How to Cheat in After Effects

337 Pages·2010·63.61 MB·English

by  Chad Perkins

Cool Tricks Appetizer!
WE’VE GOT A LOT OF JUICY STUFF TO COVER IN THIS
BOOK. So let’s get warmed up by just getting the sampler
platter of sweet After Effects tricks at the outset.
This chapter will be a great warm-up for the rest of the
book, and we’ll even conclude this chapter with a small
section about getting extra help in case you find yourself
stuck as you go through the cheats.
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Fireball
1We’ll start in the Fireball START comp in the Fireball.aep project in the Chapter
01 folder in the Exercise Files folder. In this cheat, we’re going to take a simple
animated shape layer (discussed in Chapter 7), and apply fire from the Fractal
Noise effect (discussed in Chapter 10), and then roughen it up. Note that we learn
how to make the pretty background from scratch in Chapter 10.
W
HAT BETTER START TO A BOOK COULD
YOU HAVE than a fire breathing
dragon? In this cheat, we’re going to be turning
a plain red blob into this glowing fireball above.
3Now apply the Colorama effect to the Fire layer. In the Colorama effect
controls, open the Output Cycle area, and from the Use Preset Palette drop
down, choose Fire.
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2Apply the Fractal Noise effect to the Fire layer. In the Fractal Noise settings in
the Effect Controls panel, increase Contrast to 150, and in the Transform area,
decrease Scale to 80.
HOT TIP
To animate the
fireball, animate
the Evolution
value in the
Fractal Noise
effect, and the
Offset and/or
Evolution values
in the Roughen
Edges effect.
4To make this blob look like a fireball, apply the Roughen Edges effect to the
Fire layer. In its effect controls, take Border to 75, Edge Sharpness to 0.5,
Scale to 80, and Complexity to 3. It’s looking pretty good, but perhaps we could
get a better final result by playing with the Fractal Noise and Roughen Edges
settings?
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Growing Vines
1Start out in the Growing Vines START comp in the Growing Vines.aep project in
the Chapter 01 folder of the exercise files. This contains a few vine layers from
Adobe Illustrator. It’s very important for this trick that the vines are cut up into
separate components like this. I’m going to solo just the Main Vine layer and work
on it first.
T
HIS CHEAT IS A LITTLE MORE INVOLVED
and takes a bit more time than the others
in this chapter. But nevertheless, having vines or
filigree grow is a very common trick. It’s a great
way to draw a viewer’s attention to something
important.
3Once you’ve completed painting the vine, go back to the Write-on effect
controls and change the Paint Style to Reveal Original Image. Now, there’s
no more paint. Your “paint” is just unmasking your layer. This is how the growing
vines effect is created. You then repeat this for each vine and time their reveals so
that it appears that they are growing together.
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HOT TIP
If you don’t
change the
Brush Time
Properties to
Size, then when
you animate
the Brush Size
parameter, it
animates the
2Apply the Write-on effect to this. In its effect controls, increase the Brush size of the
entire brush
Size to about 30 so you can see it. Change the Brush Time Properties value to
stroke at once.
Size, so that you can animate the size of the brush along the path if you need to.
Adjust the Brush Position value so that the brush is at the bottom, then animate it
painting the vine as above. Also animate Brush Size as the vine gets more narrow.
Trying to paint the spiral at the top is the biggest challenge.
4After doing this for each layer, I selected all of these layers and pressed
CScLSc to precompose them. I then added some glow and
a gradient background. But another secret to this trick is duplication. I pressed
CdLd to duplicate this precomp, then rotated and scaled the duplicates
and shifted them in time. This creates the illusion that your project is far more
complex and intricate than it actually is, and the result is beautiful.
SHORTCUTS
MAC WIN BOTH
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Tracked Text
1Start in the Tracked Text START comp in the Tracked Text.aep project. Double
click the cool bird.mov layer to open it in the Layer panel. In Chapter 4, we’ll
look at Mocha, which is a better way to track motion. For now, let’s use the native
motion tracking in After Effects by choosing Tracker from the Window menu at the
top of the interface. In the Tracker panel, click the Track Motion button.
E
VERY EPISODE OF THE NOW-DEFUNCT
HEROES TV SHOW had this really cool
effect that people always wanted to duplicate.
It basically featured 3D text that moved with
the scene. I still see this effect everywhere from
TV commercials to movie trailers. It’s actually a
pretty easy trick in After Effects.
3In the Tracker panel, click the Edit Target button, and choose the text layer
(TALKING Bird4) as the target. Then click the Apply button, and OK to choose
X and Y dimensions, and that’s it! Our text is tracked to the background, and now
moves with it realistically.
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HOT TIP
Normally, you
wouldn’t want
to ever track
a horizontal
surface, because
the tracking
system will
easily drift off
track. In this
2Now we need to figure out what to track, and we don’t have many options. case, we’re
We can’t track the bird because the bird moves. That leaves the background. also using the
The only area of contrast I see is on the light and shadow between the two fence contrast of the
posts. Drag the tracking point over there, and expand the feature and search wall posts for
regions to include the edges of the posts. Believe it or not, this gave me a near- tracking, so it
perfect track. works.
4I’ve applied some color correction to make this look more intense (we’ll cover
color correction in Chapter 9). And, to heighten the realism, I’ve created a
spotlight and created shadows (both discussed in Chapter 2). I’ve created some
3D distance between the bird layer and the text so that the shadows make the
text look farther away. Looking at this again, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have
reduced the scale on the text and increased the distance even more to increase the
apparent distance. What do you think?
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Blooming Flower
B
ECAUSE OF THE STATIC NATURE OF 1We’re going to be using the Blooming Flower.aep project, where I’ve created
this flower scene using shape layers (discussed in Chapter 7).
BOOKS, we aren’t going to look at a
lot of tricks that need motion in order to be
demonstrated. These include the transition
effects.
However, these transition effects can often
be used in unconventional ways. We’ll look
at the power of the Card Wipe transition in
Chapter 3 when we talk about 3D objects. In
this cheat, we’ll look at a simple transition
that can be used to reveal content like a
blooming flower.
3When the Radial Wipe effect is applied to the video clip, and the Transition
Completion value is increased, a transition occurs as above and you can see
the blue background layer behind the main clip.
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2We’re going to be using the Radial Wipe effect, which is intended to transition
between two clips like a clock wipe. Here is one clip from the stock video
company uberstock, that has donated a lot of great video clips for this book.
4Apply the Radial Wipe effect to the flower petals layer. As you animate the
Transition Completion property, the flower will seem to disappear. To animate
it blooming, animate it from 100% to 0%. This is a great trick for flowers, plus all
circular motion graphics as well.
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Tilt Shift
T
ILT SHIFT IS A TRICK IN PHOTOGRAPHY 1Open the Tilt Shift.aep project. This photo comes courtesy of Angela McInroe,
one of the photographers at Zombie Crush Photography (they did the
USUALLY USED TO SIMULATE MINIATURES.
photography on the cover of the book). I love their stuff.
I’m actually seeing this effect more and more in
commercials these days, as entire cities appear
to be tiny miniatures. It’s a pretty cool trick and
it’s easy to do.
3In the Lens Blur effect controls, check the Repeat Edge Pixels option so that
we don’t get feathered edges. Then, with the layer selected, create a mask as
shown above.
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