IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | I'm Rob Garrott, and I'd like
to welcome you to CINEMA 4D:
| | 00:07 | Rendering Motion Graphics for
After Effects. In this course,
| | 00:10 | we'll go in depth with the process of
rendering 3D elements for CINEMA 4D
| | 00:14 | and compositing those elements in
After Effects to create spectacular
| | 00:17 | finished motion graphics.
| | 00:18 | We'll start identifying essential
third-party plug-ins that will add exciting
| | 00:22 | new workflow and design
capabilities to these two powerful tools.
| | 00:26 | Using an already prepared CINEMA 4D
animation, we will see how to correctly set
| | 00:30 | up object buffers for
compositing control in After Effects.
| | 00:32 | We'll see how easy it can be create
animated video screens by attaching a video
| | 00:36 | layer to 3D renders in After Effects.
| | 00:38 | We'll also use powerful third-party effects
to enhance our render with glows and particles.
| | 00:44 | I've been using After Effects for
nearly 15 years and CINEMA 4D for 13
| | 00:47 | years, and I'm really excited to be
able to show you the power of this
| | 00:50 | amazing combination.
| | 00:52 | Now, let's make some magic with CINEMA 4D:
Rendering Motion Graphics for After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:01 | If you are premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library or if you're
| | 00:05 | watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM,
you have access to the exercise files used
| | 00:09 | throughout this title.
| | 00:10 | Now the exercise files are organized into
subfolders and chapter begins with a
| | 00:15 | start file and they're named accordingly.
| | 00:17 | Now there are three folders that are
unique to this series. The first one is
| | 00:21 | the C4D renders folder.
| | 00:23 | These are the renders that are
generated out of C4D at the end of Chapter 1, and
| | 00:27 | these are the assets that are used
in each of the chapters 2 through 6.
| | 00:31 | The final render folder contains the
finish movie that's generated in the last
| | 00:35 | movie of Chapter 6 and the Video_
Assets folder contains the snowboarding clip
| | 00:40 | that's used in chapters 2 through 6.
| | 00:42 | If you don't have access to the
exercise files, you can follow along from
| | 00:46 | scratch or with your own
assets. Now let's get started.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Essential plug-ins| 00:00 | This course is all about
cutting-edge compositing techniques.
| | 00:04 | After Effects and CINEMA 4D have an
amazing toolset right out of the box, but
| | 00:08 | throughout the industry, artists and
studios have come to use third-party
| | 00:12 | plug-ins to create a wide range of effects.
| | 00:15 | Now we're going to be using some very
specific effects for our animation, and I
| | 00:19 | want to show you where you
can find those on the Internet.
| | 00:22 | First up is a plug-in called
Render Elements for CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:26 | Render Elements is made by a very
talented artist and programmer named Adam
| | 00:30 | Swaab. And when you go to Adam's web site,
| | 00:31 | adamswaab.wordpress.com, the very first
thing you're going to see is the Light
| | 00:36 | Lister, the Light Lister is another
amazing plug-in for CINEMA 4D. But the
| | 00:40 | tool we want to use is called Render
Elements, and it's right down here, the
| | 00:43 | very second thing up.
| | 00:44 | And the latest version is 0.7.13.
And there is a cross-platform download,
| | 00:49 | so if you're working PC or Mac,
it is right there for you.
| | 00:51 | Now Render Elements is a free plug-in, and
Adam distributes it freely for his users.
| | 00:56 | What it allows you to do is to break
your renderings into very specific forms
| | 01:01 | for After Effects, all
within a single project file.
| | 01:04 | The normal workflow in CINEMA 4D
would be to save out these versions as
| | 01:07 | separate project files, and that makes
going back and making changes later on
| | 01:11 | much more cumbersome.
| | 01:13 | Render Elements keeps all those versions
right in the same file, so you can make
| | 01:16 | animation and lighting and texturing
tweaks right inside of a single file
| | 01:20 | without having to manage multiple files.
| | 01:22 | Now for After Effects, we're going to be
using a plug-in called ReelSmart Motion
| | 01:26 | Blur, and ReelSmart Motion Blur is made
by a company called RE:Vision Effects.
| | 01:30 | If you go to their web site,
revisionfx.com, and click on Products and then
| | 01:35 | go to the ReelSmart Motion Blur page,
what ReelSmart Motion Blur does is create
| | 01:39 | a motion blur effect on top of video
and compositions inside of After Effects.
| | 01:43 | Now you're probably thinking, well,
After Effects already has a motion blur,
| | 01:46 | why do I need this?
| | 01:47 | Well, when you render something from
CINEMA 4D and you render it without motion
| | 01:50 | blur and bring it into After Effects
and you want to have motion blur on your
| | 01:53 | entire composition, there is no
way to do that without this plug-in.
| | 01:57 | After Effects can apply motion blur
to elements that are moving that are
| | 02:00 | animated within After Effects, but
an external piece of footage, like a 3D
| | 02:04 | render or piece of video, cannot have
motion blur on it, unless of course you
| | 02:08 | animate it in a 2D way.
| | 02:10 | And if we animate our 3D renders
from CINEMA 4D, then that will break our
| | 02:15 | matching 3D data that allows us to
put things seamlessly into the scene from
| | 02:19 | within After Effects, and we don't
want to do that. So ReelSmart Motion Blur
| | 02:22 | allows us to add a motion blur effect on
top of all of the other layers in After
| | 02:27 | Effects so that we don't
have to do that from CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:30 | The last type of plug-ins I want to
talk about it the Trapcode Suite and those
| | 02:33 | are distributed by Red Giant Software.
So if we go to Red Giant's web site and
| | 02:38 | if you click on Products, and you'll
go to the Trapcode Suite pages, which is
| | 02:42 | where I'm on right now.
| | 02:43 | And Trapcode Suite 10 is compatible
with After Effects CS5, and there is a
| | 02:47 | whole host of plug-ins, and these are all of
the plug-ins that are part of that Trapcode Suite.
| | 02:51 | Now you can these individually, or
you can buy them all as part of a
| | 02:54 | package. The ones we're going to be
using in this course are Particular,
| | 02:58 | Shine, and Starglow.
| | 03:00 | Particular is a particle generator
for After Effects, and it is incredibly
| | 03:05 | powerful, easy to use, and fast to
rendering, and that's why it's become such a
| | 03:09 | standard in studios all over the world.
| | 03:11 | Shine is an effect that creates light
beams based on light and dark values in a
| | 03:16 | layer or on the alpha channel of the layer.
| | 03:18 | It has incredible control over the
color values created by the Shine effect, and
| | 03:23 | it really makes creating all sorts
of glow effects much more possible.
| | 03:27 | The Starglow effect creates a star
pattern of edge rays based on the light and
| | 03:31 | dark values within an image.
| | 03:33 | Now in this disco ball image that
you're seeing on the page right now is a very
| | 03:37 | extreme example of that.
| | 03:38 | Most of the time when you see Starglow
it's used in a much more subtle way, and
| | 03:41 | that's what we're going
to be doing in this course.
| | 03:44 | Now you don't need any of these
plug-ins to do amazing work with CINEMA 4D and
| | 03:47 | After Effects, but for this course you
do need them, and the reason we need them
| | 03:52 | is they've created some very specific
effects that you just can't get, and that's
| | 03:55 | one of the reasons that these plug-ins
in particular have become an important
| | 03:58 | part of professional
workflows all over the world.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Cinema 4D Prep: Multi-Pass Rendering SetupEssential render settings| 00:01 | Rendering from any 3D package can be
intimidating, but if you start with the
| | 00:04 | basics and work your way up from there in a
methodical fashion, you can avoid a lot of problems.
| | 00:09 | What we want to do in this movie is
to create a baseline set of render
| | 00:12 | settings that will become the foundation for
all of our subsequent movies in this chapter.
| | 00:16 | Now the very first thing I want to
do is turn off something called Linear
| | 00:19 | Workflow. Linear Workflow is brand-new
for CINEMA 4D version 12, and what it
| | 00:24 | does is affect how CINEMA 4D generates
multi-pass renders, and it affects how
| | 00:30 | After Effects composites those
renders together. And it forces you to use
| | 00:33 | something called a linear workflow
when you're working in After Effects.
| | 00:37 | Now I don't use that workflow, and so I
want to turn it off here, because it
| | 00:40 | will affect how my renders look down the line.
| | 00:43 | So in order to turn that off, we're
going to the main Edit menu and go to the
| | 00:46 | Project Settings, and in the Project
Settings I'm just going to raise up this
| | 00:50 | Attribute manager here.
| | 00:51 | And in the Project settings, I'm going
to turn off Linear Workflow. And when I
| | 00:56 | do that, you'll notice that the
perspective you changed slightly and also, it
| | 01:00 | redrew all the materials.
| | 01:01 | That's because it affects how CINEMA 4D
redraws all that information onscreen.
| | 01:06 | So now we're out of Linear Workflow,
and that's a very, very important step.
| | 01:10 | Now with Linear Workflow out of the way,
we can move on to the actual Render
| | 01:14 | Settings, and I'm going to click on this
icon right here, which are the Render Settings.
| | 01:18 | And within the Render Settings
now, on the left-hand side we got the
| | 01:21 | categories of render settings, and on
the right-hand side we've got those
| | 01:23 | render settings themselves.
| | 01:24 | So General settings are set to be Full Render.
| | 01:27 | That's very important.
| | 01:28 | Under the Output options, the Output
options allow us to tell CINEMA 4D how
| | 01:32 | big our frame to render, what shape should the
frame be, and how many frames should we render.
| | 01:36 | Now we're going to be using 960 x 540 as
our resolution for this project, but keep
| | 01:40 | in mind if you're doing something for
actual production, you are going to want
| | 01:43 | to render one of the known HD
resolutions, like 1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080.
| | 01:49 | So let's set the width to 960, and I'm
going to tab twice to get to the Height
| | 01:55 | field. And then you'll notice that
when I do that, it changes the aspect
| | 01:59 | ratio. And you can see there is dark
gray and a light gray area here that
| | 02:01 | when I change back to 540,
| | 02:04 | that's going to change how my camera
is shaped here in CINEMA 4D, and that's a
| | 02:07 | very important step.
| | 02:08 | We always want to work with the correct
aspect ratio when we are generating the renders.
| | 02:12 | Resolution is always going to be 72
dpi when you are working with video.
| | 02:16 | The film aspect ratio was automatically
generated when we put in the width and
| | 02:19 | height here, and we don't ever want to
change that, so we're going to leave that alone.
| | 02:24 | The pixel aspect ratio should never be changed.
| | 02:26 | It should always stay at one.
| | 02:28 | That's a throwback from the days of
old-school standard-def television, and
| | 02:31 | now that we're working in the modern
era of HD, the pixel aspect ratio will
| | 02:34 | almost always be one.
| | 02:36 | Next step is the frame rate.
| | 02:38 | We're going to be working at 30 frames
per second, because this is going out for
| | 02:41 | video production, and we don't have
to worry about the 29.97 issue that you
| | 02:46 | normally have with video.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going to leave
this at 30 frames per second.
| | 02:49 | The frame range is how many frames CINEMA 4D
is going to actually render for the animation.
| | 02:53 | Now this is a five-second
animation running at 30 frames per second.
| | 02:57 | That means I need to have 150 frames.
| | 02:59 | So if I change this from and to range
from 0 to 149, that's going to give me
| | 03:04 | 150 frames, or five seconds of animation.
| | 03:08 | Now, the next thing I want to do is
take a look at the Save settings.
| | 03:10 | I am going to move the Render
Settings window up here and click on Save.
| | 03:13 | I want to activate the Alpha Channel
and activate Straight Alpha Channel.
| | 03:17 | That's going to give me an alpha
channel anyplace that my objects don't
| | 03:20 | completely cover the background,
and it's going to give me a straight alpha
| | 03:23 | channel, which makes
compositing in After Effect a lot cleaner.
| | 03:26 | Now, the next thing I want to do is to
turn on the compositing project file by
| | 03:30 | activating all of these options here,
and what this does is tell CINEMA 4D that
| | 03:35 | I want to have data from CINEMA
4D to import into After Effects.
| | 03:39 | That's a very important step,
which we will cover in more detail later.
| | 03:42 | Next step up is the Multi-Pass options
and if I click on Multi-Pass options, you
| | 03:46 | can see there is nothing here.
| | 03:47 | It's all grayed out, yet when I activate the Multi-Pass
options, these become active. And we're not going
| | 03:53 | to touch any of these, but what did
happen is under the Save dialog, when I click
| | 03:57 | on that, I now have a new option here,
Multi-Pass image. And you can see that
| | 04:00 | when I turn this off and on, that
Multi-Pass image save field goes away, and
| | 04:05 | comes back again when I activate it.
| | 04:07 | So this is where we're going to tell
CINEMA 4D what type of file we want to save
| | 04:11 | out and where to put that file.
| | 04:13 | So for now, a very important button.
| | 04:15 | If it's turned on, on your
file, make sure it's not.
| | 04:18 | The Multi-Layer File needs to be turned
off, and you can see that it is grayed
| | 04:21 | out right now, and that's
exactly the way I want it.
| | 04:23 | I'm also going to change the bit depth from
16 bits per channel to eight bit per channel.
| | 04:27 | That's going to save a lot on render
time and file size for us, and we're going
| | 04:31 | to just work in an 8-bit workflow in After Effects.
| | 04:33 | The format is going to be Photoshop PSD
sequences, and so we're going to leave
| | 04:37 | that pulldown alone, but you can
see that CINEMA 4D can render to a wide
| | 04:40 | range of file formats.
| | 04:42 | Next up is the Anti-Aliasing
settings, and if I click on Anti-Aliasing, the
| | 04:46 | defaults for Anti-Aliasing
are Geometry and Still Image.
| | 04:50 | Now what Anti-Aliasing does is create
a much smoother image. In order to save
| | 04:54 | time in the render process, the render
engine will create jagged edges on our
| | 04:58 | image, and the Anti-Aliasing process
will smooth those jagged edges out.
| | 05:01 | And it's very important step for making
a very finished look. And so we want to
| | 05:05 | increase these values to get a
more polished look from our image.
| | 05:09 | So we're going to change that from
Geometry right to Best, and then we'll
| | 05:13 | change the filter from Still Image to Animation.
| | 05:16 | That's going to soften the image up
just a bit, so we don't run into any
| | 05:19 | problems with buzzing of
our fine lines in our image.
| | 05:22 | Now the rest of the Anti-Aliasing settings
we can leave it to their default values.
| | 05:27 | The last thing I want to activate is
something called Ambient Occlusion.
| | 05:30 | Ambient Occlusion is an effect that
occurs naturally in the real world where two
| | 05:34 | objects come together.
| | 05:35 | The photons that are bouncing around
from a light source travel into the space
| | 05:40 | where the two objects meet, and not
all photons get back out again, and that
| | 05:43 | creates a dark zone where
the two objects come together.
| | 05:46 | And it is a really important step to
making very realistic-looking images.
| | 05:49 | Now in our particular lighting
scenario that we have in our stadium, it's not
| | 05:53 | going to be readily apparent when I
activate this option, but it is going to
| | 05:56 | be very important for the compositing process,
and I want to make sure and turn it on here.
| | 06:00 | So what I'll do is go to the Effects
button and I click on that and I'll
| | 06:03 | activate Ambient Occlusion. And we're to
leave all the values at their default levels.
| | 06:08 | The basic render settings affect things
like how big will my rendered frame be,
| | 06:12 | how many frames will I render,
and what kind of quality will I render?
| | 06:15 | Once these simple steps are in place,
you can move on to more intricate
| | 06:18 | Multi-Pass options that will give
you complete control over image in any
| | 06:22 | compositing application.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up an object buffer list| 00:00 | The compositing process
really boils down to control.
| | 00:04 | How much control can I get over my
image, so that I can affect any part of it
| | 00:07 | without having to go back to my 3D application?
| | 00:10 | Multi-pass rendering gives us that
control, and fundamental to that process is
| | 00:13 | something called an object buffer.
And an object buffer is a matte for any
| | 00:18 | individual object within your scene,
and what it allows me to do is to control
| | 00:22 | that object inside of After Effects, or
any other compositing program that allows
| | 00:25 | for the idea of track mattes.
| | 00:27 | Setting up an object buffer in
CINEMA 4D is a two-part process.
| | 00:30 | In this movie, we're going to do part
one, which is creating a list of these
| | 00:33 | object buffers that we're going
to need inside of After Effects.
| | 00:36 | And so when I generate that list, what
I'm doing is I'm looking at the image and
| | 00:39 | asking myself a very fundamental
question: what do I want to be able to control
| | 00:43 | inside of After Effects, so I
don't have to come back to CINEMA 4D?
| | 00:47 | And if I scrub to the hero position for
the whole animation--I'm just going to
| | 00:49 | scrub ahead here, and we're at frame 96--
| | 00:52 | but now I can see all the important
elements in my scene. And I know that I want
| | 00:56 | to build control the type,
| | 00:57 | that's one object buffer. The phone,
that's another object buffer. The phone screen,
| | 01:02 | that's another object buffer.
And then the platform and the stadium, all of
| | 01:08 | these different elements--and I think
about the lights there as well--those
| | 01:11 | are all things that I know I'm going to want
to be able to control inside of After Effects.
| | 01:14 | And so I make that list. Sometimes I'll
write that list out on a sheet of paper;
| | 01:18 | sometimes it's just a mental list that I
go through. And then I'll create a list
| | 01:22 | for those elements inside of my Render Settings.
| | 01:25 | So I'm going to click on the Render
Settings button right here, and underneath
| | 01:28 | the Multi-Pass options, I'm going to
click on this and add in an object buffer.
| | 01:33 | Now this is part one of the
process, which is creating our list.
| | 01:36 | And so we're going to be
eventually changing this group ID here.
| | 01:39 | But for now what I want to do is change
the name, and the name that I want to use
| | 01:42 | here is for the phone.
| | 01:44 | The phone screen is the most important
element in the entire scene, and so I
| | 01:47 | usually put the most important
element first. And so I'm going to
| | 01:50 | double-click on that and hit number
1 on the keyboard, and that tells me it
| | 01:54 | is object buffer one, and then
write out where that object buffer is
| | 01:57 | going to be assigned to. And it's
going to be assigned to the phone screen, so
| | 02:00 | I go, 1 phone screen.
| | 02:03 | Now this list that we're
creating in CINEMA 4D is really for own
| | 02:06 | informational purposes.
| | 02:07 | We don't see any of this
named inside of After Effects.
| | 02:10 | What we are going to see inside of
After Effect is the object group ID, and
| | 02:13 | that's this number that shows up over here.
| | 02:15 | Now because you can't name them, it's
good to have a list here that does have a
| | 02:18 | name, so it's easy to go back and figure out,
| | 02:20 | well object buffer one,
that goes to the phone.
| | 02:22 | Object buffer three,
that goes to something else.
| | 02:24 | It makes a really easy go back
and double-check that information.
| | 02:27 | I need one more object buffer,
and we're going to have seven in total, so we're
| | 02:30 | going to repeat this process.
| | 02:31 | I'm going to click on Multi-Pass, go
to Object Buffer, and then I'm going to
| | 02:35 | double-click on this one.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to call it 2, and crowd,
and that's going to be for the crowd element
| | 02:41 | that is repeated behind our actual
stadium. So all this noise information here,
| | 02:46 | that's the crowd of the stadium, and so
I want to have an object buffer in case
| | 02:49 | I need to change the color of that crowd.
| | 02:51 | Next up are the stadium lights, so I'm
going to add another object buffer, and
| | 02:55 | I'll double-click on it, hit three, and
call it stadium lights. And the stadium
| | 03:00 | lights are these white panels that show
up behind in the background that sort of
| | 03:05 | rotate in the stadium, and those are
going to be actual stadium lights that have
| | 03:09 | a very bright glow on them,
| | 03:11 | and so I won't to be able to control
that glow in After Effects, so I need to
| | 03:14 | have them as separate elements too.
| | 03:16 | Next up, add another object buffer.
| | 03:18 | This is going to be number four,
and number four is going to be something called
| | 03:22 | pulses. And the pulses are these little guys.
| | 03:26 | They look almost like little sausages
traveling on a pole here, but what they
| | 03:29 | are is a cylinder with rounded edges
that is traveling along the length of
| | 03:33 | another cylinder inside of a tube.
| | 03:35 | I want to be able to control them
inside of After Effects, so we need an
| | 03:37 | object buffer for it.
| | 03:39 | Next up is, let's add one more object buffer,
and this is going to be number five, and
| | 03:43 | number five is going to be for the
pistons. And the Pistons are, what these guys,
| | 03:50 | originally when I did the animation
before I added the pulses, these were
| | 03:53 | just going to be these large piston
elements that sort of extruded from the base
| | 03:57 | of the platform. And so eventually
they turned into these light tubes with
| | 04:00 | energy pulse, so I still
call them pistons in the file.
| | 04:03 | So I'm going to call them pistons
in the Multi-Pass settings as well.
| | 04:06 | But what that's going to be is
these tubes that surround the pulses.
| | 04:09 | Let's add one more object buffer.
| | 04:11 | It will be number six, and this is going
to be base platform, and base platform
| | 04:18 | is this guy right here that our phone
emerges out of. And that's going to give
| | 04:22 | us the ability to control the light and
dark values on this base platform, so
| | 04:27 | that we can have a little bit control
in identify and highlighting that phone
| | 04:30 | when it emerges out of it.
| | 04:31 | The last object buffer we're going to
add is going to be number seven, and that
| | 04:35 | is going to be called all bg.
| | 04:37 | And basically all bg is everything in
the scene that is not encompassed in one
| | 04:42 | of these other object buffers.
| | 04:43 | So basically, the stadium, the panels
of the stadium itself, and all of these
| | 04:48 | other background vertical shapes
that are all throughout the scene,
| | 04:52 | they are not a major element, but I
still won't be able to control them in case
| | 04:54 | I need to do some color correction.
| | 04:56 | Now the last step in this listing
process is going to be to make sure that our
| | 04:59 | group IDs are all different and distinct.
And if I click on the phone screen and
| | 05:04 | hold down the Shift key and click of 7 all bg,
| | 05:07 | now that shows me a listing now on the
right-hand side of all of these group
| | 05:12 | IDs. And you can see that it shows me
the name up here and then the group ID
| | 05:15 | right here below it.
| | 05:16 | And so what I want to do is make
sure that each one of these matches the
| | 05:20 | number on the list.
| | 05:21 | So I'm going to go to the group ID and
change it to match the number on the list.
| | 05:26 | And so the first one is one. That's okay.
| | 05:28 | The next one I'm going to change to number two.
| | 05:30 | I-'ll just hit Tab and change that one
to number three, and I'll tab over to hit
| | 05:33 | number four, five, six, and seven,
and that's very, very important.
| | 05:40 | The group ID is the identification that
CINEMA 4D uses in order to identify that
| | 05:46 | particular object buffer, and if the
groups IDs don't match the tags, which
| | 05:49 | we're going to set up in the next
movie, you will not get an object buffer.
| | 05:52 | So it's very crucial to know what
these numbers are and to make sure that
| | 05:55 | they're all distinct.
| | 05:57 | One thing you may have noticed is that
I don't have an object buffer for the
| | 06:00 | type, and that's because I'm going to
be rendering the type out as a completely
| | 06:03 | separate pass. And so that pass
will have an alpha channel, so I don't
| | 06:06 | necessarily need an object buffer for it.
| | 06:08 | So I only have object buffers for things
that are going to get rendered together
| | 06:11 | in the scene. That's gives me the
ability to control those rendered-together
| | 06:14 | elements inside of After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating object buffer tags| 00:01 | Setting up the object
buffers is a two-step process.
| | 00:03 | In the previous movie, we set up step one,
which was to list the object buffers
| | 00:07 | we wanted to have in the Render Settings.
| | 00:08 | In this movie we'll complete step two,
which is to assign special compositing
| | 00:12 | tags to the objects we would like to
show up in those listed object buffers.
| | 00:15 | It's very important that the numbers
that we have in the object buffer tags and
| | 00:19 | the numbers in the Render Settings
match exactly; otherwise CINEMA 4D won't be
| | 00:23 | able to correctly generate the object buffer.
| | 00:25 | So what I'm going to do is bring up my Render
Settings by clicking on this icon right here.
| | 00:28 | When I do that, I now see my Render
Settings. And I'm going to highlight the
| | 00:32 | phone screen and then hold down the
Shift key and click on all 7 all bg.
| | 00:37 | When I do that, that's going to list
all of my object buffers and their IDs
| | 00:41 | in one handy location.
| | 00:43 | Now what I need to do is work my way
through the scene file, applying compositing
| | 00:46 | tags and adding object buffers where necessary.
| | 00:49 | Now some objects here in the object
manager are going to have compositing tags
| | 00:53 | that don't necessarily have object buffers,
| | 00:55 | so I have to be very careful about how I assign
them and what object buffers I assign them to.
| | 01:00 | So what I want to do in the object
manager is to assign a compositing tag to
| | 01:03 | the main categories of objects that I
know I'm going to want to be able to turn off and
| | 01:07 | on in the rendering.
| | 01:08 | For example, I know I want to be able
to isolate my type and have it render
| | 01:13 | without anything else
being visible in the scene.
| | 01:15 | That means I need to have a
compositing tag on it, and I also need to have a
| | 01:18 | compositing tag on all of
the other major elements as well,
| | 01:21 | regardless of whether or not
they have an object buffer.
| | 01:22 | So I'm going to assign compositing
tags, and then I'm going to go back and
| | 01:26 | assign the object buffer to only
the ones that absolutely need it.
| | 01:29 | So I'm going to start off with the
Type parent, right-click, and go to CINEMA
| | 01:32 | 4D Tags > Compositing.
| | 01:33 | Now the Type parent does not need an
object buffer because we're going to
| | 01:36 | rendering that out separately,
| | 01:37 | so I just want to leave the object
buffer options blank at this point.
| | 01:41 | Next up is the Phone Uber null and I'm
going to add a Compositing tag on the
| | 01:45 | Phone Uber null, right-click
CINEMA 4D Tags > Compositing.
| | 01:49 | Now this one doesn't need an object
buffer either, but I do need an object
| | 01:53 | buffer for the screen, which is
contained within the Phone Uber null.
| | 01:56 | So I twirl open the Phone Uber null and
I go down and identify the Screen object
| | 02:01 | and I right-click on that and go to
CINEMA 4D Tags > Compositing, and then I'm
| | 02:05 | going to activate object buffer number 1.
| | 02:08 | And when I enable that,
this becomes highlighted.
| | 02:11 | Now if I change that number, it will
not match the phone screen, which already
| | 02:17 | has the Group ID of 1, right
here in my render settings.
| | 02:19 | Now I could put this group ID in any one
of these fields; for convenience's sake,
| | 02:23 | the programmers gave us all of
these options already listed out,
| | 02:26 | so we wouldn't have to type out 1
through 12 in this case. But the important
| | 02:30 | thing is that the number in the buffer
field here match the number here, and
| | 02:34 | that's what we have in this situation.
| | 02:36 | Now as I scroll down the object manager,
next up in line is the Stadium Piston
| | 02:40 | uber, and this contains all of the
geometry of the stadium, including the
| | 02:45 | platform and the pistons and the pulses
and the lights, all of these elements
| | 02:50 | are contained within this null.
| | 02:51 | Some of these objects are going to get
their own object buffers, but I also want
| | 02:55 | to be able to have everything in this
group under its own object buffer as well.
| | 02:59 | And that's going to be all bg.
| | 03:00 | That's all the elements
except for the phone and the type.
| | 03:03 | So I'm going to right-click on the
Stadium Piston uber, go to CINEMA 4D Tags, add
| | 03:07 | a compositing tag, and in the Object
Buffer option, I am going to activate
| | 03:10 | object buffer number 7.
| | 03:12 | Now I know that under my Group ID, I
already have object buffer 7 for the all bg.
| | 03:18 | If those match, I'm good to go to move on.
| | 03:21 | Now within the stadium there are some
sub-elements that do need their own object buffer.
| | 03:25 | So let's twirl open the Stadium Piston
uber and take a look at those elements.
| | 03:29 | And so first up is the Base Platform.
I know I want to have this base platform
| | 03:33 | as its own object buffer,
| | 03:35 | so I'll right-click on that and go to
CINEMA 4D Tags, and then Compositing.
| | 03:39 | And then this is going to get object buffer 6 and 7.
| | 03:44 | Now, it's going to get object buffer
number 6 because it's going to have the
| | 03:47 | base platform as its own separate object buffer.
| | 03:50 | It's going to get number 7, because I also
want this object to show up inside the all bg.
| | 03:55 | Now because I added a compositing tag
up here, you're probably thinking, well,
| | 03:58 | why do you have to double it up?
| | 04:00 | That's because the sub-object
compositing tag overrides its parent.
| | 04:03 | So unless I tell it to show up in 7 in this
compositing tag as well, then it won't show up.
| | 04:08 | So I'm going to add number 6 for the
base platform, and I'm going to add
| | 04:12 | number 7 for all bg.
| | 04:15 | So now this object will show up in
two different places: one object buffer
| | 04:20 | number 6 all by itself, and an object
buffer 7 with everything in the stadium.
| | 04:23 | Now as I scroll down a little bit more,
I'm going to uncover the Stadium lights
| | 04:27 | Cloner, and that's
underneath the stadium null object.
| | 04:30 | And I know that I want to have the stadium
lights show up in object buffer number 3.
| | 04:34 | And so I'm going to right-click now on
the Stadium lights Cloner, CINEMA 4D Tags >
| | 04:38 | Compositing, and I'm going
to add object buffer number 3.
| | 04:41 | And once again, I wan it to
show up inside of object number 7.
| | 04:44 | I need to add it here as well.
| | 04:46 | So I'm going to add 3 and 7
for the stadium lights cloner.
| | 04:50 | Let's keep scrolling down now,
and within the Stadium seats is my crowd object,
| | 04:55 | and that's the crowd seats. And you can
tell it is the crowd because it has this
| | 04:58 | noisy texture on it.
| | 04:59 | I'm going to right-click on that and go
to CINEMA 4D Tags > Compositing, and this
| | 05:05 | is going to get object buffer number 2
and 7, because I wanted the crowd to show
| | 05:08 | up on object buffer number 2.
| | 05:10 | And then number 7 is going to be
all of the objects in the stadium.
| | 05:15 | So I'll click on that and add
number 2 and number 7 right here.
| | 05:20 | I'm going to twirl closed the section of
the stadium seats and then scroll down
| | 05:24 | just a bit and look at the Pistons.
| | 05:27 | Now the Pistons are made up
of several different groups.
| | 05:30 | There is the Piston Cloner, which
is the outside geometry of the tubes,
| | 05:35 | the clear glass tubes.
| | 05:36 | Then there is the Pulse Center Cloner,
which is the white element that is
| | 05:40 | running right up the middle of the tube.
| | 05:42 | Now the Pulse Center and the Pulse
Cloner I want to show up in the same object
| | 05:45 | buffer, so they're going to get
the exact same compositing tag.
| | 05:48 | So I am going to right-click on that,
go to CINEMA 4D Tags > Compositing.
| | 05:52 | Now the Pulse Center cloner is
going to get object buffers 4 and 7.
| | 05:55 | And so if I look at my list here,
you can see that the pulses show up on
| | 05:58 | number 4, but I also want them to show up,
because they're part of the stadium, in that all 7 bg.
| | 06:03 | So I am going to activate
number 4 and activate number 7.
| | 06:06 | Now here is a great little tip:
Because I need the exact same object buffer
| | 06:09 | here, I don't have to right-click and
go through that whole process again.
| | 06:12 | I can just hold down the Ctrl key, Mac
or PC, and drag a copy of that down
| | 06:18 | onto the Pulse Cloner.
| | 06:20 | And just to keep things uniform,
I'm going to drag it to the left here.
| | 06:22 | That's not necessary.
| | 06:24 | I just like to have all my compositing
tags line up vertically. But now you can
| | 06:28 | see that I have the exact same
compositing tag on both these objects.
| | 06:32 | Next, I want to assign an
object buffer to the Piston Cloner,
| | 06:34 | so I'll right-click on that, CINEMA
4D Tags and then go to Compositing.
| | 06:38 | And the piston cloner is going to
get object buffers number 5 and 7.
| | 06:42 | Remember, if you look at the pistons,
they show up in object buffer number 5,
| | 06:48 | and then 7 is the all bg.
| | 06:50 | I'm going to Shift+Click all
these guys to make them visible again.
| | 06:53 | So I'm going to go over here into the
tag, and I'm going to go to number 5 and
| | 06:57 | activate it, and number 7 and activate that.
| | 07:01 | Last step, I am going to twirl the
piston cloner closed, so I don't have to see
| | 07:04 | any of those elements, or the Upper
Tube and the giant BG tube, and if select
| | 07:08 | those guys you can see what those are.
| | 07:09 | These are the vertical elements that are
spinning in the background of the whole
| | 07:13 | scene, and there is an
Upper Tube and a giant BG tube.
| | 07:16 | And I want those both to show
up in the object buffer number 7,
| | 07:19 | so I'll right-click on the Upper BG
Tube go to CINEMA 4D Tags and go to
| | 07:23 | Compositing and activate object buffer 7.
| | 07:26 | Now I'll use that same Ctrl+Drag tip
from Upper Tube onto the giant BG tube.
| | 07:31 | Now that we've got our object buffers
assigned, we want to be able to test out
| | 07:35 | whether or not those object
buffers are going to show up correctly.
| | 07:37 | And in order to do that, I just want
to do a render to picture viewer. But I
| | 07:41 | don't want it to render
the entire animated sequence;
| | 07:43 | I only want to render a test frame.
| | 07:45 | And so what I'm going to do is I'm
going to go into the Output options and in
| | 07:50 | the Render Settings, let's
bring this window up here,
| | 07:52 | so we can see the whole thing.
| | 07:53 | I'm just going to enlarge it up a bit.
| | 07:55 | Now right now our Frame
Range is set from 0 to 149.
| | 07:58 | And what I want to do is just
temporarily, I'm going to switch this over from
| | 08:02 | Manual to Current Frame.
| | 08:05 | And what that's going to do is it's
only going to render that frame that I'm
| | 08:07 | currently parked on.
| | 08:09 | In this case, it's 96.
| | 08:10 | Now underneath the Save option, I haven't
added file names to any of these fields,
| | 08:16 | so CINEMA 4D won't try to save the file in a
folder somewhere, and that's very important.
| | 08:20 | I don't want to waste disk space by rendering
a bunch of files randomly all over the place.
| | 08:24 | I want to be very precise about where I
put these things, and right now these
| | 08:27 | are just test renders, and I
don't want them to show up.
| | 08:30 | The reason that we're doing this is
that CINEMA 4D has no way to preview the
| | 08:33 | object buffer unless you
render it to the picture viewer.
| | 08:36 | And so we need to do that here in the
picture viewer, so that we can actually
| | 08:40 | see our object buffers and
be able to test them out.
| | 08:42 | So what I'm going do is click on the
Render to Picture Viewer icon, which is
| | 08:46 | this guy right here. Or you can click
and hold here and go to that icon right
| | 08:49 | there, Render to Picture Viewer.
| | 08:51 | When I do that, the picture viewer
will pop up, and that's going to start
| | 08:54 | rendering the scene.
| | 08:55 | Now the picture viewer has the
render window over here, which shows you
| | 08:59 | the rendered image, but also over here, it's
got the Navigator and the History sections.
| | 09:05 | Now if I click on the Layer option,
it's going to show me all of my layers, and
| | 09:11 | there is an Image,
Single-Pass, and Multi-Pass options.
| | 09:14 | We want to click on Single-Pass,
and we can do this while it's rendering.
| | 09:18 | And what that gives us the ability to
do is to look at, individually, all of our
| | 09:22 | different object buffers.
