T454 Week 4 notes

Agenda:

Turn in/Review homework
AE anchor points, nesting comps & text

AE Tour

Students should now be working from their portable firewire drives!

After Effects (continued)

Quick review:

Importing PSD (do so as comps)

Making Movies (Apple-M)

Masks

You can use simple masks to isolate parts of a layer. These can be feathered and animated over time in interesting ways.

You can access masks through the layer window. (To get to the layer window, double click on the layer in the timeline.)

Masks are useful for quick & dirty “text builds.”

Transfer Modes

Apply transfer modes. These work just like Photoshop.

Layer Modes

Use layer modes to set how the layer mixes with the layers beneath it. Some work on alpha channels (stencil and silhouette) Some use lightness (Screen) Others use color. Layer modes can’t be animated.

Anchor points

Objects revolve around their anchor points. Zooming in and out is also done around the layer's anchor point.

Everyone should carry out a few simple anchor point moves to make sure they understand this.

Precompose

You can precompose a layer or multiple layers in After Effects. Pre-composing is often the answer to vexing nesting problems. Say you wanted to animate a car going down the road and show the wheels turning. You could first rotate the wheels on the car, then pre-compose the car and the wheels. Then you can move the nested comp (the car with the spinning wheels) down the road.

To pre-compose layers, select the layers you want to pre-compose, (Command - select to pick layers that are not right next to each other) then choose pre-compose under the layer menu.

In-class exercise. (Earth, moon & sun)

Using the supplied photoshop document, see if you can make the moon rotate around the earth and the earth rotate around the sun. (Celstial objects not to scale!)

Hint: You only need to animate roation.

Render out a half-sized, completed movie and put a copy into your week 5 folder. Be sure to call it "orbit.mov".

Effects

Similar to PhotoShop, the effects are organized into categories. Effects are applied to a layer (remember layers can contain comps, images or audio). Some effects can be manipulated by the properties of other layers.

Effect Categories (standard version)

Adjust - lets you alter brightness, contrast & color.
Audio - provides limited audio effects
Blur & Sharpen - focus effects
Channel - lets you tweak the color channels
Distort - manipulate & distort the layers image
Expression Controls
Image Control
Keying
Perspective
Render
Simulation
Stylize
Text
Time
Transition
Video

To view effects in the Timeline, select the layer, then press E. To view the Effects Control Window (a floating window), press Shift-Apple-T (or Shift - Control - T).

You can set keyframes in the Effect Control Window by clicking the Stopwatch icon or Option - clicking the name of the effect.

The production bundle version of AE offers many more useful effects, and a number of 3rd party companies have built their business around supplying effect packages for After Effects.

Using Solids

Create a solid layer to apply a lens flare effect Try animating the lens flare

Typography

How can you get text into an After Effects composition? There are three basic ways. Each has its merits.

Photoshop: You can use the text tools in Photoshop, then import your work into After Effects. This is quick and easy if you are working with pre-existing Photoshop files. Remember to import Photoshop files as compositions to retain layer positioning. The down side with using Photoshop text graphics is that you can’t scale the text up past 100 percent without getting jaggies, as it imports the text as bitmapped graphics. You are also limited in the parameters you can animate and manipulate.

After Effects: There are several ways to generate text in After Effects. In the tool palette, you can use the text tool to create a new text layer. This is a good way to generate large layers of text for applications like credit rolls, or paragraphs of text. Note that the text layers you create with this tool can be re-shaped using the drag points. You can also use either Basic or Path Text. To do this you must first create a solid (make sure it's big enough) - then choose "Basic text or “Path text” from the effects menu. This gives you scalable, vector graphics with parameters you can animate. The down side is that you are limited in the amount of text you can make.

Illustrator: Adobe Illustrator gives you very fine control over kerning, leading and other typesetting parameters. It also allows you to create large blocks of text, (e.g. credit roll) which you can't do in After Effects. Another benefit is that Illustrator lets you convert the fonts on a computer into vector artwork that you can take with you to any computer- even if the font isn't installed on the second computer.

Using Illustrator might seem a bit complicated at first, but it is well worth the effort, especially when trying to create animations with large areas of text. Here's an outline of the process:

First create a document the size of your text block. (You can use picas for points) It doesn't have to match the proportions of a TV screen, but should be sized to hold the entire block of text you'll be working with. For instance if you were making a long credit roll, you might want to make document that is 720 x 3000 pixels in size.
Use the text tool to define the text block and type or import your text, paying attention to tracking, leading, kerning etc.
After you are satisfied, save your Illustrator file so that you can go back and make changes later.
Select your text with the selection (arrow) tool so that all the text becomes highlighted. Then choose "make outlines" from the drop down menu. This will turn your text from a font into vector artwork.
You can make crop marks by using the rectangle tool to define the area that contains the text. Then choose "make crop marks" from the drop down menu. This will turn your rectangle corners into crop marks and define the part of the image that will be imported into After Effects.
Save your new file (make sure you don't write over your first one)
Import into AE. Since the text is imported as a vector graphic, it will scale very nicely.

