IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi I'm Lee Lanier and
welcome to VFX Techniques:
| | 00:07 | Building Replacement with After Effects.
| | 00:09 | In this course we'll look at how to
replace a building in a section of video.
| | 00:13 | I'll start by showing you how to
track the footage by using the After
| | 00:16 | Effects Camera Tracker.
| | 00:17 | Then I'll show you how to separate and
adjust various elements in a scene such
| | 00:21 | as foreground objects and the sky.
| | 00:24 | We'll see how to apply color grading
effects to a digital matte painting.
| | 00:27 | Also we'll apply the Foundry Camera Tracker
plug-in as an alternate method of 3D tracking.
| | 00:33 | Now let's get started with
Building Replacement with After Effects.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium member of the
lynda.com library, you have access to the
| | 00:04 | Exercise Files used throughout this course.
| | 00:07 | You can download these files from the
Exercise Files tab from the course page.
| | 00:12 | All the files you need are arranged
in the Exercise Files folder. Within that
| | 00:15 | folder are three subfolders.
| | 00:17 | The first, aefiles, contains all of
the After Effects scene files you need.
| | 00:22 | The next is the Footage folder;
| | 00:24 | this contains a single still in the
Stills folder which is a sunset, plus in the
| | 00:29 | Street folder a street image
sequence if you choose the video background.
| | 00:33 | The third folder is Matte and
that contains a single matte painting.
| | 00:38 | If you don't have access to the Exercise Files,
you can still apply these techniques we
| | 00:42 | discuss to your own footage.
| | 00:44 | So let's get started.
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1. Getting StartedBreakdown of the final comp| 00:00 | Let's take a look at the Breakdown.
| | 00:02 | We start with video footage of a city
street then we apply 3D camera tracking.
| | 00:07 | We track some static foreground
elements. Create a motion graphics billboard.
| | 00:12 | Track a new sky. Key out the old sky.
Combine the various elements. Add a new
| | 00:23 | matte painting of a new building. Track
that new building and then color grade
| | 00:31 | all of the elements so they match.
| | 00:35 | Here is a before and the after.
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| Setting up the project in After Effects| 00:00 | So let's setup our After Effects project
to start working on this visual effects shot.
| | 00:04 | First thing I want to do is import my footage.
| | 00:07 | This will be video footage of a
street, which we're going to use for the 3D
| | 00:11 | tracking to replace the building.
| | 00:12 | So I am going to go to File>Import>File,
go to my Desktop where the Exercise
| | 00:20 | Files are, go into the Footage folder
and go to the folder called Street and
| | 00:27 | here is an image sequence of our street.
| | 00:29 | Now this was video, but it was converted
to an image sequence, and this is great
| | 00:33 | for doing the visual effects work.
| | 00:34 | So the image sequence I simply have to
click on the very first frame, in this
| | 00:38 | case 000, make sure the Sequence button
is checked, which it is and click Open,
| | 00:46 | and here is the street footage.
It's a single unit right now.
| | 00:50 | Now while this is highlighted we can see
the various attributes of that footage,
| | 00:54 | including the resolution 1920 x 1080,
the duration, and the frame rate.
| | 01:00 | Now there are a couple of things we
need to change here. One is it'd be nice to
| | 01:04 | see the duration and frames.
| | 01:05 | If you are working with image sequences
in visual effects, it's much easier to
| | 01:09 | work with frames as opposed to timecode.
| | 01:11 | To change that, I can go up to
File and go to Project Settings.
| | 01:15 | At the very top there is a Time
Display Style, it defaults to Timecode but I run
| | 01:22 | out of Frames, so click
Frames and then click OK.
| | 01:25 | Now I can see the duration is 120 frames.
| | 01:28 | Also my Timeline when I build
it, it will read out in frames.
| | 01:32 | Now we also have to change the Frame Rate.
| | 01:35 | By default After Effects supplies
a Frame Rate to an image sequence.
| | 01:38 | The image sequence does not have a
native Frame Rate, it's not stored.
| | 01:42 | It assumes it's going to be 30 frames
per second, but in fact we're going to do
| | 01:46 | this project at 24 frames per second.
| | 01:48 | So what I need to do is
change that interpretation.
| | 01:51 | I can do that by going down to the
Footage, right-mouse clicking and choosing
| | 01:54 | Interpret Footage>Main.
| | 02:00 | About half way down there is a Frame Rate
and it will say Assume this frame rate
| | 02:04 | is 30. I can change that though
to 24 and then click OK.
| | 02:08 | Now if you don't see the OK button on
your screen, you can just hit Return or
| | 02:12 | Enter. And now I'm
interpreting at 24 frames per second.
| | 02:16 | So this is all correctly set up.
| | 02:18 | Next we can make our first
composition and there is a shortcut for that and
| | 02:22 | that is to click-drag the footage down
to the empty Timeline, right now it just
| | 02:28 | says none down here.
| | 02:29 | But I can left-mouse click
drag this and drop it down here.
| | 02:32 | When I do that it gives me my first
composition which is named after my footage.
| | 02:37 | That composition will be the correct
duration, frame rate, and resolution.
| | 02:42 | Now you can always change that
if you want to, by going up to
| | 02:46 | Composition>Composition Settings.
| | 02:48 | Here you'll see the Resolution which
you can change if you need to, the Frame
| | 02:54 | Rate, and also the Duration.
| | 02:55 | This is all correct though.
| | 02:57 | I will go ahead and rename
this up here at the top.
| | 02:59 | Since we're going to use this
particular composition for 3D tracking, I am
| | 03:03 | going to change the name to AE3DTracker,
just so I know what that composition
| | 03:10 | is for down the road.
| | 03:12 | Once you have the name typed in,
you can click OK and you can see the
| | 03:16 | footage right here.
| | 03:18 | Now one last thing I want to mention
at this point is the fact that we're
| | 03:21 | looking at the footage at a lower resolution.
| | 03:25 | There is a filter right here that's
set to Quarter by default, that's a
| | 03:28 | Resolution/Down Sample Factor menu.
| | 03:31 | It's set to Quarter to save time, it
only shows every fourth pixel or so.
| | 03:35 | What I can do though is change
that to Full to see the full quality.
| | 03:39 | Now note we're also zoomed out.
| | 03:41 | If I want to see it at 100%, I can
zoom in with my middle-mouse button.
| | 03:46 | If you have wheel, you can just zoom in like
that, or just change this menu right here.
| | 03:51 | So we imported our footage, made sure
it's a correct resolution, duration, and
| | 03:57 | frame rate, and made our first composition.
| | 03:59 | We can now start to build
the Visual Effects shot.
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2. Using the Track Camera FeatureApplying the 3D Camera Tracker| 00:00 | We have the video of the street as an
image sequence loaded into After Effects
| | 00:03 | and we have our first composition.
Let's take a look at that footage first.
| | 00:08 | (video playing)
| | 00:20 | So you can see that the camera is shot hand-
held, the cameraman is walking down the street.
| | 00:25 | Now our goal for this project is to
replace this building right here in the center.
| | 00:29 | And also we'll do a few extra things
like add a billboard over here on the side
| | 00:33 | to this building and then also replace the sky.
| | 00:36 | So this is going to require
some type of motion tracking.
| | 00:39 | Now the regular tracking that you might
have done which is through the regular
| | 00:43 | Tracker Tool is Transform Tracking and
that is where features are tracked as
| | 00:49 | they move up-down in Y or left-right
in X. So there is no depth to that, it's just
| | 00:54 | simply up-down or left or right.
| | 00:56 | That's not going to work for this footage.
| | 00:58 | Since the camera is walking down the
street and we have perspective and parallax
| | 01:01 | change we really need a 3D camera track.
| | 01:04 | Because, for instance, if we do want to
stick that billboard on the side right
| | 01:08 | here and replace this entire building,
but have the sides of the building pick
| | 01:13 | up the correct perspective.
| | 01:14 | So how do we do that?
| | 01:16 | Well there is a separate tool inside
After Effects for 3D camera tracking,
| | 01:19 | If I go ahead and select my layer, I can
go up to Animation and apply Track Camera.
| | 01:24 | Now the regular Transform Tracking
is Track Motion, so this time we want
| | 01:29 | Track Camera instead.
| | 01:31 | I'll apply that and right away it's
going to start working, you'll see a blue
| | 01:35 | bar that says Analyzing in background.
| | 01:37 | I'm going to go ahead and cancel that
however, because I want to change some options.
| | 01:42 | So in the Effects panel
I'm going to click Cancel.
| | 01:44 | Now there's a few options that
are very important to check before we
| | 01:48 | analyze and use the result.
| | 01:49 | One is a Shot Type.
| | 01:51 | This is a type of camera
shot we're working with.
| | 01:54 | It defaults to Fixed Angle of View;
| | 01:56 | however I want to check these options.
| | 01:58 | There is also Variable Zoom if there is
a zoom lens that changes and there is a place
| | 02:03 | we can also specify a very
particular Angle of View.
| | 02:05 | An Angle of View simply means
the lens in terms of millimeters.
| | 02:10 | Now I know there is no zoom here and
unfortunately I don't know the lens that was
| | 02:14 | used to shoot this so I can't
use these two options in this case.
| | 02:18 | So Fixed Angle of View does work, but
just remember, if you're working with
| | 02:21 | other footage, to double-check these menus.
| | 02:23 | The other thing that's important
to check is under Advanced.
| | 02:28 | I'll expand that and there is a Solve Method.
| | 02:30 | This is what After Effects uses to
look at the track points and to develop an
| | 02:35 | actual After Effects camera.
| | 02:38 | Now it's set to Auto Detect which
works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't.
| | 02:41 | Now the options here are Typical, which
is your average scene. Mostly Flat, where
| | 02:46 | there's very little depth or perspective
change, and the third option is Tripod Pan
| | 02:50 | where the camera is fixed and
simply panning left or right.
| | 02:54 | Now in our case Typical will work the
best, since we have a moving camera and
| | 02:58 | there is a significant amount of
perspective change, this will probably work.
| | 03:02 | It's not going to work with Tripod Pan
and it really won't work with Mostly Flat
| | 03:06 | Scene either, so I'm going
to switch this to Typical.
| | 03:08 | Once I've checked these two menus,
then I can go ahead and Analyze.
| | 03:12 | I'll click the Analyze button.
| | 03:13 | Now this will take a few minutes, we'll
see the progress right here at the left.
| | 03:19 | The second step of this process will
show an orange bar and that's where
| | 03:27 | it's solving the camera.
| | 03:28 | It's looking at all the tracked feature
points and trying to produce a camera that
| | 03:32 | matches a real world.
| | 03:34 | Once it's finished you'll see those bars
go away in the screen and there will be a
| | 03:38 | bunch of little dots.
| | 03:39 | Now dots are pretty tiny, but what I can
do though is go to Track Point Size and
| | 03:44 | scale those up just so I can see them better.
| | 03:48 | Now if the tracking worked correctly,
you'll see that the various dots are
| | 03:52 | actually Xs and those Xs range in size.
| | 03:54 | The ones that are close to the camera
are large and then they get smaller and
| | 03:58 | smaller in the distance.
| | 03:59 | Now I know this is working because the
Xs have their own perspective, in other
| | 04:04 | words they diminish in
size as it get further away.
| | 04:07 | Let's play this back.
| | 04:08 | I'm going to use the
Spacebar to play back to Timeline.
| | 04:10 | Now some of these Xs will pop on
or pop off as the features that were
| | 04:17 | being tracked disappear or become hard
to find because of the colors in the
| | 04:21 | scene, that's okay.
| | 04:22 | What's important though is that there
are still a lot of these Xs that are left
| | 04:27 | that remain on the screen and then stick
to whatever this should be sticking to,
| | 04:31 | in other words the ones on the
building stay on the building, the ones on the
| | 04:35 | trees, at least some of them
stay on the trees and so on.
| | 04:39 | What this means is, it's being able to
track these point and determine their
| | 04:42 | relative position in 3D space, in other words
in the XYZ space so they have distance
| | 04:46 | and they're far apart.
| | 04:47 | Now what do you do with these points?
| | 04:49 | While at this step once you've produced
these points, you can create a camera.
| | 04:53 | There is a Create Camera button and
that will produce a 3D camera layer.
| | 04:57 | I'll click that and there
is our 3D Tracker Camera.
| | 05:01 | This is a regular After Effects
3D Camera which you can use in After
| | 05:05 | Effects' 3D environment.
| | 05:06 | So now that we have a camera, what we do now?
| | 05:09 | Well I can use these points
in several different ways.
| | 05:12 | You can select some points and either
attach a null, which is just an empty
| | 05:17 | which is a point in space which you
can use to parent other things too or you
| | 05:21 | can create and a solid and this solid
will be positioned in 3D space and it will
| | 05:25 | be scene by the 3D camera, so it picks
up perspective and looks like it takes on
| | 05:29 | the move of the original camera.
| | 05:31 | Well how do you pick points?
| | 05:32 | Let's zoom in, I'll use my middle-mouse
button to zoom in, or I can use the menu down here.
| | 05:36 | Now what happens is as you drag your mouse
over the screen, you'll see that a target appears.
| | 05:42 | Any time this set of three points is crossed,
you'll see the target will be in the center.
| | 05:48 | Now sometimes a perspective with a
target lines up with what you would expect,
| | 05:52 | like the building. This
time it's not quite right.
| | 05:55 | But the goal is to find points and make
the target line up with the feature like
| | 05:59 | the building, for instance this one right
here and then attach that null or solid to that.
| | 06:04 | So the first method is simply to
drag your mouse over the scene.
| | 06:08 | Once you find a target that looks
correct, say right here, you can click and
| | 06:13 | those points are highlighted yellow.
| | 06:15 | Now once those are highlighted, you
can put your mouse over the center and
| | 06:19 | you get the Move tool.
| | 06:21 | Then you can move that target where it
slides in that plane up or down, until you
| | 06:26 | offset that point where the target is.
| | 06:29 | And that point is where the null or
the solid is going to go eventually.
| | 06:32 | You can always click off and pick other points.
| | 06:35 | Now the second method of selecting
points is to click them individually and then
| | 06:38 | Shift+Click additional ones.
| | 06:39 | As soon as you get 3 you get another target.
| | 06:44 | But you can click more if you need to.
| | 06:48 | Then you have to experiment to figure
out which ones make a target that seems to
| | 06:52 | line up with the feature.
| | 06:54 | Again you want to line up say with this
building, so it looks like that target is
| | 06:58 | on the side of the building.
| | 07:02 | So those are the two methods;
| | 07:03 | drag your mouse or click and
Shift+Click points manually.
| | 07:07 | We've applied the 3D camera tracker,
we've analyzed the scene, we've solved the
| | 07:11 | camera, and we've created
a 3D tracker camera layer.
| | 07:14 | We've seeing a couple of different
ways to select points. Now we're ready
| | 07:18 | to attach things to those points
and start adding new things to this scene.
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| Applying artwork to a tracked null| 00:00 | We've created a whole bunch of 3D
tracking points which you can see right here.
| | 00:04 | And you'll see these as long as the 3D
Camera Tracker effect is highlighted in
| | 00:09 | the Effects Controls panel.
| | 00:11 | So let's do something with these points.
| | 00:12 | Our first task is going to be to
attach a billboard to this side of the
| | 00:18 | building in the foreground.
| | 00:20 | So what we have to do is select some
points and then attach a null to that.
| | 00:24 | Again, there is two ways to select points;
| | 00:26 | manually where you click them or simply
by dragging your mouse until you get a
| | 00:30 | target between sets of three.
| | 00:33 | Now again the target needs to line up
in such a way that it looks like it has a
| | 00:36 | correct perspective.
| | 00:38 | So you can see that some of these
points are not so good and some are better.
| | 00:42 | Now in fact these three right here, if
I zoom in, you can see make a good
| | 00:47 | target that looks like
it's on the side of building.
| | 00:49 | And in fact this is a great
place to put that billboard.
| | 00:52 | So once you have these three points
highlighted or a three similar points, you
| | 00:56 | can go ahead and click that will
highlight them so they turn yellow.
| | 01:00 | At that point you can right-mouse
button click you'll get this menu.
| | 01:04 | Now if you haven't created a camera
you'll see that these menu options are a
| | 01:08 | little different, now the option to
Create Text, Solid, Null and so on and the
| | 01:12 | camera simultaneously.
| | 01:14 | Now we have the camera so we
just get these options here.
| | 01:17 | Aside from Solid and Null
you can attach text here.
| | 01:20 | We want to go ahead and
just create a Null, so Create Null.
| | 01:23 | That places a little null point right
in the center and it also creates a null
| | 01:30 | layer, which is a 3D layer by default.
| | 01:32 | I can tell because this little
3D layer box is clicked on.
| | 01:35 | I can go ahead and click off those
points though and then select this Null.
| | 01:39 | When you select it you'll see that there
is an axis handle, if you play it back --
| | 01:44 | (video playing)
| | 01:48 | We can see that it does follow the footage;
| | 01:50 | it looks like it's on the side of the building.
| | 01:53 | Now it's a little odd because the
axis handle is oriented in a strange way.
| | 01:56 | In this case the green arrow is Y, the
blue arrow is Z and the red arrow is X
| | 02:02 | and you can tell that by letting
your mouse hover over each arrow.
| | 02:06 | What might be nice here is to orient a
handle in such a way that looks like it
| | 02:09 | really lines up with the building.
| | 02:12 | You can do that by changing the Transforms.
| | 02:14 | I'm going to rename my layer first
just for organizational purposes.
| | 02:17 | We're going to have a lot of layers here, so
let's start early renaming these, so we
| | 02:21 | know what's going on.
| | 02:22 | I am going to name this BillboardNull.
| | 02:29 | Okay, so now I can expand my Transform
section, and because this is a 3D layer I
| | 02:35 | have X, Y, Z for everything, Anchor
Point, Position, Scale, and Orientation also
| | 02:39 | have the three Rotations, X, Y, Z.
