Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi Angie, big motion designer from
agreeing this effect we will create right now, in this lesson, I'll
show you how you can animate images using
Adobe After Effects. I'll show you techniques to
read a perfect infinite loop, which is great for posts on social media or bromo campaigns. The best part of this lesson is that it's great for beginners, even if you did an open
Adobe After Effects before. I'll share with you
all tips and tricks which you need to know to
read seamless textures, bended animations, and even create your own template
for this effect. I'll show you how
you can read a sense of depth in your animations, as well as how to create
a preset to apply this effect to any
kind of image. I'll start with basics, and gradually we will get to more complex techniques
with each new video. I think it's the best way
to learn the software while reading interesting
effects for fun. And to complete this class, our goal is to create
this waterfall animation, as well as smoke animation. Just download any version
of Adobe After Effects. Even the trial version
will work too. I'll be happy to see
it in my class as also your result after
following all the steps. So let's get started.
2. Creating Loop Animation: I'm using Adobe
After Effects 2021. I'm using standard layout. This layout should
be similar to yours. If for some reason
you cannot see some bundles which you
can see on my screen. You can always go to Window
and enable it from here, for example,
character, character. Now let's import our footage. Let's go to file, import file. These two photos
will be available to download in resource
tab to this class. So select them and click import. First of all, we want to
create a new composition. To create new
composition, we can click here or on this little
icon right here. So let's look here and
specify our resolution. We can set to 1920 by 1080
resolution of full HD video. Let's also set to 30
frames per second. Length. I'll set
to nine seconds. And let's call it waterfall. Let's pick this image
right here and leftmost click hold and drag on
timeline right here. So now we can just
select our layer and press S on keyboard and size it. It will match our resolution. We can also click here by this edge and expand our screen. And also select
the selection tool and move around your
image as you like. First thing which
we want to do is to animate parts of this image. This effect requires to create master composition
with all effects. Then we will be
able to just drop different texture to use on different parts
of this image. For example, degree, this
kind of animation with all waterfalls will need
to have chunks of it. So for example, you
can see that I've applied sine chunk here, then here, here,
and here and here. But don't worry, we will create a one template and then create other chunks
will be a lot easier. Let's create our master
template degree. This template we want to click here to create new composition. Or you can go to composition,
new composition. Let's call it water
middle because we will create this kind of
chunk in resolution. Let's maybe eight
hundred and ten hundred, five hundred and fifty. And the settings should be
saying. Now let's click. Okay, as you can see, we have this kind of
chunk of the image here. We can just drop our image, original image into
this composition. Now can cut parts of the
image into this piece. Basically, we want to
press S on the keyboard and fill this all screen
with one chunk of the water. Okay, so now we've
created our template. So let's go back to
our main composition. I'm just going to right-click
here and go to composition settings and call
it main enclave. Okay? To rename this composition, you just need to select it
and press return on keyboard. Maybe let's call it template. Unless left mouse click and hold and drag into
this main composition. As you can see at this
resolution is pretty big. Once again, select
your composition, press S on my keyboard to see
the scale and size it down. Make sure that it's
about right size. As our original waterfall. It doesn't have to be perfect
because we will apply some effects which will allow
us to measure it better. Once we've got this
composition to work, we need to click here on this solo button to
see only this piece. Now let us try to animate it, to animate this waterfall. As you can guess, it
should go from up to down. We will use an effect
called motion tile. Let's go to effects and presets. If you cannot see this panel, you can go to Window and enable it from here,
Effects and Presets. Here, Effects and Presets panel, we can type the name of
the effect which we want. We want to use
Motion Tile effect and choose it right here. Leftmost sleek, and
drag onto our layer, this composition on which we
want to apply a release it. With this tile center, we can animate this
motion of fallen down. As you can see, we
can start at 0. Then we can just
animate this property. And to animate something
in Adobe After Effects, we want to create a keyframe. To create a keyframe, we need to click
on this stopwatch. Make sure that you've set your time cursor to the
beginning of your video, and click on this stopwatch
to create our first keyframe, leftmost liquid, and then select this layer and
press U on keyboard. It will show us our
first keyframe, which if you are new
to After Effects, you might be wondering
what is keyframe. Good for him is a point in time, we should remember is the
value of certain property. In our case, this keyframe
remembers this point in time, which is 0 seconds. This value, x and y of this
property, tile center. As you can see, this property
contains two values, basically its x and y. If we will change this an X, it will move from left to right. And if we will change
the second value, it will move from up to down. We've created our Prosci
frame with the value of 0. And if we will go to the third, second, change to
something like 4 thousand. And if it will compress this
work area to this moment, you can also hold
Shift and it will stick to this moment
and press 0 or numpad. We can review this video. As you can see, it's
pretty fast animation. And this is how basically
animation works. So basically from this
keyframe, from 0, it goes to this keyframe
with 4 thousand. Here's cool little tip. If you want to have
a perfect loop of this fall and down animation, you can just simply
go to this template. Then write mostly here to
go to composition settings. And just remember the
height of your composition. Just remember this height
