After Effects Masterclass: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hi and welcome to this aftereffects master class. My name's Jos good. I'm an Adobe certified instructor and expert in aftereffects. We will start as masterclass by exploring the fundamentals of aftereffects. And by the time you complete the training, you'll be able to create some amazing looking animations, visual effects, infographics, and titles. You will cover all the key aspects of aftereffects, as well as the many creative uses of the software. You'll talk about subjects such as layers, compositions, keyframes, the graph editor, effects, motion tracking, mollusks, text animation, 3D animation, and more. Even if you are an experienced after fix user discourse will certainly fill the gaps you may have in your knowledge. And you'll also learn how to speed up your workflow by a great deal after watching this course. So if you're ready and as excited to be learning after fixed as I am teaching, it's, let's get started. 2. After Effects Interface: the first time you start aftereffects. This is the interface you'll be seeing. Let's talk about the different panels, where they are and what they do one by one, right at the top of the screen who have the main menu bar. This bar is going to host most of the common menus. We'll talk about these in the future. Tutorials on underneath That is your toolbar. This is where most of the tools will be onto the right off. That is an options area. This area is going to show you the settings off the tool you have selected onto the right off the options area. You see the shortcuts for some workspaces. We'll talk about the workspaces momentarily, and to the right of that is a search area where you can search through the help documentation. Right now, all of these panels are collapsed. If I go and click on the name off any off them that will expand the panel on. I can do the same for any of these panels here as well. So if I click on the audio panel or the preview panel or their line panel and so on, so every time you click either on the name or just to the side of the name off the panel. You can expand the panel, and again, if you click on the same area, you'll collapse it. You may have noticed it can only have one panel open at a time. That's a function you can turn off by either right clicking somewhere here or simply clicking on this button here to the right of the panel. And then you go to panel group settings, and then here you turn off solar panels in stack. So if I turn this off, this means now I can have more than one panel open at the time. If I go to, for example, the old your panel as well as my align panel, the audio penalties now up. If I click on the info as well, you see that will expanding for Panelas well. And if you open up more panels than what your monitor can display, let's say I open up my preview panel as well. You'll start revealing this scroll, but on the side. If I'm going to school down, we're up. I can go back and forth between the panels. If you want that future to come back on again. The solo feature only had to do is to click on this button again. Next to any of these panels. Doesn't matter. I can click here for the panel group settings and turn the solar panels in stack on. They will allow only one panel to be open at any given time and to the left of thes panels right in the middle of the screen, you'll see the composition panel. The composition panel is where you'll be seeing pretty much all of your work, and eventually, when it comes to export in your work, you'll export what you see in the composition panel. So the composition panel is your main canvas. This is where all of the work happens, and underneath the composition panel, you have your timeline and to the left of the timeline, you'll see your layers and above the layers or to the left. Off the composition panel, you have your project panel. The project panel is like finder on Mac or Explorer on Windows. This is where you're going to be organizing pretty much all of your files. You can create folders. You place the files inside the folders. You organize the files, you rename them all. If that happens inside the project panel, this panel is like a repository for all the files would be using inside the project. The arrangements off all of these panels is called workspace, and in the next tutorial will ever look at creating and saving a customer expects. 3. Workspaces: once you've been working with after fix for a while, you'll be familiar with all these different panels, and you'll know which ones you use more frequently than the others. When that happens, you want to save yourself a custom workspace. Now, if you remember, the workspace is the arrangements off all the different panels, like how large they are and married a r and so on And you can save a customer expects to make life easier than working enough Perfect. Now let's have a look at how to rearrange these panels first. If you move your cursor on top of any panel anywhere, let's say here inside the composition panel. And if you're just going click anywhere, you see that this is the panel that's now active, this blue line here tells us that you've just activated the panel. If I do the same for the project panel, you see that the blue highlight goes around that panel, and the same applies to pretty much any panel here. So if I click on the timeline or the layer area, timeline gets highlighted. If I click on the character panel that gets highlighted on, same applies to pretty much any panel. So if I could come here, you see the exact same things happening now. In order to change the position of the panels, you can actually click on the names and start dragging them. So if I pushed the info panel down like this, that's right will appear now. And if I want this panel to be on the side, that let's say, for example, the left side, I can just click on the name info on. Just drag this towards left and you'll see that this panel wants to snap itself onto the interface. This is called booking. Find out moves to the left. The screen panel here means that the info panel is going to go all the way to the left of the interface. There is. If you see this as just a blue highlight like this, the panel now is going to go to the left off the project panel. So I find that go here. You see that the info panel will now appear to the left off the project panel and not necessarily to the left off the entire interface. So if I click and drag us to the left, all the way you see when we have this green line, If I let go here, you see now that the info panel stood left off the entire interface, including the timeline now to take something back out, let's say, for example, I want the info panel to go back to where it waas. All I had to do is to click on the name again and then just drag this back to where it came from. And if I let go here that's going to Dr Info panel back exactly where it was before. I can, of course, move this up and down just like I did before, on all so I can resize these panels by moving my cursor down here. And when the curse it turns into this icon here where you had the double arrows, you just go click, and then you can make this larger, like that or smaller, and that applies to pretty much any panel is well again. So if I come down here between these two panels, I can click and drag this left to right, and I can do the same for the timeline on the composition panel and also the project panel at the same time. So if I move my cursor here, I can just click here and the kosher turns into a four headed arrow there. And then I can click and drag around. And if I had the fourth panel there as well on one corner, this would actually start affecting four panels at the same time. If you want a panel not to dock itself to the interface, for example, if I click and drag the preview panel around, you'll see that it wants the dock itself to the interface. But let's say, for example, you had the second monitor on you want to put this panel on to the second monitor? What you can do is to hold down the command key as you drag this or the control key on Windows on. This becomes a floating panel now, so this is called a free floating panel, and it's undocked, so I cannot place this on the second monitor or anywhere I like on the interface. Of course, I can resize this as well, so if I just click on the corners, I can resize this to any shape and size I like. There you go and I can make sense of why there on. Maybe I can put this onto the second monitor, which you can't see now. To put a panel back to where it came from, all you have to do again simply is to click on the name and then dragged the panel around and again. It will start docking itself to the interface as long as you're not holding down the command key. So right now I'm not holding down anything. I'm just gonna click and drag on, maybe let go here in the middle and there in order to get rid of a panel. All you have to do is either right click on the name off the panel or pretty much anywhere on this top line here. Or you can simply click on this button here and then just choose clothes panel. If I do that, the preview panel disappears. I can do the same for let's say, the info panel. If I just go and right click here, maybe I condemn. Just go and close the panel. Let's go. If you want to bring back any of those panels that you closed, all the to do is to go to the window menu at the top, and this is going to be a long list off all the available panels in the window menu. The names with the ticks on the left hand side are the ones that are currently visible, and the ones without the ticks are the invisible ones. So I remember now I closed the info panel, so all I had to do is to go back here and click on the word info, and that brings the info panel back, and I can adapt for pretty much any panel. So if I got to hear window on, come down to the preview option here that's going to bring up my preview panel again, as I mentioned earlier. After a while, you'll find yourself using some of these panels more frequently than the others. When that time comes, you make those panels visible on almost older, the panels invisible, and then you'll save that as a customer workspace. And to do that, you go up here again to the window menu and you come out workspace. And then this is a list of all the preset workspaces that Adobe thought would be useful. If you're doing this kind of work. For example, if you're doing some effects work, you'd be using the effects workspace. If you're doing some color correction, you'd be using the color workspace. Or, of course, you can customize your workspace and use your own. Now we have already customized is a little bit so that's just go and save this. So if I come down here, which has save as new workspace and then it asks us for the name so that's going call this my workspace and then once we going it, Okay, let get, say, there's my workspace on. You can actually see it up here now as well on as well as appearing here. It's also going to be in the window menu on the workspace. You see it in this list here as well. You can create as many of these as you like on. If you don't want to delete that. All here to do is to go to edit workspaces and then select the workspace you want to remove here on, then just hit delete. Also, by the way, in the bar, these are the workspaces that we were seeing. This is the body. It's referring to. So if you don't want to see some of the work spaces in the bar, we can just go and select the individual workspace and then deleted from the bar. So if I delete my small screen workspace and then it's okay, you see that small screen here is no longer around. The other advantage off saving a custom workspace is that when the things go wrong, you can bring this workspace back really easily. What I mean by that is this, for example, as you work, let's say you put the preview panel here on, then maybe the info panel down here, and then maybe you make sense of it larger like that, and then I'll randomly move these panels around. Let's say the project pound goes here to the left, and this looks nothing like it did before. And like I said, sometimes you do this on purpose, so you have more space for some specific panels, unless for some others, and sometimes this happens inadvertently, regardless, if you come up here again to the window menu untangled workspace right towards the bottom, it says, reset, and it tells you the current workspaces name. It's his reset to save layout. You just go and click on this. This takes the layout, the workspace back to the state that it was saved him. So much is going click. This was the interface when we say to the workspace. So hopefully now we can see the importance of creating and saving custom workspaces in after effects in order to speed up your workflow. 4. Importing Standard Files: Unlike some other applications, we usually tend to bring assets into after effects before we can start working. Although it's possible to create things in after fix from scratch, we tend to create them outside and then bring them in, and that process is called importing. One thing to keep in mind about after effects is that there's at least three or four ways of doing the same thing. That can be a good thing, and it can also sometimes be the confusing thing. But my aim here is to show you the different ways off doing the same thing, and I'll show you the ways I prefer and I'll try and explain why I prefer them. But essentially you're free to pick whichever way makes more sense to you. So let's start with importing in order to bring assets into after effects we need to import . And to do that, we can either go to the farm any at the top and then come down here towards his import, and we see all sorts of different types of files that we can import. In this case, we're just gonna use file or we could use the shortcut, which is command. I on control, I on the PC or another way, is if you go down here and then if you right click anywhere empty inside of the project panel, you can come down here to it is import. And again you get exactly the same menu here. The easiest way perhaps that I find is to go and find an empty spot here anywhere inside the project panel and simply double quick. When we do that, it's going to take us into this import dialog box. And from here I can go and click on the folder and I see all the files in here. If you want to import a single file, all they had to do is to go and double click on that file. If you want to import a range of files, you hold on a shift and you click on the 1st 1 on click on the last one that you want to import on little important entire range. If you want to import individual files, you hold on command or control. So if I go and hold on command, I can add this file, take this file out, maybe and then take this one out and so on. Let's go back level. I'm gonna go back into my graphics folder. And then I had this digital me logo. Here it's a P and G, and in order to import, we just select this and then down here, there's an option that says Create composition and by default, this is turned off. So I must have had this turned on last time. That's why it remembers this. So I'm gonna turn us off on, but the file selected either double click on the file or come down and click on Open Martin here. Now that we've done that, we have the digital miracle in the project. It's import a couple of other things as well. I'm gonna go and double click somewhere here again, and then let's go back a step. I go here and then maybe go to my video clips and then maybe bring in this basketball and he's open. Let's say we double click again and then bring in the basketball to on the shift key. I also bring in basketball three and then click open on the falls. Coming now inside the project panel, I can go and create folders to keep things organized by clicking on this, and I can call this video files and I can take the video files and place them inside that folder on. I can also create another been or a folder as they're cold and call this one graphics and then put my graphic files inside of that. And now that we have the folders, we can click on the arrows next to them to reveal the contents and then click on them again to hide the content. To delete a folder only had to do it is to click on them, press delete on the keyboard, and then it asks us if you are sure we are. So I'm just gonna go and confirm this and that folder is gone and in after effects, just like pretty much any other application. When you press command said, or control settlement does, you will undo. So if you made a mistake and you want to go back a step, you press command zip. I'll just press Command said now to bring my graphics folder back together with its contents 5. Importing Layered Files: bringing layered Fassinger aftereffects correctly is a key stage when it comes to creating an animation in order to bring in the late filing toe After fix, we go to file again, and then she was imports and file or command I or simply, if remember this double click anywhere empty inside the project panel here. And then we go and click once on this illustrative file, the AI file. And it's important that we just click once because before the importance we need to tell aftereffects how this should be imported. And we do that by clicking on this once and then coming down here, which says Import as. And if you can't see this list, make sure you click on this options button here. If I click on options, I could not see this import as a dialog box as well. I click on this. You've got three options. The first option footage is going to flatten the entire document into a single layer, which means I won't have access to these individual elements. For example, in this document here I have one layer for the airplane, one for the sun, one for the cloud, and so on. But if I choose footage, aftereffects will ask me to either bring this whole thing as a flat image or pick a single layer and bring that in only if you want to have access to the individual layers so you can control them one by one and animate them. You need to bring this in as composition mouthful composition. You have two options. Composition on composition. Retain layer sizes If you just look composition, every single layer will be exactly as big as the entire composition, and that's going to have some advantages as well as this. Advantages. If you do composition, retaining the layer sizes every single layer, you'll be exactly as big as delays contents. So, for example, if I select composition retained layer sizes, the sun layer will be just this big. So it's just gonna be as big as the sun itself, as opposed to selecting the composition, which is going to make the sun layer as big as the entire composition there. So it's going to make it into more difficult when it comes to things like rotation and scale. If you're not sure which one you should use here, I would say about 99% of the times you'll be using this composition. Retain layer sizes. Option. So let's go and click on this and they will come down here and then click open. That brings the falling as a composition, and this is what the iconic composition looks like into the project panel. In order to open this up. All I have to do is the grand double click on this composition, and now we have the exact same composition as we had in Illustrator, together with all the layers intact. And these layers are all taken from the illustrative filed, by the way. And that's something to keep in mind. In illustrator Onley, the top level layers are taken into account. For example, if you have a layer with lots of sub layers, insight on the top level layer is going to be taken into account and the sub layers are gonna be merged into that same layer, which means that you won't have control over the individual elements that are inside the sub lives. So if you are working with a designer who provides you'd illustrative files or perhaps your administrator years of yourself, you need to make sure that the layers are set properly before you save the illustrator file and bring it into after effects 6. Updating an Imported Layer: once you bring something into after effects and then you go back to the original file and make some changes, those changes will appear in after fix as well. So the farms from here stay linked to the original versions. Let's have a look at how that's done. For example, in here we brought the illustrative file as a composition, retaining the layer sizes, and you can see that the composition is here, together with the layers which are inside this folder. Open that folder up. I can go and find the sun layer here. So it's here that some if I select this, I can either press control E or command E on the keyboard. Or I can go to the edit menu here and then select Edit original down here on this will launched application that was used to create the file. In this case, it's illustrator like in Aguas Select my son. Let's say I want to change the color of the sun from being a solid color into, let's say, a radiant. So if I go and double click on this, if I don't select this color, then go to my appearance and change the fill to, let's say, a radiant. And then he added, Disc radiant as well. I'm just going to make this a radio radiant there on maybe take some of these stops out, take this one out as well, and then maybe this one out as well. On that, I'll make this a slightly lighter color. So I'm gonna go double click on, make this a bit more of a yellowish color like that, and then I'll just go and click outside on, in fact, double click to come out of this group. And then we just updated this son, and all I have to do now is to go to file and save. And as soon as we switch back to after fix, the sun should update there as well. So let's have a look if I go and minimize illustrator and if I select after fix here you see the sun here updates automatically as well, and you can do this over and over again. But just keep in mind as you're doing this, you are updating original file. So if this is something you don't want to do, I would recommend creating a backup file on working on that 7. Navigating Around: in order to work seamlessly in after fix, you need to learn how to navigate. And by navigation, I mean things like zooming in on out on panning around. The document for navigation will be using a combination of the mouse and some shortcuts on the keyboard. So let's have a look at how it's done. Just to make things easier, I'm going to go and maximize my composition panel on this is done in one of two ways. You either move your mouse anywhere on the composition panel. You don't actually have to click as long as you move your mouse here, that's enough. And on the keyboard, you pressed it till the key. That's the key between shift and said on the keyboard. And if I just press that key, you'll see that the screen would be maximized. And if I press it again, it'll be minimized. Alternatively, you can come up here to the name off the panel. I'm just going to double click on the name off the panel, and that will also maximize this. If I just go in double click here. That's exactly the same as pressing until the key on the keyboard and That's true for pretty much every single panel. If I go and double click on the name here to minimize it and let's say, for example, I would like to maximize my time line. I just come here and then double click here and then that maximizing my time like similarly , I compress the tilde key here and then move my cursor back here until the key again. That maximizes that now. One of the ways of zooming in announce is by using the zoom to here. So zoom tool zed on the keyboard will allow you to zoom in and out from the composition. So if I select this tool and then come here and let's say, for example, I want to see what's happening down here, a text is, I can simply just go and click on the text. And that was women incrementally to my text. Every time I click that zooming in. And if I want to zoom out, I hold on the old key on the keyboard and you see inside my cursor currently, either. Plus, if I press fault, it's going to turn into a minus. With that. If I just go click, that's going to zoom art and again and again. Another way to use this tool is to do what's called the marquees O. For example, if I want to zoom into a specific area rather than a point, I can just go and draw a rectangle around the area. Let's say like that, And as soon as I let go, that's going to zoom into the whole area that I'm Marquis if I zoom account again. So if I press old and then click a few times that will zoom out, I can marquees room that's a onto the airplane like that on that zooms in exactly there at any point. If you want to zoom all the way back out so you can see the entire composition again on the keyboard, you press shift and ford slash. So as soon as I press shift four slash that zooms older out and it fits the entire image onto the available area on my screen. That's how the zoom tool works, but there are easier ways. Let me show you how they work. Let me quickly switch back to my selection tool here. It's V on the keyboard. I can just go and click here as well. And regardless of the tool you have selected on the keyboard, if you press command or control arming those, then plus so if I just go command. Plus that zooms in and command that. Might this zoom out again If I press shift four slash, that's going to zoom in to show me the entire composition. One other way of zooming in and out is if you're using a three button mouse on, you have a scroll wheel on the mouse. You can actually zoom in and out with scroll wheel. So if I just go push in and out using my scroll wheel, you can see I'm swimming in and out, and you see this is happening right towards the center off the sea. So regardless off my master's position, it zooms into the center of the composition. Let me zoom out again. So a shift four slash if I use command plus again that zooms into the center, command minus zooms out, and if I use my scroll wheel that also zooms in and out, regardless off the position off the cursor. So if I move my cursor here to the sun and then zoom in. You see that steals rooms into the center. Now there's one really useful trick that I'll show you here. And that is, if on the keyboard you press the whole turkey before you use the scroll wheel on the mouse , your cursor is going to be used as the anchor off the zoom. So what that means is this. Let's say, for example, I want to zoom into this camera. So if I move my cursor here onto the camera, maybe I can place it right in that center. Off the lens year on, I hold the old key down, then use the scroll real, and it will zoom in to my cursor rather than zooming into the center of the composition. It zooms into my cursor if I was Wilmont again, shift four slash It's a one. Is women to this car? Here? I can come up here and hold on. Hold on, scroll onto the car on you see, that's exactly what it zooming into. Now let's say you have zoomed in already, and you don't want to see different parts of the composition. It's again really easy. You could hold down space bar. It's not a tap. So you're not tapping the space bar, but you're holding it down and then it can pan around. This is gold panning around the scene or the composition. And that's what this space bar held bell on. That there is the handle. As soon as you press space bar and hold it down, you actually are activating the hand tool. So we have already talked about the zoom tool and this one here is the handle, So space bar is the shortcut for it. I'll zoom out one more time. Shift four slash If you want to set the zoom level to something quite specific, you can come right down to the bottom of the panel here and it shows you your zoom level here. So if I go click, I can pick one of these, um, levels. If I want to see the scene at, say, 50% are just going click here, and that's exactly half the size off the original composition. Again, I'm gonna press shift four slash one more time. One other button in the composition panel that's quite important is this one here. Lets is full right now. If I go and click on this. This shows me the resolution off what I'm looking at now. So if this is set to full I'm seeing this. It's 100% resolution. In other words, every single pixel is being calculated. If I said this to, let's say half, you see the quality graze a little bit. And similarly, as I go lower here, if I go to 1/3 it looks even worse. And if I go to 1/4 it looks terrible. And the idea here is to lower the quality down so it doesn't take too long to process, so it can concentrate more on the important things, like the animations and the key frames. But at any point, if you want to switch the quality back, all you do is to come down here and then click on Pick your resolution. Here there are two buttons we haven't talked about. One is custom and custom basically lets you go below 1/4 off the resolution. So if I select custom, I can tell this to render Let's say, every 10 pixels horizontally and then maybe every 10 pixels vertically as well. So this is going to look much worse But again, when it comes to previewing things, this speed is going to be closer to real time. The other option here is auto and auto is going to change your resolution based on your zoom level. For example, if I said this daughter right now because we're seeing this at a magnification level off more than 100% the resolution is set to fall. If I said this, that's a to 50%. It's going to drop the resolution toe half automatically. If I said this to 25% that's going to 1/4. So the auto bottom sets the resolution based on your zoom level. There are some shortcuts you might want to remember. Let me go back to my 100% view on the keyboard. If you press command J that sets the resolution to before and if you do, command Shift J. That's half resolution and command shift. Olt J. That's quarter resource in. These are the shortcuts you might want to remember when it comes to changing the resolution off the composition without having to click on the button at the bottom 8. Layer Switches: it's crucial to understand the timeline panel before you can create any type of animation. So let's have a look at how this panel is built together with the parameters within it. This is a list of your layers as they came from illustrator. I can click on each one of these layers one by one, or I can hold on a shift and select a range like this. Or I can hold down, command or control, um, in those on their select individual layers like this or de select them again. And it's any point if I want to de select everything, I just press F two on the keyboard, and that's the shortcut to the select everything. Another way to select these layers is by drawing a marquee selection like this. You just click on the left inside of the layer on Just draw a selection like this and again to de select. You just perceive toe on the far left. You had the ice, which is ice, which is used to turn the layer on or off. For example, if I go and click on the ice, which next to the air balloon, you'll see that the layer disappears. And if I click back on this, it comes back again, and I can do the same for pretty much any of thes. And when I click back on them, they will come back again with these switches. And these buttons here are called switches, so if you have a button it can click to turn something on or off. Let's call the switch in after effects. If you wanted to do this for multiple layers at the same time, you can do it in a couple of the boys if you select multiple layers, for example, if I go hold down the shift key and select all these layers. And now that these are all selected, if I click on the I search for one of them, they all turn off at the same time. And if I click again, they all turned on. It seems if I press f two to be select them, another way of doing this is by clicking and then painting down. So just click and drag down like that, and then again, I can click and drag up to reveal them again. So that's what I see, which is used for to turn the layers on or off. Next to die Switch here is a little speaker icon on the speaker icon is only for the clips with the audio attached to them. Because this is a graphic file, there's no audio, so I can click on any of these. But if the clip had an audio, let's say, for example, it's an interview so he can see the picture and here told you at the same time you commute the clip or on muted by clicking on the speaker switch. Next, that is a little dot on this here is called the Solar Switch. The solar switch is used to turn old other layers off except the one that you sold up. So if I go and solo the airplane, for example, you see everything turns off. But this layer, my turn his back on and they are going solo the sun, that's the only thing I'm seeing now, just a some. And of course, you can do this for multiple layers as well, so I can see the sun and their airplane at the same time on solar. These this solar switch saves a lot of time instead of turning off old other layers. Deaconess solo one layer on that essentially does the same thing. Next to the solar switch is a padlock, and this is used to lock the layers so you can't make any more changes to them. For example, if I'm done with the 1st 4 layers, I can just go and look them like that, and I can't even set the layers. Now that flashing is what that means. If it layer flashes that you like this, that means it's been locked. So in order to make any changes to this, you need to go and unlock it. Next to the padlock is a little triangle, which will spend an entire video, so I'll skip this for now. Next to that is your label color you can color called your layers in after effects. For example, I can make all my text layers a specific color, and they'll appear with a different color here. So if I go down, scroll to my text layers here. So we have the let's travel on the world layers. I can click on the color swatch here and then pick a different color for this. Let's say I make this a brown color and same here as well. You can see that the color here changes as well as the color off the layer, as well as the color off the control points here. So this can be quite a useful thing. You're color code your layers, so you know what's happening to your C. I'm gonna go back and set both of these 11 there, which is the default color for graphic files next to a label. Color is your layer number, and this is going to be again useful for quite a few different things. One of the main uses off this is to allow you to use the numeric keypad on your keyboard to select lives. What that means is this. Instead of scrolling old way up to select the first layer on the new man keeper, this is the key pad on the right hand side of your keyboard on the numeric keypad. If I press one, you see that layer get selected automatically. If I press five, the fifth layer gets elected. Seven. It's Alexis seven player. If you want to select multiple layers, you can just hold down the shift key on DTaP different numbers, and it will select all those layers at the same time. So if I select one and then hold on a shift and that's a press three that selects three as well, and I hold on shift in five and seven and nine and so on again to de select. Of course, you press shift and the same numbers again. So if I press nine on its A five and one on the third and the seventh layers are left. If you wanted to select layers with two digits, let's say, for example, you want to select the 14th layer. All you need to do is to press one and four quickly, and it will select the 14 player. So if I just go along for that's my 14th layer by price 15 Telex to 15 player. So using your numeric keypad, you'll make it really easy to select the layers without using your mouse on the right. Inside, you had the names of the layers. These names are actually coming from the illustrative layers, but if you want to change the name, all the air to do is to either select the layer and then press return on the keyboard, and then you can rename this or you can just go and right click on the layer. And then she was renamed on You can See the shortcut is return as well. And that, in fact, is the way you re name pretty much anything in after effects, including masks, effects, expressions, compositions, folders, you name it, anything you want to rename you select and then press return to the right of the name. Off the layer is a little bottom that's called a shy switch. The shy switch, believe it or not, is a little guy peeking over a wall. And if you click on him, he actually ducks down. He's now behind the wall. And if I do this for multiple layers, nothing seems to be happening now to my layers. But what happens here is if you turn this on for multiple layers, and if you come up here to the larger version off that for the entire composition and then click on this button, you see what it says here, next to my cursor, it says, this button will hide all the layers for which the shy switch is turned on. So If I now go and click on this, you see those layers will be hidden from this list. They won't be miserable here, but they'll be invisible in my timeline so I can keep doing this. Let's say, for example, I'm done working with the air balloon layer. I can just going to shy this. So that disappears from my timeline. Same foot airplane on the sale and so on. So this is a really easy way to keep your timeline organized and to, of course, reveal them. You just go back and click on this button and this will I show everything and they're all back now. I'm gonna Tony switches off and it's scroll down to check. The other switches are turned off on. Yes, they are. And next to the shy switch, there's another button that looks like the sun. We will talk about this bottom and the rest of these buttons in the following tutorials 9. Intro to Layer Transform Controls: Let's now have a look at some basic transform controls for layers, not transform. Controls are things like the position scale rotation and the opacity over layer, and you'll find them all next to the label color here on the left. Inside, there's a little triangle next to every single layer. And if you click on that, let's say we go and click on this one. That for the sun that will open up the transform controls on on the debt is going to be your set off. Basic transform controls, which will include things like the position scale, rotation, opacity and the anchor point. An anchor point here may be the one that you're not so familiar with will explain that as well. In just a second now, it can either choose to see all of them at the same time like we just did here. Or it can see one at a time by using some shortcuts on the keyboard. No shortcuts are as follows. If you press the letter P on the keyboard for position, that's going to show you the position property on in this case because I didn't have any off the layers selected. It actually shows me the position property off every single layer. So if I press P again, that's going to make all of them go away. And if I click on the layer itself, so if I select the sun layer, then press P. That's going to show me the position off the sun layer on just like we saw before. If you go and press P again, that's going to disappear. And if you want to see rotation, you press the letter R on for scale, it's s. And for a pass ity, it's tea. And finally, for the anchor point, it's a so there we have it. These are the shortcuts for all those properties. P for position are for rotation A for anchor point s for scale and t four opacity. Now, if you wanted to see more than one property at a time, let's say, for example, you want to see the position so p together with scale. So for that, you press shift. Damn press s every time you use shift and add one of those short cuts that's going to add that property to the existing property. So if I go impress shift our, that's going to show me rotation as well. And if I not press shift s, that's going to make this scale disappear so I can see more of these at the same time or less, depending on how I use the shortcuts. If I want to see all of the properties again, I can either go and click back on this arrow and then click on it again. And then it will show me all the properties or if I'm seeing only one, let's say, for example, I pressed a little P and I want to see all the rest. If it's a compressed command until there, that will collapse all of that and then command until there again that that's quickly key between shift and said. Or this is the one next to the letter one or above tab, depending on your keyboard layout. So far, press command and that key that's going to reveal all of those properties again. In the next tutorial, we'll have a look at how to change these values 10. Position: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at controlling the position property off a layer by using quite a few different methods. Let's start maybe with the sound layer. So let me zoom into the sun layer here by holding down the old turkey and then using my scroll with on the mouse. Then I'm gonna hold down the space bar to bring the frame down on. Then, in fact, that's going solo the some way. So let's go to the sun layer here and then click on the solar switch, so that's all you're seeing them. So if you select a sommelier and then presto, let it pee to reveal position. As soon as you do that, you see that the position has two numbers. The 1st 1 is the exposition on the 2nd 1 is the Y. Position X is the horizontal position, and why is the vertical position? And these are measured in pixels based on the top left corner off the composition. So this means now that the center off the sun is 12 and 12.5 pixels away from the top left corner on the X axis and 133.6 pixels down on the Y axis. Now, every time you see a number in after effects on its blue on, when you move your cursor over it, it turns into an icon like this sort of hand with two arrows on either side. That means you can just click and drag on these numbers to update them. For example, if I want to change the X value here, I can just go and click, and then drag this towards right or left and you see that the layer will move left or right on. Lee and I can do the same for the why as well. So if I click on this and then dragged this down or up, I'm moving just the Y axis. Another way to update these values is to simply click on them, and then you can type in a new value. So if I actually go and type in 00 you see that the center of the sun will jump and snap to the top left corner off the composition. So if I go and type in zero tab zero now, you see, the center of the sun is exactly on the top left corner, which is where the origin off the composition is. Another way to change these values is by simply using the selection tool. This is the 1st 1 here. V is the short cut on the keyboard. You get the selection tool, and then it can freely click and drag this object around. So if I click on drag this around, you see that this update, the two numbers that we saw a second ago. So this is a little bit more visual. So if I click and drag this around, you can see I can place this pretty much anywhere I like. And as you drag this, if you want the moments to be constrained to a straight line, you use the shift key on the keyboard. So if I click and drag you can see freely. I can move this around. But if I hold down the shift key, that will lock that moments to be only on the X or if I go up and down to be on the Y axis as well. So if I do this now, I can move it left and right. But if I go to the right a little more here. I can't, Mom, over this up and down, I can only move it left and right. So a shift key constrains the movements only to be on the X or the Y axis. Now, there are two things you need to keep in mind when you're working with the shift key. The 1st 1 is that you hold the shift key down after you clicked and started dragging the layer. So you click and drag first, then hold the shift key down to activate it. Otherwise, if you hold on shift first, then click and drag. It actually thinks that you're trying to sell it multiple layers by creating a marquee selection. So that doesn't work. You need to first click drag down, hold the shift key down, so that will local layer only to move on the X or do y. The second thing you need to keep in mind when you use the shift key is that you let go off the mouse first, then the shift key. So if I click and drag on hold the shift key down, it looks it on before I let go off my mouth. If I like off the shift key, it freely moves this again. So I need to remember to let go of my mouth first, then the shift key. That's true for most of the modifier keys on, not just in after effects, in pretty much any software as well. You let go of your mounts first. If you're using a modified key, you click and drag. Let's say in this case, hold down the shift key. You let go of your mouth first than the modifier key, so in that order you don't let go of them. At the same time, you don't go off the shift key. First, you look off your mounts first, then the modifying key, which is shift. In this case. Another way to move the layer around is by using the arrows on the keyboard. So if the layer is selected and if I pressed up, down left or writers on the keyboard, you see, every time I do this, the layer is moving up or down, left or right by one pixel at a time. This is called nudging delayer, so he nudged the layer up down left right by one pixel by using the arrows on the keyboard when you use these arrows, if you want the moment to be faster, you hold down the shift key again. So instead of using their own just on their own, if I hold on a shift and then used arrows instead of one pixel, it nudges the layer by 10 pixels at a time. So we looked at quite a few different ways off tweaking the position property off a layer. In the next tutorial, we'll have a look at the other transform controls. 11. Scale and Rotation: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at how the scale and rotation properties off earlier work. So for that, I'm gonna bring this on in towards the center here first and I'll press shift four slash. Let's start with scale. If you remember, the shortcut for scale was s, so I'm gonna go impress s on that will reveal my scale, property and scale. As you can see, you will have to values on. These are measured in percent. So by default, the layers are gonna be 100%. You can make this lower or higher again the same way by clicking and dragging this so that gets smolder or drag it towards right to make it larger. Or of course, you can click and type in their value as well. So if I want this to be exactly half the size, I can just go and type in 50%. And you see, although I'm changing one value, the two numbers update at the same time. That's because by default, when you scale something, aftereffects wants to constrain the proportions off that layer so that it doesn't get squashed or stretched. You can, of course, turn this off then I can score Shin. Stretch this by changing these values individually now. So if I go and extend the X towards right, you see will get stretched out or squashed in, and the same applies to the Y as well like that. And if I go and click back on this button to constrain the proportions again, the proportions are not going to be constrained to what I'm seeing now. So it's already a scorched layer, so the proportions are going to stay like that. So if I go and increase one of these or decrease this, it's going to have exactly the same squashed proportions. Not to reset a property, and this applies to any property you can go and right click on the name off the property. So if I go right click here where it's a scale, I can go and reset this easily, and that will set the scale back to its default 100%. Another way to control the scale of failure is by using the selection tool again and then clicking on one of these control points. When you have the layers selected, you'll reveal these control points. You can click and then dragged this on by default. It's going to be a scale that's not constrained, so I can now hold down the shift key that will again constrain the proportions off the scale. Now, even if I try and drag it towards right, it's not doing anything because I need to drag this diagonally so it drags right and down at the same time. And the same applies going inwards as well. That's going up and left at the same time, so holding down the shift key will constrain the proportions of the scale again. If you remember from the previous tutorial, you hold down the shift key after you clicked on one of these buttons, which means you click first to initiate this scale, and then you hold the shift key down to constrain the scale to be proportional. Another way to scale a layer up and down is by using command or control, owing those and then using the plus and minus buttons on the numeric keypad. This is the key pad on the right side of your keyboard. So if I hold on command and then use plus, this will scale the layer up by 1% of the time. And if I do command minus, that will scare the layer down by 1% of the time. And just like moving the layers if you hold down the shift key together with your command key Now, if you then press plus or minus, that's going to scare the layer up and down my 10% of the time. So this command shift and then plus command shift minus on the numeric keypad. This is in the plus or minus on the main keyboard next to the backspace, because those are used to zoom in and out. So if I hold on command and use the plus and minus on the main keyboard, that's going to zoom in or else rather than making the object larger or smaller, you may have noticed, as I make the object larger and larger and larger, the quality off it the great. So if I go up, make this evil Nitya like that, you see, the edges are looking very soft. Let me exaggerate the Baltimore so I'm gonna go click and drag this with the shift key and then maybe move the whole thing up so I can see the edges here, you can see that the quality is really bad. That's because this is now about 1100% off the original size. Now the whole point off using illustrator initially to create these graphics while so that we could end up with vector files on. If you know anything about vectors, you should know that they can be scaled infinitely without losing inequality. And in this case, I can see that the quality has been lost. And that's because Aftereffects takes a file, even if it's a vector file, and it rast arises it at the same size as the composition. So it looks sharp if you're seeing this 100% but it doesn't do anything else. Today, Victor fall again, which means if you scale the victor, fall up. It doesn't recognize that victor file as a vector file or a vector layer in this case. So in order to tell aftereffects that this in fact is effective file and you want to keep the layers edges quite sharp, you click on this button here, the one that we mentioned in the previous tutorial, the one that looks like the sun next to the show. I switch. This button is called continuously Rest arise on. What that means is that it's going to look at the vector file and it will look at this scale property. And in this case we set the scale to be about 1100% and then calculates that, And based on those figures, it rast arises the layer so the layer looks sharp at this scale. The reason why it's turned off by default is because the more of these layers you have with this switch turned on, the slower the renders are gonna get. So to make it easier on the processor after effects by default turns e switches off. But if you are working with victor files, you usually want to turn these buttons on so we can scale them freely. So this is the one before, and this is after Now, don't confuse this with zoom level, so if I actually zoom into it, So if I use my scroll wheel and the old key and maybe zoom in here, this also looks a little pixelated now, but this isn't due to the scale value being set to about 1100% or to switch being turned on or turned off. This is purely because we have our magnification level set to be about 3000%. So if I zoom up and said this to be 100% you should be checking the quality off this at 100% view all the time. So if it looks sharp at this magnification level, you'll be all right, Let's set the scale back to on the percent. So I'm gonna select on just type in 100. I'm gonna press shift four slash so I can see the whole thing. The sun layer seems to have disappeared. So let me zoom out a couple of times there is my layer. So school, bring this back in and then zoom into it again by holding on ultra and scrolling in That brings us on here. Let me set the scale to, let's say, 250% and the next is rotation. If I go and press are I now see two values here on rotation is measured in degrees. So you usually change the second value here. This is the degrees here. So if I click and drag the 2nd 1 towards right, you see as soon as I do this, the sun is going to start rotating. That's going to rotate clockwise. And if you go towards left, that's counterclockwise. And if you go over 3 60 check what happens to this first number here. So if I just keep going towards right, and as soon as we reach 3 60 aftereffects is going to zero out this number, and it's going to add one to the number on the left. So that's the amount of full revolutions that the layer has made. So if I keep dragging this towards right, you see this close to zero, and it starts all over again, and we now have one on the left inside. This means now that the layer has done a full rotation plus 135 degrees, which means, really, if you change the first number here, nothing's gonna change. Not unless you're animating something. We'll talk about animation in the future tutorials, but for now, if you change the first number, that's not gonna have any effect on the appearance off the layer. Because if you rotate the layer by 360 degrees, you're gonna come back to exactly where you started That's why changing this number to anything. Even if I said it's true, let's add in all 5000. That's not gonna make any difference until we start animating. So let me reset the value as well here. So I'm gonna go and right click on the word rotation and then reset this and I'll show you another way of rotating layer. And that's by using the rotations. Or here. This is the fourth tool from the left. The keyboard shortcut is W. If you select this, we can anger and click anywhere on the layer and simply just click and drag, and that's going to rotate the layer. And as I do this, you see that the numbers on the bottom left with updates. If I hold on shift, that's going to look the rotation to be 45 degree increments. If I click and drag, the shift key you see goes 45 91 35 1 80 song again. You let go of your mouths first before you like off the shift key our press TV to get back to my selection tool. One last way of rotating a layer is again by using the plus and minus keys on the numeric keypad. This time we don't use the modifier key. We just simply press plus or minus. These are the keys on the numeric keypad. Remember, not the main keyboard, so the keypad on the right hand side of your keyboard. If I press plus, this rotates the layer by one degree at a time, and minus will go counterclockwise by one degree at the time. And again, if you hold down the shift key, it will rotate by 10 degrees at a time. 12. Anchor Point: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at how the anchor point works. The anchor point is the point around which some transformations such a scale and notation happen. Let's have a look at how it works. If I go and select the sommelier and then press the letter A on the keyboard that will reveal the anchor points. You see, the Anchor Point also has two values, and these are measured in pixels as well. And these values tell you how far the center point off the object is. This point here from the top left corner off the layer, not from the top, left corner off the composition, but the one off the layer. So if I zoom on, let me just use my scroll to zoom out on. Let me actually set the rotation back to its default as well. So that's press shift. Our that will open up rotation as well. And I'm gonna right click on it on Reset, and I'm gonna press shift organs or the disappears. Now the anchor point will tell us. Like I said, how far the center point is this point from the top left corner? This point off the layer on this is measured in pixels as well, so the center point is 93.8 pixels away on the X and 93.8 pixels away on the why. In fact, if you multiply these two numbers by true, you work out a wide or told the layers when you click and drag the anchor point value towards left or rights, you see that Dan component seems to stay in the same place. But the layer itself is changing position. If you think of it carefully, actually, this is quite accurate. If I go and set this back to, let's say, zero and zero, it looks like the layer itself has shifted. But really, what happened is that the anchor point got shifted to the top left corner. So the anchor point is now in the top left corner off the layer. But because we haven't changed the position of the layer, it looks like the layer has shifted down. This was a little confusing for me as well, and I first learned about the anchor point, but after a while actually does make sense. If you think about it carefully, you're changing the position of the layer. So if I go in press shift p as well. So when I moved anchor points around, I'm not changing right. The position of the layer is remember, the position of the layer is rather anchor. Point is based on the top left corner off the composition. I'm not changing that. I'm only changing. Ready lays contents are based on the top left corner off the layer. So if I set the anchor point back to zero and zero, you see, that's where it's gonna be. If I said the position of the layer to be zero and zero as well, it's not gonna move the anchor point at the top left corner. Let's go press shift. Four slash so I can see the top left corner. And if I said the position to be zero and zero that point now, the anchor point is now set to be on the top left corner off the composition. Now, instead of changing the anchor point by using the numbers here, there's a tool made just for that, and that's called the pan behind or the anchor point tool. And that's this one here in the toolbar. If you go and click on this. Why is the short cut? I can not go and click on the anchor point and move this anywhere I like. It can be anywhere inside the layer, or it can even be somewhere outside the layer, or it can even be somewhere outside. The composition doesn't matter. And what happens when we moved anchor points around with this tool is that the position and the anchor point off the layer are changing at the same time. So if I go and move this around, have a look at these two values here, click and drag this you see. Those numbers are changing at the same time to make the layer appear as if it hasn't moved . But in fact, it has. As you move down a point, you can hold down the control key or command key on the Mac, and you see this will snap toe either the edges or the points or even the center point here as well. Or you can do this to snap that component to the center or the edges off another layer as well, which we don't have, not because we solo the sun layer, but I can just place this anywhere I like. Now let's say here now you may be asking yourself why would you want to do this? Why would you change the anchor point? Well, the whole point there is so that you can rotate or scale the layer around this point. Let me show you. If you press shift are so we see rotation as well and their shift s to reveal scale as well . If I rotate the layer now you see it will rotate from around this anchor point. So if I just go and click and then drag, this is where the rotation is happening from now. Similarly, if I scale this layer, you see it's scaling away from that point or scaling towards the point if I drag it towards left until it disappears, there is before I just more than going back to the center. The rotation was happening from the center of the layer as well as the scale. So if I go to the scale of rotation here on then just changed these, you see, it's rotating from around itself. Same thing with the scale Israeli just scales from the center of it, or away from the center like that, whereas if you move anchor point somewhere else, let's say I moved anchor point here. This, for example, is an easy way to create, like a pendulum animation. If I go to my rotation now, I just animate this or move this. Gradually, you see that the sun looks like it's changing position as well as its rotation, Very. In fact, it's only rotating on Lee from a different angle point. There's a really hand the way of working with these tools at the top. Let me show you how that works. Let's say, for example, I had the selection tool. Most of these tools are what are called spring loaded tools. So the reason why they're called Spring Loaded is because, let's say, for example, temporarily, I want to switch to my anchor point tool before I move the lay around all rotated instead of just pressing why, or clicking on this to select a tool I can press and hold down the Y key. And for as long as I have my Waikiki held down, it's activated my pan behind to Lord Anchor Point Tool, and I can move this anywhere I like. Let's say here and then I let go of my mouse. And as soon as I let go of my wife, Kia's well, that's going to switch back to my selection tool or the previously selected tool. And that's true for all the other tools as well. So if I press that, say, for example, w on hold it down, I now activated the rotation tool. I can click and rotate this around the anchor point. Then I let go of my mouse on that golf the W key as well. That switches back to my selection tool. So instead of just tapping the shortcut on the keyboard or selecting the tool at the top, you can press the key and hold it down and then do whatever you need to do. Let's say move and component to hear again. I can press control as well now or command on the Mac, and that will snap. Then I can look off my key and let's say you want to rotate this. Now I can press W and hold it down and then click and drag this like that. Then I let go, and then they go off my w key. So the anchor point is really important when it comes to scaling or rotating the layer from around the point which is different than the center of the layer. 13. Opacity: the final property we will talk about now is opacity. Capacity controls are visible. The layers are it's going and zooming maybe to the sun on the clouds here. So I'm gonna hold on. Hold on there, scroll in to bring those closer to us and space bar to move around. If I got one of these clouds and selected here that will be highlighted here as well on the keyboard. If you press the letter T for opacity that's going to reveal opacity on this one is different. This is not all because always used for something else. We'll talk about that later in the future movies. So the shortcut here is T and this only gives you one property to tweak. And this is measured in percent. And by default, the layers are gonna be 100% unless they were different in Illustrator. And I'm gonna bring this down by clicking and dragging this towards left. And you see, this will make the layer semi transparent so I can see through that layer now into the sun . If I said this to 0% Exactly that will make the layer invisible altogether. If I turn it all the way up to 100%. That's going to make the layer fully opaque, so it's a simple one to use. You just click and drag this left and right, or you just click and type in a number. And now you know how the rapacity works as well. We've now covered all five basic properties off the layers. Namely, they were position, scale, rotation, anchor, point and opacity. One quick tip here before we finalize the chapter on that is, if you want to memorize the shortcuts for these parameters, you can make up a word from those shortcuts and memorize them. For example, be no peace for Position A is for anchor point are for rotation T four rapacity and s for scale. That word there would be parts, so go ahead and make up anywhere you like. There's quite a few different options there with those letters and memorize that word and then you won't forget the shortcuts anymore. 14. Creating a Composition: So far, we have been working on a composition that was created as a result off importing illustrator file as a composition. But what if you don't have administrative file to start with? How do you go about creating a composition from scratch? Well, there are a couple of different ways of doing it on. That's what we're gonna talk about in this tutorial, creating a new composition from scratch. Its first, Glenn close this project by going to file Close Project on that will take us back to square one. And to create a new composition, we can either import a file in, and as we do it, we can ask aftereffects to create a composition from that file so we can do that by going to file import file. Let's say, for example, you see, like this logo here as we select the logo, we can come on, turn this option on which should, by default be turned off. You can turn on it says, create composition, and if it's turned on, and if you then import it, that's going to bring the file in. As you can see here, as well as bringing the file, it's going to create a composition, and it will put the file inside that composition, so it's ready for us to make some changes. In other words, I cannot go back to this file. That's our press s to change the scale. And I can make all these changes to the file. If you didn't create a composition where you imported the file in, you could do the following. So if I go and delete these, it will ask me if I'm sure are confirmed. This if I just go an important file again. If I go file imports on, let's say, for example, I saved the file and I didn't create a composition at the beginning, so I just go and imported if I don't have a composition now, one way to create a composition based on the settings off the file that you're using is by dragging the file from here down to this icon here, this little filmstrip and you let go. Or you can drag it from here on top off this area here in the composition area. Or you can simply right click on the file and then choose new comp from selection. That's going to do the same thing as we did before. So that's going to create a composition and then put the file inside that composition as the only layer. Let me show you a couple of different ways of doing that. I'm gonna go and delete these again, so I just select them and then press delete on. Confirm that we can also click on this button here that says new composition from footage. And then it will ask us which filed to use. I can just go and pick any files if I got to my maybe documents here on go to my video clips on. It's a creative competition from this clip here. If I important act again, that's very similar to what we did before. So that puts the file inside the project panel as well as creating a composition and then placing that fall inside that composition as the only layer on. This is a video clip different than what we had before, so I can just click and drag around. We'll talk about the video clips in the timeline in detail later on. But what if you want to create a composition from scratch? I mean literally from scratch so we don't have any files to start with. You just want to start from scratch on. You wanna have a blank canvas you can then place things into? Well, let's have a look at how that's done as well. So let me go and delete these. If you want to create a composition from scratch, you can either go to the composition many at the top here, and then choose a new composition. Or is the short cut of course, control, end or command? And Or you can simply come and click on this button here, and that's also gonna do the same thing. They will open up the composition settings Dialog box. The first option here is the name off the composition, so that's going call this first comp on down here. We have the presets, so if I click here, I can pick any of these presets. These are some of the most commonly used presets. That's why they're in this list here, and usually they'll follow a specific four months. So first you have the name off the format. So in this case, for example, we have DVC pro HD here, or HTV or PAL one or seen IAM and so on. So these are the formats, and next to it you have some numbers. So the first little numbers, they refer to the height off the frame in pixels. So this is HD TV four months, and the height is 1000 and 80 pixels on. On this one, for example, this is DVC pro HD formats. On the height is 7 20 pixels. The number on the right. Inside the last number is the frame rate. So this is how many frames you have every second this is called FPs, or the frame rate. And usually in Europe, we used 25 frames a second for broadcast on in the States. They used 30 frames a second, and you can change this year if I go and pick this HD TV 10 80 25. This is what we call full HD, and you can see that as soon as I do that the with is set to 1920 the height is set to 10 80. That's the resolution for full HD. If you're looking for a specific size, let's say, for example, you want to create an animation that's going to be displayed on a kiosk or a mobile device or something. You can just go and change the numbers here manually. So if I wanted this to be lower or higher, I can just click and drag. And you see, because this button here that says look aspect ratio to 16 by nine is turned on. The numbers are changing at the same time. If I want to change them independently, I can uncheck this. I can now change the with or the height independently, so I'm gonna go back and pick the same preset again. So that was Hey, HD TV! 10 80 25. One question that I could ask quite often is what is the best format on? There is no such thing. So it depends on what your intention is with this file. Are you going to display your work on a mobile device? Is it going to be displayed on a TV monitor? Is it going to be projected? So that all depends. That's why, unfortunately, I couldn't give you just one number that works best for everything that's going to be the same for exporting as well. When we get to that final chapter about exporting, I'll say the same thing. There is no one former that works best for everything. Asking which preset is the best or which format is the best, is very similar to asking something like which phone is the best. Well, that depends. If you want lots of features on your phone, you probably want to get a smartphone, whereas if you just want to make a call, you can get away with using even a rotary phone. So it all depends. There is no one answer that I could give you that will work best for all situations under the within the height who had the pixel aspect ratio or the par, and this would usually be set of square pixels. There are some other reasons why you might want to change this to something different than a square. I'll leave this alone for now, and underneath that is the frame rate or the FPs. This is how many frames you want to have every second. Like I said, this standard for Europe is 25 in the States it's 30 so it can change its again to whatever you like, And the resolution is something you can change afterwards as well. If you remember, this was the resolution here. So you could change the reservation here as well. I leave this set to full for now. On the start, time called. Is the label off your first frames? I'll leave the set to zero. And the duration is how long you want the entire composition to be. My default is going to be set to 30. But of course you can change this. The way you read these numbers is at the very beginning. You have hours, then you have minutes and their seconds and frames. So right now this tells us that this is zeros. Zero minutes, 30 seconds and zero frames. I can change this. Let's say if I want this to be 10 seconds long, I just go and change that to 10. And now the composition is going to be 10 seconds. Exactly. Now you don't actually have to worry about these columns and zeros and so on. I can delete the whole thing. And if I want this to be, let's say five seconds long. All I need to do is to type in five and this is five frames now. And if I type in 50 that's 50 frames. Or, in other words, it's two seconds based on 25 frames a second. And if I tap in one more zero. So that's five seconds, zero frames. So if you're just going type in a three digit number like this or a four digit number, you're going to set the seconds. So if I, for example, one this to be 15 seconds long, I can go and type in 1500 and that makes it exactly 15 seconds long, and every time I see a double zero, I can actually replace that with a full stop. So if I type in 15 full stop, that also means 15 seconds, and it tells us what this 15 full stop means on the right inside. The last option here is the color for the background, so this can be anything you like. So if I click on the color swatch here, the way the color Swatch works in pretty much any adobe application is that on the right. Inside, you had this vertical bar, and you pick the color from here first, let's say, for example, you would like this to be a bluish color. We're just gonna pick it here. So you first pick the color and on the left inside you pick the shade of that color. So on the right, you pick the hue that say, it's somewhere here around about yellow and on the left you pick the saturation and the brightness off that color. So let's say I want something like this. And then when I'm done, I just going press OK? And that sets it and in fact, actually names that medium yellow as well. So it remembers the color there. After this, we just go in press, OK, and this is how you create a composition from scratch. 