocity graph, you get a
good idea of how this has nice natural motion,
| | 01:33 | and remember, you can always adjust the
curve handle here to refine that, and let's take
| | 01:39 | a quick look, and it's doing the RAM preview.
| | 01:45 | Now RAM previewing at full quality may
take some time, and if you want, you could drop
| | 01:49 | that down to quarter or
half for faster previews.
| | 01:54 | Notice, there I could just drop that down, and
going to Half quality gives me that real-time
| | 01:58 | performance, in fact, faster than real time, and
it makes it much more intuitive to design with.
| | 02:07 | That's working well, and we have a nice
natural motion there, including a land with some
| | 02:13 | pad and handles at the end, and notice
that really gradual start to the camera move.
| | 02:18 | It doesn't too mechanical anymore.
It feels more fluid and organic.
| | 02:24 | Let's go to the next comp, and
I want to refine these a bit.
| | 02:28 | Now I am going to take
advantage of the move here.
| | 02:31 | If I click on this, I could actually see the
camera path, and let's select this side and zoom in.
| | 02:40 | Because there's the actual camera path
there, you can use the Bezier tools.
| | 02:45 | So I can convert this here
and drag to round that out.
| | 02:52 | Let's select the next keyframe, there it
is, and I can create a nice smooth path.
| | 03:00 | I am just using J, K, L
to move between keyframes.
| | 03:07 | Click and drag and notice they are Beziers.
I can even create an S shape to the curve.
| | 03:15 | Now as we drag that through, you see the
impact, and it makes it feel a little more like a
| | 03:19 | hand-held bobble there as the
camera arcs around and swings back in.
| | 03:27 | That's really kind of cool.
| | 03:28 | It's like taking the straight crane
move and making it a curved dolly track.
| | 03:33 | Here we go, and you could do
that for other properties as well.
| | 03:38 | There is the point of interest right there,
and I could smooth that out in the middle
| | 03:44 | there so it's a more gentle arc.
| | 03:49 | Let's drag through, and you see that feels
more natural as it rounds the curve and comes out.
| | 03:59 | So all of these camera paths with position
and point of interest can have their Bezier
| | 04:04 | handles adjusted, and you could do
that right up here in the window.
| | 04:08 | If you need to do it independently and Alt-click on
the handle, will let you move just one side of that path.
| | 04:20 | There we go. That works nicely, and I will
just drag through, and you see the change.
| | 04:28 | Let's go to the last one here
and take a look at the moves.
| | 04:33 | It all seems pretty good, but
what I want to do is a small change.
| | 04:38 | I want to actually reverse the
camera path, start wide and push in.
| | 04:43 | By selecting both keyframes there I could
choose Keyframe Assistant and tell them to Reverse.
| | 04:51 | Now the animation has been swapped into a push.
| | 04:54 | I will take this and do a nice easy Ease In
to come to a gradual stop, and we will preview
| | 05:02 | that out, and that's what it looks like,
pushing into the rock outcropping, and it's going
| | 05:08 | to come to a gradual stop on our subject.
| | 05:11 | So as you see, there we've got the ability
to really refine the camera, taking advantage
| | 05:16 | of ease, vector tools to adjust the path and its
shape, as well as keyframe assistance work very well.
| | 05:23 | However, there are a couple additional
truly advanced options to really sell the shot.
| | 05:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Adjusting the CameraSetting the depth of field| 00:00 | You'll remember when we first created the
camera, we enabled the Depth of Field option.
| | 00:05 | This allows you to adjust what's
in focus and what's out of focus.
| | 00:09 | On a physical camera, this is typically
controlled by the aperture, and the more you open up
| | 00:14 | the camera to let in light, the
more shallow the depth of field.
| | 00:18 | In After Effects, you can keyframe this
property to do things like a rack focus.
| | 00:22 | But it's also very important that you check it
so you have a natural falloff in the scene.