value which you'll set. In our case it's 1550. So we already know this value. And we can go to main waterfall. Here. We can set not 4 thousand
or 4 thousand, but 1550. Click Enter. Now if I'm
going to press 0 or numpad, you can see that it's lower, but it's also the perfect loop. So this is basically
how you can create a perfect loop animation to your videos in case
if you want to agreed a GIF or GIF animation
of any picture, you can keep in
mind this technique of gradient, a perfect loop. The next video we will try to make this seamless transition. So for example,
if we're going to press mirror edge effect, it will be a lot
better as you can see, it's not a debt visible. It's much better than this. But we still have work to
do to cover these edges. And by the way, once you'll
click on this mirror effect, you need to double this value. Basically it takes
two times the height. Go back to the original place. And now we can just write
100000550, multiply two times. Now if I'm going
to press 0 numpad, you'll still will have
this perfect loop. But with the mirrored edge, you can always spread these keyframes apart
to slow it down. If it's too fast for you. In the next video, I'm
going to show you how to hide this edge. It will not be so visible. Because if I'm going
to un-solo this layer, you can see that we have
this really noticeable edge. See in the next video.
3. Seamless Texture: Before we are going to
get rid of this edge, we want to save our
project because Adobe After Effects can
crash from time to time. Let's go to File, Save As. And you can save it
wherever you want. To hide this kind of edge. We want to select
this template which we've created and
pre-compose it. Basically, we want to take this composition and put
inside of another composition. To do exactly that, we need to select
this composition and go to Layer recompose. And we want to leave
all attributes, which basically means that
all effects which we have applied will stay in
this main composition. And let's also type
here template main. And make sure to
click here to leave all attributes in
main waterfall. And let's look okay. Now as you can
see, we still have this effect which we applied. Double-click on
this composition. We will see this composition
which we created before. So basically, even if you
will go to Project panel, you can see that we have
now two compositions. First one we can
call it template inside or template texture. If we will open
this composition, you'll see that here we're
gonna drop our texture. And n template main. We will fix all the
issues with the edges. So let's fix these issues
to fix this issue. So you can simply just like this composition
and press Control D to duplicate this composition. What I want to do is to select this rectangle tool leftmost
click on it and just cut it. Just left mostly hold and drag. To make this kind of mask. Just simply select
this composition, whichever we apply this mask. And with the selection
tool, move it up. Then you can press F on
keyboard to feather this edge. We can move it even lower
or spread this mask a bit. So it will not further from the sides and just
from the bottom. And basically as you can see, if I'm changing this value
is feathering the edge, which will make this
transition more smoother. Before and after. You can see we are trying to create this seamless texture. Same thing we can
do with the bottom. We can just select this
bottom composition, press Control D to duplicate. And also select
this rectangle tool and cut this part of
the image lower part. And also let's press
F on keyboard, and let's set a store 300. Maybe. We would feather the edge
and then we can just lay the selection tool
and move it down. It can also hold Shift. As you can see,
I'm holding Shift. It will allow you to
move this composition down all the n1 axis,
which is really handy. You can see we have this
kind of seamless texture. And if we all go with
the main waterfall, you can see that now, when it's following, it
looks a lot more seamless. You can always pick this
moment where you can see your siem and just adjust a bit in this template
main composition and go back and make sure that
it's not too noticeable. But don't worry too much. Because also I'm going
to show you how you can cover these imperfections. The main thing we should
want it is to create this cool looking texture which resembles with
the original photo. As you can see, it looks really cool if we un-solo this layer. So now we have this animation, but we still have
this ugly edges which doesn't work
with our effect. And this time we can adjust, simply use this rectangle
tool like we did before to cut this composition. Because as you can
see, if I'm going to press to the Solo button, this is why we
cannot use the mask, because this effect
of motion tile will create these
kinds of problems. So let's delete our mask and use instead effect
called linear wipe. Let's type it here. Linear wipe, just
make sure to select this transition linear wipe effect and drag to
our main template. Now with this effect, we can
cut our image is you can see with this we can set the
direction for the cards. And we want to cut
from the sides a bit and a feather the edge, but there is good
to set about 155. You can see it is blends
better and then just cut. So you would not see this edge. So something like this,
like 14 should work fine. We can also select this linear wipe and press Control
D to duplicate it. We can just flip this
angle to minus 90, which basically is the opposite
effect from this side, then we can cut it
even more if you want. And it's up to you how
much you want to cut. This texture. We need to also cut
from top and bottom. So let's duplicate
it one more time. Select this linear
wipe effect and press Control D and
set this angle to 0. As you can see, it will
cut from the bottom. Here. It's better to use higher value. It will blend better at
the bottom of our image. Let's finally duplicate
one more time and set this angle to 180, which means that it
will cut from the top. And as you can see, we have
set our fade from all sides. And if it will, un-solo this
layer by clicking here, you can see that it's
blends a lot of beta and we can just simply left most leak and place
it wherever you want. Okay, so as you can see, it looks pretty good. But we have one problem. We would want to have
this kind of arc motion. And now it looks too straight. It's false to straight. And we want to have
this arc of motion. And this arc motion I'm going to show you
in the next video. See you in the next video.
