IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi! I'm Lee Lanier.
Welcome to VFX Techniques:
| | 00:07 | Tracking Objects onto a Face.
| | 00:09 | In this course, we'll learn how to
build a complex visual effects composite
| | 00:12 | using video footage and artwork.
| | 00:15 | We'll use After Effects and mocha.
| | 00:16 | I'll start by showing you how to use
rotoscoping effects to create digital makeup.
| | 00:20 | Then I'll show you how to transfer
footage into mocha, and how to generate
| | 00:24 | planar tracking data.
| | 00:25 | We'll use that data to impart
camera motion to otherwise static layers.
| | 00:29 | We'll see how to apply tracking
data to artwork in After Effects.
| | 00:32 | We'll use additional effects and
animation to create motion graphics
| | 00:36 | for a heads-up display.
| | 00:37 | We'll be covering these features
and many other tools and techniques.
| | 00:41 | Now, let's get started with VFX Techniques:
| | 00:44 | Tracking Objects onto a Face.
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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 title.
| | 00:07 | The Exercise Files are arranged in
several additional folders within the
| | 00:10 | Exercise Files folder like this one right here.
| | 00:14 | The files are divided between After
Effects files, aesthetic artwork created in
| | 00:21 | Photoshop, video footage converted to
image sequences, Mocha files, and also
| | 00:28 | some Precomps we'll create during the course.
| | 00:30 | You will be asked to import various files
into After Effects throughout this course.
| | 00:34 | I'll indicate the file
name and which folder it's in.
| | 00:37 | We'll use the files to build a
composition in which we add a heads-up display
| | 00:42 | and electronic tattoo to the face of an actress.
| | 00:45 | Now, I do want to mention
several things about Mocha.
| | 00:48 | For one, we're using Mocha for After
Effects for version CS6, in which case you
| | 00:54 | have to launch Mocha from After Effects.
| | 00:55 | Let me show you how to do that.
| | 00:57 | I've opened After Effects, and I have a
simple composition in which I have a single layer.
| | 01:02 | What you can do is select a layer,
go to Animation > Track in mocha AE.
| | 01:11 | This opens the program.
| | 01:12 | Now, it's going to want to create a new
project based on that layer you had selected.
| | 01:17 | However, you can just click Cancel,
and it leaves the project empty.
| | 01:20 | However, you can go up to Open, and
open a file, for instance a file in
| | 01:25 | the Mocha Files folder.
| | 01:26 | Before I open, I'll mention one other
aspect of Mocha, and that's the fact that
| | 01:31 | it creates automatic backup files.
| | 01:33 | Here's an example, 3_2.autosave.mocha.
| | 01:36 | This is nice in case you
lose a file by accident.
| | 01:39 | Now, you don't have to keep these,
but they're there just in case.
| | 01:42 | Now, if you save often on your own,
hopefully these won't be necessary.
| | 01:47 | In any case, I'm just going to open one
of these Mocha files so you can see it.
| | 01:52 | There we go, ready to work!
| | 01:53 | Another potential problem with Mocha
is if you move some of the files around,
| | 01:58 | you take those Exercise
Files and you put them in a new location.
| | 02:01 | Mocha might get confused in terms of where
those files are, or where the folders are.
| | 02:05 | I'll demonstrate that.
| | 02:06 | I am going to go to a
different drive and open a file.
| | 02:16 | You may see this, 'Relink clip'.
| | 02:18 | It's been unable to find where the
Exercise Files are, in this case, image sequence.
| | 02:23 | What you can do is click the Choose
button, and go to the folder where
| | 02:27 | those images reside.
| | 02:29 | In this case, they're in my
Precomps > PrepTrack folder.
| | 02:33 | Before I select the first frame of
the sequence, and I need to select the first
| | 02:37 | frame, I want to mention the Results folder.
| | 02:40 | When you create a new Mocha file, you
will sometimes get a Results folder close
| | 02:44 | to the place where the image sequence resides,
if you use an image sequence to motion track.
| | 02:49 | Mocha uses this discretely,
| | 02:51 | you don't have to use it yourself.
| | 02:53 | Now, if you make a new project over
top of the old project, it's going to
| | 02:56 | actually want to overwrite this.
| | 02:57 | Generally, it's okay to say Yes and overwrite.
| | 02:59 | In any case, I'm going to relink my footage,
| | 03:02 | I'll click on my first
PrepTrack image, and click Open.
| | 03:05 | Once that's listed, I can click Okay.
| | 03:08 | It reloads the proper image sequence in the
proper location, and then you're ready to work.
| | 03:14 | Now, if you don't have access to the
Exercise Files, you can still apply the
| | 03:18 | discussed techniques on your own assets.
| | 03:19 | So, let's get started.
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| What you need to know about this course| 00:00 | In order to get the most out of this
course, it's helpful to have a working
| | 00:04 | knowledge of After Effects.
| | 00:05 | If you're new to After Effects, I
suggest watching the After Effects CS6
| | 00:09 | Essential Training available at lynda.com.
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1. Getting StartedBreakdown of the final comp| 00:00 | Before we get started, I'd like to show
you a preview of the major steps we will
| | 00:03 | be taking throughout this course.
| | 00:06 | I'll start by showing you how to use
rotoscoping and effects to create digital
| | 00:08 | makeup. And then, we motion-track the
tattoo art and how it follows the face.
| | 00:13 | Then, I'll show you how to create a
heads-up display as if it were a pair of
| | 00:17 | high-tech virtual glasses of some type.
| | 00:19 | We'll use additional effects and
animation to create the armature and some
| | 00:22 | light effects, and we'll be doing some
color-grading to integrate everything.
| | 00:27 | The goal is to add a floating heads-up
display and electronic tattoo to the
| | 00:31 | face of an actress.
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| Review of the image sequences| 00:00 | Image sequences are used throughout this course.
| | 00:03 | They're different from
movies, so I wanted to discuss them.
| | 00:05 | For example, if we go to the Exercise
Files folder and into the Footage folder,
| | 00:10 | there are several other folders full
of image sequences. I'll go to Spy.
| | 00:14 | What you see is a series of images
numbered, in this case, from 000 up to 299.
| | 00:22 | Each frame is a separate image.
| | 00:23 | These are often used in
the visual effects industry.
| | 00:25 | They have certain advantages.
| | 00:27 | For example, they're progressive.
| | 00:29 | Each frame is whole by itself.
| | 00:32 | There's no potential for
interlacing like you might have on video.
| | 00:36 | In addition, they're very easy to manage.
| | 00:37 | If you need to re-render something, you
don't have to worry about rendering the
| | 00:41 | entire movie like QuickTime, you
can re-render just a few frames.
| | 00:44 | Now if you're working with video, you can
create your own image sequence from that video.
| | 00:48 | I'm going to show you that.
| | 00:50 | Let's go into After Effects.
| | 00:52 | Here's After Effects.
| | 00:53 | And just as example, I have one image
sequence already loaded into the program.
| | 00:57 | Great thing about After Effects, it
can bring in an entire image sequence, in
| | 01:01 | this case, with 300
separate frames as a single unit.
| | 01:04 | But we'll discuss how to import these,
and how to use them throughout the course.
| | 01:09 | Right now, let's go ahead and
bring in a movie. File > Import File.
| | 01:13 | As an example, I have
QuickTime prepared on my desktop.
| | 01:16 | You can use your own movie as a test.
| | 01:19 | What I can do then is pull
this movie down into the timeline.
| | 01:25 | When I do that, it creates a new
composition in its correct size,
| | 01:30 | duration, and frame rate.
| | 01:32 | I can just scrub to this.
| | 01:35 | Take a look at it very quickly.
| | 01:37 | Now again, this is a movie, it's self-contained,
| | 01:41 | it's not loose-frames.
| | 01:42 | It's a single file.
| | 01:43 | If I want to return this into an image sequence,
however, I can do that through the Render Queue.
| | 01:48 | With this layer selected and this
composition active, I can go up to
| | 01:51 | Composition > Add to Render Queue.
| | 01:56 | That brings you to the Render Queue tab.
| | 01:57 | There are two things I need
to change before I can render,
| | 02:00 | the Output Module, and the Output To.
| | 02:02 | I am going to click on the word Lossless first.
| | 02:06 | That brings up the
Output Module Settings window.
| | 02:08 | At the very top is the
format you're rendering to.
| | 02:11 | You can't render to another
movie format or render a sequence.
| | 02:14 | I need these options that say
Sequence or Produce the Image Sequence.
| | 02:18 | For example, I can render a PNG Sequence.
| | 02:21 | Once I have that selected, I
can click OK to close the window.
| | 02:25 | Now, I need to change my Output To.
| | 02:28 | This is where I choose a name and the
location for the files I'm going to write out.
| | 02:32 | I'm going to create a temporary
folder on my desktop, New folder, Test.
| | 02:37 | I can enter that folder, and then pick a name.
| | 02:41 | Now the way it works is, you have a name,
then brackets, pound signs, another
| | 02:47 | dot, and then the extension.
| | 02:49 | I want to name mine 'Test.' but I want
to leave the brackets and the pound signs.
| | 02:56 | Those pound signs represent numeric placeholders.
| | 02:58 | So, in order to have the first frame
named 000, I need three pound signs.
| | 03:04 | This will work if I
render all the way up to 999.
| | 03:07 | So, in any case, my name is
set right now and click Save.
| | 03:10 | Once I have the output module set and
also Output To, I can go ahead and render.
| | 03:15 | And this will convert the movie
into a whole series of still images.
| | 03:21 | Once the render finishes, the yellow
bar goes away, and you'll hear a chime.
| | 03:25 | Now, if your movie is fairly long,
this might take quite some time.
| | 03:29 | Once it's finished, though, you'll
have a folder full of image sequences.
| | 03:32 | I can view those on the desktop.
| | 03:33 | There is the folder.
| | 03:36 | And here are all the image
sequences numbered 000 all the way to 299.
| | 03:43 | So if you only have movies, no
image sequence, you can create your own.
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| Setting up the project in After Effects| 00:00 | We're now ready to set up our project,
bring in our first piece of footage, and
| | 00:03 | create our first composition.
| | 00:04 | I am going to go to File > Import File,
and grab our first image sequence.
| | 00:10 | Even though it says File, I could bring
in the image sequence as a single unit.
| | 00:15 | First piece I will bring in is called Spy.
| | 00:17 | So, I'm going to go to the Footage folder,
the Spy folder, and click on the very
| | 00:21 | first Spy frame, which is 000.png.
| | 00:24 | When I do that, I can see that the PNG
sequence is checked down here at the bottom-left.
| | 00:29 | I do want that to be checked.
| | 00:32 | What that means is even though I've
selected only one frame, I'll bring all
| | 00:36 | those numbered frames in as a single unit.
| | 00:38 | So, assuming this is checked, I
can go to Open and click that.
| | 00:42 | And there is the image sequence.
| | 00:44 | It's 300 frames long, but it's brought in as
a single unit right here in the Project Panel.
| | 00:49 | If it's highlighted, I can see the
resolution, the duration, and the frame rate.
| | 00:55 | Now, the duration looks a little funny.
| | 00:57 | That's actually time-code where you
have numbers with colons, and this is a
| | 01:01 | video type of reading out the duration.
| | 01:04 | It would be better to work with frames,
which is more suited for visual effects.
| | 01:08 | So, I'm going to go up to File>Project Settings.
| | 01:11 | At the top of this window, there
is a Time Display Style option.
| | 01:17 | It says Timecode, but I really want Frames.
| | 01:19 | So, I'll click Frames, and then click OK.
| | 01:22 | When I do that, duration is read out
in frames, which is easier to imagine
| | 01:27 | for visual effects.
| | 01:28 | Now, we need our first composition.
| | 01:30 | A quick way to make a composition is
to simply click+drag the image sequence
| | 01:35 | down into the Timeline, which was empty.
| | 01:37 | When I let go, the footage appears
down here, a new composition is created,
| | 01:42 | and that's called Spy.
| | 01:43 | Now, what's great about this technique
is the new composition has the same exact
| | 01:47 | resolution, the same exact
duration, and the same exact frame rate.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to go back to the footage.
| | 01:54 | I do want to mention
something about the frame rate.
| | 01:56 | Now, the video was originally shot at 30
frames per second, so this is good, it matches.
| | 02:00 | However, occasionally, you might bring
in footage that doesn't match or just has
| | 02:05 | a wrong frame rate interpreted right here.
| | 02:06 | What you can do is go down to the
footage, right-mouse click while it's
| | 02:11 | selected, and go to Interpret Footage > Main.
| | 02:14 | In this window, there is an
Assume This Frame Rate cell.
| | 02:18 | Now, in our case, it's correct with 30.
| | 02:21 | But, if you needed to change it, you
could change the frame rate right here.
| | 02:24 | For example, if you're working with
24 frames per second footage, you can
| | 02:27 | enter 24 right here.
| | 02:29 | Now, we're good to go.
| | 02:30 | So, I can just cancel out of this window.
| | 02:32 | Let's take a look at this
footage, and see what's going on.
| | 02:38 | I'm going to use the RAM Preview
button at the far right, click that.
| | 02:42 | The first time it plays through,
it's going to write to disk.
| | 02:47 | So, it's a little bit slow.
| | 02:48 | As soon as it reaches the end, however,
it will start playing in real-time.
| | 02:53 | It's now in real-time.
| | 03:01 | This sequence features an actress who
walks towards camera, touches her face.
| | 03:07 | There are little white tracking
marks on her face, which we'll use later
| | 03:10 | for motion-tracking.
| | 03:11 | Eventually, we'll place new objects on her
face to have them follow her face motion.
| | 03:15 | One will be a little tattoo, like
electronic tattoo, right here on the side.
| | 03:19 | Another will be a heads-up
display, a futuristic display.
| | 03:23 | The idea is she's some kind of
industrial spy, and she's using this technology
| | 03:27 | to see what's going on in the room.
| | 03:29 | Well now we have our basic project, we
have our first image sequence imported,
| | 03:33 | we have a composition, and we've
taken a look at it. We can now address the
| | 03:38 | tracking marks on her face and
create some digital makeup to hide those.
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2. Applying Digital MakeupRotoscoping tracking marks| 00:00 | We're now ready to start adding
visual effects to this project.
| | 00:03 | We have our footage with our actress
who has tracking marks on her face.
| | 00:07 | Eventually, we'll use those
tracking marks to motion-track artwork.
| | 00:11 | One will be a tattoo we'll add to her cheek,
and the other will be a heads-up display
| | 00:15 | that will float in front of her eyes.
| | 00:17 | Before we get to that motion-tracking
however, we need to remove these dots.
| | 00:22 | Eventually, when we put that artwork on,
we don't want to see the dots remaining.
| | 00:26 | So, what we can do in the meantime is
create some new layers, and have those
| | 00:31 | serve as a form of digital makeup that
disguises those dots. Let's get started.
| | 00:35 | I'm going to go ahead and rename my
first layer here just so I know what it is.
| | 00:40 | Let's right-mouse click to rename, I'm
going to rename this footage, and then go
| | 00:45 | ahead and duplicate this up. So Edit > Duplicate.
| | 00:50 | This becomes our first piece of digital makeup.
| | 00:52 | I'll rename this CheekMask.
| | 00:56 | We're going to start on the cheek.
| | 01:02 | So, I want to start by isolating
this area that has four dots here and then
| | 01:06 | the one dot here by the nose.
| | 01:08 | So, I'm going to grab the Pen Tool
while I am on the first frame, and draw a
| | 01:13 | mask that encompasses that.
| | 01:14 | So, starting about here, down below
the eye, up to the edge of the nose, down
| | 01:19 | to the cheek, over to the very edge
here right across her hair, where it comes
| | 01:25 | down beside her ear.
| | 01:26 | This is going to be the first makeup patch.
| | 01:30 | Now, just rotoscoping by itself
is not going to change anything.
| | 01:33 | What we're going to do is apply
some effects to disguise that.
| | 01:37 | A great way to approach this is to
apply a blur. That's often used to remove
| | 01:42 | things like wrinkles and shadows.
| | 01:43 | They'll even work on something
like this that's more extreme.
| | 01:46 | So, let's give that a try.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to go up to Effect >
Blur & Sharpen > Gaussian Blur.
| | 01:52 | I can try a pretty high value.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to start with 10 Blurriness.
| | 01:56 | And you can see that the dots go away.
| | 02:00 | They're there vaguely, but not too bad.
| | 02:02 | If I turn on the lower layer, you can
see that that area has been cleaned up.
| | 02:07 | Now, because our actress walks through the frame,
we definitely have to animate this over time.
| | 02:12 | So let me go ahead and go
to Mask 1 and then click on the time
| | 02:18 | icon beside Mask Path.
| | 02:19 | Now, a good approach for
animating this mask is simply to bisect.
| | 02:26 | So, start on the first frame, then
go to the very last frame, and then
| | 02:31 | reposition the mask, so
it's in the correct location.
| | 02:35 | Now, to move the entire thing as one
piece, you can double-click on Align, get
| | 02:39 | the transform handle, scale it by
dragging one of the corners, and then just
| | 02:43 | moving it by click+dragging on the center.
| | 02:46 | So, I want to align up to
approximately same features as before.
| | 02:49 | I'll hit Esc to get out of the
transform, but then I want to click+drag the
| | 02:55 | individual points to get them in about
the same location they were previously.
| | 03:04 | Because the actress walks close to the
camera, the previous blur looks a little weak.
| | 03:08 | I can still see some of those circles.
| | 03:10 | What I could do though is
animate the blur over time.
| | 03:12 | I'll go back to Frame 1.
| | 03:14 | It looks okay there.
| | 03:16 | Expand the effects, and look at the blur.
| | 03:18 | I'm going to go ahead and animate
the blurriness, click the time icon.
| | 03:22 | 10 is okay at the start. Now I will go to the
very end, and increase the blur by 20, or 220.
| | 03:28 | There we go.
| | 03:29 | Now, you might have to play around
with the mask position because you might
| | 03:35 | start to see some of the circles.
| | 03:38 | If you let this left hand side just
touch her hair, that will work pretty good.
| | 03:43 | Now, there is some leeway on these four
dots here, because eventually a tattoo
| | 03:48 | will go right in that spot right over the top.
| | 03:50 | After I have the first and last frame, I
just bisect and go to the center frame,
| | 03:55 | 150, repeat the process,
scale, the mask, move it.
| | 04:01 | If you have to, you can rotate it by
clicking outside like this, hit Esc, get
| | 04:05 | out the transform handle,
move individual points.
| | 04:09 | Like, match up to the edge of her nose.
| | 04:11 | I can go right into the shadow
here on her cheek like this.
| | 04:20 | Then, I would have to continue to
bisect, around to 225 for example, around 75,
| | 04:26 | until the mask is following the entire time.
| | 04:28 | Now, you don't have to have a keyframe
every frame, but I will say that you
| | 04:33 | should have a lot of keyframes
towards the beginning, maybe two or three frames
| | 04:36 | apart, because at the start, she is
walking, so there's a lot of movement up and
| | 04:40 | down, left and right.
| | 04:41 | So, the first half will require many
more keyframes than the last half.
| | 04:45 | There's no way I can finish this
rotoscoping in real-time during this video.
| | 04:48 | It would take far too long.
| | 04:50 | But go ahead and continue to keyframe on
your own until the mask follows the entire time.
| | 04:54 | You'll see my final version of the
rotoscoping keyframing as we continue
| | 04:58 | the course.
