Archive After Effects

This lesson will look at re-touching photographs. This is such a useful technique both at a commercial level as well as a personal level. Commercial situations demand perfect skin and eyes for models and at a personal level you can gain massive browny points from mum and dad if you can make them look 10 years younger in a photograph. Photoshop and vanity, what a combination. Re-touching is done in many ways and everyone has a different approach. Below are links to 2 different approaches to the art of re-touching as demonstrated in class.
1. Quick and simple re-touching.
QUICK AND SIMPLE RE-TOUCHING
2. 5 step detailed re-touching approach.
CLEAN UP BLEMISHES
SKIN TONE
SKIN SMOOTHING
EYEBROWS AND HAIR
MAKE-UP AND NECK

G'day fellow motion designers. This series of videos takes you into the amazing world of animation generators that ship with AE. Start with a solid and create colourful and dynamic animations with some of the weirdest graphics known to the digital world. It all looks a bit technical with words like "Physics" as a property of an effect, but never fear its mostly trial and error. Don't be afraid to tweek a property if you don't understand what it does. Its all behind the scenes mumbo jumbo to we graphic designers. We simply experiment and create graphic wonderment. We also will look at "masks" as a great way of hiding/revealing imagery and video.

MASKING > The BASICS
STROKES
ANIMATED SHAPES
FRACTAL NOISE SOLIDS AND BLEND MODES
BRAINSTORMING
Here is an extra video that explains the concept of "pre composing". We know it as nesting one or more compositions within each other. The basic concept is to "group" a number of compositions or layers within another composition. This enables applying an effect to a number of layers at once.
PRE-COMPOSING


After effects ships with a shipload of pre-animated effects both for still images, backgounds and typography (thats 3 things). While presets will give you lots of bang for your bucks, they should be used as starting points to more creative useage. They can be edited and enhanced with some judicious keyframe work. Here is a basic explanation.
AFTER EFFECTS BASIC PRESETS
TYPE PRESETS
MORE AE PRESETS
Here is a basic explanation of trimming video in the Layer window as demonstrated in class.
TRIMMING VIDEO IN LAYER WINDOW
This week we looked at an efficient method of slicing or editing video. Here is a video that shows an alternative way of adding fade transitions between clips. The behavior fade is too good. Check it out for some clever tips.
ALTERNATIVE VIDEO EDITING FADES TIP

G'day student, today we looked at the basic techniques of using the "effects" in Adobe After Effects. They don't call it After Effects for nothing, there is a truckload of effects that ship with AE and even more available through third party plug-in effects developers. One of the basic effects used was "shatter", and what a destructive little force it is. Here's a good CS4 explanation. Basic effects are the same in most recent versions of AE.
AFTER EFFECTS SHATTER EFFECT.
That "cc sphere" effect can create a great space scene. Here is an overview of the effect. They use an image, we used a "solid" Tip: Command_Y to open new solid box. Shift_Command_Y to reopen solid dialogue box to change colour.
AFTER EFFECTS CC SPHERE EFFECT

The lights in After effects work in the 3D world. Add drama and style to a 3D scene with mood lighting or dramatic night club style spotlights. Animate the lights to add reality to any scene. Graphically grand!!!! Here are some videos that get to the bottom of light usage in AE.
AFTER EFFECTS LIGHTING
AFTER EFFECTS LIGHTING !
SHADOWS

Movie clips and Compositions both have "duration" ie they will take up as much of the timeline as required. Many times you will want to loop the footage to fill up a longer time line. Here is an intermediate solution that will save you having duplicated layers.
LOOP A COMPOSITION ON THE SAME LAYER
The Time re-mapping thing is very versatile. Here is an example of character lip-synching using the technique.
LYP SYNCHING USING TIME RE-MAPPING