And so I can click on Single-Pass,
| | 09:25 | and right now the background is
highlighted. And if I click on Alpha, I can see
| | 09:30 | that there is my alpha
channel for the whole image.
| | 09:32 | Now if I click through these guys one
at a time, I can now identify whether or
| | 09:36 | not the actual elements are showing
up correctly in the object buffer.
| | 09:39 | So if I click on Object Buffer
number 1, there is the screen.
| | 09:42 | And I know from our Render Setting,
let's bring that Render Setting up.
| | 09:45 | I'm going to activate that window and
bring over here just to the left, and I'll
| | 09:50 | hold my Shift key down and activate all
those guys, so I can see the IDs again.
| | 09:55 | So Object Buffer 1 is the screen,
and I can see there is my screen.
| | 09:59 | Object Buffer 2 is the stadium crowd,
and I can see, there is my crowd.
| | 10:03 | Object Buffer 3 are the stadium lights.
| | 10:07 | Stadium lights are showing up in
their own object buffer. Perfect!
| | 10:10 | Object buffer 4 are the
pulses and the center pulses.
| | 10:15 | That's perfect as well.
| | 10:17 | Let's go down here. Object Buffer 5,
those are the tubes, and you can see
| | 10:22 | that--it might be a little bit hard because
of the compression--these are just the pistons.
| | 10:26 | And you can see there is actually a
little faint area where the center pulse is
| | 10:30 | not going to show up in the object buffer.
| | 10:31 | That's exactly what we need as well.
| | 10:33 | I'm going to click on 6 now,
and there is my platform. Perfect!
| | 10:37 | Object Buffer 7 should have everything
in it except for the type and the phone,
| | 10:41 | and that is it as well. That's perfect!
| | 10:43 | We've got our object buffers just
right, and I think we're ready to render.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up multi-pass image layers| 00:01 | The technique of multi-pass rendering
gives us tremendous control in After Effects.
| | 00:05 | We've set up our object buffers in
order to isolate different elements within
| | 00:09 | the image, but we haven't set up our
image layers yet, and that's what we're
| | 00:12 | going to do right now.
| | 00:13 | So here in the file, I am going to go
to the Render Settings, and in the Render
| | 00:16 | Settings it's opened with my multi-pass
object buffers already highlighted here,
| | 00:20 | and if they haven't, that's okay.
Right now we're going to be adding some stuff
| | 00:23 | to it, so it doesn't really
matter what's highlighted here at all.
| | 00:26 | What I want to do is go down to the
Multi-Pass option though, and click on that.
| | 00:30 | And these are all the different passes
that we have the ability to render inside
| | 00:34 | of the render engine.
| | 00:35 | And we don't need all of these right now;
all we need are a few of them. And so
| | 00:39 | in order to figure out which ones we
need, we're going to start off by adding
| | 00:43 | all the image layers.
| | 00:44 | Now, we won't be using the material
layers at all; those are for a completely
| | 00:47 | different process. And so we want to
add just the image layers right now, so
| | 00:50 | we're going to add image layers.
| | 00:52 | And I am going to scroll down, so
I can see all those image layers.
| | 00:55 | You can see that each one of those
guys shows up in our list, and if I click
| | 00:59 | on them one at a time, you can see they don't
really have any options associated with them.
| | 01:02 | And that's because these are just flat
passes that are going to be used inside
| | 01:06 | of After Effects to composite
together to make our final rendered image.
| | 01:10 | And so, like I said before, some of
these we won't need, some of them we do.
| | 01:13 | We're going to be testing out that
theory in just a second. Before we do that
| | 01:18 | though, let's add in a couple of extra
passes that aren't on this list right now.
| | 01:21 | If I go down to the Multi-Pass, the
list has gotten a lot shorter, and the
| | 01:24 | reason it's gotten shorter is
because it removes the options that we've
| | 01:28 | already added in here to this list, and so the
one thing I do know we need is the RGBA Image.
| | 01:32 | That's the final rendered,
composited image that is not made up of the
| | 01:36 | multi-passes and so we need that for
sure, so I want to add that in. And then I
| | 01:40 | am going to click one more time on this,
and I am going to add in the depth pass,
| | 01:44 | which is going to give us a grayscale
map that allows After Effects to figure
| | 01:49 | out where things are in Z Space
inside of the rendered image, and so we are
| | 01:52 | going to add a depth map.
| | 01:54 | And then I am going to click one more
time, and we're going to add motion vectors.
| | 01:58 | Now, some of these passes I may end up
not even using, but I like to have them
| | 02:02 | anyway just in case.
| | 02:04 | Remember, all of the setup that
we're going to do here in CINEMA 4D is all
| | 02:08 | about not having to come back here
again when we get to After Effects.
| | 02:11 | And it's much cheaper, from a
drive-space standpoint, to have an extra movie
| | 02:15 | that I don't need than it would be to have to
come back and re-render it if I did need it.
| | 02:19 | So I always air on the side of caution
and add stuff in that isn't necessarily
| | 02:23 | likely to be used, but I'd
rather have it just in case.
| | 02:26 | So I am going to add this motion vector in.
| | 02:29 | And a motion vector gives the After
Effects an indication of what direction
| | 02:33 | pixels are traveling within a moving
image, and it can be used by a variety
| | 02:37 | of different plug-ins.
| | 02:38 | But once again, we're going to
add this in just in case we need it.
| | 02:42 | So now as I look at this list, I've
got a whole bunch of options here, and
| | 02:45 | some of them I know I don't need;
for example, we are not rendering Global Illumination.
| | 02:48 | I know I don't need that, so I can
click on that and delete it. Caustics,
| | 02:53 | I know we don't have any caustic reflections
in our scene either, so I know I can delete that.
| | 02:57 | Now, the other ones I am not so sure
about and so I want to verify that they
| | 03:01 | are being used in the rendered image,
and so in order to do that, I'm going to do
| | 03:05 | a test render again.
| | 03:06 | And so I am going to verify that I'm
not accidentally rendering out an entire
| | 03:09 | movie. And so if I click on the Output
option and look at my Frame Range, you
| | 03:14 | can see that it's set for Current
Frame right now, which is just what I want.
| | 03:17 | And so now if I click on the Render
to Picture Viewer icon, which is
| | 03:20 | this button right here,
| | 03:21 | I just click one time on that,
| | 03:23 | and that's going to render out the scene.
| | 03:25 | And if I enlarge this window, you can see
that my list of layers has gotten a lot longer.
| | 03:32 | And in case you are not seeing this,
if you click on Image, that's what you'll
| | 03:35 | normally be seeing, unless you've
previously clicked on the Single-Pass option.
| | 03:39 | And so the great part is I don't have
to wait for the rendering to finish.
| | 03:41 | I can click on Single-Pass, and then
I can start to scrub down through my
| | 03:44 | images and see what's going on here.
| | 03:47 | So, the Atmosphere pass, that contains
the visible light, so I'll go ahead and
| | 03:50 | leave that in the scene.
| | 03:52 | Atmosphere (Multiply), that's not doing anything \
so I know I can delete that. So I'll go over here to
| | 03:57 | the Render Settings and I'll go down
and find Atmosphere (Multiply), and then
| | 04:01 | I'll delete that, boom!
| | 04:02 | And then Refraction, we do have transparency
in the scene, go back to the Image Pass.
| | 04:07 | That's in the form of these tubes
down here, but they're not refracting
| | 04:11 | anything so I know I don't need
that effect either, so I can delete the
| | 04:13 | Refraction from the scene.
| | 04:15 | Now let's go back to Reflection.
| | 04:17 | Now Reflection, if I highlight Single-Pass,
is actually giving me some information.
| | 04:21 | I want to keep that.
| | 04:22 | Ambient Inclusion is giving me some
information as well. I want to keep that.
| | 04:26 | The Ambient Pass, same thing there.
| | 04:28 | We're going to keep that.
| | 04:29 | The Shadow Pass though, no information there.
| | 04:32 | That's because the lighting that I
have in the scene doesn't actually have
| | 04:34 | Shadows turned, so I am going to go
ahead and turn that off and delete it from
| | 04:37 | the Render Settings, so I
click on the Shadow and delete.
| | 04:40 | And I'll click on Specular
now, Specular information,
| | 04:42 | there is something there, so
I'll leave that in the render.
| | 04:45 | Diffuse is base color value and
that is giving me information, so I'll
| | 04:49 | leave that in as well.
| | 04:50 | The Motion Vector pass is giving me the
pixel direction information, and that's
| | 04:53 | expressed in a very special color set
of color values, and so I can see that
| | 04:57 | that's okay as well.
| | 04:58 | Now I'm going to scrub down here and
look at my object buffers, and I've
| | 05:02 | verified the object buffers already.
The only thing I'm really concerned about
| | 05:04 | is the Depth pass and if I click on
that, you can see now I have a grayscale
| | 05:08 | value set for Depth, and that's showing
me that things that are white are going
| | 05:12 | to be blurred out heavily; things
that are black are going to be sharp.
| | 05:14 | And you can see that I have a little
gradient layer that's traveling into the distance.
| | 05:18 | And everything that's showing up
black here is going to be sharpened and
| | 05:21 | focused, and that's crucial.
| | 05:23 | So that's it for the multi-pass render set up.
| | 05:25 | What this is going to give us in After
Effects is a list of composited layers
| | 05:29 | that all add up to our final image,
and this gives us tremendous control and
| | 05:34 | flexibility without having
to come back to CINEMA 4D.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an external compositing tag| 00:00 | CINEMA 4D is a production tool that
is designed to work within a particular
| | 00:05 | workflow involving compositing
application like After Effects. Because of that,
| | 00:08 | it has incredibly tight
integration with After Effects.
| | 00:12 | One of the abilities that we have is
the ability to bring across 3D data, in the
| | 00:17 | form of camera and position
information, from CINEMA 4D into After Effects.
| | 00:21 | In order to do that though, we have to
add a special tag to our project file
| | 00:26 | for the objects that we want to have
inside of After Effects. And right now in
| | 00:30 | this scene, the only thing that we're really
concerned about is the screen for the telephone.
| | 00:34 | We want to have an exact null object
that's in the center of the screen moving and
| | 00:38 | traveling with the screen.
| | 00:39 | That will give this the ability to
actually place us a video on that screen inside
| | 00:44 | of After Effects that'll move
exactly with our 3D render from CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:47 | So what I'm going to do is over here in
the object manager, I'm going to scroll
| | 00:51 | down through the object
manager and find my phone.
| | 00:54 | There it is, Phone Uber. And within
the Phone Uber null is a Phone Screen
| | 00:58 | null object, and I'm going to select that,
just so I can identify where it is in space.
| | 01:02 | You can see that there it is right
on the face of our phone. And if I
| | 01:06 | right-click on this and go to CINEMA 4D
tags > External Compositing, you will
| | 01:11 | notice that it's different
than the compositing tag.
| | 01:13 | This is a special tag that only does one thing.
| | 01:15 | It gets position and rotation
information for a particular object from CINEMA
| | 01:20 | 4D into After Effects.
| | 01:22 | So if I add that to my Phone Screen
null object, that's all I need to do.
| | 01:26 | I don't need to touch any of
the other options for the tag.
| | 01:28 | There are times where you might need
these guys, especially, for example, if you
| | 01:31 | were using this tag in combination with
the Mograph Cloner object. But in this
| | 01:36 | case, for a simple null setup like this, we
only need to have the basic properties.
| | 01:40 | This simple step will give us all the
control we need in order to place video on
| | 01:44 | our phone inside of After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating render passes using the Render Elements plug-in| 00:01 | Compositing in After Effects requires
the use of layers, and breaking your scene
| | 00:04 | into layers can be really challenging.
| | 00:06 | Fortunately, there is an amazing free
plug-in for CINEMA 4D that makes that
| | 00:10 | process really easy and intuitive.
| | 00:11 | It's called Render Elements, and it was
created by a very talented artist and
| | 00:15 | programmer named Adam Swaab.
| | 00:16 | Now, before we start the Render
Elements process, what I want to do is fix
| | 00:20 | something in the Render Settings that's very important.
| | 00:22 | In the previous movie, we were using a
test render to test out our movie to make
| | 00:26 | sure that we had the correct layers.
| | 00:27 | In order to do that test render, we had
changed our range of frames, and I want
| | 00:31 | to change that back now.
| | 00:32 | So I'm going to go to the Render
Settings, and in the Render Settings, I'm
| | 00:36 | going to click on the Output option and I'm
going to change my Frame Range From 0 To 149.
| | 00:41 | I'm hitting the Tab key to get through
those fields. And that's very, very important.
| | 00:46 | We want to make sure that we're
rendering out the correct range of frames.
| | 00:49 | Now the Render Elements setup
process is pretty intuitive, as long as you
| | 00:53 | understand the interface.
| | 00:54 | I'm going to go to the Plugins menu.
| | 00:56 | Now, I've already installed
the Render Elements plug-in.
| | 00:58 | It's a very simple procedure.
| | 00:59 | Once you've downloaded it from Adam's
web site, simply quit CINEMA 4D if you
| | 01:03 | already have it open and drag the
Render Elements plug-in right into the
| | 01:07 | plug-ins folder in the Maxon
subfolder in your applications folder.
| | 01:10 | So once you've done that, you really
want CINEMA 4D, and then Render Elements
| | 01:13 | will show up here in the Plugins menu.
| | 01:15 | So now I'm going to launch the Render
Elements interface, and when I do that, I
| | 01:19 | get the Render Elements window.
And the Render Elements window, I'm going to
| | 01:22 | just kind of move around.
| | 01:23 | We're going to have to keep it floating here.
| | 01:25 | It's going to get a little bit tight for
our window arrangement, but we're going
| | 01:27 | to need to have quite a few things
open just to keep things organized.
| | 01:30 | So I'm going to move my Render Settings
over right here, and I'm going to bring
| | 01:34 | them down and just make
them a little bit smaller.
| | 01:36 | We're going to be needing to
access the object manager, too.
| | 01:39 | So the first thing I want to do is set
up a render element called Everything ON,
| | 01:42 | and I like to do this sort of as backup.
| | 01:44 | Right now, when I hit the Render button,
everything shows up in the Viewport as
| | 01:48 | rendering on, and that's what I want to
preserve that state, and so that's going
| | 01:51 | to allow me to do that.
| | 01:52 | So I'm going to go down here in the
Render Elements window, click in the Name
| | 01:55 | field, and type 'Everything ON'. And I'm
going to hit Record Element, and when I
| | 02:02 | do that, I get to the
Everything ON render element.
| | 02:05 | Now if ever need to get back to the
state where I have all my objects on, the
| | 02:10 | Everything ON render
element will allow me to do that.
| | 02:12 | I can always load that state, and my
scene will come back to this original
| | 02:16 | arrangement of things
being visible or not visible.
| | 02:18 | Now, what we're going to do is work
our way down through the image and grab
| | 02:22 | things one at a time.
| | 02:23 | So we're going to start off with the
beams, and the beams are the visible
| | 02:26 | light beams that are emanating out of
the platform. I want to have them on
| | 02:29 | their own separate pass.
| | 02:31 | I'm going to twirl some of these items
closed just because I don't need them
| | 02:35 | open right now, and that's going to
make my object manager a little bit
| | 02:38 | easier to deal with.
| | 02:39 | Now the only thing I want on in
this pass are the Platform Beams.
| | 02:43 | But, very important, I want the
Platform Beams to interact with these other
| | 02:48 | objects in the scene. And if I render, I'm
going to hit Command+R, or Ctrl+R on the keyboard
| | 02:52 | if you're on a PC. And you can see that
this visible light actually is volumetric,
| | 02:57 | meaning that it interacts with the
geometry, and you can see little edge rays
| | 03:00 | extending off of the type and off of the phone.
| | 03:03 | So what I want to have is I want the
phone and the type to still affect the
| | 03:06 | light, but I don't want them to show
up in the render, and that's where the
| | 03:08 | compositing tag comes in.
| | 03:10 | So if I go to the compositing tag for
the Type parent--and I'm going to move my
| | 03:14 | Render Settings out of the way.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to go to the Tag properties
and turn off Seen by Camera. And then I'm
| | 03:20 | going to do the same thing for the Phone
Uber, and I'm going to turn off Seen by
| | 03:24 | Camera. And then I'm going to do the
same thing for the Stadium, and I'm going to
| | 03:28 | turn off Seen by Camera.
| | 03:30 | Now when I do my test render, you're
going to see that there is still going to
| | 03:32 | be some things left on.
| | 03:34 | That's because those things have their
own compositing tags, and so if I render,
| | 03:37 | most of everything else is gone.
| | 03:38 | The phone body is still there, the phone
screen, excuse me. But my type is gone,
| | 03:42 | but the effect of the type is still there.
| | 03:44 | What I need to do now is go down through my
other compositing tags and make them all
| | 03:48 | not be Seen by Camera as well.
| | 03:50 | So I'm going to go down to the ones I
have visible right now, and I'll select
| | 03:53 | the Upper Tube and tell it
not to be Seen by Camera,
| | 03:56 | the giant BG tube, don't be Seen by Camera.
| | 03:59 | And if I go into my Stadium now, I need
to find all these compositing tags.
| | 04:03 | And I click on Base Platform, don't be
Seen by Camera, and let's scrub down a
| | 04:08 | bit and twirl open the Stadium.
| | 04:09 | There are my lights, don't be Seen by Camera.
| | 04:12 | And the Stadium seats, if I twirl open
that section group right there, that's
| | 04:17 | going to have my crowd in it,
| | 04:18 | so I can find that. There is my
crowd seats, don't be Seen by Camera.
| | 04:22 | And I think I've got--there are my pistons.
| | 04:25 | I don't want to have
those seen by camera either.
| | 04:26 | So I'll twirl that open and on all three
of these tags, I'm going to tell it not
| | 04:30 | to be seen by camera.
| | 04:32 | Then I'm going to do one last test
render, and when I render now, I should only
| | 04:36 | see the volumetric light, and that's perfect.
| | 04:38 | Looks like I've still get part of my phone,
| | 04:40 | so let's go back up and find the Phone.
And if I go into the Phone Uber and
| | 04:43 | twirl that open--and my Phone
Screen still has a compositing tag on it.
| | 04:48 | So I'm going to uncheck Seen by Camera
on that compositing tag, and now when I
| | 04:51 | do my test render, Command+R or
Ctrl+R, now I can see just the beams.
| | 04:55 | So what I do now is I go under the
Render Elements window, and I rename this
| | 04:59 | thing and call 'Beams Pass',
| | 05:01 | B-E-A-M-S Pass, and I'm
going to hit Record Element.
| | 05:05 | Now what that gives me is the Beams Pass,
but I've left out one very important
| | 05:08 | part of the Beams Pass, and that's the
render file name. And so if I go to my
| | 05:12 | Render Settings in here--I am going to
bring that window up--and under the Save
| | 05:15 | dialog, I want to input in the Multi-
Pass Image Save field, Beams Pass.
| | 05:20 | Actually, I'll just call it Beams for short.
And now I'm going to hit Record Element
| | 05:26 | one more time, and that's going to solidify that.
| | 05:28 | It's a very important step
when you're using Render Elements.
| | 05:30 | You have to, any change you make in the
Render Settings, or in the tags here,
| | 05:33 | you always have to re-record your elements.
| | 05:35 | So I'll hit Record Element and it's going
to ask me, do you want to overwrite that?
| | 05:39 | Yes, I do in this case, and now I'm ready to go.
| | 05:42 | So I'm just going to rearrange
my palettes here a little bit.
| | 05:44 | The next step in the process is we
want to create something called the Phone
| | 05:48 | Pass, and that's going to be just the
phone by itself. And this is going to go a
| | 05:51 | lot easier now, because we've already
established what compositing tags would
| | 05:55 | need to be on for on in our Render Settings.
| | 05:57 | That's why I started with the Beams
Pass first, because I knew that once I
| | 06:01 | turned everything else off, it would be
very easy just to reveal the things that
| | 06:04 | I needed for the subsequent passes.
| | 06:06 | So I'm going to start off by
naming this pass and call it Phone Pass.
| | 06:10 | That way I don't accidentally
overwrite my Beams Pass, and I'll Record that
| | 06:13 | Element. And now within the Phone Pass,
I'm going to first off change the name
| | 06:17 | from Beams to Phone, and then I'm
going to move my Render Settings out of the
| | 06:20 | way, and I'm going to reveal the Phone.
So I don't need the Beams on anymore,
| | 06:24 | so I'm going to kill the beam light
completely, and I'm just going to click that
| | 06:29 | guy and turn it off.
| | 06:30 | Then in the Phone Screen compositing tag,
I'm going to turn on and tell it to be
| | 06:35 | seen by camera, and then on in the Phone
Uber null compositing tag, I'm going to
| | 06:39 | tell it to be seen by camera. And then
I'm going to Command+R or Ctrl+R to do a
| | 06:43 | Render Setting, and you can see that I
only see the actual phone and the screen,
| | 06:48 | nothing else, and that's
perfect, just the way I want it.
| | 06:50 | So now I've verified I've changed the
Render Setting, the render File name, and
| | 06:55 | I've already got my Phone Pass.
| | 06:56 | I'm going to re-record my element,
and then tell it Yes to overwrite, and that's it.
| | 07:00 | That Phone Pass is locked in.
| | 07:03 | Next up is a Type pass, and
that one is really simple as well.
| | 07:06 | I'm going to start off by naming my
render element and call it Type pass, and
| | 07:09 | I'm going to hit Record Element.
And then I'm going to start off by changing the
| | 07:14 | Render Setting File name, and call it
Type. And then I'm going to move that
| | 07:19 | Render Settings out of the way.
| | 07:20 | Now I don't want my phone to show up now,
| | 07:21 | so what I do is go to the Phone Uber,
tell it don't be Seen by Camera, go
| | 07:26 | to Phone Screen, tell it don't be Seen
by Camera, and then I'm going to go to
| | 07:29 | the Type Parent and tell it please be
Seen by Camera. And now when I do
| | 07:34 | my test render, Command+R or Ctrl+R, I should
only see the type. And that's in fact what I see,
| | 07:39 | so now I can go to the Render Elements
and re-record my Type pass render element.
| | 07:45 | So I click Record Element, Yes overwrite,
and that's the Type pass is all set up.
| | 07:50 | Next up, I want to set up the Stadium
Pass, and that's going to be basically
| | 07:54 | everything except for the
beams, the phone, and the type.
| | 07:56 | So now what I'll do is start off by
making a Stadium Pass render element, and
| | 08:00 | I'll hit Record Element, and then I go
to my Render Settings, change it to
| | 08:05 | read Stadium, and then I'm going to
make the Type not Seen by Camera, and then
| | 08:13 | I want to make all the stadium parts visible.
| | 08:16 | So in order to do that, I'm going to go
to--let's twirl close the Phone Uber--and
| | 08:21 | in the Stadium Piston Uber null,
I want to make that visible,
| | 08:24 | so I tell it to be Seen by Camera.
And then I'll go to Base Platform, tell it to
| | 08:29 | be Seen by Camera. And I'm going to
work my way down through each of these guys
| | 08:32 | and tell them all to be Seen
by Camera, and scroll down here.
| | 08:35 | There is my crowd seat, Seen by Camera.
| | 08:38 | Keep scrolling down.
| | 08:39 | There is my pulses and my pistons. Tell those
all to be Seen by Camera. And then the last two,
| | 08:47 | the Upper Tube and giant tube, tell
them to be Seen by Camera as well.
| | 08:52 | Then last but not least, we want to
test render, Command+R or Ctrl+R. And if all
| | 08:58 | goes well, we should see just the
stadium elements--no type, no phone, no beams.
| | 09:04 | And in fact, that's exactly what I see,
| | 09:06 | so this render element is good.
| | 09:07 | So I'll verify real quick that I've got
my stadium there, and then I'll rerecord
| | 09:11 | the Stadium Pass by clicking Record
Element and tell it to overwrite, and that's
| | 09:16 | it for the Render Elements setup.
| | 09:17 | So as you can see, Render Elements
makes it really easy to control our render
| | 09:21 | setups right in the single file.
| | 09:23 | In the old days before Render Elements
existed, you would have had to save our
| | 09:26 | different versions of your
file, making it a real pain
| | 09:29 | if you had to go back and make any
changes, because you'd have to make sure
| | 09:32 | those changes were updated in every
single version of the file, and that would
| | 09:35 | make the render setup
process a lot more difficult.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Render Elements to optimize render passes| 00:00 | The Render Elements plug-in really
gives us a lot of control over exactly what
| | 00:05 | passes we are going to be rendering
out and bringing into After Effects.
| | 00:09 | What we want to do in this movie is to
optimize our render settings, and what I
| | 00:12 | mean by that is by
turning off selected elements--
| | 00:15 | for example, in the Beams Pass--the
only thing we need to see are the beams
| | 00:19 | and we don't need any object buffers
or anything like that along with the
| | 00:22 | beams because none of the things
that have object buffers are going to be
| | 00:24 | visible in the scene.
| | 00:25 | So, we can go through our Render
Settings and turn off all the things that we
| | 00:28 | don't need for that render.
That will save us a lot of drive space.
| | 00:32 | So, what I am going to do here in the
file is go to the Plugins menu and go to
| | 00:35 | Render Elements, and let's
start off with the Beams Pass.
| | 00:38 | And right now, the Stadium Pass is
loaded, and I can tell because of this
| | 00:41 | little asterisk here.
| | 00:42 | So, I will select Beams
and click the Load button.
| | 00:45 | And I will just verify it by hitting Command+R
or Ctrl+R, and you can see there is my beams.
| | 00:50 | So, if I go to the Render Settings and
in the Render Settings and if I twirl
| | 00:53 | open my Multi-Pass, I can see that all
of these multi-pass steps are all on,
| | 00:59 | and I don't need those.
| | 01:00 | The only thing I need is the RGBA Image.
And so I'm going to delete everything in
| | 01:04 | this multi-pass scene except for the RGBA Image.
| | 01:07 | So, I will go to hold on the Shift Key,
and then I will hit Delete, and then
| | 01:12 | I'll do the same thing down here and
delete and delete. And then all I see is
| | 01:16 | the RGBA Image for my Beams Pass.
| | 01:18 | And then if I go to the Save option, you
can see its Beams, but it doesn't say where
| | 01:21 | the file is going, and so I'm going
to tell it where to put that file.
| | 01:25 | So, I'll click on the Save Image button,
and I'm going to go to, in the Exercise
| | 01:30 | Files, the C4D renders folder.
| | 01:31 | Now, this is very important.
| | 01:33 | If you're downloading the project files
for this course, this C4D renders folder
| | 01:37 | will already be full of subfolders that
have their own image sequences in them.
| | 01:40 | Do not render your images to that
folder; otherwise, you will overwrite or mix
| | 01:44 | up all of the renders in those
subfolders, and you don't want to do that.
| | 01:47 | If you are rendering along with this at
home, render them to your own folder on
| | 01:51 | your own hard drive.
| | 01:52 | So, here in the C4D renders folder, I
am going to make a new subfolder and call
| | 01:55 | it Beams and hit Save, and I
can see there's my file set up.
| | 01:59 | I've verified that only
my RGBA Image is rendering.
| | 02:02 | Now I need to re-record the render
element and tell it to overwrite, and
| | 02:06 | yes, that's awesome. It's ready to go.
| | 02:09 | Now, what I am going to do is
navigate through each one of these guys and
| | 02:12 | repeat that process.
| | 02:13 | So, if I go to the Phone Pass and
load that up, in the Phone Pass, the only
| | 02:17 | thing I really need are the phone.
| | 02:20 | I know that I don't need the
Atmosphere or Post Effects.
| | 02:23 | I need the RGBA Image.
| | 02:24 | I don't need the Depth pass so I
can delete all of those things.
| | 02:27 | And the only object buffer
I need is the phone screen,
| | 02:30 | so I can delete all of these guys. So I
can go into the phone and are going the
| | 02:32 | phone and delete, delete,
delete, delete, delete.
| | 02:37 | I am just clicking on these guys one at
a time. And then for the Ambient pass, I
| | 02:41 | do need down that one.
| | 02:42 | I do need Diffuse, Specular, and Reflection.
| | 02:44 | Ambient Occlusion yes,
Atmosphere no, Post Effects no, RGBA yes.
| | 02:50 | Depth and Motion vector I don't need at
all, so I can delete those guys completely.
| | 02:54 | And so that saves me a lot drive
space because I won't be getting image
| | 02:58 | sequences for any of that extra stuff.
| | 03:00 | Now, if I go to the Save, I will go and
navigate and tell it where to put that
| | 03:04 | Phone file, so I click on that.
| | 03:05 | And it remembers the last place I was
looking at, so that's the Beams folder.
| | 03:08 | So I'll go to C4D renders, and I will make a new
subfolder and call it Phone and save it into the Phone.
| | 03:14 | So, there is my Phone pass, and I am
going to record that element. And then do you
| | 03:19 | want to override it? Yes, I do.
| | 03:21 | Now, I will do that same thing for the
Stadium Pass, so let's load up Stadium.
| | 03:26 | And then in the Stadium Pass,
we don't need a phone screen.
| | 03:29 | We do need the crowd.
| | 03:30 | We do need stadium lights. The pulses,
piston, base platform, those are all
| | 03:34 | parts of the stadium, and we do need object
buffers for those, so we want to leave those on.
| | 03:38 | The rest of these image passes I am
going to leave on because those are going
| | 03:41 | to be crucial information that we
will need inside of After Effects.
| | 03:44 | Now, I'll go to the Save dialog and
tell it where to put the files, and so I
| | 03:49 | will navigate out to C4D renders, hit New
Folder, and tell it to render out the Stadium Pass.
| | 03:56 | And so I can see Stadium is going into
the Stadium Folder, and there is my file
| | 04:00 | pathway, and I will click on the Record
Element and then hit Yes to override it.
| | 04:05 | And then last but not least is the
Type Pass, so I will click on Type > Load.
| | 04:10 | Let's twirl open the Multi-Pass
options and the only thing we need,
| | 04:14 | we don't need any of these object
offers because our Type isn't need the object
| | 04:17 | buffers, so we can delete,
delete, delete, delete.
| | 04:20 | We can basically delete all of these
object buffers, and we will leave Ambient,
| | 04:25 | Diffuse, Specular, Reflection, all the
stuff on, except for Atmosphere, and the
| | 04:31 | Depth and Motion vector we don't need either.
| | 04:33 | All we need now is to tell
it where to put those files,
| | 04:37 | so I click on Save, navigate to the
correct folder. And I need to make a folder
| | 04:43 | for that Type, so I will make a
Type folder and then hit Save.
| | 04:47 | And always remember to
re-record your Render Element.
| | 04:51 | Click Record Element, Yes.
| | 04:53 | And now, I'm ready to go,
so I have done my Beams.
| | 04:56 | I have done my Phone.
I have done my Stadium.
| | 04:58 | I have done my Type pass.
| | 04:59 | The Everything ON pass is just for backup.
| | 05:02 | We are not even going to render this pass;
| | 05:03 | I can ignore that for now.
| | 05:04 | So, I've got all my render elements set up.
| | 05:06 | I have optimized them in
order to save drive space.
| | 05:09 | The next step is the batch rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Batch rendering| 00:00 | Now that we have all of our render
elements set up and ready to go, we
| | 00:03 | can finally render.
| | 00:04 | We're going to be doing four separate
renders from four different project files
| | 00:07 | that Render Elements will create for us.
| | 00:09 | Fortunately, CINEMA 4D R12 has a
completely revamped batch render engine that
| | 00:14 | will automate the process so
that we can set it up and walk away.
| | 00:17 | So here in the Chapter1-08-Start file,
and I'm going to go to the plug-ins menu
| | 00:21 | and call up Render Elements.
| | 00:23 | And in the Render Elements window, we
have got a listing of all the elements
| | 00:26 | that we had created in the previous movie.
| | 00:28 | I need to tell Render Elements which
versions of the file I need to save out,
| | 00:32 | so I want to save out the Beams Pass and the
Phone Pass and the Stadium Pass and the Type pass.
| | 00:37 | Now the Render Elements plug-in has
an amazing feature that allows us to
| | 00:42 | generate C4D files based on each of
these passes, and what I have to do is tell
| | 00:47 | it where and how to put those files.
| | 00:50 | I click on this pull down here,
and I've some options here.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to choose Save
Project (One Tex Folder).
| | 00:55 | Now if you're saving to net render,
you would want to do a Save Project.
| | 00:58 | And you could also do Save Files in the
separate folders by themselves, but we
| | 01:02 | want to do for our batch render
process, Save Project into one text folder.
| | 01:06 | And so I will let go off that, and now
I've to tell it to generate the C4D files.
| | 01:10 | And when click Generate C4D files, it's
going to give me this warning, and this
| | 01:14 | warning is perfectly normal.
| | 01:15 | What it says is Render Elements will,
each time you generate files, will
| | 01:19 | overwrite the old files that were there before.
| | 01:20 | So we are just letting you know
that that's what it is going to do.
| | 01:23 | And so I know that, so I'm going to
hit OK, and it's going to ask me where I
| | 01:26 | want to save those files.
| | 01:27 | Now I'm going to go on my exercise
files and in the Exercise Files folder, I'm
| | 01:32 | going to create a new
subfolder, call it batch renders.
| | 01:36 | And now in the Batch Renders folder,
I'm going to tell Render Elements where I
| | 01:41 | want to put that file. So hit Open.
| | 01:43 | And when I do that, render elements
will generate a separate C4D file for
| | 01:47 | each one of those files.
| | 01:48 | Now, it's already done.
| | 01:50 | How long it takes depends on the type
of file you're working on and how big
| | 01:53 | it is, but in this case Render Elements has
already done the process for us, and it's finished.
| | 01:57 | So I'm going to navigate out to the
Finder, and in the Finder, I'm going to go
| | 02:01 | to the Batch Renders folder and open that up.
| | 02:04 | And you can see that I now have a
separate CINEMA 4D file for each one of the
| | 02:08 | render elements, including a text folder
that has the texture that's used in it.
| | 02:11 | And there is just one JPEG
that's being used, the Crowd 2.
| | 02:13 | So now what I can do is go back to
CINEMA 4D and load these into the
| | 02:17 | batch render engine.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to go back to CINEMA 4D
and close Render Elements up, and I can
| | 02:22 | actually close this project file up as well.
| | 02:24 | I don't need that open
anymore, so I'll close that up.
| | 02:27 | And I'm going to go to the Render menu
and go to Render Queue, and in the Render
| | 02:31 | Queue, this is the newly revamped
interface for the Render Queue in CINEMA 4D
| | 02:35 | R12, and it is fantastic.
| | 02:37 | What it allows us to do is to load in
project files, and we'll see a listing of
| | 02:41 | those project files here in the Render Queue.
| | 02:43 | And then we can start those renders and
monitor their progress right from this window.
| | 02:46 | So I'm going to go to the File menu,
open up a job, and so I'll go to my Batch
| | 02:51 | Renders folder, and I'll Start
off by loading in the Beams Pass.
| | 02:55 | So I'll select that and hit Open, and then I'll
repeat that process for each of my other jobs.
| | 03:00 | So I'll grab the Phone Pass, and then
I'll grab this Stadium Pass, and then I'll
| | 03:09 | grab the Type Pass last.
| | 03:14 | So now I've got all four of
my render elements loaded in.
| | 03:16 | Now you'll notice that there is an
error message here, and there is an error
| | 03:20 | notification for us
telling us what the problem is.
| | 03:23 | And in this case, the problem is that
it's got an invalid output multipass path.
| | 03:29 | In a previous movie, when I set up
our render elements for each one of our
| | 03:33 | versions of the file, we set the Render
folder based on a directory structure on
| | 03:38 | the machine that I was currently recording on.
| | 03:40 | Now I've changed things in order to
show you this error message on purpose.
| | 03:43 | If you're working on the project files
at home, your directory structure is not
| | 03:46 | the same as what I used
when I recorded the movies.
| | 03:49 | Now, you need to change the directory
structure, and the cool thing about the
| | 03:53 | Render Queue is that you can change
the directory structure right here inside
| | 03:57 | the Render window without having
to go back to the original files.
| | 04:00 | So the way that we do that is I'm
going to click on the Beams Pass, and down
| | 04:04 | here in the Multi-Pass Image field, it
shows us where the file was going before.
| | 04:09 | You can see that it's going to a user folder
that I don't currently have on this machine.
| | 04:14 | Now all I need to do is to to change
that location, and I can do that right here
| | 04:17 | by clicking on the Save Image button.
| | 04:19 | So when I click on that, it's going to
ask me, where do I want to send those files?
| | 04:23 | And so I'm going to navigate to the
Exercise Files and go to C4D renders, and
| | 04:28 | I'm going to put the beams in the Beams folder.
| | 04:30 | And so you can see now the error message
is gone, and it's queued up and ready to go.
| | 04:34 | So I'm going to repeat that
process for each of the passes.
| | 04:36 | So for the Phone Pass, I'll select it,
click on the Save Image button, and put
| | 04:40 | that into the Phone folder;
| | 04:42 | and for the Stadium Pass, put
that into the Stadium folder;
| | 04:48 | and the Type pass, I'll put
that into the Type folder.
| | 04:51 | You can see now I've changed all those file
locations, and now the queue is ready to go.
| | 04:58 | I've got all my items queued up.
| | 05:00 | They're all checked off, and so
I'm ready to start my render.
| | 05:02 | So I'm going to go to the Jobs menu and
tell it to start rendering, and when do
| | 05:06 | that, I'm now going to get a progress bar.
| | 05:09 | So you can see I've currently got item
number four selected, but that's not the
| | 05:13 | one it's working on.
| | 05:14 | This yellow dot indicates the job is working on.
| | 05:16 | So if I click that, I'll now see a
progress bar for that actual item.
| | 05:21 | And that's the fantastic thing about the
Render Queue is that it's going to work
| | 05:24 | through each of these items one at a time.
| | 05:26 | When the Beams Pass done, it's going to
automatically start on the Phone Pass.
| | 05:31 | And then when the Phone Pass is done, it
will automatically start on the Stadium
| | 05:33 | Pass, and so on, until it
runs out of things to render.
| | 05:36 | Now when the rendering process is
complete, we're going to end up with a folder
| | 05:39 | full of images and the AEC files that
we can import into After Effects, and
| | 05:43 | that's just what we'll do in the next chapter.
| | 05:46 | So as you can see, the Render Queue in
CINEMA 4D R12 is a really amazing addition.
| | 05:51 | It allows us to make excellent use of our time.
| | 05:53 | Instead of having to babysit each render,
we're free to set up a batch and walk
| | 05:57 | away to work on other stuff,
or maybe even just relax.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. After Effects PrepImporting files and organizing an After Effects project| 00:00 | Creating motion graphics is a very
file-intensive process, and even though it goes
| | 00:04 | contrary to most artistic brains, the
sooner you embrace organization of file
| | 00:08 | management, the better your art will be.
| | 00:10 | In this movie, we're going to be
importing all of the files that we had rendered
| | 00:12 | out at the end of the first chapter into
After Effects and organizing them in
| | 00:16 | to folders, so their parts will be easy to find.
| | 00:18 | Now I'm out here in the Finder.
| | 00:20 | If you look, there is our C4D renders
folder. And if you remember from the first
| | 00:23 | chapter, we rendered all of
our files to image sequences.
| | 00:27 | So within each one of these
subfolders is an image sequence, and there are
| | 00:30 | actually multiple image sequences
because of the multi-pass rendering process.
| | 00:34 | And so, for example, if I click inside
the Phone here, you can see that there is
| | 00:38 | a Phone_ambient pass.
| | 00:40 | And if I keep scrubbing down,
you'll see that that's the ao pass, or
| | 00:43 | ambient inclusion pass.
| | 00:44 | And then it keeps on going all the way
down to the very bottom, and at the bottom
| | 00:49 | is a little file called Phone.aec.