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| Disguising marks with grading and noise| 00:00 | We have disguised the tracking mark
dots on the actress's cheek by duplicating
| | 00:05 | the layer, rotoscoping, and applying a blur.
| | 00:09 | You can all the keyframes I have for
the rotoscoping. There are definitely many
| | 00:13 | more on the left side where she walks in
the frame, and fewer on the right side
| | 00:17 | where she comes to rest.
| | 00:18 | So, it's working pretty well, but one
problem is, if I zoom in, I can see that
| | 00:23 | the non-blurry part of the frame,
there's a lot of video noise and compression
| | 00:26 | and actually she looks a bit more fuzzy,
whereas the blur side is very smooth.
| | 00:32 | So, that's a problem.
| | 00:32 | We can disguise this however,
if we apply a grain tool.
| | 00:36 | So, I'm going to pick the CheekMask layer,
go to Effect and go to Noise & Grain.
| | 00:42 | In this case, I'm going to use Match Grain.
| | 00:46 | When you bring up Match Grain, it gives
you a little preview window so you don't
| | 00:50 | see really see the result right away.
| | 00:52 | You can click+drag the center of that window
and move it over to the part you're working on.
| | 00:56 | I don't see much of a
change, so I have to adjust it.
| | 01:01 | The first thing I need to do is make sure
it's pulling the grain from some other layer.
| | 01:06 | Initially, the Noise
Source Layer is set to None.
| | 01:08 | I'll switch that to the original Footage.
| | 01:11 | Also, there's intensity. If you go to
Tweaking, expand that, there's an Intensity setting.
| | 01:15 | If I go really high, you'll
see it right away, here's 10.
| | 01:20 | The Noise Pattern is pulled out of the
Footage layer and applied to this layer.
| | 01:24 | That's way too intense though, so I'm going
to try 2 instead, just a little bit of noise.
| | 01:29 | We also have a Size setting and some
other ways to adjust that grain, but those
| | 01:34 | are good with the defaults in this case.
| | 01:36 | We're still in the preview mode of this
effect, so if I want to see the final version,
| | 01:40 | I'll go to Viewing Mode and change it
from Preview to Final Output, and now that
| | 01:46 | noise is placed every where.
| | 01:48 | So, here's without the noise,
very smooth, here is with.
| | 01:52 | What's great about this, Match Grain
will take the noise from every single frame
| | 01:56 | of the source, so this noise will
change along with the footage as it goes
| | 02:00 | across the timeline.
| | 02:01 | Now, this tool, or this
effect, is fairly expensive.
| | 02:04 | So, occasionally I'm going to ask you to
turn off Match Grain just to save time.
| | 02:08 | You can always turn it back on later.
| | 02:10 | Now, it's working fairly well,
especially with the Match Grain, however, we can
| | 02:16 | still see a little bit of the dots
showing through, not only because of the
| | 02:20 | color, because there are white dots,
| | 02:22 | you can see that area where the dots
were is a little desaturated, right here,
| | 02:27 | right here, and so on.
| | 02:28 | To solve that, or combat that, what we
can do is make another layer based on our
| | 02:33 | current CheekMask layer and do
some color adjustment on that.
| | 02:36 | So, I'm going to select CheekMask, Edit >
Duplicate, and I'm going to call this new
| | 02:42 | layer CheekMask Color.
| | 02:47 | Now, all the effects were
copied over at the same time.
| | 02:49 | I'm going to add one more though, and
that's a Hue/Saturation, Effect > Color
| | 02:54 | Correction > Hue/Saturation.
| | 02:55 | Now, instead of using the normal master
sliders up here at the top, I'm going to
| | 03:03 | colorize, and that's a tint,
where it tints the entire layer.
| | 03:06 | So if I spin the Hue to 20, 20 for the
Colorized Hue, and increase Saturation to
| | 03:14 | 60, what I'm doing is making sure that
entire area is much more brownish red.
| | 03:20 | Now, it's incredibly intense right now,
so to reduce that what I can do is go to
| | 03:24 | the Layers Opacity and
reduce that. Let's try 40.
| | 03:32 | I'll zoom in.
| | 03:33 | If I turn it off, here is before.
| | 03:35 | You can see some of those
white areas where the dots were.
| | 03:38 | If I turn it on, there's more
even color with that entire area.
| | 03:44 | Since I copied CheekMask up,
I get the mask for free.
| | 03:47 | So this new layer is going to be
in the right place the entire time.
| | 03:51 | We've added Noise & Grain and also a
Hue/Saturation Effect to a separate layer, to
| | 03:56 | help improve the quality
of our digital makeup patch.
| | 03:58 | We'll be able to use this technique
again to help disguise your remaining dots.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotoscoping the foreground| 00:00 | We've disguised the dots on her face fairly
well, so now they're pretty much invisible.
| | 00:05 | This leads to one problem, and that's
when she lifts her finger up to press her
| | 00:08 | face around frame 100 or so, her
finger becomes blurry, because those upper
| | 00:15 | layers are blurring that part of the cheek.
| | 00:18 | We'll have to rotoscope a piece of the
footage to bring her finger back.
| | 00:21 | Now, this will serve a dual purpose.
| | 00:24 | We also need to get the tattoo eventually
underneath that finger. So, let's do that.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to go down to the
Footage layer and duplicate that.
| | 00:31 | We'll move that up to the
very top and rename that finger.
| | 00:37 | I'll zoom in so I can see and then
grab my Pen Tool and draw a mask.
| | 00:46 | Let me go down to the second joints, so
good coverage of the finger, up across the nail.
| | 00:55 | I don't want any of the cheek or the shadow.
| | 00:59 | This should be accurate enough
to really separate out the finger.
| | 01:05 | I'll turn off the other layers,
you can see the finger by itself.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to turn off the blurry layers
for now just so I can see the original
| | 01:13 | footage in this new finger.
| | 01:16 | Now, the segments between the points by default
are linear, they're very hard edged.
| | 01:20 | I really want a curvy mask to
really follow the shape of the finger.
| | 01:24 | One really good way to do that is to
double click one of the lines on the mask,
| | 01:29 | select the entire thing and go to
Layer, > Mask and Shape Path > RotoBezier.
| | 01:34 | What that does is it places the
entire mask in a special mode that allows you
| | 01:39 | to use another tool, which is called
Convert Vertex Tool, looks like a little arrow.
| | 01:45 | If that point is selected at more than one
point, if you click drag over a point,
| | 01:49 | either round it, as you go to the
right, or make it hard and linear as you go
| | 01:55 | the left. I can also alter individual points.
| | 01:58 | I can click off, select the points, and
with that tool continue to refine it.
| | 02:04 | For instance, curvier, I can go
from one to another to another.
| | 02:08 | This will work on
individual ones or groups of points.
| | 02:11 | So, I want it nice and round on the
tip of the finger there. Here we go.
| | 02:21 | Now, since we are moving with this video,
we definitely need to animate this over time.
| | 02:25 | So, I'm going to ahead and
click on the Mask Path time icon.
| | 02:28 | Now, I should be more careful
about where I place the keyframes.
| | 02:33 | Instead of just simply bisecting, it's
actually better to pick some important
| | 02:36 | moments in the action.
| | 02:37 | For example, if I go to Frame 94, this
is the frame where the finger presses in
| | 02:45 | the most deeply on the face.
| | 02:47 | Now, you'll learn this just by looking
at the footage and just making notes.
| | 02:51 | So, if this is Frame 94, I
would make sure to fit it here.
| | 02:55 | You can scale the entire mask, rotate it,
and Escape to get out of the transform,
| | 03:00 | move individual points,
whatever it takes to really fit this.
| | 03:05 | Another point of frame would be Frame
108, and I'm using the time field over
| | 03:10 | here to be more accurate.
| | 03:11 | Another point where there is contact
-- this is close to my first keyframe, in fact
| | 03:18 | I'll get rid of my initial one,
because that was a little bit haphazard.
| | 03:22 | Some of these other places that it would
be important, this is the first frame
| | 03:27 | where the finger starts to cross that
field where I want to put the tattoo.
| | 03:32 | Now, here the shape's significantly
different, so I have to spend some time
| | 03:38 | altering the shape of this mask.
| | 03:39 | I just want the finger, Frame 115.
| | 03:41 | This is where the finger finally leaves
that area, so this has to be the last keyframe.
| | 03:49 | So, between 70 and 115, that's a critical area.
| | 03:52 | So, now that I've established my most
important keyframes, what I could do is
| | 03:57 | then bisect the remaining frames, and
I'll have to have a fairly high number
| | 04:01 | of keyframes here, because the way the
finger changes shape, and I want to be
| | 04:07 | as tight as possible.
| | 04:08 | Now, the edge of the mask is very hard.
| | 04:11 | If I turn off the background layer and hide
the mask, I can see it's a very hard edge.
| | 04:18 | We probably want a slight feather to
blend this better, so what I can do is set
| | 04:24 | the Mask Feather to 2.
| | 04:25 | Now, I can't finish rotoscoping in real-
time during this video, but I'll let you
| | 04:32 | continue to work on it.
| | 04:33 | Now, one trick for examining your
keyframes is to use these arrows right
| | 04:37 | here beside Mask Path.
| | 04:38 | This will allow you to jump to
the next or previous keyframe.
| | 04:42 | We've duplicated the Footage layer and
rotoscoped it to separate out the finger,
| | 04:48 | so it becomes in the foreground.
| | 04:49 | This is a common task in visual effects.
| | 04:51 | Why is that useful?
| | 04:53 | Well, to make sure that that foreground
element is not occluded by some other
| | 04:57 | layer, and also so we can place other
elements, like the tattoo artwork, behind it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing remaining track marks| 00:00 | We've rotoscoped the finger so
that it remains in the foreground.
| | 00:03 | Let me play it back. There we go.
| | 00:10 | So you can see there's quite a few
keyframes that I wound up with.
| | 00:14 | If I zoom in here using this bar at the
top of the timeline, we can see how far
| | 00:19 | they are spread apart, and
these run from 70 to 115 or so.
| | 00:22 | Now that we've fixed this area of the face
around the cheek, we can move on to other parts.
| | 00:27 | We can try the forehead next.
| | 00:29 | What we're going to do is start
with something that's already working.
| | 00:33 | I can copy CheekMask up and go from there.
| | 00:36 | So, I'll select this layer
and go to Edit > Duplicate.
| | 00:39 | I'm going to move this up to the
top and then rename it ForeheadMask.
| | 00:53 | Now, the mask itself was copied up with this.
| | 00:55 | I don't need that, it's around part of
the face, so I'll delete the old mask
| | 01:00 | and just temporarily turn off the
Effects that were also copied, and then start
| | 01:07 | with a brand new mask.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to start on Frame 1
again and draw something like this.
| | 01:16 | It goes right over the eyebrows, over
to the edge of the forehead, across the
| | 01:21 | top here, and I'll hide the
left hand side in this shadow.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to hide the other layers
just to save time and then turn on the
| | 01:29 | Effects and see what it looks like.
| | 01:33 | Not too bad, but one problem with
this top set of marks is, they are higher
| | 01:37 | contrast, they tend to
show up a little bit more.
| | 01:40 | Also, there's nothing to
disguise these marks once we add the
| | 01:42 | additional artwork.
| | 01:43 | What we can do though is add some
additional effects to try to reduce the
| | 01:47 | contrast in this area to disguise these.
| | 01:49 | We'll turn off Match Grain
for now just to save time.
| | 01:54 | And then I am going to add a
Brightness Contrast Effect to this layer,
| | 01:58 | Effect > Color Correction > Brightness & Contrast.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to move this effect up to the
center, and then we can try to reduce the
| | 02:10 | intensity of the white
splashes there. Let's try -10.
| | 02:17 | It helps a little bit.
| | 02:19 | Turn Match Grain back on.
| | 02:21 | Since I added the Brightness &
Contrast Effect, the grain becomes very heavy.
| | 02:26 | I think it's too heavy for this area.
| | 02:28 | So, I'm going to down to the
Tweaking section of this Match Grain and
| | 02:32 | reduce that to 1.5.
| | 02:34 | That's looking better. Okay.
| | 02:39 | Much like the other masks, this
will have to be keyframed over time.
| | 02:42 | So while I'm on Frame 1, I'll go ahead and
click the time icon for Mask Path and
| | 02:47 | then continue to bisect.
| | 02:48 | I'm just going to key three times now.
| | 02:50 | It's going to take way too long to
demonstrate in real time, so once again, I'll
| | 02:54 | let you finish the keyframing on your own.
| | 02:56 | Let's go ahead and get the last
frame here, I'll scale out the mask.
| | 03:00 | Now, the mask is being a little bit slow.
| | 03:02 | You can turn off the Effects
temporarily and that'll speed things up.
| | 03:10 | Once again, I wanted to run across
right above the eyebrows, across the
| | 03:14 | center of the forehead and down to the
right edge here, and disguise the left
| | 03:17 | side in this shadow.
| | 03:18 | I'll go to Frame 150 and do one more.
| | 03:23 | I'll turn the Effects back on because
there is a problem that crops up with
| | 03:32 | this particular area and that's because this
dot over here gets extremely close to the edge.
| | 03:40 | What I don't want to do is blur
the edge to the edge of the forehead.
| | 03:44 | It looks blurry against the background.
| | 03:45 | If I turn off the mask here in the view,
you could see that might be a problem.
| | 03:50 | One thing I could do though is try to
adjust the blurriness of this layer.
| | 03:54 | So, instead of having a 20 blur at
this point, I could see it up here.
| | 03:58 | I might reduce that first to 15.
| | 04:00 | Let me go back to 150 again. Not too bad.
| | 04:09 | I'll check a few other frames.
| | 04:10 | Of course, I need to update my mask.
| | 04:18 | There is another solution.
| | 04:19 | You can isolate this area to try to
reduce contrast just where that dot is.
| | 04:27 | Again, I don't want to blur the edge of
the forehead, so if I do need to pull my
| | 04:32 | mask back here, that's
when it becomes a problem.
| | 04:35 | If I turn the mask off now, I
can see the dot's more apparent.
| | 04:38 | So again, what we can do is create another
layer and address that little area by itself.
| | 04:43 | So, I can go ahead and
Duplicate the forehead mask upwards.
| | 04:46 | I'll have to delete the old mask.
| | 04:54 | Turn off the Effects at least
temporarily, and then what I can do is draw a
| | 04:59 | smaller mask up here, and center
this mask right where that dot is.
| | 05:03 | I can turn the blur on, if I want this
Feather on the mask to be even softer, so I
| | 05:09 | can take the Mask Feather
and change it from 0 to 20.
| | 05:15 | And then apply a separate effect to
reduce the contrast even further here.
| | 05:19 | Instead of Brightness & Contrast,
what I'll do is add a curve.
| | 05:23 | I'm going to delete this effect, go
and get Effect > Color Correction > Curves.
| | 05:28 | I'll make a pretty crazy curve
| | 05:31 | that's going to help us with this.
| | 05:33 | First, I'm going to pull it upwards to
the top, and then I'm going to bow this,
| | 05:39 | pull the right side down first
and bow up the center like this.
| | 05:44 | That really starts to wash it out.
| | 05:46 | So, I'll turn off the mask here, and this is
afterwards, and this is before, so a big difference.
| | 05:53 | Now again, it's not going to be perfect.
| | 05:55 | There's still some trace of the dots here.
| | 05:57 | If I zoom out, it's not too bad.
| | 05:59 | The dots will start to look like highlights,
especially when the video is in motion.
| | 06:04 | Again, remember to adjust your mask to make
sure that the edges are coming to a good place.
| | 06:09 | We go back to the
forehead mask and turn that on.
| | 06:14 | I can decide if my points are in good locations.
| | 06:17 | For instance, I can pull these further
back and help disguise the dot here even more.
| | 06:23 | I'll turn on the other layers.
| | 06:27 | Now, there's one area left to do.
| | 06:30 | Let's assume that all the keyframing
is done in these first two sections.
| | 06:34 | I still need to deal with
this last dot on this cheek.
| | 06:37 | What I can do to save time, though,
since it's a fairly small part, is draw a
| | 06:41 | new mask on this CheekMask over here, add a
separate mask that will use the same effects.
| | 06:47 | So, with this layer selected, I'm
going to back to the first frame and draw a
| | 06:53 | brand new separate mask
that covers this cheek area.
| | 06:56 | It will take on the same exact effects,
because it's on the same layer as this
| | 07:04 | original mask over here.
| | 07:05 | Of course, this has to be keyframed over time.
| | 07:10 | So, I'm going to let you work on that
at your own speed. So, there we go.
| | 07:15 | Remember to turn on the Layer Effects
in case you turned them off, and then we
| | 07:21 | can proceed forward.
| | 07:22 | So, we've been able to copy some
layers, apply some additional rotoscoping,
| | 07:26 | applied two new effects, the Curves and
also Brightness & Contrast, to help
| | 07:30 | hide all these original tracking points.
| | 07:32 | We can now approach the Action Motion Tracking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Planar Tracking with mochaPreparing the footage for tracking| 00:00 | We've created additional makeup
to cover up those tracking marks.
| | 00:04 | Now we're ready to start Motion Tracking,
and we're not going to track in After
| | 00:07 | Effects, although we could.
| | 00:08 | I am going to use something that's
more appropriate for this style of
| | 00:12 | tracking, which is mocha.
| | 00:13 | mocha is a separate program which
you can get to by going through an
| | 00:17 | After Effects menu.
| | 00:18 | Before we go there though, I
want to prepare the footage.
| | 00:21 | I don't want to use what we have
here, in fact, let me play this back.
| | 00:29 | Using the version where the tracking
marks are covered will defeat the
| | 00:32 | purpose, so I'm going to create a new
image sequence that's been adjusted to
| | 00:36 | maximize the potential quality.
| | 00:37 | I'm going to make a new composition
for this and call this PrepFootage.
| | 00:47 | This needs to be the same Resolution, Frame
Rate, and Duration, so 300 Frame Duration.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to pull the original
footage, the Spy image sequence, down into
| | 00:57 | this new composition.
| | 00:58 | I could try to track this as is, but
I'd rather try to increase the contrast to
| | 01:05 | make the dots more visible and to
allow the tracker to be more successful.
| | 01:10 | The other thing I can do is
get rid of some of the noise.
| | 01:13 | It's fairly noisy here from the video.
| | 01:15 | If I reduce the noise, the tracker will be
less confused by what it finds in the footage.
| | 01:21 | Let's start with that.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to apply Effect >
Noise & Grain > Remove Grain.
| | 01:30 | This effect has a preview
box just like Match Grain.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to move this over, so
I can see it better on the face.
| | 01:37 | Now you can adjust the degree to which it
removes the grain and some other fine tuning.
| | 01:42 | It's actually good as is, though, so the only
thing I'm going to do here is change
| | 01:46 | the viewing mode from Preview to Final Output.
| | 01:48 | Now it will remove the grain
everywhere, or at least reduce it.
| | 01:52 | Next, I'll address the
overall Contrast and Brightness.
| | 01:55 | I'm also going to adjust the Saturation,
make it much more saturated than normal.
| | 01:59 | In fact, that's where I'll start, Effect >
Color Correction > Hue Saturation.
| | 02:04 | I'm going to make the
Master Saturation extra high, 40.
| | 02:08 | It's going to turn very red, but
that will help distinguish the tracking
| | 02:14 | marks from her skin tone.
| | 02:16 | Now this actually helps as contrast too,
because increasing the saturation increases
| | 02:21 | the contrast between different color channels.
| | 02:23 | And ultimately, it will have more
contrast than, say, the blue channel.
| | 02:26 | I can also go ahead and brighten everything.
| | 02:29 | I want to make sure these are very easily seen.
| | 02:32 | So I'm going to grab a Curves Tool > Color
Correction > Curves, and just bow up the center a bit.
| | 02:37 | Now that it's adjusted and I
have more contrast overall,
| | 02:43 | I can render this out.
| | 02:45 | I want to render an image sequence.
| | 02:46 | So with this composition selected, I want
to go to Composition > Add to Render Queue.
| | 02:51 | I need to change the
Output Module and the Output To.
| | 02:54 | On the Output Module, I'm going to click
the word Lossless and pick a new format.
| | 03:00 | I don't want to render a movie in this case.
| | 03:02 | I don't want to render an AVI or a QuickTime.
| | 03:05 | That may lead to compression, which
will interfere with the tracking.
| | 03:08 | I'd rather do an image sequence.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to pick PNG Sequence. Then click OK.
| | 03:13 | Next, I'll pick a place to write this out to.
| | 03:18 | Now, I have a folder that
has this already rendered out.
| | 03:20 | I'm just going to write over the top of it.
| | 03:23 | 'm going to change the name to PrepTrack,
and leave the brackets and the pound signs.
| | 03:29 | Again, the pound signs determine
the number of numeric placeholders,
| | 03:33 | for instance, .000. or .299.
| | 03:39 | This is ready to go, now I'll click Save.
| | 03:42 | Once these two things are set, Output
Module and Output To, I can click the
| | 03:46 | Render button and let it render.
| | 03:48 | Depending on the speed of your
machine, this may take several minutes.
| | 03:56 | But when the render is done, that yellow
bar will disappear and you'll hear a chime.
| | 04:01 | So this render is now finished.
| | 04:02 | I'm going to bring it back in.
| | 04:04 | I'm going to back to the Project tab, go to
File > Import > File, and bring this back in.