15. Composition Settings: Once you have your composition, you want to bring things into it so you can start animating them. So you know what? It's import again. Go to file and they will go import file on. Go to my graphic files here. I don't choose my logo on. Open that and that gets imported to your project panel. And to send this file from here to your composition, you can either literally click and drag, and that's going to be the centre off the file there. If I Press Command said, if I want to center this logo in the composition, I can click and drag it here and the goal. Or if our press command said the easiest way is to select the file and then use command four slash on the keyboard, that's command four slash, and that sends the file to your timeline to be right in the centre off the composition. Right now, the logo is huge, so I can press s and then scale this down like that by default. The graphic files that you bring in are going to be the same length as your composition. So in this case, this file is 15 seconds long you can see here. The last point off my timeline is the 15th 2nd mark, and that's how long this one is as well. But if I make my composition longer or shorter than sure how that's done. So let's go to composition, composition settings now or control K on the keyboard. This is how we can update anything about the composition. For example, I can change the name here. I can change the size, the with the height, the frame rate or did duration. So let's say I make this, let's say, 19 seconds long, and if I press OK now, it doesn't look like anything's happened now, but in fact, if I come and zoo Marta, that's what this to fill slider is. You can zoom in and out. You can see that this layer is now cut off on the 15 2nd mark, which means after the 15 2nd the layer is not gonna be visible. And in order to extend this layer, all you have to do is to get the selection tool the first tool here, and then come down here and move the cursor to the very end of the layer until it looks like this, a double arrow and then click and drag this towards rightto extended duration off layer as well. So the layer now is exactly same duration as your composition. You don't have this problem, of course, when you make the composition shorter. So if I go impress control K to bring up my composition settings, I can no make the duration shorter. Let's interceptors to be 10 seconds long. The layer will already be shortened as well, so I don't have to worry about the duration of the layer. 16. Background Colour: you may be wondering what the deal is with the background color. Why is it important? Well, it's important for one reason, and that is if you export a file using a format that supports transparency, and we will talk more about this, even get to the exporting stage. But if you export a file with a former that supports transparency, the background is just gonna disappear. But if you export your animation with a format that supports transparency, you'll have the option to turn the background off on background will be fully invisible. This is similar to using a PNG. If you're used to using photo shop or some other image editing application, you'll be familiar with this. If you have a PNG file, that means you can take the background out and save the file without any background information, which means that you can overlay that file on top of something else. That's exactly for example. Now, this digital logo is created as a PNG, which means that empty areas are actually holds you. They're not yellow. They actually have holes here, so I can see through them onto the background color. Now to see this, a little bit better that's going to click on this bottom, which is going to turn the transparency grade. So if I just go and turn it on, do you not see that the Digital Me file was saved as a PNG, meaning that the background isn't actually there? So it's all empty inside the letters and all around them. And if I turn this on, the background comes back. But if you save the file using a format that doesn't support transparency like a J pick, for example, that's when the background color is going to be important. The background color is then going to be the background off the actual file. So you actually see the yellow background there, which means you won't be able to overlay this file on top of something else and still see through the letters. So it's important to set your background color in case you want to export this composition . With the four months that does not support transparency and to change the background color , you can simply go to your composition settings, which is control or command K on the keyboard, and from here I can go to the background color and pick any other color that I like that. See, I make this white and then press OK? And then Okay, this one as well on That's my new background color. 17. Creating and Editing Solids: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at creating solids now. A solid is nothing more than just a simple layer filled with a single color. But don't let that make you think that it isn't important. Solids are perhaps one of the most important elements in after effects project you'll be using. So let's to change your background color. You'll be using them to apply effect to you'll be using them as bars and to mask them. They have lots of different users not to create one. You go to the later many at the top. And then if this menu's great out like this, that's because the relevant panel isn't selected because the solid is something that you create in the timeline or the composition panel. You have to have either the composition or the timeline panels selected, so you do that simply by clicking on the panel. If you remember and that will activate the panel, I can then go to Layer New and I can create a solid layer. This is a shortcut. You do want to remember control or command why this is the shortcut for a solid. So if I click outside, maybe into the timeline here. And if I press command why, that's also going to bring up the exact same menu here to create a solid. So first, let's go and name this, will it? Let's call this square and down here you can set the width and the height, my default. It's gonna be the same within the height as the composition. But if you change these values, let's say, for example, I click and drag this. I can click and type in their value as well. Let's say I make this exactly 500 by 500. If you want to change this now to make it the same size as the composition, just come and click on this button here, which does make Com size. That's not gonna set it to be exactly the same size as the composition. Otherwise, you can, of course, just grand type in the values here. So I'm gonna make this exactly let's say 2 50 by 2 50 on. I'll leave the units said two pixels. You have these other options here as well, and I'm not gonna change the pixel aspect ratio. So I want the pixels to be square pixels on down here. I have the color option. So if I click on this, I can go and pick a color from the right hand side. Let's say I make this a blue color and then the shade off that on the left and then I hit OK, and I Okay, this one as well on a solid gets created in the center of the composition. If you want to update this story, so you want to change the settings off this, let's say this size or the color maybe only had to do is to make sure that this so that is selected here and then go up to layer menu. And instead of creating a new solid, you click on solid settings and other shortcut. You probably want to remember that shift command. Why, rather than just command why? Which was the shortcut for the solid? This is shift command. Why, which is the shortcut to edit this all it. So if I go soul it settings, I can change anything about the solitaire. I can make this that's a little smaller. So if I go toe 200 by 200 maybe give us a different color as well. So I'm just gonna click on the color swatch on, maybe make this green on, maybe make it slightly brighter as well. And then Okay, this one on, then. Okay, this one as well. And that's how you update the existing solid. You see, as soon as you create is sorted, aftereffects will automatically create a folder here in the project panel. He will call that folder Solids as well, and it will place all the soldiers that you create inside this folder. So this is just a useful way of keeping your project panel organized. And after fixes helping you do that, let's say we move this stole it from here to the left, and I hold the shift key down. So it's a straight line. In order to create multiple copies of this, all the air to do is to select a layer either here or down here and then press command de on the keyboard D for duplicates or you can go to edit. And she was duplicate here as well, and this is going to work for pretty much anything in after effects. For example, if you have a composition here and you want to duplicate this, All you need to do is to press command the and that's a second copy there on command. The again. Every time you do this, it's duplicating the composition. I'm gonna press command said toe under once and twice, instead of duplicating the composition, I'm gonna select the layer here on Empress commanded D and then command d again. So I had three copies exactly on top of each other. You'll notice if I go back to my soul, it's folder. I still have a single solid object here. That means that these copies are actually copies off the 1st 1 so you couldn't duplicate the source. You just duplicated the instances off that in the timeline, which means that your aftereffects fall is actually going to be smaller than it would be if you duplicated actual saw it. So I'm gonna go and collapse this again. Let's go and separate them away from each other first. So I'm gonna go click on the top 1 may be dragged here and then click on that one and then dragged here. So just to find out which ones which I'm going to select the top one here. That's the one in the middle, actually. So I'm gonna put this to the middle as well like that. So that's in the middle. And then the left one is doing at the bottom in their layer lists. I'm gonna lift this up andare select the middle one again, which is now the last one. I'm gonna move this up as well. So now that we had the left fun as the first layer, the middle one is the second layer on the right one as the third layer. Let's go and re color them. So I'm gonna select the rights one, and I'll go to Layer sold its sittings, and I'll make this a different color. So I'm just gonna go and change the color to, Let's say blue. Okay, that one on press new here, this is going to update the layup. And this one actually does create a new solid. Not because it's a different so that it's a different color. And if you look at the project panel into the soul, it's folder, you know, have the second Soviet there. So I'm gonna do the same for the middle one. Go to layer. So that sittings and I'll give this a different color. Let's say you make this a red color like that, maybe. And I okay, that one as well, and then press new. And now I have three solids. So they're all called squares here. So I'm gonna update the names as well, so I'll select this one. If you remember to update the name, you just press return. I'll call this one green on the 2nd 1 I'll call it Red on the 3rd 1 should be called blue. And there we go. There's a really interesting feature in after effects on I used is quite a lot, especially when I want to reorganize the layers panel. And that is, if you select the layers in any specific order using the control key, for example, I select the blue layer first, then hold on control or command on the Mac and then select the green one and then the red one. So it was blue, green and red. If I then cut these layers, that's control or command X to cut them. And then if I just paste them control or command V, it's going to paste them in that order. So it puts a blue first, then green that read Not to correct this. Let's say, for example, I want the blue to be my last one on the green. To be the first I select the green first, then control or command Select the Red Man Command, Select the blue as well and then cut these control Xcor Command X and then paste Command that V Now the green is the first. The red is the 2nd 1 and the blue is the 3rd 1 18. Layer Alignment and Distribution: when you have multiple layers and you would like to align them properly or distribute them evenly, you have a few different options, and in this lesson we'll have a look at these options. First of all, before it can align or distribute the layers, you need to select them. You do that by getting the selection to here and then clicking on the layer once and then holding down the shift key and then clicking on the other layers with the shift key can select multiple leaves at the same time. You can do it in the composition panel here, or you can also do it in time line here as well. So if I click on this and shift click on the last one that selects all the layers, if I want to leave one layer out, all I have to do is to press command and then click on that layer. That one gets de selected. I'm gonna come on click on this again to selected again. Now there's a panel called the Align Panel, and it's this one here on For whatever reason, if you can't see this, if you go to window, it's gonna be here as well. You can just click on this and that will open up their line panel. And with all of these layers selected, you have a couple of options. You can align on the layers to the selection, so that's referring to the current selection we have. Or you can align them to the composition that's now referring to the boundaries off the composition. For example, if I want all these layers to snap to the top of the composition I can set is to be composition and I can say a line top. And if I click on this, you'll see all of them will snap right to the top of the composition. I'm gonna press commands that toe under that. There is if I do a line layers to selection, and if I do a lion top, it's going to look a top most object, which is this blue on here, As I can see on, it's going to look at the top edge off that, and it's gonna line everything to the top edge off the blue one like that. If I press commands it and I can now line them to the bottom as well which means that it look at the bottom, most layer, which is yellow one and then the line old objects to the bottom edge, which is this edge off the yellow layer. So if I go and click align bottom, all the layers will move down to be alliance to the bottom age off the yellow layer, the press commands that again. Toe under that and the last one I'll show you here is this button that says align vertically. And what this does is averages every single one to be aligned right in the middle off the selection. So if I go and click on this every single layer, we move down or up, depending on where they were to be aligned to the center vertically. The last three options here that we talked about our for the vertical alignment on the 1st 3 options are for the horizontal alliance. So you have a lying horizontally and line left or align right. You also have down here the distribution options. The last three in this case are gonna be for the horizontal distributions on the 1st 3 are gonna before the vertical distributions. For example, if I want the distance between every single layer to be equal. I can distribute them horizontally so I can click on this button here where it says distribute horizontally and that's going to make sure that all the layers are distributed properly so that the gaps or the distances between them, are exactly the same. You also have the option to align these layers manually on you. Do that by first the selecting off them, so I'm gonna go click outside to be select them. And if I click on any layer, let's say, for example, I click on this pink layer as I drag it. If I want this layer to snap to another layer, I can hold down the command key and you see right in the center, there's a little square that appeared, and I hold down the command key. If I let go of command that disappears, hold it down again. It comes back, and that shows me the points that will snap to the other lives. So if I go and move this year, let's say to the yellow one. You see it was snap to the yellow layer. The center of the pink one snaps around so if I go and move it here, you see, the center of the pink one is gonna snap to the green layer now, either to the corners, edges or the center off the green one as well. I'm gonna move out. But what if I want to snap this? Let's say, based on the top left corner. Well, that's very simple. If you go and click somewhere near the top left corner, not quite on it, but somewhere near the top left corner and you start dragging. If you now hold the command key, you'll see that this square will appear on the top, left corner off the layer. Then that's where it's gonna snap from. It's a lot like this one to snap from the bottom left corner. I click somewhere here towards the bottom left corner off the yellow layer and then hold down command. So the square appears on the bottom, left corner on. This can snap there on, Let's say here again, the top left corner command. So the square appears there, and then here, the bottom left corner command on. Then this square appears there and it snaps, and I can select the mall Command A is the shortcut to selectable. I can move one of them towards left or right to center teas 19. Working with Guides and Grids: when it comes to aligning objects manually, you might want to make use off the rulers, and the guide's now to access the rulers. You either press command or control are on the keyboard or you go to view and you open up the rulers by clicking on this show Rulers button. If I click on this now, I can see the rulers on. Let's say, for example, I want to create a guide somewhere around here. In order to do that, I simply need to move my cursor to the ruler. On the left hand side on, the cursor will turn into a double arrow. I then click and drag a guide out. From there. I can number with anywhere like let's say here and I let go, and then this guy can be used to snap objects to. This is something that's not going to render out in the final exports so you won't actually see the guy coming into the final render. But it's something that you can use to keep you on track. And in order to make sure that the layers snap to the guides, we need to go to the view menu top and then there's an option here. It says snap, two guides on that should be turned on if it's turned on which it is. If I click outside now and if I click on any of these layers, let's say I click on the yellow one as I dragged this, you see, that is just going to snap to that guide. I can do the same here and here and really quickly. I can Snapple of these to the guides, and once I have them snapped, I can then select them all. And then I can go to distribute layers and I can distribute them vertically, which means that the gap between them is going to be equal. You can, of course, create horizontal guides as well. And you do that by moving the cursor here and then clicking and dragging down. And then I can use this to snap objects toe like that's now. If you want to get off a guide, all they have to do is to go back on it and drag this back to where it came from, which is the ruler. On that go. I can do the same here, click and then dragged us back to where it came from and then they go. If you have multiple guides and you want to get rid of all of them at the same time, that say, I just create some random guides here if I want to get rid of all of these at the same time , all I have to do is to go to view. And then there's an option here to clear the guides. If I click on clear guides, they will all disappear. The male No, that's command said. So they come back if you want to look the guide so we can't move them by mistake again, you just go to view and you make sure that this option here what's his lock guides is turned on Once it's turned on, you can then select the guides and do anything to them. You can't even delete them. If you want to do any of that, you to go to view again and unlock the guides. Then you can do whatever you like with those guys. I'm gonna go and clear all of these again. And the next feature I want to show you is the great. Now the grid is a predetermined set off guides. If I go to view and select shore grid that will reveal the grid on by default, it's not gonna do anything. It's just gonna sit there as guides and things won't even snap to the grid. You can see they're gonna freely floating around. But if you want the object to snap to the grid as well, you go back to view and turn on snap to grid. Now, if you click and dragged objects around, you see they will snap to the grid lines under the same here and so. And if you want to change the size or the appearance off your grade, you got your preferences on on the Mac. This is inside the aftereffects menu at the top on its here. Preferences on windows. It's inside the edit menu. Right at the bottom. It will say preferences. So I'm gonna Max, I'm gonna go to after Effects CC Preferences on an option here is for grids and guides. So I'm gonna click on this. This will bring up the preferences for the grids and the guides. I can change the color off the great. So if I go down here Let me just change this to something else that say, I don't know, maybe a red color. And if I It's okay on Okay, this one as well. You see, my great lines are not red if I go back to it. So if I go back to my preferences on grids and guides, I can also change the distance between every great line. So if I click on this on the TV set this to 200 and if I It's okay, you see that the distance between every grid line is 200 incidentally, that happens to be the same size as my square. If I click and drag these squares around, I can fit them in any of these grids, like so. Well, put it here on this one can go there. And so maybe this one can go here. And there's also something else called subdivisions. And those are these smaller, great lines. So if I go back to my preferences again into grids and guides, I can tell it how many subdivisions I want from here. So if I said this to be, let's say 10. Okay? That one. I'm not gonna have 10 subdivisions here instead of four. Let's go back to the preferences one last time and into grids and guides. We'll sit this back to four and the distance between the grid lines. I'm gonna set this back to 80 and the last option I want to show you. Here is this style off the grid. By default, it set the lines. So that's what you're seeing here. Just lines. You can change that from lines to dashed lines. That's the second option here, so you're going to see dashed lines. Or you can change it to dodge to see dots instead of the lines. And while we're here, let's have a look at the color of the guides as well. It's down here, and you'll find yourself changing this every now and then because, let's say, for example, you have a purple background. Having purple guides won't really be useful. In that case, you can change it to something a bit more contrast, E Let's say like green, and then it's OK. And then when you press OK here, all their guides are gonna turn green, which will make it easier to see in front of a purple background 20. Intro to Keyframes: In this tutorial, we'll talk about what's perhaps the most important concept in all of after effects. Key framing key framing refers to the process off making something change over time and that something can be anything. Once you learn how to key frame one property, you can then key, frame pretty much any property. So if you learn how to make this car move from left to right, you can make anything more from left to right. You can make anything rotate. You can make anything change color over time or change shape or size over time. So once you understand the basic concepts of key framing, you'll be able to tackle anything. Let's see how you can key frame or change a property over time. In order to do that, I'm gonna use this car to start with, and what I want now is for this car to move from left to right on. For that, I'm gonna go to the car and then press the letter P to open up the position property. Now, when your key framing something, you'll be using this timeline a lot. So that's a look at some shortcuts and some settings here in timeline. Initially, you want to determine the frame rate off your timeline. So how many frames do you want to play every second and recover that in the previous tutorials that was called the frame rate, or FPs frames per second? Just to check what that said to you can go to your composition settings, which was command K. And here I can see that my frame rate is 25 which means every 25 frames is going to add up to a second. So with that in mind, let's go back to our timeline. And here you see that we have 10 seconds in total, which means I now have in total 250 frames. So keep that in mind because you'll be working with frames allots. Also, you can come down here and use this slider at the bottom to zoom into your timeline or zoom out from the time like this is not making anything longer or shorter. It's purely zooming in, so you can see the time any more detail or you zoom out so you can see more of the timeline . So with that information, let's have a look at how the key friends work. What I've done here for you is to include five steps that you need to follow in order to create pretty much any animation. So I'm gonna turn them on one by one so it can full of them. The first step is just turn us home gold to time. What does that mean? Assuming that we know what it is that we want to animate in this case, the position off the car. When do we want this animation to start or finish? This is what I mean by go to time. Let's say, for example, you don't want anything to happen to the car for one second and then you want the car to start moving. Well, I can goto one second in my timeline and I do that by clicking on this blue play head here . This play head is called the current time indicator. I'll just click and drag this to one second on. It will tell me where I am up here or on the left here. So right now I'm at zero hours zero minutes one second, one frame trying to pull back by one frame. I can I to do this manually by clicking and dragging this. Or I could just go and type the value here as well. So if I want this to be exactly one second or two seconds, I can just go and type it here. Or, of course, I can click on this button as well. And that will bring up the gold a time dialog box. That's exactly what I mean here. Got a time? Or you can use the keyboard shortcuts on the keyboard to go back and forth, frame by frame, and you do that by using page up and page down on the keyboard. If I press page down, that's going forward by one frame at a time. On page up goes backwards by one frame at a time. If you want to go forwards or backwards by 10 frames at the time, you do shift page down or shift page up. I'm no it one second exactly what's the second step. Second step is to set the value. The value is the value that you want to change over time. In this case, the position off the car. Let's say, for example, I would like the car to start from that say here when it's at the one second mark. So I just said the value. Now, if you wanted something to scale up, you're just going to sit the initial scale value. Or if you wanted something to change the color, you change the initial color, so the value is what you want to change over time. The third step is to create a key frame. How do you create a key frame? Well, you create a key frame by clicking on the stopwatch next with a property you want animates , and you can only key frame the properties if they have a stopwatch next to them. So position has the stopwatch next to it. So I'm gonna go and click on it that create a key frame on a key frame. In the timeline. It looks like this. It's a diamond shape. Let me zoom into this so we can see what's happening a little better here. So if I just click on the slider and there's women, I'm now at the frame level. So I'm now seeing every single frame, and if I move my plate away so we can see what the sexual shape looks like this is what a key frame looks like. It's a diamond shape, and if it selected, its gonna be blue. If you click just one side of it. So it's the selected. It's gonna be great. Once you click on the stopwatch that will activate the key frames, and then it will turn blue here and you will never click on the spot. Which again, unless you want to disable the key frames. So if you click on the stopwatch, you'll see that the key frame I just created disappears. So I'm gonna press commands that to bring that back. So you only click on the stopwatch in order to initiate the key frames. Let me zoom back out from the time my first. The fourth step is to change the time. What I mean by that Now the car will start animating on the one second mark. But how long do you want this to go on for? Let's say you will like the car to animate for two seconds, so it starts on the one second mark and it goes on to the 3rd 2nd Well, I can just click and drag my players or the C t I, the current time indicator to the three second mark there. And then I went forward by one frame. So I'm gonna press page up to go back by one frame. So that's exactly three seconds. And then the final step is to update the value and the value to be updated is the one that you said the key frame for initially, which in this case is position. So I'm gonna go click on the car and then dragged us towards writes holding down the shift key. Let's how on the car to end up somewhere here. I'm gonna let go here, and then they go off my shift key on that is the fifth in the final step in creating any animation. In order to play this back, I'm gonna press the home key on the keyboard. If you're using an extended Mac keyboard, that's the key that's pointing up and left under F 14. And in order to play this back to do a preview, you press space bar. If I go impressed space, you see nothing will happen for one second and the car was stopped moving. Then it stops on the 3rd 2nd and then nothing happens. Afterwards, I'll press space again to pose the playback. If you memorize these five steps and you follow them in this order, you can key frame and animate pretty much every single property in after effects. 21. More Keyframes: Let's say, as the car moves from left to right, you want to animate the second hand on the clock. Now for that, let's go and zoom into the clock a little bit. So I'm gonna hold on Holt and scroll into the clock and then you space bar to bring this closer to the center. Now I want the second hand to rotate. And I wanted to rotate not from its own centrepoint, which is gonna be somewhere here. Let me just select this. You see, the center point of the second hand layer is here. So if I going to rotate this by press w and rotate it, you see rotates from the wrong place instead, I want the center point to be on top of this period. Point here. So let me zoom in here exactly. So old school in on hold on space and just move this up Now, in order to move, then complain to be on top off this layer here. All I had to do is to get my anchor point tool and then click and drag. And as I do, hold the control key down and you see it will snap to go to the center off that layer. Now that the anchor point off the second hand is on the other layer here, I can rotate this from the correct place. If I go and rotate this by pressing W I can just rotate this and you'll see it will rotate from the correct place like that. I'm gonna press command said to go back a step, So I'm gonna zoom all the way out so we can see these steps again. And I'm gonna follow exactly the same steps as we did for the car. So initially, when do I want the rotation and a mission to start? Let's say I want the rotation animation to start exactly when the car starts moving. Well, for that, I need to jump on top of these key frames. So instead of moving the play head back onto the key frame, which you can do if you use on the keyboard shortcuts J or K weaken jump back and forth between the key frames. So when you press J, that jumps to the previous key frame on the letter, K jumps to the following key frame. So those two kids are gonna be extremely useful. So maybe memorized them. Jay, to go back. Kate to go forward Key frame my key frame. Alternatively, you could just click on this button here to go back and then this one to go forward. So that's J on. That's K now on the car. I want to jump to the first key frames. I'm gonna go back by one level, and I'm on this key frame now and then need to select the second layer and then press are to reveal its rotation. And I met the time now. So this is when I want the rotation to start. Second step is to set the value. What do you want the value to be? Well, I wanted to be what it is now. Zero degrees. So it's already set. Next. We need to create a key frame by clicking on the stopwatch, this time next to the rotation. That Christa key frame here. We don't need to change the time. So how long do I want this animation to go on for? Let's say I want this to go on for as long as the car moves, so I'm gonna press K to jump to the next key frame off the car on the last step is to update the value. That is, how many degrees should just be rotated by at the end of the animation. That's how long this to be. That's a 90 degrees exactly. So it's exactly on three o'clock here. So if I just go and type in 90 there, that sets us the new key frame. If I go back to the beginning and then play it by pressing space bar, you see, as the car moves from here to here, the second hand here will animate from 12 to 3, have a look, and again I'll press space to pose it. 22. Editing Keyframes: in this lesson, we'll have a look at how to edit the existing key frames. So let's first go and solo the carnal year. So that's over you're seeing, and I'm gonna collapse the second layer as well. So I don't see the key things from it. And I'm just gonna go to the beginning somewhere here with my play head. And then I'll use the plus key on the keyboard to zoom in. And similarly, you can use minus to zoom out when he's plus a couple of times so I can see both of these key frames like that. The distance between the key frames controls the speed of the animation. What that means is this if the current animation is going at this speed, but I wanted to happen much faster, all I would need to do would be to bring the key frames closer to each other, and that will speed up the animation. And you do that by getting your selection tool and then clicking on the key frame that, say, the second key frame in this case and then pushing this towards left to bring it closer to the 1st 1 You see the same animation will happen much faster, and I can exaggerate this even more. And if I play it, you see that's happening even faster. So the short to the distance between the key frames, the faster the animation. And of course, to slow this down, all they would need to do would be to separate the key frames If I click on the 2nd 1 maybe pushes away from the 1st 1 and I can't zoom out a bit more by using minus on the keyboard. And then I can keep pushing this towards right. So I now gave it more time to complete the same animation, which means he will have to go slower than it did before. On this actually makes sense. I think about it. If I told you that you only have 10 minutes to go from your house to the supermarket, you have to drive your car at a certain speed. But if I told you that you only have a minute to go, then you had to dry much faster. Or if I told you that you have half an hour to go, you'll go much slower. So the distance between your house and the supermarket stays the same, but if I give you more time, you'll go slower. If I give you less time, you have to go much faster. That's exactly what's happening with the key frames here. The longer duration between the key frames this lowered animation, the shorter the duration between the key frames, the facet animation on Let's do the same for the clock as well. So I'm gonna go and unsold of this so I can see all the steps together with the clock on. Here's a really useful shortcuts. If I want to reveal the key frames are created on any off these layers. In this case, I only had the key frames for a second layer on. I can actually see that. I made a typo here, so I'm gonna select this press return and then at an end there and then click outside. If I want to see the key frames Now, on the second layer, I select the layer and on the keyboard I pressed the letter you, and this is going to reveal the key frames you created. You stands for user key frames, so this such a useful shortcut that I use is pretty much every single time. Every time you pressed the letter you that will reveal the key frames you created. And if I press you again, they will hide them. So I'm not always Will you remember the key frames you created? So if you select the layer and press you that will reveal the key frames, same here as well. And if you select impress you again, there will hide them. So what I want to do now is to line up the two animations so that the second hand here rotate at the same time as the car moves from left to right. So far, click and drag this towards right. You see, nothing happens. It doesn't recognize the key frame or to play it here for us to tell it to snap. All we have to do is to hold down the shift key as we drag and you see as soon as we get closer to it, it snaps. So if I move my kosher left and right, it doesn't go or it snaps to the play head as well or to the key frame. In this case, I wanted to snap to the key frame, so I let go there. And now if I go back and play So if I press the home key on the keyboard and then space bar you see, the two animations will happen exactly at the same time. And, of course, if you want to speed this up now, I can select both of these key friends by creating a marquee selection like this, and then I pull them left. And now the same animation is gonna happen much faster. And this is how you tweak this speed off any animation? 23. Timing Layers: you can make the layers appear or disappear in quite a few different ways. Two of the most common ways are as follows. Let's say, for example, you want this interface off the clock to fading gradually. So for that, let me just go and select the cloak. Leah and I'm gonna press the letter t to open up capacity and other the same for the center as well oppressed t to open our capacity just for now. I'm gonna hide it the second layer here just by selecting this and pressing our or you on the keyboard and I'll go right back to the beginning of my timeline as my first step. So go to time. I'm gonna set the value of the rapacity off. This clock is going to be zero. I'm gonna go and set this 20 and then I'll create a key frame by clicking on the stopwatch and then I'll change the time. Let's I want this to happen over 10 frames. So I'm gonna press shift and page down, and then finally, I'll update the value. I'll just go here and update capacity value from 0% to 100%. And that should animate now to go from completely transparent to fully opaque over 10 frames. Let me zoom in here so I can show you one more thing. You see that we have two layers here. One is the second hand and the other one is the center. If I go back to the beginning you see, my second hand isn't doing anything. And also this Centrepoint isn't doing anything. Now if you want the same opacity animation to be applied to both of those layers as well only a to do is to click on the world opacity and then press command. See Or it can go to edit copy and then select other leaders the scent early on the second layer and then you just press command that V and it will pay the same key frames onto the selected layers. If I not press you and then you again, I can see those key frames here as well. So if you know, go back shift in four slash If I click outside to be sedate them If I play, it's just space bar. You see, this whole thing will fade in over 10 frames, Then the animation starts And of course, I can slow these down. So if I select the second key frames for all the opacity properties here, I can then drag them towards right, and then again hold the shift key down. So these will snap to the first key frame off the rotation here or the position. And if I now play it, you see that the opacity animation is gonna take one second to complete. And after that, the rest of the animations will start the second way off. Making the layers appear at different times is by literally dragging the layers in the timeline. So let me scroll down on the time line first, for example, let's say you don't on this first line of text to appear right at the beginning. I can just click on the layer itself, provided that I have my selection tool selected. I can click on the layer itself anywhere on this orange bar and then dragged this towards rights. I'm making this later appear at a later point. Let's say, for example, I want this to appear around about three seconds on a connection to use my play head as a reference there. So if I just put it There is a guide. Just drag it towards right and I can hold down the shift key so it snaps again. And now the first line of text is only going to appear on the 3rd 2nd mark. So if I go and play it, you see will be there until three seconds. Then it pops up and I can stagger them so I can put the second line to be a little bit later than the 1st 1 and then the 3rd 1 to be a little late in the 2nd 1 and then this to be a little bit later than the 3rd 1 And then finally the fifth step will be somewhere here . And if I go and play this, you see that their little coming one by one. This is different than key framing the opacity. There is with capacity. You could make this gradually come up on with this. It just comes up like that. It just pops up. And how do you make them disappear? Well, you can trim the end of thes. Let me go right towards the end of my timeline. Let's see here. That's at this point I want the first layer to disappear so I can select this and I'll tell you, Release will shock up now, and that is ult and this square brackets. If I hold down Holt and then press the right scrap bracket that's going to trim the end of my layer, I can say that the other layer and then go forward a little bit. And then the old writes crab brackets and I can select the seventh layer not by clicking on it, but by pressing number seven on the numeric keypad. And then I'll go forward by a couple of frames using my page down button on the keyboard. And then I'll hold on hold on the right scrap brackets and then number eight on the numeric keypad on page down. A few times an old man right bracket and again, this time number nine page down A few times on All turn right bracket. You see, I've done this whole thing without touching the mouse. If I now go back to the beginning again by pressing home key on the keyboard, and if I play it, you see that the clock will fade in gradually, then it will start animating together with the car that wants the car on the clock stopped moving. The text will appear one by one and then they'll disappear, starting from about eight seconds. Here we go. Now they should start disappearing. 24. Pausing an Animation: In this tutorial, we'll talk about how to pose an animation and then continue to same animation using different sets of key frames. Let's say, for example, you want this recycle icon to rotate and then wait there for a second and then to rotate back. Let's go and create a simple animation first, So I'm gonna go selected layer on. Perhaps you can make this a little bit bigger first, so I'm gonna press s to open up scale. I'm just gonna click and drag this towards right around the bar there. And as we do this, you'll see that we might be losing some detail around the edges. So to avoid that, you'll click on this button here to continue the rest arise. This, you see, that will go back to being sharp again. Let me zoom in so you can see the detail here. So this is without the bottom and this is with the bottom so I can see it goes from soft to shop. Let me now is will make out shift four slash and then open up the rotation by pressing are on the keyboard and again we're gonna follow the same five steps as we did before. So let's say I collect animation to start on the 10th frame, so I'm gonna press shift and page down to go forward by 10 frames and then I want the rotation to be set to zero at this point. So that was the second step. I'm gonna key frame the rotation. The third step, and I'll go forward, Let's say, by 20 frames now. So a shift page down twice, and then I'll set the rotation to be 1 80 So I'm just gonna go here and type in 1 80 if you play this now, this is the animation we have. So just rotates by 1 80 And let's say we want this to wait there until the 3rd 2nd and then brought it back to how it was initially. Well, what wouldn't work would be to go here to the 3rd 2nd mark and then simply set a key frame back to zero. This one work now, because what's gonna happen now is it's going to try and go from zero at this point to 1 80 and then directly from 1 80 back to zero without actually waiting anywhere. So in order to create, oppose on animation. You need to have two more key frames, not just one, so it's press command, said Toe. Under that last key frame on, let's say at this point on the 3rd 2nd mark, I need one more key frame that needs to be exactly the same as this key frame. So nothing basically happens between this key frame and the new one I'll be creating. And to do that you have two options. You can either literally copy and paste this key frame so I can select this key frame, then press command, see, and then command the V that copied and pasted the key frame. Or that the press commands that here to get it off. First, I can go all the way to the left hand side and click on this button here, the key frame button on that's going to add a key frame just under my play head with the current value, which in this case was 1 80 I can mangle forward and then change the value again. That's a back to zero on. That's how you create a pose on animation. So if I go back, you see nothing happens for 10 frames, then animates and weights and then animates back and nothing happens again after that. And other real easy way of doing this is as follows. If I go and select these two key frames and then delete them, what I can do would be to select the two key frames I created initially. Copy them both, and that's a bee goes three seconds again and then paste them so command, See, then Command V. What's gonna happen, though, is that this key frame is exactly the same as this key frame. And then this key frame is exactly the same as this key frame. So that's not good for what we want in this case, in order to create oppose. What we need to have is this key frame here, the last one to be swapped with the 3rd 1 And to do that, you can say that the two key frames you want to swap and then going right click on one of those key frames doesn't matter which one, and then you go right down to the bottom, where it says key frame assistant, and now we choose time in reverse key frames. What this is going to do is going to swap the two key frames around. So the 3rd 1 now is exactly the same as the 2nd 1 on the 1st 1 is exactly the same as the last one. If I go and play this now, you'll get exactly the same results, and we can do the same thing for a passage as well. So let's press shift T to open up capacity as well. And I'm gonna press J a couple of times until I go back to the first key frame here. Our key fame, a pass ity. So this is the first step. Go to time. I don't want capacity to be set to zero at this point and then all key frame rapacity, and I'll press K to jump to the following key frame, and then I'll set capacity to 100%. That creates the second key frame for us, and all I had to do now would be to select them, copy them and then press care again and paste, and then time reversed, eases welt or right click on one of these, and then go to key frame assistance and choose time reverse key frames on. What's gonna happen now is that the layer is going to start fading in at the same time as it starts rotating, and then it will wait there completely visible. And then as it rotates back, it will fade back out. So if I played now, here's what it looks like and this is how you pose an animation in after effects. 25. Intro to Motion Paths: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at how to edit the motion path of Ella. So for that, I'm gonna go and import some assets first. So I'll just go and double click in the project panel. And then in here, I'll go to my motion parts file and our import nous. It's an illustrative file. Import this as composition, retaining the layer sizes when a press open and then I'll open up my composition. So this is what we have. And in order to make things a little easier to see, I'm gonna change my background color from black to white. So that's done. If you remember my pressing command K on the keyboard, that's going to bring up the composition settings and I'll change my background color from black to whites. It's okay. Okay. Here and then for now, I'm not gonna be using the path in the background. I'm just gonna use that as reference, so I'll just go and look that and in fact I'll shy it as well. So it doesn't appear in the time I neither on months I turned shy. Switch on. I just need to go and turn it on for the whole composition here as well, and I'll do the same for the arrow on the right. So I have two arrows, and initially I'll animate the arrow on the left. On months, I'm done with that. I'll animate the one on the right, But until then, I'll just go and look there on the right. That's the arrow PNG, the purple and green. I'm gonna lock that and I'll show that as well. So it's visible, but you can't really click on it or do anything with it. So the only thing I can see the timeline now is the red and yellow arrow. What I want to do now is to animate the position of this arrow to go from left to right. And as it does that, of course, it's going to need to follow the path so it will curve here and there will follow another curve and then another one. Then eventually it will leave the path, and for that you need to animate the position. So let's go and press P on the keyboard that's going to reveal position on making sure I'm at the beginning of the timeline. I'm gonna select arrow on then click and drag this off screen somewhere here, and I'll actually keep their own on the left lane. So I'm just gonna move it here and I'm just gonna go and key frame this now, go forward by one second so I'll just jump here to one second. And then I moved arrow from here up to here and my default, you'll see that the layer follows a straight line. This line here that you're seeing is called the motion pot. Now, if you had the third key frame on the arrow goes to somewhere else on the third key frame, like here, you're going to automatically curve this path. So let's have a look. Let's go to two seconds and then I'm gonna click on there. Oh, and then drag it down and you see right away the path is not being curved. It's not a perfect match will make that look better in a second, But let's continue to the 3rd 2nd Yeah, and then I'll click on the arrow again and then maybe move it up here on off screen above the lane there. Great. Now we have an animation. If I go and play this back. If I just rewind and then it's space bar to playback. This is what we have. So it's following the path I just created. But not this blue path. You perfectly. So let's go and see how you can make that perfect. Firstly, if you can't see this path clearly because of the color, you can simply go and change the color off the label. If I just go here and maybe make this a brown color orange, maybe it's going to stand out into more. And there we cannot see the path. Clearly. These squares that you're seeing here are the actual key frames. In fact, if I go and click on one of these, you see that the key frame here gets elected. That's the third key frame. This is the 1st 1 This is the 2nd 1 in Seoul on the individual dots that you're seeing here are the actual frames. So if you were to actually count these dots, you'd work out how many frames there are in between the two key frames. So if you go 1234567 and so on, eventually you would end up with 25 frames. That's the duration between the two key frames 25. And as really seeing these tiny dots on the squares, you may also be seeing these slightly larger dots here. These dots are called the busier handles. Now the busy handles are there to control the actual curvature off the path if you can't see them or in fact, if you can't see the motion part at all, first, make sure that the layer is selected. You see five de selected layer just by clicking summer empty. Here, the motion path disappears. And if I just go and select later again the motion path it reveals itself on. If you want to see those little handles to control the curvature of the path you need to click on a key frame, for example, you want to control the curvature here. I would need to go and click on this key frame, and that will reveal the two handles on either side of the key frame. Now, in order to control the curvature, all they would need to do would be to click on these dots and then dragged them and you see , as I drag this one on the left up and down the opposite one. The one on the right also drags up and down in the opposite direction. So as I go down with this, the one on the right goes up, and as I lift this up, the one on the right goes down so the two are linked to each other, and that's for good reason. That's to keep this curve as smooth as possible, so you don't have any bumps on their. But sometimes you want to break that curve manually. And you do that by holding down on the keyboard, the old turkey, then clicking on these and you see, when I hold on Gold Key, the two are not linked to each other anymore. So that's how you break the link between the two points. I'm gonna under that by pressing command said so they're linked again. I'm gonna go and try to create a curve that matches the core off the path. So I'm gonna click on this and then dragged this, making sure all the while that this line stays above the path. So it's on the left side off the path, which on the left lane per se, I'm gonna go click on this as well. This is the one for the first key frame. Just drag this one towards Right on. Perhaps I can drag this one further left. And I'm just gonna keep doing this until the court lines up pretty much perfectly. So I'll just keep doing this here and then maybe bring this down into it like that. And I think that's done the trick now. So this is following that path pretty much perfectly. And I'll continue doing this on the right hand side and I'll just go all the way around. So I'm gonna click on this and then drag this right like that's and then I'm gonna click on this key frame to reveal its handles. I'm just gonna click and drag this around on again. I'll just keep dragging this until the lines line up perfectly. Just do the same here on. May be trying this down a little bit. Now you can see as I drag us up and down it's affecting this part of the line as well. Now, in this case, I actually don't want that to happen. So I'm gonna hold on old to break the link between the two can then edit that manually like that on then with old again, I'm gonna click and drag this around, and that's looking fine on. Then click on this key frame to reveal the handle on the right. These are actually called vortices or a vertex. If you're talking about a single one or plural form is Verte sees, I'll just click on this vertex and maybe drag this around and notice. Once I break the link between the two handles by holding down, alter and dragging one of them, the link is already broken, which means I don't need to hold down old anymore. So I can just click on this without the old key because the link is already broken. It's affecting just this side of the line. Now, if I want to re link them, I would hold on the old ski on. That's how you re established link between the two points. So I'm gonna press commands that now what's going create a curve here as well. And finally I'll cure of this one as well. What school? Click and drag this here on. Maybe this one further right, and then this one up and left into more. And then this one for two rights like that and maybe to critics like a tighter fit here, we're just gonna go click and drag like that perfect knife. Graham played this. If I go back to the beginning, you see that the arrow always stays on the left side, off the path, so it's on the left lane. If I play it now, you see, that's great. I pose it and go back to the beginning. Off course. It can make further tweaks to just as you like. You can click on these vortices and drag them around, or you can click on the handles and just tweet them as well. And I want to show you one more thing here. You won't actually be using it for this exercise, but you should know this if you want the line to be a straight line. So if you want this motion path to be a straight path rather than a curvy path, you can convert this path into a straight one by using the tool called the Convert Vertex Tool on its up here. Usually you'll have the pen tool here, so if you click and hold it down. You see the pencil. This is the one that selected by default instead, if you click and hold it down and then select the convert Vertex Tool with that selected. If you just move your cursor onto a vertex and then click and then click on other ones, you'll see by simply clicking on the point you're making the path straight, like into the same for here. And then eventually here and now we got rid of those curves, and it's not following a straight path of bagna path by just going play it again. You see there's no car. If you want to reintroduce the curves all you had to do it is either click and Lego that's going to curve it and same here as well. Or if you want to introduce the curve and edited at the same time, you can just click and drag rather than just clicking so we don't click and ago. So up here again, let me show you. You don't just click and let go. You click and drag to create the curve on the fly. I'm gonna press commands at a couple of times until the curvy head comes back, it's here and I'll go back to the beginning and just check that this is working on. In fact, it is. If you wanted to edit this path further, you could actually use the same tool year convert were textile. Or, in fact, you can use your pen tool. We'll talk about the pendulum more details when we talk about masking if you get the pencil . If you move your cursor with dependable anywhere on this path, you see you'll have a little plus sign next to the cursor. That means you cannot click on Add a new Vertex. It's gonna be called a vortex CIA on down here in the timeline, you've just created a key frame because remember, all these virtues sees relate to a key frame. So if I go and click here, that's gonna create a vortex on the path and that, in return is going to create a key frame on my timeline. I can do the same here as well. If I just go click here, I can move this around, so if I get my selection tool, I can move these points like I did earlier on. This is changing the position off the Vertex or the key frame so I can just click and drag this having more key frames. You'll, of course, give you more control. But it might make things a little more fiddly, so we'll keep an eye on that on. You want to create just as many key frames, you need no more. I'm gonna click and drag these around on by adding more key frames. You can control your path much more precisely. If you want to delete these points, all we would need to do would be to select them and then press delete on the keyboard. And then you need to go and readjust the curve. Or you can delete a key frame here. And when you delete one, you're also gonna delete the Vertex here. We find, for example, going to like this one and then delete you see that this one will disappear. I'm gonna go back again by prison commands that have you played this back? You see that the arrow is moving from left to right, but it isn't pointing in the right direction all the time. So, for example, as there are goes from here to here we would expect it to point up and towards right a little bit, and as it's coming down from that curve, we would expect it to point down the rights. Now. One way of doing that, a long way of thing that would be to animate the rotation Margo Press shift are to reveal rotation as well. I can animate the rotation and key frame this so it looks down here that I can keep framed this standoff forward, and at this point it looks further down and then go forward again, and at this point it looks further down and then go forward. And then at this point, I would need to change the direction. And this is a TV ist way of doing it. Instead, there's an automated way. Let me go to reset this back to zero. The automated way is called Auto Orient. You can tell a layer toe automatically face the direction of travel, and that's done by using auditory ins. And you get Totori ins by selecting layer and then right clicking on. It's either here or you can right click on the layer here, or you can right click on the layer here in the composition panel. Or in fact, you can go to the later many atop saying many options in all cases, and then you come down to transform. And right at the bottom of this list is auto Orient. The shortcut is command old and are If I now go and click on this, it gives us two options here off, which is the default one, or orient along path. So if I turn this option onward says orient along path and if I it's okay, you see, now that the arrow is it travels, you would rotate as well if I now go back, you see that orientation updates is the arrow goes from left to right. So it points up here. Then at this 0.2 points down on it goes back up again. And so So this means we don't have the key frame the rotation at all. We can just simply tell it to face the direction of travel. And this is great, because if I now go and update the motion path for whatever reason, for example, if I click on this key frame and then drags us around, you'll see the orientation of the arrow will change if I not change this. And if I let go you see, As the arrow goes through there, it's going to change its orientation again. So this effect remains on the layer, almost like a live effect, which means every time you update the motion path, it's going to update orientation off the layer. 26. Motion Sketch: In the previous tutorial, we had a look at how to create a motion path and edited by using key frames. And in this tutorial, we'll have a look at our to create a motion path by actually drawing it on. For that, you'll be using the panel called Motion Sketch. Now, for now, I'm done with the arrow on the left. So I'm gonna go on child of thes layers and then shy the arrow on the left. This is the arrow red and yellow and then unsure arrow, purple and green. And then unlock this and I'll look the arrow red and yellow And they're shy all these layers. So all I'm seeing in my timeline is this arrow on the right inside? Ofcourse, the animation of there on the left is still happening. So I'm gonna go back on. You can see the animation is still happening. And instead of creating key frames manually, if you go to the panel here called Motion Sketch if you remember, all the panels are inside the window. Many here. So if I goto motion sketch, this panel pops up. I just make a bit more space for this and with the help off this panel, you can actually draw a path that the laser will follow as its motion path. So let's see how that's done. For that, we first need to have the layers selected and then go back to the beginning of the timeline . And let's say you want this layer to follow the same path in the opposite direction, staying on the other lane. So I'm gonna go and follow it like that on. Then eventually it will leave the path from the other side. Now for that, you'll be using the motion sketch panel. Let's look at the settings here first, so the first option is the capture speed by default. What's gonna happen is that as soon as you start to capture, the player is going to start moving from left to right in real time. That's what this 100% means. But if you're quitting a complex animation, you might want to lower this down. So the play it moves at a slower pace. I'm gonna leave this set around the percent for now. And then he had this option here for smoothing. This is our smooth. You on the path to be once it's created. I'm sure what this does by turning this down to zero first and I'll show you what happens if you turn us down to zero or increase it. And eventually a different panel called the Smoother. And then the other two options here is to show the wire frame and or the background Y frame means that as you're using this tool instead of seeing the content of the layers, you're actually going to see a wire frame. So if you have a complex animation going on inside the layer, you can just disable it temporarily so it doesn't take too long to process. So I'm gonna leave this turned on for now, on the background is whether or not you want to see the actual background. So in this case, we actually do want to see the background so we can follow that path. So I'm gonna go and turn his own. