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For this first episode of pixel
playground, what we're going to do is
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take what looks like a complex animation
and easily created using tools in photo shop.
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Now right here on the screen we see a
street covered in snow.
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All this nice snow.
What we're going to do is have the snow fall.
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| 00:19 |
So, first thing we have to do is create
that snow.
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So, I'm going to look at the size of my
image here, and we see that the file is
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set to a width of 900 pixels, and a
height of 704.
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So, I need to create a file that's larger
than this to create my snow.
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So I'm going to go in and start a new
file, and I'm going to make it 1,000 by 1,200.
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So it's just a little wider than the
existing, much higher than the existing.
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Click okay, and there it is.
So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm
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going to go in here and give this some
noise.
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Add noise.
And you see I have a very high amount
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set, and I have monochromatic.
Without monochromatic, it introduces all
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these colors which we don't want.
So monochromatic keeps it in the blacks
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and whites.
Click OK.
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Now if we zoom in on this we see that we
have some noise made of black and white
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with some sprinkling of grays here and
there.
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So what we are going to do is increase
the numbers of grays so that will allow
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me to modify this to create the snow that
I need.
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So I'm going to give it another filter.
I'm going to give it a little blur more.
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| 01:21 |
And there you can see that it's
introduced a bunch of grays.
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So now that I have that, what I'm going
to do is go in here and apply an adjustment.
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Levels.
And we see the histogram, we see that
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most of the tones are right here in this
mid-tone area.
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So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
take my darkest tones, the blacks, and
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push them all the way down until they get
to this second little chamber right in here.
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Right in there.
Right at the beginning of that.
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And you can see what's happened already
in the background.
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It's turned that noise into what looks
like a starfield.
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I'm going to push my whites in so that
all my tones are encompassed in that one
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little chamber there.
Click OK, and there we have the basis for
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our snow.
That's it.
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This could be used as a star field for
some space scene you want to create or
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whatever, but for now it's going to be
our snow.
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So what I'm going to do, is I'm going to
Select All, and I'm going to say Copy.
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So now we can close this.
I'm going to close it, we don't need to
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save it, and right back here I'm going to
say Paste.
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Go in there and paste it.
Now that we have it in here, we're
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going to go ahead and call it.
We're going to call it, Far.
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Right now, I'm going to duplicate that
layer, so I have two of them.
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And a copy here, I'm going to call, Near.
Now they are exactly the same, see.
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Turning 1 off, it looks like nothing's
changed because they are exactly the same layer.
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So what I'm going to do is modify this
because as this stuff is moving, if they
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are still the exact same shapes, what's
going to happen is that you're going to
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start to get patterns.
Some little snowflakes cross each other a
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it will form a pattern.
So I'm going to go in there and take that
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near layer and we'll do some
modifications to it.
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Like I'll go in there and say well do a
180 degree rotation.
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And I'm going to give it a flip
horizontal as well.
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| 03:10 |
So now when I turn it off, you see that
we have two totally different layers.
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| 03:14 |
So now we're going to do a little further
modification to it.
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We're going to take that near layer.
That's the one that's closest to us, right?
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We're going to go in there and I'm
going to go to my Transforms > Scale.
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And I'm going to move it up here so that
it's right flush With the bottom of my
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image right there, going to move it up a
little bit.
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And I'm going to double it's size.
I'm going to hold down my shift key to
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constrain it, I'm going to kind of make
it that big.
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About like that.
Make sure it's just flush on the bottom
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down there.
A little higher and hit return so that happens.
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Then in my far layer I'm going to make
sure that it is flush with the bottom as well.
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There we are.
So now both layers are exactly flush with
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the bottom.
So now let's pull back just a little bit,
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or come in a little bit.
Just move it over to the side here.
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And what we're going to do now is to make
these guys move.
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So I'm going to set their modes right now
to screen.
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That's going to allow me to see what's
underneath it.
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You see it got thicker because now we're
seeing the snow underneath?
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| 04:17 |
And we're going to take the far one and
say screen.
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Now let's get real close for a second.
Now there they are.
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Now, we're going to create movement.
We're going to create movement.
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So to get that realistic effect, I'm
going to take that near layer.
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The one that's near.
And I'm going to give it another filter.
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I'll give it a little Motion Blur.
Straight up and down and, about seven is
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enough, and you can see what's happened
there.
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You can see that those pixels or those
particular snow flakes are now falling.
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See, and the one that's far, I'm just
going to give that a little blur more,
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just to soften those up, so they don't
look so pixelated.
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And there we can see that we start to
have the sense of the falling snow.
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| 05:01 |
So, what's going to happen now, is we're
going to animate it.
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I'm going to bring up another panel,
which is the timeline panel.
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And, right here, we can see that we have
our animation.
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It shows up the two, individual layers.
So I'm going to open up the attributes
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for those two layers, so we can see
what's going to happen to them.
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| 05:18 |
And right here we see we're at the
beginning of our animation.
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So what I'm going to do, I'm going to
lock the position for each of those two layers.
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So it locks them flush at the bottom with
a little space at the top at the
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| 05:30 |
beginning of the animation.
So now I'm going to move this little guy
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way over to the end of the animation.
And there for the near layer.
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I select just the near layer, and with my
Move tool, I'm going to move it down.
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And I make sure that Autoselect is turned
off.
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because if I don't have that turned off
then it's going to select both layers and
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move them.
I just want to move each individual
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layer, in an area where I don't really
see them.
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So I got my near layer, so I'm going to
click and drag it.
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And I'm going to drag it so that the top
is now flush with the top.
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| 06:00 |
And you see that it created a new
keyframe at the end of the animation.
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So now I take my file layer, and I will
move it so it is flush with the top.
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Right there.
Now we can come and get a little closer here.
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In fact, let's go to 100% size, and we'll
put it right here again.
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And let's close these up.
Let's close this window way down so we
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can kind of see what's going to happen.
Right here, we bring this back to the beginning.
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Clicking the Rewind.
And click Play.
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And there we see that we have snow
falling.
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And it's that simple.
It's just a question of knowing what
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tools to use to create the effect that
you want.
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