| | 00:29 | I've opened up a new project here, and I
have a couple of different projects imported
| | 00:34 | as well as the three we
are previously working on.
| | 00:37 | Let's take a look at the camera settings.
| | 00:39 | In this case, the camera is panning down,
and we are seeing our subjects moving a bit.
| | 00:45 | We clearly have our foreground subjects
as well as the crowd further in the back.
| | 00:50 | What I want to do here is adjust it
so that the crowd is not as in focus.
| | 00:56 | Let's take a look with 2 Views, and
we'll set this one to Custom View 1.
| | 01:04 | Notice with the motion here, not as far
back is that other layer. It's a bit back there
| | 01:09 | but not terribly far back.
| | 01:11 | If I select the camera, what becomes
important is to adjust the depth of field.
| | 01:16 | So I am going to double-click there and turn
on the Depth of Field option, and this allows
| | 01:22 | me to adjust what's in
focus and what's out of focus.
| | 01:27 | Under the Camera Options here, I could play
with the total amount of Blur level as well
| | 01:33 | as the size of the Aperture.
| | 01:36 | The wider that gets, the more things that are
further away are going to fall out of focus.
| | 01:42 | Let's zoom in here, and
you will start to see that.
| | 01:46 | There it is! And I could adjust the Focus
Distance, placing what's in focus in the shot.
| | 01:57 | Now, that's working pretty well. We have put the
people in the background slightly out of focus.
| | 02:03 | But this shot is only going to work so well because
we don't have that much distance between the people.
| | 02:10 | If I want to refine that, we can go
ahead and push the crowd further away, or we
| | 02:16 | can do some other things here.
| | 02:18 | We will take the Crowd layer and push it
further away as well as the Background layer.
| | 02:33 | There we go! And we just need to
scale those two layers up a bit.
| | 02:40 | Notice the bounding box makes that
really easy to tell when you have it right.
| | 02:45 | Here we go! All right. Now because we've
increased the distance, the objects that are further
| | 02:55 | away fall out of focus.
| | 02:57 | If you look at the camera there--and we
will switch this to a top view--it will become
| | 03:02 | easier to see the distance.
There it is! There is my camera.
| | 03:08 | And what I want to do is adjust it so that,
that focal plane sits right on top of our
| | 03:13 | subjects, which is that first layer there.
| | 03:18 | If you want to make sure of that, go ahead and
change the color of that layer, so it really stands out.
| | 03:27 | That lets you know that you have
placed those properly into focus.
| | 03:31 | That's great! Our soldiers are now in focus,
and the background has fallen out just a bit.
| | 03:37 | Let's take a look here.
| | 03:38 | We'll take the Field group, and set this to 2
Views, and we will change this one to Top view.
| | 03:50 | Let's go ahead and adjust the
Position here and the Depth of Field.
| | 03:53 | I have got the Camera selected, I will twirl
this down, and under Camera options we have
| | 03:59 | got the Depth of Field.
It's already turned on.
| | 04:01 | I am going to zoom out here so I can really see my
layers, and there is our foreground. There is the tent.
| | 04:10 | Let's adjust the Depth of Field for the camera.
| | 04:13 | With the Camera selected, I notice that
the Depth of Field is set so the tent is in
| | 04:17 | focus, but my people are blurry.
| | 04:20 | So what I need to do is move this camera to
the start position and adjust the Depth of Field.
| | 04:26 | There it is! I am going to pull that so
it sits squarely on top of my subject.
| | 04:34 | Now that we've done that, we can adjust the
overall Aperture size to change the amount
| | 04:41 | of blurring or use the Blur level,
zoom in there. That's working well.
| | 04:50 | And as we drag through here, I
am going to want to keyframe that.
| | 05:00 | So as the camera moves, we need to
adjust the Depth of Field settings.
| | 05:09 | So I need to pull that back
out, so they stay in focus.