And this file is very, very important.
| | 00:54 | This is a file that CINEMA 4D writes
out that allows you to import all of these
| | 00:58 | sequences into After Effects automatically,
| | 01:00 | and give you the position information
for the camera, position information for
| | 01:05 | the lights, and position
information for any null objects that you had
| | 01:09 | identified with external compositing tags.
| | 01:11 | You bring all that into
After Effects with this AEC file.
| | 01:13 | Now, you'll need the special
import plug-in in order to import this.
| | 01:17 | And you can actually find out more
information about this by watching the
| | 01:20 | Essential Training for CINEMA 4D, or
watching the After Effects Integration
| | 01:24 | series by Chris Meyer.
| | 01:25 | We'll be using these renders in After
Effects for the rest of the course, so
| | 01:28 | it's very important to keep
them in the C4D renders folder.
| | 01:31 | Let's move over to After Effects now,
and I've got After Effects open in the
| | 01:34 | background, so I'll just click into it.
| | 01:35 | And we're going to start the import
process. But before we do, we want to open
| | 01:38 | up a special template file.
| | 01:40 | So I want to go to File > Open, and in the
ch02 Exercise Files, there's a ch02-01-start.
| | 01:46 | And when I hit Open, it's
going to give me a message here.
| | 01:49 | This file was actually created in
an earlier version of After Effects,
| | 01:53 | and so it's telling me that,
and gives me that warning right now.
| | 01:55 | I actually created this
file in CS3 a long time ago.
| | 01:58 | This is a file format that
I used to organize my files,
| | 02:02 | and it's nothing special.
| | 02:04 | It's just an After Effects project file.
| | 02:05 | No special filters or anything
like that inside of it. It's just an
| | 02:08 | organization of folders.
| | 02:09 | So when I hit OK, it's going to open that up.
| | 02:12 | I will now have a file folder
structure here that makes things a lot easier to
| | 02:17 | find in the project window.
| | 02:19 | So you can see there is a folder for
production elements, like Illustrator files
| | 02:22 | and Photoshop layers, and for video as well:
| | 02:25 | video that comes from CINEMA 4D renders,
FPO video, High Res video, Pre Renders.
| | 02:30 | If I render something out of After
Effects that I want to bring back in, I can
| | 02:32 | put it in this folder.
| | 02:33 | So, basically there is a folder for
every type of file that you might be working
| | 02:38 | with inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:39 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to import our CINEMA 4D renders and
| | 02:42 | then organize them into these folders where
they are easy to find later on when we need them.
| | 02:46 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go to the File menu and do an import.
| | 02:51 | And so if go up to File > Import and do
File, and I'll navigate to the Exercise
| | 02:56 | Files, the C4D renders, and I'm
going to start off with the Beams.
| | 03:00 | And if I click on Beams, down here at
the very bottom of the file structure is
| | 03:05 | something called Beams.aec.
| | 03:06 | And this AEC file is the file that
CINEMA 4D writes out that allows you to
| | 03:10 | import special information into
After Effects that really enables the
| | 03:14 | integration between CINEMA 4D and After Effects.
| | 03:16 | And so what we want to do is import this file.
| | 03:19 | Now if yours is grayed out, that means
that you don't have the file plug-in
| | 03:23 | information correctly
installed in After Effects.
| | 03:25 | And I'm going to show you where on
the lynda.com Training Library to find a
| | 03:28 | movie that shows you just what you need to do.
| | 03:31 | So I'm going to tab over here to Safari,
and in Safari, I'm looking at the CINEMA
| | 03:34 | 4D R12 Essential Training.
| | 03:36 | So if you scroll down to "3D Animation Workflow:
| | 03:39 | Compositing in After Effects," which is
Chapter 11, and the "Importing elements in
| | 03:43 | the After Effects" movie that will show
you exactly the information that you need
| | 03:46 | to know to be able to import this AEC
file correctly into After Effects.
| | 03:51 | Now, if you already have the plug-in
installed correctly and you're ready to go,
| | 03:54 | let's get back to After Effects
and open up that Beams.aec file.
| | 03:58 | Now, when I click on Beams.aec and hit
Open, it's going to think about it for
| | 04:02 | just a moment, and I'm going to now
have in my project file, some solids.
| | 04:06 | So it already made a solid
for me in the Solids folder,
| | 04:09 | and I have the Beams Start Pass.
And depending on what my Render Settings
| | 04:13 | were, I may have also a folder called special
passes, and we'll see that in the next import.
| | 04:17 | What I want to do is take this folder and put
it into the Video subfolder, in Cinema Imports.
| | 04:21 | And so I am going to scrub that down right
there and take this and drag it right into there.
| | 04:25 | And so now I know that that's a
CINEMA 4D render and the contents of that
| | 04:30 | came from CINEMA 4D.
| | 04:31 | So it's very easy to find that
information when I need to, because we're going
| | 04:34 | to end up with a quite a few files
inside of our After Effects project window,
| | 04:37 | and keeping them organized
like this is really important.
| | 04:40 | So let's import the next element now.
| | 04:41 | So I am going to go to File > Import >
File, and I'll navigate to the Phone
| | 04:46 | folder, scrub all the way down,
grab Phone.aec, and hit Open.
| | 04:50 | This is going to take just a little bit
longer, because there is more passes, and
| | 04:53 | once it's done importing, you'll see
that I do in fact have a Special Passes
| | 04:56 | folder, and then there is the Phone pass.c4d.
| | 04:59 | What I want to do is take the Special Passes
and drag them in before I do anything else;
| | 05:03 | that way I know this Special Passes
folder actually goes with the Phone pass.
| | 05:07 | And if you twirl it open, you will see
that there is the ambient inclusion pass,
| | 05:10 | there is the object buffer, and also the
Phone-rgba, which we'll be using in our
| | 05:14 | compositing process.
| | 05:15 | So it's really important to keep
the Special Passes with the Phone.
| | 05:18 | Then I'll take the entire Phone folder
and put it into the Cinema Imports, and
| | 05:23 | let's repeat that process for the next pass.
| | 05:26 | I'll go to Stadium, and this is going to
take a little bit of time because there
| | 05:31 | is quite a few more passes. I'll hit Open.
| | 05:35 | How long this import takes depends
entirely on the speed of your machine, but
| | 05:39 | also on how many elements you have inside
of your actual AEC file. So there it is.
| | 05:44 | It's imported. Let me twirl this closed, and
get down here and find the actual folders. And so
| | 05:47 | there is the Special Passes folder.
| | 05:49 | So the very first thing I do is move
that Special Passes right up into the
| | 05:52 | Stadium Pass folder.
| | 05:54 | And then you can see, there is all my
elements, take that and move it up into the
| | 05:58 | Cinema Imports folder.
| | 06:00 | And let's do the last pass, which is
the Type, and import that. There we go.
| | 06:08 | Let's twirl that closed and go down to
the Special Passes, move them in there, then
| | 06:12 | I take the whole Type folder and move
it right up into the Cinema Imports.
| | 06:16 | So just to give an idea of what's
inside of these folders, if I open up this
| | 06:19 | composition, this composition is
now called ch01-Start Stadium Pass.
| | 06:24 | It's based on the file name that was
used when we actually rendered out the file.
| | 06:28 | And so if I double-click on
that, I now can see a composition.
| | 06:32 | I'll make this window a little bit
larger for the timeline, so I can see
| | 06:35 | the layers down here.
| | 06:36 | And you can see there is this Stadium_
reflection, ambient, specular, and diffuse
| | 06:40 | passes and all these passes add up to
the final rendered image that I can see
| | 06:44 | here inside the After
Effects Composition window.
| | 06:47 | So those are all the major
parts we're going to need for now.
| | 06:49 | The most important thing to remember
is that it is crucial that you organize
| | 06:52 | your files as you go. Don't put it off.
| | 06:54 | Keeping your files organized will
make your workflow much, much smoother.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a 3D object precomp| 00:00 | Before we can begin making our magic
here in After Effects, we need to prepare
| | 00:03 | each of the layers we're going
to need in the final composition.
| | 00:06 | We're going to start off with the phone.
| | 00:07 | Now, this may seem like a
boring step in the process, but it's
| | 00:10 | really foundational.
| | 00:12 | Understanding how to set up
correct pre-comps and building the right
| | 00:15 | pre-comps for just the right situation
means that when you get into the final
| | 00:20 | compositing process you're going to
have all of the elements that you need
| | 00:22 | right there at hand.
| | 00:24 | It really is a key to sort of setting
up a smooth workflow for you all the way
| | 00:29 | through After Effects, so
you get to the final result.
| | 00:31 | So what I'm going to do here in the
file is I'm going to go into the Video
| | 00:35 | folder, and in my Phone Pass folder,
I've got this pre-comp, and this is the
| | 00:41 | pre-comp that was imported
when we imported the AEC file.
| | 00:44 | Now I could just use this composition
originally, but I don't like to do that.
| | 00:48 | I always like to keep a copy of it on hand.
| | 00:50 | So I'm going to make a copy by hitting
Command+D or Ctrl+D on the keyboard, and
| | 00:53 | I'm going to move that into the
Pre-COMP's folder. Let's scrub down and go to
| | 00:57 | the Pre-COMP's and now in the
Pre-COMP's folder I'm going to change the name of
| | 01:02 | this and call it Phone Pass Pre.
| | 01:05 | And I'll open up the Phone Pass
pre-comp and you can see this is our
| | 01:09 | pre-comp, and we've got our Phone Pass,
and it's over black right now. And we
| | 01:13 | don't want this black here, but this
black as a result of the multi-pass
| | 01:17 | compositing process.
| | 01:18 | So we need to be able to eliminate this
back, but we need an alpha channel for
| | 01:22 | the phone to do that. And so
fortunately for us, when we set up our render from
| | 01:25 | CINEMA 4D, we did the RGBA Pass, which gives
us the complete phone with an alpha channel.
| | 01:31 | So if I go back into the Special Passes
folder in the Phone subfolder, you can
| | 01:36 | see there is a Phone_rgba.psd sequence
here. And if I bring that in--and I will
| | 01:41 | just isolate it real quick
by hitting the Solo button--
| | 01:43 | and you can see that with the
transparency active, I can now see that I've got
| | 01:48 | an alpha channel. So what I want to do
is have this alpha channel cut right
| | 01:51 | down through all this black,
and there is a really great feature in After
| | 01:56 | Effects called Stencil Alpha.
| | 01:57 | It's one of the blending modes, and if
I click on the Modes pulldown and scrub
| | 02:01 | all the way down to the bottom
and set this to be Stencil Alpha,
| | 02:04 | when I do that, it's going to
chop away all of that black stuff.
| | 02:08 | Now I don't see the phone anymore.
All I'm seeing is the result of the alpha
| | 02:11 | channel stenciling out all of that
extra information for me, and so that's a
| | 02:15 | really important process.
| | 02:16 | Now when I clicked on this, I just
noticed something very important about the
| | 02:20 | RGBA Pass, and that's in the
footage summary information up here.
| | 02:23 | It's showing me that it's millions of
colors but pre-multiplied, and I know that
| | 02:27 | for sure when I rendered it from CINEMA 4D
I rendered it with a straight Alpha channel.
| | 02:31 | And this happens sometimes.
| | 02:32 | You get confused about whether or not
you meant to have it as pre-multiplied or
| | 02:35 | straight Alpha channels.
| | 02:36 | You have to really watch out for this.
| | 02:38 | And so I'm going to right-click on this
Phone RGBA Pass, and I'm going to go to
| | 02:42 | Interpret Footage > Main, and in the
main footage interpretation dialog, I'm
| | 02:46 | going top change it from Pre-multiplied
to Straight. And I will just hit Enter
| | 02:49 | on the Keyboard, and that's going
to get rid of that screen for me.
| | 02:52 | And now I can see that it's set to be
straight alpha, and that's going to make
| | 02:55 | things a lot smoother for me down the road.
| | 02:57 | Now those may seem like basic steps
that we just went through, but once again,
| | 03:01 | this process of building this pre-comp
is foundational because we're going to
| | 03:05 | be building on top of this Phone Pass
from here on out to make our phone really
| | 03:09 | sit in the stadium, so having
this pre-comp built is going to make that
| | 03:13 | process a lot easier.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Attaching a video layer to a 3D object| 00:00 | Our phone compositing process
illustrates a really important concept inside of
| | 00:04 | After Effects, and that's the idea
that you can have a 2D element in After
| | 00:08 | Effects that sticks to a 3D render from
CINEMA 4D. And in this movie, we're going
| | 00:12 | to be doing just that.
| | 00:13 | We're going to take a piece of footage,
and we're going to put it inside of
| | 00:15 | pre-comp and stick it onto
the front of our phone screen.
| | 00:18 | So let's start off by importing
a piece of video that we can use.
| | 00:21 | First, I'll start off by
just cleaning up this window here.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to close up these folders,
and actually, I'll reopen the Video folder.
| | 00:27 | And in the Video folder, I'm
going to select the High Res folder.
| | 00:31 | When I import this piece of footage now,
it's going to go right into that High
| | 00:33 | Res folder for me, so I don't
have to organize it later.
| | 00:36 | So I'll go to the File menu, do Import > File.
| | 00:40 | I'm inside of the Exercise Files in
the Video_Assets folder. And if I select
| | 00:44 | this Lake Tahoe clip, and that's a
snowboarder going over jump and I hit Open,
| | 00:48 | it's going to import that file.
| | 00:50 | Now what I want to do is I want to get
this piece of footage into a pre-comp
| | 00:53 | that matches my final project size,
and so I need to make that comp first, and
| | 00:57 | so I'm going to scrub down.
| | 00:58 | I'll select the Pre-COMP's folder,
and I'm going to do that so that when I make
| | 01:02 | this new composition, it goes right
into that Pre-COMP's folder for me.
| | 01:05 | So if I click on the Create New
Composition button, and I'm going to call this
| | 01:10 | one Phone Screen PRE. And the Phone
Screen PRE, I want to make it 960 x 540, 30
| | 01:17 | frames per second,
and I'll make it 5 seconds long.
| | 01:19 | So my frame rate, my size, all match
my finished composition size, and that's
| | 01:24 | very important in this case.
| | 01:25 | So I'm going to hit OK here, and you
can see my Phone Screen pre-comp went
| | 01:29 | right into that Pre-COMP's folder.
And so now I take this, and I want to get
| | 01:33 | it into the Phone Pass Pre,
| | 01:34 | so let's open up that Phone Pass Pre.
| | 01:36 | I'll double-click on that guy.
| | 01:37 | Before I put this phone in the Phone Pass
pre-comp, I need to add the video to that pre-comp.
| | 01:42 | So I'll click back here on this tab,
and I'm going to drag the Lake Tahoe clip
| | 01:46 | right into this folder. And you
can see it's a little bit larger.
| | 01:49 | That's because this clip is 1280 x 720.
| | 01:50 | So I'm going to hit S on the keyboard
to reveal the scale, and I'm going to
| | 01:54 | scale this down. And I don't want
to make it exactly the same size;
| | 01:58 | I'll just make it just a hair larger, so that
there is no artifacts around the edge of the frame.
| | 02:02 | So right about 76% on the Scale.
| | 02:04 | So now what I might do is get this
pre-comp into our Phone Pass pre-comp, and
| | 02:09 | so I'll click on that, and I'll drag the
Phone Screen PRE right into the composition.
| | 02:14 | It's going to come in as a 2D layer.
| | 02:15 | Now, what I want to have is this 2D
layer stuck onto my 3D phone, and so I need
| | 02:19 | to first make this a 3D layer.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to click the 3D layer
Switch here, and when I do that, my layer
| | 02:26 | jumps out of the way.
| | 02:27 | That's because now it's honoring the
3D space that is being set up by our
| | 02:31 | camera. And so I'll need to have this
3D layer now stick to the front of phone.
| | 02:36 | Because of After Effects and CINEMA
4D's really tight integration, I have this
| | 02:39 | awesome null here called Phone Screen.
And this null sticks right to the front
| | 02:43 | of my phone, and so I want
this layer to stick to that,
| | 02:45 | so all I need to do is parent them up.
| | 02:47 | So if I take my Phone Screen and use the
parenting pick whip and parent it right
| | 02:51 | to the Phone Screen null object,
it looks like nothing has changed.
| | 02:55 | But when I hit P for Position, this
Position information is now relative to that null.
| | 03:00 | So if I zero it out--and I'll just put
in 0, 0, 0--it now jumps right to the
| | 03:06 | position of the Phone Screen,
and that's really, really important,
| | 03:10 | the idea that information is relative and
it makes this whole process a lot easier.
| | 03:15 | The first thing you'll notice about
our video is that it's really dark.
| | 03:17 | The reason that it's dark is because
the lights that came in from CINEMA 4D are
| | 03:22 | actually affecting this 3D layer.
| | 03:23 | We're not going to need that
for our compositing process,
| | 03:26 | so I'm going to delete those lights out
of the scene completely, and you can see
| | 03:28 | our video now returns back
to its normal brightness.
| | 03:32 | Next thing I want to do is I want to
size it up a little bit better, and first,
| | 03:36 | I'm going to zoom in on my
comp by hitting the Period button.
| | 03:40 | That's going to blow my comp up a little better.
| | 03:42 | I'm going to enlarge the window as well.
And now I'll select my Phone Screen PRE
| | 03:46 | and hit S on the keyboard
and just Scale it down.
| | 03:48 | When I do that, you can see that it's
not exactly centered up on the phone, and
| | 03:52 | that's because the anchor point for
our null object is actually down here at
| | 03:55 | the bottom-left corner.
| | 03:57 | So what I'm going to do is take the
Phone Screen and go back to the position
| | 04:00 | information and move it 50 units,
| | 04:02 | 50 x 50 on X and Y.
| | 04:04 | One thing you'll notice about the
screen video is that it's offset from
| | 04:09 | there, and you can see that it's
actually at the bottom-left corner of that
| | 04:12 | null object. And that null object, I
happen to know from experience that when
| | 04:15 | you bring coming from CINEMA 4D, the
anchor point for that null object is
| | 04:19 | actually at the bottom-left.
| | 04:20 | But if you move your attached Video
layer 50 units on X and Y, then it'll jump
| | 04:26 | right to the center, and that's a really
handy tip, and that makes the centering-
| | 04:29 | up process a lot easier.
| | 04:30 | So now what I need to do is to
scale it down a little bit more.
| | 04:32 | But before I do that, I
want to chop off the edges.
| | 04:35 | Right now, my phone screen fill is a lot
larger than the phone, and I want it to
| | 04:38 | able to see inside the phone before I
start playing around with the position.
| | 04:40 | So I'm going to go into my Video >
Cinema4D Imports, into the Phone Special
| | 04:46 | Passes folder, and grab the object buffer.
| | 04:48 | This object buffer was generated by
CINEMA 4D, and what it does is give me an
| | 04:52 | alpha channel just for the screen.
And when I drag this in here, you'll see.
| | 04:55 | I now have this black-and-white layer
| | 04:57 | that's exactly the same shape as
the screen on the phone--not the whole
| | 05:00 | phone, just the screen.
| | 05:01 | So if I go to my Switches and mode,
switch them over, and I set this to be a
| | 05:04 | track matte for my layer,
| | 05:06 | I'll set it to be Luma Matte Phone_Object_
1, it's now chopping off my video. And if I
| | 05:11 | select the Phone Screen, you could
see that the Phone Screen is now being
| | 05:14 | chopped off by the alpha channel, so
the transform handles show me where the
| | 05:17 | outer boundary of my Video layer is.
| | 05:19 | So let's zoom in a little bit closer
now and take a look at the screen up close
| | 05:23 | so we can get it positioned better.
| | 05:25 | I'm going to scrub forward in time
to spot where the phone starts to move
| | 05:28 | towards the camera, and right about here.
| | 05:32 | So I'm just on to next-to-the-last
frame, and I could see now my phone screen
| | 05:36 | fill is sort of offset a little bit.
| | 05:38 | So I'm going to use the X handle now
and move it over to the left just a bit.
| | 05:42 | Let's move it over right about here.
| | 05:44 | What I'm looking at is the
transform handles, and I'm watching the space
| | 05:48 | between this transform handle and the
edge, and this transform handle and the
| | 05:51 | edge, and by sliding it over just a bit.
And I'm going to now adjust the Scale
| | 05:57 | just a little bit more,
| | 05:58 | so I'll hit S on the keyboard to bring
up the Scale and bring it down in
| | 06:01 | size by scrubbing to the left. And that's too
small, and 24 is still just a hair too small.
| | 06:07 | I am going to make it 24.5. So now, if I
scrub through the video, you can see that
| | 06:14 | the phone video is sticking right to it
and it's perfect. And actually, when the
| | 06:18 | phone turns around, you can see the
phone contents actually disappear with that
| | 06:22 | object buffer, and that's one of the
magical things about this process is that
| | 06:25 | phone video sticks right to it
and looks just like it's always been there.
| | 06:29 | It's missing a couple of important
pieces though, and that's the reflections
| | 06:33 | that are on the phone screen.
| | 06:35 | In the video, we don't want the phone
contents to actually come on until about
| | 06:38 | four seconds into the animation,
| | 06:39 | so I'm going to move my time slider to a
4-second mark, and then at the 4-second
| | 06:44 | mark, I'm going to take the Phone
Screen PRE, and I'm going to move its start
| | 06:48 | point right over to 4 seconds.
| | 06:50 | I will hold down the Shift key so
that it snaps right into position.
| | 06:53 | And now that it's snapped into position,
I want to get the reflections that are
| | 06:57 | on the phone screen to
show up on top of my video.
| | 07:00 | So in order to do that, I'm going to
duplicate some layers, and I'm going to
| | 07:04 | enlarge my screen just a little bit here.
And I'm going to take this Reflection
| | 07:07 | Pass and just hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on
the keyboard and bring it up to the top
| | 07:11 | of the stack, and now you can
see there is a faint line there.
| | 07:14 | I'm going to scrub forward in time on the video.
| | 07:16 | There we go. And you can see there are some
reflections here on top of the phone screen.
| | 07:21 | They're a little bit hard to see,
but they are there, and it's a very subtle
| | 07:24 | effect, but it's important for making the
phone screen look like it's stuck into the phone.
| | 07:28 | So what I want to do is take this
Reflection Pass now and chop it off.
| | 07:32 | You can see I lost my
alpha channel when I did that.
| | 07:34 | That's because this Reflection Pass
doesn't have an alpha built in, and now it's
| | 07:37 | above my stencil alpha layer.
| | 07:39 | So what I need to do is take this
Phone_reflection pass and use the object
| | 07:43 | buffer to matte it out, the
same way I did for the screen.
| | 07:46 | So if I duplicate the object buffer and
move it up top, and if I take the Track
| | 07:50 | Matte settings for that and set it to
be Luma Matte for the phone object, and
| | 07:54 | now it's going to chop that reflection out.
| | 07:55 | You can see there is a
subtle reflection on top of there.
| | 07:58 | If I turn it off and on, it
becomes really easy to see.
| | 08:02 | This phone set up is a crucial
part of our entire production process.
| | 08:05 | What it allows us to do is to stick a
piece of video on the phone screen and
| | 08:09 | then change it out at will without
having to go back to After Effects.
| | 08:13 | CINEMA 4D's and After Effect's tight
integration together really makes this
| | 08:16 | process a lot easier.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Compositing 3D text| 00:00 | Our Type Pass is going to
be very simple to set up.
| | 00:03 | The great thing about having it as a
separate pass is that if we decide later
| | 00:06 | on we need it to say something different, then
it's really simple to change the type out.
| | 00:10 | We'll only need to render that type
pass out and not the whole stadium, and
| | 00:13 | that's really what this is about is
creating versatility in your composition
| | 00:17 | inside of After Effects.
| | 00:18 | Very often, you'll get an
assignment and the title for the job will
| | 00:22 | change halfway through.
| | 00:23 | And by building your piece in a modular
way like this, it makes it really easy
| | 00:28 | to change that type out.
| | 00:29 | You can say, hey, no problem, I'll
change the type out, and you can do it really
| | 00:32 | quickly without having to go all the
way back to CINEMA 4D and rendering out
| | 00:36 | every single piece of your project again.
| | 00:37 | You can only render the
type, and you'll be good to go.
| | 00:39 | I am going to start off in this file by
going into the Video folder and in the
| | 00:43 | CINEMA 4D Imports, I'm going into the
Type Pass. I've got this composition here
| | 00:47 | called the ch01-08-Start Type pass.c4d.
| | 00:50 | I am going to duplicate this and
move it into my Pre-COMP's folder.
| | 00:53 | So I'll hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on the
keyboard, and I'm going to scrub down, move
| | 00:58 | that into the Pre-COMP's folder.
| | 01:00 | Let's twirl that open now. And I'm going to
change the name on this and call it Type Pass Pre.
| | 01:07 | And in the Type Pass pre-comp, I've got
the same issue that I had with my phone
| | 01:12 | in that my video is showing up over black.
| | 01:16 | And that's because the compositing
layers inside of After Effects don't have the
| | 01:19 | alpha channel built into them.
| | 01:20 | And so once again, we've actually rendered that
alpha channel out in the form of the RGBA pass.
| | 01:26 | So if I go back into my type subfolder
here, I can look in the Special Passes,
| | 01:31 | and there is my Type_rgba.
| | 01:32 | So I'm going to drag that into the
composition and put it at the very top, and
| | 01:36 | I'm going to change the blending mode
to Stencil Alpha. So way down here at the
| | 01:40 | bottom is Stencil Alpha.
| | 01:41 | And when I do that, you can see that
with my Transparency Preview I can now
| | 01:46 | see the transparency.
| | 01:47 | I'm cutting out that type. I can
composite together with the phone and put them
| | 01:51 | on top of the stadium in my main composition.
| | 01:53 | Now, the nice thing about this
arrangement, aside from being able to change out at
| | 01:57 | will without affecting the rest of the
stadium, is that I can also affect the
| | 02:00 | intensity of different elements within the type.
| | 02:02 | Let's say, for example, I wanted
to have my type be more reflective.
| | 02:05 | I can actually take this
Reflection Pass and just duplicate it.
| | 02:09 | I hit Command+D or Ctrl+D,
and my type just got more reflective.
| | 02:13 | We can see I'd see more reflections in there.
| | 02:15 | Let me scrub down, and I'll make
this just a little bit larger.
| | 02:18 | We're zoomed in pretty close.
| | 02:19 | That's why the edges are a little bit
fuzzy, but if I turn this Type_reflection
| | 02:23 | off and on, you can see, just by
duplicating that, I've made my type more
| | 02:27 | reflective, and I've done that
without having to go back to CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:32 | And that's really an illustration, a
very simple illustration, of the awesome
| | 02:35 | power of this compositing process.
| | 02:37 | Keeping our type as a separate pass
inside its own pre-comp makes all this work
| | 02:41 | in After Effects very flexible.
| | 02:43 | This simple step will save you if
your client ever comes back with
| | 02:45 | a last-minute change.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Compositing a dynamic 3D background| 00:00 | The Stadium Pass is going to be broken
up into two parts: the full stadium and
| | 00:04 | then just the base that the phone rises out of.
| | 00:07 | What this gives us the ability to do
is control the intensity of effects that
| | 00:10 | are going to be based on the
platform that the phone rises out of.
| | 00:13 | Now, the first step in this process
is going to be isolating the stadium,
| | 00:17 | and so let's go into the Video folder
and go into the Stadium Pass subfolder and
| | 00:22 | grab this composition, and we're going
to move it into the Pre-COMP's folder.
| | 00:26 | Before I do that, I want to duplicate it
| | 00:27 | so I have myself a copy to go back to.
| | 00:29 | So I hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on the
keyboard, and let's drag this down now into
| | 00:33 | the Pre-COMP's folder.
| | 00:34 | And in the Pre-COMP's folder, I'm
going to name this Stadium Pass Pre.
| | 00:41 | Now the Stadium Pass Pre, if I open that up,
that has all of our stadium elements in it.
| | 00:46 | Right now, the stadium element has
these lights in it, and I don't want these
| | 00:50 | lights to be visible right now.
| | 00:51 | We're going to be using a different
layer in our final compositing process to
| | 00:55 | make the stadium lights, so what
I want to do is just cut them out.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to use an object buffer to
cut a hole in this Stadium Pass, so that
| | 01:03 | I don't see these lights anymore.
| | 01:04 | I am only going to see transparency back there.
| | 01:06 | So if I go into the Stadium Special
Passes folder, so I am going to grab object
| | 01:12 | buffer number 3 and drag it
into the Stadium Pass Pre.
| | 01:16 | When I do that, you could see I have
this black-and-white layer now that is
| | 01:18 | just the stadium lights.
| | 01:20 | What I want to be able to do is to
have this light-and-dark layer cut a hole
| | 01:25 | in everything below it, and there is
a special blending mode for that and
| | 01:27 | that's Silhouette Luma.
| | 01:28 | And so if I go down into the blending
modes and go all the way to the bottom, and
| | 01:33 | there is Silhouette Luma.
| | 01:35 | When I do that, I've now cut a hole in
this layer, and you are probably thinking,
| | 01:38 | well, what's the big deal?
| | 01:39 | The big deal is we're going to be
generating glows based on the light pieces of
| | 01:43 | information inside this render.
| | 01:45 | And those stadium lights were the
brightest thing in the whole render, and so my
| | 01:49 | glows would have been based on
those stadium lights primarily.
| | 01:53 | By covering these guys up like that, it
makes it easier to pull a glow based on
| | 01:57 | just these gray values that are
the parts joining up the stadium.
| | 02:01 | So that's going to make it a lot easier.
| | 02:03 | The next thing we want to do is to
isolate the base, so that we can have
| | 02:06 | control over it for our explosion
effect that we're going to be creating when
| | 02:10 | the phone rises up out of it.
| | 02:11 | So if I go back now into my Pre-COMP's,
and I'm going to take the Stadium Pass
| | 02:16 | Pre, and I'm going to drag it
onto a new composition button,
| | 02:20 | that gives me a copy of it
that's already pre-comped together.
| | 02:23 | And what I'm going to do is I'm going to
name this copy and call it Stadium Base Pre.
| | 02:30 | Now the Stadium Base is just going to
be the base that the phone rises out of.
| | 02:35 | So I am going to scrub over here to
the hero position, where the phone is
| | 02:39 | prominent in the screen.
| | 02:40 | We just want this little bit here, and
we have an object buffer for that entire
| | 02:43 | element, and so I'm going to
grab object offer number 6.
| | 02:46 | And if I go back into the Stadium
Special Passes and grab object buffer 6 and
| | 02:51 | drag that down in here, you can see
that that's the stadium base right there.
| | 02:56 | What I want to be able to do is to
isolate the stadium base so that we can
| | 02:59 | control the effects on it
when the phone emerges out of it.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to use this object buffer
as a luma matte for the Stadium Pass Pre.
| | 03:07 | So I am going to click and hold on
Track Matte and set it to be a Luma
| | 03:09 | Matte Stadium_object_6.
| | 03:11 | When I do that, that gives me
just the stadium base all by itself.
| | 03:15 | The next thing I want to do is I want
to adjust the contrast of it so that it
| | 03:19 | has much brighter verticals on there.
| | 03:21 | So I'm going to select the Stadium Pass Pre.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to go to the Effects >
Color Correction > Levels.
| | 03:28 | And in the Levels effect--I am going to
enlarge this window a little bit here--
| | 03:31 | I'm going to take it and push the
contrast of it by bringing the highlights
| | 03:35 | over here to the left just a bit, and I'll push
the midtones just to the left a little bit more.
| | 03:41 | What you can see that does for me is
it gives me much brighter verticals.
| | 03:44 | If I turn the Levels effect off and on,
I am going to zoom in on that so you can
| | 03:48 | see what's happening.
| | 03:49 | Let me bring that up into full-screen here.
| | 03:51 | So that's with the Levels adjustment.
| | 03:52 | That's without the Levels adjustment.
| | 03:54 | And remember, we're going to be using
this base to generate a very special glow
| | 03:58 | for our phone, and having this high
contrast version of it will make generating
| | 04:01 | that glow a lot easier.
| | 04:03 | I'm going to just do one last thing and
that's push the blacks just a little bit more.
| | 04:07 | I don't really want all that noise in
between the columns here. By pushing the
| | 04:10 | blacks over just a little bit, that helps to
isolate that stuff just a little bit more.
| | 04:14 | There we go. Put it right on up there.
| | 04:17 | Now that we've got all the pieces
isolated, the process of adding glows to the
| | 04:20 | stadium is going to be a lot more simple.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting markers for major events| 00:00 | Understanding when things are supposed
to happen is the most important part of
| | 00:03 | animation compositing.
| | 00:05 | Not only are you concerned about what a
signal frame looks like, but you are also
| | 00:09 | worried about the order in which things happen.
| | 00:11 | In this movie, we're going to make
special event markers in our composition that
| | 00:14 | will be a visual cue as to when
important effects are supposed to occur.
| | 00:18 | Now, I am here in CINEMA 4D for a reason.
| | 00:19 | CINEMA 4D holds the key to all the
information that we're going to need in
| | 00:23 | After Effects, and that's in the form of the
moment in time when a particular event happens.
| | 00:27 | And so if I scrub backwards in time,
the things that I am worried about are
| | 00:31 | events like when does the phone appear,
when does the camera start to move, when
| | 00:35 | does the phone start to move towards the screen?
| | 00:37 | And I'm going to make special notations
on a piece of paper of when those events
| | 00:41 | occur based on their frame number,
and then I am going to use that information
| | 00:44 | in After Effects to create event markers.
| | 00:46 | So, for example, I am going to scrub
through backwards in time to the moment
| | 00:50 | where I first see that phone
come up out of the platform.
| | 00:52 | So if I scrub backwards in time to
around frame 32, you can see, that's where the
| | 00:58 | phone first peeks up out of the platform.
| | 01:00 | So I write down 'frame 32,
phone appears' on a piece of paper.
| | 01:05 | I'll repeat that process for
each of the special events.
| | 01:08 | Now, I am not going through
that portion here in CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:10 | That's pretty self-explanatory.
| | 01:12 | What I want to do now is take that
information that I've already written
| | 01:15 | down ahead of time, and
| | 01:16 | we're going to go in After
Effects now and make our markers.
| | 01:18 | So I am just going to Command+Tab
over to the After Effects window.
| | 01:22 | And here inside of After Effects, I
need to have a composition to work in.
| | 01:26 | Up until this point, we've been working
with just pre-comps, and I now need the
| | 01:29 | final composition that I am going to
be using for all of my compositing for
| | 01:33 | this entire animation.
| | 01:34 | So I'm going to click on the Working
COMP's folder and click the New Comp's
| | 01:39 | button. The reason I clicked on the
Working COMP's folder first is so that this
| | 01:42 | composition I create will
automatically go right into that folder.
| | 01:46 | So I click on this, and I am going to
call this MMM-001--that stands for Mobile
| | 01:52 | Media Moment and the first version, 001.
| | 01:55 | So it's 960 x 540, 30 frames a second
and 5 seconds long. That's exactly the
| | 01:59 | right size for the composition, so I'll hit OK.
| | 02:01 | Inside this MMM-001 comp,
I need to bring in all of my passes.
| | 02:06 | Now I am going to open up the Pre
COMP's folder, and I'll start off with the
| | 02:09 | Stadium Pass and bring that in,
and I'll need the Phone Pass.
| | 02:12 | Now, be careful; don't
accidentally grab the Phone Screen PRE comp.
| | 02:16 | We want the actual Phone Pass Pre composition.
| | 02:19 | That's the actual phone;
| | 02:20 | the Phone Screen PRE is the Fill
that goes inside the phone's screen.
| | 02:23 | So I bring that in and put it right
above the Stadium, and I'll do the same
| | 02:27 | thing for the Type now.
| | 02:29 | And if I scrub forward in time, you
can see that--let's go back to the hero.
| | 02:33 | Now, I am a little bit too close in.