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to follow this path precisely. So with that turned on, I cannot go impress, start capture now, As soon as you do that, you see that the cursor will turn into across there. Now, this doesn't mean that the capitalist started. It just tells you that it's ready now in order to start to capture, what you need to do is to move the cursor where you want the layer to be. At the very beginning. In this case, I wanted to be here. You just click and drag along the path, staying on the lower side off this lane and then once you're done only had to do is to let go few months. And while you're doing that, it's going to record the position of your mouse as well as the speed. So I'm gonna click and drag and I'll try and finish the whole thing within five seconds. So I'm just gonna go click and start dragging. There you go. Now you can see as soon as this is them, it's going to create one key frame on every single frame. So if I play this back now, see what happens to the one on the right. It's following the path exactly as I drew it. That's because the smoking option was set to zero. Let me show you the same thing. With the smoothing set to a higher number, I'm gonna go, press command said, and then maybe increases smoothing to, let's say, 10 and this is an arbitrary number. So the higher this is, the smoother the path will be. If I know where to start the capture on, do the same thing again. I'll just go click and drag you see now the amount of key frames we have is reduced by a great deal. That's because the smoothing option was turned up. Now the higher that number, the fewer two key frames you'll have off course. Once you have this path, you can then go and tweak this manually. So, for example, if that point doesn't line up perfectly, I can score and click on these busier handles. If I want to move the entire path around. I can now do that because all the key frames are selected here. I can click on one of the key frames on that will move everything If I press command said to bring that back. If I click outside here to the select all those key frames, then click back on the layer. I can then click on the individual key frames like this, and then it's click and drag these around on let's say for example, I don't want this key frame to be here. I can just go and click on Delete it, and then I can keep tweaking it like this. The way I usually work with the motion sketch panel is that I set the smoothing option old way down to zero so that I can create all the key frames I need. And then I use a different panel called the Smoother, to reduce the amount of key frames I have. So let's have a look at how that's done. Let me go on press commands at a couple of times until the path disappears so I can recreate it. There we go. I'm gonna go out, said it's moving down to zero. I'm gonna go start to capture and then create the same path by clicking and dragging again . I'm just following the bottom part of this lane here, and now that we have one key frame per frame, I can go to Reno and open up the panel called the Smoother. Now, as long as all these key frames are selected on in this case, they are, I can use a smoother panel on the key frames. Let's say, for example, for whatever reason, the key frames weren't selected. I'm just going de select them by clicking somewhere empty here. The quickest way to select all the key frames on a property is not by doing this, actually, not by clicking and painting like that, and you can see when I did that, I actually left the 1st 1 out. Instead of doing that, you can just go and click on the word position here, and you'll see that will select every single key frame on that property. Now that I have the key frame selected, I can go to the smolder panel. And there's one option here called Tolerance on. This is the same option as we had before in the motion sketched in the motion sketch. There are smoothing in the smoother. There's tolerance. I can increase this, let's say to 10 and then when I hit apply. It's going to smooth the path by using a tolerance off 10. So this gives us more or less the same result as we had before when we had the motion sketch smoothing said to 10. Now the advantage of using this mother, of course, is that you can tweak the number as much as you like and then reapply it. If I said this to, let's say 15 and then present play again. This smooths the path one more time, and I can even just press, apply and apply and apply. And it keeps smoothing the path and you can see that the key frame amount is reduced by a great deal on the path here, Of course, in return is much smoother. I cannot grant tweet these very easily. I go click outside to be select all these key frames and click on the layer to reveal the path I can then click on the individual key frames and then start tweaking them. I can hold on old like we did before, and then just tweak the path as we did in the previous example, using the motion sketch together with the smoother panel. We'll allow you to draw motion parts in real time 27. Fixing the Orientation: now that we've got the arrow on the right travelling towards left, let's have a look at this orientation If I just play this. You see, that arrow is just pointing towards left all the time. We're talking about this arrow here, the purple and Greenman. As this arrow is traveling, I want this to orient itself towards the direction of the travel as well. So I'm gonna do that by selecting the layer and then right clicking on it and then going to transform on Auto Orient. And I'll turn this option on and then I hit. OK, I'm doing that. Worked fine for the red and yellow arrow, but it didn't quite work for the green and purple one, this arrow Now, if you watch it carefully, is actually going backwards. So it's orienting itself, but in the wrong direction. So if I play it, you see it's going backwards. Now the reason why that's happening is because there's no way for after fixed know which side is the right side of this arrow. So it just automatically turns this in one direction. But it can fix that really easily. All they had to do is to go to the rotation off this. So are and then you just go and change this rotation toe 1 80 And that's how you tell the layer to face the right direction by rotating it 190 degrees. You see, if you play this now, it'll be oriented properly. 28. Using Paths from Illustrator: If you are an illustrator user, you might want to draw apart in Illustrator and then bring that over into after effects and then use it as a motion path for a layer. That's what we're gonna talk about in this tutorial. Let's first go an important asset here. So I'm gonna go in double click, and then I'll select my plane. Onda all important this footage of this time I'll click open and then I'm gonna bring the plane into the composition and just place it anywhere. I like somewhere here, maybe. And what I want to happen now is for this plane to fuller path like maybe a wavy path like that. But I want to draw that path in illustrator. So for that, that switch back to illustrator on I'm gonna get my pencil and just draw any old party. So I'm just gonna go click and draw any part I like Like that. Now, in order to take this path for administrator into after effects, you first need to select it. So I'm gonna get my selection tool and then you copy it by simply pressing command. See, And then let's switch back to after fix And in order to apply that path from illustrator onto this plane as emotion path in after effects, you need to go to the plane and then reveal the position by pressing Miller to pee on the keyboard. And you need to first click on the stopwatch here to create the initial key frame. So that way after fix will know that you want to paste the path as emotion path. So we just go and click on the stopwatch here. Now that you've got the first key frame, all there to do is to paste the path. So we just go press command V. And now I had the path for administrator pasted directly onto delayer in after effects. So if I Now Graham played this, you'll see that the plane, you will be following that path we drew in, Illustrator. And of course I can set the plane Totori int as well. So for that I'm gonna use the shortcuts command old Oh, and then I'll tell it to orient itself along the path and then Okay. And if I go and play it, you'll see that the plane will follow the path exactly as I drew it in Illustrator, And it will also orient itself along the path 29. Rove Across Time: when he had multiple key frames on a property. You can slow the entire animation down or speed it up by using the following method. Now, if you just had to a key frames, it's easy. You just separate the key frames away from each other, and then the animation will be slower or you bring them closer to each other and it'll be faster. But what if you have more than two key frames? That's what I'm gonna show you in this tutorial. So first I'm gonna press command A to select everything. And then I'll press the letter you that will hide all the key frames and then you again to reveal them. So I cannot see all the key frames I created. The key frames or the top layer look a little bit different than the rest. You see that these around key frames rather than diamond shapes like these ones. This is because I pasted this path for administrator and by default. When you paste apart from illustrator, they come in as what's called a rowing key frames, which means if I click on this last key frame and then drag this out, you see all the key frames will stretch out at the same time. In other words, the relative distance between the key frames will remain the same. But the same thing doesn't apply to delay below. For example, if I selected this last key frame here and then drag this one out, you see that this is the only key frame that's being dragged out. Nothing happens to the other key frames. That's because we didn't set these key frames to row across time. So I'm gonna go, press command said Toe. Under that, if you select all the key frames that you want to stretch out evil me, you have two options. To do this, you can either right click on one of these key frames and then choose Rove across time. And that's going to make these key frames round as well. Which means if I now the select them and then click on the last one you see there will be stretched out evenly. Or alternatively, you can select all the key frames. You want to stretch out evenly and then move up to the last key frame and then on the keyboard, hold down the old key and then click and drag that also rose the key frames across time. So you have three options. You either paste a path for administrator, which will automatically come in as a role key frames. Or you can select the key frames and there, right click and choose role key frames across time. Or you can select all the key frames and then hold on bolt and then click on the last one and drag it right to rove them across time again. Being able to slow down or speed up an animation when you have more than two key frames is going to be extremely useful when it comes to editing the existing animations. 30. Intro to Parenting: There will come a time as you work in after effects when you want to link the layers to each other, and that's easily done by using parenting. Parenting will allow you to link layers to each other. So when you move on or scale on the rotate one, the other layers will follow it. Let's say we want to take this arm here. This extension to be linked to this connector and this connector to be linked to this extension on this extension to re linked here on this one to be linked here. And that, too, here on this arm to hear on Finally, this main arm to be linked to the base. Mitchell, allow us to rotate just one arm. Let's say this one and all of the rest will follow it. Let's see how it's done. I'm gonna zoom right into this tip here, So holding down old I'll just use my scroll Real. Let's say we would like this layer to be linked to this connector here, so that when you rotate the connector, this layer follows the rotation of that and then we want to link the connector to this layer. Now, before we do any of thes. We need to set the anchor point off these layers properly. So when it comes to rotating them, they rotate from the correct places. So let's start with this one. So I'm gonna select this and I'm gonna use my spring loader tools now. So I'm gonna hold on why? And then dragged anchor point towards left. And I want this layer to rotate from the center off this great datta. So I'm gonna hold down control. So it snaps to the center and I may need to kind of move around a little bit until it snaps to the center like that. Then I let go of my mouse. Then there go to Waikiki because I'll be using the pan behind to Lord the anchor points will quite a lot. I'm just gonna press why and let go so I can not click on the layers without having to hold down. Why all the time, I'm gonna swim right in so I can set this as well. I want this gray layer to rotate from its center. That's correct. And I want this layer to rotate from Let's say here, so I'm just gonna go more this up to about there. I don't need this to snap anymore. I can see where this is going to rotate from, and I'll do the same for pretty much every single layer. So I'm gonna select this layer and tell this to rotate from the center off the gray one. So holding down control or command on the Mac to snap. And then the grave on this set already that I'm gonna click on this and we'll take this one from the base somewhere here and then let me zoom out. And then I select this and I want this layer to rotate from this point here, so I'm gonna zoom right in so I can do that properly. There's nothing to snap here, so I'm gonna have to kind of eyeball this there and then I'll stick this layer and I'll make this layer rotate from yeah, Skins women again to make this precise like that, maybe and then also like this layer on, get this anchor point to be over here. And then finally, this layer will rotate from this point Dan McKenzie amount. And now we're ready to link these layers up. So let me zoom back in here again on select this layer. You see that the left extension to layer should be connected to this. Great out. Let me just check the name off this as well. This is called the Left connector. So I'm gonna link the left extension to the left connector. And you do that by using this parenting and link options here. Right now, it says none for every single layer because we haven't set the parenting up yet. I now want to link this layer left extension to two left. Collector. I'll just go and click on this. And now the left connector became the parents off the left extension to What does that mean ? Let me open up the rotation for both of these. I'm gonna select this than control and select this or command and select that on the Mac and the press are now as I rotate the left connector. Look what happens to the left extension to as well That moves together with the left connector. Now the rotation off the extension doesn't change. That's because it's following what the parent is doing now. This number here is relative to its parents, meaning if I now click on the left extension two. I can rotate that independently on that's not going to affect the rotation off the left connector. But if I rotate the left connector that is going to affect the rotation off the left extension to. So when you link the layers up like this, using parenting when you rotate or scale or move the parents the child object in this case , the left Extension two is gonna have to follow what the parent is doing. But the child can also move independently without moving the parents. In other words, I can just click and drag this around and nothing's gonna happen to my left connector. I'm gonna set both of these 20 and then I'll continue to link these up. Now I want my left extension one to be connected to this layer. Let's find out which later this is. I'm gonna go click on it. It's armed for, so I go to left. Extension one changes parenting from none toe arm for which means now, and I rotate or scale or move the arm four layer that's going to rotate this layer or scale or move this layer and in return, that's going to affect the connector. And in return, the connector is gonna affected the last extension here. I'll do the same for these extractions. So let me select this one. So this is the right extension one. I'll set its parent to be the right connector on the right connectors. Parents to be right. Extension to on. Right Extension two should be linked. Toe arm for now. How about arm four? Where should this billings to MSM appear? Russia this be linked to Well, this one should be linked to this layer here which, if I select this, I can find out the name is armed. Three An armed four should not be linked to arm three. Now, instead of using this drop down menu, I can actually click on this thing here called the Pick Whip on Drag this one on top off the layer here. Or I can just simply drag it down on top of the layer here. And that's going to do exactly the same thing as clicking on that drop down menu and selecting this layer. So arm for now is linked to arm three and then armed. Three here should be linked toe arm. True. Which is this layer here. So I'm gonna go toe arm three, use the pick whip dragons up a farm, too, and that's gonna be linked to arm one on arm one. Eventually is gonna be linked to the base. Identifies amounts. We've now successfully established a link between the layers on in the next tutorial. We'll have a look at Tel to animate them. 31. Animating Linked Layers: In the previous tutorial, we had a look at how to link the layers up by using parenting. And now we'll have a look at out. Animate them. So let me swim into the base here. I know. Just pan up. I'll get my normal selection tool. What I want to do now is to select this layer, which is arm one. And as I rotate this layer, my pressing our and then revealing the rotation and let me zoom are temporarily as I rotate this layer, you see, all of them should rotate. Except for these two. I can see that these are linked to the rest of the chain. So let me press command said I must have forgotten to link the grave onto the rest of the chain. So I'm gonna select the gray one and I'll scroll up and I can see actually here that the parenting isn't set. So I'm gonna go to what is known and I think this one to left Extension one. There we go. If I know scroll down. I will take this. All of the latest should follow suit. Now let's elect all these layers except the base and I'm gonna press are to see the rotation values off every single one of them. That would make it more space here for the timeline like that. What I want to do now is to rotate arm one from left to right. So I'm gonna select it first and then go to rotation on. Maybe we'll start it like that. And while Arm One is at this stage, I want arm to this one to be rotated in the opposite direction. I'm gonna go and rotate this towards here. Rich in return, of course, it's going to rotate everything that's linked to it that I'm gonna say Arm three, which is this one. I'm gonna go rotate it up that way a little bit, maybe. And I can select arm to again and that maybe rotate this down into more, and then maybe I'm four, which is this kind of Maine connected here on. Then rotate this down. So it's kind of pointing down, so it's folded. And then maybe I can irritate the extensions as well. So if I will take this towards left like that and I'm also going to rotate this layer towards here like that, what I'm gonna do know is at this stage, I'm gonna go and key frame every single one of these properties. So I'll select the top layer. I'll scroll down, sell it the last layer, but not the base. Because I don't want the base to do anything that I'm gonna key frame one on because they're all selected. They'll get key framed at the same time. Well, then move forward by timeframes. And I'll do that by pressing shift page down and then I'll click outside. Don't go to my arm one on rotated towards right. And as Armand rotates, I'm gonna take arm to another, rotated in opposite direction like that. And as that rotates, maybe I'll take Arm three on Rotated in this direction and then armed four all rotated like that. Maybe. And then I can treat the extensions as well. So if I go to my right extension, I can then rotate it down. And then the left extension. I cannot ate it that way. No, I didn't need to create key frames for these, actually, because I didn't need to animate them. But it won't hurt. So if I just go back and play it this is the animation we should have now on. Let's say when they come back up on this arm to continue rotating, I'm gonna go to rotation and increase this even more like that. And then I'll go to arm two and rotated backwards like that so it extends up, and then maybe I'll go to my four. I'm gonna leave on three alone. I'm gonna goto arm four, not just rotated towards here like that. I know, Plate. There we go. This entire animation was made possible. Thanks to parenting. Parenting allowed us to link layers up to each other so that when he rotated the 1st 1 the 2nd 1 followed it. And then the 3rd 1 follow the 2nd 1 and then the 4th 1 full of the 3rd 1 and saw. And finally, what I want to do is to take the base on. Just move it. I'm gonna go back to the beginning somewhere. Here are press P on the based. Open up the position and I'm left first like this, maybe hold down the shift key. So it's a straight move. There were a key frame position and then we'll go forward on the move the base towards right like that. If I played again as the base moves, everything will follow. It's because they're all connected to the base through the first arm. 32. Working with Pre comps: the concept off grouping layers together or in after effects language. Pre composing the layers is very important. Sometimes you want to group the layers together in order to simplify your timeline, and sometimes you group them so it can apply. A couple of key frames to the entire group on those key friends will affect every single layer in the group, as I mentioned, grouping layers in after fixes called pre composing or pre comping. And the reason for that is that when you group the layers together, you then place them inside. A different composition on the initial group becomes a pre composition. Let's have a look at how it's done in this example. We've got this rubble time as you can see her. We've animated this in the previous tutorials on. Additionally, I just created some solids in the background. I'm gonna click and drag this around so you can see the animation. This is what we created in the previous tutorials, and what I want to do now is initially just make a bit more space for the timeline. You can see I have all these extra layers that I don't read it once and what I'll do is take all these layers that make the robot arm and then group them together. And you do that simply by holding down shift and selecting the layers that you want to include in this group, and you either press command, shift and see. This is a useful shock that you want to remember. Command shift, see, or you can right click on the selection and then you go right down towards the bottom. It says pre compose. Or you can come up to the later. Many here and right at the bottom of that list is also the same option pre composed. But I'd recommend memorizing this shortcut because you'll be using this quite a lot. So I'm gonna click and then asks me what I want to call this composition. So I'm gonna go and call this robot solo, and I'll just go and press OK. What happens now is if I make a bit more space from a composition panel. What after effects does when I do that is to create a new composition, and it cause it robots solar like I told it to, and it places all the ladies that made that robot arm into this composition and then places the composition inside my current composition. Hence the term pre composition. Now this is really helpful because I can select the later now the robot solar layer. And then I can drag this around and do whatever I can scale this. Rotate this on, do whatever I want with this. And as I'm doing off that it's going to animate the same layers as it did before inside of this layer. So have a look, so the same animation remains. But as it's happening, let's say, for example, I wanted this to fade in. I can select this and then press T. I now have the capacity for the entire group. I can then key frame capacity at zero person and then go forward and then increased is due on the percent. And as the animations happening, I'm going to fade in all of those layers at the same time. And if I wanted to change anything about this animation, actual robot animation, all I would need to do would be to go and double click anywhere on this layer, and that takes me into the pre camp where I only have the layers off the robots. Let's say, for example, I want to this animation to be a little bit slower so I can select all the layers. Command a. Then I pressed the letter you to see the key frames, and then I'm gonna make a bit more space for the timeline, and I'll select all the key frames like that. And if you remember from the previous tutorials, it can hold on Ault and then click on the last key frame and then dragged this and this will roll the key frames across time. And now I just slowed down the whole animation. So it's happening. My slower now. And the great thing about this is that if I switch back to my previous composition, which is the rubble time, and if I don't go back and play it, you see that this will also happen slower than it was before. So this shows us that the two compositions will always remain linked. If I make a change to anything inside the robot solo here, let's say, for example, I go and turn the bass off. If I scroll down, turn the base layer off and if I switch back to the previous comp. The base will disappear here as well. So that's such a powerful tool at your disposal. Let me show you a different example here. If I go and maybe turn the base on again and then we have another compere that I brought in . It's the science lab comp gonna open this up. It's just a simple illustration here. I'm just press shift four slash and if I take my robot solo and then drag it from here into this composition and if I zoom art, I can now position this any rail like or I can actually scale this as well so that we press s and then I'll scale this down in its orbit. And then all position this. Let's say here I'll place this between the scientist on the foreground, so it's behind the scientist. And if I played now, you see that the animation happens as if it's part of this scene. And let's say now I want to this entire composition. So the composition, with the scientists and the lab, plus the robot arm to fade in Well, that's easy. I cannot select all of these layers, including my pre compere And then I create one more pre camp by prison command shift and see. And then I can go and rename this. I can call this lab with robots, and if I it's okay, that's going to now create a new composition here, it will call it Lab with robots on it, places that composition inside my current composition. And then I can just go and edit the opacity of this. If I go back to the beginning, just go to transform key, frame a pass ity at 0% and then go forward and then increases 200%. And then it will fade the entire scene in on that around the bottom. There I wanted to fade back out. I can select these two Q frames and copy and paste. And then, finally, I can time reverse these key frames so that the second and the third key frames are the same on the first and the fourth. Key frames are the same, so here we go by using pre comes. You can combine different compositions together as well as simplifying your timelines 33. Different Types of Keyframes: If you want your animations to look more professional, you really need to understand key fame. Interpellation key frame Interpellation is how you control what happens between key frames . For example, in this composition, I have four identical cars doing exactly the same things at exactly the same points. So if I play this, you'll see that they're all moving from left to right and they stop. Let me rewind back. We will leave the top car alone so we can use that as reference. But we will update the other ones. Let me first go and click on the top layer and as soon as you had the layers selected, you see that these little dots will appear. Let me zoom in these dots, if you remember from the previous tutorials, represent frames. So the amount of daughter you have here you'll be exactly the same as the amount of frames you have in between the two key frames. And the distance between these dots represents the speed off the animation. The further away these daughter from each other, the faster the animation or the greater the jump is between their reframe the closer adults to each other, the slower the animation or the smaller. The jump is between every single frame. Let me just separate these two key frames away from each other so we can see what's happening to the dots here. So if I give it more time to complete the same animation, that naturally is going to increase the amount of frames I have on this motion path If I go and decrease the distance between the two key frames you see, I now have fewer dots, as you can see. So if I zoom a by pressing shift four slash so we can see the whole thing. You could actually count how many daughter you have here and they will give us the amount of frames we have. I can see my player is on the eighth frame here, meaning that I have nine frames in total, including the last one on the 1st 1 labelled zero. And if I want to actually count this, I can go one, 23456789 So that gives us the amount of total frames. So the distance between these dots is very important, as you'll see in just a second. So I'm gonna click and drag this and then hold down the shift key so it snaps to the rest of the key frames. If I select the second layer here and then if I go to the second key frame of the second layer and if I right click on it and then you go right down to key frame assistance, I may choose Eazy E's in. If you look at these dots carefully now, you see that they're closer to each other towards the end of the path and they're further away from each other towards the beginning. That means that it will be slower towards the end and it has to go faster at the beginning . So let's have a look at how this plays. And in fact, I'm gonna shrink my entire composition so we can see this again and again easily. So I'm gonna press command K on. I'll just go to the duration here, and I'll make this about two seconds long there. So if I now play it, you see that the second layer starts faster because it has to slow down it. Then it has to make up for that slowing down motion by going faster at the beginning, and this is called easing in, So it's easing into a key frame. Whereas if I go and right, click on the first key frame off the third layer and then choose key frame assistant and then select, he's out this one now, though pretty much exactly the opposite of what we had for easing. So if you look at these frames their closer to each other, meaning that the car will be slower here, but in order for it to be able to go slowly here it is to go faster towards then because it needs to make up for that lost time by going faster. Because I'm not changing the overall time. That's the key here. We're not changing the overall duration off the animation. You're just changing what happens to it in between the key frames. So let's play this ease out as well, so I'm gonna realigned by pressing home and then play. You see the ease off car starts slowly, then it picks up speed. The top and the bottom lives are still moving exactly as they were before, so they're set to constant speeds or linear speeds. And now Let's look at the last car on the last car. I want the first key frame to have easy, easy out, and I want the last key for him to have easy, easy in. Now that's called Eazy e's. If you select both of the key frames, and then if you, right, click on one of them and then go to key frame assistance. And then she was Easy's now. What we have now is if I move my play. That back a little bit is that these dots are closer to each other at the beginning. They're also closer to each other at then and in the middle. If I go back a little bit, they're separated away from each other. If I go all the way back to the beginning on doing other playback, this is the one that's going to look the most organic, so it's going to start slowly. You will pick up speed, and it will slow down again before it stops here ago. So although the key frames values are the same in terms already start already finished on Monday starting Monday finish, what happens in between the key frames is completely different. In the next tutorial, we'll talk about how to edit the key frames by using the graph editor 34. Intro to Graph Editor: In this tutorial, you learn how to use the graph editor. The graph editor is perhaps one of the most powerful and important features of after effects. It lets you control what happens in between two key frames, and that's immensely powerful. Let's have a look at how it works. Let me just going to simply animate this car to go from left to right. So I'm gonna go select the car and then press P on the keyboard to reveal position and then click on the key frame. And then I'll go forward, Let's say by a second and 1/2 and then I'll just click and drag this to the right, holding down the shift key. So it's a straight line, so that's a simple position animation, and you see my default. This speed off the animation remains constant. I'm just gonna shorten the timeline a bit. I'm just gonna go here and then on the keyboard, I'll press the letter N that's going to set the endpoint of my work area bar, which means if I preview this by pressing space bar, that's all I'm gonna see. So just that part I'm gonna posed automation now, in order to access the graph editor. You either press shift and F three on the keyboard so it's shifted three, or you click on this button at the top that will take you straight into the graph editor. Sometimes when you do this, you're not actually going to see anything in here, and that's because you don't have a parameter selected. So if your graph editor is empty, just make sure that you click on the word position or whatever property you animating on that will show you the parameter you've selected inside the graph editor. Let's make it more space. Photograph it. It's a first. I'm just gonna click and drag this up. The graph editor here shows us how fast the layer is moving per second. It tells us here it's now moving around about 900 pixels a second, and it keeps on moving at that rate, and it stops so it drops down to zero. If you move your cursor over this line, it tells you exactly how fast it is. So it's 899.16 pixels a second, and these two points, this one and that one. They are the key frames. Now, if I come out of the graph it and then selected to a key frames and then press F nine or I can just simply right click key frame assistant under Easy's. If I now go back to my graph editor, you see that the graph is much different. It's now a curve instead of a straight line. That's because we applied an easy East of animation. What does that mean? Well, it means that the layer is gonna start slowly. Then it will pick up speed. Then it will slow down again. That's exactly what this graph represents. If I move my cursor here and as I move my cursor over the graph, you can see that it's speeding up. It tells me to speed here round about here. It's at its peak, so that's about 13 1400 pixels a second. And then it drops down again gradually, all the way down to zero, and it stops moving. And, of course, if you play this back, you see that's exactly what's happening. Let's slow at the beginning, fast in the middle, then slow again, again. Not to change this even more. What you can do is to click on these key frames to reveal the handles. These will reveal the busier handles very similar to the handles in all around. After effects, you can click on these handles and change what's called the influence. So if I click on this handle, for example, and then drags towards right, I'm now changing the influence. Which means that I'm changing the amount of time it takes before it reaches its maximum peak. If I know, play this you see No, it'll take some time before it reaches the peak run about one second and 56 frames, I guess here. So if I click here, it's about one second on four frames and then abruptly he will slow down. So if I go and play this look so you can see that's exactly what the graph represents. Slow at the beginning, fast around about here and slow it down if I drag this one. So I increased the influence off this Andalas well, which means it takes a bit more time to reach this speed here, which is zero again. If I now go and play it, you'll see what's gonna happen here is that it's gonna take it's time to pick up speed around the bar here. Then quickly it's gonna drop and it's gonna take. It's time to again, slow down. So here's what the animation looks like. Look, let's say you wanted this to start quite abruptly. So if I go back and if I create a graph like this, you see right away it starts fast, then gradually it slows down. So if I not exaggerate, this is well, maybe a little bit. And if I played, you just drop and gradually will slow down. Look. And if I did opposite, I just clicked outside by mistake. So the handles disappeared. So I'm just gonna go and click on the key frame to reveal the handles again. Well, then click and drag this to the rights all the way to the right, and then I'll click on this key frame and drag this one to the right as well. So now it takes it's time to pick up speed, and right towards then it just goes real fast and it stops. Here we go. And at any point, if you want these to go back to the linear key frame, So the original key frames, you can select them and then come down here and click on this bottom, and this will convert the key frames into linear key frames. So that's now turned into a straight line, meaning that there is no slowing down or speeding up. If I go back to my timeline, you'll see that the key frames looked like diamonds. Again. I'll switch back to my graph editor instead of switching back and forth between the graph editor and the timeline. You can actually do it pretty much everything in the graph editor. If I got select these key frames instead of pressing F nine or right clicking on the key frames to go to key frame assistance, I can just go intellect easy, easier. And it does the same thing as pressing F nine. So this applies Easy's to the selected key frames. Let's see how this works on a different property like rotation or scale. So let me go to this composition here. I have a simple layer here. I'm just gonna make this a little bit bigger. I'm gonna say my are earlier. No press are to reveal rotation. I'm gonna keep famed rotation at the beginning they don't go to one second on. Then I'll set this to be, let's say, minus 1 80 on. Then I'm just gonna go forward. It is a bit, and then press in here to set the end of my work area bar here so I can look this part. If I had space, you see will play again and again. I'll simply switch back to my graph editor by present Shift F three. And now this looks a little bit different. Let me just make it more space here. You see, this graph looks a little bit different in this case. It's showing us not the speed but the degrees. So it tells us that it starts from zero degrees and it goes down to a negative value off 1 80 But again it moves at a constant speed, so the line is linear. Now you know what to change that I can select these two and then press F nine or use this button or I can hold down the old turkey, which is going to pick my convert. Vertex still temporarily. And if I click on this key frame with the old key, that's going to reveal this handle. And again, if I hold on altar and click on this key frame that's going to reveal that handle, I can then convert this line into a curve manually. For example, if I want the value to go from zero to somewhere around, that's a minus 100. Quite quickly, I can click on this and then drag this one down. And you see, I'm changing the speed off this at the beginning, actually, so it goes quite fast to about minus 100. Then it takes it's time to go to about minus 1 80 Let me just curved other one as well. Maybe towards here on it a bit. And now what this is gonna do is to make it go from zero to about minus 100 real fast, and then it will take its time to go from minus 100 to about minus 1 80 So here's what it would look like if I play it. You see, it starts like a snap, so it goes real fast at the beginning. Then it slows down. Let's reverse this them Just go click and drag this up, and I'll do the same for this one as well, or click and drag this up. Now what's gonna happen is that it's gonna take. It's time to go from zero to about minus 100. Then it will abruptly dropped from minus 100 down to minus 1 80 So if I played us again, so it's slow at the beginning and then fast towards that. And if I create an inverted s something like this that's gonna be similar to creating an easy's, so it will start slowly, it will quickly, then change speed, and it will then slow down again before it reaches this key frame. So here we go. And while editing these handles, if you hold down the shift key, you can look that to move in a straight line, and I can do the same here as well. I can select this and then move it and then hold the shift key down. And they will lock that to move on the on a straight horizontal line and that if I go back and play, you'll see that it will start slowly. You will pick up speed, Then it will slow down again. And then finally, let's have a look at how we can do the same for scale. So I'm gonna press shift s to reveal scale as well. I'll go back to the beginning. Anarchy framed scale at, say, 0%. I was going key. Frame this and I'll go to one second again and then set this one to be 100%. And this time you can see the increase on this diagonal line. So it goes from 0% to 100% on. Now Hold on, Ault. And then click on this to reveal the handle on all 10. Click on this key frame to reveal that handle. I'm then gonna click on this handle with the shift key held down. So it looks the movement to be on the horizontal axis. And I'll do the same for this handle as well. So click and drag this up, hold the shift key down. So it's locked onto a straight line as well. And now what's gonna happen is that scale animation is gonna start slowly. Then it will pick up speed abruptly. Then it will slow down again gradually. So if I played back, you'll see what happens. In the next tutorial, we will talk about two concepts called undershoot and overshoot to create anticipation and more of an organic animation 35. Undershoot and Overshoot: in motion design as well as traditional animation. We tend to build up anticipation by using a method called undershoot. In order to understand with an undershoot is, you can try and stand up from the chair you're sitting on right now. You'll see before he stand up, you'll pull yourself down, toe build up momentum. Then you stand up. Or if you imagine kicking a ball, you wouldn't just kicked a ball. You first go back, edit of it. Daniel kicked a ball, so going back there is the undershoot, and it's quite a common thing in animation. So let me show you how it works in order to see what's happening. I'm going to start with this scale, said to not 0% but something slightly higher. And I can do this by clicking on this key frame here, the first key frame, and then I can drag this up and changing the vertical position off. This will actually change the value. Find this around about 50%. Maybe. Why not go back? It will start about half the size of the original size. Then it will reach on the percent. If I play it now you see it doesn't start from zero. It starts from about 50%. You can be precise if you wanted to buy Just going and typing numbers here as well right now. This should be fine. Now, before it starts growing before it starts increasing on the scale. I want this to go shrink a little bit, Dan grow. And to do that, I'm gonna have to click on this handle here. And I want this to go in the negative direction, so I need to drag this down. So I'm gonna click on drag this down on. What's happening now is from 50. I'm gonna go a little bit further from 50. It comes down to about 40% then it shoots up. So if you have a look at this now, look. So from 50 it scales down that it scales up. That here is called than on the shoot. So if I play this in real time now, this is what it looks like. And in order to make this look more organic, I need to do the same for the rotation as well. So I'm gonna go to rotation. And this time it's rotating in the negative direction so before it rotates in the negative direction. I need to put this up so it rotates in the positive direction first, so clockwise. Then it rotates down. So let me set this key frame, and then I'll lift the handle a bit of it, and he cannot see. It goes from zero degrees up to about 15 16 degrees. Then it comes down. If I played us now you see, as it scales down, it rotates clockwise. That is, it scales up. It starts rotating counter clockwise because this graph here is going down now, so going down means it goes counter clockwise. Going up means it goes clockwise. So that's a look at that again. So this is what an undershoot is, and overshoot is the exact opposite. If I go back to my scale key frames, I can go to the last key frame here, and usually when I want to select a key frame instead of factually clicking on it, I tend to click outside and then draw a rectangle around it. And that way I'm sure that I'm not actually moving the key frame around by mistake, so I'll select the key frame and instead of coming up to 100%. I'll tell it to go higher than on the percent. Then come back down to around the percent. So if I click on this handle and drag us up, maybe about there and if I know move my cursor over this red line, I can see now it's about 107%. Maybe I can go a little bit more so maybe somewhere here, that's about 100 and 10% now. So here's what it will look like now. So if I go and play this you see that it will scale up to on the person around the bar here , then it continues to scale up. Then it scales back down, so that's gonna be an overshoot. So have a look again to make this with more organic and interesting. I need to do the same for rotation as well. I'm gonna go rotation, a select little station key frame, just biding your marquee selection. And in this case, I'm gonna go below 1 80 Then it comes back to 1 80 So if I play this back now, you see that we have an undershoot as well as an overshoot 36. Keyframe Velocity: as you work in the graph editor. More and more, you will find that these handles can be a little bit fiddly. And sometimes only one is for these two handles to be exactly the same length. And the best way of doing that really instead of just eyeballing it, is by typing some values in, and you type those values in by using what's called the key frame velocity. If you are already inside a graph editor, you can right click on a key frame and then go to key frame velocity. If you're in the normal timelines, well, let me come out of the grafitti here. If you are in the normal timeline, all you would need to do would be to hold down alt keyboard and then double click on the key frame, and it opens up this key frame velocity dialog box. The key family city tells you what's happening with the key frame under the hood, so this is really all you need to know about the key frame now up here, it tells us the type of the key frame. So it's the rotation key frame I clicked on, and because it's the first key frame. I clicked on the incoming velocity, so the speed coming into this key frame is set to zero because there's nothing else happening before this key frame. Whereas the outgoing velocity is set to a certain number now the degrees per second is the speed, so this controls the angle off the curve. So let me actually go back to my graph editor to show you what's happening if I go back to the beginning here and then maybe zero minutes of it. And if I were on right click on this key frame and then got a key fame, velocity will bring up the same mean no again, the degrees per second. The first property here is controlled by the angle off this handle here. If I go and set this, let's say to 25 and then press OK, you see that the angle of the line changes, but not the length, because the length is controlled by the influence. So if I go and right click on this again and then go to key fame, elicit E again influence is the length off this line. So if I said this to let's say 20 and then if I press OK, that now changes the influence to be shorter. So it's 20% now. And if I want this exact same thing to happen here as well, I can not say like this key frame and then right click and then go to Key Family City. And in this case, I'm not dealing with outgoing velocity because nothing's happening after this key frame. All I have to do is to go to incoming velocity because we're going into this key frame just like it would ease into it. It's gonna go here, change my degrees to 25 and then the influence to 20 and that's how you create exactly the same handles on either side of the graph. 37. CLASS PROJECT - YOUR FIRST ANIMATION: Now it's your time to create your first animation. Your task now is to take 12 elements, 12 icons from his documents called Icons. And they used this background elements document in aftereffects, and then animate these hexagons to come in so they will start completely invisible. And in any way you like, you'll animate them so that they become visible. And inside each one of these hexagons, you need to use an icon and animate that in. Let say for example, we take the star icon. So for that, I'll go and select this icon by clicking on this once. And then I've got two layers. And this is the star icon here. I'll click on this button to highlight all of the elements that make the star. Copy it by pressing Control or Command C. And I'll just go and create a new document that's File New. And the document is going to be, let's say 250 by 250. And I'll call this one star. And I'll hit Create. And I'll just simply go and paste this year by pressing Command or Control V. Now there is my star, because the background is white, the stars white. I don't see anything. I can just go and simply press D on the keyboard to set the default colors for this. So that will just go and create outlines. And at this stage, you are also going to need to decide how you want the start to be animated. If you want the entire star to be animated all in one goal, then you can just leave this as it is and just go and save it. But let's say you wanted each on of these triangles to be animated individually. But in that case, if you remember, you that's going to separate these elements into individual layers, then save it. So for that, I'll go into the layer. You see all of the triangles are individual elements, but I can't take them out because these are sublayers. So I'm going to select a layer here. Click on the three lines, released two layers. So this will create top-level layers from these. Then I can take them outside like that. And then I'll be left with one layer here, which I can select and delete. And now that I have these elements, let's go and highlight all of these. And then go to stroke here. And click on this button to turn a stroke off, making sure that these are still white. And just to double-check, I can just push them out. And indeed they are white and put them back. And then I'll just go to File, Save As. And I'll save it inside the same folder. I'll just leave the name as star. Make sure it's an Illustrator file and then hit Save. And then I'll confirm this as well. And now that this has saved, I can go back to aftereffects and then go and import those two files. I'm going to double-click here. I'll first bringing the background elements as composition, retaining the layer sizes. I'll hit Open. And then I'll spend double click again and then bring the star as composition, retaining the layer sizes. And I'll hit open. And I can now open up the background elements. And first animate this in any way I like. So a one way would be to fade them in, another way would be to animate their scales. So I'll leave that to you, but I'll show you an example. So I can select that. Say for example, this one. Press S trivial scale, set the scale to 0 at the beginning. Keyframe it, I'll go forward, let's say by timeframes. And I set this to, let's say 120 or maybe in fact 110. And then go forward by couple more frames and then set it back to a 100%. So this is the animation I have for now. And I'll select all of these key frames and then press F9 to set them to be easy. So this is what it looks like now. And now that I have that, I can select the scale value here, copy it by pressing command C or edit. Copy will go back to the beginning. I'll select all of the layers here, except the background. Actually, I don't need the background to be highlighted. And the Nazca and paste. Let me just go and lock the background so we can't do anything to that by mistake. Now if I go back and play this animation I have and I can now staggered these. So I can put the second layer here, this one slightly out. And then the third one goes after that. And then the fourth one like that. If we just keep doing this until the end, I'm going to have a staggered animation. So the elements will appear one by one rather than all at the same time. And Nivea Ebola can play. This is what I should have. So this is those hexagon elements. And now that these are in place, I can go back to my star, double-click to open this up. Then just set these two on the person. Let's say we go to frame ten. Press S to reveal the scale for all of these keyframes, scale values for all. Go back to the beginning and then set the scale to 0% maybe. So this is the animation will have Now if I zoom in by pressing shift forward slash, this is what it's going to look like. And let's say I want this to be a little more interesting. So first I'm gonna go and set the anchor points to be in the center of this composition. So for that, I'm going to make use of the rulers. So I'm gonna go to View, show rulers. And now just go and drag a guide here. And also a guide here. So I can select these elements, the individual layers. Get my anchor 0.2 here, and then click and drag the anchor point down. But in order to do this, I need to first go unlock these guide so I don't click on the guides and move them by mistake like this. So I'm gonna go to view and I'll look the guides. So I can then click on the anchor points and move them here. If I do the same for these as well. They'll all now scale up from the center of the composition to where they are right now. So if I now go back and play is what I'm going to have. And now I can start with this as well. I can leave this first one alone, get my selection tool, push the second one down the line, and then the third one, and then the fourth one. And keep doing this until the end. So now this is what this looks like. And I can select all these keyframes and then do F9 as well to set them to be easy. So we're now play this animation I have. And then I can go back to my background elements. Take the started I've animated already and then drag this, let's say in here and a goal. And that's going to be our first animation for the star. So if I now play this, that's what that looks like. I can of course change the timing of this as well, so I can push this towards right. So the stars only appear after the yellow hexagon. The first one finishes scaling up there. So this is what it's going to look like. So this is just one example. Your task is to go and fill all of these hexagons with different icons and animate them in any way you like. So go ahead, put your creative hats on and see what you can come up with. 38. Setting up the Composition For Text Animation: one of the most powerful features off after fix is its ability to create complex and interesting text animations in after effects. You can animate text in one of three ways, and in this chapter we'll have a look at each one of those one by one. But first, before we get into text animation, let me talk you through how I created this composition. So in here I have one composition called text animation inside, which I have three other compositions. So these are my pre comes and inside these pre comes. If I open these up, you see that I had to solids. One started on the left side of the pre comp and then another one that's rotated by 45 degrees to create this tip on the right inside. And then what I did simply was to duplicate the pre comp and then change the color off the solids inside. If it on. Then I created the green one and then the blue one, and then I placed all of them inside this text animation composition and then, using the Align panel, I align them properly. I also created a Soviet, and I called it the vertical bar and I placed it on the left side off all of these compositions. And before we start talking about text, what I want to do is to create an animation where this vertical bar is going to start in the center and it will scale up and then move towards left. And once it's in its final position, I want the colored banners to appear. 39. Creating Text: creating texting aftereffects is actually quite straightforward. For that, we had the type to let the top here. And if I click and hold it down, You see, I actually have to tools the horizontal type tool on the vertical one. I'm gonna use the horizontal type tool for now, and you can see the shortcut this command T is gonna go click on with that tool selected. You have two options. You can either go somewhere inside the composition. I just click purchase gold, Let's say here and click. And this year is called the point text. Let me square type in something here. This is called the point text, and it will just keep on going. Unless you press return on the keyboard, then it can jump to the second line. You can just keep topping more on. I'll delete this text so I depress returns a greater line break. Or it can come out of the text editing either by selecting a different tool or clicking somewhere else outside your composition panel, or also by pressing the enter key on the numeric keypad. This is enter on the numeric keypad, not the return key, for if I press enter, you see that the text layer gets created and that's the layer here. And also the text is finalized. Now, with that layer selected and my type tool selected. If I just go and click anywhere on the text, I can edit this. My click here. I can go in and make some more changes. We don't do that. Um, Empress escaped to come out of this. Another way of editing text is I had the layers selected and I have my selection tool selected. I can just quite simply double click anywhere on this text on. Then that takes me into the text editing again. And I can just keep on typing here as well to cancel it. I'm gonna press, escape or compress enter to accept the changes. So what we just created is called point text. Now the alternative is again by using the same tool. But this time, instead of clicking on the points, you click and draw an area on this is called an area or a paragraph text on with this, the text will be wrapped inside this box that you just created. So if I just go and type in here so that we just type in. Every text will be wrapped inside the textbooks that you create. So if you want to a text to be inside the box like this, which means you can limit the boundaries off it, you need to click and drag rather than just clicking with this door. And of course, I can now move this anywhere I like by getting my selection tool on. Then just clicking and dragging surround every now and then, especially when you work with text and you had the capsule turned on. You're gonna run into this issue when you have the caps lock turned on in after effects, you'll disable the preview. So if this ever happens, just press caps lock to turn his back off on. Then I can click and drag this anywhere I like and again off course. If you want to edit the text, just go and double click here, and then I can click on then maybe at a space bar there and then press enter on the keyboard to come out of it. So using the area text or the paragraph text is quite useful when you want to limit the boundaries off the text. Otherwise, if you just have a couple of words maybe you're using this is a title. You can then use just a point text to freely move the text around. I'm gonna go and delete my area text by pressing delete on the keyboard. Now, to edit the appearance of the text, you have the character panel and the paragraph panel. Let me just make sure that the text layer is selected and then I can go to my character panel. Just click on this once and in here I'll be able to see every single front I have installed on this computer by clicking on this arrow and I can scroll up or down. So these are all the funds I have installed on this computer If I want to change it, of course, all I need to do is to just go and click, or I can select this and then used up and down the rows on the keyboard. Toggle between the different funds. Just go up to maybe a standard phone like Ariel. If the front I selected has a different style, like bold or italic or convinced a regular, you'll be able to see them here so I can know. Make this bolt maybe, and we'll actually have a couple more options if you make this panel a little told her. Like So, For example, if the font you're using doesn't have a bold option or italic option, you can use what's called a faux bold or four italic here. So this is to create a fake bold effect or a fake italic effect. And if you want to change the color off the text, you come up here. This is the color swatch. This is the color for to fill. So if I click on this again on the right inside, this is the standard adobe color picker. I can pick any color I like from this vertical bar on different shading off the color from the left hand side. Like so on. Once I'm happy with the color. Well, I have to do is the grand click OK, and then down here you have the font size so I can click and drag this number right or left . So that's getting bigger. That's getting smaller. And then you had the leading option here. That is, if you have multiple lines let me just add a couple of more lines here, so I'm gonna go and double click, and then maybe typing in after effects is cool. Then a presenter to come out of this and the leading here will control the distance between the lines. If I click on this arrow, I can set the distance between every line to realty 10 pixels or say 30 or more, or I can click on the actual number here and then drag it right or left. That's called living on Underneath the leading. You had the tracking, which will set the distance between the characters. If I click and drag this towards right, you see, if I go left, the characters will be closer to each other as I go towards right there before their away from each other. By the way, you'll also see that I ran out of space here. I can't go any further towards right. I can also go up as well. That's the same as going right. Coming down is the same as going left, and if this is not enough, so I'm running out of space here as well. I can hold down the shift on that will speed things up. And that's true for any slider in after effects as you go up, that's the same as going right and vice versa. Or is you go left. That's the same as going down on holding. The shift will speed up the moment and towards left side of tracking. You have turning. Turning is going to set the distance between two characters. And for that I had to be inside the text. So if I just go maybe click here, I can see the Corning. That's the distance between two characters. An alternative way of doing this is on the keyboard by pressing the old key and then using the arrows. So if I press Holt and then use the right arrow, you see that the turning is increasing for salt on the left arrow, the coating is decreasing. Let's press escape to come out of this so I don't want the turning to be applied here, and in fact, I'm gonna set my tracking back to zero as well. So that's looking normal again. I'm gonna go and delete the last two lines here 40. Animating Text with Standard Keyframes: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at how to treat the text Day is just like any other layer and animate them in particular will be animating things like position, scale and rotation. So what I've got here is a banner the Red Banner, which is made out of two solids. As you can see here, that's my first solid on the second month on to make life easier. I'm gonna go and look these two and in fact, I'll show them as well. So they're not in the way. And then I'll turn on the show. I switch for the whole composition so they disappear, which means our county will select them anymore on Go back to the beginning of the timeline . What I want to do now is to make the world standard to coming from the top and then the word animation to come in from the bottom, and then text will slide them from left to right. So those are the three words will be animating at first. Then you look at the others as well, so that select all three standard text and animation, and I'll go to about 15 frames here. They're impressed elected P to reveal position, and then I'll just keep frame one little key frame. In fact, all three, because they were all selected. And then I'll rewind and then I'll click outside to de select everything. Now click on the word standard and then move this up with the shift key. If you remember, this was called the back time the animation, so we set the last key frame first. Then we went back on your now sitting the first key frame, and we'll do the same for others as well. I don't go to the text layer and then click and drag this again, holding down the shift key to keep this in a straight line. Then and then I'll go to the world animation and then dragged this one down with the shift key on just minutes outside the composition Alico. So when I played now this is what we'll have. It's looking all right, not very exciting to make this work a little more interesting, I'll select all these key frames I just created and then press F nine on the keyboard to make them easy ease. So if I not play this, this should be a little more interesting, and in fact, I'll go to the graph editor to make them look a little more interesting. So I'm gonna open this up and then maybe start with the word standard. I'll just select the position off that I don't go back to the beginning and then I'll zoom in a bit of it here, and I'll select this key frame and then drag this one towards right, so it's got more influence. And then this one towards left. Similarly, the one on the right has no more influence as well. So with that Spike, it's going to create more of an organic move. Let's have a look. So the word standard is doing what it's supposed to do now. So let's do the same for others as well. So let's go to text on the same here around about 70 80% on the same here, Israel 70 to 80%. And then I'll click on the word position and I'll just increased. This is well to be about 80. I'm not being too accurate as you can see here. I don't said that would be about 80 as well. If I play this, you should see that's looking a little more interesting and I can stagger them. So if I now come out of the graph it so I can make the world standard coming first, then text and then animation, so just staggered them now. So this is what I have. So a standard text animation that's looking not too bad. And to make things a little more interesting, I can turn on the motion blur forties if I go back to a point where the Texas actually moving there and then if I go and turn on the motion blur, switch for all of these layers that are moving. So it's this switch here go click, click, click, and then I need to turn the motion of their own for the composition by clicking on this large button. Now I have some ocean. We're here as well, I know. Play it. Let's see what this looks like that's looking good. If you want to reduce the amount of motion blur you have, you either have to slow down the animation. Or you can go to your composition settings, which was command K and then go to the advanced tab and this option here where it says shutter angle is what you change to control the amount of motion blur. So the higher this is the blurrier the things will be, as you can see here, the smallest number, the less blur you have on the text. So if I now grants it is to, let's say 1 20 then okay. No, I don't have as much blur without changing the speed of animation. So those are the 1st 3 words that's working Fine. I'm gonna make the word is come up. So I'm just gonna select that and then you'll actually make this one full down. That safe from the top as well. So around about here, I can make the word is start falling down on set the beginning of the layer to start from this play head position, I can press the left bracket and then that's right. The beginning of the layer now is I can not press a little p and I want this to take about 15 frames as well and in order to move forward by 15 frames or let's say backwards by so many frames, the shortcut is you press fault shift and J all to shift J. This opens up the dollar books for gold to time now. Right now, it tells me that I'm a frame 17 and I know if you add 15 to 17 you'll be on frame 32. But if your timeline is based on 25 frames a second, that means one second and several frames and song. So instead of calculating a lot this year ahead, what you can do is just go here and simply type in. Plus, this means go forward by 15. And this tells us now that if you go forward by 15 frames, you will be at one second and seven frames, which is great. I can press OK, and then I'm gonna go and key frame the position, and then I'll go back to the beginning of this layer, Which on the keyboard is I? So you press. I will go to the in point off the selected layer, and then I'll make this move up literally by clicking and dragging this with the shift key again, Of course. So that's a straight line on. I'm gonna select these two key frames, of course, and then processed nine again. That's going to make them easy, easy as well. And then I'll just go and turn the graph editor on and then add this spike here as well. So that's a high influence in the same here as well on. Let's see what that looks like and that's looking fine. Maybe we can treat the timing it of it. I can come out of the graph, remove the whole thing towards left in it of itself. Animation starts a little earlier. So around about them, maybe before the world animation kind of stops back in two more. So, uh, and I'll turn on the motion blur Fortis's Well, it was just one more frame back. Yeah, there you go. On, as that's happening, I want the letter A to fly up from the bottle. So I'm gonna go to the beginning of this layer on their select a and then again left brackets. So that sends the beginning off the layer here as well. And I'm gonna press P to open up position and now press care a couple of times to jump to this key frame. Then I'll key frame a and then press J to jump back. And then I'll move a down or just click and drag this with the shift gig and held down. So it's just outside the composition and then I let go. And then I'll select these two and then processed nine and then open up the graph editor and then add, despite Syria's well, so higher influence, if you remember, means faster moment in the middle and slower at the beginning and end Well, let's see what this looks like. We're missing the motion Lord as well, so I'm gonna add the motion blur to this layer as well. So let me click outside to see what that looks like. Here you go. That's looking fine on Finally, I want the words piece off to kind of scale up and rotate at the same time. So I'm gonna go to the layer here for peace off and I'll press are and then shift s so I see scale and rotation. But before we animate this, we want the anchor point to be in the center, so that's where it scales from. So let me press why? To get my anchor point tool and then click on the anchor point and then hold down command and just slap it to the center. And I can get back to my selection tool V. I can now come out of the graph and then make this later stock around about maybe here. So I'm gonna go around about frame 20 and then press the left brackets and then I'm going keeping this scale invitation. I just pushed down towards writing it a bit like that, so I can not said the initial values. So I said, this scale to be zero and notation to be, Let's say, minus 25. So if I not play this, this is what we have. And of course I'm gonna select them and then processed mine to do Eazy e's on these as well . It's what that looks like. No, and let me go to the graph to maybe create some overshoot here. I was gonna go to the graph that scale first and just click outside, Then click on the word scale. I cannot create an overshoot like that. So it's gonna go higher than on the percent and then back down. And although the same for the rotation as well, select rotation on creating overshoot here as well so that's looking fine that I'm gonna go to my speed graph and then change this to be a spike because I created an overshoot. The speed actually goes down here that's normal. I was gonna quit despite regardless like that. Then I got to scale and of the same not select. This pushes towards right of the shift key. So it doesn't go up and down into the same here as well with the shift key. So now if I played this, let's see, that's happening a bit too fast. I think so. What I can do is to come out of the graph, take these two key frames away from the 1st 2 That's you know, that's not too bad. The only problem, I think, is that it's growing a bit too large. So let me just go to this last key frame for the scale, and I'll decreased in value. So I'm just gonna go and change this from 100%. Let's say 80%. And then I had to go to the graph editor and then selected scale and then go to the value graph. I can tell it not to go as high. So instead of going to 80. Right now, you can see it's shooting up to about 1 40 So I'm gonna select that graphs last end and then just drag this down a little bit, bit more. Maybe so. It's not gonna go to about 95. Maybe a little more, actually, about 90 my, if I played is it grows just a little bit more than 80% that it comes back over the same for rotation as well, so I don't want to rotate as much. I'll click on the word rotation and you can see instead of ending up zero and goes to about 10 degrees first, then comes back to zero. Let's select that and then tell it not to do that, not to go as far. So right now it goes to about five degrees rather than 10. So let's see that again. That's great. I can now add a motion blur to this as well. Now that's what's this with the motion blur. Great. And as that's happening on the piece of cake to, let's say, full down as well. I'm gonna go to the cake on let me come out of the graph and then I'll scroll up and then select the cakes position. So that's P on the keyboard, and I want the case to start falling down somewhere around here. So I'll go here, then press the left bracket, so that sends the beginning of the layer to be here. Then keep playing the position, Maybe not. Push this back out and then move the cake up with the shift key again. So it's a straight line, and then I'll select these two key frames and press F nine. I can dangle to my graph editor got my speed graph, and then I can add those spikes here again. So that's about 95% influence and same here as well, but not latest. Let's see, that's happening a bit too fast so that you come out of the graph, separate these two and tried again that's looking at it. So better now on may be actually a little bit slower, so I'm just gonna increase the distance and it's a bit more played again. But now I want overlap. The two latest or the piece off on the cake will be overlapped. So if I now go click and drag this tour is left. And now maybe play this as the word peace off comes up. You see, the cake is falling down, and that's looking not so bad. I'll pull this key for him back a little bit. Let's see again. That's looking great. That's also finally turned on the motion blur for this layer as well. So it's also got some blur as it's falling down. And then I'll go all the way back to the beginning on Play it. Let's see what this looks like just before we wrap up. I actually noticed because I scaled down the word peace off. There's now enough, a larger gap here and there is here. So to fix that, to move these two layers towards right a little bit, we had two options. I can either select these two ladies first, so they get highlighted and then press you on the keyboard and then you again. So we see the key frames. If I zoom out, these are the key frames. Let me zoom back in. I can I denounce, select all four key frames and then I go to the key frame here where the text is visible and then manually move them right by using the arrows. Or we could also offset the anchor points off the lose. But they would mess up the anchor point, which means if you were to animate this scale or rotation, it has some problems. So this is the safer option on for this. You need to make sure that all the key frames are selected and that your play head is on one of those key frames. If it's not on one of those key frames that say, if your plate is here, if you don't move these layers, you are actually creating a new set of key frames. You don't want that. So that's why you need to make sure that your play had these on one of those key frames. Then you can move them manually with the shift key or without the shift key. And then let's go forward to see on. That's a little bit too much, I think now. So I'm just gonna go back on, may be used the left there a couple of times there. I don't score, click outside to the select, and that's what this looks like now on that looks a little more balanced. It's previewed this one last time great, and that is how easy it is to animate text in after effects using standard key frames. In the next tutorial, we'll have a look at tell to use the text animation presets. 