| | 05:20 | There we go! I can adjust the Blur Level if I
want the background of fall out more, looks good.
| | 05:29 | And let's preview that.
| | 05:31 | And what you are seeing is a natural
falloff of the tent, but better yet, the background
| | 05:37 | really going soft for
things that are further away.
| | 05:41 | And that really makes that look good.
| | 05:44 | Using the Depth of Field option is important,
but I find that the top view makes it really
| | 05:49 | easy to see where the Depth of
Field is positioned within the scene.
| | 05:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing the focal length| 00:00 | Let's say you've placed a camera, and
you've animated, and it doesn't just feel right, or
| | 00:04 | you'd like some more options.
| | 00:06 | Fortunately, you can easily duplicate
a camera and change its focal length.
| | 00:10 | In the timeline, I'll select the Camera and
press Ctrl+D. Whichever camera is on top will
| | 00:16 | take priority in the mix.
| | 00:18 | But I can go ahead and turn off this other
one for now, and by double-clicking on that
| | 00:23 | top camera, I could bring up the settings.
This allows me to change its focal length.
| | 00:29 | For example, I can go with
a wider angle and click OK.
| | 00:35 | Doing that dramatically changes
the scene and its composition.
| | 00:40 | Let's go ahead for
something a little less extreme.
| | 00:42 | We'll go to 80-millimeter, and you
see it further punches in on the action.
| | 00:48 | Now, I'll just twirl this down, and using
the same keyframes, I can make some tweaks,
| | 00:55 | I'll just delete those two and start
here with my Position and Point of Interest.
| | 01:01 | We'll go back to 2 Views, and I can
frame this up so I can clearly see.
| | 01:08 | And because the zoom is so much longer,
it's very easy to adjust the camera.
| | 01:14 | Let's just pull that out a bit.
| | 01:17 | That's good. And we'll come to
the end here, and that looks great.
| | 01:25 | Now, notice that the depth of
field is much, much more dramatic.
| | 01:32 | That's because we zoomed in here,
and it's behaving different.
| | 01:35 | Instead of being really wide-angle and
having the camera closer, we've pulled the camera
| | 01:40 | back, and we've adjusted the zoom
level to really put the separation here.
| | 01:46 | When you do this, the depth of
field effect is going to be enhanced.
| | 01:50 | So if you really want solid depth of field,
that gives you that shallow look, use a zoom
| | 01:55 | lens and really punch in with the longer lens.
| | 01:58 | All right. That looks good.
Let's just come down to Camera Options.
| | 02:01 | We'll make a small tweak. Frame that up.
| | 02:06 | That's good, a little wider, check the
beginning, adjust our zoom, and let's pull the Point
| | 02:21 | of Interest over and the Position a little bit.
| | 02:23 | There we go. As I drag through,
I could see our movement.
| | 02:32 | That's looking great. And we'll just refine
that by using the Depth of Field controls.
| | 02:41 | There it is. Let's set the
Focus Distance, so it's right.
| | 02:43 | We're going to start on the grass,
then at about 2 seconds
| | 02:47 | we're going to adjust the Focus Distance
and rack focus over to our subject.
| | 02:53 | And at the very end here, I just need to
make sure that it's set correctly, and you
| | 03:02 | see I've framed them up.
There we go. Let's take a look.
| | 03:11 | That's good. We'll do that at a higher
screen resolution quality so it's a little clearer.
| | 03:18 | Starts on the grass, rack focus is over to
our subject by keyframing the focus distance,
| | 03:26 | and then it completes the camera move.
| | 03:29 | And the cool thing is is both of those
camera moves are stored in the same composition.
| | 03:33 | So, by duplicating the camera, you could
tweak it, modify it, add a different focal length,
| | 03:40 | play with the camera move, and really
create the look that you're going for.
| | 03:45 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding bokeh blur| 00:00 | You've already seen that the depth of
field controls can add some nice blur.