I'll hit the Comma key on the keyboard to
| | 02:36 | bring this up to a more reasonable size.
| | 02:39 | Now I can see, I've got all my layers in there.
| | 02:41 | Now what I need to do is to go to the
moment in time when my events occur,
| | 02:46 | but the timeline is currently set
to show timecode and not frames.
| | 02:50 | CINEMA 4D, I was working in frames and
here it's timecode, so what I want to do
| | 02:53 | is switch After Effects over to a
timecode base, and so I am going to go to the
| | 02:57 | File menu, and way at the very
bottom is the Project Settings.
| | 03:02 | And when I grab the Project Settings,
I now see the settings for the entire
| | 03:06 | project, and what I want to do is switch
the Display Style for the Timecode from
| | 03:10 | Timecode Base to Frames.
| | 03:12 | So when I click that, I'll just hit
Enter on the keyboard to accept this change,
| | 03:16 | and you could see now I'm seeing the
timeline displayed in frames here, and this
| | 03:21 | will match the notations I
made from my CINEMA 4D file.
| | 03:24 | So the major moments are the phone
appearing at frame 32. So if I go to frame
| | 03:30 | 32, I can click on this
and hit 32 on the keyboard.
| | 03:33 | I can go over here to the right
side of the timeline and I'll drag a
| | 03:37 | marker over. And if I hold the Shift key
down, it will snap right to that moment in time.
| | 03:43 | Now, I want to name this marker.
| | 03:44 | I am going to double-click on
it and call it 'Phone' and hit OK.
| | 03:50 | And so now this Phone marker tells me
that at that moment in time the phone
| | 03:54 | comes up out of the platform.
| | 03:56 | Now, I am going to repeat this
process for the camera move, and the camera
| | 03:59 | actually jumps back in response to
the explosion from the phone, and that's
| | 04:03 | going to need to happen at frame 38.
| | 04:05 | First, navigate to frame 38, and then
I'm going to grab the marker, I'll hold
| | 04:10 | down the Shift key, and let it snap
right there, and then I'll double-click on
| | 04:13 | that marker, Camera Shake.
| | 04:17 | I'll hit OK, and there is my Camera Shake marker.
| | 04:19 | The next moment I'm really concerned about
is when the type actually starts to come in.
| | 04:25 | So if I scrub forward, I remember from
CINEMA 4D that the type starts to come in
| | 04:29 | right around frame 63.
| | 04:31 | So if I go to frame 63, you can see
that just before then, that's where the
| | 04:35 | type animation starts.
| | 04:36 | So here at frame 63, I'll make another
marker and then double-click, and I'll
| | 04:41 | call this one Type Start. Hit OK.
| | 04:44 | The Mobile Media animates in on its own,
and then the word Moment hits its mark.
| | 04:49 | And when the Moment hits its mark, I am
going to have an effect happen, and so I
| | 04:53 | need to know when that actually occurs--
and that happens right around frame 91.
| | 04:57 | So if I go to frame 91, I'll hit Page
Down to get to exactly frame 91, and I'll
| | 05:02 | add another marker,
double-click, and call this one Moment Hit.
| | 05:08 | And so now the Moment hits at frame
91. The next thing I am worried about
| | 05:12 | is when the camera starts to move and when
the phone starts to come towards the screen,
| | 05:16 | and that's called the push in animation terms.
| | 05:19 | And so I know that happens at frame 134.
So if I go to frame 134 now, and I am
| | 05:26 | going to set a marker for that
and call it Push Start and hit OK.
| | 05:32 | So those were all the most
important moments in our animation.
| | 05:35 | And knowing when these things will
happen it is going to really help us when it
| | 05:38 | comes time to start setting keyframes.
| | 05:40 | I don't have to guess when something happens;
| | 05:42 | I can look at that marker and say, oh,
at frame 38 I know that this explosion
| | 05:47 | needs to happen right now.
| | 05:48 | Taking the time to set up these
markers makes the animation process go
| | 05:51 | much, much faster.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Creating the Stadium EffectsAdding the Star Glow effect to a layer| 00:00 | The animation compositing process is
really all about affecting your image from
| | 00:04 | 3D using filters and
effects inside of After Effects.
| | 00:08 | Now in this movie, we're going to be
using a very special third-party filter
| | 00:11 | called Starglow to create
glows within our 3D image.
| | 00:15 | Before I get started, I want to have a
3D camera in my scene that's going to
| | 00:20 | allow me to add 3D layers that will move
around, matching my 3D render from After Effects.
| | 00:24 | Now in each of my pre-comps I have got
that 3D camera, so I'm going to go and
| | 00:28 | grab the one that's inside the Stadium
Pass. And if I go under to the Pre-COMP's
| | 00:32 | folder, I'll go under the Stadium Pass PRE.
| | 00:35 | I'm going to grab the Camera,
the Platform Disc light.
| | 00:37 | I'm holding down the Command key
or the Ctrl key on the PC to select
| | 00:41 | multiple items without selecting one in
between. And I'm going to copy all three of these,
| | 00:46 | Command+C or Ctrl+C, and I'm going to
go back to my main composition and I'm
| | 00:50 | going to paste these down.
| | 00:52 | What that does, it looks like nothing
has changed, but now I have this three
| | 00:55 | information, so it means any 3D layers
that I create in here, like a solid, for
| | 00:58 | example, is going to move around inside
the scene the same way it would if it
| | 01:03 | had been in CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:05 | So now what I need to do is to add a
Glow effect to just a base and I happen to
| | 01:10 | have the Stadium Base Pre-COMP that
we've created earlier, and I'm going to use that as the
| | 01:13 | basis for that glow.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to bring that Stadium
Base PRE into my composition and place it
| | 01:18 | right above the Stadium Base.
| | 01:20 | And now I'm going to use the Starglow
effect, and I'm going to go to the Effect
| | 01:24 | menu, to Trapcode and add Starglow.
And it doesn't really look like much has
| | 01:29 | happened, and the reason is when you
first add it, it's based on the light and
| | 01:32 | dark values in an image.
| | 01:33 | And if the light and dark values aren't
strong enough, you won't see the Starglow
| | 01:37 | effect. And we're going to need to make some
tweaks to the settings, but before we do, let's
| | 01:40 | move to a point in time where we
know we'll be able to see the glow results.
| | 01:44 | And so if I go to right around frame 26
or 27, I can see the top of the platform,
| | 01:50 | and this is right around the point in
time where the phone emerges from there,
| | 01:54 | and this is where we want our glow to happen.
| | 01:55 | You can see a little bit of
the edge of the glow there.
| | 01:57 | What I need to do is adjust something
called the preprocess on the Starglow
| | 02:01 | effect, and what that does is open
the Starglow effect up, allowing it to
| | 02:05 | affect more of the image underneath.
| | 02:07 | So if I twirl open the Starglow >
Pre-Process effect, and I go to the Threshold
| | 02:13 | value and I bring the Threshold value
down, you're going to see the glow expand
| | 02:16 | across the surface of this platform.
And as I do that, the platform starts to
| | 02:22 | look like it's glowing.
| | 02:23 | Now, it's glowing with the wrong
colors, but we can fix that really easy.
| | 02:27 | The important thing to understand is
what this threshold value is doing;
| | 02:29 | it's expanding the range of values that
the Starglow filter is allowed to affect.
| | 02:35 | So as you can see, the glow is
expanded across the surface, but it's really
| | 02:38 | the wrong color glow.
| | 02:39 | We want to have a much more fiery hot feel
to our image, with lots of oranges and reds.
| | 02:44 | And so what I'm going to do is
change something called the Colormap.
| | 02:47 | And so as I twirl open the Colormap A
down here in these options, if I click and
| | 02:52 | hold on this pulldown,
| | 02:53 | there is some presets here.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to select Fire.
| | 02:56 | That changes how the glow
looks, and I'm going to do that.
| | 02:58 | There are two different colormaps, and I'm
going to change them both to be Fire.
| | 03:02 | There we go. And so now I can see I've
got this really nice hot glow.
| | 03:07 | Now, the streaks are way too long right now.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to dial those down a bit.
| | 03:11 | And so if I go up into the Streak
Length option, and I'm going to drag that
| | 03:16 | down, dial it down here, right around maybe
somewhere between five and seven.
| | 03:21 | And this is one of those sort of season-
to-taste moments that you always see on
| | 03:24 | cooking shows. And if I were really
feeling spunky, I could go back to and crank
| | 03:28 | this all the way up and have all kind
crazy starry effects on there, but that's
| | 03:32 | really not the style I'm going for.
| | 03:33 | I wanted it to be a little more subtle.
| | 03:35 | So I want to bring it down
into the roughly 7 or 8 range.
| | 03:39 | So it looks like it's hot.
| | 03:40 | It looks like it's illuminated.
It's got a very slight glow on it.
| | 03:44 | Now my glow is bleeding onto these
vertical pillars, and I don't want that.
| | 03:48 | The other thing that's happening is if
I solo this layer out, you can see the
| | 03:51 | glow is happening right on top of here.
| | 03:53 | What I really want is just the glow;
| | 03:55 | I don't see the base platform.
And there is a cool feature inside of the
| | 03:58 | Starglow effect at the very
bottom called Source Opacity.
| | 04:02 | If I dial the Source Opacity down to
zero, I'm left with just the glow, and I
| | 04:07 | don't see the Stadium Base layer anymore.
| | 04:09 | Now when un-solo my layer, I see the
glow on top of the original image, but I
| | 04:15 | don't see anything else except
for the glow and the original image.
| | 04:18 | So as you can see, the Starglow effect
is a really powerful tool, and it makes a
| | 04:22 | beautiful glow based on the light and
dark values of our image. And this is
| | 04:25 | really the first part in this
process that we're going to use to create a
| | 04:29 | spectacular-looking motion graphics piece.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a glow on the stadium background| 00:00 | The simple glow set up that we used to
create our glow for the Stadium Base
| | 00:04 | platform is really going to be sort of
the foundation effect that's going to be
| | 00:07 | repeated throughout our animation.
| | 00:10 | We can use that effect that we created
for that base and copy and paste it on
| | 00:14 | to our Stadium Pass.
| | 00:15 | That will save us a lot of time.
| | 00:16 | So what we're going to do in this movie
is basically repeat that glow and then
| | 00:19 | set up some keyframes so that the
glow appears gradually over time.
| | 00:23 | So let's start off by going to the
Stadium Pass Pre. And what I want to do is I
| | 00:28 | need to have a layer to apply the
Starglow effect to, so I'll still be left with
| | 00:32 | my original stadium, so I am going to
duplicate this by hitting Command+D or
| | 00:35 | Ctrl+D on the keyboard, and that
gives me a second Stadium Pass Pre.
| | 00:40 | Now if I go to the Stadium Base Pre,
and I am going to select the Starglow
| | 00:44 | effect that shows up in the Effects
controls and I am going to copy it, and
| | 00:48 | then I'm going to paste it down onto
this second Stadium Pass Pre layer, and
| | 00:52 | when I do, it looks as if nothing
happened. And once again, that's because of the
| | 00:57 | Threshold values and the
Pre-Process settings of the Starglow effect.
| | 01:00 | Remember, this effect is based on the
light and dark values in the image, and so
| | 01:04 | what we have to do is adjust the
Threshold to expand the range of how the
| | 01:08 | Starglow effect gets
applied to the actual layer.
| | 01:10 | Before I do anything though, I want to
verify that the Source Opacity is still
| | 01:14 | set to 0, because that's going to give
me just the glow effect and not any of
| | 01:19 | the stadium underneath it.
| | 01:20 | And so let's go down to the
Threshold and adjust the Threshold downward to
| | 01:25 | expand the range of values.
| | 01:27 | And so as I do that, you're going to
see the glow start to appear on different
| | 01:31 | parts of the stadium.
| | 01:32 | I'll just go backwards and
forwards and just reveal that slowly.
| | 01:36 | You can see, somewhere in the 30
range, it starts to feel pretty good.
| | 01:41 | It gets really, really hot in there.
| | 01:43 | And that's what we're doing is we're
creating that heat, that energy, for the
| | 01:47 | phone to emerge out of.
| | 01:49 | And so if I turn this Starglow effect
off and on, you can see that the image
| | 01:52 | looks really different now,
and it just feels like it's on fire.
| | 01:56 | Now just to review, the Source
Opacity is set to 0, so if I solo this layer
| | 02:01 | out, you can see it's just the glow,
and that shows me where the glow is showing up at.
| | 02:05 | So I'll un-solo that.
| | 02:07 | And that's the great thing is by
using this technique, we can now reveal the
| | 02:11 | glow using some simple transparency keyframes.
| | 02:14 | So I'll go to the Stadium Pass Pre,
and I want this glow to show up right at
| | 02:18 | the moment where the phone emerges from the
screen, and we have a time marker set for that.
| | 02:22 | So I am going to use the Plus key on
the keyboard to zoom into my Timeline.
| | 02:25 | And the phone marker is where I
want the glows to actually be at their
| | 02:30 | brightest, so I am going to go here
and set keyframes throughout the Stadium
| | 02:34 | Base PRE layer and the Stadium Pass
Pre layer that has the glow on it.
| | 02:37 | I'll like both of those layers and hit T on
the keyboard to bring up the Opacity keyframes.
| | 02:42 | So now I am going to set Opacity keyframes
for both of those guys at that moment in time,
| | 02:48 | and then I am going to backup about 10
frames or so to frame 22. Let's back
| | 02:54 | up right about to there, and I am
going to set these opacities to be 0.
| | 03:00 | So now what's going to happen, is over
the course of about 10 frames, our glow
| | 03:06 | comes on and gets hotter.
| | 03:08 | So you can see that the temperature
rises inside the room as the glow gets
| | 03:12 | hotter and the phone starts to emerge.
| | 03:14 | Now don't worry that your phone
is not actually coming out of that;
| | 03:16 | we're going to fix that later.
| | 03:17 | The important thing is what the glows are doing.
| | 03:20 | Now the last thing I want to do is to
brighten up this glow a little bit using
| | 03:24 | some Blending modes.
| | 03:25 | And right now our Stadium Base PRE and
the Stadium Pass Pre that have the glow
| | 03:29 | effects on them, their
blending modes are set to Normal.
| | 03:32 | And watch what happens when I set the
Stadium Pass Pre. I'll just select just
| | 03:36 | that one, and I'll set the
Blending mode to Add, for example.
| | 03:40 | It's a very subtle shift, but you can
see that we're now seeing more of the
| | 03:44 | underlying image, and it feels
a little bit brighter in there.
| | 03:46 | And I'll undo just so you can see what
the before was like. See how much red
| | 03:50 | or everything feels?
| | 03:52 | When I Shift+Command+Z to get that back,
you can see it's a very subtle effect.
| | 03:56 | Blending modes really are the difference
between a good compositor and a bad compositor.
| | 04:02 | Good compositors really understand
the process of blending modes and how to
| | 04:05 | make them subtly enhance their images,
and so using blending modes is always,
| | 04:09 | always a good thing.
| | 04:10 | You want to not overdo it, but just
know when to apply them to get just
| | 04:14 | right subtle effect.
| | 04:15 | So I am going to repeat that process
for the Stadium Base layer that has the
| | 04:20 | effect on it. So I'll go here and change
that Blending mode to Add. There we go.
| | 04:25 | You can see it just got a little bit
hotter right in this area here, and that
| | 04:28 | just kicks up the intensity quite a bit.
| | 04:31 | One thing I need to do, especially on
the stadium there itself, my platform is
| | 04:35 | feeling really, really hot and bright,
and my stadium is still feeling a little bit dull.
| | 04:39 | It feels warm, but it doesn't feel intense yet.
| | 04:42 | And so if I select the Stadium Pass Pre
layer that has the Starglow effect on
| | 04:47 | it and I go into the Boost Light,
| | 04:50 | the Boost Light kicks up the
intensity of the actual Starglow effect.
| | 04:55 | And what I do is take the
Boost Light and I'll dial it up.
| | 04:57 | I am going to crank it way up
initially so I can see that affect.
| | 05:01 | Watch as I crank it way up,
| | 05:02 | you can see it gets much, much, much hotter.
| | 05:04 | It's almost as if the stuff is
starting to glow and emanate light.
| | 05:08 | And so that's way too hot.
| | 05:10 | I just wanted to exaggerate it, so
you see what the Boost Light does.
| | 05:13 | I am going to bring this
down to about maybe 5 or so.
| | 05:16 | And you could see, with the Boost Light
at 0, you can see that it looks hot but
| | 05:22 | the Boost Light at 5 though--I'll
bring that up to about 5 again--has a much
| | 05:29 | more intense effect, and that really
feels and has the energy that I'm looking
| | 05:32 | for here for this scene.
| | 05:34 | This Starglow effect really helps us
to kick up the intensity of our piece.
| | 05:37 | And when you're working with filters,
it's really important not to overdo it.
| | 05:42 | We want to kick up the intensity we're
seeing without really making the whole
| | 05:46 | image feel like it's on fire.
| | 05:48 | We just want to have it feel hot
and warm and intense, okay?
| | 05:51 | So use the filters, have
fun, but don't overdo it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Revealing the background glow using a 3D layer mask| 00:00 | So our stadium is looking pretty hot
from a standpoint of the glow effects and
| | 00:05 | raising the temperature and energy in
the scene, but now what we want to have
| | 00:08 | to happen is we wanted that glow to
feel as if it's emanating outward from the
| | 00:12 | point of origin, and that point of origin
is where the phone emerges from the platform.
| | 00:17 | So, what we are going to do is we are
going to use a 3D layer here inside of
| | 00:20 | our composition to cause that glow to
be revealed from the central platform
| | 00:26 | outward towards the stand
and the crowds and the lights.
| | 00:29 | So, I am going to start off
by making a new 3D solid.
| | 00:31 | So, I'll go to the Layer menu > New > Solid.
| | 00:34 | Now, the color is not important, but the size is.
| | 00:37 | I am going to make the width 960 x 960,
so it's basically a square version of
| | 00:41 | our composition size.
| | 00:43 | Once again, the color doesn't matter.
| | 00:44 | I am going to call this one Glow Reveal
instead of Dark Gray Solid, and hit OK.
| | 00:51 | Now, this covers up our composition.
| | 00:53 | Next thing we want to do is make it a 3D solid.
| | 00:55 | So I'll go to my Switches and modes and
move over to Switches columns and
| | 00:59 | click on the 3D Layer button,
| | 01:01 | and my layer now moves.
| | 01:04 | Now the reason it moved is because of the
3D camera that we have from our CINEMA 4D file.
| | 01:08 | What we want to do next is we want this
3D layer to show up exactly in the same
| | 01:12 | location as this Platform Disc light,
right in the center of the platform.
| | 01:17 | So in order to do that, I am going to
use the parenting pick whip and parent it
| | 01:20 | to the Platform Disc light.
| | 01:22 | Once I've done that, I don't need the
Platform Disc light visible in the scene anymore.
| | 01:25 | I am just going to turn its eyeball off.
And now I can go to the glow reveal,
| | 01:29 | hit P on the keyboard, reveal the
position keyframes, and zero them out.
| | 01:33 | When I zero that out, it's going
to jump to the same location as that
| | 01:36 | Platform Disc light.
| | 01:37 | So I will just type in 0, 0, 0, hitting
the Tab key to move between those fields.
| | 01:41 | Now, you can see it jumped to the right
position, but now it's facing the wrong way.
| | 01:45 | What I want to do is tilt this over, so that
it's lying flat, or flush with the platform disc.
| | 01:51 | So I am going to go to the Glow Reveal
and hit R on the keyboard to bring up the
| | 01:55 | rotation information.
| | 01:57 | And on the x rotation, I am going to
change it to -90, and that makes it flat over.
| | 02:03 | Now, what I want to do next is
create a circular matte on this layer,
| | 02:07 | so I am going to double-click on the
glow reveal, and that's going to bring
| | 02:10 | it up in the Layer window. And I am
going to enlarge this and then use the
| | 02:16 | Comma key to get that smaller. And I
am going to select the circular mask
| | 02:20 | using the Ellipse tool.
| | 02:22 | Because I am working inside the Layer
window, I know it's going to create an
| | 02:25 | actual mask for me instead of a shape layer,
| | 02:27 | so I'm going to hold down the
Command key just after I click.
| | 02:31 | So I am going to click to start drawing
a circle, I am going to hit the Command
| | 02:35 | key while I am dragging, and then I
am also going to hit the Shift key.
| | 02:38 | And you notice that I clicked very
close to the center. I am going to undo
| | 02:42 | that, just so you can see me do it again.
| | 02:44 | I am going to zoom in here, and I am
going to click as close to the center as I
| | 02:47 | can and then drag outward, and you
see it's off-center, but when I hit the
| | 02:52 | Command key, that forces it to draw
from the center from the click point
| | 02:55 | outward. And then I'll hold down the Shift key.
| | 02:57 | That makes it constrain to a circle.
| | 03:00 | And so I'll drag that out to about out there or
| | 03:03 | so. It doesn't need to go all the way the edge.
| | 03:04 | I just want it to go within the
boundaries of the actual layer.
| | 03:08 | That way if I make this matte have a
soft edge, which I am going to do the next,
| | 03:12 | it doesn't bleed over.
| | 03:14 | So now what I want to do is
bring up the Mask Feathering options.
| | 03:17 | So if I raise this up and twirl open
the Mask options, and go to the Mask
| | 03:22 | Feather, and I am going to
change it to, let's call it 50.
| | 03:26 | That's pretty good.
| | 03:27 | Now, I have got a soft-edge matte on there.
| | 03:29 | Let's go back to our composition
window and see what that's doing.
| | 03:33 | So now you can see that we have this soft-edge
mask that's sitting on top of our platform glow.
| | 03:38 | What we want to do is we want to use
this layer to reveal the stadium glow.
| | 03:42 | I am going to do two things:
| | 03:44 | I am going to twirl that closed and I'm
going to drag the glow reveal layer down
| | 03:48 | above the stadium pass that has
the actual Starglow effect on it.
| | 03:52 | When I do that, you can see the
glow for the Stadium Base layer.
| | 03:56 | What we are going to do is set the actual
Stadium Pass to use this layer as an alpha matte.
| | 04:01 | And so if I go into the switches, and
I'm going to change this to be Alpha Matte
| | 04:08 | and let's go to the Track Matte
pulldown and go to Alpha Matte glow reveal,
| | 04:13 | and you can see now that glow is
now limited to the area shown by the
| | 04:18 | actual Glow Reveal layer.
| | 04:20 | The cool thing is if I go to the Glow
Reveal layer, I'll hit S to bring up the scale.
| | 04:25 | If I adjust the scale on this, it looks
as if the glow is growing outward from
| | 04:30 | the center of the platform,
and that's exactly the effect I want.
| | 04:34 | So, I am going to start off with
the stadium glow reveal at about 45%,
| | 04:39 | so our stadium glow is not visible at
all. And I am going to move to the camera
| | 04:42 | shake point, because that's where I
want the glow to actually start to emanate
| | 04:47 | outward from the platform. So now if
| | 04:49 | I go to the glow reveal,
| | 04:50 | I am going to set a scale keyframe.
| | 04:54 | I am also going to hit R on the
keyboard to bring up the rotation information.
| | 04:57 | I will make this a little bit bigger.
| | 05:00 | For the x rotation, I am
going to set a keyframe as well.
| | 05:03 | Now, if I hit the letter U on the keyboard,
that's going to hide all that other stuff
| | 05:06 | I don't need to see and show me just the
parameters that have keyframes on them.
| | 05:09 | And so now I can move forward in time to
about frame 50 or so, 51ish, and at this
| | 05:16 | point in time is where I want
the glow to be fully revealed.
| | 05:20 | And so I want to do two things:
| | 05:21 | I am going to set the scale really big,
about 300% or so, and then I'm also going
| | 05:28 | to set the rotation to be zero.
| | 05:31 | And when you do that, you can see
that my glow is completely revealed.
| | 05:34 | And let's make this a little bit
smaller, so we can see the entire image.
| | 05:38 | So now, over the course of this pullback,
when they can reacts, the glow starts to
| | 05:43 | reveal through the whole image.
| | 05:44 | I want to do one more
thing with these keyframes.
| | 05:46 | I want to take this x rotation
keyframe and I want to move this one keyframe
| | 05:51 | about halfway through, and that's
going to have it feel as though it's really
| | 05:54 | emanating outward from the platform, and then
revealing all of the glow in the background.
| | 05:59 | Let's go and double-check our
positioning here at the last keyframe.
| | 06:03 | I think that's pretty good.
| | 06:04 | One other thing you should always
do when working with 3D layers is move
| | 06:08 | forward and backward in time to make
sure they're not doing weird things for you.
| | 06:11 | And if we move forward in time, we want
to go to the point where the camera is
| | 06:16 | farthest from the phone. And you can
see that as I move forward in time, my
| | 06:21 | actual reveal layer--there is the mask for it--
| | 06:24 | it's still visible.
| | 06:25 | Here I want to make sure that it's so
large that it never comes back into the frame.
| | 06:29 | So what I'm going to do is go to the
scale and I am going to double-click on
| | 06:34 | the scale keyframe that I had at frame 51,
and I am going to change this to be about 375.
| | 06:39 | There we go.
| | 06:40 | That's feeling better. That's okay.
| | 06:42 | That little creep right there won't affect us all.
| | 06:44 | The important thing is that it's not
showing up anyplace inside the main image.
| | 06:47 | So now I am just going to just go back
and scrub through to review and make sure
| | 06:51 | that everything is looking okay, and I
can see that my animation is revealing
| | 06:56 | that glow nicely. And that's really the
whole point of this exercise is creating
| | 07:00 | a look and giving the impression to
the viewer that the energy is emanating
| | 07:05 | outward from this platform,
and I think we've done that nicely.
| | 07:08 | So as you can see, animating this mask
layer gives a really cool effect and
| | 07:12 | really creates the impression that
our energy is emanating out from the
| | 07:14 | platform and we did it all
with just a very few keyframes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a glow using the Ambient Occlusion pass| 00:00 | So the level of energy in our stadium
is really looking great, but there is a
| | 00:04 | particular zone that's really left
out of the process so far, and that's the
| | 00:07 | base around the platform.
| | 00:09 | You'll see there is sort of a dark region
here underneath the base where our pistons are.
| | 00:13 | And what we want is we want to have
these pistons not feel like pistons but
| | 00:16 | tubes of energy pumping life into this
platform, and so we're going to do that
| | 00:21 | with a very special pass
called the Ambient Occlusion Pass.
| | 00:24 | That's going to give us a lot of extra
detail that we can use as the basis for our glow.
| | 00:27 | I'm going to go and show you the
Ambient Occlusion Pass. If I go into the Video
| | 00:32 | folder and into the Stadium Pass/
Special Passes folde,r I'll just double-click
| | 00:36 | on that and here in the Footage
window I leave the caps lock and in the
| | 00:41 | Footage window, I want to scrub
forward in time and you can see the Ambient
| | 00:46 | Occlusion Pass on its own.
| | 00:47 | It is really beautiful and it has
been used for amazing effect on a lot of
| | 00:50 | commercials over the time, and what it is,
is the result of geometry intersections.
| | 00:55 | Any place where two pieces of geometry
come together in space a little gradient
| | 00:59 | is applied and that makes an image
look much more real. But we're going to use
| | 01:02 | this as the source for a glow and it's
going to create a ton of energy in just
| | 01:07 | the pistons for our scene.
| | 01:08 | What I want to do, is put this into a
precomp though before I use it in my main
| | 01:13 | composition. The reason for that is
that's going to give me a lot more control,
| | 01:16 | the ability to affect this later on,
because I know I'm going to want to do that.
| | 01:19 | And so I'm going to take Stadium_ao
and drag it onto the New Comp button and
| | 01:23 | I'll take this resulting composition.
| | 01:25 | And put it in my Pre-COMP's
folder and I'll call this Stadium_ao.
| | 01:29 | Hit Return on the keyboard
and change the name to Pre.
| | 01:33 | And in the Stadium_ao PRE I'll open
that up and you can see I'll just scrub forward
| | 01:38 | in time to a point where
our pistons are visible.
| | 01:42 | And this is the Ambient
Occlusion Pass in that precomposition.
| | 01:46 | Let's go back to our main comp and take
a look at the layers that we have there.
| | 01:49 | Now what we want to have is we want to
have this reveal in a very similar way
| | 01:53 | to how the stadium glow is being revealed.
| | 01:55 | But rather than redo all those
keyframes we can just duplicate this layer setup
| | 01:59 | and use these layers as the
basis for Ambient Occlusion Glow.
| | 02:03 | So I'm going to select both of these
layers by hold down the Shift key and I'm
| | 02:06 | going to hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on
the keyboard and duplicate those layers.
| | 02:10 | You can see our glow got a lot more intense.
| | 02:11 | What I want to do now is I want to
replace just the Stadium Pass PRE layer and
| | 02:16 | I'm going to do that using something
called an Option+drag or an Alt+drag.
| | 02:19 | And if I go down to my Pre-COMP's and
find my Stadium_ao PRE, if I select this
| | 02:25 | Stadium Pass PRE, hold down the Alt
key on the keyboard or the Option key on the Mac,
| | 02:29 | and I'm going to drag this pass in to here.
| | 02:33 | And when I let go, it automatically
replaces the layer that was there before.
| | 02:38 | Now my image turned white and the
reason that it turned white is because of
| | 02:42 | the Starglow effect.
| | 02:43 | The Starglow effect bases its glow on
light and dark values in the image and if
| | 02:48 | you remember from our Stadium_ao PRE comp,
most of the image is white, therefore
| | 02:53 | most of the image is getting a glow
right now and that's way too much.
| | 02:56 | What we need to do is we need
to reverse the effect of this.
| | 02:59 | We want to have glow where there is
black and no glow whether is white right now.
| | 03:04 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to invert this image using a filter
| | 03:07 | here in After Effects. But we're going
to do it in the precomp, so that we can
| | 03:11 | go back to our main composition and not
have to worry about that filter anymore.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to select the Stadium_ao
layer and go to the Effects menu and go to
| | 03:20 | the Channel menu and do Invert and what
that does is that reverses the image and
| | 03:25 | gives me a negative value, and so now
I can see I have black mostly and white
| | 03:30 | only in certain regions.
| | 03:31 | And what this does for me is it gives me
the energy right where I need it, so any
| | 03:35 | poster that is white now is going to get a glow.
| | 03:37 | So let's go back to our main
composition see what effect that had.
| | 03:42 | As you can see I now have much more
intense glow and that glow is happening
| | 03:45 | primarily in the base
regions underneath the platform.
| | 03:49 | I need to make some adjustments to the
Starglow effect though before I go forward.
| | 03:53 | One of the downsides of the Starglow
effect is that it creates these star
| | 03:58 | patterns and that's why they call it Starglow.
| | 04:00 | But if you use of star patterns a
little too intensely or too long, they really
| | 04:05 | start to feel like 1972 sort of
disco ball feel and I don't want that.
| | 04:08 | I wanted to dial down that Streak Length.
| | 04:11 | And so I'm going to go to the Starglow
effect and dial down the Streak Length.
| | 04:14 | Let's cut it down to like maybe three or four.
| | 04:16 | Start off with three.
| | 04:18 | As you can see my glow got a lot less
intense. The next thing I want to do
| | 04:21 | is dial down the Boost Light. Let's bring
the Boost Light back to zero for this layer.
| | 04:27 | And now I have just the right amount of
energy in the platform. We're looking at
| | 04:31 | this at half res, so I'm going to bring
this to full resolution so we can get a
| | 04:36 | more accurate picture for what's happening here.
| | 04:38 | Yeah, I think that's looking really
good. You can see now we have a ton of
| | 04:43 | energy in these tubes that is just pulsating.
| | 04:46 | It's going to pulse right into this
platform and that's all thanks to the
| | 04:50 | Starglow effect using it on
that Ambient Occlusion layer.
| | 04:53 | The next thing I want to do is I've got
a little bit too much glow happening up
| | 04:56 | in the upper regions now.
| | 04:57 | And if I solo out my Stadium_ao glow,
you can see I have got lot more glow going
| | 05:04 | on up here and I don't really
necessarily want that. And I can control this by
| | 05:07 | adjusting the Starglow options.
| | 05:09 | So I'm going to go into the Pre-Process
settings for the Starglow layer and I'm
| | 05:14 | going to go to the Threshold and dial
it down. I'm going to actually push it up
| | 05:18 | a bit and that's going to
limit where that glow shows up.
| | 05:22 | You can see that farther up I push it,
the less glow I get and I can push it
| | 05:27 | too far and get very little glow, but I just
want to bring it up into the 80 range or so.
| | 05:32 | You can see I have a lot less glow up
top here and now when I un-solo this,
| | 05:37 | my glow up top is much, much less
intense and I still got a nice hot energy
| | 05:42 | going on down here below.
| | 05:43 | So as you can see, the compositing
process in After Effects is really about
| | 05:48 | understanding what you're capable of.
| | 05:50 | This Ambient Occlusion Pass on its own
was a beautiful render, but by combining
| | 05:54 | it with a glow effect I'm able to get a
very interesting effect within my image.
| | 06:01 | And that's all thanks to those
compositing passes that we rendered from C4D.
| | 06:05 | So as you can see that multi-pass
compositing process gives you a ton of control.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Ambient Occlusion glow to create an energy animation| 00:00 | Just before our phone reveals in the
animation we want to create the effect
| | 00:05 | and the impression on the user that the
pistons are pumping energy into the platform.