4. Bending Animation: So as you can see, we have
this really cool animation which has this perfect loop, but we still have some
work to do because we want to add this
kind of motion. For this, we want to use
Puppet Tool just located here, left mouse click, and then
select this main template. Once again, it's better to
click here to solo this layer. Do you see the edges?
And you can basically just greed six points. For example, here, here, here, and here, here and here. Just make sure to create these points in the visible
parts of your image. Then you need to
select this layer and press U on keyboard. Because as you can see, it
creates these keyframes. We don't want to
have a keyframes, just select them
and press Delete. And now we can just simply go to this selection tool and move around our
image as you like. Just make sure if you
moved all your image, press control Z, and then
select any parts of the image. Then select puppet tool. And then it will allow
you to change only 1. Just like this. It's cuts this edge. And this is a problem. To fix this problem,
we need to go to this effect controls panel. And click here under puppet
effect, which we've used, this checkbox, which
basically will cut this edge. And as you can guess
now we can just make this any kind of motion
in which you like. So we can just go out from this solo mode and adjust our
flow and effect as we like. Once again, select
this composition. If you cannot see the points, then select your puppet effect. And then you should be
able to see this points. Now we can even drag up and
stretch this as you like. You can always press S on
keyboard domain this size, larger or smaller, has also, you can just simply slate this puppet tool and
stretch your effect. Just like this. As you can see with this effect, you can give some
kind of arc motion, as well as this spreading
at the bottom if you want, just don't go overboard
because it will be noticeable. You just want to have this little hint,
like it's bending. And once again, with
this linear wipe effect, you can always cut the
edges which you can see. So you will not see these
kind of lines in your image. You just need to refine
these linear wipe effect. As I'm changing
it is fades away. And finally you just, you can increase the scale
and fit your image properly. Just make sure to cut all of the edges so they would
not be so visible. This is how you can
add these kinds of your VM motion effect. We can also increase
the scale and move it down temporary 0 unnumbered
to see the preview. The next video I'm
going to show you how it's easy to use this template and create another batch of this image. See you
in the next video.
5. Template Use: Okay, so now once we've
created this template, it will be a lot easier to create other parts
of this image. So now we can just go to Project panel and duplicate
these both compositions. Let's select both of them
and press Control D. Now we can just rename
it, this main one. We can rename it, right? Because we are going to use
this part of the image, UPN, name it wherever you want. So you could understand which parts of the
image you named. Son, my case, I'm just
gonna call it water, right? Because this right part and also this copy with the two I'm
going to rename it to, right? This is how easy it is to use. You can just select this
texture composition and simply just move to the left to get this different
kind of texture. You can also increase the scale. You can even press R on
keyboard to rotate it. Because your main idea here and the texture
to get detection, which goes one direction. Because if you're going
to set it like this, let me show you on this example with our original example. Don't repeat this part. I just want to show you what
happens if you're going to set texture in our
texture template. You can see it.