| | 00:04 | We can refine this, however, with an
adjustment layer and actually add some Bokeh Blur.
| | 00:09 | Here's how it works.
| | 00:11 | In this scene I'm going to add an Adjustment
layer at the top and then take advantage of
| | 00:16 | the Camera Lens Blur.
| | 00:19 | Now this works really well, and what it's going
to allow me to do is keyframe in a blur effect.
| | 00:26 | I want to go ahead and have
this sort of reveal a bit.
| | 00:30 | We'll adjust the Blur Radius, I'll tell the Edge
Pixels to repeat, and we'll bring that up a bit to start.
| | 00:41 | Notice what's happening there
is it starts to diffract a bit.
| | 00:44 | This is easiest to see if you make sure you're
viewing it at full resolution, and I am going
| | 00:49 | to go back to 1 camera view. There we go.
| | 00:55 | Now you can adjust the size as well as Gain,
and notice here that Gain is going to start
| | 01:02 | to bloom some of the highlights.
| | 01:03 | I'll lower the Threshold, and that
causes the brighter areas to bloom.
| | 01:09 | You'll see that the sky starts
to blow out. That looks good.
| | 01:14 | Let's just twirl that down and press U for
user-added keyframes, and we'll go forward
| | 01:19 | about a second and a half, and we'll
just pull that Blur Radius back into 0.
| | 01:27 | Now what that's going to do is create a very nice
rack focus as well as a natural Bokeh in the shot.
| | 01:34 | I'll just preview that at Half quality so
you get the idea, and you're going to see
| | 01:38 | it starts off, and as the camera is moving,
it's like the operator did a rack focus in
| | 01:44 | the lens, and you see all the nice highlights
that you're used to seeing with that shallow
| | 01:48 | depth of field, bright spots, hexagons.
| | 01:51 | If you don't like hexagons, you got all of
different shapes here you could change between,
| | 01:57 | and this just does a nice effect that makes
it look like you took the lens and racked it.
| | 02:05 | So there it is nice rack focus in, and you
can see it's really quite cool, and it plays
| | 02:11 | off nicely with the 3D depth of the layer.
| | 02:14 | Applying that as an adjustment layer makes
it a believable effect and actually works
| | 02:20 | with the depth that you have
between the individual layers.
| | 02:24 | The camera blur has lots more to it.
| | 02:26 | You can in fact add a depth matte to better
define the areas, and there's lots of subtle controls.
| | 02:32 | Be sure to look up here on lynda.com some
of the After Effects Essential Training, and
| | 02:36 | if you just do a search on camera lens blur
After Affects, you'll find some great tutorials
| | 02:41 | to help you understand how to get
more out of that particular effect.
| | 02:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Lighting the SceneSetting the ambient light| 00:00 | One of the best ways to add believable depth to an
image is to adjust its lighting so it's attractive.
| | 00:06 | Fortunately, After Effects has a comprehensive
lighting system that allows you to relight
| | 00:10 | your scenes, and these tools are pretty straightforward,
especially if you have a photography or video background.
| | 00:18 | Let's take a look at this scene here.
| | 00:19 | We're going to adjust the
overall lighting for the entire scene.
| | 00:24 | Now this is a very bright day.
| | 00:26 | To do this, I'm going to add a light, and
I'll start with the ambient light, which is the
| | 00:34 | available light for the entire location.