| | 04:15 | There we go.
| | 04:16 | There is a new rendered-out image sequence.
| | 04:18 | I'm going to go back to PrepFootage
and pull this new sequence down on top.
| | 04:22 | I'm going to turn off Spy.
| | 04:24 | I don't really need it now.
| | 04:26 | At this point, I can switch over to mocha.
| | 04:28 | If you're using CS6, there is a menu
item to take your current layer and to
| | 04:32 | bring it into mocha automatically.
| | 04:35 | So with this PrepTrack layer selected, I'm
going to go to Animation > Track in mocha AE.
| | 04:44 | When it opens, it's going to set up anew
project with that layer that you had selected.
| | 04:49 | So my PrepTrack pre-render is
listed right here in Import Clip.
| | 04:53 | That also lists the Duration and the Frame Rate.
| | 04:56 | I'm going to click OK now.
| | 04:58 | Now if there's any kind of pre-
existing mocha data, it's going to ask if you
| | 05:04 | want to overwrite it.
| | 05:05 | Now since we're starting
out, that's perfectly fine.
| | 05:07 | I'm going to maximize the window.
| | 05:10 | So now we're now in mocha.
| | 05:13 | So we're ready to apply the tracking data.
| | 05:16 | In preparation for motion tracking,
we adjusted the color and the contrast
| | 05:20 | of our original footage, and then
you used the built-in menu to bring it
| | 05:25 | over to the mocha side.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up a mocha project| 00:00 | We've imported our
image sequence into mocha.
| | 00:02 | Before we begin motion tracking however,
I'd like to discuss the interface and go
| | 00:06 | over the basic parts, briefly.
| | 00:08 | I'll start at the top.
| | 00:09 | The main menus are up here,
including File for Open and Save.
| | 00:13 | There are some shortcut
icons for that also right here.
| | 00:17 | To the right are a number of tools
used to create various splines to define a
| | 00:22 | curve which the planar shape
will be attached to eventually.
| | 00:25 | We will discuss these in more detail as we go.
| | 00:28 | To the left here is the Layer Controls.
| | 00:31 | Each shape we draw will be on a different
layer and we'll use this once we have those shapes.
| | 00:36 | Now sometimes this gets a little bit
crowded with all these menus, so I'm going
| | 00:40 | to close one of these, just so
we have more space to work in.
| | 00:44 | Under the View menu, there are
various panels which you can open or close.
| | 00:47 | I'm going to go down to Overlay Colors
and just click that to close that, to
| | 00:51 | get myself more room.
| | 00:52 | It's important to have more room to
work with in the Layer Controls Panel.
| | 00:56 | To the right of this area is the viewer.
| | 00:58 | You have your range right here and also your
current frame here, which you can enter by hand.
| | 01:03 | You have standard play controls here.
| | 01:08 | To the right of that are the Track Tools.
| | 01:10 | These are used for analyzing the
motion and the patterns to develop, basically,
| | 01:15 | motion paths and eventually the planar shape.
| | 01:19 | In After Effects, these would be
similar to the analyze buttons.
| | 01:21 | To the right of that are various
key functions, including Autokey.
| | 01:27 | At the bottom are several tabs and panels.
| | 01:30 | The first one is Clip.
| | 01:31 | It has all the details about the
image sequence we're working with.
| | 01:34 | The next one is Track.
| | 01:36 | This has settings for the motion
tracking, which we'll discuss in more detail.
| | 01:40 | This also has a place to export
the data back to After Effects.
| | 01:45 | To the right is AdjustTrack tab.
| | 01:48 | This is used to fine-tune that planar
shape and eventually determine where the
| | 01:52 | tracked item is going to
appear in After Effects.
| | 01:54 | These are all within the Parameters tab.
| | 01:56 | Below that is the CurveEditor, where
you can fine-tune your curves you get from
| | 02:01 | motion tracking.
| | 02:02 | When working in mocha, you work with
mocha files. Whereas an After Effects
| | 02:08 | file ends with .aep,
| | 02:11 | For mocha, it's .mocha.
| | 02:12 | So now that we know the basics
we can begin to motion track.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Planar tracking a face| 00:00 | We have imported our
prepared image sequence into mocha.
| | 00:03 | Now to open up that file or to work in
mocha again, we do need to go through
| | 00:08 | After Effects, at least with
mocha for After Effects in CS6.
| | 00:12 | The trick for doing that is to select a layer.
| | 00:15 | It doesn't even matter which layer it is.
| | 00:17 | Go to Animation, and go to Track in mocha AE.
| | 00:23 | Mocha opens, but we don't necessarily want this.
| | 00:26 | I can just cancel this New Project.
| | 00:30 | I'll maximize it here. And then you
can go and open the file that you want.
| | 00:34 | So here is the image sequence again.
| | 00:43 | Now to make room to see our eventual
layers, I want to close the Overlay Colors
| | 00:48 | down here, View, turn off
Overlay Colors. There we go,
| | 00:52 | lots of room now.
| | 00:53 | Mocha is a planar tracker, which means
you identify a pattern surrounded with
| | 00:59 | a spline shape, figure out where that goes
over time, and then attach a planar surface to it,
| | 01:05 | as if it was a flat piece of paper.
| | 01:07 | So let's get started with that.
| | 01:09 | There are several ways to
draw spline shapes inside mocha,
| | 01:12 | which you have up here in the toolbar.
| | 01:14 | I find the X-spline the easiest to use,
| | 01:16 | so we're going to start with that.
| | 01:18 | I want to zoom in nice and close though,
| | 01:20 | so I'm going to use the zoom tool right here.
| | 01:22 | Right-mouse click and
just drag to get closer.
| | 01:26 | It would be good to start in a frame where
everything is very visible, in better resolution.
| | 01:30 | So I'm going to go to a later frame, I
think 200 will be good, I'll just type
| | 01:35 | 200 in here, and there we go.
| | 01:38 | Now in terms of the X-spline, I'll just
click this icon and then click in the viewer.
| | 01:43 | Each time you click, you get a point,
and it starts to form a closed spline shape.
| | 01:47 | Now you don't have to have just four,
you can go further, but I just want four
| | 01:51 | in this case, it makes sense.
| | 01:54 | In order to finish this shape without
putting in additional points, right-mouse
| | 01:58 | click, and there you go.
| | 02:01 | As soon as you make this shape, you
get a layer that appears up in the Layer
| | 02:06 | Controls panel, and you can rename it,
just click on it, backspace, and type a
| | 02:11 | new name, like Cheek.
| | 02:12 | All right, I'm going to go back to my Pick
Tool and click on that, so we can edit it.
| | 02:19 | The goal here is to adjust the X-spline,
so it surrounds these dots and so I can
| | 02:24 | tweak it down the road.
| | 02:25 | So a good way to do it here is to move
these corner points close so they just
| | 02:30 | touch the edge of the dots.
| | 02:32 | As I move thess around, you'll notice that
there's a little zoom window at the top left.
| | 02:37 | This will come in handy once we start
seeing keyframes to compare current frames
| | 02:41 | with previous or next keyframes.
| | 02:43 | So for now I'm going to touch the
edge of each dot. Okay, looks good.
| | 02:50 | And notice that a keyframe gets placed, a
little green one, right here when I do that.
| | 02:54 | Now we're ready to start tracking.
| | 02:56 | I'm closer to the end so I'm going to
track forward, which is this button right here.
| | 03:11 | Once it stops, you'll see a bluish, purplish
bar here that indicates that tracking has occurred.
| | 03:17 | Now mocha will try its
best to follow that pattern.
| | 03:20 | But it will slip off based on
resolution or grain or color, what have you.
| | 03:24 | What you can do though is adjust this
X-spline shape at key junctures to make it fit.
| | 03:31 | Those become keyframes;
| | 03:32 | it will help make the tracker more accurate.
| | 03:35 | So I can just grab these corners again
and click-drag, and you'll notice the zoom
| | 03:40 | windows will show our previous
keyframe and the current frame.
| | 03:42 | This allows you to match up the keys.
| | 03:45 | All right, that looks pretty good.
| | 03:52 | I'm going to go back to 200 now and
track from this point to the beginning, and
| | 03:57 | here is that button. Okay, looks good.
| | 04:04 | All right, that looks
pretty good. And there we go.
| | 04:20 | Now it does slip off, the pattern
does slip off, because one thing that
| | 04:24 | interferes is her touching her face.
| | 04:26 | Two of the tracking marks were
covered up and that confuses the tracker.
| | 04:32 | It's consistent once the finger
leaves, but it slipped off the dots.
| | 04:36 | What we can do is apply
additional keyframes to fix that.
| | 04:40 | Before I go and do that, I want to
mention one thing. I'm going to go back to
| | 04:44 | 200 and show you the hidden planar surface.
| | 04:47 | This is off by default, but you can show
it by pressing this S button right here.
| | 04:52 | Initially it's just rectangular and
square to the camera, but this is the area
| | 04:57 | where the thing you track in After
Effects will eventually be placed, the four
| | 05:02 | corners of the tracked layer in After
Effects will be pulled towards the four
| | 05:05 | corners of this planar shape.
| | 05:07 | What we can do at this point is
zoom in a little bit and adjust this to
| | 05:13 | match our tracked dots.
| | 05:16 | I'm going to pull the corners, and just
for now I want to place them at the corners
| | 05:21 | of the X-spline right here, right here,
so I'm overlapping the solid blue line of
| | 05:26 | this shape or this planar surface
with the dotted line of the X-spline.
| | 05:32 | Now I'll have to adjust this as we go
further in the tracking, but just for now
| | 05:36 | I want to set the shape right
here on Frame 200, then I'll hide it.
| | 05:40 | In any case, now I can go back and set more
keyframes to get this planar surface to stick.
| | 05:45 | Now keyframes disappear unless you
have one of these points selected and
| | 05:50 | then they appear again.
| | 05:51 | So here I'm on Frame 1 or
Frame 0, the first frame.
| | 05:54 | I could try to get these
in the correct position.
| | 05:57 | Now the resolution is very small here for this
section, but I'll try my best. Okay, looks good.
| | 06:05 | Now you'd approach is like
you would in After Effects.
| | 06:08 | You'd place keys where you think
they would produce the best curves.
| | 06:11 | In this case, it would be good to
place additional keyframes where there are
| | 06:15 | sudden changes in motion or
where the X-spline suddenly slips off.
| | 06:17 | Now it's going to be difficult for me
to do this in real time, so I'm going to
| | 06:22 | give you some frame numbers where it would be
good to set additional keys. One is Frame 40.
| | 06:27 | That's where it starts to slip off a little bit,
even after your keyframe 0. There's Frame 70.
| | 06:36 | Again, a point where it starts to slip
off, and this actually is right before
| | 06:40 | her finger touches her face.
| | 06:41 | 77, when her finger is right over this
dot here and the shadow starts to interfere.
| | 06:49 | 88, the finger touches the face,
we lose one dot completely.
| | 06:55 | 103, where the finger presses deeply
into the skin and starts to distort those
| | 07:05 | four dots in terms of their planar quality.
| | 07:10 | And 114, where the finger leaves, and
once again, all four dots are visible.
| | 07:15 | So the idea would be to go to those
keyframes and then adjust the X-spline shape
| | 07:19 | to produce additional keyframes.
| | 07:21 | If you do those minimal number of
keyframes, then it should be sufficient to get
| | 07:25 | pretty good tracking data.
| | 07:27 | Now there still is a problem where the
finger touches the face, but we'll talk
| | 07:30 | about that further later on.
| | 07:31 | We have drawn the X-spline shape and
adjusted it over time based on the tracking.
| | 07:36 | In turn the X-spline will determine
where the planar surface goes, and that planar
| | 07:40 | surface will turn into
tracking data inside After Effects.
| | 07:43 | So you can imagine that the artwork
we track in After Effects will be where
| | 07:47 | the X-spline shape is.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting planar surfaces| 00:00 | I've completed the
keyframing for my X-Spline shape.
| | 00:03 | If I click on one of the X-Spline points,
I can see the keyframes here on the
| | 00:07 | timeline and each one of the
corners has the same keyframes.
| | 00:11 | Let's play it back. And there you go.
| | 00:24 | All right, that looks pretty good.
| | 00:29 | It's following fairly well, except
where the finger crosses over the shape.
| | 00:34 | We're going to have to
deal with that separately.
| | 00:36 | In fact, we'll need to
edit that in After Effects.
| | 00:39 | Unfortunately, that's a very
difficult thing to track automatically.
| | 00:42 | Now we could add additional keyframes
here, but too many keyframes too close
| | 00:47 | together makes for a bad
set of motion tracking data.
| | 00:50 | It's actually easier to edit small
areas like this, in this problem area,
| | 00:55 | inside After Effects.
| | 00:56 | Now there's other work we can do
though, and it has to do with the surface,
| | 01:00 | the planar surface.
| | 01:01 | Remember we corrected the surface or placed
the surface on Frame 200, so it fits the shape.
| | 01:09 | Let's see what happens on the other frames.
| | 01:11 | As I scroll through, it gets
confused about the appropriate location.
| | 01:18 | It tries to make the planar shape
relative to the X-Spline, but the program
| | 01:25 | doesn't quite know how to do it the entire time.
| | 01:27 | What we can do is go to the AdjustTrack
tab and offset that planar surface, so
| | 01:35 | it gets forced into the correct position.
| | 01:37 | This is like a different set of
keyframes just for the planar surface.
| | 01:40 | It's important to get the correct
shape because we don't want our tracked
| | 01:43 | artwork eventually to grow
and shrink inappropriately.
| | 01:46 | Before I go to the AdjustTrack tab, I
want to briefly mention a few things
| | 01:51 | about the Track panel.
| | 01:52 | Now we're using most of this in a
default state and that's actually fine.
| | 01:56 | For example, there's a Motion section
that determines what you're tracking.
| | 02:00 | Now this is similar to After Effects
where you can track Translation and also
| | 02:04 | Rotation, for example.
| | 02:05 | In this case it's Translation,
Scale, Rotation, and Shear by default.
| | 02:09 | There is an option to turn on
Perspective, but in this case we'd get better
| | 02:13 | results with the default.
| | 02:14 | There's also an option for what
you're tracking in terms of channels.
| | 02:18 | We're tracking Luminance, which is fine.
| | 02:20 | Even though we adjusted the Hue and
Saturation and the Brightness of our image
| | 02:23 | sequence, we increased the Contrast
because increasing the saturation increases the
| | 02:28 | contrast between channels.
| | 02:29 | So this works fine here. And
Luminance is simply brightness of the image.
| | 02:33 | There's also the ability to track
different styles in motion in terms of big
| | 02:38 | movement or small movement.
| | 02:39 | In this case, large motion works well for us.
| | 02:42 | In any case, let's go back to the
AdjustTrack tab and we can adjust this surface.
| | 02:46 | I'll zoom in, and if I'm on
Frame 200, there'll be big Xs.
| | 02:57 | In fact, before you go to the
AdjustTrack tab, I would suggest going to Frame
| | 03:01 | 200 first and then go to this tab.
| | 03:04 | The idea is to have these master
reference points on Frame 200 where the shape
| | 03:10 | is appropriate, where the
planar surface fits correctly.
| | 03:14 | These don't affect the quality of the tracking,
| | 03:16 | they're just reference to say that's the
first frame where you placed the surface.
| | 03:19 | We can click on these points here and
you get these big boxes around them,
| | 03:27 | they're green and pinkish.
| | 03:29 | You can move these, and every time you
move these it gets a new keyframe set for
| | 03:33 | the planar surface for each corner.
| | 03:35 | Now since I placed that surface on
Frame 200 that's where I get a key.
| | 03:41 | What I can do now is go to other
keyframes where there is slippage of that shape,
| | 03:45 | like Frame 0, and move that planar
surface to get it back to where I want it.
| | 03:53 | So what happens is when you click on
one of the corners there, one of those red
| | 03:57 | boxes, you get a green dotted line.
| | 04:03 | You can move it to where you want it.
| | 04:05 | That will be the new position of that corner,
and you let go of the blue surface updates.
| | 04:10 | You have to be careful.
| | 04:15 | You might have to zoom in really close.
| | 04:17 | I'm just going to do it for a second,
because you don't want to grab the wrong thing.
| | 04:21 | You really want to grab the little red boxes.
| | 04:26 | And then you get that green rubber band
dotted line, which represents new edges, basically.
| | 04:31 | So I'm going to put them back
at the corners of my X-Spline.
| | 04:34 | Each one will get its own keyframe, and that
keyframe will appear on the timeline.
| | 04:41 | So once I move the four corners,
now my planar surface is correct.
| | 04:47 | It's in the correct place.
| | 04:49 | I wanted to continue to do this
across the timeline at critical points.
| | 04:52 | This will be similar to placing
keyframes for the X-Spline, pretty much where
| | 04:56 | there's a big shift in motion or
suddenly the planar surface slips.
| | 04:59 | So what we can do is use some of the
same keyframes as we did previously.
| | 05:04 | On Frame 40, we could reshape it to
keyframe it, on Frame 70, 77, 88, 103, and
| | 05:31 | 114, the key at those frames, then by
the end of it, the planar surface will
| | 05:36 | follow just as well as the X-Spline.
| | 05:39 | We've adjusted the planar surface
to make sure it falls at X-Spline.
| | 05:42 | And that is very important, because
eventually the corners of the planar surface
| | 05:47 | determines where the corners of the
tracked artwork go within After Effects.
| | 05:51 | So in order to avoid fluctuations in scale
or strange rotations, is a very important step.
| | 05:56 | We've adjusted our planar surface to
make sure it fits throughout the timeline.
| | 06:01 | We did this by going to the AdjustTrack
tab and setting more keys in the corners.
| | 06:05 | Now this is an important step,
because the planar surface should really fit
| | 06:09 | that feature on the face, because
eventually that planar surface, at least
| | 06:13 | where its corners are, will determine
where the corners of the tracked artwork
| | 06:17 | are in After Effects.
| | 06:18 | So you can imagine that
where the planar surface is,
| | 06:21 | that's where our tattoo will eventually go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at the Curve Editor| 00:00 | Using the Adjust Track tab, I was able to
fine tune the planar surface. It's hidden now,
| | 00:05 | I'll turn that back on, though.
| | 00:06 | I do have to make sure Layer
is selected also, and there it is.
| | 00:10 | In terms of the number of keyframes, I
click on one of the corners after I zoom in.
| | 00:19 | They match all the
keyframes that the X-Spline had.
| | 00:23 | So that's set up and good to go now.
| | 00:25 | I do want to mention one other way
to edit, and that's the Curve Editor.
| | 00:29 | If you go down to the Curve Editor
tab and click that, you get a Curve Editor
| | 00:33 | similar to one you might have in
some other program like After Effects.
| | 00:36 | What you'll see is a list of
various things you can edit.
| | 00:39 | Now in terms of the points, if you
click on one of those, like this corner of
| | 00:43 | the planar surface, and you go down to
the layer name, for instance Cheek, expand
| | 00:48 | that, you'll see various sub-
categories, including Track.
| | 00:54 | Also there's Adjust Track section for
what we just did with the planar surface.
| | 00:58 | Here are the corners here.
| | 01:00 | What we're doing is an offset
Animation, so expand that, you'll see
| | 01:05 | various qualities like X and Y.
| | 01:10 | The curves started to
appear here in the Curve Editor.
| | 01:12 | The yellow boxes are keyframes.
| | 01:15 | You can frame the entire
curve if you press Frame all.
| | 01:20 | You can select a curve by just
clicking on it, or deselecting by clicking Off.
| | 01:25 | When it's selected, it's a bluish color.
| | 01:28 | You can select keyframes at that point by
clicking on the keyframe, it will turn yellow.
| | 01:33 | To pick multiple keyframes, you can
Ctrl+click after the curve is selected.
| | 01:38 | Now you can move these
keyframes around if you want to.
| | 01:40 | Now anything in between the
keyframes is provided by mocha when it tracked.
| | 01:45 | It's not exactly linear
and it's not exactly smooth.
| | 01:47 | You have some bends in those curves.
| | 01:49 | If you do want to move a keyframe, you
are free to do that, just do it very carefully.
| | 01:54 | Now whenever you set a keyframe up here on
the timeline, let's say interactively,
| | 02:00 | these curves will update, you don't
need to reanalyze, you don't need to
| | 02:04 | retrack at that point.