| | 00:10 | In order to do that we need to create a
reveal on these pistons that's a little
| | 00:14 | bit different than the reveal
that we used for the stadium effect.
| | 00:17 | And so we've already got our reveal
layer, but what we need to do is adjust the
| | 00:21 | keyframes and tweak it just a little
bit to get the effect we're looking for.
| | 00:24 | So what I am going to do is go to the Glow
Reveal that's on the Stadium_ao PRE layer.
| | 00:28 | I am going to select that layer and then hit
U on the keyboard to bring up the keyframes.
| | 00:32 | And then I am going to
solo out the Stadium_ao PRE.
| | 00:36 | That's going to give me much better
feedback when I am scrubbing through this animation.
| | 00:40 | And so I am going to back up in time
to about here and just before the phone
| | 00:45 | reveals, that's where I want the
piston energy to peak, just before the phone
| | 00:49 | comes out of the platform.
| | 00:51 | But I can't see that energy and that's
because of how the Glow Reveal is working.
| | 00:56 | First thing I am going to do is kill
all the keyframes on this Glow Reveal.
| | 01:00 | And you notice it's the Glow Reveal for the
Stadium_ao layer, not the other Glow Reveal.
| | 01:04 | So now what I can do is scrub
backwards and forwards in time.
| | 01:08 | You can see my glow is gone
all the way through that process.
| | 01:11 | So right around here is where I want it
to be revealed, so really all I need to
| | 01:15 | do is reverse this matte here.
| | 01:17 | In order to do that, if I go to the
Stadium_ao PRE layer and go to the Track
| | 01:21 | Matte pulldown and I select this and go
Alpha Inverted Matte, now I can see the glow.
| | 01:26 | I could see the glow every place
except on the platform and that's pretty
| | 01:29 | much how I want it.
| | 01:30 | So that's the point in time
where I want the glow to be revealed.
| | 01:34 | I am going to set X Rotation keyframe
and a Scale keyframe for that object at
| | 01:37 | that moment in time.
| | 01:39 | Now that's my ending point for the glow.
| | 01:41 | So let's back up in time to about the point
where we want the energy to start coming in.
| | 01:46 | So I back up.
| | 01:47 | You can see my glow fading out?
| | 01:49 | I don't really want it to fade out,
and that's happening because there is an
| | 01:52 | Opacity keyframe on the Stadium_ao PRE layer.
| | 01:55 | So if I select that and hit U on the
keyboard, you can see there's my Opacity.
| | 01:58 | I am going to kill the stopwatch on
that and bring the Opacity up to 100%.
| | 02:03 | Then right about the time where I want
it to come in, it's going to be somewhere
| | 02:08 | in this range here, about frame 19 or so.
| | 02:12 | That's pretty good!
| | 02:13 | I don't want my glow to be seen before
then so I'll just truncate that layer by
| | 02:17 | dragging it over to that point in time.
| | 02:19 | You notice I didn't shift the whole layer.
| | 02:20 | I just dragged the in point over.
| | 02:22 | Now, what I can do is take my Glow
Reveal and I need to do two things.
| | 02:26 | It needs to expand outward and
it also needs to rotate a bit.
| | 02:31 | So I am going to start off with the expansion.
| | 02:32 | So I'll take the Scale and scale it
way up, so somewhere in the 300% range.
| | 02:40 | Then I am going to rotate it
up in the position back to 0.
| | 02:44 | As you can see we're doing
reverse of what we had before.
| | 02:47 | So I am going to do it to just about there.
| | 02:49 | So -43 or so ought to do the trick.
| | 02:52 | You can see as I scrub forward in time,
here comes that pulse energy right in,
| | 02:58 | and you can see that pistons have
the illusion that they're now pumping
| | 03:02 | energy into that stand.
| | 03:03 | I want the rotation to
happen a little bit sooner.
| | 03:06 | So I am going to bring that down, move that
keyframe over here to about frame 23 or so.
| | 03:11 | So what that's going to do is give
us the illusion that the Glow Reveal
| | 03:15 | is actually dropping into position first
and then scaling inward towards the platform.
| | 03:21 | So now as I look at this, what I am
looking for is sort of the pacing on that.
| | 03:27 | And as I scrub through the animation I
can see that right about here where this
| | 03:32 | keyframe is, I really want to have
more of the actual pistons be revealed.
| | 03:36 | And so I am going to take the scale and
scale it down just a bit so that I can
| | 03:41 | see more of that piston glow.
| | 03:43 | That way they have not as far
to travel to that 0 point here.
| | 03:48 | Then the other thing I am going to do
is just where the phone emerges I am
| | 03:52 | going to set that scale to be 0.
| | 03:53 | What that's going to do for me is make
sure that I am not accidentally hiding
| | 03:57 | any of the glow anywhere.
| | 03:58 | So now it's going to drop into
position and then hit its mark and then
| | 04:03 | disappear completely.
| | 04:05 | So now my entire glow is being
revealed just the way I want it to.
| | 04:09 | So as you can see the piston energy
reveal that we used is quite a bit different
| | 04:13 | than the stadium energy
reveal that we used earlier.
| | 04:15 | But what it does for us is it gives us
the illusion that the pistons are pumping
| | 04:19 | energy in that platform and that's
going to cause that phone explosion to feel
| | 04:22 | that much more intense.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a stadium light effect using object buffers| 00:00 | The foundation of our
stadium is almost complete.
| | 00:03 | The last thing we want to worry about
is the stadium lights and the pulses of
| | 00:08 | energy that are actually
traveling through the tubes.
| | 00:11 | Both of these are going to be created
using essentially the same technique, just
| | 00:14 | with slightly different variations
on the effect that we applied to them.
| | 00:17 | So what I want to do is I am going to
go into the Project folder and in the
| | 00:22 | Video subfolder in the Stadium/
Special Passes folder, I am going to grab
| | 00:26 | object buffer number 3.
| | 00:27 | This is the object buffer that
has our stadium lights in it.
| | 00:30 | So I am going to drag that in and put
it right above the Stadium Base Pre layer
| | 00:36 | that we've got in here.
| | 00:37 | And when I do that, it obliterates
everything below and that's because this is
| | 00:41 | just a black and white layer
that shows us the lights themselves.
| | 00:45 | This was an object buffer
that we set up in CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:48 | We're going to use this as the
basis for another glow effect.
| | 00:50 | So I am going to go to the Effects menu and
going under Trapcode and add in Starglow.
| | 00:55 | You can see that Starglow gives me that
1972 thing going on with those big streaks.
| | 01:01 | So I want to do a couple of things.
| | 01:02 | First thing I want to do is change the color.
| | 01:04 | So I am going to go to the Presets in
this Starglow and change it to White Star.
| | 01:08 | I just want my stadium lights to be white.
| | 01:10 | The next thing I am going to do
is dial down the Streak Length.
| | 01:12 | I don't want them to be really long.
| | 01:15 | I want to bring it down to about 3 or so.
| | 01:17 | So that gives them a nice bright feel
but doesn't make that Starglow effect
| | 01:21 | really feel overwhelming.
| | 01:23 | Then I am going to dial down the
Source Opacity because I want just the glow.
| | 01:26 | I don't want the black and white background.
| | 01:28 | So if I dial down the Source Opacity,
now I end up with just those glows sitting
| | 01:35 | on top of everything and you can see
it really makes those things look hot.
| | 01:38 | And I'll just turn that layer off, so
you can see what it looked like before.
| | 01:42 | Now we've got nice bright
lights in the background.
| | 01:44 | The next thing we want to do is add
some pulses that are going to be pumping
| | 01:48 | energy into the platform.
| | 01:50 | And those are the little elements
that we see inside the tubes down here
| | 01:53 | below the platform.
| | 01:55 | We have an object buffer for those as well
and we're going to use a very similar technique.
| | 01:58 | So let's go ahead and go to the Project
window and that's object buffer number 4.
| | 02:03 | If I bring in object buffer number 4,
I am going to bring that and put it right
| | 02:07 | above this layer here, the Glow Reveal.
| | 02:09 | So it's below the Stadium
Base and above the Glow Reveal.
| | 02:12 | You can see there is my white object buffer.
| | 02:15 | I want to use this as the basis for glow again.
| | 02:18 | So I am going to go back to Effects >
Starglow and that's going to give me that
| | 02:21 | same disco feel, and I am going to
start off by dialing down the Source Opacity
| | 02:27 | this time so I don't have to
look at the black background anymore.
| | 02:30 | Then I am going to dial down the Streak Length.
| | 02:34 | So I've got just a little bit. 3.
| | 02:37 | Now, let's change the color.
| | 02:40 | If we go to Colormap A and B,
I'll twirl them both open.
| | 02:45 | We want them both to be Fire. Here we go.
| | 02:50 | You can see now I have a well-defined
pulse of energy traveling through those tubes.
| | 02:56 | I am going to set the blending mode for
this though to Add and see how that does.
| | 03:00 | I may not like it.
| | 03:01 | Now, a lot of times when I am working, I'll shift the
blending mode suddenly and I go, yeah, that looks cool.
| | 03:06 | Maybe it doesn't, and so I always try it
though just to see while things happen.
| | 03:10 | That's beautiful thing about
After Effects is it's nondestructive.
| | 03:12 | So if I don't like it, I
can always just go backwards.
| | 03:14 | So I'll hit that on Add, and you know what?
| | 03:16 | I actually kind of like that because that
really helps to seat the pulses into the scene.
| | 03:22 | Before it felt like they were kind of
sitting on top and now it feels like that
| | 03:25 | energy is right inside those tubes.
| | 03:27 | So as I look at these pulses now I want
to scrub backwards in time and see when
| | 03:32 | they come on because remember the
pulses aren't there all the time.
| | 03:34 | I want them to reveal with the energy tubes.
| | 03:37 | So if I go backwards in time, I am going to
scrub just to about frame... yeah, there we go!
| | 03:43 | So right where the rest of my tubes start in.
| | 03:46 | What I am going to do is rather than go
through the whole setup of having these
| | 03:50 | things reveal with a mask layer, I am
just going to turn them up in intensity.
| | 03:55 | So if I go to the Opacity of that layer,
I'll select the layer and hit T on the
| | 03:58 | keyboard to bring up Opacity.
| | 04:00 | I am going to set a keyframe for 100%
right around frame, I don't know, 23 or so.
| | 04:05 | I am going to set that keyframe
and then back up in time about maybe 6
| | 04:11 | frames or so. There we go!
| | 04:14 | That's not so bad, around frame 17.
| | 04:17 | I'll dial that down to 0.
| | 04:18 | So now what happens is as I scrub
forward in time, those guys come on.
| | 04:24 | They sort of lead the energy
in the tubes into the platform.
| | 04:28 | The energy in our stadium is
really finally looking fantastic.
| | 04:32 | We've taken a drab CINEMA 4D render
and turned it into something amazing, all
| | 04:35 | with a few very simple techniques.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding flash bulbs with the CC Light Rays effect| 00:00 | The last step in our stadium
compositing process is going to be to add some
| | 00:04 | flashbulbs going off in the background.
| | 00:07 | What that's going to do for us is to
really give this a big-time stadium feel,
| | 00:12 | making the crowd actually come to life
in the background and having them focus
| | 00:16 | on the type after it hits.
| | 00:18 | In order to do this, we're going to
use a built-in filter that's going to
| | 00:21 | create a flashbulb effect and
we'll position that flashbulb randomly
| | 00:24 | throughout the scene.
| | 00:25 | So let's start off by making a new solid layer.
| | 00:28 | I am going to go to the Layer menu and go to
New > Solid, and this layer I want to be black.
| | 00:32 | So I'll click on the color swatch and
drag it down here on the bottom-left to
| | 00:35 | make it perfectly black.
| | 00:36 | And I am going to rename
this and call it Flash bulbs.
| | 00:41 | And I want to make this
the exact same comp size.
| | 00:43 | So I'll click the Make Comp
Size button and then hit OK.
| | 00:46 | So that gives me a black solid
that's on the top of my image right now.
| | 00:50 | What I want to do is I
want to go and add an effect.
| | 00:52 | The effect that I want to
use is called CC Light Rays.
| | 00:56 | So the CC Light Ray effect is a built-
in plug-in but I can't remember which
| | 01:00 | submenu it falls under.
| | 01:01 | So I am actually going to use the
Effects & Presets search window to find it.
| | 01:06 | So if I go over here and click in the
Search field by the magnifying glass, I am
| | 01:09 | going to type-in Light rays,
and there it is, CC Light Rays.
| | 01:14 | If I double-click on this, it's going to
apply itself to the layer that I have selected.
| | 01:17 | So I double-click and then
there is the CC Light Rays effect.
| | 01:21 | So what I want to do is dial the
Intensity up to about 150% and then I am going
| | 01:27 | to uncheck Color from Source.
| | 01:29 | And what that's going to do is the
Color from Source button tries to draw the
| | 01:32 | color from the source layer, and
because our source layer is black,
| | 01:35 | we couldn't see the effect.
| | 01:36 | I am also going to change
the Shape from Round to Square.
| | 01:39 | That's going to feel a lot more
like an actual flashbulb going off.
| | 01:42 | Then I want to rotate the
Direction around a little bit.
| | 01:46 | I don't want it to go straight up and down
because I don't want it to look like a plus.
| | 01:49 | I just want to have it just not
quite where it was originally.
| | 01:52 | And now I am going to dial the Radius up a
bit because I want this to feel pretty heavy.
| | 01:56 | I am going to bring it up in like
the 60 range, 65 or so. There we go!
| | 02:01 | I think that's looking pretty good.
| | 02:03 | The next thing I want to do is I want
this flashbulb effect to show up on top of
| | 02:06 | my image and right now the black
of the layer is blocking it out.
| | 02:10 | There's a couple of ways to do this
but the way I am going to do this today is by
| | 02:13 | making this into an adjustment layer.
| | 02:15 | So if I go to my Switches and modes and
toggle over my Switches, I can turn this
| | 02:19 | Flash bulbs layer into an adjustment
layer by clicking on this column right here.
| | 02:22 | And that's all an adjustment
layer is, is a solid that's been converted
| | 02:26 | into adjustment layer.
| | 02:27 | So now any effect you apply to it
gets applied to the image down below.
| | 02:31 | So any layers that are down
below this layer get this effect.
| | 02:34 | What I am going to do is drag this down
below the Type and Phone Passes so that
| | 02:39 | they actually show up behind them
and they don't affect those two layers.
| | 02:43 | Now what I want to do is position these
flashbulbs and right now it's only one
| | 02:47 | but we're going to be creating more of them.
| | 02:48 | So if I go to the Flash bulb's Center
and I click on that, I get a crosshair.
| | 02:53 | I am going to position this
crosshair right about here.
| | 02:55 | And now I don't want my flashbulbs to
actually start happening until around
| | 03:02 | frame 98 or so. But I am actually
happened to be on frame 97 right now, but I am
| | 03:06 | going to go one frame forward more than 98.
| | 03:09 | So our type has actually already hit
its mark and that's when I want the
| | 03:13 | flashbulbs to start going off.
| | 03:14 | After the type hits its mark, the
flashbulbs are going to start popping like crazy.
| | 03:18 | So now what I do is I am going to go to
the Flash bulbs, and I am going to set
| | 03:22 | keyframes for Intensity and
Center at this point in time.
| | 03:25 | Then I am going to hit U on the
keyboard and reveal the light rays.
| | 03:29 | In this layer I want my lightbulb to
actually show up in a different spot each time.
| | 03:35 | In order to do that, I am going to
be keyframing the position over time.
| | 03:38 | But I want the actual bulb to feel
like it's flashing on and then dying out
| | 03:41 | slowly so the Intensity
keyframes need to be a little bit skewed.
| | 03:45 | So if I back up one frame and I hit Page Up
on the keyboard, I am going to do two things.
| | 03:50 | I am going to set an Intensity keyframe of 0.
| | 03:51 | That's going to make my flashbulb go away.
| | 03:54 | I am also going to move the
Center keyframe to this exact point.
| | 03:59 | And then I am going to turn
this into a Hold keyframe.
| | 04:01 | The way I do that is by right-
clicking on this and going to Toggle Hold Keyframe,
| | 04:07 | and that sets this as a Hold keyframe.
| | 04:09 | A Hold keyframe means that, the next
keyframe I set, instead of doing a smooth
| | 04:14 | transition from keyframe to
keyframe, it's going to jump.
| | 04:16 | And I don't want to see my actual
flashbulbs move over time; I want them to
| | 04:20 | magically appear in different
locations all over this image.
| | 04:23 | So now I am going to go forward about
maybe 6 frames or so, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
| | 04:28 | I am hitting Page Down on the keyboard
by the way. And I am going to set my
| | 04:33 | Intensity back to 0.
| | 04:34 | So now what I get is I have the effect
of this flashbulb popping on and then
| | 04:41 | dying out slowly over time.
| | 04:43 | So what I want to be able to do is to
have these flashbulbs go off all over the
| | 04:47 | background in this image.
| | 04:48 | In order to do that, I am going to be
repeating these keyframes over and over
| | 04:52 | again, probably about 7 or 8 times.
| | 04:54 | Each time I do it I am going to move
the position of the center of the light ray
| | 04:58 | so that it shows up at a different place.
| | 05:01 | Now that is going to take me a little
bit of time to do and so rather than show
| | 05:04 | you all that whole process here in the
video, we're going to do a cross dissolve
| | 05:08 | back to the finished keyframes. Okay.
| | 05:11 | So now we're done with the
keyframing process for the flashbulbs.
| | 05:14 | So just to summarize what I did,
I actually went through and randomized the
| | 05:19 | position of these keyframes, just
copying and pasting as I went, and each time I
| | 05:22 | pasted down a new set of
keyframes I changed the position.
| | 05:25 | Then I duplicated the layer and
quickly offset the keyframes and then just
| | 05:29 | changed the position of these
layers so that I had more flashbulbs.
| | 05:33 | The idea here is that we're using the
keyframes as much as possible and only
| | 05:37 | changing one keyframe each time, and
that makes the process go a lot faster.
| | 05:42 | So our stadium background is pretty much done.
| | 05:45 | The last step in the process
I want to do is a RAM preview.
| | 05:48 | Now this is going to take a few minutes
in order to actually generate this preview.
| | 05:51 | So we're going to cross
dissolve to the finished RAM preview.
| | 05:54 | In order to do the RAM preview I am going
to click on the RAM Preview button up here.
| | 05:57 | Before I do that though I am going to
change my resolution from Full down to Half.
| | 06:01 | That's going to give me a
much faster RAM preview.
| | 06:04 | So as I do that, I click on the RAM
Preview button up here and then it's going
| | 06:08 | to give me a green progress bar that's
going to scroll across the top. Okay.
| | 06:12 | So now you can see our RAM preview
playing here and it is really looking cool.
| | 06:18 | We've got excellent glow happening on
our stadium background, we've got energy
| | 06:22 | pulsing into the stadium platform
that's going to be the impetus for the phone
| | 06:25 | emerging out of it, and we've got
those beautiful flashbulbs going off in the
| | 06:29 | background, really, really
kicking it up to the next level.
| | 06:32 | The animation compositing process is
really about control and breaking your
| | 06:36 | process down into manageable chunks.
| | 06:38 | Our stadium was done just this way.
| | 06:41 | By building it layer by layer
we've created a background that's both
| | 06:45 | flexible and looks great.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Creating the Phone EffectsCreating the phone reveal| 00:00 | Our goal for the chapter is to
create the effects that are related to the
| | 00:03 | phone and its screen.
| | 00:04 | The first thing we're going to need to
do is to create the illusion that the
| | 00:07 | phone is coming up out of the stadium platform.
| | 00:09 | We're going to this using a 3D Solid layer
that will act as a track matte for the phone.
| | 00:14 | And really what this movie is about is
the idea that you can use 3D solids to
| | 00:19 | reveal 2D layers inside of After Effects,
and this is a technique that I use all
| | 00:24 | the time and really it makes a lot
of very interesting effects possible.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to start off by going into
the Pre-COMP's and inside the Phone Pass Pre,
| | 00:33 | I am going to scrub through
this to show you what's going on.
| | 00:37 | The phone is coming up out of nowhere
right now, but the top of the platform is
| | 00:42 | actually somewhere right in this area.
| | 00:44 | And so what we need to do is to be able to
see this phone come up out of that platform.
| | 00:50 | Right now, it just sort of comes up out
of the ground area and so I'm going to
| | 00:54 | create a track matte for this that will
give it the illusion that it's actually
| | 00:57 | coming up out of the platform.
| | 00:58 | So there is a piece of information
that I need to have inside this comp and
| | 01:02 | it's the disc light, and that disc
light came in from CINEMA 4D when we did our
| | 01:06 | phone import, and what that gives me is the
actual position of the top of the platform.
| | 01:11 | In CINEMA 4D I had a light that was in
the top of the platform that was creating
| | 01:14 | light illuminating the underside of the
type in the phone and we're going to use
| | 01:18 | that position information to be
the basis for our track matte.
| | 01:22 | So what I need to do is go into the
Video folder and inside the Video folder I'm
| | 01:26 | going to go into the Phone Pass folder
and open up the original CINEMA 4D COMP
| | 01:32 | that came in when I imported it,
and there is a Platform Disc light.
| | 01:35 | That's in there right now.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to take that and the Camera.
| | 01:37 | So I'll select the Camera first and
then Ctrl+Click or Command+Click on the
| | 01:41 | Platform Disc light and copy that to
the clipboard, and back in the Phone Pass
| | 01:46 | PRE I'm just going to paste that right down.
| | 01:48 | And so now I've got the Platform Disc
light and the camera and you can see that
| | 01:52 | I have this light object
here in the composition.
| | 01:55 | And as I scrub through, let me scrub
through to where the phone comes up.
| | 01:58 | The place where I want the phone to be
revealed is a basically right where it
| | 02:01 | makes contact with that light.
| | 02:03 | So what I need to do is create a 3D
layer that's going to hide the phone until
| | 02:07 | it passes just the edge of that light
and then it is going look like it's
| | 02:10 | coming right out of it.
| | 02:11 | So let's start off by making a 3D solid
and I need to make a 2D solid layer
| | 02:16 | that converted into 3D.
| | 02:17 | So let's make a Solid layer, Command+Y
or Ctrl+Y on the keyboard, and then what
| | 02:21 | I'm going to do is I'm going
to call this one Phone revealer.
| | 02:25 | The size isn't really important at
this point. I think I'll just leave it the
| | 02:28 | COMP size and hit OK. And the color is
not important at all because we're going
| | 02:32 | to be creating a matte on this, and
actually using it as a track matte.
| | 02:36 | So when I make this solid I want to
add a mask to this, and I'll start off by
| | 02:40 | making a ellipse and I'm going
to draw an ellipse out on this.
| | 02:44 | I'm going to hit Command+T or Ctrl+T on
the keyboard and kind of position this
| | 02:48 | little bit better on here.
| | 02:49 | And then I'm going to soften the edge up.
| | 02:52 | Hit Enter to confirm the
transform that you just did.
| | 02:55 | I want to go to the mask
options and adjust the feathering.
| | 02:58 | If I click on that option, I don't want
it too soft. I will make it about 10 or so.
| | 03:03 | That just gives me just a little bit
of a soft edge so that the phone isn't
| | 03:07 | being chopped off pixel for pixel.
| | 03:10 | Now that I've got a soft edged map, what I
want to do is turn this into a 3D solid layer.
| | 03:14 | So I'm going to click on my Switches
and Modes, and go over to the 3D button
| | 03:18 | here and make that into a 3D layer.
And it disappears on me, and that's because
| | 03:22 | the space that we're in is a little bit
different than the After Effects space,
| | 03:26 | and so when I convert that into a 3D
solid layer, it jumps to its original
| | 03:30 | position based on its After Effects coordinates.
| | 03:32 | If I hit P on the keyboard and
reveal that, it's at 480x270.
| | 03:36 | What I want to do is have this show up in
the same location as the Platform Disc light.
| | 03:40 | So all I really need to do is to parent
this to the Platform Disc light and then
| | 03:44 | when I zero out its position,
it'll jump right to that location.
| | 03:47 | So if I use the Parent pickwhip, and
parent it right to the Platform Disc light
| | 03:50 | and then go to the Position
information for the phone revealer, I'm going to
| | 03:55 | zero tab zero and then boom.
| | 03:58 | It shows up right where I needed to.
| | 04:00 | And the awesome thing is that if I
just take this now, I'm going to make some
| | 04:04 | tweaks to the actual matte. And if I
click on the matte here, I drag this down,
| | 04:09 | I'm going put it right about there.
| | 04:11 | And so now as I scrub through
this, I can't see the phone at all.
| | 04:16 | It's behind this layer, until it
reaches that point and it should come right
| | 04:20 | about from behind it, and
that's exactly what I want.
| | 04:22 | Now there is a really great feature in
the blending modes called a Silhouette
| | 04:26 | Alpha and what that's going to do is
chop off everything below this layer and
| | 04:32 | I'm going to set the phone revealer to
Silhouette Alpha. So I switch back my
| | 04:34 | modes and go to blending modes,and
Silhouette Alpha is a way down at the
| | 04:38 | bottom, and so I'm going to go
Silhouette Alpha and you're going to see that
| | 04:41 | the phone is chopped off.
| | 04:43 | Everything that shows up behind this
layer now gets chopped off and so as I
| | 04:47 | scrub back in time, you can see the
phone now has the illusion that it is coming
| | 04:51 | up out from behind that. And that's
exactly what we want to have happen.
| | 04:57 | This simple matte is a crucial step to
setting up the big energy explosion that
| | 05:00 | the phone creates and the idea of
using a 3D solid layer as a track matte sets
| | 05:05 | you up for all kinds of special
effects that you can create in After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the phone reveal glow| 00:00 | The phone really looks like it's
emerging from the platform now, but it really
| | 00:03 | doesn't feel too energetic.
| | 00:05 | To set up the huge explosion that we're
going to add later on, we really need to
| | 00:08 | give our phone some energy.
| | 00:10 | We're going to use the Starglow effect
again to add some energy to the phone.
| | 00:13 | So let's go into the MMM-001
Working COMP and this is where all of our
| | 00:19 | compositing is coming together and if I
scrub back in time, you're going to see
| | 00:24 | that phone now emerge up out of a
platform, and that's all thanks to that track
| | 00:28 | matte that's in the Phone Pass Pre-COMP.
| | 00:30 | If I use the page down key and just
page through that, you can see that the
| | 00:37 | phone is coming out, but it
still looks the same as it did.
| | 00:40 | It's coming out of this white hot
energy environment, and so it really should
| | 00:43 | have energy imparted into it as
it passes through that boundary.
| | 00:47 | So I'm going to use the Starglow
effect and I'm going use it a couple times.
| | 00:50 | The first -time I use it it's
going to give a warm energy to it.
| | 00:53 | The second time I use it, it's going
define more of the shape of the phone.
| | 00:57 | And so let's start off by
giving it the warm energy.
| | 00:59 | If I go and twirl these layers closed,
I'm going to scroll down and find my Phone
| | 01:05 | Pass Pre and there it is right there.
| | 01:08 | Duplicate the Phone Pass Pre by
hitting Command+D or Ctrl+D on the keyboard.
| | 01:12 | When I do that, I now have a layer
that I can apply my Starglow effect to.
| | 01:16 | I go to the Effects and to
Trapcode and to Starglow. And you see
| | 01:22 | initially nothing happens.
| | 01:23 | That's because the Starglow effect in
its default settings is based on the light
| | 01:27 | and dark values within the phone.
Our phone is almost entirely black.
| | 01:31 | So what I want to do next is change
the basis for the Starglow. I'm going to
| | 01:35 | start off by changing it from Lightness to
Alpha and watch what happens when I do that.
| | 01:41 | Now it's looking at the alpha channel
for that layer and using that as the basis
| | 01:45 | for the Starglow and that's giving me a
much brighter affect. You can see it's
| | 01:48 | completely overwhelming the phone.
| | 01:50 | Now there are some really cool presets
and the Preset pulldown, and we're going
| | 01:54 | to use Warm Star as our basis.
| | 01:57 | And now I want to make some tweaks to it.
| | 01:59 | I am going to dial down the Streak Length.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to bring this down.
It starts off at 20.
| | 02:03 | You can see it gives these
really long streaks in there.
| | 02:05 | That's a little too much for my taste
and I am going to bring this down to about
| | 02:08 | four or five. Sart off with four.
| | 02:11 | That actually feels pretty good.
I'm going to leave it there.
| | 02:13 | Boost Light, I might want to kick
that up just a bit. Watch what's happens.
| | 02:16 | the Boost Light controls the intensity of
the effect and as I scrub that forward,
| | 02:21 | you're going to see the phone get
brighter and brighter and brighter.
| | 02:25 | I'm just going to crank this way up so
you can see just how hard it can get.
| | 02:28 | The problem with thought is that it
sort of starts to kill the rays effect the
| | 02:32 | higher it goes, and so what I want to do,
instead of cranking it up that high,
| | 02:35 | I'm just going to bring up
to about maybe seven or eight.
| | 02:37 | So I'm going to click on that and
go seven and that feels pretty good.
| | 02:42 | What I want to do next is to turn
down something called the Source Opacity.
| | 02:47 | When you add the Starglow effect to a
layer, it sits on top of the existing
| | 02:50 | layer, but there's a lot of times where
you'd much rather have just the Starglow
| | 02:54 | effect and this is one of those.
| | 02:55 | By turning down the Source Opacity,
I now will only see the actual Starglow
| | 03:00 | effect and not the phone layer underneath.
| | 03:02 | That allows me to change the blending
mode of the entire layer and have some
| | 03:05 | interesting blending
effects with the layers below it.
| | 03:08 | Before I change that layer though, I
want to create the next Starglow effect.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to duplicate the
Phone Pass Pre layer one more time.
| | 03:15 | I hit Command+D or Ctrl+D. And now for
the Starglow effect that I'm going to use here,
| | 03:19 | I'm going to change it
from Warm Star to White Star.
| | 03:24 | Now I haven't changed any of the other settings.
| | 03:26 | It's still using the alpha channel as
the input basis and you can see that
| | 03:30 | basically it is just sitting on top of
the existing Starglow effect and that's
| | 03:33 | not really what I want to have.
| | 03:35 | I want to add some shape to this phone.
| | 03:36 | So in order to do that I'm going to
change the basis from Alpha to Luminance.
| | 03:41 | That's going to look at a more subtle
variation on the light and dark values and I
| | 03:45 | need to now change the Pre-Process.
| | 03:47 | The Pre-Process controls the range of
pixel values that the filter uses to
| | 03:51 | generate the Starglow effect.
| | 03:53 | So if I twirl this open,
I've got some options here.
| | 03:56 | The Threshold value controls the pixel
values that it uses to generate that affect.
| | 04:00 | Higher values limit the effect, lower
values expand the effect, and I want to
| | 04:05 | expand this effect almost all the way
to zero, and in fact let's just put it
| | 04:08 | down to zero and see how that does.
| | 04:10 | I'm going to scrub it to the left and
as I do that, you're going to see more of
| | 04:14 | the White and the closer I get to zero,
actually I will bring it all the way
| | 04:18 | down to zero, there we go, and you can
see that now that it's at zero I have a
| | 04:22 | little bit of shape. And that's what it
has done is that's given me some shape to
| | 04:25 | my otherwise orange blob that I had
created with the first Starglow effect.
| | 04:30 | Now if I increase the Boost Light,
that's going to brighten up that effect.
| | 04:34 | I don't want to get it too bright, but I
wanted to just expand it up just a little bit.
| | 04:39 | I think that might be too bright. That's 15.
| | 04:40 | Let's bring that down to more about 10.
| | 04:43 | That's pretty good.
| | 04:44 | Now what I can do is to change the
blending modes for these layers to mix them
| | 04:48 | back in the background a little bit.
| | 04:49 | So I'm going to go to Switches and
Modes column and they bring back by modes.
| | 04:54 | This layer here is the orange
Starglow and so I'm going to change that
| | 04:58 | blending mode to Add.
| | 05:00 | Now you can see that mixes that
Starglow back, especially into that area where
| | 05:06 | it intersected with the platform, and
then I'm going to do the same thing for
| | 05:10 | the Phone Pass Pre layer that
has the white Starglow on it.
| | 05:14 | So I'll change that blending
mode to Add as well, there we go.
| | 05:17 | Now you can see how it really
burns into that orange effect.
| | 05:20 | Now that it is doing that, it's burning
in so hotly, I'm going to dial down the
| | 05:24 | Boost Light so that it's not quite so intense.
| | 05:27 | I will bring that down to
about five, there we go.
| | 05:30 | Now we got a little bit
of that color back into it.
| | 05:32 | It's a very subtle difference,
but with a Boost Light at 10, it was
| | 05:36 | completely white here.
| | 05:37 | When I change the Boost Light back to 5,
I got little bit more yellow in here
| | 05:41 | and white only in the most
intense parts of the image.
| | 05:44 | Now though we got our glow in place,
what we need to do is to make the glow
| | 05:47 | disappear over time.
| | 05:49 | When the phone emerges out of the
platform, it's going to explode with energy
| | 05:53 | and during that explosion the Starglow
needs to disappear so that we're left
| | 05:58 | with the clean phone at the end.
| | 05:59 | So I'm going to use Opacity keyframe on
these Phone Pre Pass layers to make the
| | 06:04 | Starglow effect disappear.
| | 06:06 | Now the place where the Starglow
effect needs to start disappearing isat
| | 06:09 | something called the camera shake point,
and if I zoom in on the timeline--
| | 06:12 | I'm going to use the plus key on the
keyboard and hit that a couple of times.
| | 06:16 | And you can see, I'm parked
on the camera shake point.
| | 06:18 | This is where the phone explosion is
actually going to start. The camera jumps
| | 06:22 | back from that point to show the explosion.
| | 06:26 | And so that's where I want my
Starglow effect to start disappearing.
| | 06:28 | So I'm going to select this first
Phone Pass Pre, hold down the Command key,
| | 06:32 | and select the one right below it, and
I'll hit T on the keyboard to bring up
| | 06:36 | the Opacity effect.
| | 06:38 | So now that I've got the Opacity visible,
I'm going to click on the stopwatch to
| | 06:42 | set a keyframe and with the stopwatch
active, now I've got keyframes at this
| | 06:46 | point in time for 100% opacity.
| | 06:49 | Now with my Opacity at 100%, I want
this to disappear over time and so let's
| | 06:53 | scrub forward in time and see
about where it needs to disappear.
| | 06:56 | I'm going to use the minus key on
the keyboard to back out just a bit.
| | 07:00 | Now the place where the camera stops
moving is somewhere right around in this
| | 07:03 | range here and so I want the
Starglow effect to be gone before then.
| | 07:07 | So I'm going to scrub
through and find that point.
| | 07:09 | We'll go right about here I think.