I'll click OK, and it drops it in.
| | 00:41 | Now what I want to do is play with the
intensity, and you notice I could bring it up or down,
| | 00:47 | and this will affect the base lighting levels.
| | 00:50 | In this case, I'm going to set that to about 75%,
darkening the room like you would a studio
| | 00:56 | so you could then add light to
build up a sense of directionality.
| | 00:59 | Let's take a look here at this next one.
| | 01:02 | I'm just going to temporarily
turn off that Adjustment layer.
| | 01:09 | That's looking pretty good, and we'll add a
couple of lights, Layer > New > Light, and
| | 01:16 | we'll start again with the Ambient light.
| | 01:18 | However, this time I want to add a little
color, and notice that the light itself could
| | 01:25 | cast a bit of a tint.
| | 01:27 | In this case, it's putting a slight yellow
glow to the scene, or we could change that
| | 01:34 | to maybe a gentle blue.
| | 01:36 | So it feels a little later in the day, and
you see how you can use that to impact the
| | 01:41 | color temperature of the scene.
| | 01:43 | In this case here, we'll
drop in one more Ambient light.
| | 01:50 | Let's set that back to white, and
we'll drop that down to about maybe 70.
| | 01:56 | That's good, and that'll give
us some room for some shadows.
| | 02:00 | I've brought in one more project that has
some depth, and it's unique in that there's
| | 02:04 | both indoors and outdoors.
| | 02:07 | We're dealing with some
shade and some direct sunlight.
| | 02:10 | You'll notice here that I've applied an Ambient
light to this comp, and the Ambient light level
| | 02:16 | is affecting the shade of this
area for the statue under the awning.
| | 02:20 | However, I don't want it
affecting the backdrop there.
| | 02:23 | So if I twirled this down you'll see that
we have Material Options, and I could say
| | 02:29 | that this doesn't accept lights and in
doing so the Ambient light is only being applied
| | 02:35 | to the area beneath the canopy.
This way the backdrop stays the same.
| | 02:42 | So I could adjust the intensity of the light for
the shadows, and this will affect the area inside.
| | 02:49 | That works pretty well.
We've got a nice, believable depth there.
| | 02:53 | Once you've placed your ambient lights, you
could start to add additional directional lights
| | 02:57 | to really create the sense of
depth and even add some shadows.
| | 03:02 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting directional light| 00:00 | Now that we've set the Ambient Light levels,
let's start to add some directional light
| | 00:04 | to get a sense of drama.
| | 00:06 | For this image we have here, you see we've
got our statue in the shade with the background.
| | 00:13 | Our soldiers here are just dimly lit, and
we'll add some directional light with a Point
| | 00:17 | Light, and we need a Spot Light here.
Let's start with this image.
| | 00:22 | I've added one light for the Ambient Light
levels, and what I'd like to do is drop in
| | 00:27 | another light, in this case
we'll do a Spot Light and click OK.
| | 00:35 | You'll notice that, that adds a virtual spot
light to the scene, and if you zoom in you
| | 00:39 | can clearly see it looks exactly
like a real spot light. There it is.
| | 00:46 | Let's twirl down and look at the controls.
| | 00:49 | You could adjust the overall Intensity of
the light, as well as open up the Angle of
| | 00:56 | the Cone, spotting it up or down.
| | 01:02 | You could adjust the Feather for a more
gradual transition and reposition the light itself.
| | 01:10 | Let's set this here to zoom back a bit.
| | 01:12 | That's looking pretty good. And I'm going
to just reposition that light, pulling it
| | 01:17 | up, and then grabbing its
point of interest to aim it.
| | 01:23 | There you see it moving across
our subject, sort of like sunlight.
| | 01:27 | If we take the Feather down, you'll definitely see
the hard edge there, and it becomes really easy to aim.
| | 01:36 | And then I'll Feather that out so it has a gradual
transition, and it looks like a sense of sunlight.
| | 01:44 | Let's grab the light there and
just adjust where it's pointing.
| | 01:49 | Now, once we've pointed that light, we
want to go ahead and cast some shadows.
| | 01:55 | I'll see that Casts Shadows is
currently Off, so I'll turn it On.
| | 02:01 | And it might seem anti-climactic, because
just turning on Shadows doesn't make shadows.
| | 02:07 | You need to then go to the individual layers,
such as the Couple, and under Material Options
| | 02:12 | you need to tell it that this is going to
go ahead and Accept the Lights and that it's
| | 02:18 | going to go ahead and Cast Shadows.
