After Effects Tutorial Number 5

After Effects Tutorial | Proxies & Workflow Tips

Melanie Lerner | December 1, 2010

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/proxies_and_workflow_tips/

In Andrew Kramer’s tutorial he shows simple tips on how to work on a project quickly at a decent resolution. He explains that a proxy is a lower resolution version (video or still image) of a project that temporarily takes the place of something that is higher resolution. The benefits are being able to work and preview your project faster.

To start with he says to check your composition and footage settings (HDTV is a standard 1920 x 1080 format). Once you set the dimensions that you want, you have a couple options as to how to work with a lower resolution in After Effects. The first is to lower the resolution of the project window (say quarter, third, half, or full size), but doing this means After Effects is still sampling from the bigger footage file. Another, better way to go about it is to look at the output module and format a proxy that way. You can right click on the footage layer, go to create proxy – movie and a render queue window will pop up. You can then go to output module settings to format your proxy, which is how a proxy saves itself. You can choose such settings such as Quicktime movie and change animation to a photo jpeg sequence, then hit ok and render. Now a square box pops up next to your footage to show that the footage has been converted to a photo jpeg Quicktime movie (hence it’s easier to work with). You have the liberty of toggling the switch back and forth between your regular full resolution project and the proxy clip. You can shut the proxy off at any time as well.

Now if you have several pieces of footage you can’t unfortunately convert all of them at the same time and create a proxy but you can create a proxy template that can be applied to each. To do this, right click – create proxy – movie (do this for each file so that all files are included in the render queue), then go to output module – make template. Now if you go to the output module and hold down the shift key for each item, you can select all the render queue items and choose the template you made to apply to all of them. Or, if you would rather make global changes in regards to proxy settings, you can change After Effect’s defaults by going to edit and output module so that when you add your composition to the render que, your settings are already in place.

Kramer mentions too that if you are working with a proxy that is ½ the resolution, you should set the original file to ½ the resolution as well (there’s no point in seeing extra pixels if you aren’t going to render them). Proxies do come with their limitations. For instance, you never want to do motion tracking with a proxy in place. Also you will want to check that your resolution is not set to full while tracking because After Effects has a tendency to change it back for you. And if a render ever dies an easy trick is just to duplicate it and the composition will re-render for you.

Kramer concludes by saying that you never want to render the final video using a proxy. To double check that the proxy is turned off while rendering you can go to add to render queue – proxy use – use no proxy. For the most part, proxies are extremely helpful and a quick way to work while keeping fairly decent resolution. Color correction and compositing are just two things that would benefit from proxy use. Kramer's techniques are certainly viable in rendering large files, which I know will come in handy in my current and future projects.

Le Creuset December 1st

Le Creuset – November 29th in Progress Video

After Effect Tutorial 4

After Effects Tutorial | Reflection Plug-In

Melanie Lerner | November 25, 2010

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/reflection_plug-in/

In Andrew Kramer’s tutorial he shows an easy way to use reflections within an animation piece (while After Effects comes with a built in reflection preset there are some limitations to it, which is why he uses a plug-in feature instead). He starts off by installing a plug-in titled VCReflect.aex (free feature of VideoCopilot), which can be downloaded, copied, and pasted into your own directory. With a new composition and image in place he begins by going to effect – videocopilotvc – reflect. Once this is in place you can go onto to change the reflection from After Effects’ default settings by altering the floor position (where the reflection starts), the reflection distance (how long the reflection goes on from the main source image), and by turning down the opacity and changing the blur amount so that the reflection looks as believable as possible. A falloff blur is one that gets stronger as the reflection extends away from the floor/beginning position (as compared to a simple directional blur). An advantage to this plug in is that it renders fairly quickly and easily.

While the first example Kramer showed involved an image that had a straight horizontal base, the next one rests on a diagonal. To accommodate for this he rotated the angle of reflection so that it lined up with the diagonal base of the image. However, even after a rotation the reflection looks awkward because reflections are supposed to appear to bend. Therefore, Kramer further adjusted the skew so that the reflection looks less forced. Another point he brought up was to consider moving the reflection behind the original image so that the image itself doesn’t get cut off.