| | 02:05 | What mocha will do is it will
update the curves in between those
| | 02:08 | keyframes automatically.
| | 02:09 | So as soon as you make an adjustment
interactively in the viewer, mocha will
| | 02:13 | update all the curves in between.
| | 02:16 | You can view small areas, let's say I
pick several keyframes here by clicking
| | 02:20 | the Frame selected button
or go back to Frame all.
| | 02:24 | For the most part when we're working in
mocha, we're going to just use interactive
| | 02:28 | ways to adjust the X-Spline
and the planar surface.
| | 02:31 | But I wanted to mention this because you
could do a lot of very, very fine tuning
| | 02:35 | in the Curve Editor.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Importing and Applying Tracking DataImporting track data from mocha| 00:00 | We spent some time making sure that our X-Spline
follows the shape, the four dots,
| | 00:04 | as best we can, and also
adjusted the planar surface.
| | 00:08 | We're now ready to export the tracking
data and get that into After Effects.
| | 00:13 | There's an Export Tracking Data
button right here in the Track Tab.
| | 00:16 | I want to make sure I have the
correct surface visible, in this case, I'm
| | 00:20 | working on the cheek layer,
so we're good to go there.
| | 00:23 | Export Tracking Data, I'll click that.
| | 00:25 | This window comes up, and there
are several ways to export the data.
| | 00:28 | What Mocha does is it exports text data
that explains where those four corners
| | 00:33 | are over time, and also
information for transforms like Scale.
| | 00:38 | We just want the After Effects
Corner Pin, which is a .text file.
| | 00:42 | Now you do have the option to save it
to text file and we'll do that later on,
| | 00:47 | but we take a shortcut by copying to clipboard.
| | 00:49 | That will copy all the data of that layer to
the clipboard. So I'm going to copy the
| | 00:54 | clipboard, click, closes that window.
| | 00:56 | Now I can switch over to After Effects.
| | 00:58 | This is where we left off in After Effects.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to go back to the Spy composition.
| | 01:04 | I want to bring in the work that I want
to place on the cheek, File > Import > File.
| | 01:12 | This will be in the Artwork folder,
and we have a file called Tattoo.
| | 01:18 | It's a PNG file, so it has
transparency in it. Open that.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to drop this
right on top of the composition.
| | 01:26 | Now we do have to do a little bit of
prep work in order to have this track
| | 01:30 | correctly. What we really want is this
artwork to be in the top left corner.
| | 01:35 | I'd like to move this corner up to the top left
here, at zero, zero in space for After Effects.
| | 01:41 | That works well when
pulling our data from Mocha.
| | 01:44 | What I can do here is change the anchor
point's X to 640, and that pins it over in
| | 01:52 | this top left corner.
| | 01:53 | Now we can paste the data, because I
copied it to the clipboard of the system, I
| | 01:58 | can highlight the tattoo layer and paste.
| | 02:02 | I can go up to Edit > Paste right here, and paste.
| | 02:04 | Now I do have to make sure
I'm on the correct frame.
| | 02:09 | Actually, I pasted on the last frame,
that's not going to help. I'm going to Undo.
| | 02:15 | Move back to frame zero, make sure
Tattoo is highlighted, and then paste again.
| | 02:25 | And then we'll zoom in and see
if we can find it, and there it is.
| | 02:28 | Now we can see how close it is to the original
tracking marks by turning off the other layers.
| | 02:33 | And it's pretty darn close.
| | 02:35 | You can see that the corners, from the
Corner Pin effect, are basically where the
| | 02:40 | surface corners were in Mocha.
| | 02:41 | Let's take a look and see what
we got in terms of the layer.
| | 02:45 | We have a brand new Corner Pin effect,
| | 02:48 | with the four corners and the
keyframes for each of the four corners.
| | 02:53 | We also have the position, scale, and
rotation that have been keyed for us automatically.
| | 02:57 | We now have the start of our
motion track tattoo in After Effects.
| | 03:03 | I'll play back just a tiny
part of it, and there we go.
| | 03:13 | Now there is an issue with the finger.
| | 03:15 | Remember the data was not quite good
with finger crosses, so we're going to edit
| | 03:20 | that by hand inside After Effects.
| | 03:22 | We've exported the data from mocha by
copying to the clipboard, then in After
| | 03:26 | Effects we simply pasted
that data onto the layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting corner pin curves| 00:00 | We've successfully imported the Tracking
Data from mocha, now we have a tracked
| | 00:04 | piece of tattoo art.
| | 00:05 | Now, it's not perfect.
| | 00:07 | Remember the finger crossing over that
area caused some problems with the mocha
| | 00:10 | Tracking Data, so what we can do though
is refine it inside of After Effects.
| | 00:14 | To get started though, I'm going to pull
the tattoo layer down below the finger.
| | 00:18 | It needs to be below the finger.
| | 00:20 | Then I want to turn off the other
layers, just to save some time.
| | 00:25 | So I can see through to the tracking
dots, I'm going to temporarily turn down
| | 00:30 | the opacity of that tattoo 50%.
| | 00:38 | So now, I can see where it is
relative to the tracking dots.
| | 00:41 | Now you noticed that there is a
keyframe for every frame for the position,
| | 00:45 | scale, and rotation.
| | 00:47 | Now the changes in scale for instance
are not that great, as is the rotation, so
| | 00:51 | you don't necessarily need all these keyframes.
| | 00:54 | One trick to edit the resulting
curves is to simplify these properties.
| | 01:00 | So for example, let's have our scale.
| | 01:02 | Let's look at it first inside the graph editor.
| | 01:07 | Here it is, a lot of
keyframes but not much change.
| | 01:10 | The few places where there's a big
change are the places we actually need to edit
| | 01:14 | because of the finger cross.
So let's try simplifying it.
| | 01:17 | What we can do is highlight Scale and
open up the Smoother window, Smoother.
| | 01:26 | And use this to decimate our curve.
| | 01:28 | What this tool does is it simplifies a
curve based on the tolerance, but tries
| | 01:33 | to maintain the shape as best possible.
| | 01:35 | Because there's a very little change
on our scale, we can try a fairly high
| | 01:39 | tolerance of three, and then apply, and
that's the number of keyframes we have
| | 01:45 | left when we're done.
| | 01:46 | If I look back in the Graph Editor, you
can see there's just a few bends here, and
| | 01:50 | again those are the areas
that we have to edit anyway.
| | 01:55 | We can do the same with rotation.
| | 01:56 | Now one reason to do this,
to simplify the curves is, we're going
| | 02:00 | to need to edit the curves by hand,
particularly where it's bad where the finger crosses.
| | 02:04 | If we have a super dense set of keys,
| | 02:07 | it's going to be very
difficult to edit those areas.
| | 02:10 | In any case for rotation, we can try
to simplify this with a tolerance of one.
| | 02:17 | There we go, fewer
keyframes, it'll be easier to edit.
| | 02:21 | But again it's maintained the basic shape.
| | 02:26 | So we're not losing too much information.
| | 02:31 | Now while the main problem area is
when the finger crosses, there's probably
| | 02:35 | some slippage, a tiny bit of slippage at
the beginning between frame zero and 70.
| | 02:39 | It's because the resolution of those dots
is so small that the tracking is not perfect.
| | 02:44 | You can see it if you playback that area.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to zoom in on the
timeline so I'm closer to that section.
| | 02:50 | We'll frame up here and play it back.
| | 02:55 | It's very subtle but there's some frames
where the relationship with the tattoo
| | 03:01 | to those dots shifts just
slightly, like right here.
| | 03:05 | Right here I can see more of the white dots.
| | 03:08 | In other words, there not covered as much,
whereas earlier, they were covered more.
| | 03:11 | If I go back to the last keyframe, or
even the first, let's go to the first
| | 03:19 | keyframe, that's how they're covered.
| | 03:21 | There's a little bit of white on the
upper part and to the left of the tattoo,
| | 03:26 | so I can go across the current
keyframes and check the quality.
| | 03:31 | Looks like it slips a little bit here,
and a little bit here, I see more and
| | 03:38 | more of the white dots.
| | 03:39 | So in this case what you can do is
offset the animation by changing the rotation.
| | 03:44 | It's not the scale that's really wrong,
| | 03:47 | it's the rotation in this case.
| | 03:49 | So you can interactively slide the
value, or try to enter values by hand.
| | 03:54 | But as you do it, it
rotates around that key point.
| | 03:57 | It's a little hard to imagine because
there's such slow resolution, but it's
| | 04:06 | worth a little work in this area.
| | 04:08 | Let's see what the next keyframe looks like.
| | 04:16 | Pretty good, here's this keyframe, and
here's the first. So you have to compare
| | 04:21 | keyframes to each other
and see if they're relative.
| | 04:24 | But I would go ahead and examine zero
to 70 and make any kind of adjustments
| | 04:29 | you feel are necessary.
| | 04:30 | Unfortunately I'm not going to be able
to finish all this keyframing in real time,
| | 04:34 | it'll take too long.
| | 04:35 | So continue to work on this on your own.
| | 04:37 | So that's the first section, 0 to
70, is the first part to take a look at,
| | 04:41 | then of course is the
area where the finger crosses.
| | 04:44 | This is roughly between frame 72, which
I'll go to, where the finger just starts to
| | 04:52 | cross, and frame 113.
| | 04:59 | Now here's a problem with the shape warping.
| | 05:04 | If you remember in mocha, the corners
were warping and it was changing size.
| | 05:08 | So in this case, we can go up to the
Corner Pin information and adjust that.
| | 05:13 | Again, that's under the
Effects, as a Corner Pin effect.
| | 05:17 | So in anticipation of that, I'm going
to delete some keyframes, and I don't want
| | 05:21 | to simplify all these
curves with the Smoother tool.
| | 05:25 | I'll lose too much information, but
what I can do is cut out the bad section.
| | 05:30 | So if I zoom in, so I start
around 72 and end at about 113.
| | 05:36 | What I can do is highlight those keyframes
for all four corners and delete them out.
| | 05:46 | So you might want to make sure you know
which ones you're deleting first.
| | 05:50 | So if you're concerned, place your
time slider to make sure it's the correct
| | 05:53 | location, so this is 72 here.
| | 05:55 | It's where I want to start, the third
column over, and then 113 is right here, so
| | 06:03 | third to second to the last,
highlight all of these by drawing a selection
| | 06:07 | marquee and deleting them.
| | 06:11 | Now there's quite a gap there, so what
you'll have to do is bisect to try to
| | 06:15 | rebuild the animation in that area.
| | 06:18 | So let me just start in the center.
| | 06:22 | And you can move each one of
these corners individually.
| | 06:25 | If you click on one of the corners,
like upper left, you'll get an interactive
| | 06:29 | circle with a little X in it.
| | 06:31 | You can move these by hand, just like this.
| | 06:39 | So again, comparing to some other
recent frame, like frame 71, see where the
| | 06:44 | tattoo lies, just visually, for instance,
this dot up here peeks through on the left.
| | 06:50 | This dot here is pretty much mostly covered.
| | 06:53 | This dot over here is mostly covered
with a tiny bit of white on the left, so
| | 06:57 | make some visual notes and then
try to replicate that position.
| | 07:01 | So I can see on this frame, which is
frame 92, I'm seeing much too much white to
| | 07:06 | this dot, maybe a little bit too much of this.
| | 07:09 | Now you have to go back and forth,
but after a little massaging, you can
| | 07:13 | replicate the correct position.
| | 07:17 | Once you get that middle keyframe set,
then you can change any of these four
| | 07:21 | corners, continue to bisect.
| | 07:23 | I go in the center again.
| | 07:25 | I definitely see it slipped off here where
I'm more on the left side of the dots as
| | 07:30 | opposed to the right. And then
bisect over here, and so on and so forth.
| | 07:38 | Now you're not necessarily going to
need a keyframe on every frame in this gap,
| | 07:42 | but you do have to continue until
there's enough for the shape to follow and not
| | 07:47 | drastically slip off.
| | 07:49 | Once again I'm not going to have time
to complete this during this video, so
| | 07:53 | continue to work on this section and
keyframe it until that tattoo stays where
| | 07:57 | it should be where the dots are.
| | 07:59 | We've taken our tracking data from
mocha to determine where it wasn't quite
| | 08:04 | working and then massaged
it by editing keyframes.
| | 08:08 | With the transforms like Scale and
Rotation, in anticipation, we use a smoother
| | 08:12 | tool to try to simplify it.
| | 08:14 | And it helps us place new keyframes
without having such high density in that area.
| | 08:19 | In terms of the Corner Pin, we just
deleted out the bad section and started to bisect.
| | 08:25 | So this might be a little tedious,
but this is a good way to improve the
| | 08:29 | most tracking data.
| | 08:30 | You rarely have data that's perfect,
so it's good to know how to go into the
| | 08:35 | transforms with the Graph
Editor and make some changes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fine-tuning tracked artwork| 00:00 | We've motion tracked the
tattoo art, so now it follows the face.
| | 00:03 | Let me play back a portion of that.
| | 00:05 | (video playing)
| | 00:12 | Now, we don't have to the stop there,
we can work on the tattoo to make
| | 00:15 | it better integrated.
| | 00:16 | First I want to talk about the
actual transforms on that tattoo.
| | 00:19 | Where we left off previously was
editing the transforms by hand and also
| | 00:26 | updating the Corner Pin keys.
| | 00:29 | I'll show you my solution here.
| | 00:33 | Once again the scale and the rotation
were decimated so the curves are simpler
| | 00:37 | and that was thanks to the Smoother tool.
| | 00:40 | Early on, from frame zero to 70 or so,
we spent some time tweaking the rotation
| | 00:45 | values, so going in and setting some
new keyframe values, because the tracking
| | 00:51 | marks were so small at that point
there was a little bit slippage, so I
| | 00:54 | hand-tuned that area.
| | 00:55 | Now, in terms of the Corner Pin
information, the section where the actress
| | 01:01 | presses her finger to her face
were no good in terms of mocha.
| | 01:05 | So that bad section was cut out and
then some additional keyframes were hand
| | 01:09 | animated with some simple bisecting.
| | 01:12 | Now it didn't take a lot of keyframes to
get the tattoo back on track, you can
| | 01:16 | see it right here, just several.
| | 01:18 | Sometimes, fewer is a little bit better.
| | 01:20 | If you have too many keyframes that you
place by hand or you alter by hand, you
| | 01:25 | could wind up with jitter.
| | 01:26 | So this solution works well in this case.
| | 01:28 | Now, the tattoo is left at 50% opacity
just to compare it to the tracking marks.
| | 01:35 | We can affect that though
to make it more integrated.
| | 01:40 | So I think a nice goal would be to make
it look like it's a real tattoo at the
| | 01:44 | start, and when she presses her finger
to it, it hits some kind of futuristic
| | 01:48 | switch and turns it on, I mean
it's electronic or something.
| | 01:51 | So let's' go to frame 90.
| | 01:54 | Frame 90 is where she presses her face.
| | 01:56 | So let's say that's when she just
first activates this built-in switch.
| | 02:00 | I want to set a key on the opacity.
| | 02:02 | I want the tattoo that starts a little
bit more faded, so I'm going to start with
| | 02:13 | a 25% opacity on that.
| | 02:14 | Then I'm going to go to frame 100,
and this is where it's fully on.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to increase the
opacity to 55%, it gets darker.
| | 02:21 | Now, at this point the tattoo has
some pretty harsh edges, even though the
| | 02:25 | artwork is a little bit blurry, because
of the way its corner pin track, these
| | 02:29 | vertical lines get a little bit
harsh, there's some sideways stair stepping here.
| | 02:34 | So one way to help fight that is to
put a slight blur on it, so I'm going to
| | 02:38 | grab the tattoo art, put a Fast Blur on it.
| | 02:41 | I don't have to go too high.
| | 02:44 | If I go too high, it's
going to become very, very soft.
| | 02:47 | There's one, that's much too high.
| | 02:49 | So I am just going to put a slight .3 on that.
| | 02:53 | Here's without, here's with.
| | 02:55 | Just to help soften that edge.
| | 02:59 | Now, since this is a switch, it would be
great to get it to interact some other way.
| | 03:03 | So I have another piece of art that
represents little lights that are built in
| | 03:07 | where these circles are.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to import that, go to the
frame zero first, File > Import > File, and this
| | 03:15 | one is called tattooCore, it's in
the artwork folder, bring that in.
| | 03:19 | I want to drop that right above the tattoo.
| | 03:21 | It initially comes in very large in the
center. Just like with the tattoo, I want
| | 03:27 | to change the anchor point first to 640
in the X. That will place this art so it
| | 03:34 | touches the upper left-hand corner.
| | 03:35 | Now, if you had your own art and you
were tracking it this way, you would
| | 03:39 | possibly need a different value, but
the goal would be to get the artwork up
| | 03:43 | here at the top left.
| | 03:44 | All right, now, I don't have to
reapply the tracking data the hard way from
| | 03:48 | mocha. What I can do is go to
the tattoo layer and steal it.
| | 03:52 | First, I'll highlight the Corner Pin effect.
| | 03:54 | I'll just use the keyboard
shortcuts Ctrl+C or Command+C to copy.
| | 03:59 | Go back up to the tattooCore and paste.
| | 04:02 | So I fixed here the
Corner Pin, it's shrunken down.
| | 04:06 | It's not in the right place yet, so
then I have to go the transforms, Shift+select
| | 04:14 | each of the transforms while
the tattoo layer is selected. Position,
| | 04:18 | scale, and rotation, copy those,
go back up to the core, paste those.
| | 04:23 | Now, it's in the right place.
| | 04:24 | Now, it's very heavy and dark.
| | 04:26 | I really want just the red dots here,
so what I can do is go to the blending
| | 04:31 | mode and switch that to Screen.
| | 04:33 | Screen will just allow
the bright areas to survive.
| | 04:36 | Now, this is a switch.
| | 04:37 | I really want it to turn
on between frame 90 and 100.
| | 04:40 | So on frame 90, I want those lights
basically to be off, so I'm going to go to the
| | 04:48 | opacity of tattooCore,
key it on and make it zero.
| | 04:51 | Then on frame 100, I want the lights to be on,
so I'll give it a higher opacity, maybe 35.
| | 05:00 | So now it turns on.
| | 05:03 | Now, while we're at it, one nice
thing might be to turn on Motion Blur.
| | 05:08 | We have two static artwork layers
that are now transformed over time.
| | 05:12 | What I can do is, with the Toggle
Switches button activated, so I can see the
| | 05:16 | Motion Blur switch, is just turn on
the Motion Blur switch right here.
| | 05:20 | Looks like a bunch of little circles in a row.
| | 05:22 | What that means is that artwork or those
pieces of artwork will have Motion Blur
| | 05:26 | streaks added based on how
far they move over one frame.
| | 05:29 | So this will better match
the actual video footage.
| | 05:32 | So first you have to turn it on here
for the layer, you also have to turn
| | 05:36 | on that switch for the entire composition.