41. Using Text Animation Presets: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at tattoos, the text animation presets. So for that, I'm gonna quickly switch back to my green Markham. And in here, As you can see, I just have a simple text layer. It says so is using text animation presets on. In order to reveal the text animation presets, you go to the effects and presets panel. And if you can't see this panel here, for whatever reason, you can go to the window menu and then just click on this panel here and once this is revealed, you can go to the first option here, which is animation presets, and twirl this down. And then in here there's some presets for text. I can click on this arrow here and in here. There are all these categories that you can use on most of these actually will make sense. Like if I go to animate in, I can see that you know, for example, if I go to fade up lines, I know that this is going to fade up the lines on my one on this woman fade up the words one by one and this randomly fade the characters up and so on, but it's quite difficult to visualize them in order to get a sense of what they look like. When you apply them, you can use Adobe Bridge. Bridge is a different application from Adobe. It's free as long as you have a subscription that includes after effects of photo shop or any other other. Be application. You get bridge for free. So if you make sure Adobe Bridge is installed, it can come up here right to the top of this list, and then click on this tiny button here to the right, off the effects and presets button. And here it says Brown's presets. When you click on this, it's going to launch bridge. Let me just do This year, it's going to launch bridge, and it will take you into this specific folder where all your presets are. This is actually very install the presets as well. If you were download presets from the Internet or elsewhere, you can install them inside this folder, and next time you start after effects, you'll see those preset in there. Now, in this folder, we have this text presets folder. I can go and double click on this This is the exact same list as we saw in after effects. Let me quit. You switch back to after effects. In here we have text three D text animating animate out blurs and so on. And here as well. We have three D text animate, inanimate up blurs and saw. So they're exactly the same, but the advantage of using bridge he so it can preview these animations before you apply them. For example, if I go and double click on the Blur's folder, I now see these presets. I can click on one just once and on the right hand side, where the preview penalties. If you can't see the preview panel again, you can go to window and then turn a preview panel on here. In the preview panel, you see a preview off the effect, so this happens before he applied effects to the text, which is great. If I want to see some others, let's say I don't know this jiggy effect. This is what that looks like. I can go back and can preview all of these. If I go to organic, I just click on one of them. That's a quiver. That's what happens there or if I treat sprouts so the characters are kind of growing. Gradually, I can choose that, say Simmer. That's what happens there. There are quite a little presets you can pick from, and some off them, I admit, are quite cheesy. Some others, though, are quite useful. For example, if I goto the text presets again and then maybe choose animates in, there are some reduce. Who wants you? For example, If I go to slow fatum, this is what that looks like and straighten by character. This is what that looks like, some kind of rains in. From right inside. You can use some others. Let's say I don't fly in from bottom. That's what's happening. But let's say you like one with them and you want to use them. Let's say, for example, I like to use the slow fatal before I used this. What I need to do is to go back to after effects and then make sure that this text layer is actually selected so that Aftereffects knows to apply the effect to the text layer. And then I go to the time when I want the effective start. Let's say for example here. I wanted to start around about 10 12 frames, so the Texas selected the plate is in place. I don't go back to bridge. And then if I now double click on this, it applies the effect to the selected text layer, starting from other places to reveal the key frames I compress you. I can see now that I have two key frames. Only on this is what's creating the automation on. The first key frame started from where my played waas. So if I go back in play, you see that this is what effect looks like. And if you want to speed this up or slow it down, it's as easy as bringing the key frames closer to each other or separating them to slow it down. So let me go a little bit faster here, and then I'll play it again. This is the animation we have. Using animation Presets will save you a little time when it comes to creating text animations. In the next tutorial, we'll have a look at how to create these animations manually by using the text animators 42. Custom Text Animators and Range Selectors: In this tutorial, we'll have a look at how to create text animations using custom text animators text animators are inside the text layers here on the right inside it's his animate. This is very lax is the text animators and this button is quite specific to the text lives So all these properties that are inside the button you can only use them for text layers. You won't get this with the normal standard layers. I come out of this. Let me first explain to you what the text animators thereabouts in the previous examples. If I go to this one, for example, in order to create an animation like this, let me just go back and play it. In order to create an animation like this, I had to separate every single word into a different layer. If I go back down, you can see that the first word standard is one layer and then you had to work text as the second layer on the animation is 1/3 layer and soul and this would be the only way off creating this animation if it wasn't for the text Animators. Now the text animators, All of these options. Here you can create pretty much the same animation as we had here without having to deal with lots of lives. All of that happens inside a single layer if you're using text animators and actually text , animators are a lot more flexible because they give you access to the individual characters , not just words. So let's look at some of the basic ones. Let's say, for example, you want the first word, but to fade up gradually and the rest to be visible all the time Now to do that, instead of separating the world into a different layer, I can just go to animate and then add an animator called Opacity Animator, because that's what we wanted it now the opacity of this world and automatically that creating new animator on it cause animated one. And it's a good idea and good practice to rename these animators because you'll see in a second that you'll be creating quite a few of these on unless you name them. It's going to be a little confusing to find out which one does what's so let's go and rename this to be but capacity, and you may have noticed that I used all capital letters here, and I do this quite often, actually, when I am renaming something, I use all capitals so that as soon as I look at it, I know it's something that I created rather than something that was there in the first place. Because if it was there in the first place, it would be upper case for the first letter and then lower case for the rest of them. If I have it all uppercase, I know it's something I created. So let's go and press enter. And this one no, just created a new property called opacity. And opacity here by default controls every single character inside the Slayer. So if I click and drag this towards left, you see the whole thing was more transparent, or if I drag it right, the entire layer gets more opaque. Now you may be asking yourself what is the difference then, between this and the opacity off the actual layer, which is down here inside transform and at the moment there's no difference. I could set this back 200% and then lower this down and it does exactly the same thing. But the advantage of using a text animator as opposed to using the opacity for the entire layer. Let me just put this back He saw that you can use this thing here called the Rain Selector Now the rain selector let me make a bit more space for his first The rain selector has after effects which portion off the layer it should be affecting. What I mean by that is this Let's go down. I'm gonna collapse to transform here If I go to rain selector and open this up you see Right now the start is set to 0% on end is set to 100% meaning that the entire layer is going to be affected. But what if I said end to, let's say 50% on the bottom? There may be if I now change the opacity Only the first half is going to be affected and not the rest you can see And as I'm dragging this end or to start values up and down you may also notice that there's a little line that traveling across the text and that effectively is the rain selector. I can do this manually as well if I had my selection tool selected. I can come down here, move my cursor onto this triangle, and if I click on the triangle, I can then drag this left and right. And if I now move this, let's say up to here then changed capacity. You see, only the 1st 2 words are gonna go transparent or opaque. So the rain selector set the boundaries or the limits off this effect in this case, opacity. If you ever lose this line and you can't see it, all you have to do to bring that back is to click somewhere outside and then click back on the words rain selector on that will come back again. I'm gonna go click and drag this to them, Not this first word. And then I can go and animate the opacity. I can go and set this to be zero at the beginning key, frame it and then go forward to about 10 frames and then increase this to be about 100% on here. The first word fades in. Let's say now, as the first word fades in you on the second month custom toe fall down from the top. Let me zoom in it. If it first, I'm gonna hold on all time. Just use my scroll on the mouse. And in order to make this world full down, I need to create a new animator. And for that I need to first de select everything. So I'm gonna go and maybe collapsed this and then click outside to de select everything, including text layer, and then I'll go to animate and because I want the world to fall down, That would be position so I can click on this and I'm gonna zoom out again and I'm going rename this. First I'm gonna go to animate a one and I'll call this custom dash position and then I'll go to position. Why Second value here and I'll distract this left and you see by default the whole layer is moving up. That's because the rain selector is set to cover everything from 0% which is here up to 100% which is here. Now I'll click on this last point, the rain selector at the very end and just drag this towards left. So it covers the word custom, and I also click on this one which covers the word, but But it's invisible now, so you can't see it. It's gonna drag this towards right, so it only covers the word custom this way. When I move the position up and down, it's only changing the position off the word custom. Let me maybe start this off screen here and then all key frame it. Don't go to the 10th frame again and then just go and change this back to zero. The initial value here, minus 1 80 shows us how far the content is from its original position. This area, the word custom moved up by 880 pixels. If I play this, you see, it's not gonna fall down as the first world fades in. And let's say I want the world animations to scale up. So for that I'm gonna go collapses again and then the select everything my clicking outside and then go to animate on this time we'll choose scale and right away I'm gonna rename this to be animations scale and the No presenter. And I'll just go to the scale here at the beginning and set this 20 initially and then all key frame. It's and then go to the 10th frame and set this to be 100%. And right now, as you can see, the whole thing is scaling up. But I want to the rain selector to limit this so that only the word animations would be affected if I click on the rain selector, then dragged us to cover the world animations. Only now if I play this you see, only the word animations is affected. And in the next lesson, we will talk about how to combine these properties as well as randomize ing them. 43. Combining Multiple Selectors and Properties: in this tutorial, I'll show you how to combine multiple properties inside one text animator. Let's say for example, you want the world are to rotate on. It's gonna do that quickly. So I'm just gonna go to animate and then add the rotation. I'm gonna changes from animator to our rotation and the no percent too. And you see, if I rotate this, the whole content is going to rotate. So to stop that from happening, you got to rein selector here and drag this just to cover the word are Yeah, and thats women now to see this of it clearly you see, as I rotate this, the characters are going to rotate from their baselines. And that's what these little exes are. These are the baselines off the individual characters. Now let's say you wanted to change that, but that's easy. All we have to do instead of creating a new animator, is to add a property toe an existing animator. You do that by going toe ad and then you select property, which means this property now that you select is going to be added to this animator, our rotation animator. I'm gonna go to property and I want to change the anchor points. And I now have anchor points, which is also being affected by the rain selector, which is set to cover Edward R. So for now, let's go and set the rotation back to zero so I can see what's happening to these excess here. So I'm gonna select and type in zero. I'll just got anchor point. Why not just decrease this so that characters shifted down? So something like that? Maybe so. The anchor points are now at the top. But of course, when we do this, the characters appear to be lower than the rest. Well, that's an easy fix. I cannot go to add on. Add a new property off position because they're now down. I want to push them back up. And if I look at Danka Point, this made the characters go down. By this much, I can select this if I know, copy it and paste it onto the positions. Why value? It's going to make the characters go up by exactly the same amount. They came down because of the anchor points. Find a presenter. Now you see that the characters are higher up. If I now go to rotation. I cannot rotate this from the top, or in fact, I can scale it. If I go to add property scale, I cannot scale them from the top as well. So let's animate both the scale and rotation. So let's start with the skill set to zero, and I'll go back to the beginning. All key frame scale annotation. I'll dangle to frame 10 back one frame, and I'll set this scale up there on the percent on almost a key fame, the rotation here. And then I can go to the graph editor for the rotation on a scale. So if I select these and then maybe two F nine, turn him into Eazy E's, I can then go to the graph editor and then go to rotation only just quick outside and select rotation on that. Me zoom in as it scales up. I want this to rotate counterclockwise, so I'm gonna go down it it first. You see, As I do this, the characters are gonna start rotating down. I need to push this down further, though, so I'm just gonna go click and drag this and they go there and then click and drag again. So let's find to start with you see their rotating by about five degrees. Let's exaggerate this. So I'm gonna go and push this further down. That's a minus 20 or so and maybe a little bit more there. So you see that they rotate towards right by about 20 degrees here, and then they come back. Let me do an overshoot as well. So I'm just gonna go click and drag this up so they first rotate clockwise and then counterclockwise let me just pushes towards rights where this happens a little bit later there and maybe this one down their rights. So this first rotation here is happening for a little bit longer than this last part. So here we go. That last bump there is a bit too abrupt. Oh, there. So I'm gonna separate them away from each other a little bit that I'm just gonna move this towards left, so it's a bit more gradual if I not play this. You see, it's not a zebra. Maybe I'll push this down just a tiny bit medical. So if I now played back, you see what happens to the word are and Of course, I can turn the motion blur on for this. If I got to motion where attorneys on and for the entire composition, you see, they now have motion blur, which is making them look a little prettier. So this is how we combine multiple properties. We combine here, the anchor points the position scale n rotation, but we've only animated this scale in rotation. So these two were used to offset anchor points so that we could rotate or scale from the top and then, as a result, off that the whole set of characters went down and use the position to push them back up. So I'm not gonna zoom back out and come out of my graph. And then, in fact, I'm gonna press tell it to you to see all the rest of the key frames, and I'll select them onto F nine on these as well. So they're not set to ease ease as well. My mom in a press you again to hide them, and what I want to show you now is the heart to animate the position off. Let's say the word far randomly. So let's first go open this up and collect all of these on then maybe collapse them like this and then make sure nothing is selected. So I'm just gonna go click outside to be select everything and I'll go to Animate and then position and I'm gonna go rename this again quickly to change from Animator One too far position. And then before we do anything else, I'll set the rain selector. So I'm gonna go a shift four slash and then click on the word rain selector and then just pushed us towards right and then push this one towards left Another ranges only covering the word far. And what I want these characters to do now is to move up and down, up and down randomly. That's first gonna make them move up. So I'm just gonna go to the white position, just drag them left so they go up. That's a bi minus 60 so they're higher than they were before by 60 pixels. But let's say no, I want to randomize this so they move up and down randomly. Well, to do that to the existing animator, I'm going to add not a property this time. But the selector called Wigley selector Every time you see the word wiggle or wiggly in after effects, that means the property is going to be randomized. So if I go and add this, look what happens to the characters there. So they ran them. They get placed again within that range that I said, and this actually now animates, So the wiggle automatically animates. If I go back and play it, Look what happens to these characters here. Let me pose this and get closer to it. I'm played again. You see, they will only go up and down within a certain area, and that area is set by changing the position here. So if he said this to minus 60 or plus 60 in this case, it won't matter. This means now they can go up by 60 or down by 60 but no more. Which also means if I want these characters not to go as far, I can just go and make this number a smaller one. Let's say I go and set this to be, let's say, 10 or minus Then, like I said, which means no, they can only go up by 10 pixels or down my 10 pixels if I play it. This is what we get. If I want them to go higher up and lower down all afternoon, it would be to increase this number. So I'm giving them more of a high arrange to play with so they can go up by 2 39 on down by 2 39 as well. So if I played is now you see that they're going up and down quite a lot. No. Let me set this to something a bit more reasonable. Let's see, maybe 50 on the actual speed off. This is controlled from inside the wiggly selector. So if I go to the weekly selector, you have an option here called Wiggles per second. The higher this number, the faster these were moved. So if I go back to the beginning and if I increase the wiggles per second from two to, let's say five and enter look how fast their movement compared to the speeds before on the other option here. The correlation is how correlated these characters are between each other. So if I said this to be on the percent, they'll do exactly the same things at the exact same points. So they'll all move up and down at the same time. Married. If I lower this, they look completely random. Things not correlated to each other. It'll if I go back. They will never be all at the same place at any given time. Played us now Here we go. No, I can do the same. But for a different property. Let's say for the word more If I now go collapse this the select everything got to animate . Let's say I want a word more to scale. Render me. I can go to scale and then change the name from animated one toe mawr scale on right away. I can change the rain selector to cover the word more only. So if I now go and set this to be at the end of E and then sit this one to be at the beginning off em. And then if I change this scale is a bit let's say they're 112 and then to it I'm going to add a wiggly selector. So if I go to add selector wiggly, you see now they'll be random is scaling up and down on both axes. If I'm not going play this. This is what's happening to the world more. I can speed this up if I go to the really selector Goto widows per second and that say we set this to four for now, play it, you see, that's gonna happen much faster as well. And finally, let's have a look at combining multiple properties with multiple selectors. So let me just go collapsed ease again and then de select everything on what I want to do now is for the word flexible to randomly move around as it rotates. So I'm gonna go select the animate button and then go to rotation and then go and rename this as well. I'll call this one flexible, random, and then I'll just go and change range selector to covered word flexible Only there. And then I'll increase the rotation. Why a little bit and to it I'm going to add a selector again. That's wiggly sofa. Nago plate is you see, there'd be random irritating. Let me zoom in here. You said they will randomly mutating now, but I want them to move around as well. Well, for that I can add a new property to the existing animator. That's called anchor point again. And if I know change the anchor points randomly and the reason why they appear to be sore end them like this is because the weekly selector is animating randomly the anchor point as well. So why not go play this? You see they'll be flying around because of the weekly selector. I can add twit somewhere properties if I goto, add property scale and maybe set the scale to be 110%. If I play this, you see their sizes will be changing as well as they go up and down the sizes get smaller and larger as well. A random. And finally, if you want to change the color off the text randomly again, I can go to add and I go to property, and this time I'll go to the field color and I'll change a hue, for example. And right now, because this has no you, it's white. It's gonna add some huge today's. So I'm gonna go to character and then maybe double click on, then select the word flexible by There were clicking on this and then I'll go to the color and then maybe give this a different color. Let's say maybe some blue color like that. Maybe a dark blue here. And then when I click outside, if I changed it, feel you on because we had The weekly selector is going to randomize to you as well. If I number and increases from zero to, let's say, 45 I'm just typing 45 exactly there. It now goes clockwise and then counterclockwise in the color real by 45 degrees from the initial Hugh, which was a blue so it will remain more or less in the blue Range. But if I increase this number even more, it's going to start picking up all random colors from the color wheel. And remember, the random ization is happening because of the wiggly selector. So if I go and turn us weekly selector off, you see it's no longer random. It's applying one who wanna rotation one scale in one anchor point. As soon as we have this turned on, it's all being randomized again. Let me now zoom all the way back out so I can see the entire animation, and I'm gonna rewind by pressing the home key and then I press you on the keyboard to reveal the key frames. And they're all set to Eazy e's, which is great and some, in fact, like scaling rotation. We've animated them by hand inside the graph editor. So let me go back and play it to see what this looks like. Now that we have this, we can just go and offset the key frames as well. So if I know uncle to a pass ity that stays there position, that's the custom here comes just after that. And then maybe scale comes after debts and then scale for dear, What are comes after that. And then the rotation was lined up with this scale here. And if I now go and play this back, you see that the first word is gonna come out first, then the 2nd 1 then the 3rd 1 and so on. And these ones actually here already visible. So let's see if you can make them invisible to start with. So when the last word are comes in, the rest can start appearing. So let me go back. I'm gonna click outside to de select everything. I'll then collapse this and then reopen it and then collapse all of these. I'll then click outside to be select everything, and I'll just go to animate capacity and I'm gonna select this animator on Greening is to be opacity, and I'll select the rain selector and only get it covered words far more flexible. And then I can go to opacity, said Mr Zero. And that's more forward in time line there. When that word comes in, the world are comes in. I want these ones to start appearing as well, so I'm gonna set the opacity is key frame there and then I'll go forward, maybe around about there. I want all of these to fade in at the same time and then also like these and set them to be Easy's as well by pressing F Night on. With that, we know how are Red Bar animated, the green bar animated on the blue bar, animated, all using different methods and because we use them as pre comes inside the text animation composition. This is our final results, and this is how you animate text in after effects in three different ways. By using standard key frames or using text animation presets or using text animators 44. CLASS PROJECT - TEXT ANIMATION: Now it's time for you to create your first text animation project. So here I provided you with an aftereffects file, which I've already populated with some text elements. So I've got two compositions here. There's the text animation option, one composition, and then there's a text animation option to composition. And inside each one, I've got multiple layers, as you can see here. So there is this, Do what you can use, what you have. Start where you are, layers. And in other competition, text animation option two. Here we have a single line of text with a couple of words in it. And your task now is to use all the tools you've just learned and apply them to animate this text in pretty much any way you like. So there's no boundary. Now, you're going to need to use your creativity to come up with something interesting. Feel free to use the text animation presets or the custom text animators and make sure you're having fun while you create an interesting text animation. 45. Intro to the Third Dimension: working in three dimensions in after effects can be quite straightforward. Or it can be quite tricky, depending on the type of work you do in this tutorial. We'll start with the basics off three D. In order to start working in three D in after effects, you first need to create a standard composition. So I'll do that by pressing command and and thats going. Call this three D, and then I'll leave the rest of the same things as they are. Impress. Okay, and now that we have this composition, we can start creating layers and turning them into three D. Let's start by creating assaulted by prison command. Why make sure that this or that is the same size as the comp by clicking on this button and then I'll press OK, now that we have this solid, we can never look at how to turn it into a three D lay. Before I do that, you open up to transform controls off this layer by clicking on this arrow, and then I make you more space here so we can see what's going on. I'll click on this again right now. You see most of these properties will have to values. So Anchor Point, for example, has X and Y position has X and Y scale has X and y and so on. As soon as you turn a layer into a three d layer, you have three values instead of two. So this is horizontal and vertical. And as soon as you make the layer three d, you'll have the death as well. And turning a layer into a three D layer is actually quite straightforward. All you have to do is to come and click on this button here under the Cube. If I click on this now, the layer has just now become a three d layer. I know that because of the cube here, as well as looking at these values. Now I have X, why and zip. So we have the horizontal axis, vertical axis and the access that goes back and forth the depth as well as having the third access. Now the set axis. You notice that we have a couple of new things. We have orientation. We have Germans options on material options. I'll leave the geometry and material options alone. For now, we'll concentrate on the transform settings. You'll also notice that we no longer have a single rotation value. I'm just gonna make this a to the layer again by clicking on this cube to turn this off. Now, if you look at this, the initial value was just rotation. If I make this three d you see, instead of having rotation, we have exploitation. Why rotation and said rotation? Now these are old indicators that the layer is now in fact, a three d later. What do these mean, though? So let's have a look at them one by one. Now, anchor point, if you remember, is you start dragging. This left and right would start shifting the contents off the layer left and right. That's something mean. Also, that's nothing new. And why would do the same going up and down but this time said, is going to start pushing the layer backwards and forth, or rather, the contents off the layer backwards and forwards. So now if I pushed his head towards right, the latest contents are getting closer to us. And if I push it towards left, they're getting away from us. The contents of layer aren't scaling. Now they're just going away from us. All right, so there's two different things. Scaling on being away from the camera are two different things. If this is happening a little bit too slow, you will remember that it can press shift and then dragged this right or left. You see, it's going much faster. Now, I'm just gonna click on this button to reset so we can start again and we can do the same for a position. So that's X. That's why on that said, I'm gonna reset this again, and we also have the same for the scale. But what about these orientation and rotation values? Now let's start with the rotation values first. Instead of having just one rotation, we had three rotation values X y and zed. If you imagine the layer being a piece of paper and then you have a string that goes from left to right like this along the X axis. And if you rotate the piece of paper around the piece of string here, that would be an exhortation. So if I now go and rotated on the X, this is what the exhortation does. So it can until still a away from us or towards us that movie sets. And if you take that imaginary piece of string and make it go from top to bottom and then rotate the layer around that piece of string, that will be your Y rotation. So this would be tilting the layer sideways like this. Let me reset again on the last rotation Zed rotation is that piece of string again. This time goes through the layer right in the centre on if you know, start spinning the layer sideways. You see, that's what the vegetation was. This, in fact, is very similar to the normal rotation before you made the Layer three D. So a normal rotation is, in fact, is a rotation. Let me undo that as well. And the final property I'll show you here is orientation orientation. There's something very similar to rotation, but not quite the same. Let me show you what I mean. If I click on the X orientation, I can just drag this and you see that the layer starts rotating. I can do the same for the wire orientation. You may be saying, Well, why do we have to then the rotation and orientation? Because orientation is usually used not to animate things but to set their initial poses. What I mean by the resists, Let's say, for example, you want the layer to start like this, and that animates around it. Zed access. I got to vegetation now and just animate this. You see that the layer is rotating around it, said access. But all the while it's facing away from us in that direction, and the vegetation here is what you'd be key framing a not orientation. Let me show you what happens if you keep framed orientation. Let me reset everything again. Let's say, for example, we key frame the exhortation and then we go forward to one second and then we change this to, let's say 3 50 somewhere around 3 50 like that. And if I go back and play off course, we'll see this rotating by 350 degrees. But if I do the same for orientation, something very different is gonna happen. Let me just disable these key frames and then re cities, then go back. If I keep frame orientation and then go to one second. If I don't set this to 3 50 and if I play it. Here's what's gonna happen. The layer is following the shortest possible path to go from 0 to 3 50 In this case, it's actually going backwards. That's where it goes from 0 to 3 59 and 3 58 and so on, eventually down to 3 50 So in short, you don't keep framed orientation. Usually Yuki from the ex wives agitations orientation is only there to set the initial postal delayer so it can then go and key friend rotation values. I'm gonna disable this and then reset this. And in the next tutorial, we'll talk about how to move and rotate delays by using the selection and the rotation tools. 46. Understanding the 3D Axis: When you are working in three D space and you want to move or rotate some three delays, there are a couple of things you need to watch out for. Firstly, if I go and select this layer, you see that because it's a three d layer, we have these arrows here. If I convert is back to a two d layer, the arrows disappear and as soon as it's three d again barrels come back. Now the arrows of really useful and you'll use them when you want to move or rotate the layer. What you don't want to do is to randomly moved a layer by clicking and dragging this because if you do this, you will actually create some problems for yourself. As you'll see later on. Let me under this. What you also don't want to do is to used rotate tool randomly by clicking anywhere on the layer. If I get the rotate tool and then click and drag, you see that the layer is going to be rotating randomly. Now you don't want to do this. You want to make sure that with either one of these tools you click on these arrows. You see if I move my cursor from this arrow to that one. It changes from extra Y. And if I will write to the sent, it says that and you only want to rotate something or move something when you see these letters. Now, if I see the letter, why and if I click and drag? This looks the rotation on Lee to be on the Y axis. Even if I try and go up and down, it won't rotate on X. Just rotate on the way, like into the same for any of these. If I rotated on the X like this, you see only rotates that way and it doesn't rotate anywhere else, and same for that as well. Let me undo. And also, if you want to move this layer around, you get the selection tool and then you click on these arrows so it's locked to Why thanks or is that you see how important and useful distant will be in the following tutorials 47. The Updated 3D Axis in CC2021: If you're working with one of the more recent versions of aftereffects. When you go into 3D space, the axis that you used to see before will actually be updated. Let me show you what I mean. If I just take this layer and convert it to a 2D layer, and if I select the layer now, you see, instead of seeing the three arrows that we used to see, we now have a more updated and more complicated gizmo. Now this gizmo here, literally that you control the position and the rotation all at once. So if I move my mouse over to one of these arrows here, let say the x, the y, or the 0. Just like the previous versions, I can move this left and right, up and down and backwards or forwards. And you see one additional thing here. As we Moodle layer, we actually see how far we are moving it by like that. The other thing that we have with this heads up display is this curved area or the curved line. Now if I move my mouse over to this curved line, I can rotate it on the z. Again. I'm seeing how much I am rotating this by. I can move this along the x-axis or the y-axis. And finally, you can also scale the layer on any of these axes by moving to one of these cubes here now, so if I move my mouse onto this cube, and if I click and drag is a scaling layer on the zed, which right now doesn't really do anything because the layer is a 2D layer. If I move the mouse onto this cube, for example, I can scale it on the X like that. Or if I moved onto this, I can scale it on the y. Now this is a little tricky now because of the rotation. So let me rotate it a little more. Now I can move the mouse onto this white cube and then click and scale this up and down on the, on the y. So although nothing has changed as far as the functionalities are concerned, they updated the weight is too looks to make it more in line with the rest of the 3D applications out there today. 48. Navigating in 3D Space: It's actually quite easy to get lost in three D space in after effects. So what I usually tend to do is to create a layer, and I call it something like floor. And then I tilted away from me on the X axis, and then I used that as the floor, meaning that everything else I create goes above that layer. So let's do that now. So I'm just gonna go and rename this floor. No press are to open up rotation on because I'm not gonna be animating this. I can change the orientation so I can sit this to be 90 degrees. And as soon as we do that, you see, now that the layer has disappeared. Well, honestly, this thin line here, this isn't the layer itself. Actually, these are the pixels or the layer. These are just the control points. And if I click outside, you see they'll get even thinner. But this red line is going to stay here. It's not actually gonna be there when you render, but for now it's gonna stay here just telling you that there's a layer there. Now, if this is a knowing you and you want to turn us off on the keyboard. You compress control or command on the Mac and their shift and hate each control shift age or command shift age that will make that outline disappear. So this is a shortcut to make pretty much every outline disappear, including things like effect controls the layer controls mosques and so on. So command shift takes you make that disappear. For now, I do wonder back, I'm gonna go press command shift age again. So that comes back on and it looks like the late has disappeared, but it hasn't in after effects. What happens where you commercially into a three d layer is that the layer actually stays as the to the layer as it was before. But it now is living inside the three D space, meaning I could place in different places in three D. But the layer itself is still a to the layer. This is why after fixes sometimes called 2.5 D on not quite three D, along with the recent updates, you can create some actual three D objects, but primarily the objects or the layers that you have are all true. The layers inside a three D space hands the term 2.5 day. Now let's have a look at this from a different angle. So instead of seeing this from the front, which is the active camera, this is what it tells me here. We're now seeing this from the active camera. Instead of seeing this from the active camera, I'm gonna go and change this view from active camera to, let's say, top non. Behold, the layer is back. Now the Lakers back because I'm now looking at the same seen from above. If I look at it from the active camera, which in this case is the same as the front view, it's gone. But if I look at it from the top, it's back. If I look at it from the side, let's say the right side it's there. It's smaller, but it's there. Let me not sweet orientation so you can see what's happening. This is what's happening to the Labor Day, and if I look at it from the top and then tweak it, you see that's what's happening there. It looks like the layers actually scaling. It's not actually scaling. What's happening is that it's flat side is becoming perpendicular to our view. So let me go back to my active camera and I'll set this back to 90 if I now push this later down. So it's not in the dead center. If I put it on the set, you see, now we can see the contents of the layer because we're no longer looking at it from a flat angle. So I'm gonna press command said to take that back together with these views the active camera, top left bottom and so on. These are all called photographic views. By the way, together with your Orta graphic views, you have some custom views as well. So with custom views, you can change where you are in space. Let's a volcano that's done. If I go to custom view one, this takes us up and left and it points us down in space. So if I just got it active camera, you see that we're looking at the scene head on and if you imagine you lift yourself up on towards the left but face down, this is what custom camera does. It lifts us up towards left and it faces down custom view to is just lifting us up in space and then looking down and casting. View three is lifting us up and towards right and making us look down as long as you're inside one of these views the custom views. You can use your camera tools and then manually change where you are in space. The camera tools are up here, so if I click and hold it down, you see we have four different tools here. The first tool, the unified camera tool, is actually a combination off these three tools. So instead of using them one by one, you could use the unified camera tool. And it does the same thing with some different clicks on the mouse. So with the unified cameras will if you left click and drag, that's the same thing as orbit camera tool. If you right click and drag, that's the same thing as track Zed, camera tool and a few middle click and drag. That's the same thing as Track X and Y Cam little. Now, for the purpose of this lesson, I'll assume that you don't have a three button mouse. I'll use these tools instead, but just know that you can use the unified capital just as easily. Just stays a lot of time. What this orbit committal does is it lets you if you select that and then move your cursor down. It lets you move around in space so I can click and drag on Neco. Click and dragon. Let go. You see, I'm moving around in space, so this is a really easy way to see the scene from different angles. The third tool here, the track X and Y camera tool, just moves you up, down, left and right in space. It doesn't get closer to the object or it doesn't change your angle. It just literally moves you up or down. Left to right. It seems like the layer is moving up and down, but it isn't the latest stays where it is. We are moving up and down, so if I click and drag this down, we're actually going up. Click and drag up. You're going down, dragging left. You make us school towards writes. Dragging right will make us go towards left. The final tool here track Zed Camera tool is going to push us in or out, depending on which direction you drag your mouse. If I click and drag towards right, you go in, drag it towards left. We go out an old while. This is happening to us. We are changing our position, but not the layers. We are moving in three D space, not the layers. So that's something to keep in mind when you're working in the third dimension in after effects. 49. Updated 3D Navigation in CC2021: Just like the way the 3D axis has been replaced and updated in the recent versions, the way we navigate in 3D space has also been updated. If you remember from the previous lesson, we used to have enough defects. The camera tools up here, that was unified Camera Tool, the orbital, and then the tracking tools. And now they had been replaced with these three tools here, you can still change your active view from active camera to, let's say, your custom view. But instead of using the capitals now, you'll be using one of these three. The first one here is going to be very similar to the orbit Camera tool. But the reason why they've changed this is again, to make the behavior more in line with the rest of the 2D applications out there today. The orbit tool here is going to allow it to orbit around. But this time you see, this actually orbits around the point that you click on. For example, if I go and click somewhere here, this becomes the pivot or the center of interest, or the point of interest for my camera. So that's where we orbit from. And if I click here, that's where we orbit from. If I click in the center, that becomes the point around which we orbit. If you click on an object and orbits, then it's going to use the center of your screen as your pivot points. The second tool here is similar to the truck X and Y tool. And this will pan now. So if I select this click and drag, it will pan and this will make it really easy to bring an object to view. For example, if the object is here, I can quickly click on this and then drag. And it looks like I'm actually bringing the object up, but it's not bringing the object up. It's pushing the camera down towards the objects to show you that point. If I select the objects and then press a key on the keyboard to reveal its position values. When I clicked and dragged object, it looks like the object is dragging. But because I had this tool here, now the Phnom, the cursor tool, it's actually pushing the camera around. And the numbers here to values for position remain the same. And the third tool is this one here, which used to be called attract X_ t2. Now this is the dolly tool. If I select a dolly tool, again, I can move my cursor, let say here, near the top left corner of the object, push in. And it's going to zoom in to where my cursor is, or zoom out from that point. If I move my cursor down here, click and drag, that's where it's going to zoom in or zoom out from. So these three tools will make life so much easier in After Effects when it comes to working in 3D. So if you have an older version of aftereffects, you'll still be able to do everything I'm doing here, but you'll just see a different interface and you'll be using the camera tools as opposed to these three separate tools. If you're on one of the more recent versions of aftereffects, now you know how these tools work. You'll be able to follow me as I go through the rest of the lessons. 50. Working with Multiple Views: we will now have a look at creating a three D room so we can then play some objects, like text or other layers inside. Then you can start animating them. Now, we've got a floor here. What I'm gonna do is to just go and create a new layer. So layer new, solid, and I'm gonna create the back wall. So just call this back wall and I'll make sure that this is the same size as the floor, which was the same size as the comp the press, OK, and you see that the wall doesn't actually get created in this three d space. The world is there. I can see it's here as a layer, but it doesn't appear anywhere here Now, in order for anything to appear in this view in the three D view, you first need to make that a three d object. Unless you do that, you're not gonna see that in three D spice. So let's convert this into a three d layer so we can see this in this for you. Now, just to make it easier to see what's going on, I'm gonna make this a different color, so I'll just go to layer sold it settings, and I'll just pick any random color here. So maybe just make this slightly more blue like that. And this is what I meant earlier when I said that these arrows were really important. And let's say you want to position this wall the back wall properly, so it lines up with the back side of the floor. Now what you don't want to do is to click and drag this manually. Let's say here, because right now this seems like it actually lying that perfectly. Maybe there, but it's not quite perfect, but it's almost perfect. But if I look at it from a different angle, look what happens if I proceed on the keyboard to get my camera tool and then see until I get to my orbit Camera tool. Look what happens there. It was nowhere near perfect. It looks fine from one angle, so it looks fine from this angle here. And this is exactly why I mentioned in the previous tutorial that we move stuff around. You need to make sure that you click on these arrows, so let me under this there in order to move up and down, backwards and forwards. You need to make sure that you click on these arrows and dragged them up like that, or down on the left and right or back and forth like this. Now, again, it's still a little bit tricky to see exactly how far it should go. Not to our count, how far they should go back. You can just go to the top for you, and that means amount. And I know this is the back side of the floor. I can then just push this backwards on the set around about that. And that's not gonna line up with the back side of the floor if I don't go back to my custom view. And if I zoom in, you see that will line up. But the height doesn't line up so I can switch back to my right. You and I can zoom out. I can then make the height lineup as well. Like that name is women. So this is not quite perfect, but it's much better than what we had before. Let me go to my custom view, and if I zoom out, you see now if I get to my camera tool I can orbit around, and that's lined up much better than it did before. But it still isn't quite perfect. If I push in with my track is Ed camera Tool and then use my track extend my camera tool. I'm just pressing C to toggle between these tools, you can see there's a little bit of a gap here. No, I can make this perfect, but instead we'll have a look at how to snap these to each other in the next tutorial. For now, let me show you one way off seeing all those different angles that we checked earlier in one place. Now, instead of going to constant view and then changing at the top and then changing Mr Wright's on back and so on instead of doing this one, my one right next to it, it says one view. I can change the wrong view to, let's say, tool, use horizontal so I can see them side by side. And this is showing us The top view on this is showing us the right for you, and I can change those as well. I can select this and then go to right maybe make this front. Then I can select top view and then maybe go here and then change this to let's say the left for you and so on. Or I can go to the four of you. If I go to four views, I not see all four like this on. I can customize this looking right to left. Maybe this can you top this camera bottom and saw. So seeing all of these different views at the same time is going to be extremely useful, especially when we start working with cameras, lights and three D animations. 51. Snapping in 3D: when you want a lineup object in three D space snapping is gonna be your best friend. Now, let's say, for example, in this case, I want to move this back world blue one tow line up with the back side of the floor. Now, of course, you can do this by clicking on this zero and then pushing it back. And then maybe you can go to decide view to make sure that it's lines up, and then you lift it up and so on. Or, of course, we can use numbers by selecting layers than pressing Pete, and you just work these numbers out or you could use snapping. Snapping is going to be perhaps the easiest and the most effective way of doing this on for it to work, you need to first have the selection tool selected, and then you click on the layer and as you drag the layer, if you hold down the control key or command key on the Mac, you see that the center off the layer is going to start snapping to the different points off the other layers. Now that's great already, but let's say, for example, you on this point the base of the blue hole to snap to the floor. Now, that's very easy. All they had to do in order to tell aftereffects that this is the point that you want to snap around. You need to go and click somewhere near the point. Not quite on the point, but near the point. Somewhere here maybe, and then click and drug. And as you drag, if you now hold the command or the control key down, you see that the base of the wall is gonna snap to the floor. And that's how easy it is. For example, if you want to this point to snap around, you click near this point and then hold on command and you see, that's the point that's going to snap you on this point to snap. I click near that point and hold on command, and that's doing that snaps around. So I'm gonna move the wall back to somewhere here. I'm just gonna click and drag and then hold the command key down so it snaps than a lick off my mouse. Then the command key. Let's go and set the rest of this room up, so I'm just gonna create the side walls as well. So for that I'm gonna go layer new, solid and only it's OK. And again, we can't see the layer here because it isn't a three d layer. So we need to convert this into a three D layer. By clicking on this button, I'm going to rotate the layer by pressing W. Then I'll rotate this on the Y axis, my holding down the shift key by holding down the shift key. So it looks that rotation to be 45 degrees and then I'll get my selection tool V on the keyboard on. Then click so many of the space point and then drag this up on hold on command and that snaps as well. And then finally, I'll just go and duplicate this command deed duplicate on them more this year with the command key again. So that one snaps as well, and I'm just gonna go and rename these. I'm gonna go call this one right will on the one underneath the left wall. And now if I get my camera tool to bring everything down and then maybe my orbits camera tool to move around, we have ourselves that perfectly lined up three D room 52. Working with Lights: Now we'll have a look at how to create some three D text and lights for that. I want this room's really to be deep directory. So I'm gonna select my floor on press command shift. Why? I'll change it. Site. So it's this part here to be a bit told her. So I'm just gonna go maybe set this to be, let's say, 4000 on to compensate for that. I need to change without the walls here. So I'm gonna go a select the wall and then do command shift, why? And then changed with to 4000 as well and then do the same for this world as well. Command shift. Why on the with is gonna be set to 4000 as well. And finally, I'm gonna select the back wall by clicking somewhere near the base here so it knows where to snap from. I don't hold on command, so it snaps on the back side of the floor. I'll know he's my camera tools to zoom out. I was gonna push up. I know Zumar things. If it's and now I'm gonna go and create a text layer, and I can easily do this by double clicking on the type tool here that puts a flashing beaming the center on the first grand typing. That's a digital me. You notice that the text is actually being created, so if you look down here, it says, digital me, but you don't see the text here. That's because the text is to be by default, going to convert this into a three D layer as well. No, I can see text. And if I now make this takes into bit larger. So if I select my character and then go to the phone size here, maybe make this a bit larger like that, I can then push this towards the back of the room, using the same arrow here as you drag. If it's going it a bit too slow like it is here, it could just hold down the shift key, and that will speed up the movements. And now that we have the text, let's go and create a simple animation on this. So I'm just gonna zoom in first and then bring this towards the center with the text layer selected. I'm actually gonna go push this old way up so it's easier to understand what's happening here, and I'm gonna press the letter R to reveal rotation. I just want no this to rotate on the X, so I'm gonna go to the exhortation. And then initially, I wanted to be set to minus 90. Let me screen type in minus 90. So it's flat on the floor on dangling key. Frame this and then I'll go forward by about 10 frames and then set Mr Zero and then right away you'll have this animation and I'm gonna select these key frames so I can create an easy is animation by pressing F nine on. Then I'll open up my graph and there's room right in Telegraph by using Plus, and then it's going click outside to de Select them all click just on exhortation. I'll just create a spike here to increase the influence like that, and I'm also gonna create an overshoot. I'm gonna go to the value graph, and I'll just go and click and drag this up a little bit so it rotates towards us and it goes past the zero degree points and then it goes back. Here we go. It's a little bit too fast, so I'm just gonna go slow this down by dragging this towards right. That's looking better now. So if I played us again, that's looking better. Let me come out of the graph, and now Ronaldo is to grow and create a lights. So let me just go forward in it a bit so I can see the text standing up. If I go to the layer here at the top and then go to new, I can create a light. And then it asks us what kind of life we want to create. Now they're 40 from types, you can use the point light. The one I have selected here is a light source that's very similar to a light bulb. So imagine a sphere that emits light in all directions. That's what a point light is, where a spotlight is going to have a direction. So instead of emitting light in all directions, the spotlight would be facing a particular point. The ambient light is the light that you used to make the entire scene taco brighter, so it's not like it's got a position or a direction. It's going to affect the entire scene and the pilot light is very similar to the sunlight. A real life in the case of after effects. The pilot light is going to be infinitely far away from the scene. So the only thing that's important is the rotation of the light, Not quite the position about the rotation of the light. Now, for now, I'm gonna create a point light with the point lead selected. We can give it a color. We can change the intensity. So I'm gonna leave these alone. And these two are grayed out cone angle and confessor because they refer to the spotlights . If I go and create a spotlight, you see, I can click and change these as well. For now, I'm gonna stick with the point light and I'll tell it to cast shadows. So I just go and turn this on and then I'll press OK, now that we had the life created, let me zoom up by using my camera tools. I can see the light here in the center off the scene. So if I now get my selection tool, I'll lift the light up. The higher the schools, the farther back it can reach, if I know Increased doctor to more. You may notice that light doesn't actually cast any shadows, although we did tell it to cast your those in the first place. Let's go and double check that to open up the settings of the light. All they had to do is to go and double click on the light here and you see that same settings will pop up and the car shadows option is turned on. Indeed. Now, in order for you to count shadows, you first need to turn the shadows option on in the lights. And you also need to tell the layer to capture those as well. So in this case, you on the text to cast shadows. And we do that by first collapsing the text on an opening that up again, I write towards the bottom. It says material options. The material options refer to the three D behavior off the layer. If I now go and turn his contratos option on Israel, you know, start seeing the shadows on the floor now, depending on when your light is so, if I select the light here, depending on my delight is or how high it is, the shadows will change. Appearance If I drag us further down, you see you have longer shadows. As I drags up, you have shorter shadows, my files, women here a bit more. So if I just use my camera toasters, women, and then maybe orbit around in it a bit and then maybe pushes to decide and then pushing there, you'll notice that the shuttle has no diffusion, so it's quite sharp. Now if you go to the light settings by double clicking again down here, it's a shuttle darkness and shelter diffusion. You can control what the shuttle will actually look like. If I were reduced the shuttle doctors, you see snow has dark, or if I increase the shuttle diffusion, it's gonna be blurry. The higher the diffusion, the blurrier it will be. But the slower the render times. So keep that in mind. So usually what I do is I said this to zero initially, and I create everything I need to create. But it doesn't take too much time to do previews. But then, before I go to find Orender, I increased this number to be whatever I want this to be. Then I render it so as you work you said the decision to zero and just before you export you increases back up again. So let me do just that. I'm gonna push the shuttle darkness to, let's say, 75 on Prince. Okay, there we go. And now, if I previewed this, you see that the text is rotating up on the shadows are following suit. You see, at the very beginning, though, the Texas actually visible. Now that's actually something I want. But if you didn't want that, what you can do is to select the text there and then go to transform and then maybe push it down just a tiny bit. So it's below the floor, and then you can animate that as well and notice when I'm changing this, it says Ed, next to my cursor. But as I updated, the why is updating Have a look, and that's because we've rotated the layer. So this arrow is what used to be. Why on the screen month is what used to be set. So you find more the green month. You see the several update here. If I want this one. The Waibel update. If you want arrows always to be colored green on the Why Blue on the set on red Index, you can come up here and click on this button which says, World access mode as opposed to the local access mold. So if I changes the world access won't. Here You see that the wire oh is always green. Zero is always blue on the X ero is always red. 53. Working with Cameras: In the previous tutorials, we had a look at how to create this three D room together with the light and also this text here at the back and what I did for this tutorial wants to go ahead and duplicate the text , the digital me text. And then I just moved it here and then here and then here. And then I just changed actual texting there. So it now says, learn after effects with digital me on. Of course, because I duplicated delayer. The animations remained the same as well. So if I go back and play it, this is what the animation look like. So this is great. But if I want to export this, what I will actually get is this. If I change my view from custom toe active camera, whatever you see inside, active camera view is what you'll be exporting up from after effects. So eventually, when we export, this is what we would get. Now, if you want to change your