I think that's a good spot and I'm at
| | 07:14 | frame 48 and I'm going to go the Opacity
and set it to be zero for both of these layers.
| | 07:20 | So I'll hit the Tab key.
| | 07:21 | That's going to bring me to the
next Opacity and I hit zero there.
| | 07:24 | You can see each time I do that
it sets the keyframe automatically.
| | 07:27 | Now, as I scrub through the piece,
the Starglow effect is really bright and
| | 07:32 | then it dissipates right around frame 50.
| | 07:37 | Adding these glows really helps to
define the shape of the phone as it emerges
| | 07:41 | from the platform, and the technique
of using blending modes to dial in your
| | 07:45 | effects really helps to add
subtlety to your animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the phone reveal beams| 00:00 | The platform that the phone emerges
from is really the source of all of the
| | 00:04 | action in the scene.
| | 00:05 | It should feel as if it's pouring
out visible energy into the stadium and
| | 00:08 | nothing says visible energy
better than volumetric light.
| | 00:11 | Part of our rendering passes
from CINEMA 4D was the Beams Pass.
| | 00:15 | Visible lights
interacting with the phone and type.
| | 00:17 | We're going to use that pass now to create an
illuminated look to our scene in After Effects.
| | 00:21 | So here I am inside of the MMM-001
composition and this composition is where
| | 00:27 | all of our compositing is coming together.
| | 00:29 | And what I want to do is create this
visible light coming out of the platform.
| | 00:33 | And if I go into the Video folder in my
Cinema Imports, I've got the Beams Pass.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to bring-in the Beams_rgba clip
and put that right above my Phone Pass Pre.
| | 00:44 | When I do that now I can see these
visible lights here in the scene.
| | 00:48 | Right now they're just kind of stuck
on top of everything and they're not
| | 00:50 | really interacting with any
of the imagery underneath it.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to change the blending
mode and I'm going to use Add as the
| | 00:55 | blending mode this time.
| | 00:57 | And let's go and add Add to there.
| | 00:59 | And you can see that as soon as I do that,
it really kicks up how that interacts
| | 01:03 | especially with the bright
things that are behind it.
| | 01:05 | The look isn't very intense and we're
really trying to amp up the energy in the
| | 01:09 | scene and take it over to the top.
| | 01:11 | So I need to have more of these beams.
| | 01:13 | And so I can just duplicate this layer to
give the look of much more intense feel.
| | 01:17 | So let's select that Beams layer and
hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on the keyboard
| | 01:21 | and you can see now I do that, boom!
| | 01:23 | It is really, really bright!
| | 01:25 | We're going to do this one more time.
| | 01:26 | We're going to be dialing this back
just a bit, but before we do that I'm going
| | 01:29 | to duplicate this layer and that's
going to create a really intense look.
| | 01:32 | That's too intense right now, but
we're going to adjust this a bit.
| | 01:35 | So let's go back to the point where the
beams need to really come on and that's
| | 01:39 | where the phone emerges from the platform.
| | 01:42 | So if I go back to the Phone marker here,
at this point in time you can see how
| | 01:47 | bright and intense this effect is.
| | 01:49 | So what I want to do is to
dial this back just a bit.
| | 01:52 | If I layer these in one at a time, you
can see it starts off with it sort of faint
| | 01:57 | and with each successive layer
it gets brighter and brighter.
| | 02:01 | With all three in there it's too bright.
| | 02:03 | So what I want to do is to
just dial this back just a bit.
| | 02:06 | So I'm going to go to each of these layers.
| | 02:07 | I'll select all three of them by
holding down Shift key, hit T on the keyboard
| | 02:11 | to adjust the Opacity, and then I'm
going to dial them down one at a time.
| | 02:15 | I am going to bring this first one down
maybe to about 50% and then I'll bring
| | 02:20 | the second one down to
about maybe 75%. There we go!
| | 02:25 | That still gives me a lot of energy
coming up out of the platform but we still
| | 02:29 | are able to see some definition in the image.
| | 02:31 | Now this is going to be the
brightest point of the energy.
| | 02:34 | When I'm animating a lot of
times, I like to animate backward.
| | 02:36 | So I find where the peak value is and
I set my keyframes for that peak value
| | 02:40 | and then I back up in time
to find the lowest value.
| | 02:44 | In this case the lowest value is
going to be 0 because we want the beams to
| | 02:46 | appear as if they're coming
on when the phone emerges out.
| | 02:49 | So we'll set our keyframes now for 100% or
for the values that we have here for the Opacity.
| | 02:55 | Then we're going to back up in time and
set 0% keyframes so that the beams look
| | 02:58 | like they're coming on.
| | 02:59 | So I'll set my Opacity keyframes by
clicking on the stopwatch for each of these
| | 03:03 | three layers and then I'm
going to back up in time.
| | 03:06 | I use the Page Up key on the keyboard to back
up about, let's call it 5 frames. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
| | 03:13 | There we go!
| | 03:14 | So now, I'll set 0% keyframes for all of
these layers and go 0 and I hit Tab to
| | 03:20 | get through each of these fields.
| | 03:22 | And now my beams are completely off.
| | 03:25 | So if I scrub forward-- and actually I'll
just use the Page Down key and get through these.
| | 03:30 | You can see that the platform starts
to look like it lights up, and as we go
| | 03:36 | forward to the Camera Shake point,
that's about where we want the beams to
| | 03:42 | start to die down again.
| | 03:44 | So as the explosion happens and the
camera leaps back from that explosion,
| | 03:48 | we want to dial these beams back
down to a more manageable amount.
| | 03:51 | So in order to do that, I'm going to
set Opacity keyframes at this point in
| | 03:56 | time and all I want to do is I want
to keep them at their same value, but
| | 04:00 | just set keyframes.
| | 04:01 | So, if I click over here on the Add
or Remove Keyframe button and I'll
| | 04:03 | just click on each of those three,
and that sets keyframes for them at the
| | 04:07 | Camera Shake point.
| | 04:09 | Now, I want to go forward in time.
| | 04:10 | Let's move our preview
range over here just a bit.
| | 04:14 | I'm going to go scrub forward and my
explosion is going to die down somewhere
| | 04:18 | around frame 55 or so.
| | 04:21 | So I want to take these
effects and dial them down.
| | 04:24 | Now, I want the opacity of the very
first one to go to 0 because we're not
| | 04:28 | going to need that anymore.
| | 04:30 | So I'll bring that down to 0.
| | 04:32 | Then I'm going to bring the second one
down to about maybe 10% or so. There we go!
| | 04:38 | I'll leave the first one at 100%.
| | 04:41 | I think that's going to
give me the look that I want.
| | 04:43 | I've got a little bit of buildup in
the light beams but not so much that it
| | 04:46 | overwhelms the phone.
| | 04:47 | As the phone becomes more prominent
player in the scene when the video comes on,
| | 04:52 | I want the beams to die down even more.
| | 04:53 | So I'm going to advance forward in time
and adjust these keyframes one more time.
| | 04:58 | So I want to have them slowly
die down right after the type hits.
| | 05:04 | Now this will be during the point in
the animation where the flashbulbs are
| | 05:07 | going off and so we really won't
even notice that the beams are dying down
| | 05:11 | because our eye will be
so drawn to the flashbulbs.
| | 05:13 | So I'll go to the Moment Hit and
this is right around the time where our
| | 05:17 | flashbulb start going off.
| | 05:19 | I'm going to set keyframes for these
other two layers that are still visible.
| | 05:22 | So I'll set keyframes for those guys
at that point in time and I'm going to
| | 05:26 | scrub forward into the animation and
I'm going to dial this down one more time.
| | 05:31 | So let's bring this one down to 0.
| | 05:33 | We'll bring this other one down
to about maybe 50%. There we go!
| | 05:39 | So now our phone is still a prominent
player in the scene and we haven't even
| | 05:43 | noticed the fact that the beams have
gotten dimmer because the flashbulbs will
| | 05:46 | be going off in the background.
| | 05:48 | So now that I've got these beams into
the scene I want to start to preview their
| | 05:52 | motion and get a feel for how they're
actually coming on and so we're going to
| | 05:55 | use the RAM preview.
| | 05:56 | Depending on the speed of your machine, this
RAM preview could take a little bit of time.
| | 06:00 | So I'm going to start the RAM preview
and we're going to cross-dissolve to
| | 06:03 | the point where the RAM preview is
done and we're going to watch this
| | 06:05 | animation playback.
| | 06:07 | So in order to start the RAM preview,
I'm going to click on the RAM Preview
| | 06:10 | button, which is right here in the palette.
| | 06:12 | And I'll click that and you are going
to start to see the keyframes cache and
| | 06:16 | there will be a green bar
that's going across the Timeline.
| | 06:19 | Now I can't see the green bar because
I'm zoomed into my Timeline but eventually
| | 06:23 | it's going to pass through this range.
| | 06:24 | So as you can see, the beams really go a
long way towards illuminating our phone
| | 06:31 | as it emerges from the platform and they
really add a lot of volume and depth to the scene.
| | 06:37 | I'm going to enlarge the Timeline
here and take a look at that region.
| | 06:40 | One of the nice things about it, once
you've RAM previewed something, you can go
| | 06:43 | back and scrub through the animation.
| | 06:45 | You can see that as our platform
begins to illuminate, we've got energy now
| | 06:50 | pouring into it and then we have the
visible result of that energy pouring into
| | 06:53 | it in the form of the beams
that are going to come out of that.
| | 06:57 | As I scrub through that, you can see
the energy of the phone just coming out
| | 07:01 | of that and it's white hot in there, not
a place you'd want to be without sunscreen.
| | 07:07 | This volumetric light effect really
goes a long way towards adding energy and
| | 07:11 | volume to our stadium and it's a
great technique that you can use on a lot
| | 07:15 | of different projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Colorizing the energy beams| 00:00 | The beams that we've added have
really had a lot of energy into the scene,
| | 00:04 | we may also add volume and depth to
our image, but they are still white and
| | 00:08 | although the white color of
the beams does look very hot,
| | 00:11 | it sort of stands apart from the rest of
the energy in the stadium and I want to
| | 00:14 | beam energy to tie itself back into the
platform, and the platform color has its
| | 00:18 | orange to it, and so we really want
our beams to tint back to that orange.
| | 00:22 | We're going to use something
called CC Toner in order to do that.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to go to the very base
Beams layer and now I'm inside the MMM-001
| | 00:30 | composition, which is where all of our
compositing is coming together, and on
| | 00:34 | this base Beams layer I'm going to go
to the Effects menu and go to the Color
| | 00:38 | Correction and then grab CC Toner, and
CC Toner colorizes a layer based on the
| | 00:45 | highlights, mid-tones, and shadows.
| | 00:46 | Our Beams Pass is basically all
highlights and so the mid-tones and shadows
| | 00:51 | don't really have an effect.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to start off though by
changing the mid-tones anyway, just to make
| | 00:55 | sure I don't have any errant colors in there.
| | 00:57 | And the color that I want to pick is an
orange and I'm going to pull that one
| | 01:00 | right out of the composition. So if I
click on the Eyedropper and I sample an
| | 01:05 | orange color out of here, I'll grab
something like that right there looks pretty nice.
| | 01:09 | And this orange color now, I want
to have in the highlights as well.
| | 01:13 | Now watch what happens when I
sample that color into the highlights.
| | 01:17 | Now our beams really add heat to the
scene. Not only is it adding energy but it
| | 01:22 | is adding heat as well and so
that really makes them blend in.
| | 01:25 | I think that might be a little
bit too much on the saturation.
| | 01:29 | So what I'm going to do is click on
the color swatch and bring the saturation
| | 01:33 | down just a bit by
sliding this over to the left.
| | 01:35 | And then also bring it back a little
bit more towards the orange. I think I
| | 01:39 | picked something that was little too red
before, and when I hit OK that kind of
| | 01:43 | dowse it down a little bit.
| | 01:44 | I won't worry about the mid-tones
because the mid-tones really aren't doing that
| | 01:47 | much in this image and I think
that highlight color looks nice.
| | 01:50 | Now you may have noticed that I didn't
need to color the other beams and that's
| | 01:54 | because they're on an additive mode and
because they're white adding in to that
| | 01:57 | base orange color they're getting
colorize themselves, so I can just leave them
| | 02:01 | at their actual values.
| | 02:03 | The next problem I have with the beams
is that if we go back to where they first
| | 02:07 | come on at the 100% value, I can
actually see the beams down here below the
| | 02:12 | platform and that looks kind of weird.
| | 02:15 | I want to have these things cut off at the base.
| | 02:17 | In order to do that, if I were just to
put a mask on this I have to go back and
| | 02:21 | keyframe that mask over the time so
that it would appear that the beams are
| | 02:24 | coming out of this area here.
| | 02:26 | But what I can do instead is use a
3D track matte to cut those beams off.
| | 02:30 | That's going to move perfectly with my
platform and we did that technique in
| | 02:34 | another part of the course
in order to reveal the phone.
| | 02:37 | Now we're going to use that exact same
technique in order to reveal the beams.
| | 02:40 | So I'm going to make a new solid layer
and I'm going to call it Beam Reveal.
| | 02:43 | I'll just hit Command+Y or Ctrl+Y and
I'll call this layer Beam Reveal and I'll
| | 02:50 | leave it the composition size 960 x 540.
| | 02:52 | The color doesn't matter.
I'll go and leave it black and hit OK.
| | 02:55 | And what I want to do is create a
little oval sort of inversion on this using a mask
| | 03:01 | and I'm going to add an ellipse
to this layer and I'll start off by just
| | 03:05 | clicking and dragging like that.
| | 03:07 | Using the Move tool, let's get back to
our Selection tool, I'm going to grab
| | 03:11 | this top and I'm going
to drag it down like that.
| | 03:15 | I just want to create a bit of a curvature
in that, and now I'm going to soften it up.
| | 03:19 | And under the Mask options, I'm going
to go to the feathering and I'm going to
| | 03:22 | put that at about 50, here we go.
| | 03:24 | That gives us a nice soft layer.
| | 03:26 | Now what I want to do is to make this a
3D layer and so I'll go to my Switches
| | 03:31 | and Modes and bring those to back to
the Switches and click on the 3D switch
| | 03:35 | and that makes it jump away.
| | 03:36 | And so I need to parent this up to
the disc light and you see there is my
| | 03:41 | Platform Disc light and this Platform
Disc light is in the exact same position
| | 03:46 | as the platform itself, the
very center of the platform.
| | 03:49 | So if I take my 3D layer and parent it
to the Platform Disk light, and then go
| | 03:53 | to the position on the Beam Reveal and
zero it out, zero, Tab, zero, Tab, zero,
| | 03:58 | and now it jumps right to that position.
| | 04:01 | This layer is in the center of the
platform. I don't want it to be in the center
| | 04:03 | of the platform. I want it to be out on
the edge, so if I take this and drag it on
| | 04:08 | its z axis towards us-- and this
movement constrains it-- I'm going to put right
| | 04:16 | about here so it feels like I
said the edge of the platform.
| | 04:19 | Now we're going to use this
layer as a track matte for our beams.
| | 04:23 | So let's bring this beam reveal down
below the first two beam layers and above
| | 04:28 | the Base Beam layer, and I'll go back
to my Switches and Modes and in the Modes
| | 04:32 | I'm going to set the Track Matte for
this layer, for the base Beams layer, and
| | 04:36 | this is one that I colorized earlier.
| | 04:37 | I'm going to set this to be actually in
Inverted Alpha. If I did the Alpha Matte
| | 04:42 | it would cut off the beams and only
show up here down blow, but if I do in
| | 04:46 | Inverted Alpha, watch what happens.
| | 04:47 | So I'll do Alpha Inverted Matte (Beam
Reveal) and you can see that my Beam
| | 04:52 | Reveal layer disappears because it's off now.
| | 04:54 | It's been used as a track matte and
this got just a little bit softer, so what
| | 04:58 | I'm seeing here left over is the
residue from these other two beams.
| | 05:01 | So I just need to duplicate this beam
reveal and use that as a track mMatte for
| | 05:05 | the other two layers.
| | 05:06 | So I'll hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on
the keyboard, drag that up above, and
| | 05:10 | then I'm going to go to the Track Matte for
that one and do Alpha Inverted Matte again.
| | 05:15 | And then repeat that one last time.
| | 05:18 | Drag that right there and do an Alpha
Inverted Matte and you'll see now my beam
| | 05:23 | is gone completely and it's just
showing up inside the platform.
| | 05:27 | And the great thing is as I scrub
through the animation you can see that
| | 05:32 | it's moving with it.
| | 05:33 | Now I think my layers might be just a
little bit off. I'm going to adjust the
| | 05:37 | matte on this one and bring it down
just a bit and I'm going to do the same
| | 05:42 | thing on the others. I will select
them and I'm just eyeballing this.
| | 05:45 | And you know there is sometimes where
you need to be precise and other times
| | 05:48 | where you can be much more artistic.
| | 05:50 | And I'm just sort of adjusting these things.
| | 05:52 | You can see as I adjust this it kind
of opens that area up underneath the
| | 05:55 | phone a little bit.
| | 05:56 | And I think that's going to look just right.
| | 05:59 | So as I scrub through this, I'm just
watching it to make sure that my beams don't
| | 06:04 | do anything weird and I think
they're looking a lot nicer now.
| | 06:06 | Even though the beams had tremendous
energy in the stadium, their color really
| | 06:10 | made them stand out. By colorizing the
beams we've brought the energy of those
| | 06:14 | beams back into the energy at the
stadium and really blended everything together
| | 06:18 | in a much more interesting way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the energy burst| 00:00 | So our phone has tons and tons of
energy, but one of the problems with the
| | 00:04 | energy that we've added to the phone
is it's very localized the phone itself.
| | 00:08 | And we want this energy to expand outward
into the scene to really feel like an explosion.
| | 00:12 | To do that, we're going to create a
2D layer and add a mask to our phone.
| | 00:17 | And we're going to use that mask to
give the impression that this energy from
| | 00:21 | the 2D layer is traveling
outward from the origin of the phone.
| | 00:24 | Now, you'll probably ask yourself, well, Rob!
| | 00:26 | Why would you use a 2D layer for this?
| | 00:28 | We've been using 3D track mattes in
the other movies up until this point.
| | 00:32 | Well, back in the day before After
Effects even had 3D layers, this is a
| | 00:36 | technique that I would use to actually
create the illusion of glows and effects
| | 00:39 | and stuff like that.
| | 00:40 | We had to create masks on layers by hand.
| | 00:43 | Sometimes I like to do that because
it gives me a little bit more control
| | 00:46 | and makes it feel a little bit more organic
than the raw precision of placing 3D solids.
| | 00:51 | So what I want to do is in the MMM-
001 composition I am going to make a new
| | 00:56 | solid layer, so Command
or Ctrl+Y on the keyboard.
| | 00:59 | And we want to make this orange so I
am going to click on the color swatch.
| | 01:02 | I am going to pull up an orange here, a
nice rich orange, not too much red to it.
| | 01:07 | There we go!
That feels pretty good. And I'll hit OK.
| | 01:11 | And I am going to call this layer Phone burst.
| | 01:16 | I'll make it the same size
as the composition and hit OK.
| | 01:18 | The Phone burst layer is at the very top
of the stack right now and I need to be
| | 01:23 | able to see my phone.
| | 01:24 | So I am going to drag the Phone
burst layer down below my phone.
| | 01:27 | This is just temporary until we get it in
position, and then we'll move it back up again.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to drag it, drag it
right down below the Phone Pass Pre.
| | 01:38 | So now I can actually see my phone.
| | 01:40 | Now the place where we want this to
happen is at the Camera Shake point where
| | 01:44 | the phone is emerged from the platform
and then the explosion happens and that
| | 01:49 | triggers the camera to jump back from the phone.
| | 01:51 | So if I drag my camera to that point in
time, I am going to solo out these layers.
| | 01:57 | I can't really see the shape of the
phone because of all the glows and stuff
| | 02:00 | that we have on top of it.
| | 02:01 | And I am going to start by soloing
the Phone burst and then I am going to
| | 02:06 | solo the Phone Pass Pre.
| | 02:07 | Now I can easily see the shape of those guys.
| | 02:10 | On the Phone burst I am going to create a mask.
| | 02:13 | And to do that, I am going
to click on the Pen tool here.
| | 02:17 | When I do that, I want to activate RotoBezier.
| | 02:20 | RotoBezier is a feature in After
Effects that makes very smooth flowing
| | 02:24 | paths automatically for you, so you don't
have to deal with the hassle of Bezier handles.
| | 02:28 | So I am going to click that and when I
start to draw, I am going to zoom-in on
| | 02:33 | this layer, get in there nice and close.
| | 02:35 | I'll Spacebar and move around here.
| | 02:38 | I am going to start drawing this around.
| | 02:40 | It doesn't really matter which corner
you start on because we're going to draw a
| | 02:43 | complete circle around our phone.
| | 02:45 | So if I grab this here and here and
as I go around, you don't have to be
| | 02:50 | super-precise because remember this
is going to immediately start to expand
| | 02:54 | outward for the phone.
| | 02:55 | So really all we're trying to do is
capture the impression of the shape.
| | 02:57 | That's one of the nice things
about this technique is you're not
| | 03:06 | really rotoscoping.
| | 03:07 | You're just sort of capturing the shape
initially and then expanding on it from there.
| | 03:15 | So I've got the Phone burst masked off,
and if we just look at that layer you
| | 03:20 | can see that it shows up
as an outline of the phone.
| | 03:24 | If I zoom out from my composition I
am going to hit the comma key on the
| | 03:26 | keyboard to get back out again.
| | 03:28 | You can see that it's
captured the phone shape pretty well.
| | 03:31 | I'd like to have this mask animate.
| | 03:33 | In order to do that, I have
to activate the mask keyframes.
| | 03:37 | So if I go to the Phone burst and if I hit
M on the keyboard, that reveals the mask.
| | 03:42 | And I'll turn on the stopwatch for
the mask path and that allows me to set
| | 03:46 | keyframes for the mask
path at that point in time.
| | 03:48 | So now any changes that I make to the
mask from this point forward will be
| | 03:52 | automatically keyframed for me.
| | 03:54 | We want our mask to start expanding outward.
| | 03:56 | The point where we want it to stop
expanding is right around frame 55 or so.
| | 04:01 | We don't have to set up a
keyframe on every single frame.
| | 04:04 | We just need to capture some key points.
| | 04:07 | So if I go to my Phone Pass and I'll
turn that back on again, as I scrub forward
| | 04:11 | in time you can see the phone is rotating.
| | 04:14 | So if I go forward a few frames to where the
phone is about like that, I am on frame 42,
| | 04:18 | and I am going to take the mask and position it,
| | 04:22 | I can move these points one at a time,
or I could hit a Command+T on the
| | 04:25 | keyboard and that's going to give me
the Transform Handles for this mask.
| | 04:29 | When you hit Command+T, it's actually
Command or Ctrl+T is the shortcut for the
| | 04:34 | Type tool unless you have
a mask selected already.
| | 04:37 | In that case it's the shortcut to bring
up the transform handles for that mask.
| | 04:41 | So just be careful with that.
| | 04:42 | I am going to rotate that
around and then expand it outward.
| | 04:48 | And once again, I don't have
to be super-precise with this.
| | 04:51 | I just want to basically capture the
shape of the phone because I am going to
| | 04:54 | make it larger than the
phone is anyway. There we go!
| | 04:59 | When I am done with the transform
handles I'll hit Return on the keyboard.
| | 05:02 | That commits the Transform.
| | 05:04 | Next thing I want to do is grab those
handles right there and kind of drag them
| | 05:07 | out and then grab those and drag them out.
| | 05:10 | So now as the phone explodes out of that,
you can see this will start to expand outward.
| | 05:18 | Right here in the middle I want to
make some adjustments and I am going to
| | 05:22 | bring these out here and this one
out here so that we have a gradual
| | 05:26 | progression in our phone edge. There we go!
| | 05:34 | That's much better.
| | 05:36 | Now I'll move forward in
time again. There we go!
| | 05:41 | And somewhere right about here we're
going to expand these out one more time.
| | 05:48 | Then once I've got it sort of roughed-in,
I want to just expand it a little bit more.
| | 05:53 | But rather than move these points one
at a time again, I can select all the
| | 05:56 | points by hitting Command+A or Ctrl+A
and I can now use the transform handles,
| | 06:01 | Command or Ctrl+T, to bring those up.
| | 06:03 | I am going to scale this outward.
| | 06:05 | But if I just drag one of these corners,
it's going to scale from the other corner.
| | 06:09 | If I hold down the Command key or Ctrl
key while I am dragging, then it will
| | 06:13 | expand that mask evenly
from the center anchor point.
| | 06:17 | So I'll go to about there and now as I
scrub through my animation, you could see
| | 06:22 | that the energy expands outward from that phone.
| | 06:25 | So now I am going to go to my
last frame which is about 55 or so.
| | 06:31 | That's where I want the phone
explosion to be gone from the scene.
| | 06:34 | I am going to use the comma key and back
out twice, so I have a much smaller screen.
| | 06:39 | Now, I'll hit Command or Ctrl+T again
and I am going to expand this outward.
| | 06:43 | Hold down the Command key and
have it go all the way off the page.
| | 06:48 | Now what happens is as I scrub through
you can see that it starts at that
| | 06:52 | phone and then boom!
| | 06:53 | Explodes outward from the center.
| | 06:56 | So now what I do is I am
going to feather this mask.
| | 06:59 | it's got a very hard edge on it right now.
| | 07:01 | So if I go to mask options and
adjust the feathering, and I'll bring the
| | 07:05 | feathering to say I don't know,
let's make it to 100. Yeah!
| | 07:09 | That feels pretty good actually.
| | 07:10 | And I might want to keyframe that
feather over time because I'd like to have it
| | 07:14 | be a little bit tighter on the phone.
| | 07:16 | So in fact, I'll do that.
| | 07:18 | At the point where the explosion first starts,
I am going to keyframe the Mask Feathering.
| | 07:23 | So I am going to bring this down to
about maybe 10 and set a keyframe for
| | 07:27 | the Mask Feathering.
| | 07:28 | And then I'll advance forward in time
and right about the point where my mask
| | 07:32 | is going to start to expand outward, I am going
to bring that Mask Feathering to about 50 or so.
| | 07:36 | I'll just type-in 50.
| | 07:37 | Then at the point where it's completely
expanded, I am going to make that 100.
| | 07:44 | So now what's going to happen is the
explosion will start very tight on the
| | 07:50 | phone and then feather
off as it expands outward.
| | 07:55 | If I turn this on right now, and I'll
un-solo all the other layers, you can
| | 08:00 | see that my Phone burst
is covering everything up.
| | 08:02 | What I want to have is I want to have this
interact with all the elements in the scene.
| | 08:06 | But right now it's below most of the elements.
| | 08:08 | So I am going to take this and drag it
to the very top of the layer stack at
| | 08:13 | the top of the composition Timeline and
I am going to change the blending mode.
| | 08:17 | I am going to change the blending mode to
Add and watch what happens when I do that.
| | 08:22 | Now it's over the top of the image
and you can see that orange energy
| | 08:26 | completely consumes the rest of the image.
| | 08:29 | As I scrub through there, as it
travels outward, it really adds a lot of heat
| | 08:35 | that's emanating from the phone itself.
| | 08:37 | Now I want this heat to dissipate over time.
| | 08:40 | So right about here as the explosion
is starting to reach the edges of the
| | 08:44 | frame I want it to start to disappear.
| | 08:46 | So I am going to move to that point in time and
then set Opacity keyframe for the entire layer.
| | 08:51 | So I'll hit T on the keyboard to bring
up the Opacity option and I'll activate
| | 08:55 | the stopwatch and then I'll go to my
out point, line it up with that keyframe,
| | 09:02 | and I am going to change the Opacity to 0.
| | 09:04 | So now as it explodes outward from the
phone, it expands and then dissipates.
| | 09:14 | Now, at the point of the Camera Shake
where the explosion starts to happen,
| | 09:19 | I don't want to see this
layer until exactly that point.
| | 09:22 | So I am going to move
the in point for the layer.
| | 09:24 | Now I am not shifting the whole layer;
I am simply editing the in-point for the
| | 09:28 | layer and I am only moving the in-point.
| | 09:29 | I don't want to move the keyframes at all.
| | 09:31 | So I am going to drag that to the
right and have it start right there at
| | 09:34 | that moment in time.
| | 09:36 | So now if I deselect that and scrub
through, let me zoom in a bit so we can see
| | 09:39 | the whole thing, and I'll zoom-
in and fill the screen with it.
| | 09:42 | So now, as our animation comes up,
this energy expands outward from the phone.
| | 09:50 | You can see this orange glow that just
really overwhelms the whole image as if
| | 09:56 | our phone has an energy beam radiating from it.
| | 09:59 | After Effects has a lot of
really complicated tools.
| | 10:03 | But sometimes I like to go back to
the old-school favorites and add some
| | 10:07 | effects with those.
| | 10:08 | And this very simple technique of using
a 2D solid layer with an animated mask
| | 10:14 | really adds a lot of energy to our
phone, and we did it in a very short, simple way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Trapcode Particular to add sparks to the phone reveal| 00:00 | Our phone explosion is missing one
last ingredient and that's sparks.
| | 00:04 | These sparks will help establish
definition scale and movement of the burst of
| | 00:07 | energy created by the phone.
| | 00:09 | We are going to use Particular, an
amazing third party particle generator
| | 00:12 | to create that effect.
| | 00:14 | So, here inside of After Effects, I am
inside of the MMM-001 Composition and
| | 00:19 | this is where all of our
compositing is coming together.
| | 00:22 | And I want to add these sparks and I
want to have them come out right at the
| | 00:26 | point where the phone
emerges and the explosion happens.
| | 00:30 | In order to do this, I am
going to use the effect Particular.
| | 00:33 | Now, Particular is a third-party
particle system and it needs to be added to a
| | 00:37 | layer in order to be visible in the
scene and now I'm going to add that to a
| | 00:41 | solid layer and the color of
the solid layer doesn't matter.
| | 00:44 | So, let's make a new solid, Command or
Ctrl+Y on the keyboard, and I'm going to
| | 00:48 | call this one Particular.
| | 00:52 | Now you can call it anything you want.
I usually name my layer exactly what it is.
| | 00:56 | That why I know how to find it in the
layer stack, but you could call it sparks
| | 01:00 | or anything you like.
| | 01:01 | Now, I am going to make it the Comp
Size and hit OK and let's back up.
| | 01:05 | I am hitting Comma on the keyboard to
backup so I can see the entire frame.
| | 01:08 | And now this Particular layer needs the
Particular effect and so when I go to
| | 01:12 | the Effects menu and I am going to go
to Trapcode and add Particular into the
| | 01:16 | scene and Particular is added to the
layer and the layer becomes invisible.
| | 01:20 | That's why the color wasn't important.
| | 01:22 | I am going to solo this layer out for
just a second and I'm going to turn off
| | 01:27 | the Transparency Grid so I can see black here.
| | 01:30 | Now, one of the things about
Particular is that it uses the 3D Camera data in
| | 01:34 | the scene but it does it in a way
that's really not very controllable.
| | 01:37 | I've actually never like that but
fortunately for me and fortunately for you,
| | 01:41 | there is a great way we can utilize some
information that we already have in our scene.
| | 01:45 | You can tell Particular to actually
look at a light in the scene and use that
| | 01:49 | light as the basis for the emission of
the particles and the light we are going
| | 01:53 | to use is the Platform Disc light.
| | 01:55 | Now, normally with Particular, if I go
to the effect and then if I go to the
| | 01:59 | Emitter options and I'll change
the Position XY of that effect.
| | 02:03 | Let's move it way over here.
| | 02:04 | You can see there is the Emitter right
there and it's kind of in a weird spot.
| | 02:07 | I don't really need to worry
about where that point is anymore.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to start off by changing the
name of the Platform Disc light, so I
| | 02:14 | will select that layer and go Shift+
Command+Y or Shift+Ctrl+Y on the PC and that
| | 02:20 | brings up the Light Settings.
| | 02:21 | I am going to change the name
of that light toEmitter and that
| | 02:26 | name is very important because
Particular looks for that name on a light in the
| | 02:29 | scene and it uses that
name to find the light source.
| | 02:33 | So, if it's not called Emitter, it won't be able
to see the light in the scene. So, I will hit OK.
| | 02:38 | And now when I go back to my
Particular control to select that layer and I am
| | 02:42 | going to go to the Emitter options
and change the Emitter Type from a Point
| | 02:45 | source to a Light and when I do that,
Particular automatically jumps the
| | 02:52 | location of the light source
and that makes it really easy.
| | 02:56 | So, now as I scrub through my scene,
you see those particles sticking right to
| | 02:59 | that light in the scene and that's awesome.
| | 03:01 | It makes it really easy to
position your Particular emission point.
| | 03:05 | The other cool thing about Particular,
aside from it being really flexible, is it
| | 03:09 | has some really cool
presets already built into it.
| | 03:11 | So, underneath the Animation Presets
for Particular, I am going to go to the
| | 03:15 | pulldown and I'm going to grab way down
here, about halfway down, the WeldGold_HD.
| | 03:23 | And when I select that, my Particular
just disappeared and that's because this
| | 03:28 | preset actually does not use an
emitter as a light source and so I have to go
| | 03:33 | back and change that one option.
| | 03:34 | So, if I go back to the Emitter
options, you can see it change the Emitter
| | 03:37 | Type back to Sphere.
| | 03:38 | So, if I change that Emitter Type back
to my Light then my sparks jump right to
| | 03:43 | that light source again.
| | 03:45 | And as I scrub through the scene, you can
see those sparks are sticking right there.
| | 03:49 | Now, we still need to make a few tweak
to the sparks but you can see that they
| | 03:52 | are already looking really cool.
| | 03:54 | The next thing I want to check in
the Particular options is how long my
| | 03:58 | particles are living for.
| | 03:59 | Now, these sparks are intended to
seem like welding sparks that come off a
| | 04:03 | welder when you see welding two
pieces of metal together and they're living
| | 04:06 | for a very long time.
| | 04:07 | I really want these sparks to just
burst out and then die off very quickly.
| | 04:11 | So, if I go down in the Particular
settings, underneath the Particle options,
| | 04:16 | these allow you to control how your
particles look and also how long they live.
| | 04:19 | You can see that my particles are
living for 1.5 seconds right now.
| | 04:23 | If I change that to a half second, .5,
that's going change the density of particles
| | 04:29 | but also they are going to live as long
and as I scrub through you can see that
| | 04:34 | they're not falling down as far either.
| | 04:36 | The next option I want to change is the Gravity.
| | 04:38 | I don't really want my sparks to fall down.
| | 04:40 | I want them to spread outward
from the source of the explosion.
| | 04:44 | And so if I scroll down under the
Physics options, I can change the Gravity.
| | 04:48 | The gravity is at 600 now.
| | 04:49 | That's the default and
I am going to change that.
| | 04:52 | Let's bring this to about 50.0.
| | 04:56 | Now when I do that, you see that the
particles are now no longer falling;
| | 05:00 | they are spreading outward from the source
and when the camera moves, the motion blur
| | 05:04 | on the particles makes them
appear to twist a little bit.
| | 05:06 | And I think that looks really cool.
| | 05:07 | That's going to look awesome
when our explosion actually happens.
| | 05:10 | Now, as I scrub through this, I want
the particles to actually start appearing
| | 05:15 | right at the time of the explosion.
| | 05:17 | What I need to do is to set keyframes
for the amount of particles that the
| | 05:20 | particle emitter is spitting out and
then adjust those keyframes over time and
| | 05:24 | that's going to make the
particles look like they're exploding on.
| | 05:27 | So, as I go, I'll scroll up here to the
Emitter options and I'm going to set a
| | 05:31 | keyframe for Particles/sec up
here in the Emitter options.
| | 05:35 | And I'm doing this at the point of the
Camera Shake and I'm going to zoom in on
| | 05:38 | the timeline and take a look at that.
I'm right on that Camera Shake marker.
| | 05:42 | So, at the Camera Shake marker, I am
going to set a keyframe for Particular.
| | 05:47 | Now, I am going to make it about 2500,
so a lot more than the 500 that we're there.
| | 05:52 | And you can see that the explosions
are lot more intense at that point.
| | 05:58 | And so now I want to backup a few frames.
| | 05:59 | Let's use Page Up on the keyboard, 1, 2, 3, 4.
| | 06:02 | That's about right.
| | 06:04 | And I am going to set my Particles/sec
to be 0 but I need to set them to be
| | 06:09 | a keyframe first, so I am going to
stopwatch this and that activates the keyframe.
| | 06:14 | I am going to hit U on the keyboard
and then I am going to move this
| | 06:17 | keyframe that I just set.
| | 06:18 | I had forgotten originally to set the
keyframe at the Camera Shake point and so
| | 06:22 | what I have done now is I have set a
keyframe for that here and I am going to
| | 06:25 | back that up in time.
| | 06:25 | Now, normally I wouldn't do it that way.