We'll get this kind of other kinds of look. In some cases, it might
work even more interesting. So it is up to you how
you want to use it. But my advice is to set to the texture composition as
straight texture as you can. So something like this
should work fine. As you can see, it
works better. Here. One TO US, straight, they share. So in my case I want
to rotate it to minus two to get this straight
lines of the water. Then I want to use this
right template Twain and just swap this texture with the new texture,
which regard? So simply you just need to left most leak and
select all of them. Deselect this new
texture which we've created for rights template, leftmost, slick, hold
Alt on keyboard. As you can see, I'm holding Alt. And make sure that you
have selected these ones. And this one. While holding Alt
on the keyboard, you just need to leftmost click, hold and drag on top
of these textures. It will swap this texture, as you can see,
once I release it, it replaced the texture. Now we can just simply go to
main waterfall and duplicate this main template just by selecting it,
pressing Control D. Same thing we want to do here. We just need to select this one which we have
moved to the right, this texture and replace it with this right template
main, just called it. Let me just click and hold, hold Alt on keyboards
and place it on top of this composition, which also needs to be selected. And it will swap this texture. As you can see, we have
this both animations. But keep in mind that
you will need to go to effects controls and
adjust this puppet tool. The easiest way to adjust it
is just simply to reset it. Then create another
curve which you like if you want to curve
in different kinds of way. Because for future example, which you're gonna
see in this lesson, we will want to curve and match different ways to
give these kinds of flows and other images. With this puppet tool, we will always able to change
direction of this flow. As you can see, we are
getting somewhere. It looks pretty cool, but
we can increase this look. First of all, we can just
use a sharp and effect. Just drop it on this one
and set it to maybe 150. To get this sharpness
into our water. We can copy it, press Control C, and select the second one and press Control V to paste it. This will increase the
visibility of each water drop, which will look even cooler. The next video I want to
show you how you can get the sense of depth
and this water. If you will pay attention, you can see that here you
have some droplets which false really fast and
sound False, Not so fast. And this increases this
depth dealing of this water. I'm going to show you how to do exactly that in the next video. See you in the next video.
6. Creating Depth in Animation: Now to create this sense
of depth in our image, we can simply just use
one of these textures. For example, let's
use this left one. We can just select it. As you can see, it's left one and press
Control D to duplicate. And just simply with
this puppet tool, we can stretch this texture. I know that at this point
it could look a bit ugly. And by the way, you can
always select one of these points and press
Delete to delete them. Let's delete this one too. They this composition
and press S on keyboard. Click on this lock button, which will allow us to
stretch it an x-axis. As you can see, we are
stretching it just like this. And with this puppet tool, we can adjust this stretch. Let's also solo this layer. Do you see what we're doing? Let's stretch it a
bit even further. Now with the linear wipe effect, we just want to make sure that we don't see these
edges and just make sure to cut all of these edges and then
un-solo this layer. And the main idea is to
change the transfer mode because now it's too visible
and it looks really ugly. So we need to go to this
toggle switches and modes. Click here until you'll
see this mode effect. So you can click it here. And let's change to light them. And as you can see,
it looks much better. If we're going to set this
resolution to quarter. Your computer will handle this animation and
press 0 or numbered. It looks better but still doesn't have
this kind of depth. And to create this depth, you just need to press
U on keyboard and change this second
value to higher value. So these drops will
fall a lot faster. For example, we can set it
to 4 thousand, a 500th. Click Enter. Now if I'm going to
press 0 numbered, you'll see this kind
of sense of depth. And it's up to you to
change it to lesser value, like 4 thousand and get the
animation we should like. At this point, you
can see that we have this kind of
stretching motion. But keep in mind that once
you'll render your footage, it will be in full. And as you can see,
quality is much better, but it's better to
work in quarter. So you could see
faster your preview. And now I want to just do fix this strategy in part because
it's too stretched out. And always you can
fix these edges. The set your
resolution to full and press 0 or numpad to
see your final result. You can always drag
your footage to the left to get a bit kind of different moment of your texture and stretch this
key frame apart. And then press 0 or numpad
to see our preview. As you can see, we
have this more sense of depth and our waterfalls. And basically with
this template, we can create more of this
kind of flow in action. The next video, I'm
going to show you how it is easy to use the same template with the different image.
Cnn next video.