angle, you can go to the cameras here and then use those tools and you see they won't actually work. They won't do anything. I can pick any of these tools and none of them you work. That's because inside active camera you cannot change your view on this. You have an actual camera in this scene, and to create a new camera, you go to the later many at the top and then new. And then you create a camera by clicking on this button. Here in after effects. There are two cameras, one is called a to note camera, and the other one is called a one note camera. Let's start with the one Lord camera. Then I'll explain that to an old cameras Well, and once I select that type on the right insight, I can change the name of the camera, and underneath that, I can change the presets. The presets, basically is your focal length, so the higher the number, the longer defends, the smaller the number, the short total ends, and it's generally easier to control lenses that are short. So if I choose, for example, that 200 millimeter lens that's going to create a camera and place it far away from the scene and it will zoom into the scene, so a tiny change that you make on the camera's position or rotation is going to result in a greater change in the final render. This is like using a zoom lens in real life. So if you ever used a camera, you know that it's more difficult to control the zoom lenses than it is to control the wide angle lenses to make it easier to understand. First, I'm gonna go and pick a mid range lens and maybe like a 28 millimeter lens, and I'll leave the rest of the settings as they are just doing press. OK, you see that the view here actually changed. That's because we change the cameras focal length. Let me press commands it to go back a step, and I'm going crazy new camera. And in this one, if I pick a 50 mil lens, this is actually the same lens that this front view is using. So if I were impressed, okay, you're not going to see any difference at all here, so just keep that in mind. The default lens that's being used by aftereffects is the 50 millions, but that's a little difficult still to control. So I'm gonna go for a while during the lens, so I'm gonna under that and then go to layer new camera and then I'll pick a 28 millimeter less are then press OK, that's more for a wide angle lens. Now you see, as soon as you do this, the camera gets created in your timeline. And although it doesn't really matter ready cameras at this stage, it's usually good practice to place the camera right at the top of the list because later on, you see how it can actually switch cameras, and that's going to be important then. And now that we have the camera here, we can now, even inside active camera, use the camera tools. So if I, for example, get the unified camera tool, I can click and drag around, and I'm actually changing what's happening to the camera. You'll see this in a lot more detail in just a second. That's press commands that to go back a step Now, in order to actually see the camera, let's switch to a different view. So I'm gonna change my views for mom view to, let's say, two views. Horizontal on the left. Inside, I have my left view and on the right, I have active camera. So from the left view. I can see how the cameras positioned. So if I press space bar and then just drag it towards here, I can see the cameras. Here. Let me just get my selection tool. This is the floor. And then this is my camera, and these are my text layers. If I lift the camera up by clicking on this yr Oh, if I just lifted up, you see my active camera view the results update. So the higher the skulls, the lower the text appears to go here on the floor. But really, this is what's happening now. The camera is looking at the scene from this position like that. Now, to make everything much easier, you worked with four views at the same time. So for that, I'm gonna go and change my two of youse 24 views. No, I see four views at the same time. Now, to make a bit more space for these views, I'm gonna go attorneys off, so I'm just gonna go right click on any of these panels on the right and then to close other panels in group and then right click on the remaining one and close this one as well . I don't get rid of the project panel as well. I'm gonna make a bit more space for the entire top part as well. So I just drag this down and I'm just going press shift forward slash. And then I was like, this view shift for it. Slash shift four slash shit, four slash i usually place my active camera view to the top left corner, but that's just a personal preference. So let me do that. First, I'm just gonna select the top left view and then change from left active camera. And this, eventually is what we'll be exporting from after effects. And then I'll set this one to be the top view and then this one to be the left of you. And I said to one like this one to be the custom view. Now, inside the custom view, if I use any of these camera tools, I'm still actually going to be changing where I am in space. But if I use the same tools inside active camera, it's changing ready cameras or what the camera is doing in space. You see, as I move this in the active camera view the cameras updating in all of the views as well. Chris commands at two under this. But if I was the same tool in this view, the custom view, I'll be changing my position in space. This has nothing to do with the camera. I'm only changing my position in space. And, of course, in order graphic views like the top of the left views, you can use these tools at all. Remember, these tools only work inside the custom view. Or now that we have a camera inside active camera view as well. So in the custom, view them just going through Marta little bit by pressing. See a couple of times until I get my track Zed camera tool mechanism, art. So I can see the whole thing from the top fuel, actually zoom minutes of it and then maybe press see again until I get my truck X and Y tool so I can see it there as well. And in the left of you are Zuma tourism or so I can see the entire floor and then maybe bring that down towards here, right? So I'll be making use of all these different use to control what happens in active camera. So let me go to my selection tool and I'll select the camera here, in fact, to make life easier. Now I can go and look old other lives except the camera. So let me just go and collapse these first and then I can select them all. So from here, including the light actually all the way down to the base, including the floor, I'll then look them so I can't even select them by mistake. So that's a useful thing to do when you're working in three D. Let's go back up. I can now click on the camera to select it. I can. Then from the left, you push the camera back and you see, as I do this the views old update at the same time. And I want the camera to point down into that first. So I'm gonna go and rotate the cameras head down. So let me go to the camera, open this up and you see, we had to transform controls just like any other layer and inside that we had the rotation off the camera so we would not be animating the exploitation of the camera. And I know this because if I look at the custom view X is this arrow here and I want the camera to rotate around the narrow so I'm gonna go to X rotation on, May be rotated down less of it like that and I'm gonna lift the camera all the way up. So I'm just gonna get my selection tool again. And then if the camera up, By the way, if you rotate an object in three D space, let me just exaggerate this so we can see what's happening if I rotate the object like this in three D space. And if your arrows are pointing up and down, left and right backwards and forwards, that's because you probably have this button turned on. So this is local access. You see now that arrows are also rotated. What if I click on this one? The world access mold. It ignores the rotation of the objects and just shows us up, down left, right and backwards and forwards. I'm just lift this up a little bit more. Now let's say I just want the camera to fly through as the text animation takes place. Let me go back to the beginning, and I'm gonna go to the cameras position on our key frame. It's then I'm gonna go forward to about 2.5 seconds, and they'll just push the camera in on the left for you and then maybe bring it down so it parks just in front of this word. Digital me. So you just bring it down and then we refer to towards left like that's I can now see that the motion path is being created for the camera. If I now go and play this back, you see that the camera will be flying through as the text animation takes place. Let me set this to be Easy's. I'll select the key frames and then press F nine and then I'll go back. And if I played us again, you see what's happening there. Now that you've got this animation, we can make use off these handles here in the motion path and then create a curve on the cameras path. For example, if I go back and forth until the camera goes past these points by then, go and click on these handles. I can make the camera fuller curve rather than a straight line uncle. My complaint issues, you know that the camera's gonna full of that curve exactly. If you want to see what's happening to the camera in these users, well, the left custom in the top views instead of playing it, you can just click and drag on your player like this, and this updates all views at the same time, whereas if you just go and play it, it only plays active camera. Let's see. Eventually, I want the camera to be lower down. So I'm just gonna go to this key frame here with the shift key on, then select the camera. I cannot push this further down. You can see it's just in front of that layer there so that we zoom in to see what's happening closely there. So if I push the camera further down, the world with is going to appear as well, actually, so that's covering the active camera. Now I'm gonna push this back up and then maybe moving towards here, it's a bit and then I'll move it down, and now I actually want to rotate the cameras head as well. It's still pointing towards the floor So what I'm gonna do is to go back to the beginning Key frame, the X orientation, not press K to jump to the next key frame will then set X orientation back to be higher like that. So it rotates up as well. I'm gonna push this back. It's a more like that. So they were digital Me is fully visible by the time you reach the second key frame. So let's play this again. And of course, I can add an easiest to these as well. So I can select these two and then press F nine. So these now have the easiest applied as well not go plate one last time. But the problem now, of course, is that we're missing the animation for the text layers here. If I played again, have a look how we miss these animations. I'm gonna go back and make the camera start animating a little bit later, I'll move these key frames towards right a little bit so that we give the animation a bit more time to start playing before the cameras starts flying. Final grand plate is you see that the first layer learn comes up and then the second layer comes up and at this stage the camera starts flying and then we see the world with and then eventually jumps onto the world. Digital me and it stays there. We're not going play the real time. Have a look. Now that I'm playing this back, I don't actually like out. The camera stays there for a while without doing anything. So I just pushed these back, and instead of starting it late, I'll slow it down. So I just like these two key frames and then separate them. So the camera's gonna start animating, but much more slowly now, maybe a little more, but not play. This starts flying right away, and then it lends onto the world. Digital me. I cannot switch back to my one view on set this view to read the active camera And why not go and play it back? This is what we should have. No. So obviously the first word perfectly and aftereffects perfectly on the word with. And then finally the word digital me comes up on. By that time the camera's going past other layers and now we're landing on the world. Digital me on. That's looking perfect. And of course, because the cameras landing just behind the world with we can see the shadows off it. It doesn't actually bother me too much. So I'm gonna leave. This actually looks pretty. I'm gonna leave this alone. But if it's annoying for you, what you can do is to go to the end of the layer and then trapped end. So when the camera lens there, it's no longer visible. 54. Two-node Cameras: the second type of camera. An after effect is called the tunneled camera. It's great to play this scene to see what we have. So there are no cameras in this scene. So we're just seeing this from the active camera. Let me just go and critic camera quickly. So if I go layer new camera instead of a one load camera, let's have a look at what the two north camera does. I'm just gonna go turn us into two nodes and then press OK on the face off it. It looks identical. It just creates a camera on our focal length has changed. That's why the little jump was there in the first place. But if I now go and open the camera inside to transform controls, I now have this new thing called point off interest. Now, what this is is if I switch my view to the four views and then you change my active camera here on the top, right to talk to you on this. Is that the left? That's great on this is custom view. If you look at the left of you actually, as well as having position in this case that say the Y position. We also have this anchor point off the camera that's called the point of interest. This is where the camera is looking at all the type. For example, if I move the camera up and down, you see that the camera's position is changing. Also the position off. The point of interest is changing, and you can see that's what's happening here as well as I lift this up and down. The two values are changing at the same time. But if I change the position of the camera here rather than clicking on the Eros here, if I click on these buttons here and then more the numbers around you see the camera is not ducking down, but it still is looking up to the point of interest. But I can did opposites. I can move the point of interest, This point here, on top of the words after effects here on, regardless of by the camera moves after that point, it will always be pointing at the words after effects. So if I now go and click and then drags manually down towards here and instead of moving the camera with these arrows because remember that will move the point of interest as well . If I know, just go and move the position of the camera manually by using the values here. You see the camera is rotating around, but it's always looking at the words after effects in the center. If I lift a camera up, you see the words aftereffects are always in the center. I can push the camera back on the set space as that's happening on, because we're not changing the position off the points of interest. The camera is always looking at that point. I cannot send the camera all the way across on the set. Plain hell, Look what happens now. So if I go to the position, said can push the stores right. You see after fix is always in the center off my view, and it switches there. But after six days in the center of the view, and that's exactly what point of interest us, it lets you set one point in space so that the camera can always look at that point. And of course, that point itself can be animated. So, for example, if I want the camera to stay static but I want this point of interest to start moving. So the head of the camera well full of that point of interest, that's very easy to do. I can go and keeping the points of interest and then just animate it. Zed position. Let's say like that And you see now the point of interest is changing to go on top of the word digital me, and that's exactly where the cameras pointing at now to the world Digital me. 55. Depth of Field: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at how the depth of field works in after effects. Depth of field in real life is the field in which the objects appear to be in focus and this phenomenon can be recreated in after fixed quite easily. Now, in order to activate depth of field, you need to first ever camera. That's exactly what I created here. I created a normal one lord camera, and in order to activate the depth of field only need to do is tow either double click on the camera that will take you back into the settings off the camera. And there's a button here that says Enable depth of Field. Or I can cancel this and then go inside the camera by clicking on this triangle and then go to camera options. And there's the same option here. Depth of field. It's turned off now, so let me go and turn us on A soon as we do this. What's gonna happen is that aftereffects is going to create one more line here. This is the end of the camera can see, and we can't see that line because the two lines are on top of each other. But that line is now called the Focus Distance, and I can change it from here if I click and drag us around, You said, the second line starts separating itself from the rest, and this is the plane that the camera is going to focus on. For example, if I want my camera to focus on the words with which is this one, I can increase the focus distance until this plane here lines up with the word with. So let me just go an increased use a little more here. So now that this plane lines up with the word with, I can now go and tweak the settings here for the aperture on the lower level in a real camera aperture is the system inside the lens that controls how much light is received by the film or the chip. It's basically a hole inside of ends, and the wider, the whole, the blurrier the results will be. So if I just go in increased aperture here, the scene is gonna get blurrier and blurrier and blurrier. You start seeing now that the word here learn is blurrier than the rest, and I can keep increasing this. And if this is not quite enough, I can then come down to here where it says blur level and increased this as well. And you see, this will make the things that were already blurry, even more Billary. You see, only the word with is in focus. And if I move my focus distance, let's say on top of the words after effects here so I can go to focus distance and then drag it left with the shift key. So it goes faster. Now the focus is on the words after effects and everything else inactive camera appears to be blurry. Now, instead of animating the focus distance, I can animate the position of the camera. So if I go up a little bit here and then select the camera transform positions said I could not push this in and out, you see, as I pushed us towards left. So the camera goes back in the set space. You're just going to more. Maybe the focus distance eventually is going to fall on this word learn. And if I animate this, I can keep you in the position. Of course, I can push this towards rights. You see, the words after effects are gonna be focused. Now I can wait that for a bit, and then maybe key frame again to make the world with get him focused on old while I'm checking this plane because this is the plane that's going to be in focus. Just bring this towards here. It's a bit. And then eventually I can keep pushing this on the said until we get onto the word digital me like that. The focus now is on the world of digital me only, and everything else is you can see here he's gonna get blurry. Let's go and actually animate this. Let me go back to the beginning Now push the camera back as well, like that's and I'm just gonna move here as well so we can see what's happening. It's a better let's see when this happened. So the word learn comes up first and I want the camera to be focused on that already. So I'm gonna go to my focus distance. I'm just sent this to be on the world. Learn there on. That's just allowed that word to pop up once that word pops up. Ongoing animate the position off the camera. I'll then go forward when the word aftereffects pops up. Then push the camera in towards after effects and you see now these are the words that are in focus and learn is out of focus. Let me just play this. So at this point, the word learn is sharp. Then after fix, get sharp and then I'll move forward on weight forward with to come up and I'll move this this way. And then I was pushed this further towards left. So the focal plane is now on the world with on Don't go forward again when the word digital me comes up, Then push this one towards after this a bit more and then just pushed us towards left. Even more so. The focus is now on digital. So if you know, play this, let's see what happens. And animation, I think a little bit too abrupt. So I select all these key frames and then press after nine that Christie Easy's learning goes blurry and aftereffects get sharp. Then that goes blurry and the world with that sharp on, then network go blurry and eventually the word digital me. He's gonna get sharp or in focus, I should say on That's looking great. But the final thing I want to do is to actually is room into the world of digital me when the camera is at its final position. So let me just go in the select, these key frames, and then I'll collapse. The cameras transform, sittings. I'll then go to zoom. So a key frame this records the value here, and I'll then pushed us towards left. And then I'm gonna go in assuming it's a bit more. You see, it's doing this without changing the focal length. So the focal plane is still staying here. I'm just coming in. I don't just go into more, and I'll move both of these key frames towards left so that the Slaski frame lines up with the last key frame of the cameras position. Yeah, and if I play this again, you see that the camera's gonna start zooming in from this point until this point on, This last point is when the camera stops anyway. So we should be lending on the perfect frame. So let's play this. There we go. Finally, also like these two key frames and press F nine to make them easy's as well. Let's play again. And as a final touch, I'll just go and lower the light down. So we have longer shadows, and that will be the last thing that will do for to see. So let me just zoom out until I see the lights lights here. I can't selected not because it's locked. So let me just collapsed the camera, unlock delight and then selected and then drag it down. And now I can see the longer shadows here. And finally, I'll just go and double click on the lights and then increase the shadow diffusion from zero to something higher. Let's say like 203 100 so that the shadow is softer around the bar here. Just know that this is going to take a lot longer to rent their than it would do without the shadow diffusion. So I'm gonna go eat okay and then go back to the beginning and then play it and you see, this is taking much longer now than it did before. But with the help of Vector Field, together with the diffuse shadows, it's looking much better 56. Switching Cameras: in this. Listen, we'll have a look at how to switch cameras halfway through the animation. Let's say, for example, we have a single camera here, and I'm gonna animate the position of this very simply now. So the press p keeping the position and then go to about a second and health and then lift a camera up on the Y axis and then maybe push this in intimate as well towards the said and will actually allow the word with to finalize its movement as well. So I'm just gonna do this a bit more time. Let's say around about here maybe a bit more there. And as the world digitally comes up, I want to switch to a different camera. Now all we have to do for this is to create a new camera and make that new camera start from this point, and that's done in one or two ways. You either go and literally creating new camera by going to layer new camera, and you can choose your settings here and then press OK, and then you need to ensure that this camera starts right to play. This. This is always switch between cameras, so it goes from this camera to the new camera that we just created, which is static. So I can select this camera and then maybe move this towards the world, digital me towards the end, and then we lift this up a little bit and then back a little. So at this point, you see that the cameras will change. So if I know going play this you see, that uses my first camera until here and then at that point, it just switches. And of course, I can select this camera and animated as well, like it crispy and then key. Frame its position. Maybe more this key frame towards the beginning of this and then go forward and then maybe lift this one up and then back maybe. And then maybe we commit. It's a little slower. And if I go back to the beginning and previewed this again, you see, initially I played the first camera, and at this point, just after two seconds, I switched to the second camera. No, I said there were two ways of doing this. And this is the first way. The second way is this. If I select and delete my new camera. I can just go to my only camera here and selected so we can go to edit at the top and we can split a layer. This is the shortcut shift command and the really useful shortcut. Remember what this does is it splits the layer at this time and it just continues as it does normally. But I now have two layers. I can now select this camera, which is a totally new camera you can see here. It's called Camera. True. I can push this one towards here on may be down and it creates its motion path because the position of this is also animated from the previous position. I can press p to reveal its position and then just get rid of these key frames. If I play this one back, Nam, you see, used the first camera until about here just after two seconds. Then it switches to the second camera. I can go back to the beginning of the second camera with the shift key. So it snaps. I can maybe key frame this and then go forward and then pushed us down and then maybe forward as well that gets closer to the world of Digital me, and that's where it stops. So let's play from the beginning to see what this looks like. Switching cameras in after effects is very easy, and it can be very useful and effective for all you storytellers. 57. CLASS PROJECT - 3D ROOM: Now you know everything about the 3D Tools in aftereffects, your task is to go an animator camera inside this room. So I've prepared this 3D room by using some solids, as you can see here. And now kids some text elements here. This is a famous quote by Samuel Beckett. So it says ever tried, ever failed, no matter, try again, fail again, fail better. So to create this layout, what I've done was to create 2D Text layers and then just separated them in 3D space. So there is some gap between them. And your task now is to take the scene and converted into something that looks like this. So I'll play this for you. It's, it's ever tried, ever failed. No matter, try again, fail again. Fail better. By Samuel Beckett. So as you can see here, I have a camera flying. And as the camera flies, the text actually flips up in line with the camera. There's some shadows on the floor, which means there is a light as well. And you can also see some motion blur as the text elements flip up. So go ahead and experiment with some 3D animation using cameras and lights. 58. Working With Cinema 4D Lite Through After Effects: As you have seen, you can create some interesting and impressive animations in 3D space using After Effects. But really, if you want to take your 3d skills to the next level, you should be looking at what's called CMR 4D. Cinema 4D is a specialist 3D application. It allows you to create animations, 3D modelling, renders, lighting, and all sorts of different things in 3D. It used widely in the industry all around the world by professionals. Now luckily for us, aftereffects has joined forces with cinema 4D and now included in your credit card subscription to After Effects, you have access to what's called the cinema 4D lights. So it's not the full version of Cinema 4D, but it's got most of the features that you'll need as an aftereffects user. Let me show you how it can access Cinema 4D light through aftereffects. So first you had to go to the File menu, come down to New. And then here you'll be able to create a Maxon Cinema 4D file. And I click on this. It will ask me to save this file. Let me just go and rename this to be 3D. And then I'll go and hit save. Now that's going to create a file, a cinema 40 file called 3D. And it's going to launch it Cinema 4D light through aftereffects. For this, it's going to need you to confirm your license with cinema 4D. So here I'm gonna go and hit OK. And that should launch cinema 40. Now, because I had a full version of Cinema 4D, it's launching the full version instead of the light version. But if you don't have the full version, instead of seeing what I'm seeing here, you're gonna see the light version of Cinema 4D, which for most of the part looks almost identical to what I'm seeing here. You may need to go through some registration process. If you haven't created an account with them, it's completely free. So go ahead, create an account which is free with Macs on botnets, which will allow you to cinema 4D light for as long as you have access to After Effects. In the next lesson, I'll introduce you to the interface and some basic concepts of working in cinema 4D. 59. Introduction to Cinema 4D's Interface: As soon as we start Cinema 4D, you'll see a welcome screen. Let's first come out of this by hitting this button. And that will take us straight into Cinema 4D where we can actually start working. Let me first give you a quick introduction to the interface of Cinema 4D so that you'll be able to work with it much faster and more effectively. Right in the middle here, this large area is called the viewports. You can think of the viewport almost like the competition panel in aftereffects. So this is where you see all your work. You create the object here, you add the lights, you see the result of your animations. This is your canvas or the equivalent of a composition panel in After Effects. On the right-hand side, you have these managers in After Effects. These are called Panels. Let say you had the objects panel, takes panel and so on. In cinema, These are called managers. Know objects manager will show you every single object you have in this scene. This is quite similar to your latest panel in After Effects. So if you want to create some texts, the texts will first have to go here before we can actually use it inside the projects. The same applies to things like cameras, lights, any kind of objects. And down here you had attributes panel or in cinemas language, it's the attributes manager. The attribute manager will show you the properties of whatever you have highlighted. Right now, because I didn't click anywhere. It shows me the attributes or the settings of the project. You can think of this almost like the competition settings in aftereffects. This is where you set things like your composition duration, your frame rate's default colors, units, and so on. If I go and click on something, let's say if I come up here and click on one of these buttons, you see the settings here will update. And on lobby seeing the attributes or the settings of the tool I've highlighted. If I go to a different tool, I now see the settings of that. If I have an object in the scene, let me just go and create one. And I'll talk about this in detail later, but quickly let me just go and create one here. I now see the settings of that object. I've just created an unloaded by pressing commands ed. To go back to the settings of the project, the shortcut on the keyboard is Command D for default. And you press Command Z or Control D on PC. This will show you the default settings of the project. This is like going to a competition settings in After Effects. The longer way of course would be to go to edit and then come down to Project Settings here. And then down here you have your timeline. And then timeline controls the timeline, very similar to the timeline aftereffects. And we'll show you where you are in time. And you have a player, you can push this back and forth to seed animations. And then these areas here, this section. And these will control how the timeline behaves or how you interact with the timeline. This is very great. Things are keyframes. You advanced forward by one frame, got at the beginning of the animation and so on. Down here, you have your materials manager. This is where you create materials and change the appearance of objects. Let's say you create a bottle due on the bottle to the plastic, glass, shiny, Matt. All of those properties are controlled inside the materials that you create here. Next to the materials manager, you had the coordinates manager here. The coordinates manager know surely three properties, position, scale, and rotation. Up at the top, we have the toolbar. This is where we find most of the tools that you'll need to create objects and manipulate them. In cinema 4D. And on the left-hand side, you have what are called modes. So it's not enough to select, let's say for example, the scale tool here. You select the scale tool and then you had to tell cinema what it is that you want to scale in aftereffects. This would be simple. You just go and select the layer and then you scale the layer up or down. In cinema 4D, you'll have to select the scale tool and also select the thing that you want to scale. Is it the texture that you want to scale? Is it a polygon you want to scale? Is it an edge you want to scale? Is it the entire model that you want to scale? So it's not enough just to select a tool up at the top here. You'll also need to select the mode in which the tool will work. We'll see this in more detail as you progress through the rest of this chapter. But hopefully this lesson gave you a quick introduction to the interface of Cinema 4D. In the next lessons, we'll have a look at how to navigate inside us viewports. 60. Navigating in Cinema 4D: In order to navigate inside of Cinema 4D, you'll be using the 123 keys on the keyboard. Here's what I mean. If I hold down one and then left-click and drag, this is how you pan around the scene. If you hold on to and then left-click and drag the xi0, zoom in and out. If you will learn three and click and drag. This is how we orbit around the scene. These are very similar to the 3D Tools in After Effects. In cinema 40. You can also utilize your right-click. If I'll a number three and right-click and drag, I can start tilting net of the camera. If I hold on number two and right-click and drag, I am now zooming in rather than pushing the camera in or zooming out, rather than pulling the camera out. There is a difference between zooming in and pushing the camera in. Zooming in changes the actual focal length of the camera. Whereas pushing the cameron physically pushes or moves the camera in closer to the objects. There's a really cool feature or a shortcut, I should say in cinema 4D as well. That is, you'll remember from aftereffects and some other applications, then you press Command or Control said, that takes you back by one step. For example, if I just go and create an object here, let's say a cube. And if I now change my mind, I just press command Zed, that will take the cube out. However, if I press Command Shift zed or control shifts at on PC, this will undo the perspective change that you made it to the camera. So if I press Command, shifts that again, they'll go back one more step to redo. You'd normally press command y, that would bring our COO back. But to redo the perspective change, I would press Command Shift Y. That will take our perspective back, or in this case, forwards to where it was before. So a Command Shift zed to undo the perspective change, and then Command Shift Y to redo it. Regardless of how much you change your perspective. If you want to go back to the default view, you can come up here to where it says View and then come down towards his frame default. And that will take you back to the first default view of the camera. When you have objects in the scene, the two and the three keys will behave a little differently. Here's what I mean. If I go and get rid of this cube by pressing command said, if I now hold down three anywhere on the screen and then click and drag, you see it's using the center of my view as the pivot point. So it's always kind of looking around based around this anchor point that I see in the middle of the screen. However, if I bring the cube back by pressing command y, now if I move my cursor onto the cube, let say here near the top left corner. Then press three, and then click and drag. The cursor, or the cross crosshair is now created just on the point I clicked on. And that becomes the pivot point for my camera. Saying that the true key as well, if I hold on to, let's say more to the right hand side and then click and drag. You see now it's going to zoom in to wherever I click, or zoom out from wherever I click. Again, if I hold down three and click somewhere here, it leaves the bottom edge of this cube to spin from. Whereas if I click off to objects, is going to use the center of my current view to rotate around from. So when you're navigating in cinema 4D is quite crucial that you move your mouse around the thing or the objects that you want to rotate. And then you hold down three and click and drag. And same in the two key as well. So you hold onto clicks a here and then push in, and then push out. At any point, if you want to go back to the default view, you go to view and frame defaults. 61. Working with Parametric Objects: In this lesson, we'll have a look at what are called parametric or primitive objects in cinema 4D. Anytime you see a blue object like this cube, or if I click and hold down on this cube, there's gonna be more. These are all called parametric objects because they all have different parameters that you can tweak. Now let's start with a simple one like the cube. So we can go through the settings of it. You see as soon as you create an object, it will appear inside this object's Manager. And here you have some settings. If I go and select the Cube and come down to the bottom to the attributes manager. I'll start from the basic tab, and I'll start with the name. If I go to the name and changes from a cube, let's say to a box. As soon as I press enter or tab, you see now the name year updates as well. Similarly, I can double-click on the name here and change this back to, let's say a cube and enter. And now the name year updates as well. So the two are linked to each other. Next, we have layers which I'm not gonna get into in this lesson. And then we had the visibility options. There are two visibility options. You can make the object visible or invisible inside the editor, which is what we are working with right now. This is the editor. Or it can make it visible or invisible inside the renderer, which is eventually what you'll end up exporting from cinema 4D. Now in order to get to the renderer, all you have to do is to press Command or Control on PC followed by r. So if I do command R, that will get rid of all the information that we don't actually want or need to see, like the grid, the arrows and the rest of it. And it will only leave us with the actual polygons are objects that we are going to see in the final render. To come out of this mode, you go and click anywhere on the screen, or you press the letter a on the keyboard, that will redraw the scene and take it back. At any point, if you want to see what this will look like, you press command R to come back out. You press a or click somewhere else. I'm gonna go and select the Cube again. Now, you can make an object visible in the editor. And by default, it is going to be visible. But I can now go and changes from default to, let's say off. And now it's invisible in this view. There's also this option which for most part is going to do the same thing as default. There is a slight difference between on and default, but that's only going to be relevant when you're working with more complex objects and hierarchies. For most part, as far as we are concerned, we can think of default as the same thing as on. Now CSR as i changes to on, this color here, up at the top, turns green. Green means on. If I actually click back on this color, that will turn red. Means off. If I click again, that will turn gray, which is default. The top plot here is for divisibility in the editor. The bottom one is the visibility in the Renderer. Now let's see the difference. If I go and make the top one in miserable by clicking on this twice or changing this option to off, the object will disappear from here. But when I press command R or control are on PC to render this, it is going to be visible. So it's only hiding an object from this view so that it doesn't get in the way while you're working. Imagine, for example, you're modelling a house in 3D. You might want to hide the outer walls so they don't get in the way while you're modelling. But of course, when you do the final render, you do want the walls to be visible. So this is one example where you can use that. Alternatively, I can go and make this visible here in this editor, but then make it invisible in the renderer by clicking on this dot twice. And if I now render this, although I'm seeing this here, when I render by pressing commander, it's going to be invisible here in the final render. This you can think of almost like a guide layer in after-effects or Illustrator or Photoshop. So you're only seeing this while editing, but it's invisible, then you do the final render. So for example, in this case, I could use this cube to align other objects tool. And then I can just turn the cube off in the final render. And now it's only going to be there as a guide if you want to update both of these together. So we want the object to be visible or invisible boating this view. And in the render a view. You can come up here, Holden Alt or Option on the Mac, and then click once on one of these dots. And then the next time you click, both of them will update at the same time. So that's ALT and clicking if you want to change them at the same time. Next up, we have this checkmark here. This checkmark is the same as this enabled Watson. If I turn this off, you see this will turn into a red cross. This means the object is disabled, meaning that it doesn't exist. As far as cinema is concerned, the object doesn't exist. There is a difference between making an object invisible and disabling it. For example, you could create a floor that's invisible. And you can still get some objects to bounce off that floor and interact with it. However, if you make the floor disabled, things will just go through it. Or imagine modelling something like a water bottle. You could make the water bottle itself invisible, but still enabled, which will allow you to feel the water bottle with water and the water will be held in place. However, if you make the water bottle disabled, then the water will just go through it. So that's the difference between making something invisible and disabled. So I'm going to enable this again so I can see it. And just above the enabled option here, there's this display color. Display color is going to be set to off by default. And in that case, it's going to display this light gray color for most of the objects. If I change this from off to on, I can now do this in a color I like by clicking on this color swatch. And now I can pick the hue, saturation and the value of the brightness. If I press OK, that will change the color of the object here, as well as in the final render. I should warn you though, this isn't a material that you're applying to an object. You can think of this more like a Layer Color in after-effects or Illustrator saw the display color is really only going to be useful to keep things organized when you start working with more complex scenes. For example, you can say every time there's a pink objects, I know that's going to be a chair. Every time there's a green objects. I know that's going to be some texts. Every time there's a red object That's going to have something to do with their lights and so on. So you use these colors on the organization and not for the actual look and the feel of the objects. The last option here is x-ray. This is going to make the object translucent so I can see through it while I'm working in this editor view. However, in the final render, the object is still going to be fully opaque. If I've got press command R, I'll see that the final render still displays the object as a fully opaque objects. And that is the basic tab of every single object in a nutshell. If I go and create a different object like let's say a figure, this is going to have exactly the same settings under the basic tab as the cube. If I create, let's say a pyramid. This is also going to have exactly the same settings as d cube. So the basic tab will show you the same options and settings for every single object you create in cinema 4D. 62. Move, Scale, Rotate Tools in C4D: Now let's have a look at what's inside the coordinate stab, the second tab of the objects. First, let me go and delete the pyramid and the figure. So I'm going to select it, press Delete on the keyboard, and same with the figure, select and delete. So I can then highlight the cube. And then first, I'll make this a non x-ray objects so I don't see through it. And then I'll go up to the coordinates tab here. Now the coordinates tab will show us three properties, the position, scale, and rotation. The first three numbers here are going to represent position. You have scale and rotation here. Let's start with the position. You'll notice by default that the position is measured in centimeters. And you're not seeing any pixels like you're familiar with, say, from aftereffects. In cinema 4D, pixels are only relevant when you start exporting something. Until then, you'll be working with centimeters by default. Now the exposition, just like in After Effects, is the left-hand right position. So it's left and right that way. Then you had a Y which is up and down. And then the Zed, which is backwards and forwards. And these are color-coded as well. So x is always going to be read, y is always going to be green, and zed is always going to be blue. If you want to update these values, all the way to do is to either go and type in a value. Let's say, for example, if I want this to go towards right in this direction, that will be a positive x-direction. I will just go and update this to, let's say 250. And if I press Enter, you see the object will move right by 250 units. If I go minus 250, that will move in opposite direction. If I want to move the object up and down, I can go to Y and do the same thing that say 150 or minus 150. And then the same can be done for dessert as well. An alternative way of changing these numbers is by using these arrows here on the right-hand side. So if I want this object to go back in the Z space towards this blue arrow here. I can just go and hit this up arrow next to the zed. And every time I do this, the zed position updates by one unit at a time. If I click the down arrow, that decreases the value by one. If I hold down shift and click on, that will do it by ten units. Or if I just click and hold it down, that's just going to continuously update this. One other alternative is to click and drag on these arrows up and down. So if I click on these arrows and drag up and down, I'll be able to push the wire up and down or increase or decrease it by going like that. If you want to reset the values back to their defaults, all we need to do is to go and right-click on these arrows here. So if I go right-click, right-click, and right-click and set all of them to 0. Now, an alternative way of changing the position of the objects is by using the Move tool at the top, which will reveal these arrows on the object. And then if you move your mouse onto one of these arrows, let say the X1 or the red one, and it gets highlighted. I can now click and drag, and this will limit the motion on it to be on the left and right. You see, even if I try and drag this up or down, it's only going left and right because I clicked on the red arrow. If I click on the green one, is we'll just go up and down. If I click on the blue one, is we'll just go backwards and forwards. And you almost always want to do this inside this perspective view. You don't want to click and drag randomly on the object like this. Because now you have no idea where the object is going. It looks like if I move this up, it's just going up. But if I fly around, you see it's actually went back and also to the left a little bit. Whereas if I go to a higher angle, let's say like that. And if I click and drag is up, it looks like that's just going up. But if I look at it from a different angle, you see I actually pushed it far back in the zed space as well. I'm going to go and reset this again by selecting the cube and then right-clicking on the x. Why? And is that I'm also going to go and reframe this by flying around like that. And that's position. Next we have scale. In particular, you have the x scale, the stretching factor on the left and right axis, the y scale up and down axis, and the zed scale, the back-and-forth axis. So if I want this object to be stretched sideways, I'd go to x scale and increase this. If I want to squash it or decreases. Similarly, if I stretch the y up, it gets elongated that way. If I squash it, it gets shorter. Like that. I can also expand or shrink the zed my bats. Or here. You may be asking yourself, what are these numbers? What does it mean when it says one or 1.6 and so on. Now let me show you, let me first reset these to their defaults by right-clicking, right-clicking, and right-clicking. This number one here is the scale factor, which is basically like a multiplication factor to the size of the objects. If I actually go to the object tab, which will spend more time in the next lesson. You should decide here is set to 200 by 200 by 200. If I go to coordinates, this X is whether or not you multiply this x the size with a number. So if I go to coordinates and if I set this to, let's say true. This is as if the size x here multiplied by two. So the resulting size is going to be 400. In fact, if you look at the size tab here on the coordinates manager, you'll be able to see that the final size is 400. As this one always shows you the final size of the objects you've selected. So I'm gonna go to coordinates and I'll set this back to one. So if you want to be quite precise with the size of an object, you would actually do it inside the object tab. And not the scale here, which is inside the coordinates. There is also a tool which will allow you to resize an object, and that is this tool here called scale tool. If I click, you see as soon as I click on that, these arrows on the objects will be replaced with cubes. And if I click and drag anywhere outside those like that, the cube we'll scale up proportionally. Or if I push it towards left, it will scale down proportionally. Because as far as Cinema 4D is concerned, this object is a cube. It won't let you squash and stretch to object on the scale. So I won't be able to click on the green one and then push it down. You see this still does a uniform scale and same with the red one here as well. This will still do a uniform scale. There is a way to override this, but by default, the cube will want to stay or remain as a cube regardless of what you do to it. Also, if you can see these yellow dots here, this and this, these are used to change the object properties of the cube. And you can, using these yellow dots changes size by clicking and dragging. And I'll explain what these yellow dots actually do in the next lesson. But for now, just know that if you click and drag this, you can change the size of an object, but not the scale. And finally, we have the rotation. If I select the Cube again and here than just scroll to the right by clicking and dragging is left. You have rotation H for heading, then rotation P for pitch, and rotation B for banking. Heading is the rotation that happens around the y, the green axis. So if I go and increase the heading, using object will start rotating around the y axis like this. If I change the pitch, is object will start rotating around the x-axis like that. So if I go and increase this, lets the pitch. And finally, the banking is going to get the object to rotate around the blue arrow here. If I go and increase the banking or decreases. So just rotated that way. So you can think of these like aftereffects, y rotation for the heading, x rotation for the pitch, and the Zed notation for banking. So instead of having x, y zed rotations, we have y, x, z rotations in 3D. If this is a little confusing for you, and you want to be able to work with the rotation values from aftereffects, you can change the order here from HPV heading, pitch, and banking to XYZ, Like you're familiar with in aftereffects. However, if you are going to cinema 4D, our Giacomo, and you might as well get used to using this default HPV, because this is going to be quite standard with any other 3D software that you might come across in the future. An alternative way of updating the rotation values is by using the rotate tool at the top. And as soon as I select this, you see those cubes will disappear and be replaced with the rotation bands. Now, again, if I don't want to randomly rotate this object, which I almost never do. I shouldn't click in the center here and then just freely rotate like this. I should be more precise by moving my mouse onto these rotation bands, waiting for them to get highlighted. Then click and drag. And this change is only that axis and nothing else. Let me just go and reset everything. And the quickest way of doing that, instead of selecting the cube and then setting all of these to 0, is to click on this PSR button for position, scale and rotation. And all three will be reset. So I'm gonna go and click and everything goes back. My Foxconn is rotation bands and drag. You see I'm only rotating on the heading. And as I do, if I hold the Shift key down, that will lock that rotation to be five degree increments. So I can easily rotate this by 90 degrees that way. And then maybe click and drag and rotated down by 45 degrees. And then will be rotated this way by 45 as well. The shortcuts for these tools that we just used, the Move Tool, Scale Tool and the rotate tool, ar e on the keyboard for the move. T4 scale. And our four rotates. In the next lesson, we'll have a look at what's inside the object tab of the objects. 63. 3D Object Properties: In this lesson, you'll have a look at what's inside the object tab. I'm going to select the Cube again and then come down to objects. And in here you see different properties for every single object. Whereas the basic and the coordinates tab will be the same for all the objects. The object tab is going to be different depending on object you create. For the cube, it gives us a couple of options, like the size I can increase or decrease it. Same with the science-y and the size zed segments, which we'll talk more about later on. And then there's this fear that option here as well. It will add some Bevel or rounding around the edges of the cube. As soon as i turned to fill it on, you see I can now turn affiliate radius up or down. And as I increase this higher, you see that the edges will start looking uglier and uglier. So they're not quite around the almost like flat here. And then flat here as well. That's to do with the subdivisions of the filter area. If I go to fill it, subdivision, increase this. And again and again. You see I'm making those rounding edges much softer. Whereas if I decrease it, they look quite rough. Let me zoom out. And if I zoom in here, you see right now because a subdivision is set to true, I only have two subdivisions here. One is that, the other one is this. If I increase this to three, I now have 123 subdivisions. So the higher this number, the smoother that result's going to be. And the segments up here are used for a similar purpose. If you only have one segment on each surface, let me zoom out and then bring it here. If you only have one segment, let's say here. Let's segment cannot be bent, twisted, or deformed in any way. So that's going to have to stay as a segment. Whereas if I increase the segments, I can then apply some effects like bending or twisting or adding some imperfections. But with a single segment, that's just not going to be possible. In order to visualize this, I'm gonna go to display and change it from the default girl shading, which is what I'm looking at right now. Two lines. Now, I'm only looking at the lines or the skeleton of the objects. If I push this here, you see this is how the object is actually built. If I now go and turn affiliate off, I now have these segments and that's all. If I increase the segments now from one to let say two, you can see I now have two segments on the x and 34 and so on. I can do the same for the y and the z. Now that we have more definition or segments or polygons on the object, we can start doing things like bending, distorting, or deforming the objects. If I want to see the lines and natural shading of the objects, I'll go to display and then choose the second option versus girl trading with lines. And now I can see my actual object, the cube and the skeleton that's used to build this cube. One more thing with object tab is that you'll see these yellow dots here. As you click and drag these dots, you're going to update a property inside the object heavier. So for the cube, this one updates the excise. This one updates the zed size. And this one, which is right now right behind this arrow, is going to update the y size. If I go and turn on the fillets. You'll now see these yellow dots. These will all Update definite radius. I can click on any of these and you'll see they'll all Update definite radius. Not the object tab, like I said earlier at the beginning of this lesson, is going to be different for every single object that you create. For example, if I click and hold down on the cube and then create a tube instead. And if I push this tube out the way, let's say here, this has very different settings than the cube. So instead of this size, we have, for example, the inner radius, the outer radius, and the height segments on the rotation segments on the heights, cap segments. So these options didn't exist for the cube, but they are quite relevant to a tube. That's why we see them. Here. The segments will actually make more sense if I go to rotation segments. And notice don't let say five, you now have yourself a pentagon. If I go down to four, Now that's a rectangle that's extruded, looking out to six to have a hexagon and so on. And now these dots, the yellow dots, will control different properties, like for example, this one who control the height. This one will control the outer radius. And this one, let me zoom into cities. This one here will control the inner radius. I can also go and create a different object, something like a Khan maybe. And then push this here. And this will have different settings than the tube. So here we have the top radius, the bottom radius, the height, and the segments where the heights or the segments for the rotation. So although the basic and the coordinates tab will show you pretty much the same properties for all of the objects you've selected. The object tab is going to be different for each individual objects. 64. Creating Custom 3D Shapes: Now let's have a look at how to draw custom shapes or splines as they're known in cinema 4D. Now next year cube, there's a little pan icon here. If I click and hold it down on the Pen icon, you see all of these options and these are all called splines. Now the blue ones here are the supplies that have parameters. For example, if I go and create, let's say a star spline. This is going to have just like a cube or the tube or the spheres. This is going to have different parameters down here that you can tweak. For example, I can go to the inner radius, increase that, decrease it. I can go to the outer radius and though the same, I can twist it. Add more points, subtract points, and so on. Just like the star, you have some other parametric splines. Let me just go and select a star and deleted by pressing backspace or Delete on the keyboard. And then I click and hold it down on this pentagon. And I have some other shapes like Helix. This will look like that coil. And again, this has different parameters. R can change the radius or the radius of the end. Start angle and angle. And I can add more height, change the bias. So it's more Curly at the top or at the bottom, and so on. I'm gonna go and select the helix and delete this as well. This is also how you create text. So if I go to the appliance here, there's a text line as you can see, if I go and create this. Of course naturally the parameters or the text spline will show you everything to do with the text editing. So if I come down here to the object tab, first, I can update the text that say I go and type in our name digit Demi. And I can just hit Tab or click outside to confirm this. I then had a different font installed on my computer. So whatever font you have installed on your computer, you'll be able to see it here. If I click and say, pick this type of graph font, I can then change the alignment to, let's say middle. Again, zoom out a little so I can see the whole thing. I can adjust the height. This is like your font size than the horizontal spacing. This is your tracking. And then the vertical spacing if you had multiple lines, let's see. If I go and type in digital HDMI training. Then I can adjust the vertical spacing as well like that. And there's this option for kerning. This will control the distance between the individual characters. So if I go and click on this shore 3D GUI, general user-interface, I'll be able to see these little dots or the gizmos here. I can click and drag left or right to adjust the distance between the individual characters like that. I'll delete the second line. And then I'll hit Tab. And I'm going to set the horizontal spacing back to 0 by right-clicking here. And then the vertical spacing back to 0 as well. And the height to which defaults to a 100 by right-clicking. Now to adjust the curling of the text properly, only to switch back to my front view, which I can do so by clicking on this button here. And now this is my front view. And from here, I can still use the two key to zoom out. I can now use these digital controllers above the letters to push them left and rights individually like this. I'll do the same for the rest as well. So I'm just going to tighten these up a little bit. Extend this m and the Y. So it looks like that. I've then got my perspective view and go full screen by clicking on this button again. One thing to keep in mind with splines in cinema 4D is that they will be 2D shapes. Meaning that if I try and render this by pressing command R or controller on PC, it's not going to give me any results. Because remember, you can only render 3D objects in cinema 4D as it's a 3D application. So in order to be able to render this, you're gonna need to turn this into a 3D shape. Or in other words, you need to convert this into some polygons. And that's what I'm going to show you in the next lesson. 