Now Orientation and Rotation are two
| | 02:45 | different ways to rotate.
| | 02:47 | The Rotation uses the revolutions, whereas
Orientation simply goes between 0 and 360.
| | 02:54 | So I change my Orientation, I can
change the way my axis handle is laid out.
| | 02:59 | Now this will take some experimentation.
| | 03:00 | If I give you some values right now,
if you enter 10 for X, 324 for Y, and 359
| | 03:11 | for Z, we'll see those numbers
line it up in a logical fashion.
| | 03:15 | Y is running up the side of the building, Z
is running along the building into the
| | 03:21 | distance, and X is perpendicular to the building.
| | 03:22 | Let's play it back.
| | 03:24 | (video playing)
| | 03:30 | So you can see that the axis handle
does follow the building in logical
| | 03:33 | fashion, so it's tracked.
| | 03:34 | Now changing the Orientation is purely
optional, but I find it easier to figure
| | 03:39 | out what's going on if I have the
handles lined up in a logical fashion.
| | 03:43 | Alright so, now what do we do?
| | 03:45 | Well we can use the Null as a parent
or use it through expressions to drive
| | 03:50 | something else that's in the 3D scene.
| | 03:52 | We're going to use expressions, but
first we're going to need something to bring
| | 03:55 | into this scene that we can track.
| | 03:57 | We're going to create a billboard from
scratch right here inside After Effects.
| | 04:01 | I want to make a new composition,
Composition>New Composition.
| | 04:06 | Now I do need to change the size, I
don't want to make the same resolution as
| | 04:10 | my prior composition, I want to make
something smaller that's a size of a billboard.
| | 04:12 | This is going to be like a news
billboard where you see the scrolling words.
| | 04:16 | So let's try 675 for width, then we'll
turn off the Lock Aspect Ratio then put
| | 04:22 | 200 for Height, this will make
a nice long skinny billboard.
| | 04:26 | Now the Frame Rate and the
Duration I want to leave the same.
| | 04:30 | I'm going to go ahead and rename it also,
call this Billboard and click OK, and
| | 04:35 | here is a new composition
with our skinny billboard shape.
| | 04:39 | Now, just for now I want to add a
solid layer just so we can see something
| | 04:44 | here, so Layer>New>Solid.
| | 04:46 | I want this to be the same size as my
current composition 675 x 200, then pick
| | 04:53 | a color that will look
good for the billboard frame;
| | 04:55 | in this case a dark brown is going
to work pretty well. Okay, click OK.
| | 05:01 | I can go back to my first composition now,
go back to my Project panel and then
| | 05:06 | drag this new Billboard comp into my
first composition, in fact just drop it
| | 05:11 | right on top, and this is called nesting
one composition is nested into another.
| | 05:15 | Alright, as soon as it comes in one
thing you'll notice is that the 3D camera does
| | 05:19 | not really see it, it's perfectly flat.
| | 05:21 | That's because I need to change this to a
3D Layer, I'll click this icon right here.
| | 05:27 | Now it's a 3D layer.
| | 05:28 | I could tell that because it has an axis handle.
| | 05:31 | Now it still looks flat because it's
right in front of the camera, it's not
| | 05:35 | pushed back in depth, it's not rotated.
| | 05:37 | So what I want to do in this
situation is take the Transforms from my Null.
| | 05:42 | So I'm going to expand the Transform
section for both my Billboard and my
| | 05:48 | Null and when I steal the Orientation
and Position vales form the BillboardNull
| | 05:52 | and apply them to the Billboard.
| | 05:54 | Now I'll push the Billboard back and
rotate it, so it looks it's in the
| | 05:58 | correct place, where the Null is right now.
| | 06:00 | Now I can simply type numbers in and I can
see what the orientation is and type those
| | 06:04 | numbers in up here and same with the position.
| | 06:06 | I'm going to use a shortcut however and
that is to apply an expression.
| | 06:09 | I'm going to click on Position for
Billboard, then Ctrl+Click or Command+Click
| | 06:14 | Orientation so those two are highlighted
and go to Animation and Add Expression.
| | 06:21 | Now I add Expression to each one of
these, so I can expand these little arrows
| | 06:25 | and we'll see all of the Expression options.
| | 06:27 | Now I could type in my Expression by
hand but the easiest way to do this is to click
| | 06:31 | off, simply go to the Position pick
whip which is this little curly Q, click
| | 06:37 | drag so I get the string and let
go over positioned on the Null.
| | 06:43 | I can then click off and that
Expression becomes permanent.
| | 06:47 | Now see as the numbers that were on
the position for the Null are now up
| | 06:51 | here for the Billboard.
| | 06:53 | Again you can type these by hand, but
this is a quick way just to transfer values.
| | 06:57 | I'll do the same for this Orientation,
click off and there is Expression for that.
| | 07:03 | If I collapse these and look on my
view again, I can see the Billboard is
| | 07:10 | indeed stuck on that Null or at least
in the same place and space as the null, if I
| | 07:14 | play it back, it's tracked.
| | 07:19 | Now the Billboard is very tiny, it's also
lined up with the X on the axis of the Null.
| | 07:24 | It's not quite correct yet, I
do need to change some Transforms.
| | 07:28 | So I'm going to go to the Billboard
layer, expand the Transforms again.
| | 07:32 | I have the option of changing the Anchor
Point which slides it left, right, up or
| | 07:35 | down compared to its pivot or I can change
the Scale and/or the Rotation to get it
| | 07:40 | into place so it looks more realistic.
| | 07:42 | So once again I can just use my mouse
to click drag left or right over these
| | 07:47 | various attributes to change the Transforms.
| | 07:51 | So with some experimentation I
could probably get this looking correct.
| | 07:55 | Now this won't be instantaneous, it
might take a little while, but I do have
| | 07:58 | some values you can use for
now that should work pretty good.
| | 08:00 | Now again, it's too small so
I'm going to start with Scale.
| | 08:03 | So Scale of 890 works well to get about the
right size and then I also need to do the Rotation.
| | 08:09 | I can't do Orientation, it's taken
over by the Expression, but I can do
| | 08:13 | Rotation, so let's try -20, -23,
and 18.5 or eighteen and a half.
| | 08:21 | You could see already that Rotation
scales made a big difference, it looks
| | 08:26 | almost correct now.
| | 08:27 | Now it's a little low, looks like it's
hanging of that ledge a bit, so what I
| | 08:31 | can do then is finish up with the
Anchor Point, so let's try 356 for X and 128
| | 08:38 | for Y and then it's gotten into a nice
place where it looks like it's mounted on
| | 08:43 | the side of the building and we'll play it back.
| | 08:46 | I am going to use the
Spacebar to play this back.
| | 08:48 | Now the Spacebar is not playing real
time necessarily, but it's a quick way just
| | 08:52 | to see what's going on.
| | 08:53 | (video playing)
| | 09:02 | And there we go, our 3D Billboard, at
least the start of it is now following along
| | 09:06 | with the building, it looks like
it was shot with the same camera.
| | 09:09 | So we've used our 3D tracker points to
create a Null and then we used the basic
| | 09:15 | Transforms of the Null to
position the Billboard layer.
| | 09:19 | In that case we used the Position and
the Orientation and we transferred those
| | 09:24 | values to an Expression.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Constructing the motion graphics| 00:00 | We've successfully tracked our
first 3D layer and that's a billboard.
| | 00:03 | We'll play it back.
| | 00:09 | You can see it's following along quite nicely.
| | 00:12 | Now it's a bit boring
right now so let's jazz it up.
| | 00:15 | It'd be great to turn this into an
electronic billboard the style you'll see for
| | 00:18 | news updates or the text scrolls across.
| | 00:21 | Now we do have enough motion graphic tools
inside After Effects to complete that task.
| | 00:25 | So let me go straight to the billboard
composition and the first thing I want to do
| | 00:30 | is make two new solids.
| | 00:31 | One solid will become the background for a
logo like the company that sponsors the
| | 00:35 | sign and the second solid will become
the field where the text scrolls across.
| | 00:40 | So Layer>New>Solid and this
first solid I'm going to make black.
| | 00:46 | I'm not worried about the size right now;
| | 00:48 | we'll deal with that in the second.
| | 00:50 | And the second layer or second
solid, I am going to make a dark blue.
| | 00:56 | Now you can choose a slightly
different color that's fine.
| | 01:01 | There are two new solids.
| | 01:03 | Now they are the same size as the
composition right now. What I can do is
| | 01:06 | interactively scale those.
| | 01:07 | If I click drag the corners or the side
dots, I can scale right there in the viewer.
| | 01:13 | So this blue or bluish solid is going
to become the background for our logo
| | 01:18 | and then the black solid, as if there were
light bulbs or something like that in that area.
| | 01:23 | So I'm going to do this fairly quickly, you
can spend more time on this if you want to.
| | 01:27 | You can also use your arrow keys to
move selected layers up or down or left or
| | 01:31 | right, those are the
arrow keys in your keyboard.
| | 01:34 | Alright, it looks pretty good
right now, so let's add some text.
| | 01:37 | I am going to add the text that
will form a logo right here first.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to grab the Text Tool up
here and the easy way is just to click
| | 01:46 | where you want the text like right there,
that forms a text layer and then before
| | 01:50 | you start to type, go ahead
and set all your text parameters.
| | 01:53 | Over here in the Character panel you
have your fonts, I'm going to leave it on
| | 01:57 | Times New Roman, you also have your
color, I'm going to click that swatch and
| | 02:01 | pick a different color like light
blue like that and you can also pick the
| | 02:06 | size, size actually might be pretty
good right now, I have 36 pixels, we'll see
| | 02:10 | what it looks like.
| | 02:11 | I can go back and just start typing now to get
all of these properties on the new text.
| | 02:16 | Now you might have to click one more time in
the viewer to activate it and then start typing.
| | 02:21 | I am going to make up the name of a
fake news company or something that
| | 02:25 | shows that this will be a news billboard, so
something like Today's News should be fine.
| | 02:30 | Now you'll see that it's aligning to the left.
| | 02:33 | I can change that if I click drag and
highlight all the text so it turns red,
| | 02:39 | well there is a red box around it and
go down to the Paragraph panel down here
| | 02:42 | at the bottom right and switch
from left align to center, there we go.
| | 02:47 | Now you can click off the text or go
back to the Selection Tool to move the
| | 02:52 | entire text unit all at once.
| | 02:55 | You can also scale all the text all at
once by grabbing these red dots and just
| | 03:00 | interactively dragging. So, that looks pretty good.
| | 03:03 | Now if you eve want to go back and edit the
text you can, just go back to your Text
| | 03:06 | Tool, click somewhere over the text and
you can highlight it again and then change
| | 03:11 | your properties or even just
Backspace and retype the actual words.
| | 03:16 | This is good for now, so I'm going to get out
of the text mode again and move on.
| | 03:21 | The next text to add is the scrolling
text which will be over this black area.
| | 03:26 | I'm going to grab the Text Tool again, click
somewhere in that black area, again new
| | 03:29 | layer, and I can check all
of my properties once again.
| | 03:32 | I'm going to switch to a different font;
I want this to be more modern and clean, so I
| | 03:36 | think Arial will be good.
| | 03:38 | I am going to change the color to
something intense like red and then for the
| | 03:44 | size I actually want a bigger size.
| | 03:46 | But for now I'm going to leave it small, I'll
change the size after I'm done typing.
| | 03:49 | So I'm going to type some type of message that
might be a news message like a news headline.
| | 03:55 | I'm going to type something about gas
prices being high. Gas prices soar.
| | 04:02 | Okay, just the message.
| | 04:03 | Now this message should be -- once it's
scaled up -- very long, so it's longer than
| | 04:07 | the actual composition, because
we're going to scroll it across.
| | 04:10 | So there is the message and I
can click on the Selection Tool.
| | 04:13 | Now if you ever get this red warning
that means your Caps Lock is on, but
| | 04:17 | you're not actually typing text, so
you just turn off the Caps Lock to get
| | 04:21 | rid of that, and there it is, and now I can
just move it over, and now I think I'll scale it.
| | 04:25 | There's two ways to scale, I can
go back to my Text Tool, highlight it,
| | 04:29 | and then change my text size here or
I can grab the corners of this text
| | 04:33 | box and scale it that way.
| | 04:35 | I'll go ahead and go back to my Text
Tool, click on the text, highlight it,
| | 04:39 | and then scale it up.
| | 04:41 | I want it to be big enough that
it fills the height to this area.
| | 04:46 | Now that's pretty good.
| | 04:47 | I am also going to position it where it
starts right here and what we'll do is
| | 04:53 | animate it moving from this point
and scrolling from right to left.
| | 04:56 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 04:59 | I'm going to expand that layer's
transform section on the first frame of the
| | 05:05 | timeline I'll click on the Time icon
beside position to key that, then go to the
| | 05:10 | last frame of the timeline and then
move it over in X. I'm just going to click
| | 05:15 | drag interactively over that number
cell and move it over, until I get to the
| | 05:22 | end of the line or close to the end of the line.
| | 05:24 | So here is the first frame, here is
the last frame, it's now moving across.
| | 05:28 | Now one problem is, is as it scrolls it's
covering up everything else including the
| | 05:33 | logo and the edges, so I do have to
mask that somehow. So one quick trick
| | 05:38 | would be to go back to the first frame and
use my Rectangle Tool. I'll click that,
| | 05:43 | and I'll just click drag a box right
over that area where I want the text and
| | 05:48 | it's automatically cropped out of the parts I
don't want, and click off that to get out of that mode.
| | 05:55 | Now if I go ahead and move the timeline
now you'll see the mask moves with the
| | 06:00 | layer, because the layer is animated, so I
do need to animate the mask also, so I'm
| | 06:03 | going to the Mask 1 section, expand that,
click on the time icon beside Mask Path,
| | 06:09 | the keyframe for the first
frame and that's the mask shape.
| | 06:11 | Now I might need to adjust it. Let me make
sure it fits better. I'll just adjust the
| | 06:15 | mask here moving some points around.
| | 06:17 | All right, that's good for the first
frame then go to the last frame, zoom out so
| | 06:22 | I can find it, double click the mask
on one of the lines, pick the entire
| | 06:28 | mask, that puts it into transform mode, move
the entire mask over zoom back in so I
| | 06:33 | can see, and then position it
for the last frame. There we go.
| | 06:36 | Now because the animation on the text is
fairly simple, I'm going to need two key frames
| | 06:42 | on the mask also, and there we go.
| | 06:45 | Now it's scrolling, but not overlapping.
| | 06:47 | So there we have a basic news
billboard that we made through motion graphic
| | 06:53 | tricks right here in this composite,
let's take a quick look and see what it
| | 06:57 | looks like in the first comp, and there it is.
| | 07:00 | If I play it back, you'll see that the entire
sign is following through the tracking,
| | 07:08 | but because that composition is nested
I have all the detail in the moving text and
| | 07:13 | the logo and so on. So, the billboard is
looking pretty good, but there's a few more
| | 07:16 | steps we can take at a later point.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining the motion graphics| 00:00 | We have a nice billboard here that we
created with Motion Graphics techniques,
| | 00:04 | using text and solid layers and so on.
| | 00:07 | Looks pretty good, but it's
not quite integrated completely.
| | 00:10 | If I zoom in you can see that the
text and the solids are very, very sharp
| | 00:15 | edged, whereas the video background is a bit
soft, we can do a few things to improve that.
| | 00:20 | Let me go back to the Billboard comp
and take a look. Now the first thing we can
| | 00:24 | address is the actual scrolling text,
it's very cleaned edge, doesn't really
| | 00:29 | look like an electronic readout or
light bulbs or anything like that.
| | 00:32 | So one trick we
can apply is a Mosaic Effect.
| | 00:35 | Mosaic will pixelate this and make it
look much cruder as if there weren't that
| | 00:40 | many light bulbs or weren't
that many pixels to start with.
| | 00:42 | So I am going to pick that layer, go
up to Effect>Stylize and apply Mosaic.
| | 00:49 | As soon as I do that you can
see that it becomes blocky.
| | 00:53 | Those are basically pixels, so I can choose
how many I have horizontally and vertically.
| | 00:57 | You can experiment with these values
up here to get basically square pixels.
| | 01:05 | So a value of 15 Horizontal and 20 in
Vertical works pretty well in this case.
| | 01:11 | And this will work as the
text is scrolling across.
| | 01:16 | That helps makes it like more electronic.
| | 01:18 | Let's go back to the
first comp now, take a look.
| | 01:21 | Now the other problem is again
that everything is too sharp, now the
| | 01:24 | scrolling text is better, but the
edges of the solids and Today's News font,
| | 01:29 | or text is very, very crisp.
| | 01:31 | What we can do is apply some type of blur to
that to improve it, so I am going to select
| | 01:35 | the Billboard layer, go to
Effect and instead of a regular blur
| | 01:38 | I am going to apply the Channel Blur.
| | 01:40 | Channel Blur allows you to blur
the RGB and the Alpha all separately.
| | 01:45 | So for example, I can blur the
Red, Green, and Blue, 3, 3, 3.
| | 01:50 | Now we will soften it, and that
will make it integrate better.
| | 01:54 | And then I can blur the Alpha separately.
| | 01:56 | Now Alpha will affect the outer edge,
so let's try 5 there, and I'll click
| | 02:02 | off it, so you can see it, and you can
see that's gotten softer on the edge now,
| | 02:05 | and that looks better.
| | 02:06 | So the softness issue and the sharpness
issue has been dealt with, but as the
| | 02:10 | sign looks very dull, we want to make it look
like it's illuminated somehow or incandescent.
| | 02:15 | You can apply a different effect for that, in
fact, we can apply a glow to make it glow.
| | 02:19 | So once again select that
layer, Effect>Stylize>Glow.
| | 02:23 | All of a sudden it gets brighter and more glowy.
| | 02:27 | We are going to have to adjust the
Threshold, Radius, and Intensity. Now you
| | 02:32 | can just slide these to try different values.
| | 02:35 | The Threshold determines what's glowing,
the lower the value the more it glows.
| | 02:38 | The Radius affects the softness, the
higher the value, the more soft it gets.
| | 02:44 | Intensity is the intensity of the glow.
| | 02:46 | You can try different values, I have
a few that work pretty well though.
| | 02:50 | 35% for Threshold, 28 for the
Radius, and .6 for the Intensity.
| | 02:57 | Now it looks like it's illuminated, as if
there are light bulbs behind the surface,
| | 03:01 | or somewhere on that surface.
| | 03:02 | Now if we click off, you can see there
is a little bit of a soft edge that was
| | 03:07 | created by the glow.
| | 03:08 | A little bit of a dark blurry edge. That's not bad,
because it kind of helps sell the shadow.
| | 03:13 | If you take that one step further
though and create a real drop shadow here,
| | 03:16 | and one trick for doing that, is to
copy that layer, adjust that copy, so it
| | 03:21 | becomes more shadow like, so I am going to select
the Billboard layer again, go to Edit>Duplicate.
| | 03:27 | That copies the entire
layer with all the effects.
| | 03:30 | Now I have two of the same
thing, let me go to the lower one.
| | 03:34 | I am going to rename that so I know
what it is, I am going to call this
| | 03:36 | Billboard shadow and look at the effects.
| | 03:40 | Now the Blur we can keep, the Glow we don't
need, we just want a dark shadow. I am
| | 03:45 | going to highlight the Glow and
delete that with the Delete key.
| | 03:48 | Now I want the shadow to be super dark,
so I am going to go ahead and apply one
| | 03:50 | more effect, Effect>Color Correction>
Curves, and one trick to make it absolutely
| | 03:55 | pitch black is to drag the top
of this curve down so it's flat.
| | 03:59 | I can't really see it now, because
it's covered up by the original billboard.
| | 04:03 | What I can do though is offset it,
so it's to the left and down.
| | 04:08 | Now I don't want to ruin the Motion
Tracking, so what I can do instead is change the
| | 04:14 | anchor point, so I expand the transform
section, you will remember that we had
| | 04:19 | expressions on the position orientation,
I don't want to ruin those, or remove
| | 04:22 | the expressions, so what I can do
instead is fiddle with the anchor point.
| | 04:26 | So if I change the Y here, you see it
slides down and the X will slide to left.
| | 04:32 | And it will still track fine.
| | 04:34 | Now the shadow is very hard on the edge
still, but I still have my blur leftover,
| | 04:40 | so I can go to my Alpha Blurriness
and increase that value to say 45 and that
| | 04:46 | definitely blurs it out.
| | 04:47 | Now it's still a bit opaque, close to the sign,
so I can reduce the opacity on that
| | 04:51 | shadow layer down to say 65
and that will make it fade away.
| | 04:55 | And I'll adjust the
anchor point a little bit more.
| | 04:58 | I don't want it to overhang the edge
of the building, so it's over here.
| | 05:01 | I do want it kind of down and to the left.
| | 05:04 | So let me click off that so I can take a look.
| | 05:09 | So there is a nice drop shadow and also
some improvement on the sign itself, so
| | 05:13 | it's integrated into that
real life footage much better.
| | 05:16 | Play it back briefly. There we go.
| | 05:30 | So far we have three, 3D
layers. We have the null,
| | 05:33 | we got from the tracker, and then the
two copies of the billboard, one which is
| | 05:37 | being used for a shadow.
| | 05:39 | It might be worth taking a few moments
to see what's going on in the 3D environment.
| | 05:43 | Right now we are simply looking
through the camera that the tracker provided.
| | 05:46 | What we can do though is look at other cameras
like orthographic cameras, much like a 3D
| | 05:50 | program, and the way to do that is to go
over here to this menu where it says 1
| | 05:53 | View, which is the Select View Layout
and switch that from 1 View to something
| | 05:58 | like 4 Views to look at multiple views.
| | 06:01 | In that case, you are going to get
three orthographic views at the same time, the
| | 06:05 | right, the front, and the top.
| | 06:07 | We are zoomed in right now but you can
use your middle mouse scroll button to
| | 06:11 | zoom in or out of any given view, that
your mouse is over, or you can highlight a
| | 06:16 | view by clicking it, so it has the
yellow corners and change in the zoom menu
| | 06:20 | here, either way is fine.
| | 06:23 | Now if I zoom out far enough,
eventually I will see all of my 3D elements.
| | 06:27 | In fact, here are my two Billboards
layers right here and click on these right
| | 06:31 | here in 3D environment and
they get selected in the layer.
| | 06:35 | So you can see they are close together,
this shadow is a little bit offset from
| | 06:38 | the original Billboard, and again,
that's because it changed the anchor point,
| | 06:41 | so they are close together, but not touching.
| | 06:43 | There is also a camera, the camera that
is created by the tracker, if I zoom in
| | 06:47 | to the right view, for example,
I will see a little box.
| | 06:50 | If I click on that box,
it's actually the camera icon.
| | 06:54 | If I zoom in closer, when selected I
can see a transform handle which has a
| | 06:58 | three directions on it.
| | 07:00 | Also there is motion path
with all the little keyframes.
| | 07:02 | If I playback the timeline, I can see
the camera moving on that path which the
| | 07:07 | tracker developed for me, and the fact
that the camera is moving in relationship
| | 07:13 | to those 3D layers like the billboards,
is what makes it look like the
| | 07:17 | billboards are in 3D space.
| | 07:18 | Now you can change what you see in any
of these views by clicking on the Views
| | 07:26 | so their corners turn yellow and then
changing the menu right here, is the menu
| | 07:30 | right beside the four views, that says
3D View Popup, you can change it to
| | 07:34 | different camera views.
| | 07:35 | You can also go back to 1 View any time
you want to, and while you are in the 1
| | 07:39 | View you can change the view there also.
