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.