I would have remembered to set my keyframe
| | 06:29 | there but I forgot this at the keyframe
so now I am correcting that problem.
| | 06:33 | So, now that I'm at the right point of
time, I am going to set the Particles/sec
| | 06:36 | to be 0 and now my particles
explode outward from that source.
| | 06:44 | Now, I don't want the emitter to keep
spitting out particles forever; I want it
| | 06:48 | to be a burst of particles and then
the particles should die off naturally.
| | 06:52 | And so in order to do that, I am going
to keyframe it the other way, bring it
| | 06:56 | back down to 0, and the place where I
want it to stop, that's right around frame
| | 07:00 | 40 I think I will have it stop.
| | 07:02 | And so at that point I am going to set
the keyframes to be 0 for particle emission.
| | 07:08 | And now what's going to happen is that
as that as the particles jump out then
| | 07:14 | they die off and they continue on their
course, and then they die on their own
| | 07:20 | natural lifespan progression and that
gives the illusion that the particles are
| | 07:24 | bursting outward from that center.
| | 07:26 | Now, the next thing I want to do to
these particles is I want them to brighten
| | 07:28 | them up a little bit, kick them up and
out so to speak, and I am going to use the
| | 07:32 | Starglow effect once again.
| | 07:33 | Let's twirl close our Particular and
I'm going to apply the Starglow effect to
| | 07:38 | the Particular layer.
| | 07:39 | So, I go to the Effects options under
Trapcode and do Starglow and the Starglow
| | 07:43 | effect once again comes in with
these really long rays on here.
| | 07:46 | I don't really want that.
| | 07:47 | The other thing I want to do is I want to base
the glow on the alpha channel, not the lightness.
| | 07:52 | And so, if I go to the input channel
under the Starglow and tell it to look at
| | 07:56 | the Alpha, it's going to be a
much more intense glow effect.
| | 08:00 | The next thing I want to
do is change the settings.
| | 08:02 | I am going to go to the Presets and
click on that and do Red as the preset.
| | 08:07 | And you can see that it gives
me a nice red glow on there.
| | 08:10 | They still look a too long though, so I
wan to dial the streaks down to about 5.
| | 08:13 | There we go and we can see what it looks like.
| | 08:17 | So, now let's take a look at what our
sparks look like with all the other layers.
| | 08:21 | And so I'll uncheck the Particular layer as
the Solo option. That reveals all of our layers.
| | 08:27 | And so you can see the particles are
going to now emit from that point of source
| | 08:35 | as the phone comes out and
then they're going to die off.
| | 08:38 | I think I have set my
keyframes a little bit too late.
| | 08:41 | What I really wanted to have them do is
I want them to come out right about here
| | 08:45 | where the phone is actually starting
to emit out of the platform and I think
| | 08:52 | that's going to look a little bit better.
| | 08:53 | What I am going to do is select the
keyframes on this and I am going to
| | 08:57 | drag them back in time.
| | 08:59 | Now, the place where I want to drag
them back to is-- I am going to back up
| | 09:01 | and find that point.
| | 09:02 | I wanted to really peak right around here,
so I am going to grab that and drag it.
| | 09:07 | Now what that does this is it sits on
top of the phone emission and as it comes
| | 09:13 | out of there, you can see it lines up
perfectly with the phone coming out of the
| | 09:18 | platform and it really feels like
those sparks are being caused by the phone
| | 09:22 | coming out of the platform itself.
| | 09:24 | So, now that we have got our sparks in the
scene what I want to do is to do a RAM Preview.
| | 09:29 | I don't need to preview the whole animation.
| | 09:30 | I really want to see the portion of
the timeline where the sparks are.
| | 09:34 | So, first thing I am going to do is
zoom out of my timeline a little bit and
| | 09:38 | enlarge the preview range.
| | 09:40 | And then I just want to hit the RAM
Preview button and I am going to watch the
| | 09:43 | green progress bar and I am going to
let it get to the point just after the
| | 09:46 | sparks are gone and then I'm
going to stop it by pressing any key.
| | 09:50 | It's going to RAM Preview
automatically once I stop that RAM Preview process.
| | 09:54 | So, I click the RAM Preview button and
it starts to cache the frames and this
| | 09:59 | first part goes pretty quick because
there is not many effects on, and then it
| | 10:03 | start to slowdown a little bit as
the effects become more prominent.
| | 10:06 | So, here comes our explosion.
| | 10:11 | Now, our sparks are gone and
there goes our big phone explosion.
| | 10:17 | So, once that dissipates,
let's take a look at this intro.
| | 10:20 | I am going to hit Return on
the keyboard just to stop it.
| | 10:33 | So, the sparks really add a lot of
detail to the point of impact when the phone
| | 10:38 | first makes contact and pushes
it's way about to the platform.
| | 10:41 | I really love Particular.
| | 10:42 | It gives you a lot of flexibility in
After Effects and it allows for tremendous
| | 10:46 | control over your image.
| | 10:48 | You can add all kinds of effects.
| | 10:50 | Take a look at the presets and have some fun.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the phone screen video| 00:00 | The last step in our phone process is
going to be to refine the video that's
| | 00:04 | in the phone screen.
| | 00:05 | Right now our phone screen video, it
simply pops on and we need to refine that
| | 00:10 | so it feels like it's flickering on over time.
| | 00:13 | We are going to do that inside of the
Phone Pass Pre composition, so let's go
| | 00:15 | in there right now.
| | 00:16 | So I am going to go to the Pre-COMP's
folder and I'm going to double-click on
| | 00:21 | the Phone Pass Pre, and not the
Phone Screen Pre but the Phone Pass Pre.
| | 00:26 | And so when I do that, I can now see my
phone floating in the transparency grid here.
| | 00:31 | As I scrub through in time, my video
for the screen comes in at frame 120.
| | 00:36 | If I scrub into that range,
I can see that my video isn't visible.
| | 00:40 | The reason it's not visible is
because earlier in the course we added a
| | 00:44 | Platform Disc light to our composition in
order to parent up the phone revealer to it.
| | 00:49 | When we did that, the 3D light of the
Platform Disc light started to have an
| | 00:53 | impact on the Phone Screen Pre layer,
which is a 3D layer also, and because that
| | 00:57 | 3D light is now supposed to be hitting it
but they're not lined up quite right,
| | 01:01 | the Phone Screen Pre layer is now dark.
| | 01:04 | And so all I need to do to fix that is to
simply turn off the Platform Disc light.
| | 01:08 | Now, I don't delete the Platform Disc,
because I have other layers that are
| | 01:11 | dependent on it, so I will simply turn that
off and now my phone screen video shows up.
| | 01:16 | The next thing I want to do
is to control how it comes on.
| | 01:19 | Right now, it just pops on immediately
when it hits its start time at frame 20,
| | 01:23 | and I would like to have that flicker
on as if it were gradually getting power.
| | 01:28 | So, in order to do that, we are going to use
transparency on the Phone Screen Pre layer.
| | 01:32 | So, if I select the Phone Screen Pre
and hit T on the keyboard and bring up
| | 01:36 | the Opacity option, I'm going to activate the
stopwatch at the starting point for that layer.
| | 01:41 | Now, I want this effect to
happen over about 20 frames.
| | 01:44 | We are going to keep an eye on that.
| | 01:45 | We want to be done with these
keyframes at about frame 139.
| | 01:49 | So, if I go to the Opacity and activate
the stopwatch for it, I am going to set
| | 01:54 | the Opacity to be 0.
| | 01:55 | And what I want t to do is I want
to give the impression that it's
| | 01:58 | flickering on. So each time it
flickers, it's going to be a little bit
| | 02:01 | brighter than the time before.
| | 02:03 | So, it's going to go dark to sort of
dim, to very dim, to a little bit more
| | 02:07 | bright, back down to dim, little bit
brighter, dim, brighter, dim, brightest, so
| | 02:13 | that it's almost a stair step effect.
| | 02:15 | And so what I want to do is go to the
Opacity option and I am going to page down
| | 02:20 | about maybe three frames or
so, four frames, 1, 2, 3, 4.
| | 02:23 | And I will set the Opacity to be about
15%, so I will just type in 15 there.
| | 02:28 | And you see my video layer starts
to become a little more visible.
| | 02:33 | And then as I page down, 1, 2, 3, 4,
I want to bring it back down to about half
| | 02:39 | that value, so about 7%, so
I will change that to be 7.
| | 02:43 | And then I am going to go forward
another four frames and then I will change
| | 02:47 | that to be 30, so about twice what the
previous value was, and then I will go
| | 02:53 | down again and bring it back
down to about 20 frames this time.
| | 02:56 | Each time it dims down, it is
going to get a little bit brighter, so
| | 02:58 | that's going to be 20.
| | 03:00 | And then go forward and this time it's
going to go to about 75, and then forward
| | 03:07 | a little bit more and we are at 139 right now.
| | 03:11 | We are going to have to tighten these
keyframes up just a bit. We will fix that.
| | 03:14 | We are going to go down to about 50
and then we will go forward a few more
| | 03:18 | flames and up to 100% brightness.
| | 03:21 | So, now as I scrub through that range,
you can see that my phone starts to flicker on.
| | 03:26 | But the problem is that
it's really not a flicker.
| | 03:29 | It's more of a gradual brightening and
dimming and we can fix that though by
| | 03:32 | making these keyframes in the Hold keyframes.
| | 03:35 | A Hold keyframe holds its value until
the next keyframe comes up and then it
| | 03:39 | immediately switches to that new value.
| | 03:42 | So there's no gradual transition in value.
| | 03:44 | It's a very hard step from one value
to another and that's going to make our
| | 03:48 | flicker look a lot more convincing.
| | 03:50 | So, if I select these keyframes,
I just drew a rectangle around them, and I
| | 03:55 | right-click and go to Toggle Hold Keyframe,
| | 03:58 | when I do that these are now all Hold
keyframes, and as I scrub through that,
| | 04:03 | it's going to feel a lot more like a flicker.
| | 04:05 | Now, it's still happening too slowly;
we need to shorten these keyframes.
| | 04:09 | So, before I try to do anything,
I am going to zoom into that area of the
| | 04:12 | timeline, so I will use
the Plus key on the keyboard.
| | 04:15 | And now, with all these keyframes
selected, if I hold down the Option or Alt Key
| | 04:20 | and drag to the left, I can
squish these keyframes down.
| | 04:23 | What we are doing is time
scaling all of the keyframes.
| | 04:26 | And I am going to bring
them down to about 138 or 139.
| | 04:30 | And the exact number isn't important, as
long as they're just before the frame 140.
| | 04:36 | That's going to give us the
right amount of time for our flicker.
| | 04:38 | So, now when I scrub through, you can see our
screen flickers on and then it starts to move.
| | 04:45 | So, that's it for the Phone parts.
| | 04:47 | Let's take a look at this
with one last RAM Preview.
| | 04:49 | I am going to switch over to the main
composition, MMM-001, and I'm going to hit
| | 04:56 | the RAM Preview button and
let it cache those frames.
| | 04:58 | Now, once again, how long that RAM
Preview takes depends entirely on your computer.
| | 05:02 | So we're going as fast forward through
this RAM Preview process and come back
| | 05:06 | when it's just about done.
| | 05:11 | Wow! That animation is really coming together.
| | 05:13 | And a lot of these effects, we've
added quite a few of them in this chapter,
| | 05:17 | they're all really simple techniques.
| | 05:19 | The important thing to remember is to
build gradually on your design and add
| | 05:23 | the effects as you go.
| | 05:24 | Don't try to do all in one step.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Creating the Type EffectsCreating the type glows| 00:00 | Our type is revealing in a much more
subdued way than the phone came in.
| | 00:04 | This is on purpose.
| | 00:05 | If the type had just as much impact
as the phone, the animation would be
| | 00:09 | overwhelming in its intensity.
| | 00:11 | When the type hits its mark though, we
still want to draw some attention to the event.
| | 00:14 | We're going to do that with the subtle
Edge Ray effect using a combination of
| | 00:17 | Trapcode Shine and Starglow.
| | 00:19 | Now I am in my Timeline and I'm parked at
the Moment marker, and you can see our type,
| | 00:25 | Mobile Media Moment. It's
sitting on top of the Edge Rays.
| | 00:28 | The first thing we're going to do with
our type is we're going to bring them
| | 00:30 | down below the rays, the beams that
are coming up out of the platform.
| | 00:33 | That's going to make them feel
a lot more seated in the image.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to scroll down, and there is
my Type Pass and these are all my Beams.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to twirl everything closed so
I don't have to look at those parameters
| | 00:46 | anymore and I'm going to take the
Type Pass and drag it right down below the
| | 00:50 | Beams and above the Phone Pass. And you
can see as soon as I do that, the type
| | 00:54 | feels like it's really
stuck inside the image now.
| | 00:57 | Now our type needs to have a
little bit of a glow on it.
| | 01:00 | We're going to do that with the Starglow effect.
| | 01:03 | So the first thing I need to do to add
the Starglow is duplicate my Type Pass Pre.
| | 01:07 | Now I could add the Starglow right to
this Type Pass layer, but that doesn't
| | 01:11 | give me a lot of control and by adding
it to its own layer, that allows me to
| | 01:15 | make the effect much
more subtle and interesting.
| | 01:17 | So I'm going to duplicate the Type Pass Pre
by hitting Command+D or Ctrl+D on the keyboard.
| | 01:23 | And now with this layer selected,
I'll go to the Effects menu and go to
| | 01:26 | Trapcode and then to Starglow and
now when I add the Starglow effect, let's
| | 01:32 | solo this layer out.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to click the Solo button for
that layer, so we can see just that layer.
| | 01:38 | Now the Starglow effect is based on the
light and dark values inside of an image
| | 01:43 | that you apply it to and right now our
Mobile Media Moment type doesn't have a
| | 01:47 | lot of light and dark values.
| | 01:49 | I'm going to zoom in a little bit on the
Mobile Media Moment type so we can see
| | 01:53 | the Starglow effect.
| | 01:54 | I'm going to hit Period
on the keyboard to zoom in.
| | 01:56 | That's a little bit too close.
| | 01:57 | So I will hit the Comma key to back
out one level and then I'm going to just
| | 02:01 | hold down the Spacebar to bring up my
Hand tool and bring they type right in the
| | 02:04 | center of the screen.
| | 02:05 | Now we've also been previewing our
images at half resolution and that's making
| | 02:09 | my type a little bit crunchy right now.
| | 02:10 | So I'm going to turn that up to Full
and so that I can see my effect a little
| | 02:15 | bit more accurately.
| | 02:16 | Now the next thing I need to do is
to adjust the Starglow effect so the
| | 02:20 | Starglow looks at the light
and dark values in an image.
| | 02:22 | But right now our type doesn't
have a lot of light and dark values.
| | 02:25 | It has light and dark values on the edges,
but that's not quite enough for the effect.
| | 02:29 | So I'm going to go into the Pre-
Process option and in Pre-Process controls
| | 02:34 | how Starglow look at the source image
and it opens up the range of values
| | 02:38 | that it can consider.
| | 02:39 | So by adjusting the Threshold downward,
I'm going to expand the range of values
| | 02:43 | that Starglow can consider and as I
drag that down, I'm going to bring that
| | 02:47 | down probably around 20 or so.
| | 02:49 | There we go and now we've got this crazy
disco ball effect going on in our type.
| | 02:54 | And that's way more than we need, but
it allows them to see what were actually
| | 02:59 | working with the effect.
| | 03:01 | Now we can dial down the effect
and it's going to look a lot nicer.
| | 03:04 | So the default colors are not what I want to
have. There is a lot of green in those rays.
| | 03:09 | So I'm going to switch my preset to
something that has a lot more warmth to it.
| | 03:13 | If I click on the Preset pulldown and
go to Warm Star, that warms up those rays
| | 03:19 | and changes the color.
| | 03:20 | Now the rays are way too long so I'm
going to dial them down in intensity.
| | 03:24 | So I'm going to go to the Streak Length
and bring that down to about 3 and you
| | 03:27 | can see they are just right at the edges now.
| | 03:31 | The next thing I want to do
is adjust the Boost Light.
| | 03:33 | The Boost Light will crank up the
intensity in the brightest parts of the image.
| | 03:38 | So I'm going to bring it to about 3 now
and it's getting really, really hot.
| | 03:42 | The next thing I'm going to do, I'm
going to adjust the Threshold up just a bit.
| | 03:45 | My type is feeling a little bit soft
and so I'm going to bring the Threshold up.
| | 03:49 | That's going to limit how
the effect is being applied.
| | 03:52 | It was applying too much of the image
at that Threshold amount and now as I
| | 03:56 | do this, it really kind of tightens
it up and only does it on the very
| | 04:00 | brightest parts of the image.
| | 04:01 | Now the last thing I need to do to the
Starglow is to adjust the Source Opacity.
| | 04:06 | The Source Opacity is what the
Starglow is sitting on top of.
| | 04:09 | Right now, it's sitting on top of an
exact copy of my Type Pass Pre, but I
| | 04:13 | really only want the Starglow effect
and I don't want the type layer below it.
| | 04:17 | So if I adjust that Source Opacity
down to 0, you'll see that now I'm just
| | 04:23 | seeing the Starglow effect.
| | 04:24 | I get black underneath it.
| | 04:26 | Now I can add my Type Pass Pre.
| | 04:28 | I'm going to add the Solo button for that
one and that's going to give me my effect.
| | 04:32 | This is a much more subtle look than we
had before and it allows the a lot more
| | 04:36 | control over the glow effect.
| | 04:37 | Now that we'll have the Starglow
effect added, we're going to add this subtle
| | 04:41 | Edge Ray effect using the Shine filter
that happens when our word Moment Hits.
| | 04:46 | So in order to do that, I'm going to
duplicate this Type Pass Pre layer one more time,
| | 04:49 | Command+D or Ctrl+D, and that
brightens up our Starglow because now we have
| | 04:53 | two Starglow effects.
| | 04:55 | So on this layer, I'm going to delete
the Starglow effect, Delete, and that
| | 04:59 | makes my type show back up again
and we're going to go to the
| | 05:02 | Effects > Trapcode, and add in Shine.
| | 05:04 | Now Shine has some similar settings to
Starglow and what we want to do is to
| | 05:09 | first off adjust where it's coming from,
and then we do that using the Source
| | 05:13 | Point and we want this glow effect
| | 05:16 | to feel like it's coming from right
behind the logo, and so by clicking on
| | 05:20 | the Source Point and bringing the
Source Point right up here, that's going to
| | 05:24 | adjust where that Shine effect happens from, and
I'm going to bring this down just a little bit.
| | 05:28 | The really cool thing is you can see
that effect in pretty much real time and I
| | 05:32 | can adjust it right from the fly.
| | 05:34 | I'm going to have it coming from
right below the base. There we go.
| | 05:37 | Now it feels like the light source that's
creating these rays is right behind the type.
| | 05:42 | The default colors for the Starglow are
little too red for my taste and for this image.
| | 05:47 | So I'm going to go into the Colorize
option and we're going to change that
| | 05:50 | by making the shadow color this same
sort of orangey yellow value and so I
| | 05:55 | will just click on the Eyedropper
and select that and that's going to
| | 05:58 | brighten up that edge ray.
| | 05:59 | So now it more closely matches
the glow that we have on our type.
| | 06:02 | Next up, we want to adjust the Boost Light.
| | 06:05 | Boost Light controls the intensity of
the effect, not so much the visibility of
| | 06:10 | the rays, but how intensely are they
interacting with the source image, and so
| | 06:14 | we adjust the Boost Light upward,
| | 06:16 | you can see that we really crank up
the brightnesses of those rays and I'll
| | 06:20 | bring it up to about 10 or so, and
I'll dial it back down to maybe 7.
| | 06:23 | I think that'll be a little bit more
subtle. And these edge rays are much longer
| | 06:28 | than we're going to actually need.
| | 06:29 | All I'm doing right now is sort of
adjusting the base parameters for them and
| | 06:33 | we're going to be keyframing these
over time so that the edge rays sort of
| | 06:36 | emerge on when the word Moment hits.
| | 06:39 | So let's go ahead and do that process now.
| | 06:41 | I'm going to unsolo all of these layers.
| | 06:43 | I'll be able to see the glows here in the image.
| | 06:48 | Now these are what the glow value is
going to be at their brightest point when
| | 06:51 | the word Moment hits and then
they're going to taper off to something a
| | 06:54 | little bit more subtle.
| | 06:55 | So let's set keyframes for Opacity
for these layers at this point in time.
| | 06:59 | So the Type Pass Pre layers that
have the effects on them are these two
| | 07:03 | right here. I'll hold down the Shift key and
select both of them and hit T on the keyboard.
| | 07:06 | So let's bring up the Opacity
and set keyframes right there.
| | 07:10 | So now what I'm going to do is to back
up in time to the point where I want the
| | 07:14 | edge rays to start
appearing, and so let's back up.
| | 07:17 | The word Moment becomes visible and
starts to fly in right about here.
| | 07:21 | So about just before it hits its mark,
which is right around frame 85 or so,
| | 07:26 | I'm going to set these values down to
0 and so let's go bring the Opacity of
| | 07:33 | both those layers to 0, and the type is going
to fly in and gradually become more intense,
| | 07:40 | hit its mark, and then the edge ray
should dim out, and they should dim out over
| | 07:44 | about maybe 15 or 20 frames or so.
| | 07:47 | So right about the time that the
Flash bulb start coming on and we can set
| | 07:52 | these values back down a bit. And
rather than set them to 0, I want to
| | 07:56 | adjust them visually.
| | 07:57 | Now I do want the edge
rays to go away completely.
| | 07:59 | So I know I'm going to set that value
to be 0, and then I'm going to adjust the
| | 08:04 | intensity of the glow, and I'll bring
that down to about may be 50%. There we go.
| | 08:09 | So now our type has a very subtle glow
effect on it that doesn't overwhelm the
| | 08:14 | legibility of the type.
| | 08:16 | So now I think I've got that effect
just about dialed in, but you should always
| | 08:19 | RAM Preview your animation to
check the actual timing of it.
| | 08:23 | Now rather than RAM Preview the entire
Timeline, I'm going to adjust the Preview
| | 08:27 | range and bring that over to just
before the type starts, and then I'll hit the
| | 08:31 | RAM Preview button and let it
preview just those frames.
| | 08:37 | Okay, I think that's about
enough frames to give us a feel.
| | 08:40 | Now one thing I noticed, if I stop the
RAM Preview action and let it play back,
| | 08:44 | that looks pretty awesome.
| | 08:46 | My palettes are kind of
overlapping the window now.
| | 08:48 | I'm going to just enlarge that a bit
and enlarge this a bit. And I don't have
| | 08:54 | enough screen room here in
order to see the entire image.
| | 08:56 | So I'm going to hit the Comma key on
the keyboard to back down just a bit and
| | 09:01 | also re-center this in the frame, and
then I'm going to start my RAM Preview
| | 09:04 | again so that I can
see the entire animation.
| | 09:10 | So our type now has a really nice subtle
shine effect on it that happens when it falls.
| | 09:16 | This is sort of a season to taste moment.
| | 09:18 | You guys can feel free to adjust the
values that we use on this effect and
| | 09:22 | really either dial it up or down,
based on your personal taste.
| | 09:25 | That's one of the great things about
these effects is they're completely
| | 09:28 | nondestructive and so we can
have a lot of fun experimenting.
| | 09:31 | We can push them over the top.
| | 09:33 | We can make them more subtle.
| | 09:34 | It really depends on your style.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding the type glint| 00:00 | Once the type is hit and the animation
is settled, we want to remind viewers to
| | 00:04 | read what's important on the frame.
| | 00:06 | In this case it's the type.
| | 00:07 | We'll use a copy of the type layer
and a track matte to create a glint or a
| | 00:11 | shimmer of light on the face of the type.
| | 00:12 | This will draw the viewer's eye up to the
type without overwhelming the rest of the image.
| | 00:17 | I'm inside of the MMM-001 composition
and this is where all of our compositing
| | 00:22 | is really coming together.
| | 00:23 | And the Type Pass Pre layer that we
have here is the affected layer that has
| | 00:29 | the Shine effect on it.
| | 00:30 | Now we're going to make a copy of this
and delete the effects off of it so that
| | 00:34 | we can use this as the basis for our glint.
| | 00:37 | First thing I am going to do is select
that layer, hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on
| | 00:40 | the keyboard, and now it's also
got keyframes on it for Opacity.
| | 00:44 | So if I hit the letter U on the
keyboard, that reveals the Opacity keyframes,
| | 00:49 | and I'm going to turn the stopwatch off and
bring the Opacity of the layer back up to 100%.
| | 00:53 | Now that makes our Shine effect really visible.
| | 00:58 | We don't want the Shine effect anymore,
so I'm going to delete it from the layer.
| | 01:01 | That leaves us with just a plain old type layer.
| | 01:04 | Now what we're going to be doing is
using a moving track matte to create a
| | 01:08 | shimmer of light that's going to pass
right across the surface of this type.
| | 01:12 | In order to do that, we're going to use
the layer that we have, but we're going
| | 01:14 | to change the blending mode.
| | 01:15 | Now, watch what happens when I change
this blending mode from Normal to Add.
| | 01:21 | Our type gets much brighter.
| | 01:23 | Now, if I create a very slim matte
with a very soft edge and use that as a
| | 01:27 | track-matte for this brighter layer,
it's going to give me the illusion of a
| | 01:31 | light beam passing across
the surface of the type.
| | 01:33 | So I'm going to make a new solid layer,
Command+Y or Ctrl+Y on the keyboard, and
| | 01:38 | I'll call this layer Type Glint mask
and hit OK on the keyboard, and now that
| | 01:45 | gives me a solid layer and the color
of the layer is important because we're
| | 01:48 | going to be using this as a track matte.
| | 01:49 | So now I want to create a matte for this layer.
| | 01:53 | And I'll use the Ellipse tool and I'm
going to make a very long slender oval on this.
| | 01:58 | So I'll drag it right down the center here.
| | 02:00 | That's pretty good right about there.
| | 02:02 | Now I want to soften up the edges of this oval.
| | 02:05 | So I'll go to the Mask options and
twirl that open and adjust the feathering.
| | 02:09 | Let's start off with about 50.
| | 02:11 | We want to use this as a mask for the
layer, but it's not at the right angle.
| | 02:16 | So I'm going to select the entire
layer and use the Rotate tool, W on
| | 02:20 | the keyboard, and rotate the
whole layer around and I accidentally
| | 02:24 | selected the particular.
| | 02:26 | You guys just saw a
particular behavior in After Effects.
| | 02:29 | I had the Type Glint mask layer
selected, but when I clicked the mouse I
| | 02:32 | didn't actually click on the layer; I clicked
away from it and it selected the layer below it.
| | 02:36 | So I'm going to undo.
| | 02:37 | Command+Z or Ctrl+Z. I'm going to
click the Type Glint mask layer again and
| | 02:42 | this time when I click I'm going to
select right inside the mask and then drag.
| | 02:46 | That's going to allow me
to rotate this whole layer.
| | 02:48 | I'm going to put it at about there.
| | 02:51 | It's at an angle compared to the type.
| | 02:52 | You never want your glint to be
exactly perpendicular to the letters.
| | 02:56 | I want it to travel at an angle across
the face of the word, and so that's a
| | 03:00 | pretty good angle for us right there.
| | 03:02 | Now, what I need to do is to move this
Type Glint mask down to just above my
| | 03:07 | additive type layer.
| | 03:08 | So let's twirl all these values closed,
so we can get a little bit easier view of
| | 03:13 | our Timeline,and I'll bring this
down to just above the Type Pass Pre.
| | 03:18 | And so when I do that, the Type Glint
mask is now above that and I can set this
| | 03:23 | to be a Track Matte for this Type Pass
layer and this is the additive layer.
| | 03:28 | So if I go to the Track Matte options,
and tell it to be an Alpha Matte "(Type
| | 03:32 | Glint mask)", look what happens.
| | 03:33 | I now have this slash of
brightness across my type.
| | 03:37 | And the cool thing is if I animate the
position of this Type Glint mask, it's
| | 03:41 | going to give the illusion that I have
a beam of light passing across my type.
| | 03:46 | So I'd like the beam of
light to start around frame 108.
| | 03:49 | That's a really nice sort of pause after
the Shine effect has gone away and now
| | 03:54 | our glint can draw the viewer's
eye back up to the type again.
| | 03:58 | So I'm going to scrub my
Timeline to about frame 108.
| | 04:01 | Then I'll take this layer.
| | 04:03 | I've still got my Rotation tool active
so I'll go back to my Selection tool and
| | 04:07 | take this layer and drag it to
the left just off of the type.
| | 04:12 | Now, I'm going to set a keyframe for Position.
| | 04:15 | So if I select the layer and hit P on
the keyboard and I'll set a Position
| | 04:18 | keyframe for around frame 108, and
then I'm going to move forward in time to
| | 04:23 | frame 126 or so. 125. Let's go 126.
| | 04:27 | And at this point in time I'm going to
drag the layer across and that's going
| | 04:30 | to set a new keyframe when I do.
| | 04:32 | And you can hold the Shift key down if
you wanted to or I can just eyeball it.
| | 04:37 | In this case an eyeball is just fine.
| | 04:39 | So now when I get across there, I'm
going to have a glint passing across my type.
| | 04:44 | So I'm going to RAM preview this and take a
look at what that glint looks like moving.
| | 04:48 | So to start the RAM preview process
I'm going to click on the RAM Preview
| | 04:51 | button right here and how long this
process takes depends entirely on the
| | 04:55 | speed of your computer.
| | 05:00 | Okay, so you can see from that RAM preview
that the speed of the glint traveling
| | 05:04 | across the type is really fast and
that's going much quicker than I'd like.
| | 05:08 | So I'm going to adjust the
keyframes to slow that glint down.
| | 05:12 | So in order to do that, I'm going to
take the first keyframe and drag it to the left,
| | 05:17 | so I'll bring that back.
| | 05:19 | I'll scrub through the Timeline.
| | 05:20 | I think I want to have it right about here.
| | 05:22 | So I'm going to drag that keyframe
right over to that point in time.
| | 05:25 | That's going to affect my RAM preview.
| | 05:27 | Then the last keyframe, I'm going to
just drag it to the right, to right about
| | 05:32 | here, just before the push start happens.
| | 05:35 | So I drag that over here.
| | 05:37 | So now I'm going to do another
RAM preview to check the speed.
| | 05:40 | But before I do, I'm going to
change the resolution from Full to Half.
| | 05:44 | That's going to give us a
much faster RAM preview.
| | 05:52 | The simple movement of that glint across
the type adds a lot of production value
| | 05:56 | and also helps draw our eye up to
the type with a really simple effect.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Final Touches and RenderingCreating a camera shake effect using precomps| 00:00 | At the moment the type explodes out of
the platform, the camera leaps backwards
| | 00:04 | as if struck by the shockwave of the explosion.
| | 00:07 | The camera move that I created in
CINEMA 4D does move backwards at that moment,
| | 00:11 | but it's not with nearly enough intensity.
| | 00:13 | I did this on purpose.
| | 00:15 | If I'd shaken the camera in CINEMA 4D
and then decided later that I didn't
| | 00:19 | like that shake, then I had to go all the way
back to CINEMA 4D in order to change that shake.
| | 00:23 | This would cost hours of rendering time.
| | 00:25 | To avoid that cost of the render time, we're
going to shake the camera in After Effects.
| | 00:29 | It doesn't look quite as good, but
it's much more flexible and that's
| | 00:33 | what we're after here.
| | 00:35 | In order to shake this, I want
to have to shake the entire frame.
| | 00:38 | And rather than try and grab all
the layers and keyframe everything
| | 00:42 | independently, it's much easier to
simply precompose this entire composition
| | 00:46 | into a new comp and then shake that.
| | 00:49 | So what I'm going to do is go into the
Project window and in the Working Comp's
| | 00:53 | folder I'm going to take the MMM-001
composition and I'm going to drag that
| | 00:58 | down onto the New Composition button.
| | 01:01 | What that's going to do is to nest
this composition into another comp that's
| | 01:05 | exactly the same size and
length as the MMM-001 composition.
| | 01:10 | That doesn't seem like a big deal,
but what this allows us to do now is
| | 01:14 | treat this as a clip.
| | 01:16 | And so now I can scale and rotate and
position this clip as if it were a single
| | 01:20 | source and I don't have to
deal with all those layers.
| | 01:23 | That's the big advantage of precomposing.
| | 01:26 | The point in time that I want the camera
shake to start is that the camera shake marker.
| | 01:31 | So let's zoom in on that area. I am
going to move to that point in time and
| | 01:34 | then use the equals key on the keyboard to
zoom into my Timeline just a little bit more.
| | 01:39 | At this point in time I want to set
keyframes for position, scale, and rotation.
| | 01:44 | And so I'll hit P and then hold down
the Shift key and hit S and R and that's
| | 01:49 | going to bring up the Position, Scale,
and Rotation parameters for this layer.
| | 01:54 | Now I'll set the stopwatch for all
three layers and I just clicked and dragged
| | 01:57 | across all three of those stopwatches.
| | 01:59 | So what I want to do is to first
figure out when I'd like the effect to stop.
| | 02:03 | And I know that I want to have the
effect stop somewhere around frame 57.
| | 02:08 | The camera shakes, but it doesn't shake for
very long, and I want also that effect
| | 02:13 | to diminish over time.
| | 02:14 | So I'm going to set a marker here in the
Timeline, so I know where I'm trying to get to.
| | 02:19 | Let's enlarge the Timeline a
little bit or expand outward.
| | 02:22 | And around frame 57 is where I like the
camera to stop, so it's right about there.
| | 02:26 | So if I bring my time slider over to
frame 57 and make a marker right there,
| | 02:32 | I know that my keyframes need to end right
there. So that gives me a point of reference.
| | 02:36 | Now I can go back to the original
point and I'll use the Page Down key.
| | 02:41 | The first thing I want to
do is enlarge the layer.
| | 02:43 | So I want to Page Down about maybe two
or three frames and I'm going to grab the
| | 02:47 | transform handle and hold down
the Shift key and make it larger.
| | 02:51 | Then I'm going to get the Rotation tool by
hitting W on the keyboard and rotate my frame.
| | 02:59 | And I think I want to
have it rotated a bit more.
| | 03:01 | I don't have enough room here in the
viewport so I'm going to make my Timeline
| | 03:04 | just a little bit smaller.
| | 03:06 | And then let's adjust the scale a bit more.
| | 03:08 | So I'll hit V to give my Selection
tool back and I'll hold the Shift key down
| | 03:12 | and enlarge it up a bit.
| | 03:13 | And then let's rotate it just a bit more.
| | 03:16 | And the thing I don't want to do is this.
I never want to break the illusion of the frame.
| | 03:21 | So when I rotate it, I'm going to rotate
it just to the point where it's about to
| | 03:24 | break the frame and leave it there.
| | 03:26 | I can also position it in space as well,
so I'll hit V to get the Selection tool.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to move it over and down a bit.
| | 03:33 | You have to be careful. See, I
don't want to violate that frame edge.
| | 03:37 | So I'm going to bring it
over this way. There we go.
| | 03:40 | So that's our first shake point.