| | 07:41 | I can hop from active camera, which is
the current 3D camera, to some other view
| | 07:46 | like the orthographic right, and then
zoom in or out of those views, and once
| | 07:51 | again there is the camera.
| | 07:52 | For now though I'm going to go back to 1
View and back to my active camera.
| | 07:55 | That's what happening behind the scenes.
| | 07:57 | We have added some effects to the
billboard layers to integrate them better into
| | 08:01 | the live-action footage, those are
basically complete, and we are now ready to
| | 08:05 | add some other elements into the 3D scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracking a new sky| 00:00 | We built a news billboard
and tracked it into the scene.
| | 00:03 | Now we're ready to see what other elements we
can add taking advantage of the 3D tracking data.
| | 00:08 | Well one important thing to replace is the sky.
| | 00:11 | The original sky here is very boring,
its just pure white. We also want to
| | 00:15 | eventually change the
lighting so its look like its sunset.
| | 00:18 | So replacing the sky is a great
thing to do in this situation.
| | 00:21 | So I'm going to take advantage of the
3D tracking data, let's give that a try.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to go back down to the street,
go back to the 3D camera tracker, select
| | 00:29 | that, so we can see our points. A
new sky element is going to be very
| | 00:33 | distant, it should look like it's far
away and overhead, so I don't want to use
| | 00:37 | the tracking points that were selected
for the billboard, I really want something
| | 00:40 | that's very, very far away, so
let's zoom in and take a look.
| | 00:43 | There are a couple points back here and they
are very small and if you have hard time
| | 00:49 | seeing them go ahead and scale up the
track point size, but one thing I want to
| | 00:53 | make sure is that those points stay in
the frame the entire time, so I'll just
| | 00:57 | quickly scrub through my
timeline and see if they last.
| | 01:02 | And indeed these two do last the entire
time and these are about as far back as
| | 01:06 | I can get in terms of the points.
| | 01:08 | What I'll do is I'll select this
one point in between the two buildings.
| | 01:11 | Now previously we selected multiple
points because we're more worried about the
| | 01:14 | plane, we wanted the plane in the
billboard to match the plane on the side of the
| | 01:19 | building for example.
| | 01:20 | In this case I'm going to put the sky
in the background, not so concerned about
| | 01:24 | the orientation at least as
part of the tracking process.
| | 01:27 | So I can just select a single point
in this case and make it work, so I'm going
| | 01:31 | to click on this point it turns yellow,
it's a little hard to see but it's selected,
| | 01:35 | then right mouse-click and create a
new null, we're going to rename this new
| | 01:39 | null, SkyNull, so we know what's going on.
| | 01:44 | There we go, and then we can use this.
| | 01:47 | Now I am not worried about the
orientation of this null, I'm just concerned
| | 01:51 | about where it is in 3D space, so
when the camera moves we can see it.
| | 01:55 | So I can go ahead and bring in a brand-
new sky and use it with this null, so back
| | 01:59 | to File>Import>File, we're
going to bring in this static image.
| | 02:03 | I'm going to back out back into the
Footage folder, this time I'm going to go to
| | 02:08 | the Stills folder and there is a
single frame or a single still there called
| | 02:12 | Sunset, I'll grab that and bring
that in and go ahead and drop that on top.
| | 02:19 | Now that sky is very big, it's bigger
than the resolution of the composition.
| | 02:24 | Its also going to be ignored right
now until I turn it into a 3D layer.
| | 02:28 | So 3D layer turn that on and then I
can associate it with the SkyNull.
| | 02:31 | Now I'm going to use a similar trick as we
use before which is relate the transforms.
| | 02:37 | Now in this case I don't really care
about the orientation, I'll deal with that
| | 02:42 | separately, I just care about the position
in 3D space, so I'm going to select the
| | 02:47 | position of the sunset, go to Animation>
Add Expression, pick whip the position of
| | 02:53 | the SkyNull, and then click off.
| | 02:56 | The sunset is probably going to be
very small now, it's pushed back in the Z
| | 03:00 | direction, so it's not as big as it's
used to be, I'll turn off the street
| | 03:02 | and see if can find it.
| | 03:04 | And in fact there it is, it's
very tiny, it's very, very far away.
| | 03:07 | So we do have to spend some
time working with the scale.
| | 03:10 | So I can start up by interactively
scaling it, and experiment with different
| | 03:15 | values, I'll give you a value that
works pretty well here though, which is
| | 03:19 | 8000, and it's big enough to cover
that section of the frame that we need to
| | 03:25 | fill up with the new sky.
| | 03:27 | I can also adjust the anchor point to
slide it up and over a little bit to the
| | 03:31 | left, values of 1750 for X work well
and also 1500 for Y. Now we can deal with
| | 03:40 | some rotation orientation and again
those are the same words that being base
| | 03:43 | orientation and rotation we'll rotate
that layer, so in terms of the rotation it'd be
| | 03:48 | nice to rotate that sky, so it's more
overhead, you can think about walking
| | 03:53 | down the street, the sky is mainly
overhead, it's not perpendicular to the
| | 03:56 | street, it's more over the street,
over the sidewalk, over the buildings.
| | 04:00 | So what we can do is give it a slight
angle through the orientation to give it
| | 04:04 | that effect, for example if I change
the X, in the positive direction you'll see
| | 04:09 | how it's more of a ceiling, which is
what we want. I can also the change the Z
| | 04:14 | just to tilt it over.
| | 04:17 | So in this case the value of 30 in X
and the value of 10 in Z works well, it's
| | 04:24 | more overhead, or at least at an angle, and
it's filling that top right portion of
| | 04:28 | the frame where the new sky
needs to replace the old sky.
| | 04:31 | So let's play it back now.
| | 04:33 | And there we go we have a new tracked sky.
| | 04:42 | Now there are still a few problems
to deal with, one the sky overlaps the
| | 04:46 | billboard, we can address that
later through layers in rotoscoping.
| | 04:48 | There's also issue with the fact that
the original sky is still a part of the
| | 04:53 | original video footage, I can also
remove that through keying in rotoscoping.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracking static foreground elements| 00:00 | We've tracked a new Billboard and also
a brand-new sky, we're ready to see if
| | 00:04 | there are other things we
can use a 3DTracking data for.
| | 00:07 | Let's turn on the street and see what
problems we might have down the road.
| | 00:11 | We need to hide the sky too here.
| | 00:13 | Now the goal here is to eventually
replace the center building, now there are
| | 00:17 | few problems with that, one of which
is the fact that there are foreground
| | 00:21 | elements that block that building.
| | 00:22 | So, we want to get the new building,
which will be matte a painting, and in there we'll
| | 00:26 | have to do something to get those cars
and this lamp to stay in the foreground.
| | 00:30 | Now one solution is to Rotoscope.
| | 00:32 | Now rotoscoping can be difficult and
it can also present problems where the
| | 00:36 | edge of the rotoscope
flutters and it looks like it jitters.
| | 00:39 | Another solution instead of that is to
mask out a single frame, a static frame, and
| | 00:45 | then to track that using the 3D Tracking data;
| | 00:48 | that way there will be no
issues with the edge quality.
| | 00:50 | Let's give that a try.
| | 00:52 | Let's start with the lamp;
| | 00:53 | the lamp is the most problematic here,
because it's so thin, it'd be very hard to
| | 00:58 | rotoscope over time.
| | 00:59 | So, I am going to start by grabbing
a static frame of that, I am going to
| | 01:05 | File>Import>File, and select just
the very last frame of that image
| | 01:11 | sequence, frame_119.
| | 01:12 | We want to make sure the Sequence
checkbox is off, now it's on by default, I
| | 01:18 | want to make sure it's off and
open just frame_119 and there it is.
| | 01:22 | I'll pull that down, I'm going to go to the
last frame of the timeline, just because
| | 01:28 | that's where that frame belongs,
then I am going to roto that out.
| | 01:32 | I am going to use just my regular Mask
tools, for example the Pen tool and you might
| | 01:39 | have to zoom in pretty
close to see what's going on.
| | 01:41 | I'm going to start at the base and draw a
mask going around all the things that are
| | 01:45 | connected to the pole like the walk box,
all the way up to the bend here, to the
| | 01:57 | part where the lamp itself is
housed and back down the other side.
| | 02:03 | Now I'm doing this pretty quickly, so
you'll probably have to spend more time
| | 02:08 | yourself to refine it, but
this should work for now.
| | 02:11 | Back down to whatever these boxes are;
| | 02:13 | utility boxes, to the sign, down to
the bottom, and then close the mask.
| | 02:23 | I'll turn off my street, so you can see
that, so now that lamppost is cut out.
| | 02:28 | Now I do need to make a few fixes here,
just for now though, I think I'll go to
| | 02:35 | RotoBeizer mode just to smooth some things out.
| | 02:37 | So, I can select the entire mask, go
to Layer>Mask and Shape Path>RotoBezier,
| | 02:43 | what that means is I can go to the
Convert Vertex tool, select any Vertex, any
| | 02:50 | point, and then click-drag
left or right to smooth or harden.
| | 02:55 | So, if you drag to the right, you get a
smoother transition, if you drag to the
| | 02:59 | left, you get a more linear one.
| | 03:01 | So, very quickly I can round out a few
of these points here, so the edges are
| | 03:05 | a little bit better.
| | 03:07 | And of course you can move
points around as much as you want.
| | 03:10 | Be careful not to move the
entire layer though. There we go,
| | 03:17 | that's good enough for now.
| | 03:18 | So, there is the lamp by itself, now
we can apply 3D Tracking data to it.
| | 03:23 | So, I am going to back and turn on my
street, go back to my 3D Camera Tracker and
| | 03:31 | then pick a point, I only
need one point in this case.
| | 03:34 | I want a point that is close to
the lamppost or lamp pole, but doesn't
| | 03:38 | disappear over time, so I probably have
to play the timeline back and look for
| | 03:44 | what stays and what goes
away, what doesn't drift.
| | 03:49 | And I think what's good in this area
is this point right here, beside this
| | 03:53 | deposit box on this building, so I can click
that 1 point, right-mouse key and Create Null.
| | 03:59 | I'll rename this New Null, I am going to
call this CornerNull, and I am going to
| | 04:08 | drag up below the street, just for
organization, and in fact, the street layer I am
| | 04:12 | going to rename too, I am going to
rename this lamp, just so I know what it is.
| | 04:17 | I need to convert the Lamp to a 3D Layer,
take advantage of the 3D Components, and
| | 04:21 | then I need to match the position of the
CornerNull to the lamp, or vice versa.
| | 04:26 | So, I am going to use my same trick
that I have used previously and that is to
| | 04:32 | select the Position of the lamp, Add
Expression, and pick whip down, down to the
| | 04:38 | Position of the CornerNull,
click off to finish the Expression.
| | 04:42 | Now I can turn off my street and see where
my lamp wound up, probably, way too small.
| | 04:49 | This not unusual, because that lamp
got pushed far back in Z, so perspective
| | 04:54 | caused it to look smaller.
| | 04:55 | So, I need spend some time working with
the scale and maybe the anchor points,
| | 04:59 | and possibly the orientation or rotation
to get it back into the correct position.
| | 05:03 | Now I'm going to turn on my street again,
because what I really want to do is line up
| | 05:07 | my cutout lamppost with my original one,
again, I am on the last frame of the
| | 05:13 | timeline right now.
| | 05:15 | So, I'll have to do some scaling and
also changing the anchor point until they
| | 05:20 | overlap. This may take a while to,
get them to line up perfectly, I'll give you
| | 05:31 | some numbers though that work.
| | 05:33 | While you're on the last frame, if you enter
these numbers, 732, 991 for Anchor Points,
| | 05:43 | also a Scale of 1480 and
last a little bit of rotation.
| | 05:50 | I am going to change the Z-Orientation
to -1, enter a negative number into the
| | 05:57 | orientation, it becomes a positive
number, it becomes 359, in any case between
| | 06:02 | the changing the anchor point, to
changing the scale, and a slight change in
| | 06:06 | orientation, this post now
lines up with their original post.
| | 06:10 | It is not perfect, but it's pretty close.
| | 06:12 | Now there is one problem with this,
and that is because there is lot of lens
| | 06:16 | distortion in the original video footage,
just a tracking is not going to make
| | 06:21 | this lamppost line up perfectly
throughout the entire timeline;
| | 06:23 | there will be a little bit of drift
on it through the distortion of the lens.
| | 06:27 | So, what I need to do is go ahead and check
the other frames, in fact, I am going to
| | 06:31 | need to do animate the anchor point,
to change in a tiny amount to try to
| | 06:34 | improve how it's tracking.
| | 06:36 | So, I am going to click on the anchor
point time icon, go ahead and key it on the
| | 06:40 | last frame, because that's already good,
and go to the first frame, and try to
| | 06:44 | get a better match.
| | 06:45 | In fact, it'll have slipped a little bit.
| | 06:47 | So, again you can change this
interactively on the anchor point and it
| | 06:51 | doesn't take a huge change.
| | 06:52 | For example, 727 in the X, and 989 in
the Y works pretty well here, now it's
| | 06:59 | back to being closer.
| | 07:00 | There's probably one other place in the
key, if we look at the entire shot, the
| | 07:04 | cameraman walks forward and
then suddenly he pans as he stops.
| | 07:09 | So, probably right before this pan to
the right, would be a good place for a
| | 07:14 | key, because there is a sudden
change in the way the camera is moving.
| | 07:17 | So, on frame 95 we want to add one more
key, so I am going to go frame 95, and
| | 07:21 | then try to get the lamp to fit
better again, pretty tiny changes.
| | 07:26 | So, in this case 733 and
989 should work pretty well.
| | 07:32 | So, now we've fine tuned the anchor
point with some keyframes and make sure
| | 07:39 | that that lamp follows even better. Let's
turn off the street and we will play it
| | 07:43 | back and there we go.
| | 07:53 | The static frame of the street lamp,
now takes on the camera motion.
| | 07:57 | Now keep in mind that the original lamp and
that building behind it is going to go away.
| | 08:02 | So, you'll wind up with just this lamp,
that's why if it's not 100% perfect, it's
| | 08:06 | still okay, as long as it looks like
it's there and using the same original
| | 08:10 | camera, then it will be good.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracking additional foreground elements| 00:00 | We have used the tracking data one
more time to track a static element in the
| | 00:05 | foreground, in that case it was the
lamp pole right here, this will allow us to
| | 00:10 | put a new building behind that at a later step.
| | 00:14 | We can continue that process by
cutting out these cars here, these three cars
| | 00:18 | also cover up the building, it can
potentially be a problem when it comes time to
| | 00:22 | put the new building in.
| | 00:23 | So we can use a similar technique. We can
take a static frame, cut it out, and then
| | 00:28 | use the tracking data. Let's do that.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to grab Street_119 once
again, which I brought in previously,
| | 00:33 | drop it into the comp above the Lamp, I'll
rename that Cars, just so I know what that is.
| | 00:39 | Then turn off the street, and then zoom
in, and then use the Mask tools to cut
| | 00:47 | this out. Let's grab the Pen tool,
zoom in, and try to cut these three cars out.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to do this fairly quickly, so
you can spend more time to do this more
| | 01:02 | accurately. I don't want the background I
just want the cars and in this case this
| | 01:05 | truck, or SUV, this white car, and this
other truck or SUV. Try to get all the detail,
| | 01:17 | like the roof racks, hinges, things
like that, bumpers, so you might need to
| | 01:24 | spend a little bit of time shaping this.
| | 01:26 | There's the basic idea.
| | 01:28 | I'll close that, now the
cars are cut out by themselves.
| | 01:31 | I am going to go-ahead and move to frame_
119 of the timeline now, because that's
| | 01:35 | where I am working with this particular frame.
| | 01:37 | Now I can convert this to another 3D
Layer, so Cars, 3D button. They'll
| | 01:44 | disappear because we're not in the right
place compared to where the 3D Camera
| | 01:48 | is, the camera is not seeing them, that's okay though.
| | 01:50 | Once again we will take that 3D
Tracking data and apply it to that new layer. So I
| | 01:55 | can reuse the CornerNull I already had,
turn on the street, we can take a look
| | 02:00 | at that, the CornerNull is right here at
the corner of this building, and that's
| | 02:03 | pretty close to the lamp pole, and
also pretty much on the same plane as the
| | 02:07 | cars, so I can use that again for the cars.
| | 02:10 | So, I am going to use the trick of
adding expression one more time. I'll expand
| | 02:14 | the Cars layer and the transforms,
then also the CornerNull and there are
| | 02:19 | the transforms there.
| | 02:20 | I'll select the Position, not really
concerned about the orientation here, just
| | 02:23 | the Position. Go down to Animation>Add
Expression, grab the pick whip, and then choose
| | 02:30 | the Position of the CornerNull,
click off to finish the expression.
| | 02:35 | I'll turn off the street again, and
we'll see that the cars are not in a
| | 02:41 | good place right now and they are
going to be too small, once again that's
| | 02:45 | because that layer is pushed pretty far back
in the Z-direction, so they're just too tiny.
| | 02:49 | So, we can go back to the Cars
layer and work on the transforms, in
| | 02:53 | particular scale and then anchor point.
We'll turn on the street one more time,
| | 02:57 | just so we can see where
the cars needed to lineup.
| | 03:00 | I want to scale and position these
cars, so they cover up the original cars
| | 03:04 | here in the footage.
| | 03:05 | So, we can try interactively anchor
point and scale, till they get in the right
| | 03:15 | place, we'll do it roughly and I will give
you some values that work pretty well here.
| | 03:22 | So there, they are starting to line up.
| | 03:24 | Now in terms of more accurate values if you
try 1520 scale, which we are pretty close
| | 03:31 | to, that works, and also for the anchor
points 738 for X, and 992 for Y. There we
| | 03:38 | go, now they overlap.
| | 03:41 | Let's do a before and after. I'm going to turn on
and off this layer, so off, and on, off, on.
| | 03:47 | You'll see that they lineup, however, there
is some perspective change that's an
| | 03:52 | indicator that there is some pretty
heavy lens distortion typically at the
| | 03:55 | edges of the frame, so I can get the
position to line up and scale to lineup, I
| | 04:00 | am not going to be able to really reproduce
that distortion without a lot of extra effort.
| | 04:04 | Now since the original cars in the
footage are going to be going away, we're going to
| | 04:08 | cut those out as we replace the new
building, or at least cover them up, they are
| | 04:12 | not going to be a concern.
| | 04:14 | We are just concerned with the new
static Cars layer, which we just created.
| | 04:17 | So, we're not going to really see that
distortion, so we're not really concerned
| | 04:20 | about it. It's a bit of a cheat;
| | 04:21 | but it's going to work okay.
| | 04:22 | Now there is one concern though, if I
go to another frame like frames_0, or
| | 04:26 | frame_1, I am going to see the cars
slip. The distortion will cause the
| | 04:31 | 3DTracking data not be 100%
accurate, that's okay.
| | 04:34 | We can deal with that by changing the scale and
anchor point, and then keying those over time.
| | 04:39 | So, I know I am good on this frame. I'll
go ahead and turn on the time icon for
| | 04:43 | anchor points, and scale.
| | 04:45 | Now I am going to go to another
frame like frame_1 or frame_0, frame_0 in
| | 04:51 | this case and see what's going on, and in this
case the distortion has caused the cars to slip.
| | 04:57 | I can see two tires here instead of one.
| | 04:59 | So, I can change these values, now one
trick here is, I can change the scale, it
| | 05:04 | doesn't have to be even, I can make the
X-scale different from the Y. So, I can
| | 05:09 | stretch them horizontally
to help with this problem.
| | 05:11 | In fact, if I turn off the link here,
I can change X by itself without
| | 05:15 | affecting Y, and in fact, if I try a smaller
value like 1475, it's going to work pretty well.
| | 05:21 | Now I still need to adjust the anchor
point though, so I'll move the anchor to say
| | 05:26 | 709 in X, and 995 in Y. That new anchor
position along with the new scale, where
| | 05:35 | it's different than X, actually
makes them fit pretty well now.
| | 05:38 | Now there is a bit of overlap right
here where there are two roof lines, that's okay,
| | 05:43 | that's going to be covered up with
a new matte painting, which is a new
| | 05:47 | building, so that won't be an issue.
| | 05:49 | So, let's turn of the street now and
take a look, now that we have two keyframes on
| | 05:53 | here. I'll play it back and
we'll see it looks pretty nice.
| | 05:57 | There is one issue where there is a
gap that opens up at the bottom, that's
| | 06:10 | okay, we are going to deal with
that at a later step, but otherwise the
| | 06:14 | tracking is working for us.
| | 06:15 | So, we have gone back to our
3DTracking data, to track another foreground
| | 06:18 | element, in this case this cluster of cars.