| | 02:22 | In doing that, it creates a
shadow behind our subject.
| | 02:26 | Let's check the brick wall really quick,
and under Material Options make sure that it's
| | 02:32 | set to Accepts Shadows, which it is.
| | 02:35 | So you see our shadow being
cast on the wall behind our people.
| | 02:39 | Let's reposition the light a bit and see
if we could move that shadow. There it is.
| | 02:50 | And you see the shadow casting behind them.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to adjust the Position a little
bit, and there you see it on the back wall.
| | 03:03 | Now, you can adjust this until you get the
shadow positioned where you intended, and
| | 03:10 | then you can go ahead and play
with the amount of the shadow itself.
| | 03:17 | I'll come down here to the Couple,
there is the Shadow, and we can adjust it.
| | 03:23 | Playing with the Diffusion for the front,
for the surface, adjusting the Shininess,
| | 03:31 | that looks pretty good.
| | 03:34 | And then for the light itself, we'll refine
the shadow a little bit, and we can adjust
| | 03:40 | the Diffusion so the shadow goes
from really crisp to much softer.
| | 03:46 | And I'll increase the
Darkness so it stands out a bit.
| | 03:50 | So now, there's our camera move with the cast
shadow falling on the back wall, as you see there.
| | 03:59 | Now, you may want to play with where that
light is coming from, but you get the idea
| | 04:04 | of how it creates a very photorealistic shadow.
| | 04:08 | Let's take a look at the
statue here and do the same thing.
| | 04:10 | I'm going to do a couple additional lights here.
| | 04:14 | We're going to start and add a
Parallel Light off to the side.
| | 04:24 | Let's choose zoom in so we can see it, grab
the Parallel Light, and we're going to move
| | 04:35 | it back a little bit. There we go.
| | 04:40 | And I'm just creating a little bit
of side light with that Parallel Light.
| | 04:46 | You see we're getting a little
bit of the interest coming in.
| | 04:48 | I'll turn that off and on.
And we can adjust the Intensity of that light.
| | 04:55 | That's just creating some light coming from
the side, and that's really starting to make
| | 05:00 | that look photorealistic.
| | 05:03 | Now, we'll just name that,
press Return, and call that Side.
| | 05:09 | Add one more Light, and let's add a
Spot Light, and we'll adjust this.
| | 05:20 | Let's pull it back.
There we go, nice and far.
| | 05:28 | Adjust the Intensity of the light and make
sure that it's casting some shadows. There we go.
| | 05:42 | Take a look at our statue here, check the
Material Options, and tell it to Cast Shadows as well.
| | 05:50 | Now, here's the tricky thing,
where is it casting a shadow?
| | 05:55 | Right now it's casting it on
the trees, which we don't want.
| | 05:59 | So I'm going to come down here to the Trees and
make sure that Accept Shadows is off. There we go.
| | 06:08 | And now you see that the shadow
is only casting on the column.
| | 06:15 | So if we look at that light, we can now better
point it, there it is, and you see the shadow
| | 06:28 | being cast on that back column.
| | 06:32 | Let's do a quick move on the camera, and
you see the shadow falling on the back column
| | 06:45 | being created by our statue,
and that looks very believable.
| | 06:51 | We can tweak the Darkness as well as the Diffusion on that,
but this really makes the scene look very photorealistic.
| | 06:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Is that it? Hardly.
| | 00:03 | There is much more to this technique,
including advanced lighting, use of particles to add
| | 00:07 | depth, mixing in footage,
and time lapse for clouds.
| | 00:12 | There's all sorts of things we can do.
| | 00:15 | What I'd like you to do is
practice what you've learned here a bit.
| | 00:18 | I promise to come back, and I've got a lot
more to share, but for now take the lessons
| | 00:23 | learned here as well as our documentary techniques with
Photoshop and After Effects course, combine those and get started.
| | 00:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