That's a global switch to the composition.
| | 05:39 | So you need it both here,
and down here turned on.
| | 05:42 | Once it's turned on, it will
be blurred based on the motion.
| | 05:45 | You can see it most heavily near the
beginning where the tattoo is moving faster.
| | 05:49 | If I turn off the Motion Blur, you see
it's a slightly different position and it's
| | 05:53 | a little bit harder edge.
| | 05:54 | If I turn it on, you get more of that blur.
| | 05:57 | Now, towards the end you will see
less blur because there's less motion.
| | 06:00 | All right, one last thing we do to the
tattoo to jazz it up a bit is maybe put a
| | 06:08 | glow on these little lights. So
I'm going to tattooCore, go to
| | 06:11 | Effect > Stylize > Glow.
| | 06:15 | You then need do adjust
the Glow options at the top.
| | 06:21 | I'm going to lower the Threshold, say
35, reduce the Radius, and then most
| | 06:30 | importantly, increase the Intensity to 3.
| | 06:32 | Now, we'll spread the Glow
out pass where the circles are.
| | 06:37 | So here's frame 90, where this tattoo is
basically at rest, and here's frame 100,
| | 06:45 | when it's switched on.
| | 06:46 | We've made the tattoo more complex
by bringing in a new piece artwork,
| | 06:53 | tattooCore, which is
serving as a sets of lights.
| | 06:56 | We still did motion tracking by
just copying and pasting newly activated
| | 07:01 | Motion Blur to integrate it
better, and also animated the opacity.
| | 07:04 | We now have a complex tattoo.
| | 07:06 | This tattoo is going to serve as a
switch that turns on and heads-up display.
| | 07:11 | So that will be the next step,
is to start creating that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a second tracking layer in mocha| 00:00 | We have the tattoo artwork tracked in
After Effects, and that's working well.
| | 00:04 | We can now move on to the second piece
of artwork we're going to track, which
| | 00:08 | is the heads-up display, which is a set of
futuristic glass-like projections over her eyes.
| | 00:14 | To create that we're going to need
to do some additional motion tracking.
| | 00:18 | In fact, there's a set of tracking marks
above and below her eyes for that purpose.
| | 00:22 | So we're back in mocha now to create a
second planar surface and track that.
| | 00:28 | How do you do that?
| | 00:30 | Well, I can just make a new X-Spline shape,
| | 00:33 | and that will create a new layer.
| | 00:34 | I'm going to go to frame 275 first. I want
to see the four dots really easily.
| | 00:41 | I'm going to zoom out a bit, and then
I can go and get my X-Spline tool, once
| | 00:47 | again up here, and draw
another shape around these four dots.
| | 00:53 | To finish off this shape, I'll just
right-mouse click, and there it is.
| | 00:57 | Now this time, I'm not going to make my
shape really tight to the edges of the dots.
| | 01:02 | You don't have to do that,
| | 01:03 | you don't have to line this up with some edge.
| | 01:06 | You're really just defining a pattern
within the shape it's going to track.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to leave a little gap
between the dots and the corners.
| | 01:15 | If you see the zoom window at the top left
there, we can see what kind of gap there is.
| | 01:21 | So I'll adjust this real quick,
bottom left, and bottom right.
| | 01:35 | Okay, and the goal is to get similar gaps
throughout the entire timeline once we start to track.
| | 01:40 | So I'm on frame 275 now. Because I
moved these points, I get a keyframe.
| | 01:46 | Let's try a track to the end, track forwards.
| | 01:50 | Now there's very little going on in
terms of motion here, so this part of the
| | 01:58 | tracking is nice and smooth.
| | 02:00 | Even knows how to deal with the
fact she smiles, but it keeps the shape
| | 02:04 | consistent, which is great.
| | 02:07 | So let me go back to 275. Now before I
forget, I'm going to go up to my layer here,
| | 02:11 | and this is a new layer for new X-spline,
and just double-click to rename it.
| | 02:15 | I'm going to call this Eyes.
| | 02:20 | Now if you click of that layer, you can
just re select it to see that spline again.
| | 02:25 | But if I select just one,
you'll see that keyframe reappear.
| | 02:28 | Remember, each corner point
has its own set of keyframes.
| | 02:32 | Okay, let's try to track backwards
and see what happens. And there you go.
| | 03:03 | I'm going to stop now.
| | 03:05 | You can see that the shape is
definitely drifted, so let's look for some places
| | 03:09 | we can add additional keyframes.
| | 03:10 | Generally you want to add them
when there is a sudden shift in the shape.
| | 03:15 | And that's usually associated with
something like a head turn or some action of
| | 03:20 | the actor, in this case.
| | 03:23 | So, if we go to frame 150, you can see
that's right before she turns her head.
| | 03:29 | So that's a good place to
place additional keyframe.
| | 03:32 | I'm going to reshape this X-spline, and
using my window's top left, I can see the
| | 03:39 | current frame, and the next keyframe,
and therefore be able to at least make
| | 03:45 | that gap similar between the two frames.
| | 03:48 | Now, the top right one is a little bit
tricky because the perspective shift on
| | 03:51 | the dot makes the gap a little hard to estimate.
| | 03:55 | It's not going to be the same size, it's
going to be a little smaller because of
| | 03:58 | the perspective shift.
| | 03:59 | So we'll just have to make our best guess there.
| | 04:02 | So here's the lower right and the lower left.
| | 04:07 | Lower left is probably
one of the easier ones here.
| | 04:09 | Okay, let say that's good for now,
let's try to track some more.
| | 04:15 | Before I do though, before I go to the
beginning, it might be good if to go
| | 04:19 | into the center between 150
and 275, where we were before.
| | 04:22 | See how it does in that area.
| | 04:25 | Now, whenever you set a new keyframe,
what happens is mocha automatically
| | 04:29 | updates all the in-betweens.
| | 04:32 | The tracking curve will update
to reflect the new keyframes.
| | 04:36 | There's still some drifting and
slipping, mainly because she turns her head
| | 04:46 | right here in this area.
| | 04:49 | So a couple good places for
additional keyframes would be, say, 205.
| | 04:53 | We could quickly adjust that. You'll have to
spend more time, this is just very quickly.
| | 05:04 | 224, and then I'll show you also 235,
two more places that need adjustments.
| | 05:15 | Let's assume we've got that
adjusted to a couple more keyframes in that
| | 05:19 | area. Then we'd go back and finish
tracking to the beginning, track backwards.
| | 05:30 | Right here, there we go.
| | 05:55 | Okay, definitely some major
slippage here, so I do the same thing.
| | 06:01 | Go to frame zero, adjust this shape.
| | 06:04 | Again, doing it very rapidly here. And
then determine in between zero and, say
| | 06:10 | 150, where would be good places
to place additional keyframes.
| | 06:14 | I'll give you some
numbers here just to help out.
| | 06:16 | For example, frame 139, that's the end
of that head turn that starts at 150.
| | 06:24 | It's also a 90, 74, and 49.
| | 06:33 | Now your keyframes don't have to be
exactly the same as the ones I just listed,
| | 06:40 | but I found by watching the motion,
those are pretty good places to place
| | 06:43 | the keyframes and get good motion tracking.
| | 06:45 | Now I'm going to go back to frame 275
here just for a second, because we haven't
| | 06:50 | looked at our surface, our planar surface.
| | 06:52 | 275 is where we started, so I'm going
to go there before I turn the surface on.
| | 06:58 | And you turn it on
right here with this button.
| | 07:00 | There it is. Oh, it looks like I
didn't enter 275 correctly, I'm on 75.
| | 07:04 | I'm going to turn that off.
| | 07:06 | Let's go back to 275 again, there we go,
and now I'll turn on the surface.
| | 07:12 | And that's what we would expect is
the default square shape in this case.
| | 07:16 | I'm going to go ahead and shape this
to match my initial X-spline shape.
| | 07:22 | Eventually, I'm going to want to make
a more rectangular shape to match the
| | 07:27 | heads-up display we're
eventually going to track.
| | 07:29 | But that'll be another step.
| | 07:31 | Just for now, I'm going to follow this
practice of just fitting it to the X-spline.
| | 07:35 | I'm going to turn it off for now because
we will have to come back to that later.
| | 07:40 | We added a second X-spline shape, so we
could track these new four tracking marks
| | 07:44 | above and below the eyes.
| | 07:46 | That's attached to the planar surface.
| | 07:47 | The tracking worked pretty well, but we
did have to make some adjustments with
| | 07:51 | some additional keyframes as
she turned her head and moved.
| | 07:54 | Now, I didn't have enough time to
finish all those keyframes myself, so I'm
| | 07:58 | going to let you continue that process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Offsetting the planar surface| 00:00 | We have our new X-spline shape following the
tracking marks above and below of her eyes.
| | 00:05 | This required some additional
keyframing, I'll show you my solution to it.
| | 00:09 | These are keyframes in
all of the keyframe positions we
| | 00:12 | discussed previously. I'll play it back.
| | 00:16 | It's starting to follow pretty well.
| | 00:18 | The tricky part of this is the perspective
shift as she moves her head or turns her head.
| | 00:29 | You can imagine there is a slight gap
between this planar surface, which is
| | 00:33 | perfectly like a piece of
paper, and the dots on her cheek.
| | 00:36 | So you have to imagine what that
would look like as she turns her head.
| | 00:40 | So right here for example, this corner
is closer to the dot than it is when she
| | 00:45 | turns her head towards camera.
| | 00:48 | So that'll take some experimentation.
| | 00:50 | This one is working right now so we can move on
| | 00:54 | and do all the planar surface. If I go to
275, that's where we started, what I can
| | 00:58 | do is turn on the planar
surface and see where we left off.
| | 01:01 | Here is a button for that, and there it is.
| | 01:03 | Previously, I simply matched the
corners in my planar surface to the X-spline.
| | 01:08 | Now that's not necessary.
| | 01:09 | It can actually have a
different shape, like a rectangle.
| | 01:12 | It'll still be associated with the X-spline
but it doesn't have to match the corners.
| | 01:16 | What we want anyway is a more
rectangular shape to match the heads-up display
| | 01:20 | we're going to add as tracked artwork.
| | 01:23 | That's more in the shape
of a pair of sunglasses.
| | 01:24 | So what we can do now on
frame 275 is reshape this.
| | 01:30 | To help us out, we're going to use a
new function, and that's the planar grid.
| | 01:34 | Here's a shortcut button for
that right here, Show Planar Grid.
| | 01:38 | What this is is a pinkish grid that
shows the virtual plain that that planar
| | 01:43 | surface is sitting in.
| | 01:44 | Again a planar surface is like a
perfectly flat piece of paper, and this is the
| | 01:49 | plain that would hold it, extending
in all these different directions.
| | 01:52 | If I move the corners of my
planar surface the grid changes also.
| | 01:56 | So the grid is really useful for
seeing the perspective shift but also you
| | 02:00 | can use the grid lines and grid
intersections as reference to line up certain
| | 02:04 | features over time.
| | 02:08 | For example, if I move the corners
here of the planar surface, for one, I can
| | 02:14 | make it more rectangular, but two, I
can line up the dots on the top of the
| | 02:19 | forehead to a couple of the
intersections or a couple of the corners.
| | 02:26 | So here I've lined up a dot to this
corner and another dot to this corner.
| | 02:32 | I can use that as reference all the way
through the timeline to make sure the planar
| | 02:35 | surface is consistent.
| | 02:37 | Doing that also places a line
down the center, down the center
| | 02:41 | of her nose to her lips, and
that's good reference also.
| | 02:44 | Now it's more like a trapezoid right now, going
off into the distance down there at the bottom.
| | 02:50 | What I could do next though is
straighten up the sides, more perpendicular,
| | 02:53 | straight up and down, and that would
be better for the heads-up display.
| | 02:58 | Now for the bottom, I can use the blue
edge of the planar surface as reference also.
| | 03:03 | I can line it up to the top of her
nose, or I should say the tip of her nose,
| | 03:10 | right above the nostrils.
| | 03:15 | So once I'm done adjusting, I have
some good reference features, or lines.
| | 03:21 | So I have my forehead dots lined up to
two corners here and here, and the
| | 03:26 | center is a nice center line of the
grid that goes through between her eyebrows
| | 03:31 | all the way down to the center of her lips.
| | 03:34 | The bottom edge of the planar surface, this
blue line, is just above her nostrils.
| | 03:39 | So all good reference, and of course, as
I said, the sides are more straight up and
| | 03:43 | down, which I can try to keep
consistent throughout the timeline.
| | 03:47 | So now we have the shape for 275, and what I
need to keyframe it, because this is going to slip.
| | 03:52 | If I go ahead and scrub the timeline,
we'll see that it tries to fall but at a
| | 03:57 | certain point, it gets
confused and becomes slanted.
| | 03:59 | It looks like it's the slope of a mountain.
| | 04:01 | All right, so what we can do is go to the
AdjustTrack tab and set some keyframes
| | 04:09 | to offset the planar surface.
| | 04:11 | So back to 275, and go to the AdjustTrack
tab and we'll see our master reference points.
| | 04:19 | The master reference points for the
planar surface have the Xs in them.
| | 04:23 | The Xs are just for
reference so you know where you started.
| | 04:27 | If I click on one of those,
| | 04:28 | we'll see our first keyframe at 275.
| | 04:30 | Again, those simply relates where you
want the surface as how it compares to
| | 04:37 | where the X-spline is, or where the
corners of the X-spline are, and also where
| | 04:43 | the planar surface started, in our case.
| | 04:45 | So let's adjust for other keyframes. And
we'll leave the grid on, again to line up
| | 04:50 | various reference points like
the corners compared to these dots.
| | 04:54 | So much like the X-spline, I want to
look for key places where the shape slips
| | 04:59 | off or starts to slide.
| | 05:01 | So for example, I can go to the last frame,
| | 05:04 | make sure that's good, first and last,
you always probably want to do anyway.
| | 05:08 | Then go deeper, say, to 240, and this
corresponds to where there is the head turn.
| | 05:15 | And I can just simply grab my red ends,
and if I grab the red dot, so I can see
| | 05:22 | that green dotted line, if I see that
then I'm good because I can know I can
| | 05:26 | set a keyframe there.
| | 05:29 | As I drag this like a rubber band, they
will update the shape. Let me back up.
| | 05:38 | Just did a Ctrl+Z there.
| | 05:41 | As I move that red point and that green
rubber band, you see the shapes update,
| | 05:54 | planar shape updates.
| | 05:57 | So what I can do is force those dots back
into the corners of the grid there.
| | 06:02 | I'll continue to do this.
| | 06:03 | Get the sides nice perpendicular and again,
and also try to get that bottom blue
| | 06:12 | line lined up with the tip of
the nose, so something like that.
| | 06:19 | So I can't do this all in real time, but
there are some other keyframes that would
| | 06:23 | be useful, for instance on frame 205.
| | 06:27 | Again you can see a major slippage there.
Frame 150 or 151 corresponds to that
| | 06:34 | head turn. 140, 90, and the first and
last frame as I mentioned previously.
| | 06:45 | So I can't demonstrate this in real
time but I'll let you continue to work on
| | 06:48 | the keyframes for that shape.
| | 06:50 | Now it's a little indirect.
| | 06:51 | Again, you have to move these red dots,
get that green rubber band, and that
| | 06:57 | remotely pushes the planar shape around.
| | 07:02 | But if you leave the grid on, that'll make it
easier to see if everything's lined up.
| | 07:10 | Okay.
| | 07:11 | So we used the planar grid as reference
to find certain features and therefore
| | 07:15 | make it easier to give our planar
surface a more rectangular shape.
| | 07:20 | That's going to allow us to better
fit the heads-up display we're going to
| | 07:24 | eventually place in After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Preparing a Motion Graphic Heads-Up DisplayAnimating an artificial camera| 00:00 | We've created some new
planar tracking inside mocha.
| | 00:03 | Before we can use that tracking data, however,
we need something to track in After Effects.
| | 00:07 | What we're going to do is create a
heads-up display that will appear right
| | 00:11 | in front of her eyes as if it were a pair
of high-tech virtual glasses of some type.
| | 00:15 | Now, let's take a look at the footage first.
| | 00:18 | I have turned off all the layers
except for the Footage layer, so you can see
| | 00:22 | what her action is, and we'll play it back,
because we need to create a heads-up display
| | 00:25 | that looks like it's her view, what she
sees through her eyes, but perhaps enhanced
| | 00:30 | with computer graphics or technology
where she can actually zoom her view in
| | 00:33 | closer or further back.
| | 00:35 | Let's see what she does in
the action. There it is.
| | 00:43 | So, we're looking for any kind of
head movement or eye movement that would
| | 00:51 | indicate that she sees something different.
| | 00:53 | The basic idea is she's some high-tech
spy who has this fancy equipment that
| | 00:57 | allows her to see into a crowd in the
room and look her for particular equipment
| | 01:01 | that's important for her mission.
| | 01:03 | In any case, let's see what she's
doing again in terms of her eyes and head.
| | 01:07 | I have some numbers.
| | 01:08 | You might want to write this down or
watch this yourself and make your own notes.
| | 01:12 | At frame 140, she's about to blink
and move her eyes, and at 144 she's
| | 01:18 | finished moving her eyes.
| | 01:19 | So, 140 to 144, a blink in the eye movement.
| | 01:23 | She winds up looking further
to her left, or screen right.
| | 01:27 | At 144 to 203, she's pretty
much looking in the same direction.
| | 01:33 | Then 203 to about 209, she
looks the opposite direction.
| | 01:38 | So, quick eye movements, followed by
a slow head movement as she looks at
| | 01:42 | something further to screen left, or her right.
| | 01:46 | So, those are important movements and
frames where we need to replicate that in
| | 01:51 | the heads-up display.
| | 01:52 | I'll make a brand new composition.
| | 01:58 | New Composition, and I'll call this Headsup.
| | 02:05 | And this time, I'm going to make
the resolution half the previous.
| | 02:08 | So, the previous is 1280x720, like this.
| | 02:14 | I want half size, 640x360.
| | 02:18 | So, I'll center that, same
frame rate though, and same duration.
| | 02:22 | I am going to click OK.
| | 02:25 | Next, we need something for her to look at.
| | 02:27 | We're assuming she's in a warehouse.
| | 02:29 | There's a big crowd.
| | 02:31 | We actually have footage from a
different course we can use to present or to
| | 02:35 | replicate what she sees.
| | 02:37 | We'll bring that in.
| | 02:40 | It's actually in two image
sequences, File > Import > File.
| | 02:44 | The first one is called View.
| | 02:45 | This is her main view of this crowded room.
| | 02:48 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 02:51 | It's a crowded warehouse
where somebody is speaking.
| | 02:54 | There is also some high-tech solar panels,
which this particular spy is interested in.
| | 02:58 | There's another piece of footage that
matches this, File > Import > File, called Panels.
| | 03:08 | These are a pair of solar panels
that are actually in the other view or
| | 03:12 | separated out with transparency.
| | 03:13 | The reason we made these separate is
so we can treat them differently and
| | 03:18 | make them pop out as if she has some type of
x-ray vision or something special like that.
| | 03:22 | Okay. So there's the footage.
| | 03:24 | Let's go ahead and pull that into this composition.
| | 03:27 | First the View, and I'll put the panels on top.
| | 03:31 | Now, the first thing we
can see is this is too short.
| | 03:36 | It's only 200 frames each. That's okay.
| | 03:38 | I want to Shift+select both of these
and move the bars to the end like this,
| | 03:43 | so it starts in frame 100.
| | 03:44 | That's going to work for us because,
really, the heads-up display is turned on
| | 03:48 | by that tattoo switch between frame 90 and 100.
| | 03:51 | So, it mostly fills what we
need for the heads-up display.
| | 03:53 | Let's go ahead and go to frame 100 so we
could see what's going on. Here we go.
| | 04:03 | Now, it matches up with 100.
| | 04:05 | Another thing we can see if I zoom out
is that the resolution of this footage is
| | 04:12 | much larger -- in fact, twice
as large as the composition.
| | 04:15 | This is intentional.
| | 04:16 | What I want to do is move this view
around to simulate her eyes and head moving.
| | 04:22 | As long as the footage is larger than
the composition, I can slide it around.
| | 04:27 | So, let's get started with that.
| | 04:28 | Now, I want the panels to follow the
view, so I'm going to go ahead and parent
| | 04:32 | the panels to the view and
just for now, hide the panels.
| | 04:35 | We'll get back to those later.
| | 04:37 | So, now I need to use my notes about
what she's doing in the footage.
| | 04:40 | I'm going to animate the position and scale
of the view to replicate that point of view.
| | 04:46 | So, I'm going to start on frame 140,
which is right before she moves her
| | 04:51 | eyes for the first time.
| | 04:52 | I'm going to click the position scale
keyframe, or time icon, to get the keyframes.
| | 04:58 | We'll start there.
| | 05:00 | So, at this point, I want the view to
center on that person at the podium.
| | 05:04 | So, I'm just going to move it around,
slide it around so he's in the center.
| | 05:09 | I'm also going to change the scale.
| | 05:11 | I'm going to pull back virtually
a little bit by making it 75% scale.
| | 05:17 | So, roughly right there for the start.
| | 05:19 | Now, I'm going to go to 144, when she moves
her eyes and looks further to one side.
| | 05:25 | Then I'll move this view over and
also change its scale as if her heads- up
| | 05:30 | display is able to allow her to
zoom in on what she's looking at.
| | 05:35 | The goal in this case is
this solar panel right here.
| | 05:39 | It's what she's looking at.
| | 05:40 | That's the piece of
technology she's trying to find.
| | 05:43 | Now, the view doesn't really
change for her between 203 and 209.
| | 05:47 | So I'm going to go to 209.
| | 05:49 | I should say it doesn't
really change between 144 and 203.
| | 05:52 | I'm on 144 now, so I'm going to go to 203 next.