| | 06:20 | This is going to help us insert the
matte painting into the scene, but maintain
| | 06:24 | our foreground elements.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing tracking the foreground elements| 00:00 | So far we've tracked two static elements
in the foreground using the tracking data.
| | 00:05 | If I zoom in we can see that those are
this Lamppost, and also this cluster of
| | 00:10 | cars here, you can see them right here,
if you turn on the mask Lamppost and Cars.
| | 00:15 | There is one more thing we can cut
out and track that is going be useful
| | 00:20 | and that's this streetlight right here, this
tree right here, and part of this lamppost.
| | 00:26 | The reason is those elements cover up
this building, and once again, we're going
| | 00:30 | to replace that building, so it would be
great to have those in front of the new
| | 00:34 | matte painting building.
| | 00:35 | We can use the same process though. I can
grab a copy of this frame_119 of the
| | 00:42 | street, drag it down to the Composition.
| | 00:44 | I'll rename this Light and then cut it out.
| | 00:48 | I'm going to go to the very last frame of the
timeline here and once again use my
| | 00:55 | Pen tool to cut this out.
| | 00:56 | I am interested in this streetlight
right here with its pole, have to zoom in
| | 01:02 | pretty close to see it, up the pole here,
across the pole, and a little bit of this tree.
| | 01:11 | On this tree edge, it would be worth my
time to really try to get intricate mask.
| | 01:16 | I'll let you spend more time than I am,
I want to do it fast right now, try to
| | 01:21 | get all the variations if you can, where
the leaves stick out, then back down the
| | 01:27 | pole, and finish up the light.
| | 01:31 | Then go down, below the roof of this
car, and you'll need to spend more time,
| | 01:38 | than I am, to get this to
look nice, but there we go.
| | 01:41 | There is the light and part of the tree;
| | 01:43 | I'll turn of the street so that
we can see it, there it is cut out.
| | 01:47 | I'll go ahead and turn this into a 3D Layer now.
| | 01:50 | Now in terms of what tracking data
do you use, I am not going to use the
| | 01:54 | CornerNull or the BillboardNull, or
the SkyNull, I have to find a new point
| | 01:58 | that's really close to this point in space.
| | 02:00 | It's not really on the same plane as
this Lamppost, and these Cars, it's a little bit
| | 02:05 | further down the street.
| | 02:06 | So, I am going to go back to my street,
go back to my 3D Camera Tracker and
| | 02:10 | look at the points.
| | 02:11 | And as it turns out there is a point
right here at the top of the Lamp, and if I
| | 02:16 | scrub my timeline, I can see that stays
there the entire time. This is a great
| | 02:22 | place to add a null. I am going
to pick that point, right-mouse key,
| | 02:26 | CreateNull, and I will call this null,
LightNull and pull this down to the
| | 02:33 | Composition just for organizational purposes.
| | 02:35 | We can see it's right there on the post,
so once again this is a pretty small
| | 02:40 | element, I am not really concerned
about orientation, but I am concerned about
| | 02:44 | its position in 3D Space, so what I
will do at this point is use the old trick
| | 02:48 | of connecting the transforms between
the Light in this case, and the LightNull,
| | 02:56 | pick the position of the light add an
expression, use my pick-whip to hook that up to
| | 03:03 | the Position on the LightNull, click off
to finish that expression and let's turn
| | 03:10 | off the street and see where the Light wound up.
| | 03:12 | Again, it is going to be way too tiny,
it's very tiny, it's right here, pushed
| | 03:16 | pretty far back in Z.
| | 03:17 | So, we still have the same old task of
adjusting the scale and the anchor point,
| | 03:21 | possibly the orientation to
get it into the right place.
| | 03:24 | So, obviously it's way too small now, we'll
scale it up, I'll start to adjust the
| | 03:28 | anchor point and of course if we turn
on the street, it's a good reference, so
| | 03:33 | you can see where you need to get to.
| | 03:36 | So I'll give you some values here to
save a little time, but here it is starting
| | 03:40 | to get into the right position, but
let's try a Scale of 2640, Anchor of 1224 in
| | 03:47 | X, and 892, okay, that's
back in the right place.
| | 03:56 | So, here is after and
before, almost a perfect match.
| | 04:00 | Let's turn off the street and take a
look. Let's zoom in really close, because
| | 04:14 | we're starting to see something that's
really nice about this 3DTracking, besides
| | 04:18 | something 2 dimensions, it has depth to it.
| | 04:21 | Notice where the streetlight is
compared to the roof of this truck, a
| | 04:25 | perspective shift, where the light is
compared to where the roofline is, changes
| | 04:29 | over time to indicate that there is depth.
| | 04:31 | So even though we're dealing with static
elements, or basically flat cars, we're
| | 04:35 | still getting a sense that things are far
apart, and this is a great advantage of
| | 04:40 | using this tracking system.
| | 04:41 | There is a one other adjustment we can make;
| | 04:43 | I mentioned you have to spend more
time with this mask to make it look nice.
| | 04:47 | Another thing we can do with the mask
aside from just moving points around and
| | 04:51 | deciding if they are curvy or
linear, is to Feather part of it.
| | 04:55 | Now there is a global feather that you
have on any kind of mask that you draw,
| | 04:59 | I'll expand that mask, and that's just
for the mask feather, so I can give it a
| | 05:03 | slight feather, like 1 pixel all the way around.
| | 05:05 | We can turn off the mask view here, so
it gets a little softer on the edge.
| | 05:12 | Now what I think we can do is add a
bigger feather using this new Mask
| | 05:16 | Feather tool right here.
| | 05:17 | I can pick that and then if I click on
a point on the mask, we get a special
| | 05:25 | hollow dot, if I pull that out
it becomes an interactive feather.
| | 05:32 | Now initially this goes all the way around
the mask, however, if you click another
| | 05:36 | point nearby, like right here
with this tool, it finishes the mask.
| | 05:41 | You can also drag these points wherever
you want them, and in fact, you can also
| | 05:46 | animate them over time.
| | 05:47 | So, I'll click one down here also, and as
many as you want actually, you can really
| | 05:53 | spend a lot of time
getting the interesting shape.
| | 05:56 | What I can do is really pull these mask
dots out far here on the back and get a
| | 06:00 | nice big feather, this will be great
for preventing me from getting a harsh separation
| | 06:05 | line in the middle of the tree, not
worried about the edge of the tree,
| | 06:09 | that's going to be overlapping the
buildings, but the middle of the tree I can
| | 06:11 | potentially see a potential problem
where pixels don't line up where the tree
| | 06:16 | in the original footage has different lens
distortion and you see a change along this pole.
| | 06:21 | So, by feathering this I'll prevent that.
| | 06:23 | So again, in order to do that, if you
want to add a feather, just grab your
| | 06:28 | Feather tool right here, click on one of
these points, you'll get a hollow dot, you
| | 06:35 | can pull it out that for a feather.
| | 06:37 | You can also delete these.
| | 06:38 | Delete key if one is selected
| | 06:39 | and that gets rid of it.
| | 06:40 | Go ahead and re-add it there, so I
have the feather just in the back.
| | 06:44 | So, it's a nice little feature.
| | 06:45 | For the third time we've used the
tracking data to track a static element in the
| | 06:49 | foreground, and once again this is going
to help us integrate our matte painting
| | 06:53 | building but maintain our foreground elements.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Layering a SceneRemoving an old sky| 00:00 | We have spent some time tracking some
foreground elements and also tracking this
| | 00:04 | new billboard using the 3D tracker.
| | 00:07 | We are ready to move on and start
building the composition, where we start adding
| | 00:10 | all the elements together.
| | 00:11 | So in fact I am going to make a
brand-new composition, Composition>New
| | 00:15 | Composition. I want to make sure this
new composition is the same size as the first
| | 00:20 | one in terms of the resolution, 1920 x 1080,
there's a preset for that which is called HDTV
| | 00:25 | 1080 24, it is 24 frames per
second, and that the duration is 120 frames.
| | 00:31 | I will go ahead and rename this one also,
I'll call this BuildStreet, click OK,
| | 00:38 | here is a new comp and this will be
where we combine everything together to
| | 00:43 | build up the new street with the new building.
| | 00:45 | I want to start this by dragging a new copy of
the street footage down into the composition.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to rename this
backgrounds become the new background.
| | 00:55 | Now the first task here will be to
remove the old sky. We've already tracked a new
| | 01:00 | sky in the previous composition, but
we need to remove this one, so the new sky
| | 01:04 | can show through.
| | 01:06 | Now this sky is almost pure white
or pure grey and that means that we could
| | 01:10 | probably use a keyer on it.
| | 01:11 | Now we could rotoscope this, but
because a camera is moving, because we have these
| | 01:15 | really intricate tree shapes,
it's going to be extremely difficult.
| | 01:19 | So in fact a keyer is a better solution here.
| | 01:21 | Now there are a number of options in
After Effects, we're going to use something slightly
| | 01:24 | different or unusual.
| | 01:25 | With the Background selected I'll go up
to Effect>Keying and choose Color Range.
| | 01:32 | Now the Color Range keyer operates in
different color spaces, in fact you see a
| | 01:39 | Color Space menu right here
It defaults Lab, but it also has YUV and RGB.
| | 01:44 | We're going to use Lab or Lab.
| | 01:47 | That's a color space that splits the
luminance and separates it from the color
| | 01:51 | component, so L is luminance or
intensity of the pixels and A and B are the
| | 01:57 | color components, A is the green to
magenta components and B is the yellow to blue
| | 02:03 | component, so because the sky is so bright
and so neutral, it's a great tool to use for it.
| | 02:10 | Another advantage of this tool is it
has these eyedroppers where you can
| | 02:13 | interactively select pixels to
determine what part of the matte will be opaque and
| | 02:18 | what part will be transparent.
| | 02:20 | In fact we can start with the plus
eyedropper here in the center and click on
| | 02:23 | the sky to tell the effect that that
needs to transparent and which it is, it
| | 02:29 | starts to become transparent, so we
see the black emptiness come through.
| | 02:32 | You can then adjust the matte with the
minus eyedropper and use this to click on
| | 02:37 | parts of the matte that need to be opaque
now you can click either in the viewer
| | 02:41 | here or in this thumbnail right here,
so let's give it a try, in fact I'll
| | 02:46 | start with the buildings out here,
we'll try and make them more opaque.
| | 02:49 | You can go and do this several times
and try to restore part of the matte
| | 02:56 | that shouldn't be transparent. I can
also do it right here in this little
| | 03:00 | thumbnail like I said.
| | 03:01 | Now the reason the top of this
building is pretty transparent now is because
| | 03:07 | it's very similar to the
sky in terms of intensity.
| | 03:09 | So that's a little bit better.
| | 03:14 | Now you can also move these sliders
around, in fact these eyedroppers change the
| | 03:18 | sliders automatically.
| | 03:19 | If you notice there are columns here, so
the Lab column, it's on the left here, Lab,
| | 03:26 | so there's a min, max for each one of
these, I'm going to start with the L min,
| | 03:30 | max and in fact if I move this
slider up to say 240, it restores most of the
| | 03:39 | buildings and what this is saying is
that any pixel values that have an intensity
| | 03:43 | or luminance that's above 240 up to the
max 255, those will become transparent. Anything
| | 03:51 | below 240 will remain
opaque in terms of intensity.
| | 03:54 | Now I can also move the color components
too and you can try these interactively.
| | 03:59 | And there will be some minor changes
here at least with this footage. We are
| | 04:04 | going to zoom out default, in fact let's
zoom at the default 127 we'll take a look.
| | 04:08 | So it's pretty good.
| | 04:09 | Now this is not perfect the edges of
the buildings and the edges of the trees
| | 04:14 | have some white lines trapped on them also
there are some noisy gray right here in the sky.
| | 04:18 | Now the buildings and the trees will
deal with separately with a few extra tools.
| | 04:23 | In this grey you can also deal with the
separate tools in fact first tool we use
| | 04:27 | or the first effect we'll use is a
choker, there are several chokers here under
| | 04:32 | the Matte menu, we're going to use
Matte Choker and the chokers are designed to
| | 04:37 | refine the edges of the
matte just within the alpha.
| | 04:41 | Now the way this choker works is the Choke
1 will erode or expand the edge. There's
| | 04:47 | also a Choke 2 which has the same thing,
we're just going to use the single choke
| | 04:51 | now, so just Choke 1.
| | 04:52 | So for example, if I raise Choke 1
up to 100, it erodes the matte
| | 04:57 | slightly, so here's after and here's
before, if I zoom in you can see there is
| | 05:04 | a bit of a white line trapped in the
buildings, if I turn it back on, That gets eroded.
| | 05:09 | Now we acan adjust the softness
also, there's a Gray Level Softness which
| | 05:13 | determines the blurriness of the
edge and also a Geometric Softness, which
| | 05:20 | determines the smoothness,
how much detail there is.
| | 05:24 | If it goes really high, the edge becomes very flat.
| | 05:28 | So if we leave the Geometric Softness
at 4 and increase the Gray Level Softness
| | 05:34 | to a higher number, at least compared to
the default value of 30, then we get an
| | 05:38 | improved edge, so here is after, here is before.
| | 05:44 | So, that improves it overall, especially when
we're zoomed back out, now there are a
| | 05:48 | few issues that remain, and one is I've
eroded into a few parts of the building and in
| | 05:53 | fact these parts of buildings were very
similar to the sky so they had holes in originally.
| | 05:57 | For instance this billboard right here,
there is hole there and a few of the
| | 06:02 | windows, they have reflections in them,
also are eroded, so I'll have to deal with that.
| | 06:07 | Also we still have the white line
trapped in the edge of the tree.
| | 06:10 | Again, there are a few additional steps
we can take in terms of rotoscoping and
| | 06:14 | additional keying, which
we'll do a little bit later.
| | 06:16 | But for now though let's get the new
sky back in here, so let's go back to the
| | 06:21 | first composition and copy the sky over.
| | 06:24 | Now right now the sky is off which is
fine, but I can Command or Ctrl select the
| | 06:29 | Sunset, the SkyNull, and the 3D Tracker
Camera, and then Command+C or Ctrl+C for
| | 06:35 | Copy, go back to BuildStreet,
and Command+V or Ctrl+V for Paste.
| | 06:40 | Now I want to put the background on
the very top of the composition stack and
| | 06:45 | turn the sky back on or the new sunset back on.
| | 06:48 | Now I do need to copy my 3D Tracker
Camera over, because remember the null which
| | 06:54 | is providing the position,
information and the sunset are both 3D layers.
| | 06:58 | So in order for those to be seem
correctly you have to have your 3D camera with
| | 07:02 | you. In any case, there's a new sky.
| | 07:05 | Now already it's starting to look
better, so let's play it back real quick.
| | 07:08 | And there we have the start of our new scene.
| | 07:13 | So we've used the keying tools built tino
After Effects to remove the sky. We used
| | 07:18 | Color Range, which is able to work on
luminance, which works really well in this
| | 07:21 | situation, also a matte
choker to erode the edge.
| | 07:24 | And then we just copied over a few
of the layers that we setup in our
| | 07:28 | first composition.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a core rotoscope| 00:00 | We have added a new sky to this street, so
we started to build the scene. That's great.
| | 00:05 | However there's still a few problems if I
zoom in here, you can see that the keyer,
| | 00:09 | the color range tool, has left holes in
some of parts of the buildings, like down
| | 00:13 | here where the billboard is, some of
these windows, also further down in the street,
| | 00:17 | that's not good, I need to fill that in somehow.
| | 00:22 | I don't want to change my keyer it's
working for the most part, so one trick in
| | 00:26 | this situation is to add a core roto,
what that means is to add a new copy of the
| | 00:32 | Street, rotoscope the sections in
question, like where the holes are, and basically
| | 00:37 | add that back on top of the
composition stack, let's give that a try.
| | 00:41 | I'm going to pull a new copy of street down
to the top of this comp and now obviously the
| | 00:46 | entire frame is restored.
| | 00:47 | Now I can zoom in and using my Pen Tool
draw a mask that fills in the problem areas.
| | 00:56 | So Pen Tool, I will make a very rough mask
in this area where there are holes opening up.
| | 01:03 | Now as I do this I don't have to go to
the edge of the buildings. This is just a
| | 01:08 | very rough core, core meaning
the center the problem area.
| | 01:11 | And close this and once it's closed
you'll see the core on top of the original
| | 01:16 | background that has a keyer.
| | 01:18 | If I zoom in I can turn this layer on
and off, so here is off there is holes
| | 01:23 | here, here and here and so on, turn
it back on those holes are restored.
| | 01:27 | Now what's nice about this core roto
is I don't have to be that precise, I
| | 01:30 | just have to have the mask roughly in the
correct position, I don't even have to touch the edges.
| | 01:36 | Now I still have some holes down here on the
street, so what I can do is draw a second
| | 01:40 | mask down here and make this one even more
simple in fact I can just make it a big rectangle.
| | 01:45 | Now it gets filled back in.
| | 01:49 | Now since the camera is moving I need to
animate these masks over time, but I don't
| | 01:54 | have to be super precise, you might
need a lot of keyframes, but I can move
| | 01:59 | these masks very rapidly, let's give that a try.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to expand my new layer here,
in fact I am going to rename that just
| | 02:06 | so I know what it is.
| | 02:07 | I am going to call that BackgroundCore
and then expand it, expand the mask
| | 02:15 | there's Mask 1 and 2, I can click on the
time icon for mask path for both, so I can
| | 02:20 | key it on that first frame.
| | 02:22 | I can go to a different frame like the
last frame and then just pick the entire
| | 02:29 | mask, I can double-click on one of the
lines, get the transform handle, move the
| | 02:33 | entire thing over and just
roughly place it in the correct position.
| | 02:36 | I don't want to overlap the edges;
I want to be just inside the edges.
| | 02:41 | Now to get out of this transform mode I
can just double-click outside of it and
| | 02:44 | click a third time to deselect.
| | 02:46 | Now I can double-click this new mask to move it.
| | 02:49 | I can also scale these or
move the points individually.
| | 02:53 | But transforms are a
really quick way to set a key.
| | 02:57 | So there is a key for the first and
last frame, I can move to some other key.
| | 03:01 | Now in this case because the motion of
the masks is pretty simple, I can bisect
| | 03:06 | and what bisecting means is put a new key
in between older keys, so in this case I
| | 03:12 | have a key at the first frame and last
frame, so the bisect I'll put a new key
| | 03:16 | somewhere in the center about right there.
| | 03:18 | So I'll move the timeline to the center,
quickly move these masks into the correct
| | 03:22 | position, and get a new key there and then
I'll continue the bisect going between
| | 03:30 | those, bisect again, sometimes the
mask doesn't have to move that much, but I do have to watch
| | 03:42 | out, I don't want it to get across
the edge though, so there we go.
| | 03:46 | Now you will have to put more keyframes
than me because the camera is moving a decent
| | 03:50 | amount, you'll probably need the
keyframes every 3, 4, or 5 frames or so.
| | 03:55 | It's going to take me a while to do on
screen some I'm going to let you do that on your own time.
| | 04:00 | That's the basic idea.
| | 04:01 | If you ever have holes opening up
through a keyer like we do in this situation,
| | 04:05 | one solution to restore the interior of
the buildings or the character, whatever
| | 04:10 | you're working with is to create a
core roto, in this case it simply animated two
| | 04:14 | masks moving roughly over time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining keyed edges| 00:01 | We've successfully integrated the sky
| | 00:02 | and the sky is looking pretty
nice against the buildings.
| | 00:04 | One place that doesn't look
so good is next to the tree.
| | 00:07 | If I zoom in I can see there is
a heavy white line trapped here.
| | 00:11 | Now it's going to be difficult
to deal with that on one layer.
| | 00:14 | What we can do though is cut the trees
out of the background then add them back
| | 00:18 | to new layer and treat them
differently. Let's do that.
| | 00:22 | So on the first frame I am going to
draw a new mask to subtract these trees.
| | 00:28 | So Pen Tool and draw a mask.
| | 00:30 | I am going to start just above the street sign.
| | 00:32 | While I'm at it I can deal with another
problem and that's the fact that there is
| | 00:37 | this little dot right here.
| | 00:38 | This is actually a street
lamp that got mostly eroded.
| | 00:41 | We can draw the mask in such a
way that that gets cut out also.
| | 00:48 | So I am going to finish this mask
and go up, cut out this top tree also.
| | 00:52 | It's okay to cut out part of this building
that gets replaced anyway, across and back down.
| | 00:56 | Now initially the mask is set to Add.
| | 00:58 | But I can reverse the effect, I go down
to Mask 1 and switch that to Subtract.
| | 01:03 | Now the trees are gone from that layer.
| | 01:06 | Now of course I want to add the
keyframe this over time, so I want to activate
| | 01:09 | the Time icon for Mask Path,
| | 01:11 | and then go to different
frames, like the last frame.