In-class Exercise:

Remember the opening to the Star Wars movie? Take a stab at making a similar effect. You don't need to use space as a backdrop- black will do just fine. The trick is to make the long, rolling, 3D animated text. Put completed, half-sized "star wars" movie into your Week 5 folder. Please make sure it's called starwars.mov.

Thursday--------------------------------------------

Audio

After Effects is not ideally suited for manipulating sound, but it offers some useful audio tools. Here are some basic tips that will help you deal with sound.

First off remember to copy your audio into your local media folder *before* you import it and try to work with it.

After Effects (and most other editing/compositing software) does not work well with compressed audio (eg. MP3s). Make sure all of your audio is in PCM (digital audio) format. You can follow the tips on my website if you need help converting compressed audio to PCM.

Layer Markers

It's often necessary to time movements of visual elements to the rhythm of music or to have explosions coincide with sound effects. If you've worked in After Effects you've probably noticed that it won't necessarily play your audio when you hit the spacebar or do a RAM preview.

For a real-time audio preview, press the period/decimal point key on the numeric keypad. It will sacrifice visuals to provide an audio preview. You can then set markers by tapping on the asterisk key. You can slide them around to fine tune them. They can be deleted by right-clicking or control clicking them.

If your audio doesn't play long enough, check your audio preview settings in preferences.

Simple Exercise:

Import some audio into your project and into your timeline. Then you can click on the arrow putton to expand the view and show level. Note you can set keyframes and adjust the volume. If you view the audio monitor you can also set levels and keyframes there as well.

Try previewing the audio.

Tap the asterisk key while it's playing to set layer markers.

Audio Spectrum and Audio Waveform are two cool effects you can use with sound. Note: Audio Spectrum and Audio Waveform effects must be applied to a layer other than the audio. Solid layers work well for this.

If you want to use Audio Spectrum or Audio Waveform:

First make sure you have an audio layer in your comp. Then create a new solid layer. Apply the audio effect to the solid layer. (Effects -> Render -> Audio Spectrum / Audio Waveform.) Make sure the "Audio Layer" pull-down selector is pointing to the audio layer. Try experimenting with the controls.

Track Mattes

What is a matte? A matte is a layer or a channel that defines the transparency of that layer or another layer. (Like an alpha channel in Photoshop) Some like to think of it as a cookie cutter.

Track mattes need two layers to work. One layer acts as a matte or cookie cutter, the other layer provides the filling.


Track mattes can be used to insert an image into a defined shape. For example you can insert moving video into some text or the shape of an oval.

If the matte you want to use has or resides in the alpha channel, use the “Alpha Matte” option. If it is a grayscale image, use the “Luma Matte” option.

To use Track Mattes, follow these rules:

Make sure you can see your modes in the timeline. If you can't see the "mode - track matte" panel, then right click (if you have one), or control click the top menu bar in the timeline. You will get a pop-up window. Select panels -> modes and your mode - track matte panel should appear in the timeline window.
Place the matte layer (cookie cutter) directly above the layer that will serve as the fill.
On the fill layer, set the track matte popup menu to use either alpha or luma of the matte layer. Note that "inverted" is an option. Use this if you want to reverse the fill (fill outside the cookie cutter rather than inide it).
The matte layer will automatically have its visibility turned off.

Track Matte Exercise:

In this exercise we’ll superimpose a video onto some text which will move over another video.

Start a new Comp: 320 x 240 15 fps, 8 seconds long
Import two 320 x 240 movies (movie a & movie b)
Place both movies in your time layout window
Make a new solid, bigger than your comp: 700 x 300
Use basic text to type in MATTE or a word of your choice. Set the point size to be big, about 225 or so.
Make sure your solid/text layer is the top layer and that the movies are at the bottom
Select the “switches/modes” button at the bottom of the time layout window to access the transfer modes.
Experiment with the different track matte options for the movie layer. Try to matte your "movie a" layer into the text.
Once you’ve mastered this try adding drop shadow to the text.
Lastly add some audio (any audio) into the soundtrack so I can see that you know how to do this. Be sure to have it fade nicely out at the end.

Place a 320 x 240 sized copy using the animation codec into your week 5 folder. Call it trackmatte.mov

Homework:

Create a 15-30 second animation that contains video, a track matte, animated text, an animated effect, and audio. Remember to keep your work 100% original and to follow the principles of good graphic design. (Make sure it doesn't suck : )
Be sure to have a message/purpose - remember we're working on applied art not fine art. It could be a promo, a commercial, and intro to a DVD, etc. Fill out a T454 critique form that outlines the purpose and major elements and effects that you used.
Render it out as a 320 x 240 movie for iPod. (Try using the MPEG4 or H.264 codec.) Keep your original full-size comp and media so we can play with it later.
Bring in an initial proposal for your final DVD project. Be sure to think about its purpose, overall length, duration of the various components and audio. Want to see an example of a proposal? Look here.

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