| | 05:58 | And then to make the position roughly
the same, I'm going to copy these previous
| | 06:03 | key frames on 144, use the keyboard
shortcut,Ctrl+C or Command+C, and then
| | 06:09 | paste right where I am on the timeline.
| | 06:13 | That just copies those keyframes over.
| | 06:14 | So, basically, the view doesn't change or
changes very little between 144 and 203.
| | 06:18 | All right, now on to 209.
| | 06:22 | This is where she moves her eyes once again.
| | 06:28 | Here, she looks the opposite direction
so I can pull the view over more towards
| | 06:33 | this side, and that automatically sets in our key.
| | 06:39 | Now, she turns her head continuously to
the very end so what I can do is go to
| | 06:44 | the end and then slowly
pull this over to the right.
| | 06:48 | So, it's like drifting over at the very end.
| | 06:51 | And our new subjects of our attention is
this other larger solar panel over here.
| | 07:03 | So, I'm just roughing this in, we'll have to
probably adjust this once we go on to later
| | 07:07 | steps and eventually when we
track this to the front of the face.
| | 07:11 | But this approximates her
view through this heads-up display.
| | 07:19 | One thing that we have to address at
this point is the fact that there is
| | 07:23 | nothing between 90 and 100.
| | 07:24 | Between 90 and 100 is
where we turn on the tattoos,
| | 07:27 | so we assume that's a switch
for this heads-up display.
| | 07:30 | So we need to fill in this gap somehow.
| | 07:32 | What we're going to do is just create
a solid color, New > Solid, we'll make it
| | 07:38 | green, make it the Comp size, and we'll
assume this is the color of the view when
| | 07:43 | it's just warming up.
| | 07:44 | I want to put that at the bottom here and
slide this over, so it starts at frame 90.
| | 07:49 | So now it goes green to the view.
| | 07:52 | So it looks like it's actually warming
up and flickering on, and what I'll do is
| | 07:59 | then go to the View, key the opacity,
I'll have it start at zero, then fluctuate
| | 08:04 | that opacity from the first few frame
as if it's flickering on, just randomly up
| | 08:08 | and down the opacity for a few frames.
| | 08:11 | Until it powers up to 100%.
| | 08:12 | So now, there's some flicker.
| | 08:16 | If I need to, I can zoom the Comp in so I
can see better, and maybe make these closer together.
| | 08:23 | I may make some of the keys a little
bit higher and some lower, so like that.
| | 08:31 | We've begun a heads-up display by
importing footage that represents her point
| | 08:39 | of view and placed it into a
smaller resolution composition.
| | 08:42 | Having a smaller composition in a
larger image sequence allows us to slide that
| | 08:48 | view around as if it's her
point of view, or even a camera.
| | 08:52 | This is one trick for making an artificial camera.
| | 08:54 | You can now add additional effects
to this to jazz it up and make it even
| | 08:58 | more high-tech.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating text| 00:00 | We've started to construct a heads-up display.
| | 00:02 | We then made another shot to recreate a view.
| | 00:04 | I'll show you what we
have so far. There you go.
| | 00:20 | I spent a little more time working with
the scale and position animation so
| | 00:25 | it mimics what she's doing with
her eye movements and head turns.
| | 00:29 | We can now move on and add some
more effects to make it more high-tech.
| | 00:34 | I'm going start by turning on the Panels layer.
| | 00:37 | Now this layer follows, because
it's parented to the View layer.
| | 00:41 | This is a special view of these
solar panels as if she has some type of
| | 00:47 | computer-assisted display.
| | 00:49 | Let's make this more interesting.
| | 00:50 | One way to do that is to experiment with
blending modes and also apply different effects.
| | 00:57 | With Panels selected I'm going to
select the Hue/Saturation effect.
| | 01:01 | I want to colorize it this time.
| | 01:06 | Click that on and then increase the
saturation to a really high value of 75.
| | 01:11 | That makes the panels intensely red.
| | 01:12 | I can get an even more unusual result
if I change the Blending Mode from Normal
| | 01:17 | to something else, for
example, Classic Color Burn.
| | 01:20 | It gives that an unusual look, as if
you can see through the people.
| | 01:25 | Now to go one step further I can
apply one more effect and that's
| | 01:28 | Effect > Channel > Invert.
| | 01:29 | That returns it to blue, but still
maintains the unusual mixture of colors.
| | 01:35 | Okay, now that the panels have an unusual
look to them, now let's add some font or some
| | 01:41 | text as if the computer is
typing out messages to the spy.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to go to the part of the timeline
where it zoomed in on this first panel.
| | 01:50 | I'll start on frame 140 though,
or maybe 150, where it zoomed in.
| | 01:59 | Now I want to use the text tool to type some
text. Before I do that though, I'm going
| | 02:04 | to create two solid layers so the text has
something to sit against so it's easier to read.
| | 02:09 | So, Layer > New > Solid.
| | 02:11 | I'm going to make this one a cyan color.
| | 02:13 | I want to start small, 100
by 100, and then adjust it.
| | 02:18 | Here's the first one.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to scale up by the corners
until it fits this gap on the left. Then
| | 02:25 | I want to copy this, Edit > Duplicate, and
make one more of the same size and move
| | 02:29 | that over to the right.
| | 02:32 | Now we can type some text.
| | 02:33 | The Text Tool is up here.
| | 02:36 | When you click that, you can click-drag
a box in the viewer that represents
| | 02:40 | where the text is going to appear.
| | 02:42 | When you let go it turns red on the edges
and you have a special text mouse pointer.
| | 02:48 | You can click on that area and start to type.
| | 02:50 | I want to give this the name
of this device she's looking at.
| | 02:53 | Maybe something kind of random like XJ36
Prototype, something along that line.
| | 02:59 | Once you have text typed out you can
click-drag from the end of it to the
| | 03:05 | beginning to highlight it and then alter it.
| | 03:08 | Once you add text you'll see the
Character tab over here to the right.
| | 03:15 | Also, below that will be the Paragraph tab.
| | 03:17 | The Paragraph tab takes care of
alignments, whereas Character tab has things
| | 03:21 | like size and color.
| | 03:22 | I'm going to increase the
size on this first font to 39.
| | 03:29 | Now if the text isn't wrapping
properly you can expand the box size by
| | 03:34 | grabbing these sidebars.
| | 03:35 | Now that might stretch the text out.
| | 03:38 | That will give you more
room to spread the text out.
| | 03:42 | You can also move that text layer as a
layer, and it comes in as layer. I'll turn
| | 03:48 | off of the Caps Lock.
| | 03:49 | And if it's selected as a layer I can
just interactively move it around with
| | 03:53 | the Selection Tool.
| | 03:57 | In terms of the color, if I
highlight it one more time, I can change the
| | 04:00 | color and the font.
| | 04:02 | Right now I'm using Microsoft Tai Le.
| | 04:04 | You might have a different list of
fonts in your program but anything that's
| | 04:09 | similar to Arial should be
fine, or anything that looks high-tech.
| | 04:13 | Again, in terms of the color, there
are two places to change the color.
| | 04:16 | One is the solid core,
which is this box right here.
| | 04:19 | If you click on that, you can choose a
different color and you'll see it change.
| | 04:23 | I'm going to stick with white for now.
| | 04:27 | You also have the option of an
outline, which I have here in red.
| | 04:30 | This little hollow box is the
outline box or what they call the stroke.
| | 04:35 | Now it can be turned off.
| | 04:36 | This little off button
right here, No Stroke Color.
| | 04:38 | If I click that it turns off, and there's
a little line through it that says off.
| | 04:43 | If I click it again in that hollow box I can
then choose a color and that activates it.
| | 04:47 | So here's a stroke, and
here's the solid core color.
| | 04:54 | The size of the outline is controlled by
this section right here, Set the stroke width.
| | 04:58 | You can make it really thick or really thin.
| | 05:01 | I'm going to make mine fairly
thin. All right, there's some font.
| | 05:06 | Now this font is there the entire time.
| | 05:08 | I'd rather have this font start later.
I'd rather have it start once the view
| | 05:12 | changes to this particular solar panel.
| | 05:14 | So I'm going to move all of these bars at
the top, just Shift+select them, over to 150.
| | 05:20 | Let's say I want that to start there.
| | 05:22 | Then I can animate the
opacity changing over time.
| | 05:25 | I'll start with the font itself.
| | 05:27 | Opacity, keyed on, 0 to start with, maybe
go 10 more frames, and then key at a 100.
| | 05:38 | I can copy that opacity
animation to the solid layers, also.
| | 05:43 | The first one, make it fadeout.
| | 05:45 | Let's say I'm going to make it fade
out once the view changes at about 198.
| | 05:49 | I want to set one more key at a 100%.
| | 05:55 | I can just right-mouse key over
opacity and choose that keyframe.
| | 05:57 | Then go a few more frames and fade it out.
| | 06:00 | Now that I have all these keyframes I can
back up to the first keyframe using the Go
| | 06:06 | to previous keyframe arrow right here.
| | 06:09 | Select all these keyframes using
my keyboard shortcut to copy those.
| | 06:13 | While I'm on that same frame go to my
solid, paste, and then go to the other
| | 06:19 | solid and paste again.
| | 06:21 | Now all of these things will fade up.
| | 06:23 | I would like some more font over
here, more text as if it's a computer
| | 06:29 | readout giving me the stats and
qualities of this thing that's being looked
| | 06:32 | at, like technical readouts.
| | 06:34 | What I can do is copy this text layer,
Edit > Duplicate, move it over as a layer
| | 06:40 | and then update the text inside.
| | 06:43 | Just click over the end letter
to the beginning to highlight.
| | 06:47 | You can change the size, like down the 14.
| | 06:49 | I can choose to have a stroke or not.
| | 06:54 | I'll definitely have to reduce the
stroke, if I keep it that small or even
| | 06:58 | turn off the stroke.
| | 06:59 | Maybe I'll just turn it off.
| | 07:00 | Let's click this red line box and it goes off.
| | 07:02 | Now I can type into it and update it.
| | 07:06 | For now I'm just going to type some
gibberish, but imagine that you typed some
| | 07:10 | lines in here and hit the Return key,
or Enter key, and that will be the technical
| | 07:16 | readout of this panel.
| | 07:17 | I want to spend some time filling
this in with more interesting text.
| | 07:24 | Now if it's not big enough, your text
box, what you can do is go back to your
| | 07:29 | Text Tool, click in it to get the
red box, and then change that box size.
| | 07:33 | Then I have more room to
type more lines if I want to.
| | 07:36 | Before I move it, go back to the Select Tool.
| | 07:41 | One thing about this, see if I make
these fade up and fade out, they're on the
| | 07:47 | screen all at one time.
| | 07:48 | What would be cool is if they were
more like a typewriter or computer readout
| | 07:52 | where one letter appears at a type
like a printout. We can do that.
| | 07:56 | There's a special preset inside After Effects.
| | 07:58 | I'm going to go down to my first
text box, go to the frame where it first
| | 08:04 | appears or starts to fade in.
| | 08:07 | Then I'm going to go to the Effects &
Presets tab right beside Character over here.
| | 08:14 | There is a special preset called Typewriter.
| | 08:16 | So if there's nothing there you can type
it in and it will find that preset for you.
| | 08:23 | You have to spell it correctly though.
| | 08:25 | There we go, and there's the Typewriter preset.
| | 08:31 | If you double-click this,
it will add that preset.
| | 08:33 | What happens is if I expand the text
section on the layer, this adds what's
| | 08:39 | called an animator, and this is Animator 1.
| | 08:42 | If I expand that, there's a range selector.
| | 08:45 | The thing that makes it type
on screen is this start property.
| | 08:48 | If I go through now, it types on the screen.
| | 08:52 | Now how fast it types is determined by
these two keyframes it gives me automatically.
| | 08:58 | If I want it to type faster I'd
move this last keyframe up sooner.
| | 09:01 | Let's say I move this keyframe to 160.
| | 09:06 | I'll see where 160 is and move this up.
| | 09:08 | This will make it type
really fast, but it still types.
| | 09:11 | I can do the same thing on this
text layer on the left too.
| | 09:19 | Same set of steps, I can select it,
apply my typewriter preset, which is still
| | 09:24 | visible here, expand that,
Text, Animator 1, Range Selector.
| | 09:32 | Once again I get two keyframes based on
where I had my timeline and I can move
| | 09:38 | this one, the last one, up
closer, and have it type out.
| | 09:41 | Last thing I want to do on the text is
make sure that it's slightly softened.
| | 09:50 | It's very hard-edged now.
| | 09:51 | When I shrink it, it might be
problematic. It might buzz.
| | 09:54 | It might have stair-stepped edges.
| | 09:56 | So I'll pick one of the
font layers or text layers.
| | 09:58 | Go to Effect and apply a Fast Blur.
| | 10:01 | I can just blur it a little
tiny bit, .5 should be sufficient.
| | 10:04 | I'll copy this effect and
paste it onto the other text layer.
| | 10:09 | We've activated the Panels layer and
made it an unusual X-ray type look by
| | 10:14 | experimenting with the Hue/Saturation
and also Blending Modes.
| | 10:17 | Then we added text to the Text Tool.
| | 10:20 | We spiced it up a bit and made it
look like a computer readout with
| | 10:23 | the Typewriter preset.
| | 10:25 | Then we fine-tuned with the Opacity animation.
| | 10:27 | We're now ready to add additional
effects to make it even more high-tech.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Wrapping up the motion graphics| 00:00 | We've added text to the heads-up
display to make it more like a computer readout.
| | 00:04 | I spent more time typing in text to
make it look more technical, especially over
| | 00:08 | here on the left, and then adjusted the
opacity animation to work as the camera
| | 00:12 | zooms in, or the view zooms in.
| | 00:14 | One other thing I did, too, is on the
cyan solid colors, I changed those Blending
| | 00:21 | Modes to make it more exciting.
| | 00:22 | Here's the before where it's Normal,
and here's the after where it Subtract.
| | 00:28 | So those are set to Subtract.
| | 00:30 | I also renamed these layers
just to keep track of them.
| | 00:33 | This part is finished and I'm ready to move on.
| | 00:36 | And it would be great to get another block
of text at the end when the spy zooms in
| | 00:41 | on the thing she's looking
for, which is this other panel.
| | 00:43 | So I'm going to copy one of
these other backgrounds to save time.
| | 00:48 | I'll just duplicate this one
right here and then move it downwards.
| | 00:56 | Now there is animation on it.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to remove the
fadeout, the opacity keys at the end.
| | 01:03 | Then move it over to where I wanted to start.
| | 01:05 | I want to start on frame
225, when the camera pans over.
| | 01:11 | So I can move this bar,
just click-drag it over to 225.
| | 01:16 | Then scale the end, just grab
the end and drag it.
| | 01:22 | I'll zoom in my timeline
so I can see it better.
| | 01:27 | There's that copied solid.
| | 01:29 | I want to move this over and just let
it take up a larger section, like this.
| | 01:34 | I can also steal some fonts
or steal one of the text layers.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to go to top text layer.
| | 01:43 | Then I duplicate that.
| | 01:44 | This has the same issue.
| | 01:47 | It has opacity information.
| | 01:48 | So I'm going to remove the end keyframes.
| | 01:51 | Then it starts at the wrong place.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to move it over to 225.
| | 01:54 | Let me make sure I'm on the correct frame.
| | 02:00 | There we go, and then extend the end of the bar.
| | 02:05 | Now it still has the typewriter effect.
| | 02:08 | That's okay for now.
| | 02:09 | I'm going to readjust the layer to
get the text back in this dark area.
| | 02:14 | I don't want to scale it, but
I do want to give it more room.
| | 02:20 | I do need to go into the Text Tool
mode, and once I get this red line, then I
| | 02:23 | can adjust the sides.
| | 02:26 | I want to get rid of this old text.
| | 02:28 | I should probably move to the
start of this text, or actually the end so
| | 02:35 | I can see it all.
| | 02:37 | There we go, there's the end.
| | 02:39 | I'll get rid of the old text
and type some new text in.
| | 02:44 | I'll go to my Character
tab so I can see the size.
| | 02:50 | I'm going to increase the size here
and type the name of this new high-tech
| | 02:56 | panel, and you can just make up some name.
| | 02:58 | I can go ahead and center the text by hitting
the Center Align button here. Turn off the caps.
| | 03:15 | Now if I want to return the stroke, I
can turn that back on by clicking the hollow
| | 03:20 | box and choosing a
different color. There we go.
| | 03:26 | Now the typewriter effect is still there.
| | 03:28 | So I can decide if that is good enough.
| | 03:30 | If I want to change how fast that
appears, I simply have to move this end
| | 03:34 | keyframe right here.
| | 03:35 | But I am going to leave it
as is for now. That looks good.
| | 03:39 | One last piece of text I'd like to get
is a flashing bit of text at the bottom
| | 03:43 | that gives some kind of warning
or some kind of important message.
| | 03:46 | So I'm going to copy this text upwards,
duplicate, move that new text box
| | 03:52 | down so I have some room.
| | 03:55 | In this case, I don't want the typewriter.
| | 03:57 | So I'm going to go to Text > Animator 1
and delete that, and now it's permanent.
| | 04:03 | It'd be kind of cool to have it flash
so I can animate the opacity, but let me
| | 04:08 | go ahead and change the
font first and what it says.
| | 04:11 | Let's say it's a warning
message, like target acquired.
| | 04:18 | Maybe I'll make it a different color to
make it more important. Here we go.
| | 04:28 | Again, to make the opacity change
and to make it flicker I just need to
| | 04:32 | copy some keyframes.
| | 04:33 | So it starts at 0 and goes to 100.
| | 04:35 | Then we can go back to 0 now.
| | 04:37 | I guess it goes up to 90. Let's see.
| | 04:39 | It goes up to 90. That's fine.
| | 04:43 | Then back up to 90.
| | 04:44 | So what I can do is start copying
keyframes. I'll copy these two keyframes, 90 and 0,
| | 04:50 | and then paste, I'm
using the keyboard shortcuts.
| | 04:54 | Move the slider and paste again.
| | 04:56 | Move the slider and keep doing this,
until the entire timeline is filled up,
| | 05:00 | at least to the end.
| | 05:04 | Now I'm doing this very quickly.
| | 05:05 | You can spread these out very
evenly or make them more random.
| | 05:11 | Now I'll play this back.
| | 05:16 | There's our flickering warning text.
| | 05:21 | Okay, that wraps up the heads-up display.
| | 05:22 | Now we're ready to prepare it
to eventually motion track it.
| | 05:28 | Now what I'd like to do is mask in such a way
that looks like the shape of a pair of glasses.
| | 05:34 | So I'll to make a new composition. Same size.
| | 05:38 | I want to call this HeadsUpMask.
| | 05:45 | Then nest the HeadsUp in that.
| | 05:48 | I'm going to do some special color work on this.
| | 05:50 | So I want to have two copies.
| | 05:52 | So I'm going to nest it twice.
| | 05:53 | I move my time slider to
a frame where we can see.
| | 05:58 | Now in the top copy I'm really going
to treat the colors quite a bit for
| | 06:02 | something really futuristic.
| | 06:04 | So Effect > Color Correction > Colorama.
| | 06:06 | Now this makes colors really crazy.
| | 06:09 | What it does is spin the entire color wheel.
| | 06:11 | Now you can change that by adjusting
the phase and some other qualities, but I
| | 06:17 | think I'm going to leave
it at the default right now.
| | 06:20 | However, to make it even more
interesting, I can change the blending mode.
| | 06:23 | For example, instead of Normal, Saturation.
| | 06:29 | Some of the areas are still black and
I can still read the text, but for
| | 06:33 | instance the people's clothing and
hair is just wild reddish, purplish color.
| | 06:37 | One thing about this tool is
it really exaggerates the grain.
| | 06:40 | I can see that here
at the top. That's okay.
| | 06:43 | I'm going to fade this layer out a
little bit so I can get back some of
| | 06:47 | my original colors.
| | 06:48 | So I'm going to change the capacity to 70.
| | 06:50 | So it mixes with what's below it.
| | 06:53 | Then on the bottom layer I'm
going to add some more noise.
| | 06:56 | So I have noise on both layers.
| | 06:58 | Effect > Noise & Grain > Add Grain.
| | 07:03 | Add Grain is a preview box, but I can go
ahead and switch it over to Final Output.
| | 07:08 | It's going to add grain based on these
settings in our tweaking, and also you have presets.
| | 07:13 | And the presents are set to
various kinds of motion picture film.
| | 07:16 | So if you change this to some other type,
you'll get a different style of grain.
| | 07:21 | Some bigger, some smaller.
| | 07:23 | But whatever grain you have, you can
still adjust the size and the intensity.
| | 07:31 | This looks pretty good.
| | 07:32 | It looks like a staticky,
noisy computer display.
| | 07:34 | Now last step we need to apply before
we can motion track it is to mask in such
| | 07:38 | a way that it looks like a
pair of virtual sunglasses.
| | 07:41 | I want that sunglass shape cut out.
| | 07:44 | So I'm going to turn off
the top layer temporarily.
| | 07:47 | On the bottom layer we are going to
draw a mask that has a sunglass-type shape.
| | 07:52 | Now as a reference I want to turn on
the Title/Action Safe just so I have some
| | 07:57 | lines on here that I can judge.
| | 07:59 | I'm going to zoom in a bit and then
draw a mask that, again, is kind of like
| | 08:04 | a pair of sunglasses.
| | 08:07 | Something like this.
| | 08:07 | It goes up on the nose, and the reason
I turned on the Action Safe is so I can
| | 08:13 | line up the two sides and
see where the points fall.
| | 08:19 | Now we're going to have to
adjust these once we track.
| | 08:22 | So I'm just getting it roughed in.