| | 01:13 | Now it's difficult to see what's
going on here, what we can do temporarily just
| | 01:17 | switch the Subtract menu to None
and then I can update this keyframe.
| | 01:23 | Now to be consistent I want to line
this up with certain features, and again I
| | 01:28 | can use the top of this
street sign as a reference.
| | 01:33 | So as long as I keep the bottom edge of
this mask lined up with the top of this
| | 01:37 | sign I should be good.
| | 01:43 | And I'll update the shape and then move on,
I'll go ahead and bisect this and continue on.
| | 01:54 | Now you're going to need more keyframes than I
have here, probably need a keyframe every
| | 01:58 | three, four, or five frames, so I am
going to leave that up to you to do that,
| | 02:01 | it's going to take too long for me.
| | 02:03 | Assuming this is finished in terms of
keyframing, I can set the Mask 1 back to Subtract.
| | 02:09 | Now I can go ahead and make a new tree layer.
| | 02:11 | Once I'm done keyframing the
background I can copy that entire layer up.
| | 02:16 | So I'll do Edit>Duplicate, go to
Background 2 and move that to the top and then
| | 02:21 | I'll Rename that Trees.
| | 02:22 | Now I need to reverse the effect of the
mask, so I'll go down to that mask that
| | 02:27 | got copied over and change it back to Add.
| | 02:31 | Now the trees are separated.
| | 02:32 | Now the keyframe animation came over
with the mask, but there are several
| | 02:36 | problems we need to deal with.
| | 02:39 | One is when I switch that to Add, the
building gets trapped in this layer;
| | 02:44 | I don't want the building here.
| | 02:45 | So I am going to need to update the
keyframes to get rid of the building just like this.
| | 02:49 | Now I'm going to have to cut into a few of my
leaves here at the beginning, that's okay,
| | 02:54 | we can restore those later on.
| | 02:55 | Another problem is the fact that the
lamp comes back here, this little dot.
| | 03:01 | So we need to adjust this
mask to get rid of that.
| | 03:05 | This might require a few extra vertices.
| | 03:07 | So I am going to go to my Add Vertex
Tool, click a few times to add a few more
| | 03:13 | vertices and then I can move those.
| | 03:15 | We move it like this, that gets cut out.
| | 03:18 | Another potential problem is the
fact that if I am not careful enough I'm going
| | 03:24 | to wind up with a gap here.
| | 03:25 | In fact if I turn the mask off now
it's going to be a gap just by default.
| | 03:28 | So what I have to do is adjust this copy mask
here in such a way that I get rid of that gap.
| | 03:35 | In fact if I overlap them slightly I'll be okay.
| | 03:38 | Another potential problem is the
fact that you might see the transition once
| | 03:43 | I start to adjust the effects on this
layer between this layer, where the trees
| | 03:47 | are, and the background.
| | 03:48 | This will become a bigger problem once we get
into the color grading point of the process.
| | 03:54 | So reality is, even though the keyframes
were copied over, I really need to start over.
| | 03:58 | Now I can keep one keyframe for
the initial shape that's fine.
| | 04:02 | But what I really need to do before I start
reshaping is delete all of the other keyframes.
| | 04:07 | So I can drag a box over this entire
area and you'll have more than I do at this
| | 04:12 | moment, but delete all those extra
keyframes except for the current one where our
| | 04:15 | current timeframe is.
| | 04:17 | So I'll select all those
keyframes and delete them.
| | 04:19 | And then once again my basic start shape,
cut out the building, remove the lamp,
| | 04:25 | and then make sure I have no gap
here, then I continue to key further on.
| | 04:29 | I mentioned that potential
problem with the transition here;
| | 04:33 | this will be a great place to add a feather.
| | 04:36 | Now since I only have one keyframe now, it's
not a big deal to put it here at this point.
| | 04:41 | In fact it's going to be
more apparent at the end.
| | 04:44 | So let's move to the end and I'll just
position this quickly, and then we'll add the feather.
| | 04:58 | I'll use the Feather Tool>Mask
Feather Tool, click a few times on the line.
| | 05:05 | You can click on the line or on a point.
| | 05:08 | Once you have the new
feather dot you can pull it out.
| | 05:11 | The goal here is actually to create a
feather that os just in this area of
| | 05:16 | the building that's going to be the biggest problem.
| | 05:19 | So I can start to feather small here
at the start of this sign, taper it
| | 05:23 | outwards, and then make it go short
again in the back here, something like this.
| | 05:32 | This feather will look a lot better,
especially when you start to color grade.
| | 05:36 | This is remembered by the
keyframe which is just right down.
| | 05:38 | I'll go back to the first frame, I
have to adjust it and this is one major
| | 05:45 | reason for deleting those keyframes
and starting over, because the feather is
| | 05:49 | memorized by the keyframes also.
| | 05:51 | So now I have to bisect this and finish
keyframing this, I have to position the
| | 05:55 | overall mask to get it to fit once again ,
and then, if I have to, adjust the feather.
| | 06:00 | Alright, but let's assume this is done,
you going to have to spend more time than me
| | 06:06 | on this, and get
quite a few more keyframes.
| | 06:08 | But now that that's basically done
we can move onto improving the edge.
| | 06:11 | So let's see what effects
we have on that new layer.
| | 06:14 | We have the Color Range and
Matte Choker that were copied over.
| | 06:17 | What we can do is get rid of the Matte
Choker, I'll just delete that and stay
| | 06:20 | with the Color Range.
| | 06:22 | However, we can add one more effect
here to help improve the result and that's
| | 06:25 | the Curves Effect, so
Effect>Color Correction>Curves.
| | 06:30 | I'll move that up to the
top then we can adjust it.
| | 06:33 | Now temporarily I'm going to
turn off the Color Range.
| | 06:36 | Then what we can do is add
more contrast to this layer.
| | 06:40 | It's going to help us get a better edge
here and get rid of some of the white.
| | 06:44 | So what I'll do is click two times on
this curve and bend it down into this
| | 06:49 | plateau. Something like this.
| | 06:53 | It's going to darken the sky and
it's going to give us a, overall a greater
| | 06:57 | contrast between the tree and this gray area.
| | 07:00 | Let's see what happens when
we turn the Color Range on.
| | 07:02 | Now initially the Color Range doesn't
do anything because now the sky is gray,
| | 07:05 | so there's nothing to cut out.
| | 07:06 | What I can do though is change the
Min L to a lower value to key that out.
| | 07:11 | If I go down to 200, the sky gets removed.
| | 07:15 | Now there's still some issues with the edge
of the tree, there's a lot of purple here.
| | 07:20 | Now the purple is better than having the
bright white, but it's still a problem.
| | 07:24 | What we can do though is wait to the
point where we do some color grading and we
| | 07:27 | can get rid of that with color grading.
[00:07:329.92]
So we've managed to improve the edge
quality of the trees by cutting them out of
| | 07:33 | the background and then
treating them on a separate layer.
| | 07:36 | This allows us to apply a totally
different set of effects and options just for
| | 07:41 | the trees by themselves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Transform tracking a matte| 00:00 | We spent some time separating out the
foreground elements so that when we bring
| | 00:03 | in the new building, they'll set right on top.
| | 00:06 | There's one more to work on though, and
that's this giant building on the left.
| | 00:09 | Now we can rotoscope that on a
separate layer or we can mask it and also use
| | 00:13 | Motion Tracking to automate that process.
| | 00:16 | Let's give that a try.
| | 00:17 | I am going to pull a new copy of street
down and place it below Trees and rename
| | 00:22 | that Foreground and go ahead and then
mask out that building. I'll use my Pen
| | 00:28 | Tool and cut it out and I'm going
to do this very quickly, you can spend
| | 00:32 | more time to make it more accurate.
| | 00:34 | The idea is to get all the architectural
detail. So mine is a bit rough but this
| | 00:41 | will give you the idea.
| | 00:43 | Up to the top, across, down, over, and
back to close it. Of course you'll need to
| | 00:50 | spend a little more time on this,
tweak it so it's a nice good fit.
| | 00:54 | Also you probably want to adjust the
feather and maybe the mask expansion on the
| | 00:58 | mask itself to make sure it has good quality.
| | 01:00 | I can go ahead and solo this right now.
| | 01:03 | Here is a Solo button to
see that building cutout.
| | 01:05 | Now normally you'd have to keyframe
the mask or retime and make sure that it
| | 01:09 | follows as the camera moves.
| | 01:11 | What we'll do instead though is we'll
create that mask in combination with
| | 01:15 | motion tracking to save a little time.
| | 01:17 | Now before we do that I need
one more layer which is a solid.
| | 01:20 | So Layer>New>Solid, I am going to make
this pure white and I want to make it
| | 01:29 | oversize needs to overhang the edges.
| | 01:31 | So let's try 2200 x 1200.
| | 01:37 | There's a new solid, I want to put it
right above the Foreground and rename
| | 01:41 | it ForegroundMatte.
| | 01:44 | I don't need to see it, I am going to use it, I
don't need to see it though, so I can hide it.
| | 01:49 | I do need to get the mask from the
Foreground, transferred up to the
| | 01:52 | ForegroundMatte though.
| | 01:54 | You can copy masks, so I am going to
highlight Mask 1, Ctrl+C or Command+C for
| | 01:59 | Copy and go to ForegroundMatte, Ctrl+
V or Command+V to paste and that will
| | 02:03 | transfer the mask upwards to that layer.
| | 02:06 | I don't actually need it any
longer in the foreground, so I'll get rid of
| | 02:10 | the Mask 1 right here with
the Delete key. All right!
| | 02:14 | So there is the cutout
ForegroundMatte. Now what do we do with it?
| | 02:17 | Well we can use it as a reference.
| | 02:19 | I can turn this off again, go down to
Foreground and use the Track Matte feature.
| | 02:24 | If I don't see the Track Matte column, I
can go down to toggle switches to display
| | 02:29 | it, Track Matte is right here.
| | 02:31 | I can change the menu beside
Foreground to one of these options, in this case
| | 02:36 | Luma Matte works great.
| | 02:38 | If I solo this layer then I can see that it's
working, the building is cutout. What's happening?
| | 02:44 | Well, the Track Matte takes the
luminance information in this case from the
| | 02:49 | next layer up which is
ForegroundMatte and converts that to Alpha for that
| | 02:53 | layer which is foreground, so it steals the RGB
and turns into Alpha, so that's working great now.
| | 02:59 | Now, again this mask needs to move
somehow over time, so what we can
| | 03:04 | do is do some transform tracking
to move this mask automatically.
| | 03:07 | I am going to use my Foreground, I am
going to turn off this Luma Matte just for
| | 03:12 | now, go back to No Track Matte,
so I can see the whole thing.
| | 03:15 | And then I can apply a Motion Tracker to this.
| | 03:18 | I am going to go to Animation>Track Motion.
| | 03:22 | Now I am not going to use
Track Camera, that's a 3D tracker.
| | 03:25 | I am going to use the older 2D
Transform Tracker, which is Track Motion.
| | 03:29 | When I do that, it gives me a track
point in the layer view and it also gives me
| | 03:35 | the Tracker panel at the right.
| | 03:37 | I actually want to keep track of the
Rotation and the Scale of the features that I track.
| | 03:42 | I am going to turn on that
right here, Rotation and Scale.
| | 03:45 | When I do that, either Rotation and/or
Scale, I get two track points and that's fine.
| | 03:51 | I am going to place these over features
that are high contrast, they're on this
| | 03:56 | building somewhere that
stay visible the entire time.
| | 04:00 | So for example corners of windows are
fantastic for this, nice high contrast
| | 04:05 | area right here for example.
| | 04:07 | I'll do the second one now, put the
Track Point 2 above and let's say I'll go
| | 04:13 | up to a higher window, that has more
contrast this third window right here,
| | 04:17 | right in the corner.
| | 04:18 | So now the two track point's positioned.
| | 04:21 | I don't really need to
change the scale in this case.
| | 04:23 | This is a fairly easy transform track.
| | 04:25 | Once those are positioned on the first
frame, then I can analyze, so I'll click
| | 04:30 | the Analyze button, Analyze Forward.
| | 04:32 | Once it's finished, it will show me the
motion paths for those two features and
| | 04:37 | scrub the timeline to see how accurate that is.
| | 04:39 | In this case it's a fairly easy tracking
so these motion tracks are very accurate.
| | 04:44 | Once you have the tracks established,
you can apply this data to a different layer.
| | 04:50 | And we're going to apply this
data to the ForegroundMatte.
| | 04:53 | Now I want to actually do some
preparation first in the ForegroundMatte.
| | 04:56 | Let's go back to that so we can see it.
| | 04:58 | Go back to the Composition View.
| | 05:01 | I want to make sure that the anchor point
is in the same place as that first track
| | 05:08 | point and it will make it much more
accurate when I apply the data.
| | 05:11 | So in order to see that, I need to find
the anchor points, it'll be a little
| | 05:16 | hard to see against this busy background.
| | 05:19 | Here it is right here,
this little dot right here.
| | 05:23 | I can reduce the opacity so I can see
through and then move this with the Pan
| | 05:28 | Behind Tool which is right here, Pan Behind.
| | 05:32 | I can move this so it's in the same
place as that first track point, Track Point
| | 05:36 | 1 right at the corner of the window.
| | 05:38 | By doing that, I'll wind up in the
correct place once I apply the data and I
| | 05:42 | won't have to offset it.
| | 05:43 | In any case I'm going to return the Opacity
to 100%, I can hide this, I don't really
| | 05:48 | need to see it, go back to the Tracker.
| | 05:50 | Now to get back to the Tracker, I need
to select my Foreground and if I still don't see it
| | 05:55 | I can go to the Motion Source menu on
the tracker panel and then pick that
| | 05:59 | layer again, Foreground, and then I
should see at that point and in any case I am
| | 06:04 | ready to choose a target, I can go
to Edit Target, make sure that the
| | 06:09 | ForegroundMatte is selected, click OK
and then click Apply and then say Yes to
| | 06:17 | X and Y so then the data is applied.
| | 06:19 | Now, if I show the Matte
again, it's on its side.
| | 06:23 | Now its transforms are automatically
animated by the tracker when I transfer the
| | 06:28 | data, Position, Scale and Rotation,
however it's on its side because the Rotation
| | 06:32 | is off by 90 degrees.
| | 06:33 | In fact the first frames are -90.
| | 06:35 | Now even though the tracking is working,
I don't want it on its sides, so what I
| | 06:39 | can do though is offset the Rotation.
| | 06:42 | The way to do that is to show the
Rotation in the Graph Editor, so I can
| | 06:46 | click this button beside Rotation,
which is the include this property in the
| | 06:50 | graph button, highlight Rotation
here and then go to the Graph Editor and
| | 06:54 | here is a rotation curve.
| | 06:55 | I can offset the entire curve by
selecting all the keyframes, I can just click
| | 07:00 | drag my mouse from the upper left until
all the keyframes are covered, then let
| | 07:04 | go, and they turn yellow.
| | 07:05 | I get the Transform box.
| | 07:07 | Once I get the Transform box I can
click drag the first keyframe upwards, up
| | 07:11 | and down is value.
| | 07:14 | If I drag it straight up, I'm going to
change the value to be closer to 0, in
| | 07:19 | fact I can stop right on 0, now this
will take a few seconds, just drag your
| | 07:24 | mouse above the Edges graph editor.
| | 07:26 | Oops, too far, there we go and so I
can get that keyframe back down to 0.
| | 07:31 | Now it might be a little tricky you can
always turn off the magnet snapped so it
| | 07:35 | doesn't stick so much.
| | 07:36 | You can get it right down to 0 or
extremely close to 0, so let's say it's on 0
| | 07:42 | then you can click off this once
you are done with that, close the Graph
| | 07:46 | Editor and then see what's going on.
| | 07:48 | Now you have to be careful not to move
your curves too far to the right in the
| | 07:53 | Graph Editor because that
will offset the frame number.
| | 07:55 | If I zoom in here to the timeline, I
can see that my first frame actually got
| | 07:59 | moved over, so now it's on Frame 1
instead of Frame 0, I want to fix that and
| | 08:03 | one way to fix that is to pick all of
these keyframes, be careful of which one
| | 08:08 | you pick, just you want the lower set
here, if you get the wrong one, just click
| | 08:12 | off and try again, if I need to I
can zoom in and then pull to the right.
| | 08:20 | So now all those keyframes are selected
and I can move them all over as a group back
| | 08:24 | to where they need to start to the left.
| | 08:26 | Now if I zoom in, I can see that the
first frame is on Frame 0 which is correct.
| | 08:31 | So once I have offset the curve and
made sure that they still start at Frame 0,
| | 08:36 | you can see that the matte is back in the
correct position, I can reduce the opacity
| | 08:39 | here and I can see that it lines up once again.
| | 08:42 | So now I can return it to its previous
state where it's working to Track Matte.
| | 08:46 | I can hide the ForegroundMatte and I can
turn the Track Matte for the Foreground
| | 08:52 | back to Luma and then I can solo that
so I can see it and there it is, it's cut out
| | 08:59 | and now I can play it back, and it's
going to follow. So now it's following.
| | 09:11 | Now my mask was a bit hasty.
| | 09:13 | I do need to make some adjustments to
it and in fact you might find you also
| | 09:17 | have to make adjustments on your own.
| | 09:19 | Now aside from just drawing mine too
quickly, also the issue with the fact
| | 09:22 | that there is lens distortion so part of the
mask might slip off even though it's tracked.
| | 09:27 | What you can do though to solve that
problem is put a few keyframes on it, so I'll
| | 09:33 | just leave it on solo and just go to
the ForegroundMatte, click that so I can
| | 09:37 | see the mask and then, make minor
adjustments while keyframing it, so I can go
| | 09:41 | to Mask 1, click the Mask Path
keyframe and then, make adjustments while I am
| | 09:47 | still on frame zero.
| | 09:48 | There needs to be more minor adjustments,
this is not to make sure it follows as
| | 09:52 | the camera moves but minor adjustments
to make sure it fits particularly with
| | 09:55 | the lens distortion.
| | 09:56 | So there's Frame 1, I can go to last
frame and see if anything slipped off and
| | 10:03 | usually it's the bottom that slips off a bit.
| | 10:05 | In fact, I can see the pipe is gone now,
so then I could pick those points so
| | 10:09 | its vertices are a problem and just
adjust those until it fits again and now the
| | 10:15 | pipe is visible again, and then check
a few other frames here and there, you
| | 10:21 | can bisect and just check and
make sure it's a good tight fit.
| | 10:25 | Now I can't do this in Real Time, this
will take a little bit of work, but I'll
| | 10:28 | let you do that in your own time.
| | 10:29 | So there we go, we've cut out the
foreground building and so now we are ready
| | 10:32 | to insert something behind it and use
the combination of masking, a solid layer,
| | 10:39 | Track Matte, and also motion tracking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Restoring foreground elements| 00:00 | We've spent some time preparing this
composition, so we can bring in the new matte
| | 00:04 | painting of that center building.
| | 00:05 | There are a couple more steps to take however.
| | 00:08 | One is we need to retrieve some of the
work we did in the first composition and
| | 00:13 | that has the tracts, billboard,
foreground cars, lights and lamps.
| | 00:18 | So while the Sunset remains off at
least in this composition I can go back to
| | 00:22 | BuildStreet and pull that composition
into this one, I'll put it right on
| | 00:28 | top of ForegroundMatte and those elements
come in, you can see that by the Billboard.
| | 00:32 | Now it's a good time to make sure that
any animation that you have in the first
| | 00:36 | composition is working for you.
| | 00:38 | So one issue might be the
foreground cars, because they have a lot of
| | 00:41 | distortion from the lens on them.
| | 00:43 | So previously we had animated the
anchor point and scale to try and make them
| | 00:48 | fit the original cars.
| | 00:49 | Now at this point I would probably
fine-tune it a little bit more or at
| | 00:53 | least double-check it.
| | 00:54 | Now you can compare this to the originals by
turning on the Street layer to take a look.
| | 00:59 | Now I did make some minor changes so I'll
give you those values just to save time.
| | 01:03 | For example in frame one, the Anchor Point
was changed a tiny bit, so it's 708 in the
| | 01:08 | X. Also Scale is reduced a
tiny bit to 1470 in the X.
| | 01:12 | On the last frame, Anchor Point was
changed a little bit to 743 in X and 994 in
| | 01:21 | Y. Then the Scale was
increased a tiny bit in the X to 1525.
| | 01:26 | Now there is one additional keyframe
that was added and that's at frame 90,
| | 01:31 | because remember that's where the
camera all of a sudden pans to the right.
| | 01:38 | So frame 90 and those values are 743
for X, 994 for the Y for the Anchor Point
| | 01:48 | and then the scale is also 1525 just in the X.