65. Rendering a 3D Text Spline: Now that we have our 2D text here, let's have a look at how we can convert it into a 3D shape. Whenever you have a spline and you want to convert it into a 3D shape, you're gonna need to use what's called the generator. Now a generator is any of these green objects. And in particular, the one I'm interested in is going to be this one here called the extrude object or the extruder generator. What this does is it takes a 2D spline like this text plan we created. And it create an extrusion based on it. And that will give us some polygons we can actually render. Let me show you how that works. I'm gonna go and add an extrude here by clicking on this button. And now this is the extrude. It won't do anything by itself. So it's expecting us to give it some inputs. And you do this by dragging your spline into the exude object like this. So that the extrude now becomes the parents like an After Effects and the text becomes the child. And in that setup, the text is actually visible now and it's made out of polygons. So if I now go and press command R, I will indeed see this as a final render, which means you'll be able to change the appearance of this. It will accept lights, cast shadows, and so on. Now on the extruder object here, if I just go and click on it, you have some more settings. Down here. On the object tab, you have the offset auction, which is going to determine how far back the extrusion goals. So by default, it is a 100 centimeters. I can lower this down like that. And I'll also go and get rid of these lines that I'm seeing here by going to display and then changing my shading to garage shading. Now that will just give me the final result like this. The second option I want to show you here is the caps tab. If I go and click on the caps, now I'll be able to add some caps. Caps referred to what happens to the front side and then of course, the backside of the objects as well. So now let's come down here to access both bevels because it will control both the start and end at the same time. And I'll go to bevel shape. It's round, so it's going to be softer around here. And I'm going to increase the size and see what happens when I increase this. Then muslim more into it's clearer to see. So this is what the rounded cap will look like. You can change this from around cap to, let's say a step cap. And then here if I go and increase the size, this is what I'm getting now. And I'm getting three segments, as you can see here, the segments are set to three. If I increase this, I am more with our decreased it, let's say to two, I have two segments here. So you can create some really interesting stuff here. There's also some presets you can use. If I come down here towards his Lord presets, These are all the presets that I have in cinema that are already built in. For example, I can start with this flat and rounded one. And that's what that's going to look like. And I can just grow randomness command R. And this is the result will be getting. So just to recap, if you have a spline that you want to convert into a 3D shape which can be rendered. You're going to need to put that spline inside the generator. And in this particular example, we use the extruded generator so that you could extrude the spline backwards or forwards to create a 3D shape from it. 66. Using Cinema 4D Lights: Now that we've excluded the text in 3D, let's see how we can actually add the lights and custom shadows on the floor. Not to add a light to the scene, you need to go and click on this light object here. And if I click and hold it down, you see different light options. Let me quickly talk through what these lights are and we'll only be using one type of lights, but I will explain what these lights are. So this light here, called an Omni light, is going to be similar to a sphere that emits light in all directions. So imagine around light bulb, which emits light in all directions equally. That's what enlight here is. That we have the spotlight. The spotlight is a directional light, so it can point it at a specific object or an area. Varies. A target loads is exactly the same thing as a spotlight. But in addition to the spotlight, this has a little tag applied called the target tag. So it's like an effect you apply. So he can point the light at one specific objects. So if the object starts moving around, the target light follows it. That's what a target lighters. Then we have an area lights, which is very similar to a soft box in a studio. So this will be a diffused light source which is quite pleasant to look at. Then we have the IES light, which is like the spotlights that we talked about. But this time the light is going to have a different profile so that when it hits the surface, it can actually create these interesting shapes. Next we have an infinite lights, which you can think of like the sunlight's. So as far as this scene is concerned, the Infinite Light is going to be infinitely far away, which means that the position of the light doesn't really matter. The only thing that's going to be important then is going to be the rotation of the lights. So you can rotate the light to affect how the objects in the scene, you build it up. Then we had the sunlight, which is like the infinite lights. But with one difference, the sunlight will give us the options to use values like the specific location of the scene, time, date, and so on, so that it can actually set the light according to where you are in the world and at what time, what dates. So this would be more useful for architectural renders. So it can specify exactly what the scene will look like at any given point in time in the future. Then we had PBR light, which is the physically-based render light, which is the same thing as an area lights, but it's going to have some settings turned on as opposed to the area light having those settings turned off. So that the physically based render light is going to act a lot more like an actual physical lights. So it's going to be more accurate and very much like a real light source. Then down here, there's this lighting tool, which I'm not gonna get into now, but this will allow you to interactively add light sources to the scene. Now with that brief introduction to lights, let's go and create an area light here so we can start lighting up our text. As soon as I create the area lights, you see that the text turns almost fully black. And that's because the light and the text occupied the same space now. So I'm going to go and put the light back, lifted up. And now let me zoom out a little bit. And I fly to one side. And I'll push the light here and then increase its height a little more. And there we go. If I render this now, this is what the text looks like. So I'm now getting some variation on the shading here. Now in order to see the full effect of the light, it would be nice to have some shadows on the floor as well. Most of the lights in cinema 4D will not cost initiatives by default because they'll take some time to render. That's why they're turned off. So let's go and turn on the light settings here. If I select the lights, come down to General. And then down here too, it's a shadow. I'll change it from none to this first option here where it says Shutter maps soft. Now I'll do this. What if I render? I still won't see any shadows because there is no surface that the shadows can be cast onto. Now let's go and create a surface. And that's usually going to be a floor. Up here, we have a floor object. If I just go and create that. We now have a floor onto which we can cast our shadows. That's what it looks like now. So now we are getting these shadows. And you'll notice that I had to render in order to see these shadows. And that's going to be quite a common thing in cinema 4D. To see the final results are the senior will actually look like when you render it, you're going to need to keep pressing commander. Now a couple of things I want to point out here. The first one is that the light is actually casting this weird shadow on the floor. This is because on the area lights, it's actually shining in this direction and also in the negative z direction. So no light goes up, down, left or right. So when I render this because no light comes straight down, I'm going to end up with this line here. Now to avoid that, you can go to the details tab of the light. And I scroll all the way down. And there is an option here. It says zed direction only. If I turn this on. This now ensures that no light is shining behind this object. If I run this now, you'll only see the light going in the z direction. The second thing is that the shaded areas here, these dark areas are virtually black. So I have no detailed here whatsoever. In order to avoid this, you'd create something called the three-point light setup. That is, you'd have one light like we have here, that would be called our key light. And then another light in an opposite direction to fill in these darker areas that would be called the fill light. And then ideally one more at the back so that when I fly to the backside of this, it's not all pitch black like this. So let's go and create those additional lights. So I'm gonna fly out. And firstly, I'll go and push this light to here to decide. And I'll go a little more and then rotate this by pressing R. And then I'll rotate this on here. And then maybe by pressing E, I can pull the light back a little. And I can check what's happening from the top view as well like that. So that's where the light is now in relation to the text, which is great. And I'm gonna go and rename this to be the key lights. Now that we have our key light in here, let's go ahead and set a fill light, which is going to be in an opposite direction somewhere here. So for that, I can select the lights, copy and pasted. So edit copy. And then edit paste. Or let me undo this, my clicking on this button here. The easiest way to copy and paste the light is too selected here. Hold down the Command key or control on PC, and then drag it down. When I let go, I now have a copy of that lights. This I'll call the fill light. And if I now take the fill light, drag it towards here now in the opposite direction. And then it's R to get my Rotate tool. So I can rotate it on the green axis here by clicking here and dragging. So the light is facing the same object again, the texts. And I'll press E and I'll push it further out like that. And if I now go to my perspective view on this side, you see it's no longer pitch black. Now the purpose of this slide is to actually fill in these dark areas, not to actually lived objects, but just to make these dark areas a little lighter. So for that, I'll go to the fill lights general and lower down its intensity. Usually, the intensity of the field lights should be about a third of the intensity of the key light. So if the key is a 100%, which it is, the fill should be between 30, 40%. So if I just go and set this to, let's say 35. And my phi randomness. You see that this side is dark? Yes, but it's not black. So this is with light turned on and this is off. So before and after. And the third light, like I said, would be usually placed behind the object and that would be called a back or rim light. That would actually help us separate the object from the background. So let me just go to the top view again. And then I can actually command the drag this light to go behind like this. And then press R. And I cannot take this on the green axis again, like that towards the scene. And ie. And I can put these anywhere I like now. And then maybe lifted up a little bit and then pull it back like that. And like I said, will be called the backlight. And I would usually set the intensity of this to be even less than the field light, something like maybe 15 to 20%. So if I go to here, look at it from behind. Yes, it's very dark, but it's not just pitch black. So I still have some detail here. Now, although this next thing wouldn't be possible in real life in cinema 4D, you can specify which lights will actually cast shadows and which lights once. So I can go to my backlight. And also the fill light with the command or control click to select both of them at the same time. And I can go and turn their shadows to none. So the only type of shadow we get in this scene is the shadow that's cast or created by the key light here. So if I run this, you see I only have one line of shadow here where it's about grand tour and others on, we've got to shadow. Turns micron, you see now will have more shadows. So there's this darkening in the front, which is really diffused. And then there are these lines as well. I don't quite like this look. So I'm gonna go and turn off the shadows for the back and they fill lights. So I'll run there again. I only have one line of shadow here from the key lights. You may have also noticed some other types of shadows as always clicking on Shuttle type. So if I go to the key light, the first one we used the shadow maps soft is going to create some soft diffused shadows. And it's going to be the quickest one to render as well. The second one, the ray traced hard, is if I go render this is going to create hard shadows like this. As you can see. So there is no diffusion here. So if I fly around to a different angle, let's maybe increase the height of the light so that the shadows are shorter, just like in real life. That's what these shadows would look like. If I load a light down than if they really long shadows like this. And this will take a little longer than the shadow maps soft option. And the result you can see it looks completely different, so it's a personal preference. The last one here, the area shadows, you'll be the most realistic one in terms of how the shadows are diffused. And it will take the longest as well between the three. So if I render this, now when you have a really simple scene like this, like the one we have here, the time difference between the different types of shadows won't really be noticeable. But as soon as you start working on more complex scenes, every second that you can save is going to be important. So that's just something to keep in mind when you're working in 3D in general. 67. Using Materials: Now, in order to change the appearance of the objects, things like color, reflection, transparency will need to apply it what are called materials to them. We create a material by coming down here to this empty area called the materials manager. I mean double-click. As soon as you double-click this default material called mat is created. It's gonna rename this to be text. And then to apply this to the text, you'll just simply need to click and drag this from here on top of the text and they're gone. Now the texts will show you this material and you see the material gets applied as a tag to the extrude object here. I'll do the same for the floor. I'll go double-click and then rename this to the floor. And I will just drag this from here to the floor. Now the floor has that material, that blood as well. In order to update the appearance of these will go and double-click on these materials. Let's say we start with the floor. And now this brings up the Material Editor. The Material Editor is going to be divided into two sections. The channels on the left-hand side, and then the properties of those channels or the settings of them on the right hand side. Let me just move this out of the way so we can see what's happening. And the normal the scene towards left and it's a bit like that. And let's see, we just want to change the color of the floor. So if I go and click on the Color channel here, and on the right, you see the three color options like we saw in the basic color tab of a layer. I'm gonna go and select that, say, a green color. And then in light shade of green that say here. And then only the value of the brightness as it is at 80%. If I now render this command, R will now have a green floor. Let's say we change the color of the text as well. So I'll just come down to text, click on this one. And then just go to, let's say a blue-colored is time and then give it a bit more saturation. And then render again. And now the text is blue. This is how easy it is to change the colors of objects. But you can do more than that. If I go to the floor, let's say I want to turn on the reflection on the floor so it reflects some of the text year. So if I go to the reflectance channel, click on this so I can see the settings here. And I can add to it some reflection. So I'm going to come up here towards his ad click, and we have different options here. Now, since this is a brief introduction to our Cinema 4D works, I'm not going to get into the differences between these different options here. I have plenty of other courses for 3D If you want to check them out. But what I will do is to go and click on the first option here called Beckman. And as soon as I do this, that's going to turn the floor into a reflective floor. If I now go render this, you'll now see the text and the light reflecting off the floor. Now you see that this is a little diffused and blurry. If I don't want that, if I want this to be a perfect mirror, let's say no blurriness nor roughness year. I can come down to it as roughness law. It is all the way down to 0. And I get this landscape image here, which is going to disappear when you ran there. This is just an indication showing us that the floor is going to be reflective. It doesn't necessarily mean that the floor will reflect this image here. But when I go render this command are on nausea perfect render or perfect mirror image of the text on the floor. Now you'll notice that you've lost the greenness of the floor. Sometimes you want the color to be mixed with the reflection. Let's worry you can lower down the brightness or the strength of the reflection. So if I go to reflectance, and then on the right-hand side, there's the setting here that says global reflection brightness. You can think of this like the strength of the reflection. When load is done on mass, start introducing some of the original colors. Let's see if I go to say 25% render again. This will not be twenty-five percent reflective and seventy-five percent color. The Lord is number. The less reflection you see on the floor, the more of the original color, the green color UC, like that. Let's say we want the text to look like it's glass. Well, if I go to the text material here, come up to transparency. Turn this on. Now you see, if I zoom in. Now see that the text will look like it's glass. If I render this now. That's what that looks like. And you'll notice that this is actually taking much longer than the previous renders because that's one property of transparent channels. They take awhile to calculate. And right now you see this is completely transparent except for the shuttles that are inside the object. But forgot to transparency come onto brightness. If I lowered on the transparency brightness to, let's say 90%. It's going to show us some of the original color, which was blue for the text. So if I render this command R will now has some blue text that's transparent. For now, I'll just go and turn transparency off. And that's in a nutshell, is how you create an apply materials to objects in cinema 4D. 68. Using the Cinema 4D File in After Effects: Now that you've finalize our 3D scene, let's see how we can take it from here back to aftereffects. For that, the first thing we'll do is to go and update the render settings. And to do that, I'll come up here where we sit as Clapper board with a little cornmeal inside. This will open up our Render Settings, quite similar competition settings in aftereffects. And in here, on the left-hand side, we have the different options, which I'm not gonna cover now, but I just want to show you in the Output Settings here that can dial in the width and the height, as well as your frame rates. So I'm gonna go and set this to be 1920 by 1080, so it's full HD. And I'll come down here to the frame rate and set this to 25. Now the frame rate would only be relevant if you are animating something in cinema 4D. In this case, I haven't actually animated anything, so it won't make any difference. But it's good practice to keep the frame rate of the same between Cinema 4D and aftereffects. So if the composition of your using an aftereffects ALL have 25 frames per second. It would make sense to set this to 25 in cinema 4D as well. Now that I've done this, I'll come up and hit this x mark. And I'll do one more safe by going to File Save. And I'll switch over to aftereffects. And in After Effects will have this 3D file here. And all I need to do is to click on this and then right-click and then create a new comp from this election. Now that I've done this, I'll take the cinema 40 file into After Effects and I can actually see the result inside of aftereffects. Now this competition that will have its own settings. And I can go to competition settings here. And then you see the width and the height will match, but the frame rate actually doesn't. So I'm gonna go and set this to 25 as well, and then come down and press OK. And now the two frame rates much in case you are doing some animation. Not, you won't be able to, by default changed his view in After Effects. But if you switch auteur cinema, update your view. Let's say you go to a close up of this text here. And save again Command or Control S. And then switch back to aftereffects. And it will take a second, then update here as well. If you actually want to get rid off all of this information, that if for example, you don't want to see the grid here on the floor, and you actually want to be able to see the shadows as well. On the left-hand side here where it says Render Settings and Renderer will change it from viewport draft to current. And that will give us the final result that will actually get when we render the scene. You see that there's some transparency here. This is where the floor actually finishes. You can either go and add a background element in After Effects or in cinema 4D can add something like a sky there, which I'm not gonna cover now. Or it can simply go and turn off the transparency grid here and then change, let's say the background color from this to black. So if I go to a composition settings and then change my background color to black, and then press OK. And now that area is going to be black here. It really interesting workflow is that you can create a set-up like this 3d setup in cinema 4D, sanded to aftereffects and then create an after fixed camera to fly through the scene. You see by default here on the left it says the camera is going to be the camera that comes from cinema 4D. Now I can change this to the camera, which right now I don't have any. So let me just go and create a camera here. My going to layer new camera. I'm going to make this a one Lord camera, so it's easier to control. And I'll go and pick a wide-angle lens, let's say something like 28 mill. And then I'll press OK. Now just gives us a warning saying that the camera will only work if you have 3D layers. Now this is kind of misleading actually because this is a 3D layer, but not an aftereffects 3D layer. So this was created in cinema 4D. Anyhow, I'll go and press OK. And now that I have a camera here, I can go back to this layer. Make sure that this camera is set to calm camera and now everything is going to disappear. But if I'm gonna set this to centred com camera, that's actually going to center the scene like this. So it's easier to work with. And I can come up to my camera tools here. And just to help the speed of the render, I'll just change render from current to report draft. So it doesn't take too long to render this. And for now, I'll also come up here and click on nor textures shader. So it's much quicker. I'll not be able to use this camera tool or any other camera tools here, and then fly around using the aftereffects cameras. So if I go to the pan tool here, I'll be able to move up and down like this. I'll go to the zoom tool. I'll be able to push in and outs. And just again, the orbit tool, let me fly around like this. To toggle between these tools, if you remember, it can just press C on the keyboard. So this will toggle between these three tools. And this opens up so many possibilities. You can create some amazing scenes in cinema 4D and elements and send them from there to aftereffects and then animate a camera here, like we have learned, and then export it directly from aftereffects. And that's how you integrate real 3D into your aftereffects workflow. 69. CLASS PROJECT - CREATING A CINEMA 4D RENDER: For this assignment, you need to create a cinema 4D seen through aftereffects and add some elements. And the elements can be anything you like. In this case, I've added some texts and some rings and apply some materials for these objects. And also create a floor and make the floor a little reflective at some lights. And save this, take it back from here into aftereffects so we can then animate a camera around them. So with this task, you are allowed to create pretty much anything you like. So go ahead and flex your creative muscles and see what you can come up with. 70. Introduction to Effects: There are lots of different ways off, making your clips look different in after effects. Most of these ways will involve using effects. Now, I should warn you, effect is a huge topic, and we could spend an entire Siris on just effects. So it's gonna be impossible to explain every single effect in one chapter. But what I'll try and do is to explain to you how the basics work, and I'll show you how to apply effects and edit them and then key frame them. And I'll also show you a couple of useful effects, and hopefully you will then be able to go and explore the rest of the effects yourselves. If you like their plan effect to a clip, you got a couple of options. First, you can select the layer that you want. Apply the effective, and then you can come up to the menu here, the effective in your top. And then this is the long list off every single effect that there is enough effects. So these are all categorized into somewhat folders that makes sense. For example, if you want to apply some color correction effects, their little be listed here, so you have things like brightness and contrast. Color, balance, hue and saturation is on. Or, for example, if you want to blurry clip, you got the blue and sharpen category. So here you can apply any of these blur effects as well. Another way of applying, in effect, is by going to the effect some presets panel on the right inside. So if I go and click on this panel to reveal this, this is the exact same list as I saw in the effects menu here. But this time I'll actually be able to see all of these at the same time. So I got all the same categories here. I can click Enter all these open. You see, I can just see all of them at the same time, and I can even search for defect here. So if I know the name off the effect that I'm after, let's say, for example, we know that there's an effect called black and White. I can just go and click here, and there's search for defect black and whites, and as I start typing in, you'll see the effect will be filtered to show me the ones with the word black, and I can now see this black and white effect as well as this transition. Here. It's called Fade to Black. And if let's say, for example, I'm interested in applying this effect to the clip again, there are a couple different ways of doing this. You can either click on the name off the effect and then drag. It's on top of the clip here, or you can drag it on top of the layer here, or delayer here on the left inside. But this is a little bit fiddly, especially when you have lots of layers in timeline. So just go and drag this back to where it came from. Two cancelled application The best, and perhaps the easiest way of applying in effect to a layer is by making sure that the layer is selected and then you go and double click on the name off the effect. If I just go and simply double click here anywhere on this line, it applies the black and white effect to the selected layer, and as soon as it does that, you see that the clip will turn black on white and on the left inside instead, of the project panel. I now see the effect controls panel. If you want to be a project panel back, it's actually here. You can just go and click on this and can switch back and forth between the two battles. The effect controls panel. We'll show you the properties or the settings off the effects that you apply to the clips. In this case, the black and white effect has all these properties I can tweak. For example, if I wanted to make the Reds in it a bit brighter, I can just click on this value here and then drag it towards right. And you see, the Reds are getting a bit brighter. I can drag it left to make them darker, and I can do the same for pretty much any other color. So if I go to, let's say, greens can push this towards right or left to change the brightness off the green pixels under this controls that if you change quite a few of these and you want to take it back to how it was initially when first applied it, all the effects are gonna have this reset button. If I go and click on this that's going to resettle these properties back to their defaults . In this effect, there's also another option called tint. I can lantern its on. This is how we can create a C Peotone effect. And if I want this to be a different color, I can click on this color swatch and then pick any color I like from here. And then as soon as I press okay, the effect updates. Now, as well as seeing the effect inside Effect Controls panel here, you'll also see it inside the layer that you applied it. So if I go to this arrow before we only had transform and now we had transformed as well as effects. If I click on this, it will show me a list off effect. I applied to the clip and this is a list because we can apply more than one effect, as we will see in a second. And then under. That's I had a black and white effect now on the debt. It's exactly the same controls as we saw here, so I can either change the properties here. We can change them here as well. If I go and apply another effect. Let's say, for example, if I go and hit this cross, but in here, so it cancels the search and then you can go to blur and sharpen. And these are all the blur and sharpen effects, and you'll notice some of the effects will have a little kind of play, but on with three lines on the side next to them. These are the fast preview effects. These are the ones that will render quite quickly, so you won't have to wait as long. For example, there's an effect called the Gaussian Blur. This one here, I'll just go and double click on this. And unlike the black and white effect, the girls in blue doesn't do anything right away. So it sits here on the left inside, and it's also gonna be here as well in this list. If I scroll down, it's here. The girls Ambler, but it doesn't know anything. The black and white. If it did something, it turned a clip into like a might. The girls similar is waiting for us to have some input. So if I now go to races, blurriness on increased this. It's not gonna start changing the way the clip looks, so not old effects are gonna make the clips of different right away. Sometimes you need to go in and manually adjust them. Like in the case of this girl's Imler, The gals Imler Perfect just blurs the clip on. As this is happening, you may notice that the edges are intimate darker now than they were before. Now that's because the edges are getting blurry as well. And this is actually getting dark. It's just getting more transparent to see this. I can click on this. Transparent agreed. I'm not seeing the edges are actually transparent, not avoid this. There's a button here that says Repeat edge pixels, and this is gonna be there for most of the blur effects. If you click on, this is going to fill in these edges so the edges are no longer going to be transparent. Why not going click on this? It repeats the last pixels so that the edges are no longer transparent. Once you're blind effect, you have two options to get rid of it. You can either turn it off by clicking on this F X button, and what this is going to do is to make the effect it disappear for the time being, and I can do the same for black and white as well. So it's back to square one. Now I can turn on, let's say, just a gauzy blur effect. So it's only blurry, but not black or white, so it can switch them on a north like this. Or if you're sure that you don't want the effect, it all you can just select the effect and just press delete on the keyboard, and that will get off the effect for good. But if you do get it off the effect, just remember that it's going to get rid of all the settings you created as well. So if you aren't quite sure, it's a better idea to turn the effect off rather than deleting it. So I'm gonna press command said. Then I'll just turn its effect off and maybe turn on the Blackcomb weights 71. Keyframing Effects: If you want to change the way the effect appears over time, you can key frame. It's as long as the property has a stopwatch next to it. Like this blurriness. You can change this over time. You can key frame this and you can do this either in this panel using the Fed controls panel or you can do it in the timeline is well, in both cases, the key frames are gonna appear in the timeline anyway. But he can initiate it from the Fed controls panel or down here. Let's use both. So let's say, for example, I want the clip to be initially very blurry and then gradually goes back to being in focus . So for that, I'm gonna go on increasing blurriness amount, maybe about 50 and I'm going to repeat their pictures as well so that we don't get these transparent edges and all key famous here. And nothing seems to have happened to the layer here. But if I go impress you on the keyboard, that's going to reveal the key frame I created here. Down in my timeline, I cannot go forward to, let's say, two seconds. I cannot set the blurriness back to zero. And if I know Graham, play it, you'll see it will start blurry and then gradually it will go towards being a focus. As this is happening, we can maybe also make this fade in. So if I press shift T to reveal a pass ity as well, I can sit this one to be 0% thanki frame it's on. Go to two seconds again and then sit this back to on the person. Don't go back. I'll turn off my transparency, greed And now, as it fades in, it's going to go from blurry to sharp. So let's see. So it's very easy to set key frames for effect as well. They were pretty much the same way as any other property. 72. Colour Correcting with Lumetri Color: when it comes to color, correcting in after fix. There's one effect you really do need to know, and that is the geometric color that's going to find it here. If I go to fix and presets and just search for elementary, it's this effect. I'm talking about the geometric color, and I can click and drag this on top of the layer and then let go. That will open up the Effect Controls panel, and it would apply the geometric color effect automatically using this effect only you can create a totally different look on the clip rather than applying multiple color correction effects at the same time. So let's have a look at some of the basics. First, I'm gonna go and open up the basic correction tub. Firstly, there some presets where it says input lots, lots stands for look up table. These are something you can create outside of our graphics as well, so there's some presets for these cameras. If you used one of these cameras to shoot your clips, you can use these presets. For example, if used Inari camera, I could just pick. This applies the preset here because I haven't used a narrow camera. It looks a bit strange. So I'm just gonna go and reset this. So I skip the presets for now. Then underneath that is the white balance. Now with white balance, What you need to do is to find this spot in the clip that you know to be a neutral color in real life. In this case, I know this building was white. It was shut outdoors just before the sun set on. The white balance was off when I'm a shooting this. So I'm just going to click on this eyedropper here and then I'll go and find that spot. It could be anywhere on this building now, because I know the entire building was white. I can just go and click any around the building and right away, you see, it will set the color balance right there surely before and after views by turning the effect off and back on so you can see the difference already. And then if you want to tweet this further, you can use the temperature and the tint options, the temperature control, whether the image looks warm as you go towards right or cooler as you go towards left so it can tweet this as well. And then the tents will control her green on magenta purple. The image looks if I got a tent and drag this one towards right, you see, it looks more purple. As I go towards left. It looks more agree. So I'm gonna under that. So if the white balance was enough, you can treat this further by using these two values and then down here, where it says, Tom, you can set the exposure contrast in song. So if you want this entire thing to be a little bit brighter, you can go to exposure. Just drag this towards right and this refers to the stops on your camera. So this is one stop brighter now than it was before on increasing the contrast you make the blacks even richer and the whites even brighter. So under that, this option here highlights is going to control just the brightest areas in the image. So if I got the highlights on drag this one towards right, it makes those bright areas even brighter. As I drag this towards left, it makes the over exposed areas like the cloud areas here a little bit darker, so we get some of the details back. Shadows option does the same thing for the dark areas. I go to shadows and increase this. It makes the dark areas only a little brighter. Or, as I decreased is it makes the dark areas. Even Doctor I want to increase is a little bit. And as we're doing this, it's a good idea to turn defect off and back on to see what's happened to the clip. So this was before this is now, so it's already quite a bit of change. Then we have whites and blacks. No whites refer to the brightest areas, and blacks refer to darkest areas where it's highlights were the bright areas. Whites are the brightest areas on. The blacks are the darkest areas, so the whites and blacks are a bit more extreme than highlights and shadows. So if I go to whites and drag this one towards right, you see that the white areas, the brightest areas, are being affected. So these areas, as I drive this towards left, you see they get darker and the same applies to blacks as well. If I click on the blacks drive this one towards left. You see, the dark hair is the very dark areas. The black areas are getting even darker. I'm gonna under both of these. And then we had the reset button, which is going to reset all of these properties as opposed to resetting the entire effect. This bottom here with reset all the properties, including these that we haven't looked at this bottom is going to reset just these properties. And then we had the auto button. This auto button will just tell aftereffects to guess what the image should look like, and it will then adjust these properties accordingly. I don't usually trust these automatons in after effects, so I'll leave this alone and underneath a little button we had the saturation saturation is going to increase the vividness off the colors, or is that drags towards left. It's going to suck out the color information until the image turns black on white. One thing to keep in mind is if you increase the situation too much, you may create some weird art effects on, especially if you're clippers compressed, you'll create some strange art effects all around the image, so I'm gonna under this, then after the basic correction, you have some creative correction options as well. So if I go into all this down inside here, we have some presets again. So if I go towards his look and change from mum to one of these, that's quite a few different presets you can use on. You can just go through each one to see what they look like. These are all different film stocks. I'm gonna under this as well. You can then tweak these options manually so it can add a faded film effect. So the whole thing looks more faded again. I'm gonna press commands that toe under this and I'll skip the rest of these. I'll let you explore these yourselves. There's one last option I want to show you, though, and that's Devyn. Yet. If I go and open this up, we now have this vignette amount. I can click and drag us towards left and you see how the edges are now getting darker. So this is without the vignette. This is with the vignette can make even darker. I condemn adjust the midpoint. So whether that's a small point like that for a large point in the realm us, and then the feather, the softness. If I increase this, it's gonna be quite soft, and I decreased this. It's very sharp, as you can see, and with the feather set to zero, it can actually easy to see what's happening with the rest of these settings. If I now change the midpoint, this is what's happening. So it's making that area larger or smaller. On this round, this option changes that lips shape into a circle or back to any lips. And then the feather, of course, will soften the edges. So this is without the vignettes on. This is with the vignettes. Now, if you turn the entire effect off in the macron, we can see what's happened to it. Why not go and turn us off? This was before. This is no. It's a big difference, although you can come by multiple color effects to create a specific look that you're after , Do you met? Your color effect is so powerful on its own that you'll find that using this is just enough . In most cases, 73. Using Animation Presets and Transitions: as well as using, affecting after effects. You can also use some animation presets. Animation presets are some pre defined effects that you can use easily to make the clips look difference. For example, on this one we have a layer called London Time Last one. If I go to affects and presets, you see that the first category is animation presets. If you open this up inside of this will have multiple folders. For example, let's say you want to change the way your image looks. If I go to image and creative if I open this up, these are all the precepts that you can use. Let's say, for example, we apply the colorized gold dip, and in order to apply this again, you either had to select the clip and then double click on the name off the effect, or you simply drag their effects on top of the clip here or here. So if I let go here, you see what the colorized gold dipped us. And of course, I now can change the options here. So if I want more green, I can just go and pick a green color like that. And if I it's okay. It's just update it let me under this twice, so the effect disappears. There's another one called sepia. So if I go to colorize, apply the CPI effect here. This is what that looks like, and this one is a combination of three different effects. So there's a fill effect calculations effect on the tent effect. I'll do that as well. There's another one called Bloom Brights and Darks. This is what that looks like. And again, this is a combination of Fosler calculations on another calculations. And if I press commands that to get off this, we can multiply these effects as well. So if I apply the CPR first on top of that, I can apply the bloom, brights and darks. This is what that looks like now so it can combine these effects. I'll under that as well and again, so there's quite a few options here that you can use. There's also some options for the transitions. For example, they just go and bring a different clipping here. If I go to the project panel in the video clips, I have another clip called London Time Lapse three. So I select this on drag this just on top of this one. So this is a different Clippers. You can see. Let's say I want this top clip to start coming in around the bar here just about maybe two seconds in. I want to talk to come in so it's gonna be a transition going from the bottom clip to the top. Now, if you leave your played where you want the transition effect to start from its A in this case on the two second mark. And if I go to transitions, let's say wipes. If I scroll down, maybe in this list and then use the wedge wipe. All I have to do now is to win double click on this, and this will automatically animators Well, if I go and play this, have a look on what's happening here. I can reveal that by pressing the letter you is that the radial wipe effect is being animated on the specific transition completion property to go from 100% up here down to 0% and it started on the two second mark because that's where my play had waas. So the top layer is only coming in from the 2nd 2nd until the 3rd 2nd and then it's fully visible after that point. If I under this I can also apply the linear wipe. If I go to, let's say one second and then double click on the near wipe, it's not gonna make this clip the top clip coming at the one second mark, and it wipes on from left to right like this. Now, if I select this top clip on go to affect controls on the left, I can change the angle of this wipe I can make it go from. That's a right to left holding down the shift key like that. I can also change the feather. This is the softness off the transition there, as you can see in the middle. And if I let go and play it now you see, this is how we can wipe a clip on very easily by using a transition that's an animation presets. So, as you can see, using animation, presets can be a huge time saver when it comes to applying an animating effects 74. Blending Modes: by using layer modes or blending modes as they're known in some other applications. Like for a shop, you can combine the contents or the pixels off the layers to each other to create some amazing results. Let's see how they work in this example. I just said this footage off the wheel here. If I just go and play it, this is what it looks like. I'm gonna pose it. And on top of this, I got one layer called fireworks. I'll just go and turn us on. And this is what that looks like. Now. I don't tip off that I got a filmstrip layer which looks like this. And on top of that, I get a paper texture which looks like this, So I'm gonna turn both of these off, so I only had the fireworks left. Now, in order to access the lay amounts, you need to go and click on one of these buttons here under the word mold. If you can't see this column, you may need to come and click on this button here where it says toggle switches and moments. So I click on this, you see, by default. This is what you should be seeing this switches. But if you look back on this bottom or on the keyboard, this is F four. You'll now see the months now. Like I said, we use moments to combine layers to each other. In this case, we have this layer off the fireworks and let's say I want to get rid of the black background. My foot, Open up my capacity If I selectively your first impressed T to open up capacity if I lower this down. Yes, I'm seeing some of the clip in the background, but that's not quite what I'm after. I want to leave the top layer completely opaque except for the black parts on the black parts to disappear. Well, that's an example when you can use blending months or lay amounts. So if I go here and click on this is normal, you see that we have a ton of different Les Monts. You won't go through every single 11 by one, but I'll explain three categories here that I think will be most useful. The first category is the ad or lighten category. Basically any one of these options here from add to lighter color what will happen when you select any one of these is that the black pixels in the image will disappear and you'll be left with everything else. If I know Goto ad, you see now that the blacks are gone and I'm left with the rest of the image. If I'm not going, places here can see the fireworks of their now. So if I now go, push this back and I'll just play normally without the blacks. Now that's what the ad category does or delight in category does now, the rest off them going from ad down to lighter color. We'll do pretty much the same thing, so they'll all get of the black backgrounds or black pixels, I should say on leaving you with everything that's not black but with slightly different variations. For example, if I choose lighten, the result is a little more contrast. E If I choose. For example, instead of lighten screen, we now have an in between look, so it's between ad enlighten screen and the rest will do the same thing. Like I said. But the results are gonna be slightly different, so the blacks are gonna be gone. But the remaining pixels are gonna look a little bit different each time. If I choose, let's say color Dodge. You see the pictures look even more contrast. E on more saturated. So for now, I'll just leave this on ad and that is the lighten or the ad category. Let me just go and turn another clip here. Let's say you want to do exactly the opposite here, so why not go and play it? You see, this is what we have. So these are some filmstrips going past. Let's say in this case I want to get it off. Only the whites and I want to be left with everything that's not white, including the Greys and blacks. Well, that would be done in the dark in category here. So if I come up here to darken, you see all the white have disappeared, and I'm now left with everything that wasn't white and the rest of these inside the same category inside a dark in category from darken the darker color. Like I said, we'll do the same thing. They'll all get off the whites, but they will look slightly different every time if I just multiply. For example, this is gonna create a slightly softer result. You can see if I go back to darken, and if you take a look at the edges, they look a bit more harsh. But if I go back to multiply, they're a bit softer on the rest of these in the same category in the dark and category are gonna be doing the same thing, but with slightly different variations. So if I choose, for example, linear burn, this is gonna create a bit more contrast around the edges. Here. Look, I'll all knew this to go back to multiply on the last one I want to show you is this. If I go and turn this layer on you see, I now have a paper texture here. Let's say in this case we want to get it off all the great pixels, exactly 50% gray pixels and then be left with everything that's darker than gray and everything that's lighted angry that would be done by going to the mold of the paper texture changed from normal one of these here in the middle that start from overlay down too hard mix. These are called the contrast category, so If I now choose overlay, you see that everything that was darker than 50% gray makes the image underneath Docker and everything that was lighter than 50% gray makes the image lighter. So if I go turn this off, I'm back home on and off. You can see the difference, though the overall result looks a bit too bright. That's because most of my layer was brighter than 50% gray. So if I go back, set this back to overlay on Netto, apply an effect to it. Let's see if I go and apply brightness and contrast to this economic this gray layer a little darker by bringing the brightness down, and it will make the results barker again. So this is without the layer. This is with the layer, and the other options here, under the same category are gonna create the same result with slightly different variations each time. So if I just saw flight, for example, the effect won't be as harsh. If I go too soft light enough overlay, you see this dials defect down into it. So, as you can see by using later modes, you can combine the content off the layers together to create results which would otherwise be impossible 75. Introduction to Masks: in this lesson, we'll talk about masking. Masking in after effects is extremely important and helpful when it comes to combining multiple layers together or cutting a hole in one layer so you can see through it or isolating a specific portion off the layer. Let's have a look at how it works in this clip. We have these windows at the back and let's say you want to change the content of these windows so that we can see a different layer now. For that we use masking. Let me show you how it works. I'm gonna zoom into these in those first by holding down ultra and then scrolling in. I'm gonna press space to bring this summer in the center like this, and maybe we can start from this re Neue. Now the AMIA is to cut a hole where the contents of the window is so that we can see something else instead of what we're seeing them now. To do that, you need to make sure that the layer is selected first and this is the first step in creating a mosque, making sure that the layer is selected and then you go toe either the pencil here or next to it, is a rectangle toe Now inside the rectangle tool. If you click and hold it down, you hear these other shapes as well. But we'll start with the basic rectangle tool first. So I'm just going to select it and again making sure that this layer is selected. I'm gonna go and start from one of these corners and then just drag rectangle towards the opposite corner. I mean, don't have to be very precise here. I'll just let go here and we just created a mosque. Now the reason why everything turned black is because these areas are not transparent. If I turn the transparency great, we can see that they are transparent indeed. And this is actually doing exactly the opposite of what we want. We want the content of this to be invisible or transparent, but everything else to be visible. Well, as soon as you create the mosque you see in the layers panel here you have your mosque and this is called mask one that's gonna change the name off this toe. We know one and next to it there's a bottom it says inverted. If I go and turn this button on. It's not gonna invert the mosque so that whatever was visible before is going to be invisible on the invisible parts are not gonna be visible now, inside of this area, I now see the checkerboard pattern, which means I can replace this with something else. My seems replacing that something else underneath this layer. But before we do that, that's gonna refine this mosque. And in order to do that, I'm gonna get my selection tool. Right now, all the points on the mosque are selected, which means if I click on one, the whole thing will move at the same time. I'm gonna press Command said I'm gonna click outside ones or inside Once. Doesn't matter so that the points are now the selected, which means I cannot click on a single point and it will only move that point and nothing else. Let's zoom right in. I can now click on this point and then drag this to that corner and then I hold on space bar to go up and then I'll move this one to this corner in the space bar again toe pan around here, and then I'll just push this one to go here on their Zuma by pressing shift four slash. And now, if I click outside the outline of the Moscow disappear and I cannot see the checkerboard pattern here perfectly, I have a different image here that I'll views. It's called a background. I'm just gonna click and drag this here and now. You can see that image through that mask area. I can no more my background left right up and down. If I just click and drag this. You see, I'm seeing a different part off that image. Now that's it. I will leave it here. I can make this of its smaller actually with the shift key as well. So it's not breaking the proportions. Then I'll place it somewhere here. Now let's keep adding a couple of more mosques so I can show you the settings on those masks. So that means women. And I'm gonna get my rectangle tool again and again. I need to make sure that the layer I want to apply the mask to is selected. It's the masking sample layer. I'm just gonna draw another rectangle starting from here. Old way down to the bottom, right corner another goal. And right now you see nothing's happening because this mosque, let's actually call this with no to now. The reason why nothing seems to be happening is because the second mosque we know two, is set to the mold ad. It was the same for the 1st 1 but that didn't matter because it was the only mask then. But now what I need to do is to set the second mask and every other mask after that to be subtract. So this is the mold off the mosque, so it's not being subtracted from the rest of the mosques. So if I know I get to my selection tool on the inside or outside to de select these points , then I can click on each 0.1 by one and then move them where I want them to be. That means women again, so I can do this precisely if it's a little difficult to see the color of the mosque because of the background color, maybe you can just go and change it by clicking on this color swatch. If I click on this color swatch, go to, let's say, a red mask. It's not gonna make it easier to see what's happening there. So I'm gonna go to decide, click and drag this around and then come down and then dragged us around as well. I'll ignore this bottle for now. Pretend it's not there. Go here, not just push this here as well. And in order to see the results without the outline of the mosque, you come and click on this button or you press command shift H If I press command shift age , it does the same thing. Let me hide it. No one is amounts And no, I got that one mosque as well. That's a look at some of the settings on the mosque and these women. You see that the edge of the mosque looks very sharp. If I zoom in a bit more if you compare this edge to this age, this is the original one. This is the master version. This looks very sharp. You can control the sharpness here by going into the mosque and there a couple of options here. The mask feather is the softness off the edges. If I click and drag this towards right, you see how the edges are getting softer or sharper. As I go left, someone add maybe two pixels of feather here so that it's a little soft. The other options you have here are the mass capacity, So this is going to make the mask invisible or visible, or the mosque expansion. So this change is the size of the masks. Expands the mask or it shrinks it. That's amount to see what's happening here. So mosque expansion does this. And of course, you can keep fame. All of these as well. There's a stopwatch next to it, which means you can key frame this. I'm gonna under that on again. So we're back to square one, a little bit of feather to the first mosque as well. So this isn't too sharp, either. I'll go to the mosque here, got a feather. Maybe I'll set this to to as well, so it softens the edges of this as well. Now enough, I zoom out and then select the bottom clip. I can no more this anywhere I like, and you see that will be visible inside those windows off course. There's more work to be done here. Firstly, I would do some color correction and then maybe I'll blur this alternative it and then I create these reflections as well by using maybe some solids and effects. But that's a subject for a different lesson in this lesson. We only looked at how the masks are created and then edited in the timeline here. 76. Working with the Pen Tool: when the shape you want to mask isn't quite a geometric shape, like a rectangle or a square or a circle. These tools here really won't be helpful. In that case, you'd be using the pencil. In this case, we have a car here that we want to mask out, and you see that the car isn't quite a geometric shape, so it doesn't like a rectangle. Nor does it look like an ellipse or anything else. So in this case, are abusing the pencil. So I select the mental and again before I create the mosque, I need to make sure that the layer is selected. Otherwise, you'll be creating a shape layer. Let me show you what I mean by that. If I select a rectangle, for example, and then the selected layer, and if I just click and drug that's creating a rectangle shape rather than a mosque that's a rectangular mosque on the layer, so that's not what we want. We want to create a mask so we just go under selected layer. Then we use the tool on that, create a mask. I'm gonna under this as well, and then I'll select my pen tool and I'll explain to you know how the pencil works. Let me zoom into one side of this car. Now the whole point of using the pencil is so that you can draw straight lines or curved lines or a combination of the two. Here's what I mean with the pencil. If you just go and click anywhere on the layer and then let go, that initiates the mosque. Then if you go and click somewhere else on the Lego, you know in a straight line between these two points. If I click again, I had the second line and I can click and then click and click. And every time I click, as you can see, it's creating a straight line. And if I go back to where I started from, I'll see little circle next to my cursor. If I now click with Circle visible, it's going to close the mosque, and now I have myself a mosque, and this part is not being masked out, and everything else becomes invisible. Now I'm gonna go and delete that mosque first all quick outside, and then I click on the mosque and then delete it. The other function off the pencil is to draw curves, and here's how that works. Instead of just clicking, clicking and clicking. If you click and drag, you see that you'll end up with the curve here and only this portion is curved. And this handle here, this one called the busy andl controls how much curvature you have on this path. And the second handle, this one, will control how much curvature you have on the following part. So if I go and click here, it's already curved because off this path here and beyond this. But if I want to Curtis even further, instead of just clicking, I can click and drag so that create a curve here. And it also creates this handle here, which means that my following line is also gonna be curved. If I know that's a grand click here and then drag, it curves this line as well as creating this handle, which means that it will curve the following line. Let's use this. If it more sensibly I'm gonna go click outside, select the mosque and delete it. Let's say we want to mosque this car, so I'm gonna go make sure that layer is selected And then I'll press the tilde key. That's the key between shift and set on the Mac or the key about tab on Windows on there is room into the car. Little more Let's say starting from the top here and I'm just gonna click on the goal and then the next click is gonna be click and drag. So I'm gonna click and drag somewhere here so I can create this curve. So this curve is now following the top part of the car. And because of this handle, I'll be creating another curve here Now, initially, it doesn't have to be on the percent precise. For example, if I go and click here, I can see that this car isn't perfect. But that's fine on show you in a second how to fix all of these? No, I want a straight line between this point and that point, I'm just gonna go click once rather than clicking and dragging. I'll just go and click So that draws a straight line. Let me zoom in a bit more to here and here. I want a straight line again, so I just click. I'm not gonna click somewhere around here where the curve kind of changes. The angle you can see from here until they're the curve goes in one direction, and at this point, it goes in a different direction. So I'm gonna click on Reddit. Change happens, and then I'll just drag. So that creates the curving left perfectly. And it also creates this handle, meaning that I can now create another curve. If I come down here again, I'll click where the curve changes direction. So this curve that I'm gonna draw is gonna go old way around about there, and at that point it's going to change the direction. So it's gonna go click here and then dragged them once you get the hang of this pencil is actually very easy. It's just a little bit tedious to get used to it. But once you get used to it, you just do it without thinking too much. I was gonna go here and then complete this car as well. So again, I'll just go to write his car finishes somewhere around here now and then just click and drag. I don't want this night to be a pretty much straight so I'm just gonna go click and they go and again a straight line until about here. So I just click and nickel and then I want to curve here, just go click and then drag, and I can actually see that as I'm dragging this. I didn't quite get this right now before I let go of my mouse. If I hold on a space bar, I can reposition this. I'm holding our space and still dragging this so I can reposition it that once I'm happy with the position. Let's say I let go space. I can continue editing this curve. Maybe press space again to position is perfectly. And then I let go. Now around the bar here, you can see that the car's shape it's kind of sticking out that we move in. So I'm just gonna click here and then dragged towards right because there's another curves on preparing the shape for the next curve. Gonna come down here, Then I come down to about maybe here on the curve kind of changes shape. This is gonna be quite a long line. So maybe around the bar here and again, if you don't get this right on the percent, you can tweet these afterwards, it's gonna drag this down. Maybe I'll hold on space and move it towards writing a bit in the LegCo. Let me zoom out. Now that seems to be a straight line, so I'm just gonna go click on May be dragging a little bit so I can prepare this for the next curve. And then there's another curve going here. So I'm just gonna go here right? Occur finishes click and drag and again here click and drag and then maybe click and drag here on. I'll just go around the car. I'm full of this shape old way around. We'll go around here, click and drag, and then again, somewhere here, click and drag. Click and drag that resuming again here and then click and drag. I don't go here to click and drag. That means amount. No, I don't go and click somewhere here now and drag. I'll speed up this portion of the clips so you don't have to sit there and watch this until I'm done. When you go all the way back to restart it from, you see this circle, you can then just go click on the circle and that will finalize the mosque. If I know, Zoom out. We now have this car masked out, and all we had to do is to tweet these points. That means women again, and I'm gonna get my selection tool and I'll bring my background color back. So that's the black color. I'll just go click on these points, and you see that this point has no curve. So if I click on this handle zone there now, in order to reveal the handles, I would need to get back to my pencil and then on the keyboard. Hold on the old turkey. So we temporarily switched the distal called Convert Vertex Tool. It's this one here, actually, that's what's holding down the old key does. When you had pencil selected so filed on Colton, just click. I know I have these curves. I can get back to my selection tool, and then it's quick and tweet these like that and you see, as you drag one of these, it's dragging both of them at the same time. Same here as well. If I drag this one, it drags the one on the left as well a pond, though, if you don't want that. If you only want this one to be dragged without affecting other one again, you can get your pencil and hold the old key down. And this time, click on the handle on this breaks the handles apart. So this is no longer affecting the other handle. I can do the same here, maybe push this down in some more and then maybe push this up on their resume. And that's gonna be enough for what we're gonna be creating in the next lesson. So this is how use dependable in after effects. Like I said, it does take some time to get used to this. But once you learn the basics, it just becomes second nature and you just do it without thinking too much about it. 77. Compositing Text with Masks: In the previous tutorial, we had a look at how to mask this car using the pencil, and now let's go and create some text so we can place the text behind the car and then eventually reintroduce the background. So let's bring the background color in first. By clicking on this checkerboard pattern here, I want to get my type tool by double clicking, and I'll just go and talking some specs about the car. This is gonna be our first layer, so presenter to come out of this and I'll just go and change of frontier as well. If you will make this any Talic forms may be bold and italic. I don't make sense of it smaller, and then I'll duplicate the text and then bring it down. And then on the quick on this so we can change the text and then all presenter again. And then finally, I'll duplicate this and then drive this down and then double click, and they will change this one as well. On the no presenter again know what we'll do now is to place these layers under the car like this, and then I'll just press P on the keyboard to reveal position on then key family position values don't go forward and then drag them towards rights so they will come in and maybe I'll make these. It is a bit smaller first, like that's and then on Select all these key frames and press F nine to make them Easy's. And I'll hold on. Hold on double click on one of these key frames to open up the key frame velocity. As we saw in the graph editor chapter, I'll change the influence for all of these two. Let's say 75. And if you play this now, this is what we should have. I'm going to stagger this animation, so I just select this layer, pushed his stores right, and then this layer push this one further. Right, So they come in one by one on. Finally, I'll go and turn the motion with her own and for these layers as well. This is what it should look like now. And now that we have the animation happening here, let me just go back a little bit so you can see the text halfway through there. We can now go back to the original layer here This is the one before we apply the mosque. And then I can drag this back from the project panel inside the composition, right at the bottom. So the text is gonna sit between the two layers. This now brings the background in. But because we had the car is a mosque. Dark car on the text is underneath that mask. Are the text appears to be coming from behind? If I play this now, this is what it would look like. And all that's happening, really is that this car, the master version, is blocking out the text so that the text appears to be coming from behind. I can, of course, turn this layer off to show you what I mean, if I just go and turn it off by clicking when I switch, this is what we really have. And if I turn this layer on the car goes in front of the text because the car is a separate layer on its own. So here's the final animation. Another thing you can do to this, of course, the stop line effects to the background clip. Let's say, for example, you make the background black home whites but the car is gonna stay in color if I go to mosque in car. This is the background layer. If I go to fix them presets, maybe we apply the black and white effect here. And if I double click on this you see, the background goes black and white. But the car stays in color because the car again remember, is a separate layer on its own. If I said like this, this is a separate layer on its own. Or, of course, I can blurred background a little bit. So if I select this layer and then go to effects and presets, and then maybe search for the calcium blur again and apply it like in the increased blurriness. And if I repeat that pixels, you see another, the background is blurrier than it was before. What? The car is still in front of it. That's why the car stays shop. Using mosques will help you create better compositions and interactions between layers 78. Intro to Adjustment Layers: using an adjustment layer is a great way to apply one or more effects toe one or more layers at the same time. And the other really useful thing about this is that you can mask they just malaria's to create an effect on a specific portion off the composition. Let me show you what I mean. In this scene, we got to text layers on top of an MP four that plays in the back. So here's what the scene looks like. So the text animation that you see here was done with the decoder presets on. There's nothing special or there's nothing applied to the layer in the back, So this is just a plain layer as it came out from the camera. Now let's go and have a look at how they just when there's are created so they just go to layer new and adjustment layer. This is where they are, and when you create, they're just in there. You're not gonna see anything at all except for these control points. And also you have there just mayor here in the timeline. But the adjustment layers don't do anything by themselves. You need to apply an effect of they're just Malia to see the result off it. So let's going apply an effect. I'm gonna go to effect some presets. And let's say you want to apply a Galaxy Miller effectiveness. So it's this one here. I'm gonna make sure that they're just when they were selected, and then I'll go and double click on the gauzy blur. So now that the effect is applied to the adjustment layer, and if I go in increased blurriness, look what happens to the other clips. They all start getting blurry. I'm just going to repeat the age pixels to get it off These transparent teachers now they just made it does is that it shows the effect that you apply to it on all the layers underneath it. In this case, they just players at the top so that it's showing the effect gown similar on every single layer underneath. There. Just one way, let's say, for example, you didn't want there just when they were to affect the text. Well, you can simply drop the adjustment layer below the two text layers, and if I go forward to see the other text there as well, you see the adjustment there isn't applied to the text layers because it's below them, but it's applied to the layer underneath, so they just when there's work this way, they always show the effect that you apply to them on top, off the layers underneath them. So if I want only the first layer to be shocked, let's say the date layer to be sharp. I can place the adjustment layer above the location layer as well, so that gets blurry on the date States shop. Now I'm gonna push there just when they are old way back up. So everything is blurry and the other main feature of adjustments is that you can move them around and they'll act almost like a filter that's applied to the entire composition. Here's what I mean by that. If I get my selection tool and then move their adjustment layer, look what happens to the composition. So they just when there is almost like a filter that I'm dragging around. So wherever you see the adjustment layer, there's gonna be the effect on as soon as they're just when their leaves that area, the effect disappears. On the main advantage of this of course is that you can mask there just from there. Let's say, for example, you want to make this guy's face blurry. Well, that's very easy. I can select the adjustment layer, get to my mosque tools. Let's say that lips mask this time I can just draw on the lips on his head on. It gets blurry. I can then, of course, animate the position of the mosque or the position of the entire adjustment layer. I can select this layer and then keep playing the position off it, or you can select the mask and keep from its path, as we will see in the next lesson. 