And I'll close that, and it's cut out.
| | 08:28 | Now it's very linear right now, but I
can smooth it if I just double-click one
| | 08:32 | of the lines and go to Layer > Mask and
Shape Path > RotoBezier, and go back to my
| | 08:39 | Convert Vertex Tool, and slide over
the selected points, left or right.
| | 08:44 | Okay, it looks much smoother.
| | 08:47 | I could spend some more time making it
more symmetrical by moving points around.
| | 08:53 | Again, we're going to have to adjust this
| | 08:56 | once we track it, so we
can do the fine tuning then.
| | 09:01 | One important thing is to
leave a nice gap for the nose.
| | 09:04 | This will fit better over the face.
| | 09:06 | Let's say it's good enough for now.
| | 09:11 | I'm going to copy this mask up to
the top layer, reveal the mask, copy
| | 09:17 | it, keyboard shortcut.
| | 09:19 | Turn on the top layer, paste
that in, and now it's cut out.
| | 09:22 | So now we have a heads-up display that's
ready to track to the front of the face.
| | 09:28 | We used some additional color tools
to exaggerate the colors, like Colorama.
| | 09:32 | Also, we added Add Grain to
make it more grainy and staticky.
| | 09:36 | And of course, we added additional text to
finish up the display in terms of the readout.
| | 09:42 | Next step is to bring this layer
into the earlier comp and then to apply
| | 09:47 | the data from mocha.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Adjusting Tracked Artwork and 3D LayersTracking the heads-up display| 00:00 | We've finished creating our heads-up display.
| | 00:02 | Now, we're ready to go back into
mocha, and retrieve the tracking data.
| | 00:06 | This is mocha once again.
| | 00:07 | And where we left off was making sure
that the planar surface was tracking with
| | 00:12 | the face, which it is.
| | 00:14 | So, as long as this layer is visible,
which it is, the Eyes layer, I can go
| | 00:18 | right down to the Export Tracking Data button,
click that and make sure it's set to Format:
| | 00:25 | After Effects Corner Pin.
| | 00:27 | Now, instead of saving to the clipboard
or copying to the clipboard this time,
| | 00:30 | I'm going to save to an external text file.
| | 00:33 | So, I'll click Save, and
save it out as a text file.
| | 00:36 | I already have one called Eyes.txt,
but I can always make a new one, like
| | 00:41 | Eyes2, and click Save.
| | 00:43 | Now, I can return to After Effects.
| | 00:47 | Here's where we left off in After Effects.
| | 00:49 | We had finished the heads-up display
and masked it into a rough shape of a
| | 00:53 | pair of sunglasses.
| | 00:54 | I'm going back to the Spy
composition now, and I'll go ahead and leave
| | 00:58 | everything off for the moment just to save time.
| | 01:00 | I'm going to drag the heads-up Mask
composition into this one and drop it on top.
| | 01:07 | Now, it's empty for the first 90 frames,
because there was no background there,
| | 01:11 | because the footage started at frame 100,
and we had a green solid at frame 90.
| | 01:16 | Here it is right here though.
| | 01:17 | What I need to do though, before I
apply tracking data, is make sure that the
| | 01:24 | top-left corner is positioned in
the top-left corner of the frame.
| | 01:28 | Top-left corner of the frame
is 00 in After Effects space.
| | 01:32 | So, for the tracking data to be
applied correctly, I need to push this
| | 01:36 | artwork up here to the left.
| | 01:37 | I can do that with anchor points.
| | 01:41 | In this case, it would be 640 and 360.
| | 01:48 | There it is at the top-left corner.
| | 01:49 | I'm going to go back to frame 0, and
then retrieve that file I wrote out.
| | 01:55 | I am going to use Notepad,
| | 01:57 | but you can use any plain text editor to open
the file you saved for mocha. There is Notepad.
| | 02:02 | I want to select everything, and this
is just a very long list of keyframes and
| | 02:08 | the XY positions of corner points.
| | 02:09 | So, I'm going to use the Select All
option, highlight everything, and go to
| | 02:15 | Edit > Copy, return to After Effects.
| | 02:19 | Again, make sure I'm on frame 0, select
that layer, HeadsUpMask, and then paste.
| | 02:27 | All the keyframes come in, for the
Transforms, also there's a new Corner Pin effect,
| | 02:31 | with all the corners animated.
| | 02:33 | I don't see much now because, again,
the first 90 frames are basically empty.
| | 02:38 | So let's go to a different frame
number and check it. There we go.
| | 02:47 | I am going to go to frame 275 because
in mocha, that's where we originally set
| | 02:51 | the position of the surface, the
planar surface, and I'll zoom in.
| | 02:59 | Now, here's where we can decide if we
want to adjust the mask or not, because we
| | 03:02 | roughed that glass' shape in, we
might adjust it to fit the nose better.
| | 03:07 | Another thing we can do is adjust the scale.
| | 03:09 | If we select that layer, we can see
that its anchor point is basically in
| | 03:14 | the center there of those glasses, and
that's where it's attached to the motion path.
| | 03:19 | So, we can change the scale
without ruining the actual tracking.
| | 03:22 | They look a little small now, so what
I can do is while I'm on frame 275,
| | 03:27 | is adjust the scale.
| | 03:30 | I'd say that looks pretty good.
| | 03:33 | Now again, I mentioned the mask.
| | 03:34 | It looks like I might need a
little bit more room for the nose.
| | 03:38 | If I go to an earlier frame, I have
some issues with the perspective here.
| | 03:42 | So, if I widen out that bottom area
of the sunglasses or glass' display, I
| | 03:46 | won't have an issue there.
| | 03:48 | So I can return to the HeadsUpMask,
display the mask, and adjust that.
| | 03:53 | Now remember, there are two masks here,
| | 03:55 | one on the bottom and one on the top.
| | 03:57 | So, you'd have to adjust those
separately and make sure they match.
| | 04:01 | So, there is one layer adjusted.
| | 04:05 | I can adjust this one now, like that.
| | 04:11 | Let's say that a little bit
more room will look better.
| | 04:14 | I can go back to the Spy
composition, and take a look.
| | 04:16 | And I can also flare out the bottoms too.
| | 04:19 | I'll go back one more time,
and maybe flare it out like this.
| | 04:24 | This will take some experimentation.
| | 04:32 | Let's try that for now.
| | 04:35 | Back to the Spy composition, and
there we go, it fits a little bit better.
| | 04:39 | I'll go to a later frame.
| | 04:43 | Okay, let's say the scale is good.
| | 04:45 | You can continue to adjust that if you want to.
| | 04:47 | I would do it on frame 275.
| | 04:49 | Now, there is one issue with that and
that's if you do adjust the scale directly
| | 04:53 | right here, it's only
going to adjust one keyframe.
| | 04:56 | It's important to remember.
| | 04:58 | You really want to adjust
the entire row of keyframes.
| | 05:02 | So let's go into the graph
editor and see what happened here.
| | 05:05 | Well, the one keyframe I adjusted is
over here, it's been pulled up way too high.
| | 05:09 | It's out of line.
| | 05:10 | In fact, I can just select that little
area of keyframes, and frame that area,
| | 05:14 | and you could tell that I
really pulled up too high.
| | 05:18 | It's not similar to anything around it.
| | 05:20 | Now, I can get that back down
to where it was, right here.
| | 05:26 | I really would want to
offset all the keyframes at once.
| | 05:29 | So, I framed them all right
here, and I'll select them all.
| | 05:35 | And then, while I'm on frame 275, move
them up and down to adjust the scale.
| | 05:39 | Be careful not to move them left or
right if you can help it. There we go.
| | 05:44 | So now I'm able to scale it up, but keep
my overall motion-tracking intact. Okay.
| | 06:00 | Let's say it looks pretty good.
| | 06:01 | Close the curve editor.
| | 06:05 | Now, I probably need to adjust the
mask more, but that will be fine for now.
| | 06:08 | Another thing you have to consider
is if your heads-up display and motion
| | 06:12 | graphics were correctly positioned, you
notice that some of my text is being cut
| | 06:16 | off here, so I could consider going back
to my original HeadsUp composition and
| | 06:20 | adjusting some of the positions,
for instance, the text or text boxes.
| | 06:24 | In the interest of time now, I'm going to move on.
| | 06:30 | Now, there are some other ways you can
make this HeadsUp display look better.
| | 06:34 | It's very opaque, and it's very hard-edged.
| | 06:37 | Let's deal with the Opacity first.
| | 06:38 | What we can do is animate
the Opacity changing over time.
| | 06:43 | Remember that with the tattoo animation,
when she presses her finger, the tattoo
| | 06:47 | turns on between frame 90 and 100.
| | 06:49 | So, let's do something similar here.
| | 06:51 | I'm going to go to frame 90.
| | 06:52 | I'm going to key the Opacity at 0.
| | 06:58 | Let's say it takes 20 frames to
turn on, we'll have it flicker.
| | 07:05 | I'm going to go to frame 110
and give its maximum opacity.
| | 07:09 | Now, it would be better to see through
this as if it was a midair projection.
| | 07:14 | So here, I'm going to make it 50% opacity.
| | 07:17 | So we can see her eyes through that.
| | 07:21 | And in between I'm going to fluctuate
the opacity, so it's just flickering on like
| | 07:25 | it's warming up, just random values,
high to low or low to high. All right.
| | 07:40 | I'm going to play back this tiny section now.
| | 07:42 | Okay, here's a little flicker on.
| | 07:53 | Let's go on to the edge quality.
| | 07:54 | It's very hard-edged.
| | 07:55 | If it was a midair projection,
we'd probably want a softer edge.
| | 07:59 | So, let's try a tool that we
sometimes use for a green screen.
| | 08:03 | And that is the Matte Choker.
| | 08:06 | Matte Choker erodes the edge of a
layer in terms of the alpha matte edge, and
| | 08:11 | can potentially soften it.
| | 08:12 | One way to do that is to increase the
Gray Level Softness. Let's try 50%.
| | 08:20 | We'll zoom in here closer, and now
you can also just move the slider around
| | 08:23 | to see what you get.
| | 08:29 | So, there's a little bit softer.
| | 08:31 | If I turn it off, here's
before, and here's after.
| | 08:33 | Let's wind up with a
value of, say, 45. There we go.
| | 08:39 | Now, since this is a midair display,
another thing that would be nice would be
| | 08:42 | to get a sense of glowy-ness,
a sense that it's a light source.
| | 08:45 | So, let's apply a glow to it.
| | 08:47 | Effect > Stylize > Glow.
| | 08:52 | We'll adjust the various settings.
| | 08:53 | Let's try 30% Threshold, 45 for the
Spread, the spread out, the radius, and then
| | 09:02 | you can make it more intense like this, or less.
| | 09:05 | Let's try the default one for that. Okay.
| | 09:13 | There's our heads-up
display tracked onto the actress.
| | 09:16 | We were able to bring the tracking
data from mocha by saving the tracking
| | 09:20 | information out to a text file,
opening the text file, copying the text, and
| | 09:24 | then pasting it onto the new layer.
| | 09:26 | Now, there were still adjustments to
make in terms of the mask in order to get
| | 09:30 | the glass' shape to fit, and
that still needs some more work.
| | 09:33 | And also, we were able to improve
the quality of that heads-up display,
| | 09:37 | once it's tracked, by affecting the
edges through the Matte Choker, and
| | 09:41 | applying a glow, and
also altering the opacity.
| | 09:44 | Now that we have the heads-up display
working, one thing that we can use is some
| | 09:48 | device that the actress has
to project that into midair.
| | 09:51 | So, we're going to add an armature that
comes out from behind her ear, with a little
| | 09:55 | light projector at the tip.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fabricating geometry and shadows| 00:00 | We've successfully motion-tracked
the heads-up display to the front of the
| | 00:03 | actress' face, and now it follows along.
| | 00:06 | I'll play back a little
portion of that. There we go.
| | 00:13 | Now, I did spend some time altering
the masks to make sure that the eyeglass
| | 00:18 | shape fit well over her face.
| | 00:20 | That required going back to
HeadsUpMask, and altering this mask.
| | 00:24 | So, there's a place for the nose, and
then, the two sides taper off, and that
| | 00:29 | works well in this case.
| | 00:30 | I also made sure that any kind of text
that appears in the heads-up display was
| | 00:35 | easy to see, that it fit in each
lens of this virtual pair of glasses.
| | 00:40 | To do that, I had to go back to HeadsUp,
and just move around the type layers.
| | 00:44 | Okay, so now we're ready for the next element.
| | 00:49 | It would be great to get some type of
armature that pops out to serve as a
| | 00:53 | little projector to project
this heads-up display in midair.
| | 00:57 | Now, we don't have any kind of pre-
rendered element for this, but we can
| | 01:00 | fabricate an armature by using
Solids, Solid Layers, and Masking.
| | 01:05 | Let me turn off the heads-up display to
save time, and then I'll go back to frame 0.
| | 01:12 | Let's get started by making a
new solid. Layer > New > Solid.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to make this one white
just initially so I can see it, and then
| | 01:21 | make it say 1200x720. I will click OK.
| | 01:26 | Initially, it covers up everything, but
what I'll do is open it up in a Layer View,
| | 01:30 | so it's by itself, and draw a
rectangular mask over the top.
| | 01:35 | I can use this Rectangle
button up here, just like this.
| | 01:41 | Now back to the Composition View.
| | 01:42 | Again, it's just on the top.
| | 01:45 | What I can do though is borrow some
tracking information from a different layer.
| | 01:48 | If I zoom in, I can
choose where I want it to be.
| | 01:52 | I'd like it to appear over her
ear as if it's a Bluetooth device.
| | 01:56 | Now, this is actually close to where
the tattoo is motion-tracked, right here.
| | 02:01 | So, what I can do is borrow the corner pin,
and the transforms from the tattoo layer.
| | 02:05 | I'll start with the corner pin.
| | 02:07 | I'll select that Effect, Ctrl or
Command+C on the keyboard to copy.
| | 02:14 | Go back up to the Solid, and paste,
Ctrl or Command+V. That distorts it through
| | 02:22 | the corner pin, so now it's small down here.
| | 02:24 | The mask is in the same place though.
| | 02:26 | Next thing I'll do is grab the transforms.
| | 02:30 | I'll Shift+select Position, Scale, and
Rotation, again on the first frame, copy
| | 02:37 | those, go back up and paste again
to the solid layer. There we go.
| | 02:46 | So, there is a solid.
| | 02:48 | Now, it's close to the motion path, it's
not really where we want it, and that's
| | 02:53 | because I didn't bother to
change the anchor point in advance.
| | 02:56 | I can do that now though.
| | 02:58 | If I go up to the Solid, look at the
anchor point, I can just slide it over to
| | 03:03 | where I'd like it to be.
| | 03:05 | I'm going to go to a different frame, though,
where I can see the side of the face better,
| | 03:10 | frame 200.
| | 03:12 | There's a better side view, and I'll
slide it over, somewhere around here,
| | 03:19 | so maybe 375 in the Y, and somewhere around
660 or so for the X. Now, it seems a bit short.
| | 03:30 | There's some perspective shift on it.
| | 03:32 | But, I'd like it to be longer.
| | 03:34 | I have to go back further and go out further.
| | 03:36 | So, I can go back to the Solid Settings
and increase the Width. Let's try 1800.
| | 03:45 | That makes that solid longer.
| | 03:47 | Now, the anchor point, and the X has
changed because we did make it longer, but
| | 03:52 | we can change that again to
get it back where we want it;
| | 03:55 | somewhere around 980 or so might be good, 970.
| | 03:58 | The rotation now is a little funny, I'd rather
have a point downwards as opposed to
| | 04:02 | across like it is now.
| | 04:03 | What we can do there is go to the
Rotation, go to the Graph Editor, frame it
| | 04:08 | all, select all the keyframes
and offset the entire curve.
| | 04:13 | I'll just pull this curve up or down
until it feels like a good rotation.
| | 04:17 | So, I think, when I'm on frame 200, a
rotation of around 20 is going to work,
| | 04:23 | something like that.
| | 04:25 | That's looking good.
| | 04:26 | Now, there are still a few issues to deal with.
| | 04:30 | One is the fact that it overlaps the hair.
| | 04:32 | I'd rather make it look like it's
coming out from beneath the hair.
| | 04:35 | What I can do there is add another
mask to cut out part of this solid.
| | 04:39 | I can't do it right here, I have to
zoom backwards, or zoom out, and find the
| | 04:44 | mask, which is still up here.
| | 04:45 | What I can do though is draw a
second mask and subtract that mask.
| | 04:50 | So, I'm going to draw one like this with a bit
of a rough edge right here, and close it up.
| | 04:56 | Then, I'll change its second mask to subtract.
| | 04:59 | Now, because it's so far away, I have to
zoom in to see how that worked, I might
| | 05:04 | have to go back and forth a few
times, but that's the general idea.
| | 05:05 | I've cut off this end and now it
fits underneath, that part of the hair.
| | 05:10 | Another problem is, because it's a solid
that's been shrunk to such a high
| | 05:13 | degree of its corner pin, there's some
kind of bad stair-stepping on the end, it
| | 05:16 | looks kind of rough.
| | 05:18 | What I can do there though is just add a blur.
| | 05:20 | Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Fast Blur,
in a small number like 0.5.
| | 05:27 | That's going to help.
| | 05:28 | Now, it's very bright right now, and
it's extra harsh because it's white, but I
| | 05:32 | can go back and change
this to black, like plastic.
| | 05:35 | So, Layer > Solid Settings, and make it black.
| | 05:38 | Let's check the tracking to see how that works.
| | 05:46 | I'm going to play back a
short section. All right.
| | 05:56 | That looks pretty good. There we go.
| | 06:03 | So now we have great rotational
shifts in that solid, thanks to the
| | 06:07 | motion-tracking and the corner pin.
| | 06:08 | So, it looks like it's
turning with the face. All right.
| | 06:14 | It would be great to have some kind of shadow.
| | 06:17 | There's a definite shadow right here.
| | 06:18 | So, we'd expect a shadow from the armature.
| | 06:20 | I can do that by copying the current solid.
| | 06:23 | I'm going to rename the
solid first so I know what it is,
| | 06:26 | Armature, and then duplicate this layer,
pull it down underneath, rename that,
| | 06:35 | call it Armature Shadow.
| | 06:36 | It comes in right where the
original one is, but I can offset that by
| | 06:44 | changing the anchor point.
| | 06:45 | I'm going to push it over to the
right a little bit, and down a little bit.
| | 06:52 | Now, I don't really need the very
start of this to be cut off, or least not
| | 06:56 | from that double mask.
| | 06:57 | What I could do though is pull out
to see the mask, and either alter this
| | 07:02 | subtractive mask or simply delete it.
| | 07:04 | I want to delete that second mask.
| | 07:07 | Mask 2, delete, and that puts
it back to its original length.
| | 07:14 | Now, as a shadow, it's very dark, very opaque.
| | 07:16 | So, first thing I'll do here is reduce
the Opacity to 50%, and then blur it even more.
| | 07:22 | There's a fast blur here
that I got from the copy.
| | 07:24 | So, I'll set that to 2. That looks better.
| | 07:27 | Now, the color is not quite
right, it looks a little bit blue.
| | 07:31 | It doesn't look red like the other shadow in the
footage, so I'm going to add a Hue/Saturation.
| | 07:35 | Color Correction > Hue Saturation,
I'm going to use Colorize this time.
| | 07:41 | And the Hue is already set to Red,
which is 0 degrees, but I'm going to crank
| | 07:45 | up the Saturation to 70 and more importantly,
the Lightness, so I can see some of that red, to 7.
| | 07:52 | And there, a reddish tone comes in,
it starts to look like a shadow that
| | 07:56 | might be on the face.
| | 07:57 | That will also track along, because
it's using the same animation that was
| | 08:00 | originally on the Armature layer.
| | 08:06 | We've created a virtual piece of
geometry by using a solid layer, masking, and
| | 08:10 | then applying tracking information to
that by borrowing it from another layer.
| | 08:14 | We've also created a shadow by
copying the original solid downwards and
| | 08:17 | adjusting it with color tools like Hue
and Saturation, Blur, and then the Opacity.
| | 08:23 | There are a few more things that
would be great to add to this armature.
| | 08:26 | One would be some type of
highlight that looks like it's plastic, like
| | 08:29 | it's glinting in the light.
| | 08:30 | The other is some type of light
source to make it look like a projector.