| | 01:55 | So that makes the cars fit even better now.
| | 01:57 | So just keep in mind that once you
create some animation on to a layer, you can
| | 02:01 | always go back and fine tune it.
| | 02:03 | Let's go back to the BuildStreet comp.
| | 02:05 | now aside from bringing that layer
in and taking advantage of this
| | 02:09 | foreground elements, there is a few
other things we can deal with now.
| | 02:13 | One is the fact that there are passing cars, there are cars
that drive by and appear in this gap right here.
| | 02:18 | Now since we're putting our matte
painting back there, it'd be great to capture
| | 02:22 | those passing cars and keep them.
| | 02:24 | So that requires just some standard rotoscoping.
| | 02:26 | I am going to play this back first so we can
see where the cars are passing, and there we go.
| | 02:34 | If we look closely, we can
see a couple of cars driving by.
| | 02:39 | Here is the first right here;
| | 02:41 | here is the second right here.
| | 02:46 | So what I can do is create another street layer,
I'll pull the street back down, place
| | 02:54 | it above ForegroundMatte, these would
be under the AE3DTracker, rename this
| | 03:00 | PassingCars, and rotoscope it.
| | 03:05 | So I need to find where a car is, for
instance right here, and begin the mask.
| | 03:10 | I'll use the Pen Tool and cut out this
roof, and we could tie it to the roof,
| | 03:15 | then I can extend it into these cars
in the foreground because those will be
| | 03:20 | covered up anyway with the new AE3DTracker cars.
| | 03:23 | We need to keyframe this, so I'll go
ahead and activate the Time icon for Mask
| | 03:28 | Shape or Mask Path, and then set some more keyframes.
| | 03:31 | And in this case I should go probably
a few frames ahead, move the mask a few
| | 03:38 | frames behind, set the mask;
| | 03:42 | make sure to shape it so it fits
correctly, figure out where it goes on our
| | 03:48 | frame and then move the mask where
it's not going to affect anything.
| | 03:54 | So there is one car, let me see
where it leaves, pull it down where it
| | 04:00 | doesn't matter, and then go
find where the other car passes.
| | 04:07 | There it is right there, it's a little
bit shorter, but it's still in there.
| | 04:13 | Again forward a few frames, then backwards.
| | 04:24 | Then when it's out of frame we just put the
mask where it's not going to affect anything.
| | 04:34 | I took a few other random frames
because I don't want the mask to slip
| | 04:37 | back in where it's going to
interfere, towards the end.
| | 04:43 | So there we go, there is
the roto'd passing cars.
| | 04:53 | Now just one more thing to deal with
before we get the building in here, and
| | 04:57 | that's the fact that this building at
the top right is semi transparent because
| | 05:00 | of the keying, so we need to patch that.
| | 05:02 | Now you notice the sky is missing and
that's because I have to remember to go back
| | 05:11 | to the AE3DTracker and turn off the original
Street layer which was just there for reference.
| | 05:16 | Now if I go back, I'll see the sky again.
| | 05:20 | In any case the building is
semitransparent because of the keying process, so I
| | 05:24 | can add another layer
and roto that to keep that.
| | 05:27 | So I'm going to go to the last frame, because I
see most of the building there and pull
| | 05:32 | down the street footage one more time,
drop it underneath the Trees and rename
| | 05:37 | that BuildingPathch. Then I can rotoscope that.
| | 05:42 | Now I don't want to try to roto the very,
very edge because that might jitter.
| | 05:50 | The part that's a problem is where there
is a bright spot, here and here and here.
| | 05:54 | So I am going to draw the roto mask
in here where I can disguise it, I won't see
| | 05:59 | the edge so clearly.
| | 06:00 | I'll pull that down all
the way down the building.
| | 06:05 | Then go outside, go to the
top, across and back down.
| | 06:09 | And I should also look at the tree
because there is a hole that opens up in the
| | 06:16 | tree too right here, so I just need to
make sure that my roto edge is somehow
| | 06:20 | disguised maybe through this tree
trunk right here and then it fills in any
| | 06:25 | holes like here and here.
| | 06:29 | So of course this needs to be animated
over time, so I will set a key, go to the
| | 06:36 | first frame, move it over,
reshape it if I need to.
| | 06:41 | Again, I am going to try to
disguise it where the edge is right here in
| | 06:46 | this gray area, make sure it goes behind
this limb down to the bottom of the building.
| | 06:51 | This will require a number of more keys, maybe
every three, four, or five frames or so,
| | 06:57 | then you can continue to bisect
this on your own time to get it to fit.
| | 07:01 | So that's the last step we need
before we bring the building in.
| | 07:06 | so in order to do a little cleanup we
transferred over the first composition
| | 07:10 | into this one through nesting, we
roto'd the passing cars and we also roto'd
| | 07:16 | this building at the top right
to repair the holes in it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Using the CameraTracker PluginTracking features with the CameraTracker, from The Foundry| 00:00 | We've spent some time building up the
BuildStreet composite in anticipation of
| | 00:03 | adding a new building.
| | 00:04 | We are now ready to move on and
prepare some 3D tracking data.
| | 00:08 | Now we do have a 3D tracker set up in
the first composite using the built-in
| | 00:12 | camera tracker inside After Effects.
| | 00:14 | However, we're going to use a new plug
-in to create some new data, this is
| | 00:18 | written by the Foundry.
| | 00:19 | So let me go ahead and set the
composition first and then we'll talk about that.
| | 00:23 | I'll make a new comp, make sure it's
the same resolution, frame rate, and the
| | 00:27 | duration as the previous ones, I am
going to call this FoundryCameraTracker,
| | 00:32 | click OK and then drop a new
version of the street into this.
| | 00:39 | The effect is under Effect>
The Foundry>CameraTracker.
| | 00:43 | Now the camera tracker is a plug-in
which does not come with the standard
| | 00:47 | version of After Effects.
| | 00:48 | However you can download a trial to give
it a try or of course you can purchase it.
| | 00:52 | Now if you don't have access to this
or don't want to install it, you can
| | 00:56 | actually get similar results with a built-
in camera tracker right inside After Effects.
| | 01:00 | However, it'll be good to know another
tool, which has a slight different set of
| | 01:04 | options and slightly different workflow.
| | 01:05 | I'm going to apply this right now, camera
tracker, and here are the main set of options.
| | 01:11 | Now as long as that effect is highlighted,
you'll also see a menu right here in the view.
| | 01:15 | In any case the first thing you do
with this tool is click the Track Features
| | 01:20 | button, now before I do that I want to
look at a few options here, these are
| | 01:24 | underneath Tracking and Solve.
| | 01:29 | These have to do with the
camera and the type of lens.
| | 01:32 | The first option is under Track Validation
and has a menu that has several lens options.
| | 01:37 | There is a fixed camera, a Rotating
Camera, and Free Camera. Ours is actually a
| | 01:41 | free camera so I'll leave it at that.
| | 01:43 | There's also a Focal Length Type
in terms of what millimeter.
| | 01:47 | Now I don't know the lens so I'm
going to leave it on Unknown Constant.
| | 01:51 | However, if you had a different
piece of footage, you might change it to
| | 01:55 | a known lens or a zoom lens that varies, or
approximate lens, or an unknown zoom lens.
| | 02:00 | We're going to leave it on
Unknown Constant for now.
| | 02:03 | There is also the Camera Motion which
again has to do with the way the camera is
| | 02:08 | moving, there's rotation only like a
pan or again we have a free camera.
| | 02:11 | So we're good with the defaults here,
but it's good to check these before
| | 02:15 | tracking the features because if you
don't match the menus to your type of
| | 02:19 | camera and type of lens
you'll get an inaccurate result.
| | 02:22 | Alright I'm going to go ahead and
click the Track Features button, this will
| | 02:27 | take a few minutes, it'll give you a
message at the top that explains what its doing;
| | 02:32 | its going to go forward
first and then backwards.
| | 02:36 | Once they stop updating, you are going
to have a bunch of tracked features plus
| | 02:39 | a little tiny motion paths
to show where they are going.
| | 02:43 | Now you can restart this as many times
as you want, for example I might go down
| | 02:47 | to the tracking section and
change a few options here.
| | 02:50 | Now one that's useful in this
situation is number of features.
| | 02:52 | These are the number of
features that attempts to track.
| | 02:55 | Now in general, it prefers around 200
tracked features to stay on screen the entire time.
| | 02:59 | I'm going to change this to 200.
| | 03:01 | Another option that's
good is Feature Separation.
| | 03:05 | This forces the tracked features to be
a certain number of pixels apart to prevent
| | 03:09 | them from clustering too close together.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to leave it at 12
right now, but you can change that.
| | 03:14 | So now that I've changed the Number of
Features to 200, I'm going to re-track.
| | 03:19 | This will overwrite the old tracking data. Again,
this will take several minutes, and then the updates.
| | 03:27 | Now it's good to have 200 number of
features because I wanted to get some
| | 03:31 | features along the side of this
building that I can apply to the side of the
| | 03:35 | building to later in terms of the matte painting.
| | 03:37 | The next step after getting some good
tracked features is to solve the camera,
| | 03:41 | so you can just click this button right here;
| | 03:43 | it will give you a message that
explains how many key frames are used to
| | 03:47 | animate the eventual 3D camera and also any
kind of error in terms of the number of pixels.
| | 03:52 | Once you click OK, it's
going to turn those green or red.
| | 03:57 | Green points are good, they stay
on screen the entire time and are
| | 03:59 | successfully tracked.
| | 04:00 | The red points disappear and are not useful.
| | 04:03 | As long as you have approximately 200
points that survive, you should have a good track.
| | 04:08 | At this point, you can go ahead
and create the scene, that's a third
| | 04:11 | button here, Create Scene.
| | 04:12 | As soon as you do that, it'll create a
3D camera and also a null which is a 3D
| | 04:17 | layer. As soon as you have the camera
you can go and look at that in the 3D
| | 04:21 | environment. I'm going to switch
to 4 View here and take a look.
| | 04:25 | I'll zoom into the right
view and there is the camera.
| | 04:28 | If it's selected you'll see the axis
handles and plus a little short motion trail.
| | 04:33 | If you move the timeline, you'll see
that the camera moves along that trail.
| | 04:37 | Now in this situation, the camera wound up,
right-side up and moving in the logical fashion.
| | 04:42 | Occasionally based on the footage, you
might have the camera come in crooked
| | 04:45 | or up side down, it might still be moving
correctly but might not be in a useful orientation.
| | 04:51 | If that's the case, there is
an option for fixing that;
| | 04:55 | if you go back to the Effect and select
it, you'll see this menu right here. What
| | 04:59 | you can do is select a few points
that run along a certain axis, like, for
| | 05:04 | instance these two would be in the Y direction,
| | 05:07 | go to this menu and click Ground Plane
and say, Set Y. You can pick other ones
| | 05:14 | and Set X or Set Z, and also, if you
have a number of points on the ground,
| | 05:19 | which should be the ground, you can then
set those to Set to Selected, which would
| | 05:23 | be the ground plane.
| | 05:24 | That will reorient the camera to make logical sense.
| | 05:27 | Now in our case, the camera looks
great, it has good motion, its staying
| | 05:32 | upright, which you expect.
| | 05:34 | So you can just leave ours as is.
| | 05:37 | So there we go we've used the
FoundryCameraTracker to 3D track this to produce a 3D camera.
| | 05:44 | We're now ready to bring in 3D layers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying artwork to a tracked null| 00:00 | We've used the
FoundryCameraTracker to produce some 3D tracking data.
| | 00:04 | Now we can use that data and apply it
to a matte painting to create our new
| | 00:08 | building in the center.
| | 00:10 | First thing we need to do though before we
bring the matte painting in is create a null.
| | 00:14 | This is a similar process as you might
take with the After Effects Camera Tracker.
| | 00:18 | So what I want to do is look for a
point somewhere in the front of the center
| | 00:22 | building to create a null with.
| | 00:24 | So let's zoom in. I'm going to play it back to
see which points stick around. A few disappear.
| | 00:34 | So in terms of points to stay around
that are in the center of the building.
| | 00:38 | This one right here works pretty well.
| | 00:40 | Now, if you have slightly different
settings on your Camera Tracker, you might
| | 00:43 | have a different set of points, that's
okay, select one that's in the center, I
| | 00:46 | am going to select this one right
here, it's about the third window up.
| | 00:50 | Once it's selected, you can just click
on it and it's yellow, you can go to this
| | 00:54 | built in menu, and choose Create>Null Object.
| | 00:58 | That creates a null.
| | 00:59 | Now null here, looks like a red square.
| | 01:02 | If I select that new layer however,
you'll see the axis handles at the top left.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to rename this new
layer, while I'm thinking of it.
| | 01:09 | I'm going to call this BuildingFrontNull.
| | 01:11 | So there we have a null.
| | 01:14 | So let's bring in the matte painting next.
| | 01:16 | So File>Import>File, this will be in the
Matte folder, there is a file called
| | 01:22 | MattePainting, it's a
Targa file, just one image.
| | 01:25 | You can tell by the thumbnail that this is
a new building that was painted over a
| | 01:29 | still frame from the original image sequence;
| | 01:31 | that was done just to make sure the
perspective fit and everything fit nicely.
| | 01:35 | Also it was done to maintain some of
the original parts of the center building.
| | 01:39 | In any case let's pull this down, top
of the composition, here it is.
| | 01:43 | Now this was painted over frame 119,
so I want to make sure my timeline is at
| | 01:48 | the very end on the same frame,
so make it easier to line up later.
| | 01:52 | So before we apply this, we need to
convert this to a 3D layer, so click
| | 01:56 | this icon and because it's going to
be in the wrong place compared to where
| | 02:00 | the camera is, it disappears
temporarily, that's okay, we're going to relate
| | 02:04 | the MattePainting to this null and
just as a quick shortcut, I'm going to
| | 02:09 | apply expression again.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to pick the position of
the MattePainting, go to Animation>Add
| | 02:16 | Expression and pick whip the position of the
null, click off and there's the expression.
| | 02:22 | So MattePainting becomes visible again,
however, it's more in the foreground and
| | 02:26 | actually it scales too large.
| | 02:28 | Because it scales so large, it looks
like it's been pushed over to the left and up.
| | 02:32 | So we still need to address the
anchor point and the scale and possibly the
| | 02:36 | orientation to get this
mapping back to where we want it.
| | 02:39 | Because we are looking at the entire
frame, the goal is to get that situated, so
| | 02:43 | it sits right over the old one.
| | 02:44 | In fact, you can line up the old
buildings, like this foreground building
| | 02:48 | and even the tree here.
| | 02:49 | So you need to adjust the Scale and
the Anchor Points and in fact, in this
| | 02:56 | situation I probably need a negative
anchor point value to get it back down, but
| | 03:01 | eventually I should be able to get
this frame to line up with the old one.
| | 03:05 | So in this situation, a scale of 54
works pretty well, also an anchor point of
| | 03:11 | -989.5 in the X, -621 in the Y, and I
also might need to adjust the Orientation.
| | 03:23 | It's getting close, but it's
still angled because of perspective.
| | 03:26 | Now if I work that
orientation, I can get it closer.
| | 03:29 | So small values will actually make a
big difference here, so for example, if I
| | 03:34 | put -1 in X of orientation, 4 in Y
and -1 in Z, it snaps and it's almost
| | 03:40 | perfect, almost the perfect match up here.
| | 03:42 | Now again, if you are tracking these
a little bit different, you select a
| | 03:45 | different point, you are going to have
to use different values here, you might
| | 03:48 | find, you need a completely
different anchor point, different scale and
| | 03:51 | different orientation.
| | 03:52 | But you go through the same process,
you are trying to get this lined up again, where
| | 03:56 | it fits the frame
perfectly instead on to camera.
| | 03:59 | This is because again, the mapping was
created over a top of the original frame,
| | 04:03 | so I really want to get the two to match.
| | 04:05 | So now, we can cut out the MattePainting.
| | 04:07 | We're going to deal with just
the front of the building first.
| | 04:08 | We're going to treat the side of
the building in a separate step.
| | 04:12 | So I'm going to use my Mask Tool, my
Pen Tool, to create a mask, I'll start at
| | 04:16 | the top, carefully go over the roof
line, I just want the front of the building. Now this
| | 04:20 | building has a little corner to it,
but I'm going to go to the corner and then down this
| | 04:24 | corner edge, to the edge of the glass
here, I'm going to cut off that brown
| | 04:31 | column, down to here, across, back up.
| | 04:38 | So now the building is cut out, you
can see how the new building lines up to
| | 04:41 | the old building really well, the roofline
lines up, the edge of the building lines
| | 04:45 | up, down to the bottom.
| | 04:48 | So now let's cut out,
let's see what it looks like.
| | 04:50 | I'm going to turn off my original
street, which we're just using for tracking
| | 04:53 | data, I'm going to go back to
BuildStreet composition and go ahead and drop that
| | 04:58 | new composition into this one.
| | 05:00 | So FoundryCameraTracker, I'm going to
pull that down, put that below Foreground.
| | 05:04 | It needs to be behind the
Foreground layer, and there it is.
| | 05:08 | Because the foreground was dealt with
separately on separate layers, it's now in
| | 05:11 | front of this new building.
| | 05:13 | So that's looking pretty good.
| | 05:15 | I'll deal with the sides separately
and we'll also eventually cut off the top
| | 05:18 | of the old building.
| | 05:19 | For now the one thing we want to work on,
maybe is the integration on the bottom better.
| | 05:23 | You'll see there is this red
truck here, that's trapped.
| | 05:26 | We have two red trucks.
| | 05:27 | Well, this red truck right here is
from the still retracked, we want to keep
| | 05:32 | that, this truck here on the left is
trapped in the MattePainting, it's just
| | 05:36 | garbage, you want to cut that out.
| | 05:38 | So what I can do is go to the
foreground, and actually the ForegroundMatte,
| | 05:42 | remember the mask is on the
ForegroundMatte for the Foreground and add a new
| | 05:45 | mask here, just add a new one right
here, and get by with the old one.
| | 05:50 | So what I can do is draw a U-shaped
mask that basically cuts out part of the
| | 05:53 | matte painting we don't want, and actually
what it's doing is it's just adding a new
| | 05:57 | part to the foreground.
| | 05:59 | So we're retrieving part
of the original footage.
| | 06:02 | So a U-shape like this, I'm going
across the top of this brown area down this
| | 06:06 | column, to save the column across and
then down this column here, to save the
| | 06:11 | column, but cut out this truck.
| | 06:13 | I'll go across then up here, finish the U.
| | 06:16 | So what I've done is retrieve part
of the original footage that way.
| | 06:19 | But I kept this column right here, I kept
this column right here, from the MattePainting.
| | 06:23 | Now I'm going to need to
animate this mask over time.
| | 06:26 | So I'll expand the ForegroundMatte look
for that new mask, key on Mask Path and
| | 06:32 | then start to bisect animate.
| | 06:34 | So there's the last frame, definitely
need to move this over, where you tweak it
| | 06:40 | so it fits well, and then continue to bisect.
| | 06:42 | You'll need more keyframes than I'm
doing right now, but you get the idea.
| | 06:46 | One last step would be to get a nicer
transition on the center column, because
| | 06:50 | right now, the way, I've cut it just
ends suddenly, it doesn't really mesh with
| | 06:53 | what's there originally,
in terms of the store front.
| | 06:56 | So I'm going to draw one more
little mask right here to soften it.
| | 06:59 | Now I could add a feather to this mask.
| | 07:02 | I could also use the Feather Tool to
try to get a soft edge right here, at the
| | 07:06 | bottom of the column.
| | 07:07 | This shape makes it really hard though.
| | 07:09 | So what I'll do instead is create a
second mask, to just feather that area.
| | 07:13 | So, I'm going to draw another
mask, a little box mask right here.
| | 07:16 | What I can do is feather that one
really heavily because the two overlap,
| | 07:26 | I'll get the net result of a fuzzy edge
on the bottom and hard everywhere else.
| | 07:31 | So if I increase the Feather of this
Mask 3, it's going to start feathering that
| | 07:35 | column at the bottom.
| | 07:36 | So if I try a value of say 20 or 30, and hide
the mask, it starts to fade in to the background.
| | 07:42 | So this might also need to be
animated over time, this little box mask.
| | 07:49 | So I'll do the same thing after I key
it, I'll just bisect it over time, make
| | 07:55 | sure everything lines up.
| | 07:56 | Again, I'll leave that up to you.
| | 07:58 | All right, but we used the
FoundryCameraTracker to apply tracking data to
| | 08:02 | this new MattePainting.
| | 08:03 | We cut it out and then nested it into this
BuildStreet Composition to get it behind
| | 08:09 | the Foreground building.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining tracked artwork| 00:00 | We've integrated the front of the
MattePainting building into our scene and it
| | 00:03 | looks pretty good right now.