So it's going to hit that mark and jump.
| | 03:44 | And now we can start to
rotate it back the other direction.
| | 03:47 | So let's go up forward about the same
number of frames. But each time I do this,
| | 03:52 | I'm going to do it just a little
bit less, so that the effect gradually
| | 03:56 | diminishes until we get back to the
original position, scale, and rotation.
| | 03:59 | So let's get that rotation there and
I'm going to bring it back just a little
| | 04:04 | bit more and then rotate it.
| | 04:09 | That's pretty good and right about
there and I'll scale it down just a bit.
| | 04:16 | Let's rotate it up so I don't
accidentally violate that frame. There we go.
| | 04:19 | So now we can check that.
| | 04:21 | It goes boom, boom, and then
we are going to go back again.
| | 04:26 | And I'm going to repeat this process
and rather than hear me mumble, I'm just
| | 04:31 | going to skip ahead in time until
the point where I've got these keyframes
| | 04:35 | just where I want them.
| | 04:36 | Then we'll RAM Preview and
take a look at the shake.
| | 04:38 | So I've got my keyframes now and you can
see that I have also stretched them out a bit.
| | 04:43 | I noticed as I was doing this process
that I had the keyframes a little bit
| | 04:46 | too close together.
| | 04:47 | And so I spaced them out a little bit
more so that I didn't have quite so much
| | 04:51 | shake and so many different
vibrations within that span of time.
| | 04:54 | So now what we should do is check our
shake to make sure that it feels right,
| | 04:59 | and so I'm going to
expand my preview range here.
| | 05:03 | And what we'll do is we're going to
start a RAM Preview and let it go all
| | 05:07 | the way to the point just after the
shake and stop it and then we'll watch
| | 05:10 | it a couple of times.
| | 05:20 | So you can see from that that this is
a pretty convincing shake effect. As our
| | 05:24 | camera scrubs through this area, boom!
| | 05:27 | It really has a lot more impact
now when the explosion happens.
| | 05:32 | Some of these frames though still aren't
feeling quite as impactful as I'd like them.
| | 05:36 | So I'm going to make a couple of quick
adjustments and then we'll tweak the RAM
| | 05:39 | Preview one more time.
| | 05:40 | So I going to zoom in on that area,
hitting equals on the keyboard, and I'm
| | 05:43 | going to go to this keyframe.
| | 05:45 | One of the things you will notice is
that the keyframes are not exactly on
| | 05:50 | the frame marker, and that's because I time
stretched these keyframes when I was working.
| | 05:55 | And so when I make a new keyframe here,
it's going to jump to that position and
| | 05:59 | what I want to do is just to make the
scale a little bit bigger and you'll see
| | 06:02 | that as I do that, I end up
with an extra keyframe here.
| | 06:05 | And so what I want to do is to position all
these other keyframes on this point in time.
| | 06:11 | And so I'm going to delete that scale
keyframe and grab these and move them over a bit.
| | 06:16 | If you're working at home and following along,
you may not necessarily have to do this step.
| | 06:20 | It's only because I had used the Option+
Drag tool to time stretch the keyframes
| | 06:25 | while I was working.
| | 06:26 | And sometimes when you do that, they
come up not exactly aligned on a frame.
| | 06:30 | So I'm going to make this scale a lot
bigger and rotate it quite a bit more so
| | 06:39 | that I have a much bigger initial impact.
| | 06:44 | And then I want to go forward in
time and I'm going to just move these
| | 06:48 | keyframes over so I don't
have that same issue again.
| | 06:51 | I'll leave that frame alone and I'll
go to the next frame, which needs to be
| | 06:55 | a little bit bigger.
| | 06:56 | And I'm going to hold the Shift key down
to scale it up and rotate it into position.
| | 07:00 | There we go.
| | 07:02 | This kind of exaggerated it a
little bit and lined those frames up.
| | 07:07 | So now it's going to go boom, big,
small, and then big again, and then back
| | 07:14 | down to small, and then gradually taper off.
| | 07:18 | So now we still got quite a bit left on
our RAM Preview cache and so I'm going
| | 07:22 | to back out just a bit in the Timeline
and then we'll RAM Preview this one more
| | 07:26 | time and take a look at the
changes that we just made.
| | 07:37 | Excellent! I'm really happy with this camera shake.
| | 07:39 | That little tweak that we added just now
really kind of kicked the impact up a
| | 07:43 | notch and technique like this
really saves a lot of time and energy.
| | 07:47 | If the client came back to me and said,
"You know what Rob, we're really not
| | 07:50 | feeling that camera shake.
We want to take it out."
| | 07:53 | If I had done that inside of CINEMA 4D,
I would really have a big problem.
| | 07:57 | I'd have to go all the way back to
CINEMA 4D, re-render my files, rechange
| | 08:00 | out all the cameras.
| | 08:02 | It dramatically affects my animation.
| | 08:04 | By doing the camera shake here in
After Effects, if someone comes back and
| | 08:07 | says they don't like or they want to
see a change, it's very, very easy to swap it out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding depth of field with the Lens Blur effect| 00:00 | When you shoot images with a real
camera, there is an effect called depth of
| | 00:03 | field that's present in all photographs.
| | 00:05 | This refers to the amount of subject
matter that is perfectly in focus, starting
| | 00:09 | from the foreground and
traveling backwards into the image.
| | 00:12 | Depth of field can add tremendous
amounts of realism to any scene if
| | 00:15 | used correctly in 3D.
| | 00:17 | 3D renders though are not produced
by real cameras and as a result they
| | 00:21 | don't have this effect.
| | 00:22 | Fortunately the programmers of both
CINEMA 4D and After Effects have given us
| | 00:26 | the tools to create this effect
right inside of After Effects.
| | 00:29 | The depth of field that I'd like to
create in this image is going to be based on
| | 00:34 | the platform as the central
focus point for the image.
| | 00:37 | So I'd like to have things that are
going backwards into the image out of
| | 00:40 | focus as they get further and
further away from the platform.
| | 00:44 | We created when we rendered from CINEMA
4D something called the depth pass and
| | 00:48 | we're going to use that depth pass to
drive an affect here in After Effects.
| | 00:52 | So let's go into the MMM-001
composition and that is right here.
| | 00:58 | And the MMM-002 composition is the
camera shake, and I'm going to rename that
| | 01:02 | right now because
that's a little bit confusing.
| | 01:04 | So I'll select this composition, I'm
going to hit Return on the keyboard, and
| | 01:08 | I'll change that to MMM-001-
Shake, as in camera shake.
| | 01:14 | Now I can tell those two compositions apart.
| | 01:16 | So inside of the MMM-001 composition,
as this is where I want to add the camera
| | 01:21 | shake, so let's raise the timeline up a bit.
| | 01:24 | Inside the MMM-001 composition is where
I want to add the depth of field effect,
| | 01:29 | and the Depth of Field is going to be
based on the depth pass from CINEMA 4D,
| | 01:34 | but I know from previous experience
that sometimes I like to tweak the depth
| | 01:38 | matte, and so I always pre-compose it,
and put it inside its own composition.
| | 01:42 | That gives me a lot of freedom and if I
wanted to make changes to the depth pass later.
| | 01:45 | So let's go into the Video folder and
into the Stadium Pass folder and inside
| | 01:52 | the Special Passes folder in
there is the Stadium Depth.
| | 01:55 | And let's take that and drag
it onto the New Comp button.
| | 01:58 | And let's take this Stadium Depth
and bring it down and put it into
| | 02:02 | the Pre-COMP's folder.
| | 02:03 | Inside the Stadium Depth, I want to
scrub forward in time to the point where the
| | 02:09 | camera settles, and I can see that I've
got a pretty good looking image. The way
| | 02:14 | the depth matte works is it's a
grayscale image and CINEMA 4D when you
| | 02:18 | render, projects a fog into the scene
and the presence of the fog is based on a
| | 02:23 | focal point for the camera.
| | 02:25 | And things that are sharpened and
focus are not going to be enveloped in this
| | 02:29 | fog and things that are out of
focus will be enveloped by the fog.
| | 02:32 | And that fog you never really see, but it's
present here in the form of the depth matte.
| | 02:35 | And so the way that depth matte works
is that After Effects is going to be
| | 02:38 | using the light and dark values in here,
to determine what things are in focus.
| | 02:42 | Now things that are perfectly black
are going to be in sharp focus and things
| | 02:45 | that are of grayscale values or
white are going to be out of focus.
| | 02:49 | And so you can see that our platform
and the elements that project out from it
| | 02:54 | are going to end up being in perfect
focus and that's going to really have to
| | 02:58 | draw our eye towards the type and
blur out the background of the image.
| | 03:02 | So let's go into the MMM-001
composition now and I'm going to drag in the
| | 03:07 | Stadium Depth composition and we're
going to put that, it starts off at the
| | 03:13 | top here, but we're going to drag it to
the very bottom of the layers stack, so
| | 03:16 | all the way down, and right
below the Stadium Pass Pre.
| | 03:20 | Now what we need to do is the Stadium Pass Pre,
| | 03:23 | if I solo that layer and turn it
off and on, that has holes in it.
| | 03:30 | I want to make sure that these holes of
ever become visible again and I don't
| | 03:33 | to want to accidentally see
the depth matte below that.
| | 03:35 | So I'm going to add a solid layer
to my composition and put it right
| | 03:39 | between those guys.
| | 03:40 | That way it almost acts as a
basic grounding for the whole image.
| | 03:44 | So let's start off, I'll un-solo that and
I'm going to make a new solid, Command+Y
| | 03:48 | or Ctrl+Y, and let's make it black.
| | 03:50 | We will just leave the name Black Solid
and I'll hit OK and I'm going to drag
| | 03:55 | that Black Solid layer all the way
down to the very bottom of the layer stack
| | 04:00 | and put it just above the Stadium_depth pass.
| | 04:02 | And the Stadium_depth pass now is
right underneath that black solid and
| | 04:07 | there's no chance me ever seeing that
Stadium_depth pass, because the Black
| | 04:09 | Solid is covering it up.
| | 04:10 | What I need to do is to add the
depth of field using an adjustment layer.
| | 04:16 | An adjustment layer is a special
layer in After Effects that affects all
| | 04:19 | the layers below it.
| | 04:20 | And it's really handy because you can
add these adjustment layers and then
| | 04:23 | it controls their intensity by just simply
adjusting the opacity of the adjustment layer.
| | 04:27 | So let see what that means.
| | 04:29 | I'm going to make a new adjustment
layer so I go Layer > New > Adjustment Layer,
| | 04:34 | and that shows up at the very
top of the layer stack, and I want to add
| | 04:38 | the effect to that layer.
| | 04:40 | The effect that we're going to use is
the Lens Blur effect and so I'm going to
| | 04:43 | go to the Effect menu and go to Blur &
Sharpen, and go to Lens Blur, and when I
| | 04:49 | add Lens Blur to the scene,
the whole image blurs out.
| | 04:52 | But there's a really cool feature in
the Lens Blur effect called Depth Map
| | 04:56 | Channel and what I need to do is to tell it
which layer to use to generate that depth map.
| | 05:01 | So I go to the Depth Map Layer pulldown
and this is a listing of all the layers
| | 05:05 | that are in this composition.
| | 05:07 | Well, way at the very bottom is the
Stadium Depth and so when I select that
| | 05:11 | it's now going to use the light and
dark values to generate that Blur effect,
| | 05:14 | and so let's see what happens.
| | 05:15 | You can see that everything is blurred
out. Now I have a problem though.
| | 05:21 | The things that's the platform is blurred out,
but also my phone, and so what I need
| | 05:25 | to do is adjust the position of this
adjustment layer and I need to put the
| | 05:29 | phone and the type above that, so we're
going to take the adjustment layer and
| | 05:34 | drag it down in the layer order
so that the type is above it.
| | 05:39 | So let's go down and raise that up.
| | 05:42 | So there's my Flashbulbs.
| | 05:43 | I'm going to put these right above
the Flashbulbs and below the Phone Pass.
| | 05:47 | And when I do that, you can see now
the background is blurred out but the
| | 05:51 | foreground is in nice sharp focus.
| | 05:53 | Now I'm going to adjust the Iris effect.
| | 05:55 | That controls the intensity of
the blur and it's at 15 right now.
| | 05:59 | That's the default value, and
I'm bringing that down to about 10.
| | 06:01 | So now it's a little bit blurry,
but not completely blurred out.
| | 06:06 | I don't want to have a
total blur on the background.
| | 06:09 | One of the things that depth of
field tends to do is to make images look
| | 06:12 | smaller, and so I want to be careful.
The larger the depth of field, the smaller
| | 06:16 | the foreground objects are going to look.
| | 06:18 | And so we are going to be very careful
with that and apply very subtle effect.
| | 06:22 | So now I'll turn the adjustment layer
off and on so you can see what it look
| | 06:25 | like before and after.
| | 06:26 | And so if I just turn that off, you
can see it's a very subtle effect but it
| | 06:30 | does help to draw the eye towards the
focal point of frame and that's really
| | 06:34 | what this is all about.
| | 06:35 | I don't want this Lens Blur to be
visible all the way through the animation.
| | 06:39 | I don't want it to come on
really until the type hits while the
| | 06:43 | flashbulbs are going off.
| | 06:44 | That's going to help to draw our
eye towards the center of the frame.
| | 06:48 | So let's go forward to the Moment Hit
marker and I'm going to move my time
| | 06:52 | slider to right there.
| | 06:53 | And what I want to do is to set keyframes
for the opacity of this adjustment layer.
| | 06:58 | So I'm going to select the adjustment
layer and hit T key on the keyboard to
| | 07:01 | bring up the Opacity.
| | 07:03 | And I'm going to turn on the stopwatch
for Opacity, and that sets a keyframes
| | 07:06 | for 100%, so that's where
I want my blur to go to.
| | 07:10 | I want to move this forward in time.
I'm going to put it to about frame 106 or
| | 07:16 | so, right above there.
| | 07:19 | And then the moment and the type hits,
I want it to be zero and that's going to
| | 07:22 | turn the Blur effect off.
| | 07:23 | So if I go to the Opacity and change it
to zero, that sets a keyframe for that.
| | 07:27 | You can see the blur effect is off.
Now what will happen is that the blur effect
| | 07:31 | will come out slowly as we move through
these keyframes and by the time we get
| | 07:36 | to this keyframe it will be fully on at 100%.
| | 07:39 | You can see now it's blurring out
that stuff in the background but our type
| | 07:42 | is nice and in focus.
| | 07:44 | So once again let me turn off the
adjustment layer, so you can see a before and after.
| | 07:48 | When I turn off the adjustment layer,
you can see that background is in very
| | 07:52 | sharp focus. When I turn that on
again it gets subtly out of focus and that
| | 07:56 | really helps to drive the
importance of the type in the phone.
| | 08:00 | This subtle Lens Blur using the depth
pass adds a lot of realism to the scene.
| | 08:04 | it also helps to draw attention to the type.
| | 08:07 | But be careful with it.
| | 08:08 | The more shallow your depth of field
is, the smaller your entire image will feel,
| | 08:11 | and so you really
want to use it with caution.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Transitioning to full-screen video| 00:00 | The next step in the evolution of our
project is to combine this animation with
| | 00:05 | the raw snowboard render.
| | 00:07 | The movement that we have on our
camera has it coming to screen and then
| | 00:10 | hitting the screen and that's really the
transition point for us to get to full screen video.
| | 00:14 | And so we're going to combine this
video with our full screen video in a third
| | 00:18 | composition and that will
become our final rendered composition.
| | 00:21 | So over here in the Project window I
am going to go up to the very top and I
| | 00:26 | have a folder here called Render.
| | 00:27 | This is a folder that I put things in
when I know it's the final composition in
| | 00:32 | the pipeline that's going to
be rendered out for the client.
| | 00:34 | And so I click on this folder and I am
going to hit the New Composition button,
| | 00:39 | and I am going to call this one MMM-
001 and then RSMB as in ReelSmart Motion
| | 00:45 | Blur and then render.
| | 00:46 | We're not going to be adding our
ReelSmart Motion Blur in this particular movie.
| | 00:50 | We're going to do that in the next movie,
but I want to make sure to notate that
| | 00:54 | on the name of the composition right now.
| | 00:56 | This composition needs to be long
enough to account for the length of our
| | 00:59 | animation plus the snowboarder video, so
I am going to make it 300 Frames long.
| | 01:03 | And you can see I've already got a
composition 960x540, 30 frames per
| | 01:07 | second, 300 frames long.
| | 01:09 | I am going to hit OK.
| | 01:11 | Now, we've got our composition open.
| | 01:13 | And the two parts that we need are the
composition that has the camera shake on
| | 01:17 | it and then the full screen snowboarder video.
| | 01:20 | Let's close up that video folder.
| | 01:22 | And in the Working COMP's folder I am going to
grab the shake composition and bring that in.
| | 01:26 | And then in the Pre-COMP's folder I am going
to get the Phone Screen PRE and bring that in.
| | 01:31 | Now, I need to know where the
Phone Screen is going to start.
| | 01:33 | What I need to do is to go into the
actual Phone Pass Pre and find out where
| | 01:39 | that Phone Screen starts.
| | 01:40 | And so if I go into the Phone Pass Pre,
I can back out in time here, I can see
| | 01:45 | that here's my Phone Screen Pre layer
and the video comes on at Frame 120.
| | 01:50 | You can see I moved the time slider there.
| | 01:52 | It shows me Frame 120 is
where we're coming in at.
| | 01:55 | So now, After Effects does a really cool thing.
| | 01:58 | If you have compositions that are all
linked together, it keeps the timelines of
| | 02:01 | those and the time markers of
those compositions all lined up.
| | 02:04 | So if I go back to my ReelSmart Motion
Blur render fold composition, I can go
| | 02:08 | into that composition and it has
already moved it to Frame 120 for me.
| | 02:12 | So now I can select my Phone Screen
Pre and then hit the left bracket on the
| | 02:15 | keyboard just above the Return key,
and that automatically pops my layer in
| | 02:20 | point to the current time marker.
| | 02:21 | So now what I can do is check the
transition from the animation where the phone
| | 02:25 | hits the screen to the full screen video.
| | 02:28 | So I am going to go forward in time to
just before the phone hits and I'll use
| | 02:32 | the Page Down key to go forward.
| | 02:34 | So I am going to Page Down until the phone hits.
| | 02:39 | And there is the last frame of the video.
| | 02:41 | And when I go forward,
you can see there's a jump.
| | 02:44 | I am hitting Page Up and
Page Down to get back and forth.
| | 02:47 | This is the last frame in the animation
where the phone hits the screen and this
| | 02:50 | is the full screen video. What's happening?
| | 02:52 | There's two things going on.
| | 02:53 | It's being colorized and also
it's not the right size and position.
| | 02:57 | So we're going to need to do some
tweaks inside the precomps in order to
| | 03:02 | make this video line up and also to change
the color of it back to the more original color.
| | 03:07 | We're going to go into the MMM-001
composition and inside there I am going to
| | 03:12 | go to the last frame.
| | 03:13 | I will hit End on the keyboard.
| | 03:15 | You can see that our video is in fact
a little bit orange, and what's causing
| | 03:19 | that orange are the light beams that we
added to make our platform feel like it
| | 03:22 | was emanating light.
| | 03:23 | And so what we want to do is to keyframe
the opacity of the light beams over time.
| | 03:28 | Let's make this window
just a just little bit larger.
| | 03:31 | If I grab all three of these beams,
I will hold down the Command or Ctrl key to
| | 03:35 | select all three of those and hit T
on the keyboard, I can see that at this
| | 03:39 | point in time these two layers are all
0 and this third layer is at 50% and
| | 03:45 | that's the layer that's colorizing my video.
| | 03:47 | So if I turn that layer off, you can
see my video goes back to clear and so
| | 03:52 | that's what I want to do. I am
going to keyframe this Opacity.
| | 03:55 | So I am going to back up in time,
about five frames so I will Page Up, there
| | 03:59 | we go, 144. I think that's good.
| | 04:01 | And I am going to set an Opacity
keyframe by clicking on the Make Keyframe
| | 04:05 | button, go to the end of the composition
again, and I am going to change the Opacity to 0%.
| | 04:12 | So now that Opacity for that Beams
layer will gradually turn to 0 and our video
| | 04:18 | will become the correct color.
| | 04:20 | Now what we need to do is to go into the
Phone Pass Pre and make some tweaks in there.
| | 04:26 | So we're going to go into the Phone
Pass Pre composition and there's two tweaks
| | 04:31 | we need to make here.
| | 04:32 | The first tweak we need to make
is the Opacity of the reflection.
| | 04:37 | The reflection at the very last
frame needs to be out of the way.
| | 04:40 | It needs to be off.
| | 04:40 | And so at that point in time we need
to make it 0% Opacity. So let's hit T on
| | 04:45 | the keyboard for that layer.
| | 04:47 | We've got the Phone_reflection there selected.
| | 04:48 | And I am going to set a keyframe
for that by clicking on the stopwatch.
| | 04:54 | That keyframe is 100% at the end frame.
| | 04:56 | I am going to move this keyframe back to
about Frame 146 or so and then let's go
| | 05:02 | back in time. You know what,
let's move it to about Frame 144.
| | 05:05 | So I am going to move it to
that point in time right there.
| | 05:08 | Now I will scrub back to
the end of that actual layer.
| | 05:12 | And be careful. There's a slight
discrepancy in the length of this composition.
| | 05:15 | It's one frame too long and that
was because of a render setting that we
| | 05:18 | had set in CINEMA 4D.
| | 05:20 | It's not a big deal for the compositing
process, but it's something to be aware of.
| | 05:23 | And so what I need to do is if you
hit End on the keyboard, it takes you to
| | 05:27 | this transparent frame, and I
am going to hit Page Up on time.
| | 05:30 | That's the actual last
frame of our actual animation.
| | 05:32 | And so I am going to set the Opacity
keyframe to be 0 here. So I'll set that to
| | 05:36 | be 0% and now my
reflections are out of the way.
| | 05:40 | The last thing I need to do is to
adjust the Position, Scale, and Rotation of
| | 05:45 | our snowboard video so that it more closely
lines up with the boundaries of the frame.
| | 05:49 | That's going to make that transition
to the full screen video much smoother.
| | 05:52 | So let's find our Phone Screen PRE.
| | 05:55 | That's this layer right here and
I want to adjust the Position, Scale,
| | 05:58 | and Rotation over time.
| | 05:59 | So if I hit the P on the keyboard
and that brings up the Position.
| | 06:02 | If I hold down the Shift key and hit R
for Rotation and S for Scale, that brings
| | 06:07 | up all those parameters.
| | 06:09 | I only need to change the Position,
the Scale, and then instead of the
| | 06:13 | Orientation, we're going to
change the X and Y and Z Rotation.
| | 06:16 | And I think we're probably only going
to have to change Y but I'll set the
| | 06:19 | keyframes for all of those.
| | 06:21 | Now, I am going to back up in time
about to Frame 144 again-- And actually I am
| | 06:25 | going to do it right about Frame 146.
| | 06:29 | And at Frame 146 I am going to set
keyframes again and these are going to be our
| | 06:34 | starting point keyframes.
| | 06:35 | So now let's click to the next
keyframe button and at this keyframe let's
| | 06:40 | adjust our video so that it more closely
matches the actual boundaries of the frame.
| | 06:45 | So to do that, I am going to make this a
little bit smaller and the first thing
| | 06:49 | I am going to do is adjust the Rotation
to try and get this line here parallel
| | 06:54 | with the top of the frame.
| | 06:55 | So if I go to the Rotation, I'll scroll
down here and grab the Y Rotation, and
| | 07:00 | if I actually scrub that forward, I can
see that I have to go into the positive
| | 07:05 | range to try and get it.
| | 07:06 | Now, I don't have to get it exact.
I just need to get it close enough and I
| | 07:10 | think I just about hit it with 2 degrees.
| | 07:13 | Now what I need to do is adjust the Scale down.
| | 07:15 | I am going to click on the transform
handle and start to drag and then I'll
| | 07:18 | hold the Shift key down
and scale this into position.
| | 07:22 | What I am looking for is the top and
bottom of the frame to line up and that's
| | 07:26 | pretty close right there.
| | 07:28 | Now, the next thing I need to do is
move it over to left so I don't have this
| | 07:30 | black gap over here.
| | 07:31 | So I will take this X handle and just
drag it to the left so that our frame
| | 07:38 | edges are even on both sides.
| | 07:40 | And I think I've got that pretty close.
| | 07:42 | The way we can check it is by going
back to the final composition and then
| | 07:46 | paging up and down through the frames to
check the smoothness of the transition.
| | 07:50 | So let's go back to that composition
and I am going to Page Up a few frames.
| | 07:55 | And now I'll Page Down again and look at
our video and you can see that's a much
| | 08:00 | smoother transition. There we go!
| | 08:04 | And I think that's going to work just fine.
| | 08:06 | Checking the accuracy of that
transition is really a crucial step and one that
| | 08:09 | can't be overlooked, but as you can see,
the effect of going from full screen
| | 08:13 | animation to full screen video
really creates a dynamic transition.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the ReelSmart Motion Blur effect| 00:00 | Our work is almost done.
| | 00:02 | The last step in the compositing
process is going to be to add something
| | 00:05 | called motion blur.
| | 00:06 | Motion blur is actually a visual
artifact that occurs when the camera takes an
| | 00:11 | image and an object moves through
the frame while the shutter is open.
| | 00:16 | It's actually a really desirable
effect in a lot of cases and it adds realism,
| | 00:20 | especially to 3D images.
| | 00:22 | 3D images are generated without
motion blur normally and it can be very
| | 00:26 | time-consuming in a 3D render
engine to add that motion blur back in.
| | 00:31 | So there's an excellent third-party
plug-in called ReelSmart Motion Blur that
| | 00:35 | allows us to add in this motion blur
artifact without having to do it in the 3D
| | 00:39 | render and so it makes it much easier to
adjust the intensity of it and also to
| | 00:45 | turn it off or on if we decide we don't like it.
| | 00:47 | So we're going to do that in this step.
| | 00:50 | So I'm inside of the render
composition and I've got my Shake layer selected,
| | 00:55 | and I'm going to go to the
Effect menu and go to the
| | 00:59 | RE:Vision Plug-ins and add ReelSmart Motion Blur.
| | 01:01 | There are several different versions here.
| | 01:03 | We're just going to use the basic version.
| | 01:05 | And when I add that, I'll scrub through
to a point in the animation where, for
| | 01:10 | example, camera shake is happening.
| | 01:12 | Let's scrub to that point in time,
which is right about here, and I'm going to
| | 01:17 | turn the filter off and on
so you can see the effect.
| | 01:19 | You can see our image is very blurry.
| | 01:21 | And if I turn it off and on, there is a
lot of blur that's happening to the image.
| | 01:27 | Let's zoom in.
| | 01:29 | I'll zoom in so you can really see what's
going on, just especially up here in the corners.
| | 01:35 | What it's doing is it actually
analyzes the direction that pixels travel from
| | 01:40 | frame to frame and it blurs
them based on the blur amount value.
| | 01:44 | And so we want to have this effect.
And the default value for this is
| | 01:48 | actually pretty good.
| | 01:49 | There is an issue with ReelSmart Motion
Blur that I know about from experience
| | 01:52 | and it's caused when objects get too
close to the camera in the actual frame.
| | 01:57 | So I'm going to use the Comma
key on the keyboard to back out.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to go to the very
beginning of the animation.
| | 02:04 | You can see that there is going to be
some weirdness that happens over time.
| | 02:08 | So what I want to do is to keyframe the
intensity of the ReelSmart Motion Blur
| | 02:12 | effect so that it starts off at 0 and
goes up to 0.5, and I want that to
| | 02:18 | happen to over about 10 frames.
| | 02:20 | So let's go to the ReelSmart Motion
Blur Amount and I'm going to go Page Down
| | 02:25 | until I get to frame 10. There we go!
| | 02:30 | 9, we started at frame 0, so that means 9
is the actual 10th frame of the animation.
| | 02:34 | So I'm going to click the stopwatch here.
| | 02:36 | So that's where I want my animation to go to.
| | 02:39 | Now if I hit the Home key, I'm back at
the very first frame and I'm going to set
| | 02:43 | the motion blur amount to be 0.
| | 02:45 | So now what will happen is as I page
down through the animation, the motion blur
| | 02:51 | effect will come on slowly and we'll
get a lot fewer of these weird blur
| | 02:55 | artifacts that happen to swish the
image around because the blur filter can't
| | 03:00 | deal with all that intense
motion so close to the frame.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to repeat that
process at the end of the animation.
| | 03:06 | So if we go all the way to the end-- and I can
select this layer and hit O on the keyboard.
| | 03:11 | That takes me to the very
last frame of that animation.
| | 03:13 | You can see there is all that
swishing that I was talking about.
| | 03:16 | I'll zoom in on that so you can see it.
| | 03:19 | That's a weird artifacting that occurs.
| | 03:20 | We don't really want that to be
visible on our video because that's going to
| | 03:23 | make that transition really weird.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to back up 10
frames, Page Up for about 140.
| | 03:33 | I'm going to set a keyframe
for the motion blur amount.
| | 03:36 | So if I select this layer and hit U
on the keyboard and I'm going to add a
| | 03:40 | keyframe for that, and now I'm going to
hit O on the keyboard to get to the last
| | 03:44 | frame of the actual layer, and
I'll set the Blur Amount to be 0.
| | 03:49 | Now, if I page up and down through that,
you'll see that the Blur Amount starts
| | 03:53 | to dissipate over time.
| | 03:55 | That makes our transition into the
full screen video much more smooth.
| | 03:59 | So that's the last step
of the compositing process.
| | 04:02 | The ReelSmart Motion Blur filter should
always be the last thing on so that it
| | 04:05 | affects all your layers in
a single precomp at once.
| | 04:07 | Now, normally at this point in the
process I would do a RAM preview.
| | 04:11 | But in the next movie, we're going to
be doing our final render so we can see
| | 04:14 | our animation in all its glory.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Putting together the final comp| 00:00 | At the end of the day, it all boils down
to your final render from After Effects.
| | 00:04 | This is how the world will
finally get to see all that hard work.
| | 00:08 | So here in the project, I've
got my final render folder in my
| | 00:11 | MMM-001-RSMB-render composition and
this is the composition that I want to
| | 00:17 | actually render for output.
| | 00:20 | And so what I am going to do is go to the
Composition menu and tell it to Add to Render Queue.
| | 00:25 | When I do that, the Render Queue is
going to pop to the foreground and you can
| | 00:29 | see down at the bottom I am going
to raise this up, so it's closer to the
| | 00:32 | middle of the frame.
| | 00:34 | And here in this window, I've got an
actual item listed in the Render Queue.
| | 00:38 | Now, in the Render Queue, there is
really no limit to how many items you can
| | 00:41 | stack up here and they will
all be listed numerically.
| | 00:43 | There are three components to this item.
| | 00:45 | First up are the Render Settings and
they tell you the quality of the render.
| | 00:50 | The next step is the Output Module it
tells you what kind of format and what
| | 00:53 | size frame we are going to be rendering.
| | 00:56 | And then the Output To settings, that
tells you where the render is going to go.
| | 00:59 | I am going to start off by
checking where my render is going to go.
| | 01:02 | Normally, After Effects remembers the
last place you rendered to, so I am going
| | 01:05 | to click on this and I'm going to go
to the Exercise Files and I am going to
| | 01:10 | make a new subfolder in the
Exercise Files and call it final render.
| | 01:16 | When I hit Create, that makes a new
subfolder and I'm going to just leave the
| | 01:20 | name as it is and hit Save.
| | 01:22 | I have told it where to go.
| | 01:24 | I just want to confirm these settings.
| | 01:26 | The Best Settings and Lossless are the
default settings for rendering out of After Effects.
| | 01:30 | And what that means?
| | 01:31 | If I click on the Best Settings option,
this is a summary of all of the settings
| | 01:34 | that are there in the Best Settings option.
| | 01:37 | The most important one is
the Quality and the Resolution.
| | 01:40 | I have got it set for Best and
Full and that shows me the actual
| | 01:43 | final resolution, 960x540.
| | 01:46 | Everything else I am
going to leave it to defaults.
| | 01:47 | I am just going to hit Cancel because I don't
really want to change any of this information.
| | 01:51 | And then the Output Module shows us
what format is it going to and if I click
| | 01:56 | on that, you can see that it's going
to be rendering to a QuickTime movie and
| | 01:59 | the format for the QuickTime movie is
going to be Animation codec, and that's
| | 02:02 | what Lossless means.
| | 02:03 | It means lossless quality, no
compression added, and that's exactly what we want.
| | 02:08 | It's a common mistake that I see a
lot of junior After Effects artists make
| | 02:11 | is they try to render H264 right
out of After Effects and there are two
| | 02:15 | things wrong with that.
| | 02:16 | First of all, the render settings for
H264 in After Effects are really confusing
| | 02:20 | and that's just an issue with
the interface that they have.
| | 02:22 | But more importantly, it makes your
renders take a lot longer because not only
| | 02:26 | does After Effects have to render the image,
| | 02:27 | it then has to compress it.
| | 02:29 | And then what happens if you
don't like the compression?
| | 02:31 | You can't undo it because you have to go
all the way back to the render process.
| | 02:35 | So the correct way work is to
render to an uncompressed format and then
| | 02:40 | compress your render using a third-
party utility like QuickTime Pro or
| | 02:44 | Compressor or some other utility.
| | 02:46 | So I am not going to change any of
these options either and I don't need audio.
| | 02:50 | This is where you'd add audio
in if you had it in your video.
| | 02:52 | And there is audio in the snowboard
video, but it's really not that important,
| | 02:56 | so I am just going to leave it out for now.
| | 02:57 | So I will hit Cancel because I don't
want to change any of these settings and
| | 03:00 | I'm just about ready to render.
| | 03:02 | The last step in the process before you
render is to close all of the open windows.
| | 03:07 | After Effects when it starts to
render will redraw the frames of the open
| | 03:11 | composition that you are trying to
render. And you don't want to do that.
| | 03:14 | That gives it one more thing to think about.
| | 03:16 | So what I'm going to do is click on one
of these tabs that's behind the Render Queue
| | 03:19 | and then go up to the File menu
and do a Close and I will just close each
| | 03:25 | of these windows, there we go.
| | 03:32 | Now that I have got no compositions open,
if I go back to the Render Queue, I'm
| | 03:36 | almost ready to render.
| | 03:38 | The very last thing I should do before
I render is save and you should never
| | 03:42 | start to render without saving first.
| | 03:44 | I am going to save this file as a new name.
| | 03:47 | File > Save As. I'm going
to call it 06-05-working.
| | 03:52 | And now I am ready to render, I've
got my files queued up, I have saved my
| | 03:56 | project, I have closed all the open windows,
and now I am going to hit the Render button.
| | 04:00 | Now, how long this render takes is
entirely dependent on your computer system.
| | 04:04 | We are going to fast-forward through the render
process and come back when the render is done.
| | 04:11 | (Ding!) So that sound you just heard means
your render is done and it is the sound that
| | 04:15 | every After Effects artist lives for.
| | 04:17 | A happy render time is a happy render artist.
| | 04:20 | So now let's go out to the
Finder and take a look at what we did.
| | 04:25 | So in the Exercise Files in the final
render folder is our MMM-001-render movie.
| | 04:30 | So I am going to double-click on that
to open it up in QuickTime. And here I am
| | 04:36 | in QuickTime Player and I'm going to hit Play.
| | 04:39 | Before I do that, I am going to let it
loop, so I am going to go to the View
| | 04:42 | menu and tell it to loop.
| | 04:45 | And we will just let that playback a
couple of times and enjoy the animation
| | 04:48 | that we worked so hard on.
| | 05:07 | All that hard work really paid
off with a pretty cool animation.
| | 05:10 | The render process is really the final
culmination of all the hard work that you
| | 05:14 | have done and you need to pay special
care to the render settings to make sure
| | 05:17 | that you get what you
expected out of After Effects.
| | 05:20 | And as you can see from our final render,
all of that hard work we did with the
| | 05:24 | camera shake, the motion blur, the
subtle glows and effects, adds a tone of style
| | 05:29 | and dynamic energy to what was
really a pretty boring animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionNext Steps| 00:00 | I hope you enjoy watching CINEMA 4D:
Rendering Motion Graphics for After Effects.
| | 00:04 | Now if you're looking for information
on how to take your After Effects work to
| | 00:07 | the next level, there's some really
great places right here on lynda.com that
| | 00:11 | you can find information.
| | 00:12 | Ian Robinson's course on the
Principles of Motion Graphics will give you a
| | 00:15 | great overview on all kinds of information
about the graphic design process for motion.
| | 00:22 | It primarily uses After Effects and
it's at the intermediate level, so if you
| | 00:25 | haven't already been through the
Essential Training series for CS5, that will be
| | 00:29 | another great place to start.
| | 00:30 | Now if you're looking for more
information and trying to take your CINEMA 4D
| | 00:34 | work to the next level,
you can check out my CINEMA 4D:
| | 00:37 | Designing a Promo series
right here on lynda.com.
| | 00:39 | In that series I'll walk you through
the entire process of creating a 15-second
| | 00:44 | animated promo from start to finish,
using both CINEMA 4D and After Effects.
| | 00:48 | Now if you're looking to find more
information about CINEMA 4D, you can go to
| | 00:51 | the CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training
series and in that series I'll walk you
| | 00:56 | through CINEMA 4D from top to bottom,
covering quite a few topics that weren't
| | 01:00 | covered in this course.
| | 01:01 | And if you just look into pure
creative inspiration and a lot of really great
| | 01:05 | eye candy, there is no
greater site than Motionographer.
| | 01:08 | Motionographer is a blog that has a daily
listing of amazing animation and motion graphics.
| | 01:14 | With all of these amazing web sites an
inspiration available to you on Internet,
| | 01:18 | your motion graphics can
really be taken to the next level.
| | 01:20 | Thanks for watching CINEMA 4D:
Rendering Motion Graphics for Aftereffects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