The third example Kramer demonstrated showed how to create a reflection in 3-D space using text, which yields different but interesting results than from adding a reflection to a mere image. The reason is that After Effects separates the text and reflection layers so that if you move one the other one doesn’t follow suit. To fix this, he suggested you precompose the layer (making sure all of its attributes are attached). Consequently, the two layers should then link together. He suggested adding a camera into the mix as well and playing with light and texture to make the work look more dynamic and dramatic.

The final example Kramer illustrated in this particular tutorial was how to customize effects on a reflection. First change the blend style to reflection only. Then you can go to effect – stylize – scatter. With the title selected you can go to effect – channel – cc composite to do some pretty interesting things as well (just have to make sure RGB box is unchecked so that the title appears on screen). This feature allows for the reflection to have noise/texture to rather than just its basic sheen. If there is a solid color layer in between the text layer and the reflection layer, a simple adjustment layer will separate the two so that they A) render in the proper order and B) don’t get cut off by the solid color.

While there are definitely many options for as how to go about customizing a reflection, knowing the basic steps will give me a starting point from which to branch out from. I find this plug-in will be a handy tool to have when animating and give an extra layer of depth and dimension to my work.

LC November 22nd

After Effect Tutorial 3

After Effects Tutorial | How to Make a Countdown

Melanie Lerner | November 19, 2010

http://vimeo.com/11312354

In this tutorial the artist Jordan Wiseman explains how to make a countdown clock by using expressions in After Effects. Before working on a plain background, he decides to start out by creating a more visually interesting one. He opens up a new solid layer and then goes to effect – generate ramp. The default is set to show a linear gradient but that can easily be switched to radial. You can then further alter the look by playing with different colors and expanding the gradient in size so it becomes much more subtle. He then took the text tool to write out 2:00 and clicked the arrow under the text layer followed by an Alt + Click on the source text layer so that the expression box showed up. The countdown expression is set in such a way that you have to input how many seconds are in the amount of minutes you hope to show. For instance, inputting 300 seconds would generate a 5 minute countdown while 120 seconds would generate a 2 minute countdown. You can manipulate the seconds to get the exact minute count you want, which I find helpful when trying to show moving numbers in my own presentation.

After Effects Tutorial | How to Show Smoke

More November 19, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmimOeWZRcY

In this video the creator shows an easy way to form a realistic looking smoke. He starts out with a plain black image/background and then goes to effect – stimulation – particle playground. The default color is set to red, but in order to look more like smoke you need to change the coloration to a light gray. He then goes into to alter the velocity to 250 (now the particles on screen go upward in motion instead of down). To get the particles looking less rigid you can add a blur by simply going to effect – blur and sharpen – fast blur. In this scenario the artist chose to adjust the blurriness to 16 in value, clicked enter and then ok. You can at this point watch what you have created by generating ram preview or if you want to see what the particles look like without the blur you can do that as well. By selecting total transparency grid you will see the smoke by itself (shows up as pretty faint), and this layer can be placed into any after effects video you want to use. Because my client is Le Creuset, knowing how to make smoke can be extremely helpful if I want steam to come out of a pot at some point during the animation sequence.

Le Creuset November 19

Le Creuset November 17 Video

After Effect Tutorial 2

After Effects Tutorial | Advanced Camera Tips (Duration: 29:37)

Melanie Lerner | November 13, 2010

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/advanced_camera_tips/

In this tutorial, Andrew Kramer discusses how to animate a camera in After Effects by showing us some tips for advanced camera angles. Kramer emphasizes that successful camera angles can be done with few key frames if using the write technique. To start with, click P for position then Shift+A to get the point of interest to show up under the camera layer. Then use the track camera tool to move the camera around on screen (just click and drag). While After Effects defaults to a setting that when you change the camera position it affects the X,Y, and Z coordinates together, there is another way to animate each individually so as to prevent extra key frames and distractions. First you need to create a null object and make it 3-D, then parent the camera to the null object. Next, go to the effects tab and type in “Separate X, Y, Z position” and apply it to the layer. Doing so allows for much more precise control over each coordinate. So instead of relying on position to animate the camera’s movement, you use camera controls.