79. Masking Adjustment Layers: now that we know what the adjustment there's do that's going to apply one so you can change the color off, say the car in the background. So that's gotta layer. And you see if this is a great out, by the way, that's probably because you don't have the correct panel selected. Now, in order to create an adjustment layer, you need to either had the composition panel selected here or the timeline. Right now I have my project panel selected. That's why this is great out. So let's go to a composition panel and then go to layer. And now I can create one like a layer new just more you. I'm gonna apply an effect to it in this case, on multiplying effect to change the hell off this car on goat effects and presets. And I'll just type in Hue. And this is the effect I'm after Hue saturation it. Just apply this to their just Malia. And right now nothing happens. So I had to go and treaties now because the car doesn't really have any who it's almost white. I'm gonna go and colorize it. So if I not change the hue here, you see, not much is happening to the car. It's only changing the hue off the things that already have the you. Let's say if you want to make these guys blew for whatever reason, you could use that. But in this case, I'm gonna reset this. I'm gonna hit colorize so the entire image gets a color tint. I can then changing Hue off the colorization from here. That's I want the car to be blue, every little less. And then I'm gonna increase the saturation as well. And then maybe I'll bring down the line. It's just a touch. Let's light a doctor. And now what we want to do is to mask it so that only the car is colorized and nothing else is. And to do that off course, we lose our Pantsil on making sure that adjustment there is selected. I'm gonna go and double click on the name of the composition panel, so this gets maximized. I can no start mosque in the car. No one is women. Let's say the mosque, the top part of the car first. Now let's go click and drag to initiate the car. I'll then click and drag here and just keep in mind. The fewer the points you have, the easier it'll beach animates. So we'll come to that later on. But for now, make sure that you have a few points as possible and not because I created this handle. It's going to curve the next path that we create, but I'll fix that later on. So I'm gonna go click somewhere here. And I was going click and drag say, here to create a curve. And you see what I'm doing here is to mask the top part of the car only on. It would be smart to do that, because if I not try and mask the whole thing in one go, don't be quite complex and it be quite difficult to animate later on. So it's a good idea to divide the shapes into multiple sections so it can mask them easily . Let me zoom back in. I'm gonna go click here once, and then maybe just gonna follow his jacket all the way out back to here. No, I've got the top part of the car masks. And as well as having the car, I got his jacket on this guy's arm colorized as well. So let's go and fix those as well. I'm gonna get my pencil. I'll hold the old key down to break these two handles apart. I can then drag the stone and although the same here as well, also like this point Olt Then click and drag this handle in like that's and then I can swim in and then maybe pushed us towards right a little more. And as amounts I can see that this curve isn't quite perfect. So I can just click and drag this around and then maybe the handles as well. You see, you also colorize the contents or doing those here, so to remove the colorization from here. If you remember from earlier chapters, we can create another mosque and said that mosque to be in the subtract mold on this area will be subtracted as well as these areas. So let's do that. I'm gonna go impress the tilde key to come out of this and then I'll make sure that layer still selected. So we'll click and start maybe somewhere here outside the mosque. Then click and drag here and click and drag here with space bark and reposition this and then click and then go back to where I started from and click closing that masking off course at this area to the rest of the masks so that we score in. Go to my second mosque and I'll change its mode from add to subject. Now that area is being subtracted from the rest of it. I'll then go into the same here as well. Let's go quick click quick. There's a slight curve here, so I'll just click in drag, and that curves this side as well. That's an easy fix. I hold on hold and then just bring this back down and that's my mosque. Three. I'll set this to subtract as well, and I'll do it for this part as well. I'll just go click, click and drag, click and drag, click and drug and then click on the old so it can fix that curve and then finally changed that from add to subtract my nose with my cults, you know, mask that part of the car out. So this is for the top part, and I have to do the same for the front on this side and the back. This is a little bit tedious and time consuming, but it's the best way and the most precise way of doing what I'm gonna do next that is to change the color of the car but leave everything else in their original colors. 80. Rotoscoping: in the previous tutorial. Yeah, they look at how to mask and adjustment layer. So we ended up with this shape here on top of the car. But that was only for one frame. What I mean by that is this. If I zoom in, you'll be here. And if I go forward by one frame, that's page down on the keyboard. You see that the mosque stays where it is, but the characters move. If I go back and if actually play it, look what happens. The mosque stays here, and obviously they go into the mosque and out of the mosque. So it's not quite right. I'm gonna go back a couple of frames until we're back on that frame there. This was the original framed every mosque. When a zoom all the way in. And in this tutorial, I'll show you how to key frame the shape of the mosque so it can make that move together with the camera. So good practice is to start from the largest mosque in this case, the top part of the car here. So I'm gonna ignore the little openings here doing those, and that's my mosque. One that's going to rename this to be top. So I know what animates if I go into the mosque, the top mosque. I now have an option here called Mask Path. If I go and key frame this, it will create a key frame recording the shape of the mask here. And what I can do now is to go forward by one frame, my pressing page down. I can then just go and more this around and it will record new key frames. So that means women he's gonna click outside to de select them now just click and drag this in place and then reposition this and then do the same for these points as well, and then do the same for this point on all of these points. Do you see why I said earlier that you should have a few points on the mosque as possible? That's because when it comes to key framing the mosque, those points are gonna get in the way. And it's gonna be more difficult if you have more points. So that's why I kept this to a minimum number, not that created Aniki frame here, and I need to do this again for the following frame. So I'm gonna press page down and then I click and drag these old again like that and then the same here and then we'll this in place on, then page down again in the movies. Now, this may seem like a tedious job, and it is in fact, a tedious job. But this is the only way and the best way off doing what's called rotoscoping. We're now rotoscoping, which is key framing a mosque or separating an object from the background frame by frame my hand. Now, to speed this process up, I'm gonna try going forward by time frames and see if you can make that work. I'm not gonna press shift page down that's going to jump forward by 10 frames so I can just click and drag these around on. This one goes here, and this one goes back to this corner on this to that corner, and then maybe I bring it down into bits that's on the shift page down again, and I'm doing this in time frame increments. But in a second, I'll just go back and check what's happening in between those time frames. Now, if I go back and play it. I'm just crossing my fingers that this will work and it doesn't actually work perfectly. You can see that there's a bit of a gap here, so I can now go to the fifth frame here and they're fixed this gap and hope now that it will work between the first and the fifth frames. Do not go back. That's kind of working. Now I'm looking at the edge here as well as looking at. Of course, these edges. That seems to be fine. And I'm not grand. Check what's happening in between these frames. That's not quite right. If I go here and fix these as well, maybe that one goes here. This can go down. It's a bit. This one can go down and left a little bit. You do this ideally by assuming all the way in to each one of these points on doing this as precisely as possible so that you have less work to do. Afterwards, I'm gonna go forward by 10 more frames, shift page down and only said these points on that's creating of course, new key frames here, as you can see. And now I'm gonna speed up this video so we don't have to sit there and watch me doing this in real time. Now, it took me a while, but I completed most of the top part of the car. So I'll play this back enough for you. And this is what I have with some imperfections and to make them a little bit more difficult to notice. I'm gonna go and increase the mask, Feather, let me go in and I'll increase the feather off this mask. Let's say by five or three. Maybe so. That should make the edges a little softer. And I still have these holes to finish. So let me go in on Don't just go and animate these holes as well, so I'll not pulls the screen recording, and I'll then come back once this is them. So I just went ahead. Them asked about 25 seconds off this clip and it took me about 15 minutes or so. So this is a bit tedious, like I said and time consuming. But this is the only way off getting perfect results. And in this case, I haven't spent really much time to refine this. So what I would need to do next would be to go in and edit this mosque frame by frame until it's perfect. But so far, this is what I've got. So you can see now here that the top part of the car is a different color, thanks to just adjustment layers, hue and saturation effect. And now that I've got that effect there, I can just go and tweet this, and I can change the color to whatever I like. And if I played us again, you not see that the color will update right away on because I created those mosques and then key frame them the colors on the show where the mosques are. 81. Introduction to Roto Brush: In this lesson, I want to talk to you about a tool that I love and use all the time. The tool I'm talking about is the Roto Brush. The Roto Brush Tool didn't used to be a really good or accurate tool. But now in this version, aftereffects CC 20-20, they've given this tool and amazing upgrade and it works better than it ever did. It's used to cut out an object from the background. So it could either replace the background is something else, or maybe a blind effect just to the background or the foreground, or simply place something between a subject and the background. Now let me show you how it works and why I think you will love this tool as well. This is the Roto Brush at the top here. So it's the small guy holding a large brush. I'm gonna click on this to select it. And for this to work, you have to be inside the layer. If I try clicking and dragging, you will see it will give us a warning. It will say this tool only works if you're inside the layer panel. I say, okay, and to go into the layer panel, we either double click here on the layer or simply double-click on the layer here. And that takes us into the layer. Now that we're inside the layer, we can start using this tool. You see if I move my mouse over here, it's got a little circle around it. The circle, the radius is going to control how large an area this tool is going to cover. And if you wanted to change the size of this, you simply hold down the Command key on the Mac or control them in those. And then click and then drag up to make this brush larger or down to make it smaller. If you are using a tablet, like I'm using a Wacom graphic tablet now, you'll actually be able to control the size of this brush, my, the pressure that you apply to the tablets. So the harder you press on the tablet, the larger the brush is going to be, the lighter you apply the pressure, the smaller the brush is going to be. Now what I want to do with this tool is let me first go and play this clip so you can see what the clip is like. I'm just going to hit spacebar to play it. You see she's moving around. And let's say I want to apply an effect so that it only shows on her or the background. Or maybe we wanna create some text and then place a text between her and the background. Now this is exactly what the Roto Brush Tool is used for. It's a streamlined and easy way of rotoscoping. Now the way this works is let me just go to the beginning again. Here. All I have to do is to click and then paint on the foreground on her. So I'm going to go click and then paint. As soon as I let go of my mouse, a purple line will be created around these boundaries. And these lines will help aftereffects understand that a subject that we are trying to select is. So in this case, it didn't quite cover the whole thing because my line was only about there. So I'm going to keep adding more drawings to this line. So I'm gonna go click and draw like that. And it covers this as well. You see, it doesn't cover where the change in color or lightness happens. So it thinks that this is a different subject. This S here. Now I know it isn't. But first, to make life easier, let me just go and double-click on the name of the panel here, or hit the tilde key on the keyboard to go full screen. And then I can see what I'm doing a little better here. So I'm gonna go ahead and tell aftereffects that this S should also be added to the selection simply by painting over it. And you can see the harder I press, the thicker the line gets, the lighter I press, the thinner the line gets. So it's really easy to change the size of the brush with the pressure we apply to the tablets. Now I'm going to keep adding more to the selection simply by painting around here. I'm making sure when I do this that I don't actually go outside like this. If I do, it will try selecting this area as well. And if this happens, all you had to do is to hold down the Alt key on the keyboard. So the brush turns red. And if you're not paint with the red brush, this tells aftereffects to exclude these areas from the selection. Let me do the series. Well, there we go. I'm gonna keep drawing more lines now to add the rest of this shape here. And I'll just go around and I'll actually cover the arm and the hand actually here. And I can just go paint these as well. And I want this area to be taken out. So i'm gonna hold down and then paint this out. And the same with this as well. So I'm going to hold down Alt and pain these. So I only get her arm like that. And I'm just gonna go around here and add more to the selections like that there. And I think that looks like a good base frame. In order to refine this further, what we can do is to go to this tool, click and hold it down. And then the second tool here is the Refine Edge tool. If I select this, it works in a very similar way. You go around, you hold down command, make your brush smaller or larger. When the point of this refinance tool is to go around the edges that need a bit more attention. For example, if you look around here where the hair is quite flats, This doesn't need that much of an attention. But here, for example, there are some stray hairs that go up and these will be lost as a result of this mask. But if I use the Refine Edge tool, areas will be added and refined for the final selection. So normally in my workflow, what I do is I first create the Roto Brush with this tool. So I first paint this over like I just did. And then I get the refinance tool here. And then just paint over the edges of these areas that I think we need more attention, like the hair for grass, transparent surfaces and so on. So all I have to do now is to go around and paint a selection like that around the edges. And you see as soon as I do this, the whole clip turns black on white. And then this area has a lot more contrast. Now, the white areas that I see here are the areas that are going to be left visible as a result of this mask. And the black areas, the outside areas here are going to be invisible or hidden. Let me finally confirmed the mosque. So then just go and paint over the edges anymore. I'm going to compress harder to get the brush to be bigger or lighter to make it smaller. So for these areas, the brush doesn't need you with that big because the hair is quite flat here and there is no kind of stray hair. So I can keep the brush quite small here and here as well. And I'm gonna make the brush quite large coming down to here now. So I'm pressing harder on my tablet so that these areas, you'll be calculated in some more. And then the transparency of this can be set properly. So I'm gonna go around all of these areas. We need a bit more calculation. So I'm going to paint over these a little more like that. And then go over here. And then maybe include this as well. And an oligo there. Now it looks like I've actually missed this part out, so I'm gonna go and paint this like that. Now this mask will hopefully be good enough for after fixed understand what we are trying to select. So that on the following framed, it can automatically select dissimilar pixels. Let me show you what I mean now. All I'm going to do now is to go and press spacebar to play it. And you see after-effects will actually understand what I'm trying to select. And it propagates. Or it extends both the Refine Edge here and the actual purple outline that we created initially. So if I go back by using the page up key on the keyboard, you see all of these will update automatically without us having to do anything else. So this is tracking the mask pretty much automatically, as long as you give it a good outline to start with for the base frame, the rest will work perfectly fine. So I'm gonna hit Spacebar and just keep an eye on the overall shape and see if there are only frames that are causing any problems. So let me press Spacebar. And this looks all perfect. Maybe here actually, if I pause it and go back a couple of frames. Here, you can see the hand is kind of getting cut out. So I can switch back to my Roto Brush Tool and then paint this again. And you see as I paint this, all of these frames that were green, meaning that they had been calculated will disappear. So let me just show you this. If I just go and paint, all of these frames are not going to be based on this new frame that I've just updated. So if I now press page down, I'll do this frame by frame. Instead of pressing Spacebar, I'll go frame by frame by pressing Page Down. And just keeping an eye on the outline here, the overall shape. And that's all looking good. And I'm looking at the hand as well that we're looking at as well. Now there's a bit of an issue here, I can see, but because this is black, that means it's going to be invisible anyway. So I don't have to worry about this. But if there were some white here or there to go to the Roto Brush Refine Edge tool and then update this as well. Right now, that's all looking fine. I'm going to press page down. Page down. Now, let's say from this point on, we want to get rid of this black area here. Like I said, it doesn't really matter, but just to keep things tidy, I'm gonna go to the Refine Edge tool here and then hold down the ALT key so I can subtract this from the selection as well, just like that. Remember without the old key, you're adding more to the Refine Edge and withhold key you're subtracting. So I'm gonna hold on old and then get rid of all of these areas. And then this as well. And then I'll just press page down again to continue from here. That's all looking good. Now, there's a bit of an issue here now, so let me just press Page Up and this happens. So I actually want to take this out as well. If I go back one more frame, you see there is no such issue there, but on the frame next to it, there's this weird glitch. So I can hold on and then paint these out as well. Like that. The reason why that's happening actually is because my Roto Brush thinks that it should actually include this as well. So this actually didn't have anything to do with the Refine Edge. It was more to do with the Roto Brush itself. So I'm gonna go to the Roto Brush. Hold on. And then take this area out so it doesn't select this. Then page down. And the rest is looking good. And I think now we are in good shape. I can just go and press space bar to see what the rest of these will look like. You see what I'm doing now is I'm just keeping an eye on what the frames look like. The overall frames look like as the initial frame gets propagated down the timeline. Now once this is done, it will do a quick preview like this. And while it's doing it, I'm just keeping an eye on what the final result looks like and just checking that this purple outline here doesn't stray out or it doesn't go away. And this black and white area, this Refine Edge, doesn't really look crazy, so it doesn't start adding more and selecting things that I didn't want to select. And this is looking perfect now. And what I need to do is to come down here and click this freeze button so that all of this work aftereffects has done, is going to be cashed to the RAM so that it doesn't need to recalculate these every single time that you want to see the results. So let me scroll and freeze this. Now that these frames that have been frozen, we can't make any more changes to these unless we unfreeze them. You see if I move my mouse over here, it gives us a little more entry sign morning here saying that you can edit this or it can't make any more changes unless you go and click on this freeze button again, which will unfreeze everything. And then you can go back and make further changes. Now to see the final result here, all I have to do is to switch from my layer panel to my composition panel where our see the final result with her being cut out and everything else invisible. And this is the initial results we get from the Roto Brush. Let me actually minimize this. If I go to the beginning and play, You see we now have a cut out that we can use for all sorts of different purposes. I'll pause this here. And in the next lesson, we'll have a look at how to refine this results and use it in context. 82. Refining the Roto Brush Results: Now that we've frozen the Roto Brush by clicking the freeze button and jumped back into the competition panel. We can see the cutouts and also on the left-hand side, we see the settings of the effect called Roto Brush and refined h. Now this Roto Brush and Refine Edge isn't actually an effect you can apply by going to effects and presets. It only gets applied when you use the Roto Brush Tool. And as soon as you do and you're inside the composition panel now, you can see the settings of these and you can go and update them now. The ones that are grayed out, the version, quality propagation and this last one here, invert foreground-background, are only going to be available while you're inside the Roto Brush Tool inside a later panel here. Before you froze this, you could change how this behaves, that could change quality. So it creates better results but takes longer and so on. But now that I'm done with this, I'll come out back into the composition panel and I want to show you the rest of the settings here. Now the first thing we want to do is to make sure that this fine tune Roto Brush Matt is turned on. If it's turned off, these options here will be grayed out as well. So I'm gonna turn it on. And the first one here where it says feather and it means when you first, these areas won't actually show what happens with these settings because this here, Roto Brush mats on the controls where the Roto Brush was active. This area, if you remember, was controlled with Refine Edge option or the Refine Edge tool. So let me just go first, scroll down. And here I will be able to see the effects of the Roto Brush Matt settings. So if I go to further increase this, using the edges here gets softer than just go to the other side as well. So you can see. So let me zoom in once more. This is further. So there's less feather. This is more further. So it's softens out these areas. But you see this effect doesn't show. If I zoom out, they affect one show on this hair here because that's controlled, like I said, with this Refine Edge tool, which is all down here, which I'll get to in just a second. And go to the feather, lower it down because I don't want the edges to be that soft. So maybe let's say we set this to 15. You also have contrast, kind of similar but in opposite direction of feather. So if I go and lower down the contrast, that will make the edges software. So let me zoom back in again. Here. If you're already a soft edges, you can increase the contrast to sharpen them again like this. So our lowest on ultimate. And the next option here is shift edge. If you wanted the edges to be shrunk in or expanded, you can just click here and then drag it left or right. I pushed it towards right. You see the edges will get larger or anything that you may have missed out will be included. Now, if I push us towards left into a negative direction, this will actually start eating into these edges. So if I go back to 0, UCI ID, black lines here. If I go and push this towards left, is kinda shrinks the mascot Little bit, which in this case I actually like. So I'm going to go and set this to, let's say something like minus 15. It brings some of this back, but that's fine. We can fix this in a slightly different way later on, I'll show you this. The one that's going to take the longest to process, but the one that also will create the best result is this reduced chatter. I'm zoomed way out by pressing Shift and forward slash. As I play this, you may notice that the edges of the mask, we'll jump around a lot. So if I go and play, and if I pause it so I can do another preview quickly, especially around here on the shoulder here look this area. And then these, these areas keep jumping around a lot. So you see keeps changing. Now if I increase the reduce chatter all the way up to a 100%, this will take a little longer. But now if I go back and preview, this is going to come down the mosque so it doesn't jump around as much. So this create a better and a smoother result. If I pause it, go back. And now you see the mask doesn't jump around as much. Next we had to refine edge Matt. Now if you remember, we find edge where these areas that we created the brush for around the hair to refine this a little bit better. And if I now as women and then move up as I go to smooth, you see what this does? Kinda rounded these off. Now it's quite difficult to see the result of this. So let me just turn the background checkerboard pattern off by clicking on this button. My Fargo too smooth and numberings down to 0. And if you keep an eye on these edges now as I increase this to, let's say 50, you see these edges will get smoother. So this is before. And this is after. Now I don't want these to be that smooth, actually want some variation here. So I'm gonna go to, let's say 20 or so there. And then you had the feather as well. So this is the softening. So if I go to further increase this, this will create software results. Contrast will do the opposite for pushes towards right. It will sharpen the edges like that. Actually one contrast, but not this much. So I've got contrast, let's say set this to 15 or so. And then we had the shift edge. This is going to shrink the edges in. And in this case, this might actually be a helpful thing because we get all of these kind of green areas. So I'm gonna go to shift edge Lord is down to, let's say minus 20. So this will kinda shrink these edges. And then the same option here for the chatter. I'll go and turn this on. Now you have two options. You either had a more detailed version, which is kind of similar to this reduce chatter, or he had a smoother version which will take longer, but it will create much smoother, better results. So I'll go for this now. And then down here, you can adjust the amount of reduced chatter. So I'm gonna go and increase this all the way to a 100%. Actually went over a 100%. So I'm gonna go and set this to around the percent now. So this will take a little longer, but the results are going to be great. And the next option here is whether or not this uses motion blur. So if there was a lot of blur in the subject as she's moving around, you can turn it on. And this will add some motion blur to the edges, especially around the parts where she turns around, let's say if I go forwards. And here she is moving a lot and there's a bit of a blur on the sides. So this is with the motion blur. This is without, if you look around the edges here, this now has no motion blur. If I turn it on. And this is with the motion where if I go to the next frame to an emotional or off, you can see all the edges updates and they have less blur. If I now turn us on, that will add the motion blur to the edges. The final option here, the Muslim MCAT, is this decontaminate edge Colors option. This will have a look at the edges of the object here. And if the edges actually take some of the color from the background because of reflection or some shine, this would actually contaminate them. So if I go and turn this on, then first come out of this so that I can see the checkerboard pattern. And then zoom back in here to let say, her arm. If I turn it decontaminate off. And if you just look at the edges here, turn it back on. It's kind of cleans up these edges. If I zoom more in, this might make it easier to see. So this is with the decontaminate off. And this is with it on. Now I can actually go and increase the settings authors as well. If I go into decontamination, I can go down to here where it says increase radius, pushed us up. And it'll increase the range to decontaminate. Then just go and click on view map. This is the area that you'll see in a second that it's looking at it, this white area to take the colors out and even them out with the rest of the foreground. So as I increase this increase radius, this area gets larger UC Now there. So the larger this area, the more of the decontamination will be applied to the edges. And the overall amount will be controlled with this amounts value here. Let me uncheck this view map. If I go to amount, set this to let say 50, it's going to have an effect on the half as much as it did before. Let me zoom all the way back out and do a full preview by going to the beginning, by pressing the home key on the keyboard and then Spacebar. And this is what the final mask looks like. It's a pretty accurate result. And we will use this in the next lesson to create some interesting effects. 83. Selectively Applying Effects: Now that we have our mosque, Let's go back to the beginning. And I'll actually go and duplicate this layer by pressing Command D on the keyboard. And then on the bottom layer here, let me just go and rename this to be background. And one above, I'll call this foreground. And I'll select the bottom one and just go and delete. It's Roto Brush effects from here. So this actually brings back our background. Now the reason why I did this is so that I could have her as the foreground as a separate layer. So I could have her like this. And then I could have the background as a separate layer and I can apply an affected about ground or to her and there'll be separated from each other. Of course, if I play this, let me just lower down the quality here so it doesn't take forever to play by play this you'll see they'll both play at the same time. Like we have to have the same girl there like that. And I don't want this ofcourse. I'm gonna go and put this back to where it was by pressing commands it. And then I'll go to full quality here as well. I'm going to select the background and then go to effects and presets and search for maybe the black-and-white effect applied to the background by double-clicking. And you see the background turns black on white and she remains in color. And that already is a really cool effect. When I could take you further, I could undo this by pressing commands it and apply different effective background. Let's say like the camera lens blur, which is going to take quite a while to preview because it's a processing heavier effects, but the results are pretty amazing. So if I go and double-click, now the background starts getting blurrier. And it can go and increase the blur radius to, let's say ten. And it's even blurrier. Now, let me exaggerate this. A typical 220. And you see when this happens, the edges start showing through. So I'm gonna go ahead and click on this repeat edge pixels button. So they'll get hidden. But this ends up creating a little halo around the goal. The reason why is if I go and turn off the foreground, everything is blurry like this. And of course, when I put this original layer back on top, that blurry areas start showing through. So one way to kind of cheat would be to select the foreground and then scale this up a little bit by pressing S. Let's say we scale this up by two or 3%. So if I go to one or three and then reposition heard just a tiny bit. She covers the Halo there. As you can see, we don't see that much of the Halo anymore. So this is without the background effects or let me just go to the background. Ternary affects off here, or up here. This is without the defect, and this is with that effects. So you can direct the attention of the viewer to the area that you want them to look at. One other thing, of course, is that I can play something between her and the background. Let's see if I go and get my Type Tool. Click and just type in some text here. And if I make mistakes larger, you see fire commodities tool. Because I had my background layer selected, the text gets created above the background layer. And as I move it anywhere like now, that text will appear to be behind her. I can animate the text, shrink this in, slide this down, do whatever I like, and it will always appear as if it's behind her. And the final thing you can do, of course, let me just go and delete this text is some selective color correction. Let's say you wanted to apply some color correction only to her, but not the background. I can select the foreground. Now. I'm just gonna collapse this effect. And then go and apply, say, diametric color effects by double-clicking. And here I can go to base a correction. And then let's say I increase the temperature and then bring the highlights done intimate. Maybe add a bit more contrast. We initially goes up. And maybe the exposure up just a tiny bit. And now this is with the effect and this is without. So I'm applying the geometrical effect selectively Just to her and nothing else. So thanks to the Roto Brush, I can do some selective color adjustments like this as well. Hopefully you can now see why Roto Brush is one of my favorite tools in all of aftereffects. 84. Content Aware Fill: Following the footsteps of Adobe Photoshop aftereffects also has added the content air-filled tools, tweets arsenal. Now the content or Raphael, and allows you to remove unwanted objects from the scene. This could be a person or an unwanted microphone, a cable or a wire, or a mark on the wall. You name it. If there's something in the scene that you don't want to see and you have nothing to cover that up with. You tried to content to refill the content of air, we will analyze the surrounding areas and fill those areas that you want to remove myth, whatever is relevant or necessary that it thinks is going to be suitable. So let's see how it works. This is the content of a field panel. If you can't see this, that will be on the window. Content aware. I'm just gonna go and open this now. And in order for content to where I feel to work, you first need to give the player some alpha information, some transparency information. Let's say for example, in this clip, we want to remove this charity number here. So that's the charity registration number. And let's say this was sensitive information and we didn't want this to be displayed on the internet. And so it works. I'm first going to go and get any of these masking tools that could be the pen or the rectangle or any shape you like. In this case, I'll need to cover up this charity nor text here, so the panel would be a good candidate. So I'll go and select the pen and just draw a simple mask here. But because I don't have the layer selected, I'm actually going to create a shape layer. So I'm going to go and make sure that the layer is selected so that when I create this is going to turn into a mosque. So I'm gonna go select and then click there, and then click here. And then maybe here, and then come down and then go back to where I started from. And that creates our mosque. I'll also when invert this mask. So I'll go and select this layer again, and then press M on the keyboard to reveal the mask. And then on the right-hand side here, you can either click the inverted button or you can just change them all from add to subtract. That area now is transparent. Now, I also need to make sure that the mask is animated or tract so that if the camera moves, and in this case it does move a little bit, let me just show you. The camera moves around. The mosque should move with it so that After Effects knows what area it should feel. So I will go and keyframe the mars path and on springs sort of center with the Spacewar. And then zoom in once maybe, and then maybe zoom in some more. There we go. And I've keyframes already, so I'll advance forward, let's say by five frames. And just make sure that I can kind of put this on the object again. Now if it's a little difficult to see what's happening, you can just go and turn this mask to numb temporarily and keep animating it. So it is pushed his Donald into bits. And then here, push it down again, and then down to the 20th frame, go down. And then finally, I'll do just as well, just checking that the mosque actually does move with the object and it seems like it's all good. I'll then go and set the mask back to being a subtract mosque. And to create a smoother results, I can add some feather to this as well, so it's less obvious. So I'm going to press on the keyboard to reveal the mask feder. Increase this, let's say, by 20 pixels or so. And then all I have to do after this is to go to the content or Raphael dialogue box on the right and then come down. And you know, a couple of options. Now the thumbnail here will actually show you the area that's going to be filled. So the checkerboard pattern area here is the area that after fixed we look at to fill this in. The alpha expansion is if you wanted this area to be larger, as if you just went to the mask and expanded it that way. So if I go and increase this, you see this area here will get larger. Take a look. So it just makes us area bigger. I'm going to shrink it now back to 0. I've already created the mask accurately, so I don't need this. And then you have three fill methods. The first one of which is objects. Object is used to remove something that's moving in the scene, say a person or a car or anything else that's moving. The second option, surface, if you have something fixed in the scene, let's say the wall that we're working with right now. And let's say we want to replace this gap with the contents of the surface. That's what this would be. An edge blend is a quick and dirty way of aftereffects guessing what this should be filled with. So if you're not sure, you can start with edge blend and see if it works. This is going to be the quickest option. But otherwise, depending on what it is that you are trying to remove or replace, you'd be choosing object or surface. Now because I know this is the wall surface, so I'll stick this to surface. And then it asks us where we want to apply. This effect is the entire work area which is starting from here until the end here? Or is it the entire duration of the timeline? Right now? They all mean the same thing because my work area is as long as my entire timeline. But if I go and shrink the work area here like that, it will now apply the effect on the, to the section here. I'm gonna go ahead and double-click anywhere here to make the work area as large as the entire timeline again. Now this option here where it says create reference frame, will actually take this frame from here into Photoshop, which will allow you to create a reference frames. We can actually feel these areas yourself. And After Effects will use that as reference to create better results. I'm not gonna do that now. I'll just go and click on his generates a field layer option. And what that's going to do is to create one image per frame. And in this case we needed 27 frames. And it will then stitch everything back together. And it will add those frames as intimate sequence to our timeline. This will also create a folder called it fills. If I open this up, and here we had the Content Aware feel folder, open that up. And then this is the image sequence. Let me open this up. And this is the actual sequence that is created and using, if I right-click on this and reveal in Finder, or this will say Explorer on Windows. Here you can actually see next to my projects, it created a new folder called it fills content or air fuel, just like here. And then 0000. And then these are all the PNG's it created. These are just a few layers you can see. And then it stitched those layers as an image sequence here, and then added that to the timeline. If I zoom back out by pressing shift forward slash and then play this again, you'll see that text is completely gone and it's almost impossible to tell that it was ever there. This is the power and the beauty of the Content Aware fill in aftereffects. 85. CLASS PROJECT - CHANGING BACKGROUND OF A VIDEO: For this assignment, you'll be using the tools and skills you just learned. And mascot is specific subject to replace the background with something else. So let me show you what I mean. Here. I have a clip of a soldier walking like that. And I also have another clip which will use as the background clip, which is this one here. And what you'll be doing now is to replace the background of this clip. Meaning that you'll be cutting out the trees and everything else and replacing them with this clip. Now this may sound a bit too intimidating at this stage, but you've actually learned all the tools that you need to use for this. So the result's going to be something like this. If I go back to the beginning here, here's what the final result is going to be. Let me break it down for you so it's going to make things easier. So what I've done at the beginning is I've masked him out. And in this case I've actually used the Roto Brush, but you could use the normal mosques if you wanted to and animate them. But I've used Roto Brush cause it was just easier. And that meant that I could just leave him with no background. So this is what I ended up with. So just him and no background. You can see here. And then I placed original background back again so that I have two things. The original background with no effects applied, more Roto Brush, no mosques to anything. I also have the cutout here, which is just him. And then while he's walking somewhere down here, I've actually started masking is back plate. If I select a back plate, press M for the mosques. Here you can see that the back plate is actually revealing itself. By doing that. Then just go and turns back plate on as well. And you can see at this point the back plate actually reveals itself. Now you'll notice at this point, I actually cut this layer off that because I wanted to replace that with a different layer here, which is a duplicates of this layer, but color corrected. So what I've done is I've selected this Layer, press Command D to duplicate it. On the top layer that must go and make this visible as well. I've applied the geometric color effect. There's a bit of an overlap here. You can see. You can see here, this is the original one. And the top one here actually fades in gradually. Which means the one that's got the effect applied actually fades in. And by this time, the bottom layer here, the original soldier disappears. And then we're left with this top one here that's already colour corrected like that. And then to fix the perspective, I've actually animated the size of this as well. You can see it's getting smaller there. And then finally, I've created one more copy of the soldier and place that copy inside a precompile on its own. And the reason why I did this is because I've already applied the Roto Brush effect and I've applied it to this precompile a couple of effects. Let me show you if I go to Window and then Effect Controls. I've applied the fill effect to make it black, and I'm just going to turn this layer on. Let me turn off the fill effect. So apply the fill and the Gaussian blur. If I turned a Gaussian Blur office, well, that's basically, let me zoom in here. That's basically a copy of the same layer of this. Offset it a little bit like this. And then apply the fill so it's black. And then apply the Gaussian blur so it looks blurry. And then down here, I just said the opacity of this to animate from 0 as this kind of goes from here to here, and from 0 to 50%. So it looks like this. The reason why I had to preconscious is because the Roto Brush effect doesn't like to have other effects applied on top of it sometimes. So in order to kind of trick aftereffects into thinking that there's no effect applied to this clip, to this original clip. Here. I just selected the clip and then just on its own vent to precompute by right-clicking and then decomposing it. And then I applied the effects, the fill and the Gaussian where effects to the pre-cum. So if I go back out and then play this again, this is the final result I had. Now, I know that this might seem a little too complex, but trust me, you do know all of these tools with some confidence, your creativity, and patients, you can create something that's similar to what I have on my screen. So go ahead and see what you can come up with. 86. Intro to Motion Tracking: in this chapter, we'll talk about motion tracking. Motion Tracking, in essence, is asking aftereffects to follow some pixels as they move in the clip. What can be done with those pixels, you ask? Well, let's see, in this example, we just have a simple tracking shots like this, and what I want to do now is to take a pre comp I created that's in here. It's inside the composition folder here, and it's a pre comp. I'll just drop it on top of this on the pre camp is just this. If I open this up, it's a simple pre come. We got a solid that scares up on the X, and it's rotated. And there were two text layers that come up one by one. So the animation is this, and what I want is pre come to do if I go back to my motion. Tracking compere is to follow a specific portion in this clip, for example, let's say we want this line here to follow a specific portion off this plate. You see that the pre camp isn't linked in any way to the clip underneath, but what we can do it? Motion tracking is to make the pre combat move together as if it's part of the sea. So let's say, for example, on the pre camp to start scaling from here from the bottom left corner, as it does. And I want that corner to be stuck to, Let's say here. So for that, I'm first gonna go and reset my anchor point on the pre comp. If I now move this down and get my ankle point tool like in the more Danka Point to the bottom left corner roundabout. Here, maybe on the nose remarks. And in order to motion track any clip, you first need to make sure that the clip is selected in this case. I want to motion track this clip here, the motion tracking clip and then on the right Inside you see a panel called Tracker. If you can't see this, just go to window and it'll be in this list tracker. Just go and click on this to open that up. I'm gonna make a bit more space here so you can see the rest of the panel and I'll scroll down. And you see, there are four different types of trackers that we can use. Initially, we'll start with tracking the motion. So for that again, you need to make sure that the layer is selected and then he can go and click on track motion. As soon as you click on track motion, it's going to take you into the layer as if you double clicked on the layer on Let's say I want a truck this little dot here maybe, and you see that the track 0.1 is created because we clicked on this track motion. This is what after fixes going to track this track point. If you move your cursor anywhere, let me just get my selection tool first. And if I move my cursor anywhere on this trucker as soon as the cursor turns into a black hair Oh, with four other arrows on the side, and right now it's a little bit fiddly because it's so small. So let's zoom in. So when my cursor is black and it's got four arrows on the side, that means I can click and move this around. I'm gonna move this old way to the left to about here. Let's say this is the thing that we want to truck, and as you click and drag, you see his room. The inversion of this in case you can't see this clearly, and let me explain to you know what these different areas are the plus on the inside the cross there is ready layer. Pre com is going to be linked to the Tracker, So this here is called the Attach Point. The inner square. Here is what after fix will track. So what there is inside the inner square, you'll be tracked. This square is called the feature Region. The outer square is called the search Region on the way it works, basically, is that after fix will try and track whatever is inside the inner square, but from one frame to the next. If what it's tracking, this appears from inside this inner square. It will then try and relocate it, looking at the Artist Square, which is the search region. So let's say for the sake of argument, if this little dot jumps from here to here from Mom frames of next after Vettel trying, place this tracker back onto this and it will continue to track. But if it jumps true far out, let's say it jumps like this. It's outside the search region as well. It's going to lose the track. So I'm gonna go back to the beginning and then place this back on top again. You may be asking now, why don't we just make this search region huge? So they were jumps outside? Well, you can. But if it's got other things like this, so there's another very similar dot here and another one here and maybe another one here. It might get confused. It might start jumping around as well as slowing down. If the search region is massive like this, it's going to take much longer to track. That's why we want to find an optimum size. And in this case, I think something like this should be enough. And you see, as soon as you click on one side, the other corner starts scaling in, and that's usually a useful thing. But if you don't want this, you can hold on control as you drag or command on the Mac, and it was scale only from that corner, and it won't touch the other corner. Same thing applies here as well. I'm gonna make this if it's smaller I'm gonna make sure that this entire adult is inside the future region like this. So it knows what to track. I'm gonna make this a bit Stroller here. There we go. Once you get this right, you then come down to your tracker and then down here it says, analyze. I can analyze it forward by one frame or backwards by one frame. The idea there is if you're not quite sure whether or not this is gonna work, you can just go on, try this frame by frame until you're sure Then you can analyze it. And the reason why there's the backward option as well is so that it can start from the end of the clip that say, somewhere here there is, um, out. And then I can place this one here and then I can start making my way back. So it is. You're both options. I'm gonna go back to the beginning and then places back again and let's see if this is gonna create a good track. So I'm gonna zoom out and then I'll just go and analyze this forward. What I'm looking for here is for the striker to stick to that little dot there, and indeed it does. If it doesn't work, for whatever reason, let's say, for example, it just jumps around or it kind of starts snapping itself to this start here. Where you can do is to press, command, said, or controls that only knows to go back a step toe under this and just go in and tweak this tracker a little bit that say, you make this a little bit larger, you make the search region of its smaller and then more this around a little bit and then re track, and eventually you'll get it. But the thing that you're tracking needs to be separated from the background, so it needs to kind of be distinct. It needs to look different than the rest of the things that you're tracking. For example, what you can't track is maybe this area here, although it's a little bit brighter than the background, it's probably not a good idea to try and track this because it's very faint on not quite distinct. So you're looking for an area that's quite contrast, E. And it stands out from the rest of the image, such as this area here And now that we tracked it, all we have to do is to come down here to it says motion targets on because I have only one layer here called pre comp, it automatically sets that layer as my motion type. But if he had multiple layers, you need to click on this edit target button and then specify which layer you want applied is tracking data to In this case, we don't need to because we only have one layer here anyway. And once the motion targets set that, we make this a bit larger so we can see the rest of the panel that was the target to set. We just need to go in a press supply and asks us now whether we want to apply this on X or Y or both. So I'm gonna play on X and y So this is going to track the motion exactly as it happened, going up and down as well. If there was any bombs or anything, I'm not gonna go impress, okay? And then the tracking is gonna be applied to the prequel. Let's see what this looks like. Now let me zoom out. And if I play it. Here's what we have. So you can see that the pre comp I created earlier sticks to the rest of the clip as if it's part of the clip where it was part of the clip when it was being shot. The pre compere needs some fixing so that we just go into the pre come by double clicking. I can see that layers are cutting too early, so that's an easy fix. I can press command a and then drag my played old way to the right and then on the keyboard I can press fault right square brackets, and that sets the end of the layers to be on my play. This just like old and left bracket sets the beginning off the layers. All right, bracket sets the end of the layers if I now switch back to my motion tracking composition, if I go back, the text here should stay until the end of the camp and you see texture going off screen, which is perfect, and you see that the pre compere this organic vinegar pre camp is linked to the Tracker from its anchor points. That's why we have to set the anchor point of this at the very beginning, before we did anything else toward a bit more depth to the scene. What we can do is perhaps the Adam ask around this pepper mill so it can make the text appear as if it's coming from behind the Peppermill. So let me show you how that would work. I go back to the beginning of the timeline. In fact, we don't have to go to the beginning. We can go to the frame and the text overlaps the Peppermill somewhere. Yeah, I'm gonna go here and there, select my motion tracking layer, and I'll duplicated command D and I'll call this copy Masked, and then I'll place this above everything else, and then I'll select it and then get my pencil. And I just use my pen to create a mosque around this pepper mill Like this stuff from here . Maybe I'll go down here with the curve and then maybe come down here and I'm not being careful. That's all about these parts because that's gonna be gone anyway. I'm gonna go go around there. If I zoom in, you can see now I made this look as if it's coming from underneath on. Of course, to make this perfect, I can add a bit more feather by going into the mosque. If I 12 us down, gotta masks and open up the feather can increase the feather. And maybe I can expand the mask a little bit as well. So it's a bit larger. If I got a mask expansion. Just drag this towards right. There we go. And to hide outline of the mask I can click on this button. Gabigol No, of course you need to animate the path of the mosque. So here I go and key frame the mask path and then I'll go forward by a couple of frames. So I'm just gonna do that by pressing page down. I'll get my selection tool and reveal the mosques outline, and then I'll just click and drag the mask back in towards you on page down a couple more frames and then with the mosque again on page down again and then, with a mask page down. Keep moving the mosque like this page down. Eventually the text will be free. So I'm just going more this couple more friends maybe just going down almost there. Now there we go. I think this is gonna be defined along. Let me go to the right a little bit. Maybe a couple more friends. That vehicle now the text and the peppermill are completely separated. I was gonna move the mask off the screen like that. All guns, women hide the mask outline. Go back to the beginning and play. And this is what we should get. And this is happening, thanks to the mask layer at the top and just click and drag this. You see, this is what's happening because we key frame that the text appears to be behind this. Now, to add a final touch to this, we can add some drop shadow to the pre comp. And to do that, I go to the pre camp I right click. And then she was layer styles on drop shadow. You see, this will introduce this tiny drop shadow here, and then you zoom in. This is with the drop shadow, and this is without the drop shadow. So that makes it stand out from the rest of the image a little bit more. In the next tutorials, we'll talk about different types of trackers 87. Stabilising Motion: If you ever had to shoot something, handheld, you know that the results are usually quite shaky. Now, in after effects, you can either eliminate the shake altogether or you can reduce it by smoothing the motion . Let's have a look at both ways. Now, let me first show you what we have here. If I just go and play this clip, you see that this is some handheld footage is very shaky indeed. You can see how shaky it is. If you look at ages around here now you're two options. You can either stabilize the motion altogether, so there's no movement at all or you can smooth out the motion. I'm sure you both on the right inside inside the tracker. If you go to stabilize motion, it takes her into the layer as if you double clicked on the layer and then it creates a track point. I'm gonna click and drag this point somewhere. I know to be static. Let's say, for example, it's this little thing here on the floor. I think it's a leaf. It's gonna leave it there, and I'm gonna zoom in a bit more. I can make this a little bit larger so far, this is exactly the same as tracking the footage so we can attack some pre comes or graphics to it. But instead of using the track data to attack, some layers will be using it to stabilize the clip. Now, with that, if I just go impressed analyze forward, I can actually go back as well because I wasn't at the beginning of my time light. In fact, in this case, because I'm in the middle, I'll have to do both. I'm gonna go analyze this forward, making sure that this sticks to that piece of leaf there. And I also need to go back here again and analyze it backwards. I'm gonna go here and analyze it backwards again, making sure that the tracker sticks to that leave. Now that we have this, we can just go and perceptual I and it's gonna ask us whether we want to apply this on the X and Y dimensions or ex Onley, or why only I'm gonna choose extend my and then I'll press OK. And what happens now is that if I play it, you'll see that the whole clip will start jumping around, especially if you look around the edges. This looks a bit strange, but what's happening, really is that after fixes looking at this leaf and it's looking at the trucker. And it says, if the tracker, which was stuck, did Leaf moves down my let's say, 50 pixels for mom frame to the next. And if I move the entire layer up by 50 pixels, that's going to make the leaf appear as if it didn't move, so it's actually quite a smart way of doing this. So it figures out that if the leaf most words left by 10 pixels from one frame to next, you can move the entire layer to the right by 10 pixels to compensate for that movements. But, of course it use your funny result around edges. And really, your best option here is to scale the clip up, and instead of using scale by pressing s and scaling this, which might work, but it's gonna lose some quality. Instead of doing this. There's an effect in effect and presets, and it's called detail, preserving upscale, so if you just search for detail, it will come up on the face of it. This is going to do pretty much exactly the same thing as a scale. But what really happens? Let me just gonna play this. What really happens is that it scales it without losing as much quality. So if I said this door on 2118 or something, it's going to look as if it's scaled. But if you look at this scale here, it hasn't changed. So the detail preserving upscale is going to try and retain the quality as much as it can before it starts breaking apart. And also the effect comes with an option to reduce the noise. So if I go and increase this, it's gonna take a little longer to Renda. But if I look at it in detail, let me just go and turn its reduce noise down to zero so I can see what this did. I said that zero and press enter. There is a mole, Dwayne, so I can see actually what's happening. This is with the reduce noise effect. If I not going increases it, it's a more so you can see what's happening perfectly. This is with the noise reduced. This is without the noise reduced, but of course, it takes much longer to render. But if I zoom art and if I played, you see how stable the bin is compared to my cursor. It's shaking a little bit still, but compared us to what we had before. It's almost static. And because of the detail preserving upscale, it's taking a little longer to Renda than it would normally, because the motion here was quite exaggerated. So the camera was shaking too much. It can only do so much in the next tutorial. I'll show you how it can stabilize this clip, not by getting rid of the motion altogether, but by reducing its. 88. Warp Stabilizer: in this tutorial, we'll have a look at how we can smooth out the motion. If the camera is too shaky, that's a little later. First I'm going played it so you can see how shaky the camera was when I shot this. Now, instead of getting it off the motion, which is what stabilized motion here does. If you choose warp stabilizer on the right inside inside the Tracker, it's going to take its time and its going to analyze the clip. Basically, what's happening is it's looking at every single pixel in the clip from one frame to the next, and it works out to about those pictures that moved. And then it applies is algorithm to make those boxes go back to where they were. Smoothly, we wait for analyzing to finish, and this may take a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the type of clip that you're using. The higher the resolution, the longer it will take to analyze. And now that it's done analyzing, if I know, go back and play it because some of the motion is it didn't quite get it off the motion. It just made it smoother now, so I have a look. The camera is still shaking, but not as much. It's kind of floating rather than shaking. It's as if it's on a Steadicam. Now. If you wanted the motion to become altogether, you can go to the Effect Controls panel. We should now display the warp stabilizer effects, and it's only there because we apply the warp stabilizer inside the Tracker, and I can set the result to have no motion at all by clicking here and then changing the smooth motion to know motion. And it will stabilize it again. If I now playback, this actually will do a much better job than the stabilize motion mutton, because this is more of a recent effect. Another one you see, it's almost a locked off shut. It's as if I was using a tripod if you wanted the motion. But you want to have less motion, I can go to result. Set this back to smooth motion, and I can increase the smoothness. If I just go and sit this to, let's say 100% it will stabilize it again. And if I go and play it, the motion is gonna be even smoother now. There are a couple of different options here, right? Says Method. It says Subspace warp. What this means is that it's going to create new pixels from scratch. You remember in the previous example, destabilize the motion. We have to scare the layer up to get it off the edges that were transparent. Now, if you choose the subspace walked default, one new pictures are created for you automatically, so you don't have to scale anything up. This is why it takes a little longer to render this. If you change it from subspace warp to, let's say, position, scale and rotation, you'll now try and stabilize its only by changing the position scale and the rotation off the cliff. If I now go back and play so it's a little stranger than it was before, it's got all these strange war perfects going on. So the best one here is the subspace work most of the times. But this is the one that's going to take the longest to render as well just keep that in mind. If the result isn't quite great, you can go here, which is advanced and can turn on detailed analysis and it's going to take a little longer to analyze this, but it's gonna create much better results. And this is just one other way off stabilizing clips in after effects. Just to compare this to what we had before the warp stabilizer, I'm gonna go and turned effect off and then play it again. See how shaky this waas and when I turn this on, see what it looks like now all of us, of them, it cuts the shakiness off. So hopefully now you see that using the warp stabilizer, you can save the clips which you thought were too shaky and useless. 89. Tracking Masks on Faces: when you want to create a mosque and you want the mask to follow someone's face, say, for example, you have an adjustment layer and you apply some color effects that I just Malaya on that you want to mask the adjustment layer so that the color effects on the show on someone's face. You can get that mask to follow a face automatically. Let's have a look at how it's done. First, I'm gonna go and create an adjustment layer and then I'll go to affect in presets. I don't apply the geometric color effect here. Just drag it on top of the just Malia or double click to apply it. And then I'm just gonna make some changes. I'll go to basic correction. Let's say, for example, in this case, as I play this, you see that the camera is kind of tracking along, and that's here. For example. I want this guy's face to be slightly brighter on may be a bit more red as well, so it doesn't look as pale. So I'm gonna go to the adjustment layer, go to the white balance here, an increase the temperature first, and then I'll go to exposure just drag this towards right just a tiny bit and then maybe go to shadows, increased this as well, and then maybe decreased exposure, just a tiny bit roundabout There may be. And if I go and turn it off and then back home, you can see this is before this is after, Let's say I want this effect only to be applied to his face and nowhere else. Well, we know how to mask this already. So if I go back to the beginning and select the adjustment layer and get my mask to, let's say, for example, the lips tool, I can then draw it really rough shape around this space. It doesn't have to be precise at all. I'm gonna go and draw something like this, and as long as this mask is selected on down here, I can make sure it's selected. And if I go to the tracker, you will tell me that the method is gonna be face tracking. Now, if I click on this, you see, it's got face tracking outline on me on face tracking detail features. We're not gonna talk about the detailed futures in this video. That's more for applying specific thing to, let's say, his left eye or right, I order nose or the mouth and song. For now, I'm just going to face tracking outline on me, and you see this is only available if the mask is selected. If I go and click outside the mask that I select this layer, it disappears. So this is only available when the mosques are selected, with the mask selected on this face tracking outlined only selected. I'm gonna go and analyzes forward. And as soon as I click on this, look what happens to the masks shape. It's gonna snap itself to his face. Look, and it tracks it for dress of the clip so you don't have to do any work after fixed does all the work for you, and it's done. If I go back, you see that the mask is following his face. Of course, we still need to do some more work on this. So if I now go to the mosque and maybe I get rid of that line here so I can see what's happening around the edges of the mosque. And first of all, we'll see. It's too sharp off course this image is very pixelated. It's low res because I compressed it so I can share them with you. But leaving that to one side, we can see that it changes from dark to light, really abruptly, so to soften it, I can just go to feather increase the feather, and you can see how soft it gets. Now I can then expand the mask as well. So it's a bit larger, not too much, maybe just a tiny bit like that, and let me know. Attorneys adjustment layer off and then back home so I can see before and after. If I goes amounts. And if I played us again from the beginning, see how his face is not being brighter than it was before? I can expand the mask a little more. Maybe so. His neck and the forehead are also covered. I'll go back and play it again. You see a bright his face is now. And of course, I can go back into my new metric color effect on make any other changes here. Let's say, for example, if this is to read, I can when dial this temperature down a bit, so it's not as red I can increase the exposure, increase the shadows, maybe the increase. The contrast. I now turn it on and off. You can see what happens to the face. Let's say we want the same effect to be applied to disguise faces. Well, well for debt. I can go and draw another mask around this face. So if I select they're just Malia and then just go and draw a mosque like that's and then I can track his face. I'm gonna track it forward from this point on, and then I'll come back and tracking backwards. Tours left. I'm gonna analyze it forward and it snaps to his face, and you can see how the shape changes gradually. And then I'll go back and then I'll analyze it backwards so it covers the entire clip. And with that, if I go and turn the mask outline off, can I get a really sharp edge to fix this? You go into the mosque hoping the mosque up and go to mask. Feather increased this as well, and then maybe in this case, I'll decrease the mosque expression, so it's a bit smaller. If I was amounts. Nice face has exactly the same effect as this guy's face, and you can do this for pretty much every single person in the clip. If I go in maybe at the mosque, to this guy's face for that, I'm gonna select there, just one there again. And then it's going draw a mosque so he gets brighter and no analyze it forward that will analyze from this point onwards, and then I'll go back and analyze it backwards. And monsters is done, of course, under two Grand Feather this mosque as well. It's losing some detail here because it's just over exposed. But of course he didn't go into these mosques and manually adjust them as well. I was in Macau, and then I'll select that mask as well. I'll go to its feather, increase that and then maybe increased the mosque expansion as well. And then maybe featherless even more fuck like outside and rewind. You see, his face is also brighter now, so if we're not going to turn their just when they're off and then turn it back on, you can see what we did to all three guys. This is before this is after. So if you want the effects to appear on the own faces. You can apply them to adjustment layer and the mosque there, just milia around the faces and then track those mosques. 