Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi Angie. I emotions zone from
agreeing this effect, we will agreed right
now in this class I'll show you how you can create
a card freeze effect, which is perfect for posts on social media and promo videos. The best part of this class is that it's great for beginners, even if you did an open
Adobe After Effects before. I'll share with you
old dibs, effects, which you need to know
while filming video for this effect to get the
best possible result. Also, we will create this effect which could look
even more interesting for your promo videos with Gould text animation
and engaging visuals. I'll start with basics and
gradually we will get to more complex techniques
with each new video. I think it's the
best way to learn this software while
creating something for fun. And to complete this class, our goal is degree,
discard, freeze effect. Just download any version
of Adobe After Effects. Even the trial version
will work too. I'll be happy to see
it in my class as also your result after
following all the steps, soul, well, let's get started.
2. How to Film Your Footage: If I'm using Adobe
After Effects, 2021, but you can use any
version of Adobe After Effects. It should work fine. First of all, as you can see, I'm using standard layout. This layout should
be similar to yours. If for some reason
cannot see some of the panels which you
can see on my screen. You can always
enable it from here, from window, for example,
character, character. You can also close these panels which you
don't want to use. Now, we can import our video. We can go to File, input file. This video footage is provided in resource tab of this class, so you can download it, double-click it to
import this file. Now we need to create
new composition. We can just simply
leftmost click here on this video footage and drag
it here or on timeline, just like this and release it. As you can see, we've
created new composition. This video I filmed for
you just for example. You would have the
footage to practice on. In case if you want to
film your own footage, I want to give you
a few little tips. First of all, you need to
make sure that you let the room for the cards
which will fly out. So as you can see, my video, I've asked my camera man
to live the room here, the cards where
they should appear, make sure that you are
onsite of your screen. Ngo left the room in your frame. Four cards to appear just like this as you can see
it on my video here. The second tip, which
I need to mention that you need to throw the
cards as far as you can. Basically, you want to throw your cards so they
would not appear on the ground because it will ruin this effect of Reason time. Then you need to ask
your camera man to walk slowly so you would not
have too shaky footage. And by the way, you
can always select your polish and go to Animation. Warp Stabilizer. You can left most ligaments. And here it will analyze your footage and apply
some smoothness. You'll need to change
to smooth motion. But it's better if you will film your footage as
steady as you can. And this Warp Stabilizer
should help you. But I would recommend
you to use not more than 20% because it may warp
your footage too much. So I'm going to
delete this effect. Final little tip which
you need to remember that once you throw the
cards, you need to stop. Your camera man should stop. Also, don't move until
cards will fall down. It's important. Once again, you'll
throw the cards. They fall down. And once they are on the floor, you cannot see them, then you
should move. In this way. This effect will
work the best and you should act like
your prose in time. Now when you have your approach, we can track our camera. To track our camera. We can go to animation. Track camera. I left
most look here. You can see now it's
analyzing this footage. And to get the best result
of 3D camera tracker, you need to make
sure that no one is moving in your
shot except you basically it will create a tracking points on contrast
points of your image. And it's best if you don't have any moving cars or people in your shot because it will mess up the tracking of
3D camera tracker. Make sure that you have
well-lit environment and no one is moving in your shot and also avoid a
reflection surfaces. And by the way, if
your 3D tracker cannot solve your footage, you need to go to Advanced and click here to detailed analysis. It may help or make sure to film your footage as
steady as you can. Because if you have too
shaky video or it's too blurry than the
studio camera tracker will not work as good as here. Now as you can see,
we have a bunch of dots on our forEach. And now we can create a camera
basically, if you will, let more slick and
make circle like this around to your
floor and release it. You'll create this area
which represents the ground. Then we can right mouse
ligament and select, create null and camera or create texts and camera
to check our result. And this point is you can
see that this text stack to our flora, which is great, but you can always
delete this text and choose other point which have already been tracked
by this 3D camera. For this, you need to
select your footage and select this 3D camera tracker, and choose any point
which you like. For example, I want to choose
the point on my finger. As you can see, I have
these small points, but in your case, these
points could be a lot bigger. So I can increase
it or decrease it. If your points is too small, you can just increase the size. So now we can see our points, tracking points a lot better. And I want just to choose this point around my
finger, just like this. With leftmost, rightmost click, let's create a text. For now. We can see text
has been created. We can press S on keyboard
to make it a lot bigger. It's around my hand. You can select the
selection tool and just move out from my hand
a little bit further. Now it's in 3D space. We can always move by these arrows or just
by simply selecting this text layer and pressing P and change the
position of first value, second value, and third value, basically x, y, z axis. Okay, so on the next video, I'm going to show you how
you can create this kind of little cool effect
with the letters. So for example, if you don't
want to use your cards, you can just simply
create this cool effect, which could be fun, a little
promo for your personal use. This effect I'm
going to show you in the next video. See
you in the next video.