| | 00:05 | There are a few places we can make some
adjustments however, if we zoom in and
| | 00:08 | take a look at it, there are
some issues with the perspective.
| | 00:13 | Now what's happening is in the original
footage there's a lot of lens distortion.
| | 00:17 | So what happens is on certain frames you
can see that the foreground building is
| | 00:21 | curving, it's not perfectly straight.
| | 00:24 | First frame looks okay, if you
compare the Foreground building to my new
| | 00:27 | building, all the lines that run
vertically are pretty parallel.
| | 00:31 | I'll go to the last frame though.
| | 00:32 | We'll see it looks like the new
building is dipping inwards or you can see that
| | 00:39 | the original building is bowing towards the sky.
| | 00:43 | So the original building, if you
trace it upwards, is no longer a perfectly
| | 00:46 | straight line, it looks like
it's tipping towards the sky.
| | 00:49 | In any case, it looks like these lines
arranged vertically are no longer parallel.
| | 00:53 | So let's try to deal with that.
| | 00:54 | I'm going to go back to the FoundryCameraTracker
composition and one thing we could do is
| | 00:59 | apply some distortion to this MattePainting.
| | 01:01 | There is an effect for that, I'll
select my MattePainting layer and go to
| | 01:05 | Effect>Distort>Optics Compensation.
| | 01:12 | What happens is if you increase the
Field of View, it's going to distort this
| | 01:16 | layer in a spherical fashion, so
it gets bowed towards the edges.
| | 01:21 | So, in fact if I put a value of 40 in, it
bows out just a little bit, this will help.
| | 01:26 | Also what I can do is
continue to adjust the orientation.
| | 01:29 | Now in this case, what works pretty
nicely, is if I had a tiny bit of Z Rotation.
| | 01:35 | Now I can change my
Orientation or I can just use my rotates.
| | 01:39 | You can use Rotation in combination
with Orientation to get the net result.
| | 01:43 | So for example, if I rotate Z by a very
small number like .1, I'll tip it over
| | 01:48 | just a little bit and that should help.
| | 01:49 | If I go back to BuildStreet now and compare,
I have improved the end frame a little bit.
| | 01:54 | So now the lines are a little bit more
parallel between the Rotation and the
| | 01:58 | Optics Compensation.
| | 01:59 | If I go to the first frame,
this still looks pretty good.
| | 02:02 | So I'm comparing for instance this white
vertical line to the edge of the building.
| | 02:07 | Okay, so that's working well now.
| | 02:11 | Now let's add the side of the
building which of course is cut off.
| | 02:14 | So I am going to go back to the Camera Tracker.
| | 02:17 | Now there's a couple of
different ways we can approach this.
| | 02:19 | One is we can go back to our original
tracking data and pick a point along the
| | 02:24 | side of the building, turn it into a
null, and use that null, the different
| | 02:28 | MattePainting layer that cuts out the side.
| | 02:30 | Now because the MattePainting actually
has the perspective of the side built
| | 02:34 | into it, where it really matches frame 119
really well, we don't really have to do that though.
| | 02:39 | You can use another trick and that is
to use the same null on the front of the
| | 02:44 | building and use some transform
tricks to make sure it fits well over
| | 02:47 | time, let's do that.
| | 02:48 | Now the shortcut is just to
duplicate the MattePainting layer itself;
| | 02:52 | add a duplicate to get a new
MattePainting, delete its mask and draw a new
| | 03:04 | one that cut out the side.
| | 03:05 | So a Pen Tool go across the roof, down
the side, there's a little bit of a ledge
| | 03:15 | here, straight down to where the stores
are, tip in a little bit, straight through
| | 03:21 | this truck, that will be covered up later,
across and up at the same point where
| | 03:29 | we cut previously across the side of
this glass and this brown line there about
| | 03:33 | right here, you need to
adjust that, something like this.
| | 03:37 | Now in order to make it a little bit
easier to draw, I should probably turn
| | 03:40 | off my Optics Compensation which
is also copied over at the same time.
| | 03:44 | Now I can see it a little bit better.
| | 03:48 | Once cut out, then I could turn
on the compensation one more time.
| | 03:53 | I turn off my original street on
the bottom so I can see it together.
| | 03:59 | Now because I've made a copy of that
MattePainting layer, the expression
| | 04:02 | was also copied over.
| | 04:04 | So if you look at the Transform
Position has a same expression which is still
| | 04:08 | related to the null, the
front null so that's perfect.
| | 04:11 | I'll go back to BuildStreet and
we'll see the entire MattePainting.
| | 04:19 | Now one thing that might be an
issue is the fact that this is a static
| | 04:23 | MattePainting, I might have it moved
forward in the Z direction compared to
| | 04:26 | where the camera is, but there's
no real paralax, no real
| | 04:30 | perspective shift on the side.
| | 04:31 | And in fact, the real building the size
of the side is changing relative to the
| | 04:36 | frame, in other words
it's getting wider over time.
| | 04:38 | As you get closer to the building,
you see more and more of the side.
| | 04:41 | That's not happening with our
MattePainting, it's getting closer, but the side
| | 04:44 | is not changing scale.
| | 04:45 | I can tell that's an issue if I zoom in
close and I compare the MattePainting to
| | 04:49 | the original building.
| | 04:51 | Now, in fact I can see the original
building poking out a little bit right here,
| | 04:54 | two little ledges right here sticking out.
| | 04:57 | We can also see of course top sticking
out and this will be cut off later, but
| | 05:00 | it's a good reference.
| | 05:01 | Now if I compare that on the first
frame to the last frame, what happens is I
| | 05:06 | can see a little bit more of the
original building on the last frames.
| | 05:09 | In other words, the side is getting a
little bit wider over time, a little bit
| | 05:12 | more is poking through.
| | 05:14 | So in order to match that effect, what
I can do is go back to my Camera Tracker
| | 05:19 | and then adjust the transforms over time,
what would work best is if I change X
| | 05:24 | scale of the side piece over time.
| | 05:26 | So for example, I can go to the first
frame and just adjust the X scale, so I'll
| | 05:33 | have to turn off the link, I don't
want to mess around with my Y or my Z. And
| | 05:36 | then for example, on the first frame
increase the scale a little bit next, let's
| | 05:40 | make a little bit wider and that will
cover up those ledges that were poking out.
| | 05:44 | Now when I change the scale, it's going
to push it away from my front because of
| | 05:49 | where the anchor point is, over here.
| | 05:51 | Now, I'll have to go ahead and adjust
the anchor point to fix that, so I can put
| | 05:55 | in -953 and then I'll pop
it back into the right place.
| | 06:00 | Now of course, you can try this
interactively to figure out the right value.
| | 06:03 | But in this case -953 works well.
| | 06:06 | Now the idea is we're going to change
the X scale over time so I need to key
| | 06:11 | this, this scale and the anchor
point on the first frame, and I can put
| | 06:14 | another keyframe in.
| | 06:16 | Now I have a couple of choices.
| | 06:17 | I could go ahead and put a keyframe
at the very end, but what will be more
| | 06:20 | useful to us is if I place a key right
when the camera is about to pan to the right.
| | 06:26 | So again, what happens is the person
walks forward, pauses and then pans the
| | 06:29 | camera to the right.
| | 06:31 | So actually some place around frame 79
is where the transition is about to occur
| | 06:37 | in terms of the pan, so let's say frame 79.
| | 06:40 | What we can do is add another keyframe
here, so that's where the person stops
| | 06:45 | walking forward with the camera.
| | 06:46 | So that's where the scale pretty much stops.
| | 06:48 | So what I can do at this point
is increase the scale to widen it.
| | 06:52 | So if try say, 57, it makes that side
wider and then of course, I have to change
| | 06:57 | the anchor point, in this case -881.
| | 07:02 | So let's take a look at the
BuildStreet and see what that gets us.
| | 07:05 | So here is frame 0, so widen out the
side a little bit, so it carries up those
| | 07:11 | two ledges that are poking out.
| | 07:13 | If I go to the end frame, it keeps the
same relative scale, another way to tell
| | 07:20 | is look at the top of the building.
| | 07:23 | Here is the first frame, I can see
these ledges poking out a little bit,
| | 07:27 | again, those will be cut out later
and here is the end frame, where roughly the
| | 07:31 | same amount of ledge is visible.
| | 07:33 | So in fact, the side of the building
is widening, but staying relative to the
| | 07:37 | original background building.
| | 07:40 | Let's play it back. There we go.
| | 07:54 | Now because we laid some groundwork
in advance and we paid attention to all
| | 07:58 | these foreground elements, we have
some nice integration here, in fact it's a
| | 08:02 | little bit difficult to see where
the building stops and where the real
| | 08:05 | background starts, which is good.
| | 08:06 | Other things we have is nice parallax
between the foreground elements like this
| | 08:10 | street lamp and the cars and the building.
| | 08:12 | So we see things slide by appropriately.
| | 08:15 | So there is our integrated MattePainting.
| | 08:16 | We'll use some similar tricks that we
applied to the front to get the side in
| | 08:21 | there, in terms of applying
the FoundryCameraTracker data.
| | 08:24 | We also adjusted the transforms
to make a better fit between the new
| | 08:28 | building and the original building.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Faking reflections| 00:00 | We have integrated the matte painting,
so that's starting to look pretty nice now.
| | 00:03 | Now we can move on and remove
this original center building.
| | 00:06 | Now the only way to do that is to
simply rotoscope that and subtract it.
| | 00:10 | So I can go down to my Background layer,
where that building is right now and
| | 00:14 | draw a new mask, I'll grab the Pen
Tool, draw a mask that starts behind the
| | 00:19 | foreground building, goes across and
above the third building, which I do
| | 00:23 | want to save and across in between the old
building and the trees and then close that.
| | 00:29 | Initially that mask is additive but I
can go down to the new mask that I just
| | 00:34 | drew and change that menu to
subtract and there the building goes away.
| | 00:38 | Of course, I need to key this over time
so I am going to go ahead and key the
| | 00:43 | first frame for mask path here then, go
ahead and move to the last frame adjust
| | 00:48 | that mask and then continue to bisect
to key that, I'll do one more frame, move
| | 00:55 | that over and then I'll let you do the
rest of the keying, it probably will need
| | 00:59 | quite a few more keyframes,
but that gives you the idea.
| | 01:02 | So that building is now removed, now
we can look at the overall quality here.
| | 01:06 | Now one thing that might be nice in
order to integrate this building better
| | 01:09 | would be to create some type of
reflection, this is just a static Matte
| | 01:13 | painting, so you are not going to get
any moving reflection that you would
| | 01:16 | normally get if you were truly walking
down the street, something similar to
| | 01:19 | what you see in these windows
right here on the foreground.
| | 01:21 | We can fake that right in the
composite though and go back to the
| | 01:24 | FoundryCameraTracker composition and
create those reflections right here.
| | 01:28 | Now before I do that I want to rename a
few layers, just so I know what's going on.
| | 01:31 | This layer is the left side of the
MattePainting, so I'll rename that
| | 01:35 | MattePaintingL and this is the
right side, so MattePaintingR.
| | 01:39 | Now in terms of reflection what we
could do is bring in some other footage
| | 01:44 | or some other still image and mask
it so it's just for the WindowsR to
| | 01:48 | create a fake reflection.
| | 01:50 | Now there is a problem of bringing the
still image from some other source;
| | 01:53 | I don't have that camera motion so
it's not really going to match correctly.
| | 01:57 | It's going to look like it's
sliding in a strange way.
| | 02:00 | What would be better is to use the
original street footage somehow because that
| | 02:04 | has original camera motion in it,
and that will line up quite nicely, let's
| | 02:08 | go ahead and do that, let's pull
on the street a couple of times.
| | 02:11 | I'll put one copy on top of the Matte
Painting Right and one on top of the Matte
| | 02:16 | Painting Left. Of course those new
street layers take over the entire frame.
| | 02:21 | So we need to figure out a way to
mask those where they appear just for the
| | 02:25 | WindowsR so I am going to turn
off the street layers temporarily.
| | 02:28 | What we can actually do is copy up the
original matte paintings and then, create
| | 02:33 | a Matte using just the window color,
let's try that, I want to pick the Left
| | 02:38 | Matte Painting, add a duplicate, that
becomes L2, I want to pull L2 above the
| | 02:44 | street, I'll do the same with the
Right Matte Paining, duplicate that, pull
| | 02:49 | that right above the street so
it goes original, street, copy.
| | 02:54 | Okay, I am going to hide the original matte
paintings now and I'll get down to just my copies.
| | 03:00 | Now what we do there, so you can use a
keying tool to concentrate just on the
| | 03:05 | blue color where the windows
are to separate out that section.
| | 03:08 | For example I can go up to
Effect>Keying and apply Keylight.
| | 03:14 | Now normally keylight is used for a
green screen removal but it works perfectly
| | 03:17 | fine in this situation also.
| | 03:18 | In fact let me just start with the
left side, so Effect>Keying>Keylight.
| | 03:23 | The first thing I'll do is select the
Screen Color, I'll pick an average blue.
| | 03:31 | Instantaneously most of the glass
is removed and becomes transparent.
| | 03:35 | Now what might be nice is simply to
reverse that effect where I remove the
| | 03:39 | stone, but keep the windows.
| | 03:42 | So one trick for that is go to the
Screen Matte section, and invert Clip Black
| | 03:48 | and Clip White. Now normally these
determine what's pure transparent and what's
| | 03:52 | pure opaque but if I reverse these, I
get the opposite result and in fact if I
| | 03:59 | use a value of 35 or roughly 35 for
Clip White and roughly 70 for Clip Black,
| | 04:05 | I'll get a good result.
| | 04:06 | Now I am not concerned about the color
because what we are going to do is use
| | 04:10 | this simply as not the source, as a
reference, and in fact I can see the
| | 04:14 | Matte if I go and change the view right here to
Combine Matte, that's a nice matte right there.
| | 04:20 | I'll return this to Final
Results so we can go back.
| | 04:25 | Now I guess we're going to use this as a source,
so the trick there is use the Track Matte
| | 04:31 | tool one more time.
| | 04:32 | So what I can do is turn back on the
Streets, turn off the L 2 and Right 2, show
| | 04:41 | the Track Matte menus through Toggle
Switches, and change these menus beside
| | 04:46 | Street. So for this street, I'll change
this Track Matte to Alpha Matte and this
| | 04:52 | street to Alpha Matte also.
| | 04:55 | And when I'm done with that, I'll see
that the windows are cut out, in other
| | 04:58 | words the street is cut out
in the shape of the windows.
| | 05:00 | My right side doesn't really have the
Windows showing up yet, because I need to get the
| | 05:03 | keylight over there first, so what I
can do is go to my L2 where keylight
| | 05:09 | currently is and is currently set, Ctrl+
C or Command+C that, copy that and paste
| | 05:14 | it onto R2, Ctrl+V or Command+V and
there we go, so both sides are cut out.
| | 05:20 | Now we don't have to live with where
the reflections currently are, in other
| | 05:24 | words, the streets were brought, in
after the default locations so we get a
| | 05:28 | default center chunk of those images.
| | 05:30 | In order to be more selective, what I
can do is change the transforms of those two
| | 05:34 | street layers to select a better
section to create the reflection.
| | 05:38 | So for example, if I go down to the
lower street which creates a front
| | 05:44 | reflection, I can fiddle around with
the scale and position until I get a
| | 05:49 | section that looks kind of nice.
| | 05:50 | For example it might be good to get a
section of the sky back, so you can change
| | 05:53 | these things interactively, and
you will see it slide across.
| | 05:57 | I'll give you some values that'll work
pretty well here, for Scale 105 and then
| | 06:02 | for Position 736 and 568.
| | 06:11 | What that does is it pushes the
building over so this center building winds up
| | 06:16 | more here on the left, and
I get a piece of sky back.
| | 06:19 | What's nice about this is this building
right here, that's reflecting, is the
| | 06:22 | one we cut out anyway so people
are not going to recognize it.
| | 06:24 | Let's try the right side also.
| | 06:27 | I'll grab this street, and change the
transforms, and this one I'm going to leave the
| | 06:31 | scale 100, but I'll try a different
position, 672, 470, there we go, and that
| | 06:37 | gives me a little piece of sky right here.
| | 06:38 | Now I need to get back my original
MattePainting so I am going to turn those
| | 06:45 | back on left side and right side and
the first problem is that the reflections
| | 06:49 | mostly take over the building, I can't see too
much of the building left and that's not good.
| | 06:54 | What I can do though is reduce the
opacity of those two street layers.
| | 06:58 | Let's say 35% for each one.
| | 07:01 | And there we go, so now I can
see the reflection on top of the
| | 07:08 | original MattePainting.
| | 07:09 | Now one last step that would be nice here
is to somehow distort the reflections.
| | 07:14 | Often when you walk down the street and you
look at a sky scrapper, you will see
| | 07:16 | that the glass creates a wavy reflection,
that's because the glass is not perfectly flat.
| | 07:21 | In order to do that, we can apply an
effect to these street layers and the one
| | 07:24 | that's perfect for this is
called Turbulent Displace.
| | 07:27 | So I'll start with the left side
Effect>Distort>Turbulent Displace.
| | 07:32 | You will see instantaneously the
reflection becomes wavy, now you can change the
| | 07:39 | intensity and the size of that
wave by changing the amount and size.
| | 07:43 | So for example the amount I can
experiment with, but then slide down to 20 or so
| | 07:50 | and the size I can also play around
with but I'd probably want a relatively
| | 07:54 | small size, very, very subtle so I
think a value of around 8 will be good.
| | 07:59 | Now I have to see this by zooming in, but
this is with the Turbulent Displace and
| | 08:03 | this is without, very subtle distortion,
but as the camera moves you will see this.
| | 08:08 | At least you will see that the
building windows and building sides in the
| | 08:11 | reflection aren't perfectly straight.
| | 08:13 | Let's take a look at this now
in the BuildStreet composite.
| | 08:16 | We'll play back a short section and there we go.
| | 08:24 | Now one problem is because it didn't
finish keyframing the removal of the
| | 08:29 | original building shows up for a
second, but once you keyframe that mask
| | 08:32 | completely that will go away.
| | 08:34 | Let's concentrate on the reflections though,
take a look at the reflections over here.
| | 08:42 | One nice thing is the reflections move
relative to the building which is very accurate.
| | 08:45 | The reason this happens is if I go
back to the Camera Tracker is because the
| | 08:53 | MattePainting itself is been tracked, it
moves but my street layers are not being
| | 08:58 | tracked, so they stay static.
| | 08:59 | So two move relative to each other
in the end and that's actually a very
| | 09:03 | realistic result in
terms of the fake reflection.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Color Grading and Fine-TuningColor grading for sunset| 00:00 | We have integrated the new Matte
Painting into the scene and it's looking nice.
| | 00:04 | However, there is one major series of
steps left to take and that is color grading.
| | 00:08 | You will notice right now that the
colors don't match; the matte painting is
| | 00:11 | very blue and also the original footage,
it does not really match the sunset,
| | 00:15 | it's not very orange or pink, so we can
apply various color effects to different
| | 00:19 | layers to try to integrate
all these elements together.
| | 00:21 | So let's start with the sunset, let's
make sure the sunset is the way we want it
| | 00:26 | first, and we'll match everything to that.
| | 00:27 | If I zoom in I can see that maybe
there is a little bit too much green or
| | 00:30 | greenish tan inside the sunset, so what
I can do is go to the sunset layer and
| | 00:34 | apply some color effects.
| | 00:37 | So I'll start with Effect>Color
Correction>Color Balance. Then also Effect>Color
| | 00:43 | Correction>Hue/Saturation.
| | 00:45 | The Color Balance allows you to adjust
the balance between red, green, and blue in
| | 00:51 | the Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight area.
| | 00:52 | Now you can move these sliders around
interactively just to see the result,
| | 00:56 | for example I can reduce the green in the
highlights and it gets more purplish in that case.
| | 01:02 | Now let's take some time to experiment,
but I will give you some values that
| | 01:08 | will work in this case.
| | 01:09 | So for highlight green, I am actually
going to enter a -45, then for Shadow Red,
| | 01:14 | I'll put in a -11, Shadow
Green, -21, and Shadow Blue, 18.
| | 01:25 | So these values make it
more orangey and less green.
| | 01:28 | Now whenever you adjust the color
balance here, it might affect the saturation,
| | 01:33 | it's become more
saturated and much more intense.
| | 01:36 | I'd actually like to reduce saturation so
that's why the Hue/Saturation effect is here.
| | 01:40 | I can reduce it through the
Master Saturation or increase it.
| | 01:45 | In this case, I want to make it a little bit
more washed out so I am going to enter -40 here.