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| Adding highlights and light effects| 00:00 | We've created an armature to serve as a
tiny projector to tie into the heads-up display.
| | 00:04 | Let me play that back.
| | 00:13 | It works well as a motion
tracking, but there are several problems.
| | 00:18 | One, it appears the entire time, in
other words, it doesn't pop out when she
| | 00:22 | presses a switch on the tattoo.
| | 00:23 | I think it'd be nice to do that.
| | 00:25 | Another thing is it's a bit flat.
| | 00:27 | We can address that with additional layers.
| | 00:30 | Let's start with the fact that
it should appear when the switch is thrown.
| | 00:34 | We could animate the transforms but an
easier way is to affect the mask that is
| | 00:39 | coming out of that shape.
| | 00:41 | So let's open up the Armature in the layer view.
| | 00:43 | What we can do is animate this
rectangular mask growing over the frames where
| | 00:48 | she turns on the switch, so at frame 90,
that switch is off so I can key that
| | 00:54 | mask, Mask 1, down to a small shape.
| | 01:00 | So I'll pick the end points here and
move those so it's basically not visible.
| | 01:04 | Then I'll go to frame
100 and extend it back out.
| | 01:12 | So now this will grow over time, just like that.
| | 01:15 | I do need to do the same thing for the shadow.
| | 01:19 | Now, since they are based in the same
original layer, I can go ahead and just
| | 01:24 | copy the keyframes here while I'm on
frame 90, so Ctrl+C or Command+C down to
| | 01:31 | the other mask, Mask 1 on the shadow,
and then Ctrl+V or Command+V to paste.
| | 01:39 | If I open up the Armature shadow layer,
it's not visible there, but I can go back
| | 01:45 | to the composition, it's up
here at the top, and there it grows.
| | 01:53 | Okay, that's solves the
appearance of this armature.
| | 01:56 | In fact let me play that short
section back, and there it pops out.
| | 02:03 | Now let's address the fact that it's
very flat and very black, very plain.
| | 02:09 | It's really missing a highlight, if
that was plastic, there'd be a highlight.
| | 02:13 | We can create a highlight by copying the
Armature layer and tweaking it. So Edit > Duplicate.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to call this Highlight. and then
I'm going to open this in the layer view also.
| | 02:29 | It's black now so I'm going to change
the color, Layer > Solid Settings, to white
| | 02:35 | or some type of grey.
| | 02:36 | Let me make sure it's open, here we go.
| | 02:43 | It takes up the entire area of the armature.
| | 02:45 | What I really want to do is make the
highlight small, so I can draw another
| | 02:49 | mask and draw a tiny, skinny, irregular
mask right here, kind of where the top
| | 02:53 | would be, like this.
| | 02:57 | It doesn't show up immediately.
| | 02:59 | I need to change the mask's blending mode.
| | 03:01 | Instead of Add I can switch that to
intersect, and I'll get this result, which is perfect.
| | 03:07 | Now it's very hard on the edge so I
can go ahead and feather that to 20.
| | 03:11 | If I want to erode this and make it
even skinnier I can adjust the mask
| | 03:16 | expansion, like that.
| | 03:18 | Let's take a look in the composition view
and see what it looks like. There it is.
| | 03:23 | Now, for additional realism,
I can tone it down a bit.
| | 03:27 | For instance, reduce the opacity.
| | 03:29 | We can also animate this over time.
| | 03:34 | Let's say that she moves around,
that highlight changes intensity, that
| | 03:38 | would be more realistic.
| | 03:39 | Let me turn off all the other layers for
now to save time, and let's see how she moves.
| | 03:49 | So it's off at the beginning, you
don't have to worry about that.
| | 03:52 | She moves right here, so let's say
that it's dimmer around here, so I'll go
| | 03:58 | back to the highlight.
| | 03:59 | One way to animate that intensity
would be to animate the mask expansion. So I
| | 04:05 | can say reduce the expansion to a
greater negative number to make it fade away.
| | 04:12 | And when she turns her head, I can
either reduce it or increase it, it maybe goes
| | 04:17 | into a shadow for a second.
| | 04:18 | Still in the shadow over here, and
then we she turns her head again, it
| | 04:26 | goes more into the light.
| | 04:27 | I'll leave that up to you.
| | 04:28 | But varying the highlight
intensity it will make it more realistic.
| | 04:37 | So that's care of the armature itself.
| | 04:39 | Now to tie this into the heads-up display,
what would be nice is to have sense
| | 04:45 | the light is streaking from the end
of this armature over to the glass area.
| | 04:50 | What you can do is use an additional
copy of the heads-up display, streak it, and
| | 04:54 | put it in this area right here.
| | 04:56 | Let's give that a try.
| | 04:57 | I'm going to pull down another
iteration of HeadsUp, pull it down to the top.
| | 05:05 | It's too big, so I'll scale and move it
so it's roughly in the area where the
| | 05:10 | projection beam would be.
| | 05:18 | I'm going to reduce the
opacity just so I can see through.
| | 05:21 | Zoom back in here, and then draw a
mask on this layer to just make it that
| | 05:34 | triangular shape, something like this.
| | 05:43 | That'll also need to be keyed
over time so it follows along.
| | 05:46 | So I'll just set a couple of keys
now, and I'll let you finish up the
| | 05:50 | keyframing on this.
| | 05:53 | So there's the first frame, move
that over for the last frame.
| | 06:02 | And then we're going to continue to bisect
that until it follows the entire time.
| | 06:05 | Let's go back to this earlier frame.
| | 06:12 | Now it has a very hard edge also so
I'm going to feather that on the mask.
| | 06:19 | I'm going to borrow the
blur from the HeadsUp layer.
| | 06:25 | I want it to glow in the same fashion,
so find the Glow, copy that, Ctrl+C or
| | 06:31 | Command+C, paste, Ctrl+V or Command+V.
Also need to worry about the opacity.
| | 06:37 | On frame 90 this whole HeadsUp break
is off, so I need to go to frame 90 and
| | 06:44 | animate that with zero opacity, and go
to frame 100 and animate it at a higher
| | 06:53 | value, let's say 15.
| | 06:54 | I don't want it too be intense.
| | 06:56 | Now I need to make sure at least on frame
100 this mask is in the correct place.
| | 07:00 | Let me just key that real
quick. Then also frame 90.
| | 07:13 | Okay, so now it turns on with everything else.
| | 07:15 | Now one problem at this point is the
images within that projected area are very
| | 07:20 | clear, very easy to see what's going on there.
| | 07:23 | What would be better is to have
that blurred or streaked somehow.
| | 07:27 | What we can do in this case is add another
effect which will do that, which is Radial Blur.
| | 07:35 | Radial Blur has two modes of operation.
| | 07:37 | One is spin, where it spins
everything around for a blurry result.
| | 07:41 | The other is zoom, I can
change the type to zoom.
| | 07:44 | The center determines how it's
streaking that layer, so if I grab the center
| | 07:48 | tool and place it near the armature,
it'll streak from that outwards with
| | 07:54 | increased intensity.
| | 07:55 | Then I can increase the amount
to a high number. Let's say 100.
| | 08:02 | And you'll see the simulation right here.
| | 08:04 | Now, the Center will also have to be
animated to follow the armature, so I'm just
| | 08:13 | going to quickly place a few keyframes
here and I'll let you do the rest of the
| | 08:16 | keyframing on your own time.
| | 08:26 | Let me pick one more location for a
quick keyframe and we'll take a look.
| | 08:30 | We'll move the mask first, then make sure I have
the center on that blur in the right place.
| | 08:39 | Here we go, and I'll hide the mask.
| | 08:43 | So there we have a blurry streaked
version of the heads-up display and that will
| | 08:47 | help tie it in better.
| | 08:48 | We've improved the quality of the
armature by adding the highlights, using some
| | 08:52 | a similar solid with different masks.
| | 08:54 | We also animated the mask expansion
to make that highlight vary over time.
| | 08:59 | We then created a blurry streaked
projection by dropping an additional HeadsUp
| | 09:04 | layer, masking it, and applying
a radial blur to streak it out.
| | 09:07 | We can now move on to the final step
of this armature process by adding an
| | 09:11 | integrated light to make it flicker
and make it look like a light source.
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|
|
7. Color Grading and RenderingApplying color and light effects| 00:00 | We've added some additional realism to
the Armature by creating a highlight from a
| | 00:03 | solid layer, and also creating a
streaked projection along the side here.
| | 00:08 | I spent some more time making sure
that the keyframes were set for the mask
| | 00:12 | on that streaked area,
which is now called Projection,
| | 00:16 | and also adjusting the highlight to make it
look like it's changing as she turns her head.
| | 00:23 | We're now ready for the last step on our
Armature, which is to give the sense that
| | 00:26 | there's a little light bulb in the very end.
| | 00:29 | We could do this by
adding a CC Light Rays Effect.
| | 00:31 | Before we get that far though, what I'd like
to do is cut a hole in the end there, so
| | 00:37 | there's a place for a
virtual light bulb to fit in.
| | 00:40 | So let's do that, I'm going to open the
Armature layer in the layer view and then
| | 00:45 | draw another mask at the
very end to cut out a hole.
| | 00:47 | I am going to you use the Rectangle tool and
draw a little rectangular hole right here.
| | 00:53 | Now when I say hole, it will be a hole if I
go ahead and set that Mask 3 to Subtract.
| | 00:59 | Now if I return to the Composition, you
can see a little a notch cut into that.
| | 01:05 | Alright, so now we can
add the Light Rays Effect.
| | 01:09 | Now, when using this particular effect,
it's actually better to go ahead and
| | 01:12 | nest the composition because the effect
takes into account all the colors below
| | 01:16 | it, and it's just better
to work with a single layer.
| | 01:19 | Let's make a new composition, and in fact,
this new composition, we'll be able to
| | 01:23 | use for the final color grading also.
| | 01:25 | So, I'm going to call that ColorGrade.
| | 01:29 | I want to make sure it's the correct
size of the original composition, 1280x720,
| | 01:33 | 30 Frame per second, and
also 300 Frames in Duration.
| | 01:37 | I'm going to nest that first composition in
this one, that's Spy, I'll drag that down.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to go to a layer frame where we
can see all the heads-up display material
| | 01:52 | and zoom way in and add a CC Light Rays.
| | 01:56 | It's under Generate > CC Light Rays.
| | 01:59 | It works with a Center Controller, so I'm
going to use a Center button, to place
| | 02:05 | a center, right at the end in that notch.
| | 02:07 | As soon as its laid down there, you can
see a little flare, and the flare is based
| | 02:12 | on the colors underneath that Center.
| | 02:14 | This'll be nice because
it will flicker over time.
| | 02:16 | I need to keyframe that
Center moving with our Armature.
| | 02:19 | I don't have enough time to set all
the key rays, but I'll set a short section
| | 02:24 | just so you can see.
| | 02:25 | I'll do some quick bisect
animation here to position that Center.
| | 02:36 | I can just interactively
drag that Center handle.
| | 02:39 | I need to make sure I do have
keyframes at the beginning when that armature
| | 02:47 | flips out and it's folded out at Frame 100.
| | 02:54 | And then it first appears at a
Frame 90, or starts to slide out.
| | 03:04 | I don't want the intensity to be at 100 right
now, because it's hidden, it's not on yet.
| | 03:09 | So, at Frame 0, I want to animate the
intensity, so at Frame 90 I want the
| | 03:14 | intensity to be zero.
| | 03:15 | Then at 100, when it's finally turned on
and flipped out, I can increase it to a
| | 03:24 | higher number like say,
somewhere between 200 and 400.
| | 03:29 | Now, it extends a very far away, if I
zoom out that streak is going all the way
| | 03:33 | past the back of her hair.
| | 03:35 | So, what I can do then is reduce the radius.
| | 03:38 | And also adjust the Warp Softness, too.
| | 03:40 | In terms of the intensity, I want to
go ahead and flicker that overtime, so
| | 03:51 | every few frames I'm going to
randomly adjust it between 200 and 400.
| | 03:56 | As I go, of course, I want to make
sure the Center is in the correct place.
| | 04:00 | So, there's a short section of some
variation in intensity, and also making sure the
| | 04:12 | Center was positioned at
the end of that Armature.
| | 04:15 | Let's play back that
short section. There it is.
| | 04:24 | So, there's the flickering
light source at the end.
| | 04:28 | Now, I do need to finish all the key
framing on the intensity and also the Center.
| | 04:33 | I can't demonstrate that in real time so
I will let you finish that on your own.
| | 04:37 | I do want to mention one thing about the
Armature, and anything that makes up the armature.
| | 04:41 | If I go back to the Spy composition,
you'll notice there's a number of motion
| | 04:46 | blur buttons turned on.
| | 04:48 | Any artwork that's been tracked is a
candidate for having the Motion Blur turned
| | 04:52 | on, that includes the armature
shadow, the armature, and the highlight.
| | 04:55 | I'll go ahead click those motion blur buttons
on, and therefore I'll have it streaked as
| | 05:01 | it moves across the scene.
| | 05:03 | Now again, you have to have the
button turned on for the layer and also
| | 05:07 | the entire composition.
| | 05:08 | Go back to ColorGrade.
| | 05:10 | So, assuming that the key framing is
done on the Intensity and Center, we can
| | 05:15 | move on to the final step, which
is color grading the entire scene.
| | 05:18 | When we pull back, we can see that the
scene is fairly brightly lit and it's
| | 05:23 | fairly neutral in color.
| | 05:24 | What would be nice is to, say, have the
edges go darker and more blue, and have a
| | 05:30 | nice, warmer highlight in the center
where the actress is. So let's do that.
| | 05:36 | I'm going to start by just adjusting
the overall image to make it warmer,
| | 05:41 | just on this one layer.
| | 05:42 | So, I'm going to add a Curves Effect, Color
Correction, Curves, and also a Color Balance.
| | 05:50 | I'm going to make it slightly brighter
by bowing up the curve first and then
| | 06:01 | I'll experiment with the color sliders.
| | 06:03 | I have some values here to help out.
| | 06:05 | Let me go into the Highlights section,
increase the Red to 38, the Green to 16,
| | 06:13 | and the Blue to -2, some more Red and Green.
| | 06:20 | Also, in the Midtone Reds, I'm
going to increase those to 25.
| | 06:23 | That warms it up and makes it much redder.
| | 06:27 | Now in order to get the blue edges, I'm
going to pull another copy of Spy into
| | 06:32 | this composition, nest that one more
time, and draw a mask around the center
| | 06:38 | that's kind of a soft, curvy
mask, something like this.
| | 06:42 | Pretty much in the area
where we see the actress.
| | 06:47 | Now, I want to invert this so the blue or
this part is inverted so it's on the outside.
| | 06:53 | So, I'm going to the mask
and invert it, invert it.
| | 06:57 | Now, I don't want a harsh transition, so
I'm want to make a big feather on this.
| | 07:02 | We're going to try 400. And then we
can color correct this edge that's left.
| | 07:12 | I'm going to add a Hue
Saturation to that top layer.
| | 07:18 | Go to Colorize and spin the color wheel
to -125, increase Saturation, and darken
| | 07:30 | down that area by reducing the lightness.
| | 07:32 | We're going to hide the mask, and now
we see have a warmer area in the center.
| | 07:39 | Now, you can continue to play with the
feather, and also the size of the mask, to
| | 07:44 | see what might look appropriate.
| | 07:45 | Now, this thicker shot moves
over time, there's a camera pan.
| | 07:48 | So it'd be good to animate
this mask roughly following.
| | 07:52 | So, if you line up an element of the
mask, like this point right here, to a
| | 07:56 | feature in the background, like
maybe this pipe in the background, we can
| | 08:00 | animate it over time.
| | 08:01 | I'm going to key that, go to a different
frame, say frame 1, and then roughly
| | 08:07 | move it over to about where that pipe was
right here, and I'll do the same to the last frame.
| | 08:12 | That way the actress steps into the
light and comes into a warmer light.
| | 08:24 | So, that's the final step.
| | 08:25 | We have added all the visual effect
elements like the heads- up display, the
| | 08:28 | Armature, and the Tattoo.
| | 08:29 | We've done some color grading and some
light effects to intergrade everything.
| | 08:34 | We can now render out a movie.
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| Batch rendering the final comp| 00:00 | We've finished all the visual effects work
on this shot, so now we're ready to render.
| | 00:04 | Let's take a look at the shot first.
| | 00:07 | (video playing)
| | 00:15 | So, we have our color grading, we have our heads-up
display, our Armature, and our Tattoo tracked in.
| | 00:21 | So, to render out, I simply need to add this
composition and color grade to the render queue.
| | 00:28 | Composition > Add to Render Queue.
That gives me the Render Queue tab.
| | 00:32 | It's also listed down here.
| | 00:34 | I need to change my Output Module and
my Output to, and then I can render.
| | 00:38 | So, in terms of Output Module, I'll click the word
Lossless, and the Output Module Settings window opens.
| | 00:46 | In terms of the format, I can
choose a movie just for a test.
| | 00:49 | If I wanted to render out something with a
higher quality, I would choose Image Sequence.
| | 00:52 | But for now, I'm just going to
choose a QuickTime movie, QuickTime.
| | 00:56 | Now, whenever you do pick a movie, you should
change the Format Options to maximize your quality.
| | 01:04 | Click this button.
There are a number of choices.
| | 01:08 | All the different Video Codecs are up here.
I'm going to select MPEG-4.
| | 01:11 | Now, there are several other ones that are
good quality too like, H.264, but this will
| | 01:16 | do for now, MPEG-4. Click OK.
This is all good. Click OK.
| | 01:23 | And then go and pick a place to
render this, and also a name for the movie.
| | 01:27 | I'm going to go to my desktop and
just call this one Test. Save that.
| | 01:35 | Once these two items are set, I can render.
| | 01:43 | Once the render finishes, the yellow bar
will disappear and you'll have a movie on disc
| | 01:47 | where you chose to write it out.
| | 01:49 | You can open that movie
outside the After Effects.
| | 01:51 | Now, I want to just import it just to check it.
| | 01:55 | File > Import > File, go to my
desktop, and grab that Test.mov.
| | 02:00 | I'm going to open it up here, just
in the footage viewer and take a look.
| | 02:08 | And there we go, the final rendered movie.
The project is now complete.
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| Looking at the final scene| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at our finished shot.
| | 00:02 | (Male speaker: …and you can be proud of the contributions you've made
in engineering, developing, and manufacturing the zero-loss system.
| | 00:08 | (applause)
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|
|
ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | We've reached the end of the course.
| | 00:02 | We've successfully motion
tracked objects into a face.
| | 00:05 | These include an electronic tattoo and a
heads-up display that floats in midair.
| | 00:09 | These techniques we've discussed
can be applied to a wide range of
| | 00:12 | visual effects work.
| | 00:13 | If you're interested in learning
more about these topics, please visit
| | 00:17 | the lynda.com site.
| | 00:20 | Several titles that would be useful
include After Effects CS6 Essential
| | 00:24 | Training, Mocha Essential Training,
and my other title, Maya Rendering for
| | 00:32 | After Effects Composites.
| | 00:33 | Thank you for joining me on this course.
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