90. 3D Camera Tracker: when you want to reconstruct the scene in three D space so it can place a layer in this scene to make it look as if it belongs here as well. You use the camera trucker. The camera tracker will automatically track points in this scene so you don't have to set them manually. In this example, we have a scene that was shot on a crane. If I play this now, you'll see the cranes going down. And let's say we want to play something in this scene in front of this wall. Well, for that, I'm just gonna go and track the camera by clicking on the track camera button. This is going to first analyze it in the background. What after fix means by analyzing in background is that you can go back and work on something else while this is working on this. If I know I got to face tracking, for example, I can work on this and it's still happening in the background. If I go back to it, it might have finished their ego. It's actually just solving the camera now, so its about to finish. Now. If I go back to the beginning. And if I scrub through the time line like this, you see some track points all around these little crosses. These are called attract points if I know keep scrubbing and they appear and disappear from time to time. And some of them appear to tiny like these, and some of them appear huge like these. This is actually tracking this woman here on. We don't want it to track the woman, but that's fine. We're just gonna use the ones that reaction need. So I'm gonna rewind on the track. Points on the walls are the ones I'm interested in, but I can't see them quite clearly because they're too tiny. So if I go to the Fed controls panel on the left inside a three D camera trucker, I can increase the track point size. It makes all these cross as much larger. It doesn't actually change anything. It just makes them easier to see. And you may have noticed that I was dragging my cursor around. There's a target that follows my cursor. Let's say, for example, you want to play something on the floor. Well, you want to make sure that the target is flat on the floor like this. You want to play something on the wall? You just move your cursor somewhere here so that the target is flat on the wall. You want to find the point where the target is perfectly flat. So you don't use a point like this. For example, that's not gonna work. Do you want to find a point where the target looks more natural like this? And basically, it happens based on the triangulation off three points by default. So it uses in this case, if I just go and click here, it uses that point that point on that point. There is women, so it only uses those three points to place the target. If I don't like it, I can just click outside and reposition the target anywhere I like. And it keeps snapping around. Or if I just went to a marquee selection like this, it will use all these points now to place the target there. The more of those points you have on one surface, the more precise your target is likely to be. So right now, I selected all these points. And if I don't want a specific point to be selected. I can just go impress command and then the selected like this. Let's I want to place an object on here now that I'm happy with the position of the targets . All I have to do is to go and right click on the target, and that gives us some options we can create on this target. A text layer and the camera. We can create a solid layer on a camera. You can create a no on a camera, or we can create what's called a shadow catcher on a camera on the lights. For now, I'm just gonna go and create a solid and a camera. And what this does now is if I go click outside to the select, everything is to create a solid there, and it also creates a camera. And if I play this, let me just go back to the beginning. And if I press shift forward, slash to zoom out. If I play, this soldered will appear as if it belongs there. Look, it will move together with a camera. It changes in perspective. It changes its size because it goes away from the camera and it changes in rotation as well as the camera rotates and that is a pretty decent truck. The soil, it sticks there. Like I said, as if it belongs there. Let's see how this is built. Let me come out of this active camera and then go back to, let's say, my custom view. What's happening here is that this is the camera that we created on the camera is actually gonna follow the path that actual cameras following if I go back, then just changed my angle here by using my unified cameras will. So this isn't just zoom in a bit more. So this is what actual camera was on the crane. And if you remember the scene, the crane was actually kind of coming down. Gradually, let's go to two of you so you can compare them. I could make the left view my active camera, so I have a look at what the crane does here. It just comes down gradually as it tilts up, and that's exactly what this camera here is doing as well. Have a look as this crane here on the left comes down and the camera tilts up. This camera here comes down and it starts tilting the head up look. So this camera here is simulating exactly what the real camera here was doing. That's what the three D camera tracker does. It just simulates a real life camera. Let me change my views back to one of you. I'm gonna go to the active camera and of course, we can replace the soil it with something else. So let's go to the project panel and I'm going to the footage folder and there's a follow here that I have. It's called Crack Start Jay Peak. Now, if I select any layer in the timeline, this is are you to play something that's on the timeline with something that's inside the project battle. You select the layer in the timeline, and then you dragged the clip that you want to replace that with on top of it. But before you look off your mouse, you press the old key on the keyboard and then you look off your mouse. That's how you replace earlier in the timeline with one from the project panel. No, I got this file here. If I know, go back and play. You see, the cracks remain that perfectly. I can, of course, go and make some further changes to this. If I go select the cracks, maybe I can scale this down. Like that's of course, I can rotate these as well if I open up the rotation order orientation in this case, I can orient this on the set a little bit like that. And let's say we want to get off the grays here, so we're left only with the cracks. And I can do that by going to delay a moment here and change it from normal to something like soft light. And now we can see that the Grace had disappeared and were left just with the cracks off course it can Le grand scale this up and the reposition this in three D space by using the arrows here, I'm gonna hold down the shift key so it goes faster. And then if I go back on, play it, you'll see the cracks are gonna remain there throughout the entire clip. Of course, when these two characters get in the way, we have to go and mask them, starting with their heads so that they appear as if they're in front of the wall. not behind it, and I can do that easily by selecting my base layer on duplicating it. And then I dragged us all the way to the top. I can rename this to be masked. I can then get my pencil. Maybe let's start with this woman's head. What is going mosque? This go around back to her shoulder as well. I'll come around back to where I started from, so she appears to be in front of those cracks. If not, click outside. And of course, we can add some feather by pressing F. And then I can change this to, let's say three. So that's gonna make the edges a little softer, and I can do the same for this woman as well. I can just go creates one more mosque here around there now at some feather to this one as well. So if I click outside, it appears as if they're in front of the wall there. Of course, this is only happening for one frame, so if I go forwards or backwards, you see that the mosques are going to remain there and then they'll walk off. So what we would need to do really would be to go in and then key frame the mask path for both of these mosques. But go a key, frame this mask path, and we'll forward by one frame and the modem. Ask again on top of her head and then do the same again for this one until the end of the clip. And then from here I would rewind back until they're clear away from the wall. Of course, there are many different ways we can make this scene look more realistic. But my aim in this lesson was to show you the basics off the three D camera tracker and hopefully you now understand, are powerful. The three d camera trucker can be. 91. Taking a Hand Drawn Sketch into Photoshop for Cleanup: At some point in your life as an animator, you'll either be asked to create an illustration or work on an illustration that's already been created for you. Here in front of me. I have a really simple drawing I did on a piece of paper. And my task now is to convert this to a digital illustration so I can take it into After Effects and animated. Let me first start by tidying this image up in Photoshop. So I'm going to right-click on this image and open it with Photoshop. And now we are in Photoshop. Now the way photoshop works is that on the left-hand side, you have your toolbar. Right in the middle. You have your canvas. This is where all the work takes place. Above it, you had the Options bar, which shows you the settings or the properties of whatever you've highlighted or selected. And on the right-hand side, you have your layers and some other panels here. Now, since this is an animation course, I'll try and keep the Photoshop and Illustrator part as straightforward and simple as I can. The first thing we want to do to this image is to rotate it so that it's the right way up. To do that, I'll go to the Image menu at the top and then come down to image rotation. And I'll rotate this 90 degrees counterclockwise. Now how to file the right way up? As you can see here, I was trying these different drawings. And in the end I decided to actually go with this drawing in the middle. So in order to tidied up, let's go and crop everything. So the only thing that we have is this illustration in the middle. For that, I'll go and get my crop tool from the left-hand side. And because the last time I used this tool, I was using the ratio of 1440 by 720. That's the ratio that it automatically selects. I'm gonna go and clear this and manually click on the coordinates and then drag this around the frame here like that. And then this goes here. And then I'll extended down like that. And Margot and press Enter on the keyboard. And that will crop the image. Let me zoom in by pressing command or control NPC and plus. And this is my illustration. Now I want to clean this up a little bit. So firstly, I want to convert it to a black and white image. For that, I'll go to image adjustments and I'll come down to here versus black and whites. I'll just leave the default settings alone and press OK. And now my image is black and whites. Secondly, I want to make the background as light or white as possible and old lines as dark as possible. And that will be done by adding some contrast. So I'll go back to image adjustments and then come down to brightness and contrast. And here I'll just move this out the way. Add a bit more brightness to it. And in fact increase the contrast as well. To see the before and after versions, I can click on this preview button. This was before, this is after. So you can see my lines are much clearer now and this will make it easier for us to trace this in Illustrator or go and press. Okay? And finally, I also want to clean this up so that these lines don't show. There are many different ways you can notice in Photoshop, but I think the easiest way would be to use the tool here called the Spot Healing Brush Tool. If I click and hold it down, this tool here is the spot healing brush. If I select it. Now you'll see my cursor turns into a round brush. I can change the size of this brush, managing the square brackets on the keyboard. The right square bracket is going to make the brush larger. The left square bracket is going to make it smaller. So I'm gonna go and make the slightly larger like that maybe. And I'll just go and paint over these lines. Now because I'm using the graphics tablets. The harder I press on the tablet, the thicker the brush gets, the lighter I press, the thinner the brush gets. So let's go and paint over it is like that. And I'll just try and go down and follow this line to make it disappear. Like that. You might need to go a couple of extra times on these lines to make them go away. Like that. And that took part is fine on score around here as well. And then clean these up. There's some lines here and so I'm going to clean these up as well. And then this line here on the right. And these are just clean this up as well. Now having these lines wouldn't really matter that much because you'd be manually tracing this anyway. But it would be easier to look at something that's cleaner. So that's why I'm cleaning all these lines. So I'm gonna get rid of all of these. But that's and then here as well, I'll just clean them up like that. Now maybe this line here as well on the left. Let's go get rid of these. It's like that they're all gone. And here as well, I can clean this up as well. And then there's some detail here that can clean up. And that should do the trick. Now I don't really care too much about these lines here because I want, like I said, be tracing these anyway. So I'll leave these as they are. Now that I have this image a little cleaner than it was before, I'm ready to take it from Photoshop, Illustrator and start tracing it. Let me just go to File and Save the image. I'm going to save this as. And I'm going to add the word clean next to the name of the file as I've just clean this up. And I'll save this as a JPEG. Or then when per se, I'm going to increase the quality. And then press OK. And now that the file is ready to be taken into Illustrator and then traced, that's exactly what we're looking at in the next lesson. 92. Bringing the Sketch into Illustrator: In this lesson, we'll have a look at how to create a file in Illustrator and then bring our imaging so it's ready for tracing. I'll go to file and I'll create a new document in Illustrator. When you do that, Illustrator is going to ask you to confirm the settings of the document you are creating. Let's say for example, I want to create something for the web. So I'm gonna go to the web presets here. And these are the most commonly used where presets. Now if the size of the file that you want to create is actually different than what you're seeing here. You can go and dial in some specific values here. Let's say for example, I want to create a document that's 1080 by 1920. So it's the full HD size, but in portrait mode, like something that you would see on Instagram stories, for example. Then I'm not going to change the rest of the settings and just go and hit Create. That will give me a file that's exactly 1080 by 1920. Now that we have our document ready, let's go and place the image we've cleaned up in Photoshop. So I'm gonna go to File Place. And here I'll just go and pick nature clean. And when I do that in Illustrator, it's going to ask me down here if I want this object to be linked, which means this fall one, the embedded to your Illustrator file, but rather it will be linked just like the fires in aftereffects. Or it can uncheck this link option, which means this fall here. It would be embedded tour Illustrator file. And that's exactly what I want. So I'm going to make sure that this link option is turned off. If I then want it place. And now that JPEG is loaded into my cursor, I can now click and draw an area to load this J pagan. And none that I have the file here, I can, as long as I have my selection tool selected, click on one of the corners. And then scale is Down, up and squash it and stretch it sideways as well. As I do this just like an After Effects. If you hold down the Shift key, you lock the proportions intact, which means you can't break the original proportions or there is no stretching more squash. So I'll make this slightly larger like this. And then also larger this way as well. And I'll also try and centered is by clicking and dragging this down. And at some point you'll see illustrated will intersect this with the center of your art board. And then they go. And now that I have our file ready, I want to go to the Layers panel illustrator by clicking here. And I'll then rename this layer to be drawing. And then I'll go and lock the layer so I can't make any more changes to it. In the next lesson, I'll show you how to use the pen tool to trace the image manually. 93. Tracing the Sketch in Illustrator: Now it's time to try and draw this digitally in Illustrator. For that, I'm going to go to the Layers panel first and create a new layer by clicking the bottom right corner here. And that's going to create a new layer, which I'll rename flour. Making sure that this layer is highlighted. I'm gonna go to the pen tool here and then start drawing this. Now Illustrator gives you tons of different ways of recreating this image by tracing it, including some automated ways. But since this is not an illustrator course, I'll keep using the Pen tool, which you can also find in After Effects. So hopefully this will feel somewhat familiar to you. So I'm gonna get the pen tool and start with one of these petals. So I'll zoom in a couple of times by clicking Command Plus or control plus on PC and spacebar to center this. And I'll start with tracing this top petal here. So I'll click here with the pen tool and draw a handle of then come up to somewhere here. Click and drag. Then up here, click and drag. My. If you want to reposition this, as you drag, it can hold the space bar down, which will allow you to reposition this point before we let go of your mouse. Let's say here. Then I LIGO. Now the next point I want to create is going to be somewhere here. So it's going to be in line more or less with this point. So I'm gonna go here, click and drag. And then finally come back down here, and then click and drag. When I'm done, I either go and press escape. Or if I want to close the shape, I come down here and click back on where I started from. And they'll give me one full shape. Now, if I press Command Z to undo this, I could also press escape. And that will lead this part open. Now because we will put these petals on top of each other. It doesn't really matter that much. But just to keep things tidy, I am going to go click here. So that's going to reactivate this path and then come back here and click to close this with a straight line. Let's go into our first petal. Of course you can go and tweak this now. So if I get my direct selection tool in Illustrator, I can then click and drag these points around, let's say like that. And then push this around. That way. I can click and drag these handles as well, like that here. And I want to line up these two points as well. So I'm just gonna click here and then lift this up. And you see your Concord. Get this right. So let me zoom in by pressing command plus. So I can click and drag this up. And that should do the trick. I'll zoom back out. And now we have our first petal. What I wanna do now is to take this petal and duplicated to go here. And then here. And here. For that, I'll go and use a tool called the rotate tool, which is this one here. Now for that to work, I'm first going to need to select my selection tool. Make sure that the entire shape here is selected. So illustrating those water rotate, I'll then get my rotation tool here. Now I want to rotate the petal from around the point somewhere down here, as if the anchor point of this petal is set somewhere down here. To do this precisely on make use of the rulers and guides in Illustrator. For that, I'll go to the View menu and then come down to where it says show rulers. And now that I had the rulers, I can draw a guide from here. Right in the center of this petal here. Like that. I'm just using the tip of the petal as reference like that. And I'll also draw one more line from the top down that's going to specify the center of that little corner there. So I'll let go there. And now this is where I need to rotate this petal from. You can see my drawing on paper wasn't quite symmetrical. That is why we actually use Illustrator to make things as symmetrical as possible. And none that I have these guides in place, I'm going to go select my selection tool again, select the pedal that I want to rotate, and then get the rotate tool here. You'll notice when I select the rotate tool, there's a cyan crosshair here, which is where the layer is going to rotate from. The best way to update this in Illustrator is to hold down the Alt or the Option key and then come down here to where this intersection is. And then click once. As soon as you do that, you will put down components or the reference point down here. And it will open up the rotate dialogue box. So now I can dial in how many copies I want here. This only works in angles. And I know there's 360 degrees in a circle. So if I go and type in 360 divided by four, because eventually I want four objects here. And if I press tab, that will do the calculation for us. So that's 90. Or if I want to go to the right, a command set this to minus 90. And then instead of pressing OK here, which would actually rotate this existing petal down here, I'm gonna go and press Copy once. And now that I've done this, I can now repeat this action. In Illustrator, The Way to repeat an action is by pressing Command or Control on PC, followed by the letter D for delta. If I press Command D once and twice, and now have two more copies of that. Now if I zoom out by pressing command or control minus, I have four petals that are identical and they are perfectly aligned to the center of these two guides I've just created. You can see they're not quite aligned to my original drawing, but that's fine. I want to create something a bit more symmetrical. So I'm going to leave this as it is. But if you don't like that, you can actually get your selection tool. And the more these objects manually to wherever you want them to be like that. And then you can get the direct selection tool, the white arrow, and then tweak the actual handles or the points like this. And I'm not going to do this. I'm going to press Command Z to undo that a couple times. And now that I have the four petals, what I want to do is to go and create these in-between petals as well. So for that, I'll just go and get my pen tool again. And before I start drawing on where unlock this layer. In fact, if I double click on the name, I can call this main petals. Now that it's locked, I can go and create a new layer. Call this one small petals. And then the small petals layer selected. I'll just go and click somewhere here. Let me actually zoom in by pressing Command Plus and then Spacebar. And then come up here, click and drag to create something like this. And come down to somewhere here. Click and drag. And then here, click and drag. I want to go all the way back and close this as well. So I'm gonna click somewhere here, run this off, and then come back to where I started from. Click and drag. Like fats. I can now get my direct selection tool and then click on these points and then just tweet them. Let's say that opened this up a little bit. Newer pushes down again, a little, something like that. You can be as creative with these as you like. But what I want to do is to make sure that there are no gaps between the large and the small petals. So for that, I'll go and click and drag this down. And in fact, I'm going to ignore my original drawing a little bit and push this down that way. And then pushes that way. And then maybe push this up. And then maybe this can go here. And then the handle can be increased. And this one also can be increased like that as well. So now there are no gaps between them and the small petal actually touches the larger ones here. Let me zoom out by pressing command minus. And now that I have one small petal plucking up my selection tool, make sure this is highlighted. And get my Rotate tool. Hold on all. Click on his guide centerpoint again, and then do the same thing minus 90. Copy Command D to duplicate that. And Command D again to duplicate that. And now I have four small petals as well. Now in order to make it a little easier to work with, I'll just go and select everything by pressing command a. And I can see now that I've selected these and because my main petals layer was locked, nothing on that one got selected. So let me unlock this and then try command a again. So now everything is selected. And then I can scroll to the left hand side here and select the stroke option, and then give us a black color. And if I actually go to the properties here, i can come down to stroke and increases from one to let say, four. So this way I can actually see the outlines of the shapes as well. I'll click outside the select everything. And I've got two layers. One last thing I want to do with these is to swap the two layers around so that small petals appear as if they come from underneath the large ones like that. And then to fill the center area up, I'm going to create a circle. So for that, I'll go and create one more layer. And I'll rename this to be circle. And now I'm going to get the ellipse tool here, which is inside the rectangle is this one. I'm gonna go and click in the center and drag. As I do this, I'll hold the ALT key down. So drawing happens from the center outwards like this. And I'll also hold the Shift key down, so it's a perfect circle like that. And then ago, Nivea Gore, get my selection tool. Click outside. This is the shape I have. Now. I don't want to have any stroke on the circle, but I selected motor properties. Stroke, set this to 0. My Fargo click outside. This is what it's going to look like. And now I want the circle to be in front of everything. So I'll go to layers, pushes circle right up. So this is the final result I get. I can now go and color these. I'm gonna select the circle and pick a color for this, let us say here. But before I pick the color, I need to make sure that the thing here that's in front is the fill colour. Otherwise, if I just go and pick a color like this, that's going to be colorizing the stroke, which I don't have. So I'm gonna make sure that they feel is in front by clicking here. And then I'll just go and pick a yellowish, reddish tint like that may be maybe a little lighter like that. And then for the large petals, I'll just select them. In fact, I'll shift select these as well. I'll pick a green shade or something like that. You can see I must have missed it, this one out, so I'm going to select this as well. And then try this again. So select these with the Shift key and then pick the green shape like that. And the ones that the buck. So I'm gonna select these, the small petals. Wanna make them a slightly different shade of green. Let's say something like that maybe. And on all of these now I'll go and get rid of the strokes. So I'm gonna press command a to select everything properties, stroke 0 and enter. So now I don't have any strokes on the objects. Let me zoom out and I have myself this flower shape. In the next lesson, we'll complete this drawing by adding the text and the additional elements, like the stem and a gradient in the background. 94. Creating the rest of the illustration: Now let's create the stem, the text, and a few more elements. Let's start with the stem. I'm going to create a new layer by going here. And a new layer. And I'll call this one stem. And I'll make sure that this is at the bottom of everything like that. And that the layer is highlighted. So I can get my pen tool and draw one curve line here that will be the stem. And on this line, I don't want any fill, but on their stroke. So I'm going to go to the fill here, click and then turn it off by clicking on this button. Then click on stroke. And then they'll pick a brownish color here, like that. And they'll click and draw the initial curve. And then maybe click once more here. And if I want to reposition this, I can hold our Spacebar and then maybe go here and let go of my mouse. And then press escape to come out of this and go to Properties. And I'm gonna give this a thicker stroke now by holding down Shift and then clicking on this apparel. That's a, that's going to be our stem. Let's go and tweak this a little bit. So I'm gonna go and get my Direct Selection tool by pressing a. And I can click on this and then drag the handle down. And then maybe this goes up a little bit like that. And using what's called the width tool in Illustrator, which is this one here, you can give this stroke some more definition. Let me zoom in by pressing Command Plus. And now if I get the width tool, I can move my cursor anywhere on this path and then click and drag. And you can see I can adjust the width variably, like that's where it can be thicker here. And then maybe click here and drugs which thinner here. Or if I undo this, I can make it quite thick here. And they're really thin here. So it looks like that. You can add more detail here by clicking and dragging again like that. And it can push these around like that. Maybe. If I zoom out by pressing command minus, that's what that stem is going to look like. At any point if you want to turn off the background image. So we can actually see your illustration properly. You cannot layers, turn is drawing layer off. And this is eventually what will end up with. Let me turn this micron. And the final thing we'll do two, this is going to be the text. Let me zoom in to the text. Let's first go and create this little curve here so the text can sit on it. So for that I'll get the ellipse tool again. And then click, I'm going to start and centered IS I'm going to click here and then hold down alt, and then just draw a circle like this. But this time I'm not holding down the Shift key, so it doesn't have to be a perfect circle. So it's more of an elliptical shape. Now that I've drawn it, I clean up my selection tool. Lift this up, holding down the Shift key, so it moves in a straight line. And I'm just trying to line up this curve here of the circle, just underneath the text. So I'll come down here and extended towards right. But when I do this, I also want to extend towards left at the same time. So for that, I'll hold down the Alt key again. So it extends equally like that. And you can see again, my drawing wasn't quite symmetrical, but of course the shape I just did now is symmetrical. So I'm going to send a text that I'll create on this shape. But one thing I just realized is that I drew this on the same layer as the stem, which is going to create some issues when it comes to animating it. So you want each object to be on a separate individual layer. So I'm gonna go and create one more layer here called this one banner. Open up the stem layer, take the ellipse, place it inside the banner. So that's sitting on its own layer. Now, let me collapse the stem. And now I have this banner. Now I'm gonna hold down Alt and duplicate the spanner to go up. And now volume now shifted as well so that it moves in a straight line. And let me now when Locke and hide everything else, so it can only work on these two circles. So I'm going to go and lock this and the petals and actually hide them as well. And this is my banner. So what I wanted to now is to go and delete the sections that I don't need. The best way of doing that is by using a tool called the Shape builder tool. So if I now go and highlight bottle the shapes. And then on the keyboard, if you press Shift M, that's this tool here for shape builder Shift M. Now what this allows you to do, if you just click and draw a line like this, you can actually merge the shapes. Or if you hold on, then click and draw. You can subtract these from each other like that. So you only end up with this section here. Let me undo that. I actually want the edges here to be flat as well. So I'll go and add to this a rectangle. Miranda draw the rectangle from one of the centers here. Let's say this line, click and drag and hold the Alt key down so it moves in both directions like that. And I let go somewhere here. So I can then reposition or rescale this. I can click and drag this down my butt. And then drag this up like that. And now I have all of these shapes. I can select all of this by getting my selection tool and then drawing a big rectangle around them so they're all selected. Then I can get my shape builder and then hold down the Alt key and take up the bits that I don't need. So I'm going to hold on, click and paint or it is bit. So that's taken out saying that this is well alt, click and paint this little piece as well. Here we campaigns. I'll do the same for the right hand side. Click and paint around these. And also for the bottom alt, click and paint. And then here as well, and then the top part. So I'm only left with this banner here. If I now go and turn everything else on. Let me go and switch off my original drawing layer. And that's going to be our banner. Then click outside the cell like this. And if you noticed on the original drawing, my banner actually had some open ends. And I quite like this. I don't want this banner to be closed like that. So I'll go and turn off the original layer again. Select this line. This might Direct Selection tool and then deletes. This reveals one more line underneath. So I'm gonna select that as well and delete, and do the same here as well. Select, Delete, select delete. So now I have two lines that will act as the banner. And now it's time to go and add our text on it. So for that, I'm gonna get my Type Tool, which is this one here. And I'll create a new layer by clicking on this new layer icon. I'll call this one text. And what I want to do is to take this curve here of the banner layer, copy and pasted inside a text layer as well. So I can use it as a path for the text that I'll be drawing. So let me do that. I'm gonna go get my selection tool. Select the banner, and select this line at the bottom, which is this layer here. I'll go and copy this by pressing Command C. And then we'll select this text layer highlighted and targeted by clicking on this dot here. So this layer is targeted, which means if I now go and paste it by going to Edit, paste in place, that will paste it line also on this text layer here. If I go to my banner, collapse it, turn it off. You see I still had this line because this is now part of this text layer. I'm not going to get my type tool. And if I move my cursor here and then click that will put the text on this path, albeit upside down, which we can fix in just a second. I'll now go and type in nature. And then go to Properties and then highlight this text, make it larger. And then I'll switch back to my selection tool so I can have the controls for the text. You see there's going to be this line in the middle. If I move my cursor here, It's got this little icon next to it and arrow pointing up. For now, click and drag. I can when a text along that path where if I push up, I can switch it to go above the line, which is what I want. I'm going to leave it there, make it even larger, and then expand this a little bit so there's more space on the right hand side for the text to be visible. What bats. And I'll make this a little larger, actually, something like that. And then we're gonna push us back to the centre. So if I select the text more my cursor here, I can just place this somewhere here. And I'll go and pick a different font, something like maybe this one here, impact. And I can select the text. And in fact I'll make this much larger. So I'm gonna hold down Shift and then click on this upper omics and a font size. Like that. I'll push this towards left. And I'll expand it towards right from this line here. So I can actually see the rest of the text like that. I'll make this a little larger. And then unscrew and pushes towards left again, so it's centered there. Now go and give this a different color. So let's maybe go and pick a similar color. Let's say this time a yellowish green like that. And I'll click outside. And then I'll go to my layers and enabled the banner. No, I think now the banner could be a little larger, so I'll go and select the banner layer. In fact, if I click on this dot, that will select everything inside the banner layer. And I'll click on one of the corners. Hold down shift so the proportion of dawn break. And also hold on. Old sorta scale happens from the center of the shape. And I'll expand this a little bit of that. Select the text. And then maybe lift this up by pressing the up arrow a couple of times. And then I'll click somewhere Mt. And finally, I could make these lines have some variable with says, well, I'm going to select this shifts like this, and then go to my width tool, that shift W, or it's this tool here. I can now go click and draw. Let's say something like that. And then maybe here I can click and draw one like that. And I'll get my selection tool again. So it's topline and lifted up by a couple of clicks. And the bottom one and push this one done by a couple of clicks like that. Of them go click outside and then press Command Minus a couple of times. And that is going to be our banner. And now let's add a gradient to the background. I'll go and create one more layer called this one background. And then place this right at the bottom above the drawing layer. Of course, like everything else, select the background layer. Centered is get my rectangle tool so I can draw a rectangle from the top left, bottom right, like this. And if I go and open up the gradient panel, if I go to Window gradients, I can initiate the gradient by clicking here. And then I can change the settings of it by using the rest of this panel. First colors. I'm gonna click on this down pointing arrow. And here you can actually pick a preset. Let's, if I pick this guy preset, this is what it's going to look like. Or if you don't quite like this, you can change pretty much everything about this gradient by using gradient tool here. So if I select Gradient tool, again, it's a click and draw a line from the bottom to the top or from the top to the bottom like that. If I want to change colors here, I can actually use this gradient editor on the right-hand side. I can let say, for example, get rid of these colors. If I click here, remove that by dragging this out. Click on this color, stop, remove that as well. So I only have two colors to work with. If I were to change the colors, I can just go and double-click simply here. And then give this a different color. Let's say a bit more of a reddish tint like that. Or if I lighten this up a little bit, let's say here. And maybe even lighter. So if I go click and drag this up almost to white, but not quite white. So that's what it looks like now. And get my selection tool. And when I click outside, I'll hide all those controls. Let me now go on look older layers. So I'll go here on the call of them except my drawing. Then go to View guides. And I'll clear these guys as I don't need them anymore. And you can see I've actually got these petals sticking outside dart board. So I'm going to select everything that make the flour. So I'll lock the background with text. I'll look the banner. Everything else is available. I'll now press Command or Control a on PC to select all of the unlocked layers. And then click on one of the corners with the shift and the old keys held down. So I can scale this down proportionally like that. Then if the flowability bit. So it looks like that. I actually want to crop this art board as well now. So I'm going to go to my art more tool here. On the left-hand side. It's this tool. And then I'll just go here, click and pushed us up. And then come up here. Click and pushed Estelle. And I'll come back to my selection tool. I'll also need to update my background gradient from an unlock this click on this gradient, pushed us in, click on here, and push it up. And it's add the final touches to this sorted a circle in the middle. I'm going to add some white Stroke. I'll go select the circle. Click on stroke so it's in front. And I'll make it white. Angle to properties and increase the stroke width. So it looks something like this. And let's say we also want to add a gradient to this, so it doesn't look like a single color. I'm going to select this, open up the gradient editor, make sure that it fill is in front. So when I click on the gradient button here that adds the gradient to defile, it would remember the last gradients are used, which I don't want anymore. So I'm going to come down here and change the colors. So this will be a yellow color, let's say something like this. And this one will be a dark erosion of that. So I'm gonna go and pick something like that. I want the gradient to be a radial gradients by clicking on this. So it goes from the center upwards. I can do the same thing for these petals as well. So if I select this petal, Click on the gradient here, so it gets applied. And then select the start of the gradient, make this green. And then the end of the gradient make it a darker green that say something like that. But this time you can see the gradient is actually drawn from here, which I don't want. So I'm going to get my Gradient tool and then draw it from here out to around here. If I do it this way, the tips will be darker. Whereas if I do it the other way, so click here and then drag down. The root is going to be darker, which I think looks nicer. Let me pull this up and then maybe start from somewhere here and then draw. So it looks like this. And now this petal is actually looking pretty nice. I can get my selection tool, select the other petals here with the Shift key. And then click on this eyedropper here. And then click on this petal so that the same gradient is applied it to these as well. The alignment or the gradient doesn't work. So let me go and fix that select selection tool. Select only that one, get the gradient tool. And I'll just go click outside and draw a gradient like that. Same it says, well, I'm gonna get the selection tool. Click on this object, Gradient tool, click outside and drug. And then select this last one. Gradient tool. Click outside and drag. I can actually now I think get rid of this white stroke. So if I select my selection tool, select this, go to the stroke. And here actually set this to 0. I'll add gradients to these light small petals as well. So I select small petal, press, I click on this gradient, so it's the same. But then if I go to the gradient editor, we ned to front, I can make this lighter. Let's say something like that. And this one can be slightly darker, say something like that. And then get my Gradient tool and then click outside again and drag. I'll do the same for this one. This one. And this one. I'll select them all. Get no dropper. Click on this so they all get copied. And then I'll get my selection tool. Select this one. Get the gradient tool. Click somewhere here, just outside and go near the center of this core. Again, for this one, get the gradient tool could just outside go near the center of this yellow circle. And then this last one, selected Gradient tool. Click outside and then go near the center of the circle as well again here. Now if I get my selection tool luma by pressing command minus a couple of times, and this is what I have now. In the next lesson, we'll have a look at how to organize and optimize this file so that we can take it into After Effects and start animating it. 95. Preparing the File for After Effects: As you know, aftereffects likes working with individual layers. So let's go and create some. In Illustrator. I've created all of these individual layers here, but I can further tweak them and further organize them so that it's easier for us to animate these individual petals in After Effects. Because at the end of the day, after-effects will only look at the top-level layers here. What I mean by that is, for example, if I wanted to animate the main petals one-by-one, I'd only be able to do that if these were all separated into individual layers. Right now, I can only animate all four petals at the same time like this. Same as the small petals as well. If I click, this is all I can animates. So as soon as we take the same two after-effects or four petals here, the small battles will behave as one layer. In order to be able to animate these individually, I have to create separate layers in Illustrator, then take them into After Effects. The easiest way to do that is to select the layer that you want to separate into individual layers. And then go to this icon here near the top right corner where we see the three lines. And then choose release two layers sequence. When I do that, the individual objects will be sent onto individual layers. I can now take these layers out like that. And of course there is now this empty layer called main petals. Let me just go and delete this by selecting and then coming down here to the trashcan and then deleting. And let me go rename these first. So this is the petal facing left. So I'm going to call this, he left. This is the one facing down, so that's P down. This is facing right, that's p, right? And then this is facing up, so that's p up. And then go to small petals layer. Click on the Save button. Released this two layers, and I'll take these out. Then delete my small petals layer by selecting it, and then deleting here. Then this one will be S For small P4 petal. And this is facing southwest, so I'll call it SW for Southwest. This is going to be small petal SB, southeast. Small petal SB, northeast, small petal SP, Northwest. Let me go unlock these layers now. And the text is on its own layer. That's good. But if you wanted to be able to animate the individual characters, you need separate these characters into individual layers as well. I'm not gonna do that now, so I'll leave this as it is. The stem is on a separate layer. That's good. The background is on a separate layer that's also good. But the banner here has two elements, the upper one and the lower one. Let me go and separate those as well. And the first unlock that, then go and click on the three lines. Released two layers. And now I have two layers here. I'll take them out. Delete the banner layer. This one is going to be the bottom manner. So I'm going to call this banner down. And this one is banner top, or go and unlock everything on the drawing as well. And in fact, delete the drawing layer as I don't need that anymore. I'll confirm. And now it's going to save this by pressing control S or going to file save. And now this is ready for us to take into After Effects and animate the individual elements. 96. Animating the Illustration in After Effects: We are now back in after effects and we can import the file that we just created in Illustrator and start animating it. So I'll go to File, Import, File. I'll select the flower file. Make sure that I import this as composition, retaining the layer sizes. And then he'd open. And now I have this composition here together with the layers that I've created in Illustrator. Let me go and double-click on this competition to open this up. And here's what I have. All those layers I separated in Illustrator reassure as individual layers in aftereffects. Now let's say we want to animate this so that the circle comes up first, then the petals appear, and then maybe the stem. And then we had the banners and the text. So let's start. I'm going to select the circle, press S, and I want to animate the scale of this. So I'll go start from 0% at the beginning. Keyframe it then it's a go forward to, let's say 15 frames. Increase this to a 120%, and then go forward by a few more frames here, let say frame 18, and lower this down to a 100%. So if I solo this layer, this is the animation I have now. To smooth out this animation, I'll select all the key frames and then press F9 on the keyboard. If you remember, this was adding ys. Ys. If I now play it. This is what I have. I can speed this up by selecting last two keyframes, pushing them closer so that this one is on the 15th frame. Let me see what this looks like. And I think that looks nicer. And now do the same thing for the petals as well. But before I do that, let me on sort of this. I want to set the anchor point of these petals to be in the center of the flower. So when the scale, they'll scale from here outwards. So let me select this petal here, get my anchor point tool, and then click and drag this down here with the command key held down so it snaps. I'll do the same for these petals as well. I'll click and drag with the command key. Select, click and drag. Select, click, drag command, select, click and drag, and select, click and drag. And then this one, click and drag with the command key. I can now simply select the scale property. Goto, the beginning of the timeline, copy it, command C or control C. And then I'll select all the petals here. So petal left, down, right, up. And in fact, I'll select all the small petals as well. And paste Command V. Now this is animation I have for all of these. And of course, if I press the letter S, I can see all the scale keyframes are lined up. I don't want this. So I'm going to go and select everything by pressing command a and then S again, so they disappear. I'm going to offset the timings of these. So I'll make sure that circles scales up first, then this top petal, and then this one and that one and that one. So let's organize these. So circle petal up, petal right, petal down, and petal left. So let me offset these layers now, I'm gonna go and push us towards right way few frames. This one towards right by a couple more frames. And this one, and then the petal left as well. So if I now play, this is what that's going to look like. Let me solo the top five layers first. So this is the animation we have for the circle and the main petals. Once they appear, I can then go and set these small petals as well. And a push this off here. Always by a couple of frames, maybe two frames here. And then this one, if I solo these as well, let's see what this final animation looks like. That's looking good. And now let's go and enable the stem as well. Let me scroll down here, find the stem. In fact, I'm gonna go and push this just underneath that small petal here. And I want the stem to scale from somewhere here. So I'll go to my anchor point tool placed down can point to somewhere here. But that's now go to the beginning of the stem. Press s. In fact, I can just go and press paste Command V. I already had the keyframes in place here. This is what the stem is going to do. And I want to add some rotation animation to this as well. Presses shifts are, so I can add rotation to this property as well. I'm going to start with this. Let me just go a little further so I can see this object. I'm going to start with this and it'll rotated, let's say that way. So let's say minus 20 to go to the beginning keyframe rotation there. Go to adduce keyframe is set this to a, to a plus eight or ten. Then we'll do at this keyframe is, and then set this back to 0. If I then said activities and then press F9. So we add the ys, ys. This is what that animation that looks like for the stem. Now let me go and un-solo this. If I now play it. And of course I'll have to offset the stem as well. So if I select my selection tool, pushes down the line like that. And if I play, this is what I should have now. And it's also animate the banners in the text. So I'm gonna go scroll down. I'm first going to animate this down banner. So I'm gonna go select this banner down. And then I want to actually animate this with a mask so it's invisible to start with, and the mask expands. So this gets revealed. I'm actually going to animate it from left to right, from the thin area to the thick area. So for that, I'm going to go to the beginning again, solidus layer. I'm going to get a simple mask, let's say like a rectangle mask, click and draw rectangle, making sure that the rectangle doesn't actually cover this banner. So I'm gonna go start outside like that. I'll go to this mask and then keyframe the mask path. Then I'll go forward to, let's say frame 15. My selection tool. Select the mask points here. So at this point and their shifts in at this point, and then drag them left. So that reveals the banner like this. Let me also drag these points up. So there's more space like that. So if I now play is what I should have. Because of the starting position of the two right points here. That's actually just too tight. So I'm gonna go back to the beginning and then lift the entire mask up a little bit like that. And if I play, that should give us a little more headroom in case we wanted to add something like feather may be at the top here. It won't cut off. So that's that one. None. Let me just go and see actually what the federal would look like. So if I go and increase this, it does actually look a little nicer than Museum in so you can see what's happening. So this is with no feather. This is with some further. So it kind of softens the edges. Let me zoom out. Fine. I'll play. This is what it's going to look like. I'm going to select tool keyframes. Press F9 to add these 0s to these as well. And I'll do exactly the same thing from the left to the right for the banner at the top. So let me go to banner top, solidus. On solid the banner down. Go to the beginning. Get my rectangle tool and draw a mask like this. I made a mistake. Now I still had the banner down selected. So let me undo. I'm going to select banner top, then draw a mask like that. I'm going to go and keyframe the mask path. Go forward to frame 15. Select these two points. And then drag this towards right. To reveal the rest of the shape. I'll add the same amount of feather here, say 49. And I'll select the two keyframes, an F9 to add. And nearby on solidus. And let me just go and collapse these layers. I can then go to banner down, push this right. And then Ben atop, that goes after burner down like that. And if I ignored as texts for the time being, this is what I should have. And as soon as the banners come up, I actually want the text to fade in. So I'm gonna select the text. Pushes towards here. Let see when the second banner actually finishes animating. Somewhere here. Push the stakes here. And I'll just simply go press T on the text to reveal its capacity. I'll make sure that fixes visible. Keyframe it to go from 0% over, let's say, ten or 15 frames to a 100%. So this is now what I have. And that's how we take a hand-drawn sketch into Photoshop to clean it up, from there, into Illustrator to vectorize it, and from there into objects to give it some life by animating it. 97. CLASS PROJECT - ANIMATING A HAND DRAWN SKETCH: For this task, what I'm going to ask you to do is to take a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper and then draw anything that you can. Don't worry if you're not good at drawing, but just going to sketch something and see if we can put that on your computer using a scanner or even your phone. And if it needs cleaning up, take it into Photoshop and do some adjustments like we talked about. And then from there, bring it into Illustrator so we can vectorize this. And then using illustrator, you prepare the file so that it can be animated in aftereffects. And finally, take your file into aftereffects and animated. Again. Don't worry if you don't have any good drawing skills. Just sketch anything else. Maybe write your name, create a stick man, draw a heart. Anything you like. If you need some inspiration, just go to Google and search for whatever you're looking for. Let's say stick man drawing or an icon drawing or an icon sketch. So if I go to Google here, you can see here and I search for Icon sketch, there's 1000 things that come up. And if you'd like one, just see if we can draw something similar and see if I were to click on this. Let's say a lattice fast-forward button. Well, I can try and draw this really simply an Illustrator or let say it is Clapper board or anything really. Again, you're going to need to flex your creative muscles and see what you can come up with. 98. Exporting Directly from After Effects: where you are non creating your compositions. You'll want to save your files out in a former that can be read outside of after effects. For example, let's say you know what a saver file, so you can then upload it somewhere on the Internet or maybe email it to a client or then just send it for review. For that, your compositions need to go through a process called the rendering. Now, rendering effectively is baking everything together. So think about it like this. You put your flower in your eggs, your sugar, your water, you mixed it all, and now we're gonna render it, or you gonna put it in the oven to bake it. Once your composition has been rendered on that rendered version, you will no longer have the individual layers or key frames or the effects. They'll all be Bactine into a single video file. So that's why it's a really good idea to keep your project fast safe. In case you need to make some changes to the compositions, you can go and open up the project files, and you will then have access to the individual layers and key frames and everything else varies with the rendered files you want. Let's see how rendering works. First, you need to go to the composition that you want to rent their. In this case, it's this composition here that we just created in one of the previous chapters, and you also need to tell aftereffects which portion off the composition you want to render out. Let's say, for example, I only want to render the 1st 6 seconds, so I know my poor head to the six second here. I can angle the way to the right medicine, will bloom arteries and then dragged this towards left. And this marker indicates right awoke area ends like that, and if I hold down the shift key, it will snap and I can sit the beginning as well. Let's say, for example, I would like it to start from about here. When this great bar is in position there, I can now drag the first marker towards right, but instead of doing that, I can just simply press the letter B on the keyboard and B sets the beginning off the work area bar. This grey bar here is called the Work Area Bar and be sets the beginning to where you play it is on the letter end sets the endpoint or to our carry a bar. So if I move here and maybe, let's say press end, that sets the end of my work area bar to be here, I'm gonna under this. And when she had the work area set after fixed by default is only going to export whatever is inside this work area. In fact, if you just do a preview for just going press space, you'll only be able to preview what's inside the work area bar as well. If you want to reset the work area bar back to covering the entire composition, all you have to do is to go and double click anywhere on the work area bar. If I just go and double click. That resets the length off the work area bar to be the same as the composition. So I want the work area about to start from the beginning, so I'll leave the beginning along and I'll go forward to about six seconds and then I'll press end. This is the range will be exporting out so in total will have a duration off six seconds and one frame. And once you set your work area bar, you then go to the composition 1,000,000. It's up and then you choose add to render queue. Once you do that, it's render queue will pop up. I'll explain to you why this is called a render queue. In a second in the Randich, you we had the rendering composition. This is the name of the composition, and down here next to output module, it says lossless. If you go and click on the word lossless, this will open up the output module settings. This is where we pick the four months and the Codex off the files that will be exporting. So if I come up here to isis formats, I can pick any formats that I like from here. And the format is just going to determine what the extension of the file will be. For example, if I choose quick time, I'm gonna end up with a file that has an extension off dot more. Let's say that's what I want. So I'm just gonna go a truce, Quick time and then up here. It says format options. If I go click on this This is where we can select the Codex. The product is the main factor that determines the quality and the signs off your file. And if you know the Codec that you need, you can just click here and pick the one that you're after. And then once you pick the Codec, let's say, for example, which is a high quality Codec for Apple pro rise. I want to pick the Codec. You come down, click OK, and then down here, it asks you if you want to resize this composition, you can turn it on and then dial the numbers in. Or, if you want to crop the composition again, you can turn this on and tell it to crop a specific portion on the composition and down here, it asks you whether or not you want to export in the audio. And in here you have three options. If it's at the auto, it's going to look at the composition and see if any layers have an older channel. If they do and they're turned on, then it'll export audio. If they don't have it order and order clips at all, it's not gonna leave this older channel turn off. So I'm gonna set this to be all for now and I'm going, It's OK and it takes us back out on. The next thing we need to do is to click here where it says output true, and it's got the name of the composition here, and sometimes it says not yet specified. So I just go and click on this. This is where you tell after effects where to save the file. So right now I'm gonna save it in the folder called Renders and I can rename this. I can call this my first render and I had saved and nothing happened just yet. The reason why this is called Aranda Q is because I can now go back to a different composition that's open up another composition here. Let's say this one. I cannot send this to the render queue. So if I go to composition, add to render queue. I cannot go through these settings here just like we did before, and then I can create a list that will be the Q. And then finally I can press render and it will go through this que to render these compositions one by one and then say the files in those locations we specified If this part was also confusing for you, well, I have some good news. You're not the only one. In the next tutorial, I'll show you how to send your compositions from after effects into adobe Media encoder. And from there you can export these compositions without much hassle by using some presets . 99. Using Adobe Media Encoder: If you want to export your composition to be used in a specific platform, let's say like you troop or video or maybe an iPhone or an iPad instead of rendering it directly from after effects. You can send it from here to Adobe Media Encoder, which is a separate application, but it gets installed automatically when you install after fates and then from there, by using some presets, you can easily run their files out. To do that, you go to composition and then come down to add toe adobe media encoder que. If I see like this, this will launch median colder, which is a separate application that gets installed automatically when you stole after effects. And in here we had the composition from after effects. Underneath the composition, we've got the format. If I go and select this arrow, I can see the rest of the four months I can use, and in this case, I'm gonna use at age 2644 months. This will create a file with the extension of dot mp four, which is pretty much all the fires that you see on the Internet every time you watch something or YouTube or Vimeo or pretty much anywhere else on the Internet. The funds that you're watching on page 264 files Those are the files with the extension off dot mp four. So I'm gonna click on this and then next to it, it says Match source. High bit rate. If I click on this down pointing arrow, that's going to reveal the presets for this formats. And let's say, for example, we want to upload the file eventually to YouTube. If you come down here, we got some mutual presets are composition must 10. 80 p HD. So I'm gonna select the same here as well. And then we can come up here to read his output file. This is the location off the file that will be saved if I then click on this and then tell it where to save on what to call it. I'll go here and then maybe save it inside my renders folder. If I now go and call this my first export and then it's safe, I can then come up here and click on this play button, and that's gonna start rendering the aftereffects composition the other advantage off using media encoder is that as it's rendering, you can switch back to after effects and continue working in after effects without having to wait for surrender to finish. Whereas if you export something directly from after effects, you're locked out of after effects until the export is done. And now you know how to send the composition from after effects into adobe media encoder and their render it from there by using some presets. 100. FINAL PROJECT - NOW IT'S YOUR TURN: Now it's time to put all your skills into practice and create an actual project. So let me talk you through what the project is and what you're expected to do. For this project. I've provided you with four different illustrations there called timeline one, timeline to timeline three and timeline for now we have a fictional clients called Vortex. And your task is to create an animation for them based on one of these illustrations. There's some information about the style. Holland Animation should be. The assets that you'll be using, the colors and some additional elements as well. One thing I do want to point out though, the Illustrator files are not yet ready to be animated. So one of the first things you need to do is to go and break the Illustrator file up into smaller pieces and layers that can be managed and animated in aftereffects. Here's what I mean. I'm just opened up this timeline for file. And this is the stage where you have to decide what it is that you want to animate individually. Let's say, for example, to start with you on each one of these banners to come up one by one. Let's say maybe this one starts from the left hand side and it slides in. And then this one slides in, and then this one and this one and so on. So in order to do that, you have to have these banners on separate layers, if you remember. So the best way to do that is to go and double-click. That will take you in by one level. Double-click again, that will take you in by one more level and then select this banner. Not that this is the only thing that's selected. You can go and cut it by going to Edit cuts. And then you double-click outside to come out of that. And then you come down here, create a new layer. And then you go to Edit and Paste in place. Now that it's pasted onto a separate layer, of course you can see it's covering up that little icon there. I can just go and place this underneath that layer. And now that's one separate layer. I can rename this to be Banner one. And I've had to do the same thing for the second manner, double-click, double-click, click, edit, cut, double-click outside, create a new layer. And then go to edit, paste in place. And then place this one on the top layer as well and call this manner through. Let's say you wanted to animate this charters. Well, let me zoom in. You have to decide how the chart is going to animate, is going to animate as one big icon. If that's the case, you double-click, select it, and then select all of these with the Shift key. Then cut these. Then double-click outside to come out of this, create a new layer. And it's pasting place. And now let's go and call this chart. What you might want to animate the chart as three separate elements. Maybe the ring animates first, then this vertical and horizontal bar, and then maybe this chart here. In that case, you'll have to create one layer ordering, one for this bar and one for this diagonal line. So I've created two more layers here. I go into this chart layer. There's my ellipse, does the circle. I can put this up here. There's this first path, if I were in turn us on and off, that's our first path. I can put this here and rename them. So this is here. The diagonal part. I can call it Chart diagonal. And this one here is the chart vertical. Horizontal. And this one is the chart ring. Now have them as three separate layers. I can animate them separately. I can maybe make the ring come up first, and then this bar, and then this diagonal line maybe. So let me zoom back out. And this is a very real scenario. You'll often be given an Illustrator file that's not being prepared for animation. The person who created this may not have been aware that this was going to be animated. So in this case, it's your task as an animator to go and break this Illustrator file up into smaller, manageable pieces, into layers that you can then animate in aftereffects. And trust me, the more time you spend at this stage organising the file, the less time you spend in After Effects trying to fix problems. 101. AE MC Outro2020: And that's it, folks. Congratulations and thanks for completing this course. I hope you found that helpful and inspiring. And I cannot wait to see what you create with the skills you've just learned. So go ahead, put your creative hats on and create some amazing animations. They share them with me and the rest of the community. And finally, if you found the course helpful, it would be amazing if you could leave a review to help both your fellow students and myself. Once again, thanks for watching my course and I hope to see you on the next one.