| | 01:51 | So there is a nice pale sunset
with some blue still showing through.
| | 01:57 | We're going to use this as the guide
to color correct everything else.
| | 02:01 | We're going to start with just the
Live Action portion, we'll save the
| | 02:04 | Matte Painting for later.
| | 02:05 | Now before we move on there is one
other step we can take with the sky.
| | 02:09 | If you remember we added an optics
compensation to the building to get
| | 02:13 | some distortion on it.
| | 02:14 | We do the same on the sky, since the
sky takes up a big area, it would be nice
| | 02:19 | to distort the edges a
little bit as the camera moves.
| | 02:22 | So let's do that with the sky
selected or the sunset selected, I'll go to
| | 02:26 | Effect>Distort>Optics Compensation.
| | 02:31 | Again you can raise the Field of
View until it becomes distorted.
| | 02:35 | In this case I am going to use a
fairly small number just to give me a little
| | 02:39 | bit of distortion but not
too much and let's try 25.
| | 02:42 | You will see it mostly on the edges
and that's what we are trying to get.
| | 02:45 | Alright, now we can move onto other
parts if the scene for color grading.
| | 02:49 | Lets start with the
background core, which is right here.
| | 02:52 | I am going to add several effects and
then be able to copy them to other layers.
| | 02:56 | These are commonly used.
| | 02:57 | So, the first one will be
Color Correction>Curves.
| | 03:00 | Next one will be Color
Correction>Color Balance, and the third once
| | 03:06 | again, Hue/Saturation.
| | 03:07 | I am going to start with the Curves.
| | 03:11 | The Curves allows you to adjust the
Brightness and Contrast interactively and
| | 03:16 | also increase or decrease the contrast.
| | 03:18 | What I'd like to do here is just darken
these buildings down, so it looks more
| | 03:22 | like twilight, like the sun is below the horizon.
| | 03:24 | So I am going to lower this top
point here, which will darken the highlights, add
| | 03:29 | another point in the center and bow it
down. This will add a little bit more contrast
| | 03:34 | and then darken it overall, so
now it looks definitely darker.
| | 03:37 | Next thing I'll do is adjust the Color Balance.
| | 03:40 | The goal here is to get
this more pinkish like the sky.
| | 03:43 | Again, you will have to experiment, but
I'll give you some values just to save
| | 03:46 | time. I am going to increase the
Red in the Shadow, Shadow Red 45, also
| | 03:52 | increase the Red in the Midtones, 15,
but in the Highlights I am going to reduce
| | 03:58 | the green, Highlight Green -10.
| | 03:59 | So now it's more pink, more red, less green.
| | 04:05 | Now this just altered the saturation so
I need to deal with that. I am going to
| | 04:09 | reduce the saturation to -25. So now
it's more pale which matches the sky.
| | 04:14 | Now that I have set these effects in
terms of color grading, I can collapse
| | 04:19 | them and copy them to some
other layer, so I can just Shift+Highlight
| | 04:23 | these three effects, Ctrl+C or Command+
C to copy, and go to another layer, for
| | 04:28 | instance Background, and Ctrl+V or Command
+V, and now the core integrates with the
| | 04:33 | rest of the background.
| | 04:34 | I can also copy these to the foreground
which is this building here on the front left.
| | 04:39 | So once again Ctrl+V or Command+V,
now when I do that it looks too dark, so
| | 04:44 | what I'll have to do is adjust these
effects one more time just for this
| | 04:47 | foreground building.
| | 04:48 | Now in this case it's too dark so I
am going to raise the curve back up
| | 04:53 | something like this.
| | 04:54 | You can also adjust the saturation, looks a
bit pink still, I am going to go down to -35.
| | 05:04 | So now this building in the foreground
looks similar to the building right here.
| | 05:07 | Now that I have this foreground building
balanced, I can go ahead and apply that
| | 05:11 | to these cutout cars and lampposts.
| | 05:13 | So I am going to copy the effects as
it is right now, Shift+Select them,
| | 05:18 | Ctrl+C or Command+C for copy, then
go to the AE3DTracker, and Ctrl+V or
| | 05:28 | Command+V paste.
| | 05:32 | That darkens these cutout foreground elements.
| | 05:34 | Now there is one other one associated
with that and that's the cutout passing cars.
| | 05:38 | I am going to paste those effects
down to that layer right now, Ctrl+V or
| | 05:42 | Command+V, those are the cars that
disappear briefly in between this front cluster.
| | 05:48 | All right, just one other section to
deal with at this step and that's this
| | 05:53 | foreground building.
| | 05:54 | Now we are going to save the trees for a
later step, those definitely need to be
| | 05:59 | graded but they need some extra work.
| | 06:01 | What I can do though is go ahead
and adjust the building patch which is
| | 06:04 | underneath the trees, that just fills
in the holes, so I am going to paste one
| | 06:08 | more time with those effects in
there and then adjust the saturation.
| | 06:13 | Now they are hard to see but if I raise
the Saturation up to a really high value
| | 06:17 | you will see that patch show through
the holes that the trees layer has made.
| | 06:21 | Now that's too intense now, so I
am just going to reduce it to -10.
| | 06:25 | Alright, so by using some color
grading effects like Color Balance,
| | 06:28 | Curves, and Hue/Saturation
| | 06:29 | we are able to balance the colors and
the brightness and contrast on most
| | 06:33 | of the elements in this scene to get
them better integrated with this sky.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Color grading matte edges| 00:00 | We've color graded quite a bit of
the scene now, so that the various
| | 00:04 | buildings match the sky.
| | 00:05 | One major area of the original footage we
need to do a still though is the trees,
| | 00:09 | so let's look at that area.
| | 00:12 | I'll start by copying the effects from
BuildingPatch upwards to Trees, so the
| | 00:17 | Curves, the Color Balance, and the Hue/
Saturation, Shift select those, Ctrl+C or
| | 00:23 | Command+C and then paste onto Trees.
| | 00:26 | Overall this matches better now, but we
can continue to adjust these effects to
| | 00:31 | try to get better edges on the
leaves and that's a real difficult area.
| | 00:36 | Now the effects I pasted come in at
the bottom and that's fine, we still
| | 00:40 | had the original Curves and Color
Range we used to remove the sky, the new
| | 00:44 | Curve becomes Curves 2.
| | 00:45 | I will start by trying to adjust the
Curves to see if I can improve the edge quality.
| | 00:50 | For example, I can go to the top Curves to
maybe darken the very end of the curve
| | 00:55 | and there will be a slight difference
in the resulting color range keying.
| | 01:00 | I can also adjust the Curves 2 that
I just pasted in, to make a bowed down
| | 01:07 | curve like this and you get an area that's
pretty distinct in terms of this purplish area.
| | 01:13 | What we can do is target that area with
a different keyer and try to remove that.
| | 01:17 | I don't really want these hard
edges here, where I have the tree,
| | 01:20 | mostly the color is over here towards the right.
| | 01:24 | So what I can do is add a
different kind of keying tool.
| | 01:27 | This time I'm going to try Linear Color Key;
| | 01:29 | you can sample that
purple color just to target it.
| | 01:35 | So, I'll pick this purple somewhere in the
center here, and instantaneously it gets eroded.
| | 01:41 | I control the aggressiveness of the
erosion by adjusting the Matching Softness.
| | 01:46 | I go down to 0, it's back to normal or I can do
something very tiny like 1 to erode into it.
| | 01:52 | Actually it looks pretty good;
| | 01:53 | however, I still have this hazy
ghosty edge hovering outside the leaves.
| | 01:58 | So, what I can do there though is
add a blur to try to soften that.
| | 02:02 | In this case I'm going to add a Channel Blur.
| | 02:05 | I am going to raise the Alpha blurriness
by a small amount like 1, and that softens it out.
| | 02:11 | That's actually looking pretty good overall;
| | 02:15 | I can continue to adjust the
original curves to, to have different results.
| | 02:20 | In fact, if I pull the center
of this second Curves down a bit;
| | 02:25 | it gets rid of the last
remaining bit of haziness.
| | 02:28 | Now one problem with this is it might
affect the other parts of that layer in a
| | 02:37 | poor way, in fact, if we look down
here towards the bottom, we will see this
| | 02:41 | building we saved earlier gets eroded.
| | 02:42 | Now there's two choices, at least in
terms of the effects we already have,
| | 02:47 | we can adjust the Linear Color Key to
try to restore that building or just
| | 02:51 | remove it completely.
| | 02:52 | I rather have good edges on my
leaves, it's more important I think.
| | 02:56 | So, what I can do is just raise the
Matching Softness, and erode that building
| | 03:00 | out completely, and in fact, that still
leaves my edges looking pretty good for my leaves.
| | 03:08 | Another potential problem though is it
might affect the top of this building
| | 03:14 | here, and in fact, the very edge of this building
starts to fade away and become semitransparent.
| | 03:18 | So, there is a case where I might just
leave my effects as is, because I like
| | 03:22 | the tree the way it looks, well, the
two trees, but then patch this building
| | 03:26 | with a different layer.
| | 03:28 | So, what I can do is copy the Trees
upwards, Edit>Duplicate, get Trees 2;
| | 03:36 | get rid of those masks or the mask
that is on there already; delete that.
| | 03:44 | And draw a new mask that just restores
part of the building we're concerned with.
| | 03:47 | So, I might draw a mask like this on
frame_1, so I'm back to the Pen Tool, and
| | 03:55 | maybe a mask that just saves
that corner of the building.
| | 03:58 | Now the old effects are still on that new copy
so I don't really want the Linear Color
| | 04:02 | Key, that's the thing that is
giving that the problem in terms of erosion.
| | 04:05 | So, with Trees 2 is selected,
| | 04:07 | I'll make sure to get rid of that
Linear Color Key, and the Channel Blur,
| | 04:14 | so just delete those.
| | 04:17 | Now the building is much
more opaque here on the edge.
| | 04:19 | Now of courses this has to be keyed
over time, there is the first frame, and
| | 04:25 | adjust it for the last frame.
| | 04:27 | We can also increase the Feather;
| | 04:29 | I want this area to be soft right here
where it's crossing the leaves themselves so
| | 04:33 | I can feather that by 10.
| | 04:35 | Now we have to continue to bisect
this and add more and more keys, until
| | 04:38 | it follows completely.
| | 04:40 | But there we go, we have made some
adjustments to the effects on the Trees layer
| | 04:45 | to improve the actual leaves, and then we
patched the building to restore some of
| | 04:49 | the parts that got eroded away with
the new layer and some more masking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Color grading a matte painting| 00:00 | We have color graded most of the scene
now, and most of the buildings, and trees,
| | 00:04 | and so on, integrate well with the sky.
| | 00:06 | Now there is one thing left and that's
the matte painting, obviously it's very
| | 00:09 | blue, doesn't quite fit.
| | 00:10 | There's a couple of
different ways to deal with this.
| | 00:13 | The first way is we just add affects to
it like Color Correction and Hue and Saturation
| | 00:16 | and so on and adjust it that way.
| | 00:18 | Another way is to create a duplicate
layer, and tint that, and combine the two.
| | 00:23 | I am going to try that way;
| | 00:25 | it's going to work better in this situation.
| | 00:27 | I am going to rename that layer first,
which is a FoundryCameraTracker and just
| | 00:31 | so I know what it is.
| | 00:34 | Now I'll copy that layer upwards, so
Edit>Duplicate. There's Building 2.
| | 00:41 | I am going to rename that BuildingTint.
| | 00:46 | I'll go to the effects on that
and there are no effects right now.
| | 00:49 | I'm going to add a Hue/Saturation,
Color Correction>Hue/Saturation.
| | 00:53 | Now normally we deal with the Master
Saturation slider, this time however, I
| | 00:58 | am going to Colorize.
| | 00:59 | And Colorize, is kind of like a Tint,
you can see it change color right away.
| | 01:05 | I can adjust the wheel on the
Colorized Hue to get different colors.
| | 01:10 | Now in this case if I enter 7
| | 01:13 | that gives me an orangey pink
that's very similar to the sky.
| | 01:17 | Now when I do that the tinted
version takes over, I can't see the
| | 01:21 | original version at all.
| | 01:22 | So, what I need to do is reduce its
Opacity, reduce it down to 60%, now I get a
| | 01:31 | combination of both the tint and the original.
| | 01:33 | So, I wind up with a pinkish
building where the windows are no longer
| | 01:37 | supersaturated, but are more
closer to the blue you find in the sky.
| | 01:40 | If I zoom back to see that, it looks
much better; it fits the scene is much better.
| | 01:44 | Now there is one last thing we do
while we're working with this building, and
| | 01:48 | that's to adjust the overall brightness and contrast.
| | 01:50 | Now I don't like to that equally
across the entire building, what I'd like to do is
| | 01:54 | get a Shadow here on the left, this will
help make it pop out and make it more
| | 01:57 | separated from the foreground.
| | 01:59 | So to do that I'm going to make another
copy of the building, I am going to go back
| | 02:03 | down to Building, Edit>Duplicate and
that New Layer I am going to call that
| | 02:08 | BuildingShadow, and then I'mg going to
darken that down, once again, there are
| | 02:13 | no effects here, so I am going to
add a Curves, Color Correction>Curves.
| | 02:16 | Now I'll use that to darken the building,
pull that curve down and you point in
| | 02:21 | the center and bow it down
for a little bit more contrast.
| | 02:24 | You see it gets darker right here.
| | 02:26 | Now I don't want that darkens to be
equal across the entire building once again, I
| | 02:29 | want it to be on the left side,
so I am going to draw a mask.
| | 02:33 | Just roughly over the left side, a little
bit irregular, something like this, and
| | 02:37 | then down to the bottom, across, and back up.
| | 02:39 | Now initially that transition is very
harsh, but what I can do is create a Feather
| | 02:45 | there, a big Feather, say 200 to
really soften it out, and there it is.
| | 02:53 | So, here's with the shadow and without.
| | 02:55 | With is much more interesting.
There is more contrast, it's easier to see the
| | 02:58 | building, plus reflections are more
interesting, because there is more
| | 03:02 | contrast there as well.
| | 03:03 | So that completes our color grading.
| | 03:04 | Now there is one last thing we can
address while we are in this composition,
| | 03:07 | and that's the fact that for the first few
frames, these leaves are cut off at the top.
| | 03:12 | This occurred when we masked the trees out
on the Trees layer. I can turn the mask
| | 03:19 | back on and we can see that.
| | 03:20 | Now initially the problem was that the
Building was appearing underneath the
| | 03:23 | leaves or very close to the leaves.
| | 03:26 | Now since we have added some more
effects to this layer, we can review that and
| | 03:30 | see if that's necessary.
| | 03:31 | I am going to expand the masks, and I
want to see where all my keyframes are,
| | 03:35 | this is really only a problem
for the first fifteen frames or so.
| | 03:37 | What I can do though is adjust this
mask to see if there is still problem.
| | 03:41 | If we pull off far enough, we
eventually see that building, but that building
| | 03:44 | has been keyed out to the point
where there is very little of it left.
| | 03:48 | So, in this case we can just
adjust this mask to restore those leaves.
| | 03:52 | I am going to go from keyframe-to-
keyframe to update this, I am going to use
| | 03:54 | this arrow here to jump to the
next key, and then adjust the mask and
| | 04:00 | restore the leaves.
| | 04:02 | Now as soon as the leaves leave the
frame, then it is no longer an issue,
| | 04:06 | so there, they have come back. All right!
| | 04:08 | So that's basically the completed scene,
there are a few more steps to take and
| | 04:12 | then we will be ready for rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding motion blur and final rendering| 00:00 | We are almost finished with our project.
| | 00:01 | There's just two more steps to
take to prepare this rendering.
| | 00:05 | The first is to add Motion Blur. We have the
option to Motion Blur any of the static
| | 00:09 | elements that are tracked, this will
help make those various layers match the
| | 00:14 | real footage a little bit better.
| | 00:16 | For example, I can go to the
AE3DTracker composition and turn on Motion Blur
| | 00:21 | for anything that's being
tracked, for example the cars.
| | 00:25 | To do that I need to turn on the Motion
Blur switch beside the layer right here
| | 00:30 | and also turn on the Enable Motion Blur
for the entire composition right here;
| | 00:34 | as soon as you do that it's going
to move that layer very slightly.
| | 00:39 | Now since these layers are not moving
very fast, it's going to be a very short
| | 00:44 | motion blur trail, but it
does soften it very slightly.
| | 00:46 | You can also turn on Motion Blur for
these other layers, like the Lamp, the
| | 00:50 | Light and both Billboard parts,
the shadow and just the Billboard.
| | 00:54 | You can also turn on Motion Blur for
any other layer in any other composition
| | 00:59 | that might be tracked.
| | 01:00 | For example, I can go to the
FoundryCameraTracker and do the same for
| | 01:03 | MattePainting, left and right.
| | 01:05 | Now if you don't see that switch,
toggle switches, so MattePaintingLeft and
| | 01:12 | right and the Enable switch.
| | 01:15 | Let's go back to BuildStreet.
| | 01:17 | Now I don't need to activate the
Motion Blur for this composition because the
| | 01:21 | things that need to be blurred are
already blurred in the prior compositions
| | 01:25 | and then nested here.
| | 01:27 | In any case let's play back the
first few frames and here we go.
| | 01:30 | Now one problem that often happens
with 3DTracking in Motion Blur is once you
| | 01:35 | activate it and play it back, you'll see
that the layer slips, you can see on this
| | 01:43 | Billboard in particularl there it
looks like it's lagging behind, there's a
| | 01:46 | gap that opens up, and wiggles back and forth.
| | 01:48 | There's a way to prevent that though.
| | 01:50 | You have to go back to the Composition where
the Motion Blur is, go to Composition
| | 01:54 | Settings and look at the Advanced tab.
| | 01:57 | In the Advanced tab there's a
couple of Motion Blur options.
| | 02:01 | The first is the Shutter Angle and
that determines how long the Motion Blur
| | 02:05 | trail is and actually this is fine at 180.
| | 02:07 | More importantly, there is a Shutter Phase.
| | 02:09 | We can use Shutter Phase to offset when
the shutter opens and closes, in other
| | 02:14 | words, where it's looking forward and
backward in time, and in fact, if you
| | 02:17 | change this to -90, it will work
much better in these situations, -90.
| | 02:21 | I need to do that on all the
compositions with Motion Blur, so, I have to do it
| | 02:26 | here on the FoundryCameraTracker also,
so again, Composition Settings, Advanced
| | 02:31 | -90, let's play that back now.
| | 02:36 | So now that lagging, that
wobbling, is almost completely gone.
| | 02:45 | So -90 Phase ensures that the blur
is centered on the current frame.
| | 02:50 | So now that Motion Blur is working, we
can move on to the last step, and that is
| | 02:54 | to nest the final composition.
| | 02:55 | Now, if you remember earlier on when
we dealt with these foreground cars that
| | 02:59 | are tracked, there's a gap that opened up.
| | 03:01 | In fact, I'll go look in this
first composition here, right here.
| | 03:06 | So in order to prevent that, what
I can do is nest this BuildStreet
| | 03:09 | composition and scale it up.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to create a new composition,
same size 1920 x 1080, 24 frames, 120
| | 03:19 | frame duration, I am going to name
this Final, then I'm going to nest the
| | 03:26 | BuildStreet into this composition and
scale it up by 102%, just a little bit
| | 03:33 | bigger, not enough to ruin the
quality, just a tiny bit bigger.
| | 03:36 | So what I'll do is let it overhang a
tiny amount, so we don't see that gap that
| | 03:41 | opens up below the cars.
| | 03:42 | You can also position this too,
like that, and that's the final step.
| | 03:52 | Now we are ready to render.
| | 03:54 | So if we want to render out, I
can pick this composition, go to
| | 03:57 | Composition>Add to Render Queue then,
go to the Output Module, click Lossless,
| | 04:04 | select an Output Format, say QuickTime,
change the compression if I want to,
| | 04:09 | through Format Options, then go to Output
and choose a place to write this out, and
| | 04:16 | then render it out and there you go.
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| | Looking at the final scene |
|
ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | If you're interested in learning more
about VFX Techniques, I recommend checking
| | 00:04 | out some of the other
courses in the lynda.com library.
| | 00:07 | For example there's two of
my courses, VFX Techniques:
| | 00:10 | Tracking Objects onto a Face and VFX Techniques:
| | 00:14 | Crowd Replication with After Effects.
| | 00:16 | In addition there is a great series,
After Effects Apprentice, authored by Chris
| | 00:21 | and Trish Meyer that covers a lot of
the important basics of After Effects.
| | 00:25 | Well that takes us to the end of the course.
| | 00:27 | I hope you've learned some techniques that
you can apply to a wide range of VFX projects.
| | 00:32 | Thanks for watching!
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