Video Co-Pilot is an amazing After effects tutorial site run by long-time Aftereffectian Andrew Kramer. This 3D city tutorial is not for the squeemish or After Effects beginner as it makes extensive use of the 3D (2 and a half D) environment. While a bit tricky the finished product is amazing and a great creative use of After Effects. Most of the tutorials at this site make use of 3rd party plug-ins. ie you have to buy a plug-in to complete the exercise. Thankfully this is plug-in free and well worth the effort. Good Luck.
AFTER EFFECTS 3D CITY BUILD

After Effects can create amazing simulated 3D environments for Images, Typography and Video. Layers do not have their own personal depth, but they can be placed into a 3D environment and viewed through various cameras and lighting. This can create great video. The 3D space is a bit intimidating at first but a bit of practice will have you a master in no time. Here are some basic concepts.
3D CAMERA
3D TEXT
FAKE 3D TEXT

Any video benefits from an audio track. Music, narrations, synched sound effects etc. Once upon a time to create music you had to play an instrument or have a recording studio. Now with GarageBand you can cut and paste loops, record voices and instruments and add sound effects to create great  backings. Avoid copyright issues and spend an hour with Garageband to create your own musical masterpieces.
APPLE GARAGEBAND PAGE
GARAGEBAND WORKSPACE
HOW TO USE GARAGEBAND

There are a number of ways to render and formats to render  in After effects.When you have finished your After Effects Video Masterpiece it time to output you final Composition. Here are a few tips. nb: A frame rate of 59.4 frames per second is referred to in the videos. This, along with the pixel size is generally referred to as High definition. High definition tests the best of wi-fi networks to deliver the video without stopping and starting. Hence our studies are at 25 frames per second in the interest of a modest frame rate.  The holy grail of rendering is "maximum quality with minimal file size and data rate". TIP: have the caps lock on when rendering to stop the preview slowing down the render.

AFTER EFFECTS RENDER SETTINGS H264
ALTERNATIVE RENDER SETTING ANIMATION/PHOTO-JPEG

Here is a few of the Generators found in AE. These guys create without having to import footage. A simple solid and they are away. Strap yourself in for some serious
weirdness and fun as these guys create alien worlds and amazing backdrops. Mix them with Typography, images and video and enjoy.
FRACTAL NOISE
PIXEL POLY
PARTICLE WORLD 1
PARTICLE WORLD

Here is some serious motion graphics true 3d and after effects style compositing. Very slick.
MAZDA ad

Here is a handful of useful After effects techniques guaranteed to liven up and add spice to any Still image, Video or Typography you can throw at them. Make interesting shapes appear with the write-on effect. Get rid of awkward backgrounds with the RotoBrush and enter the twilight zone of over 400 text effects. Self indulgence allowed.
VINES IN ILLUSTRATOR
VINES IN AFTER EFFECTS
THE ROTOBRUSH
BUILT IN TYPE PRESETS
MORE PRESETS

Masking creates all sorts of opportunities to section off parts of images and to reveal and hide parts of images and videos in creative ways.
INTRO TO MASKING
EDITING MASK PROPERTIES
MASKING WITH THE PEN TOOL
SHAPE LAYERS
ANIMATED SHAPE LAYERS AND BRAINSTORM

The puppet tool is great for bending things and animating still images. The brainstorming function helps you when the creative juices dry up and your looking for some inspiration. Check out the greenscreen sample. Here are a few links in that direction + others.
PUPPET TOOL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LogW_AOHosQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FKaPBAUBNY
GREENSCREEN SAMPLE
w.youtube.com/watch?v=bie_Pj0AbAY&feature=related
FRACTAL and BRAINSTORMING
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppBDVS5DbQw
CAMERA ANGLES AND MONITOR VIEWS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPKyyItXg5E
TEXT ON A PATH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzJ80D3nMxg&feature=related
ROTOSCOPING CS5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYgfDUnA1Ys

Hi students, it time to drag yourself off Facebook and practice the basic After effects Transformation animation principles.Transformation is a fancy word for adjusting a property of the image or video. ie make it bigger and smaller,  Rotate it,  Adjust Opacity etc. Rated: Useful+
Basic Animation
Scale Animation
Opacity Animation
Rotation Animation
Editing the Animation PAth