7. Smoke Effect Using Template: And now I just wanted
to show you how it is easier to use this same
template which you've created, two different kinds of images. Let's create another
composition. Let's call it smoke. It should be also full HD or any resolution we should like and click OK
and let's drop it. This photo with the smoke, and let's size it down. And basically now once we
have this kind of template, we can just simply select these two compositions with the main and texture
and press Control D to duplicate it near, just to rename it to the smoke. So we would know
that it's for smoke. This one as well. With the number two, we need to rename
it to the smoke. Now we can just close this composition and
go to waterfall. Simply, we need just to
copy one of these layers, not this one, but
just decide one. For example, let's
copy this right one. Let's press Control C and go to the smoker position
and press Control V. Because here it has all
our preset which we want. Then we can just open
it and select all of these three layers and swap
it with the smoke texture. Let's swap it. To swap it, we need to select
these three compositions. The select this position
here, hold Alt, leftmost, slick, and
drop it here on top, and then just open it. Because now we have
this small texture, but we just need to drop
this image into it. So let's go with the smoke
one and drop it here. And once again, you
just need to set your smoke inside of this composition using
rotation and scale. So press S for scale to make
it this size larger and R to rotate it to get to this straight line as I
recommended in previous videos. So something like this
should work fine. We can see that it's changed
to this smoke effect. Just make sure that you're
worked in this smoke main. Let's open it. Let's drop this texture smoke
and the smoke main one. Then let's go to the small. And as you can see, we
already have this effect. Once again, we
just need to go to the puppet and reset it. It will get this simplest
form of this smoke. Then let us see the direction
it goes from top to bottom. In our case, we want to
go from right to left. So let's select it and
press R on keyboard. We can just simply rotate. The texture is you can see this bright spot
needs to be on top. Let's set it's just like this. It matches pretty well. And as it can, Yes,
we want to have these two patches here
to get this part. So let's set it about
here, just like this. Once again, we're gonna go to the solo mode by
clicking here and adjust these edges so it
will cut all unwanted parts. We can always go to scale by pressing S and make it larger. To cover more of this, we can reduce the sharpness
or just disable it. And again, get this kind of result and press U on keyboard, select both of these keyframes. Because now you can see that
it goes from left to right. And we want to go
from right to left, like it has gone from
here to the left. So to do the opposite of the motion which
we already have, we need to press U
on the keyboard. You see these keyframes, select them and then right mouse click on
one of them and go to the keyframe assistant and choose time-reverse
keyframes. Now as you can see, it goes
in opposite direction, which is exactly what we want. And basically you can just duplicate this same composition, move it here and use it as is. Or you can once again
duplicate here. Open detects your composition
and use different parts of this image to get a
different texture than open this main
with the second one. Swap it as we did before, and go to this smoke composition and swap it with new one. And in this case you'll
get another kind of smoke. You can see we get this
same kind of effect, which looks pretty cool. And finally, as you remember, you can just duplicate one
of these ten positions. Press S fun keyboard. Click here to
unlock this button. Stretch it out. Just like this. Just don't stress too much
because it can look ugly. And you can always go
to this puppet tool, adjust how this
smoke will behave. For example, you can go
with this kind of girth. Look, if you're gonna set this
smoke to go up like this. And here you can also
stretch it a bit. With this stretch part. You need to go to Mode
which is lighter. To see these moles,
you just need to click on Toggle Switches
and change the item. And it will overlay
a natural way, like smoke would overlay. You remember this stretch
one we've created. So to add a bit more depth
to this composition, because without it, it
looks pretty basic. But if we will apply
the stretch one, and if we're going to
press U on keyboard and set this layer to
go even faster. And our case here
at the beginning, we want to set it to 4
thousand Empress 0 numbers. It will go even faster. And I was, you can see
it has more depth to it. So let's press 0 number two. See in real-time,
you can see he's too fast and you can just
spread these key frames. It will go a bit slower. You can always select all of these layers and press
U on the keyboard and select all of these
keyframes and spread it apart to slow
down the movement. And with this layer, which we said on top, it creates even more
dimension and our smoke. And now it looks a
lot more interesting. If you want to have
a faster look, you just need to set these
keyframes closer apart. And this case is you can
see it moves a lot faster. And it's a good idea always
to check on these layers and maybe go to Puppet Tool and
create a bit different. Look. If you want more
interesting kind of shapes in your smallest. Let's press your numpad. And once again, we can set to full to see our
original resolution. It's really easy to add
this kind of animation and animate your images once you
will create your template. Basically the same
you can do with this part is also
with this part, just make sure to
stretch your edges to the left and right as we
did with our waterfall, as you remember, we've
stretched and our waterfall, it would go like this,
two different parts. And same thing you would
want to have here. Thank you for watching my class. Feel free to follow me
here on Skillshare. I post places every week. As you can see, I have a
bunch of places on VFX, as well as fundamentals
of Adobe After Effects. If you want to
know how to create a text animations and a bunch of different
kinds of animations. I've also created
complex we effects which can get your
professional kind of look, is also log animation and
even DaVinci Resolve classes. And I recommend you to watch this really short
class which takes only 12 minutes and you'll get really powerful
result at the end. Just feel free to
follow me here on Skillshare and you'll see more interesting classes every week. Thank you for watching.
M Jake, Lets Create VFX & Cool Stuff Together