To create some cool particle/nebulous/firework effects, Kramer explains that you must go to the effect tab and select trap code and then the particular button. From there you can choose how many particles you want to emit. To stop emitting particles simply set the key frame back to 0. The physics time factor lets you freeze time in the animation sequence and the Aux system feature allows you to emit more particles from the main, already existing ones. Like other areas in After Effects, you can control the size of the particles and their opacity, in addition to their velocity, size over life, their color, and the amount emitted per second. To add an element of randomness you can play around with the random setting under the physics tab.

Once this is complete, you can type “A+A” to bring up your camera options. At this point it is necessary to turn on depth of field. Because depth of field requires high rendering settings, it is wise to turn the resolution on screen to ½. After doing this, you can create a new adjustment layer and play with the curves to affect particle color. You can even add text, make the layer 3-D and animate with the rest of the particles. When making a text layer 3-D, however, you will want to shut off depth of field in order to see the text clearly (text suffers from shallow depth of field). If you shut off depth of field using the draft 3D button though, the camera’s depth of field remains on – thus becoming a useful tool.

On a side note, Kramer explains that if you ever need to duplicate a layer’s position just hit control+D and copy and paste it into another layer. You can add expressions like wiggle to make the animation more exciting and play with focus distance to determine how close or far something is too. There is really no limit as to what can be done in After Effects. Overall, the main point to be taken away from this video is that knowing how to use a camera and playing around with camera angles and particle emissions, one can make ordinary animation seem exciting, and produce some pretty cool results. I personally found it valuable to find out about camera controls and how it’s better to animate a camera’s X, Y, and Z coordinates separately rather than bundled together.

After Effects Tutorial Number 1

After Effects Tutorial | Expressions

Melanie Lerner | November 5, 2010

http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/tutorials/09.Expressions/

In this tutorial, Andrew Kremer unlocks expressions for the After Effects user. Expressions are a scripting language for the program that have many endless variables and possibilities, which lets you add in special features not found in the effects bar of the program. To add an expression you must alt + click on a stopwatch (say for position, rotation, or opacity). The expression dialogue box will then appear. The default settings should show up on screen as transform + position (if you are animating position). To change the default you can type in a new expression like wiggle (12, 5). The numerical values tell you two things. First how many times a second the wiggling will occur (in this case 12), and second how much it will occur, in this case 25 units/pixels. To close the expression box, click outside of it.

By animating the expressions in this way, however, the entire layer has an expression added onto it. If however, you want to start and stop the expression so it only occurs at certain points in the animation sequence, then you have to utilize slider control. Slider control doesn’t affect the footage, just the value you want something to have. To get slider control to appear you will have to go to the effect toolbar, click expression controls, and then slider control. You then delete the section of the code that says how often something will occur (the second number) and click and drag the pic width to the slider control bar. The pic width looks like a spiral. At this point, the expression will automatically write itself a new code. This way allows for more control so that the user can add in keyframes to start and stop the expression as he/she chooses.

You can add expressions to other things as well, such as to the opacity. You would use the same technique as before, alt + click the opacity stopwatch, then drag the pic width to the slider control. You can further link layers together so that one expression is used for all without recoding it each time by simply copying and pasting the code. When layers are linked together and you only want to change one part of one of them without affecting the others, you can add a divide or multiply sign after the code to animate differently just that one specific part.

To erase an expression you alt + click the stopwatch or alt + click the = sign. I found the tutorial was effective at demonstrating and helping better understand what are expressions and the ways in which to incorporate them into an animation project. It is, in short, a simple math formula that produces powerful results.