3. Flying Text Effect: So now I'm going to show
you how you can create this little fun animation with the letters for
your personal use, which also looks pretty fun. Okay, so as you can see,
we already have our text. And once again, to
create this text, we've chose our footage, shows our 3D camera
tracker and we've increased our track point
size to see these points. Then we need to select
our point, create a text, then press S on keyboard
to make it bigger, and then just move it
wherever we want to have it. For example, something
like here and press R to rotate it. You can always change the fund. I've used Montserrat font, which is free, but you can
use any font which you like. Once again, if you cannot
see this character panel, you can go to Window and
enable it from here character. Now let's see how it looks. And we can always adjust the rotation and
position of this text. So for example, we want
to have this text. Let's type it the
name of my profile, and let's add this kind of fun animation of these
flying out characters. If you want to learn how to add the cards in your
scene instead of text, you can just skip
to the next video. And now I'm going
to show you how you can animate these words. We need just to select our text layer open here and
clicked here on animate. We want to animate position
and maybe a bit of rotation. We have animation by position. And we can click here on the
Add Property and rotation. Basically with this add, you can add any property
which you want to animate, or we can even use opacity
as I've used in my preview. Here. You can see here
at the start it's semi-transparent and
then it's visible. But basically you can
use any other property. So let's maybe your scale
for sake of variety. So to create this animation, we also want to have each of
these letters in 3D space. And to make this,
we need to click on this animate arrow key here and go to enable
pre character 3D. And now we can animate each
of the letters in 3D space. Here an animator, we can
see at this position, and it has three values, x, y, and z space. So we want to push this in Z
space closer to our hands. And we need to make sure
that it's around our hands. And by playing
with these values, we can adjust the position. So basically we want to push
to our hands just like this. And then scroll with
this time courser to make sure that it's
about an hour hands. Then we want to add a bit of rotation In our letters
just like this. And finally, we need
to set the scale to 0. It would be invisible. And then once it
will be animated, it will become visible. To start animating,
we need to go to a range selector here and text that animator
range selector. Let's go here to
this drop-down menu. And we want to use
this offset tool. It's way better to animate with this offset because it will animate all the letters at
once and not one-by-one. So basically what I mean that if I'm going to
change this value, you can see that we have this animation
letter one-by-one. Let's set it to 0 as it was. Let's set this
upset to minus 100. And now we will start animating to animate in
Adobe After Effects, you need to create key frames. To create keyframes, you need to select with this time cursor
where you want to put it. And then click on this
stopwatch with leftmost leak. As you can see, we've created our first keyframe.
What is key-frame? Key-frame is basically point
in time which remember, is the value of
certain property. So this keyframe in
this point in time, which is 19 frame, remembers this value of minus
100 of property offset. So basically if I'm going
to set this time cursor here and change this value to, for example, to 100. It will also create a keyframe. Will remember in
this point in time, which is 1 second 23, this value of 100%
of property offset. Now basically after Effects
will try to remember this value of 100% and
this value of minus 100%, as you can see here,
is minus 100%. And it will try to
connect these two points. Basically, it will go
from minus 100 to 100. If I'm gonna scroll
with this time coarser, you'll see how this
value changes. So take a look here. As you can see, it's
changing to 100. And this is basically
how animation works in Adobe After Effects, you can animate any property, create a keyframe, then move it a bit later and create
and change the position. And it will remember first position and go
to the next position. And this is how animation
works in this software. Okay, so now we have
this animation, but it doesn't look interesting. So we need to go to Advanced. And change this shape to ramp
up with this ramp up shape. Now we can animate a couple
of letters animating at once. Now it looks much
more interesting. We can spread these
keyframes to make it slower, or decrease this distance
to make it faster. Let's make it a bit slower. But also we can play
with this value, with this ease high and low. Basically, if we will
go to minus 100%, you can see that it
goes really slow. Nice. Let's click here and
drag it to the left. See only this work area. And now if I'm gonna
press 0 or not, but we will preview
on this moment. With this minus 100, we can get this really
nice animation. If you will go to 100, you'll get opposite
of this animation. It starts now really slow
and ends really fast. It's up to you which kind of
animation you want to have. I will go with minus 100%, which means that it will
start fast and end up slow. And we can also move this
keyframe to the start. It will start here at the
beginning of this layer. And we can just simply move
this layer and time at well, with our hands simply
by dragging this layer. And final part which you can do is to select this
keyframe and press F9. It will increase
this slow movement at the end, even more, less little tweak which
we can add is to go to Advanced here at animator
Range Selector advanced. And click on this
randomizer order. We can set to. Basically now, these letters
will come random order. So you can see it's
gay than j, then E, then it will form our word, which looks even
more interesting. This is basically how you
can get this cool animation. Then we can just
duplicate this layer. So select this layer and
press Control D to duplicate. And let's move it a
bit to the right, which means that second animation
will start a bit later. I want it to start
much later here. We will see how it
flies from our hand. Let's move it this layer about here and press U on keyboard. With this shortcut, you'll see these keyframes which we already created and we can spread it. This animation will be slower. So now as you can
see, these letters generates about here. And we can always
click here to open this animator and
change this position. We can move it. So it will start about,
around our hands. Adjusted accordingly. And I was against
it starts just from our hands and we can
always tweak it a bit. So it would look a
lot more believable. I want to change this color
to something different, maybe to this dark reddish one, so it will not be the same. You can see we have this
little problem that it will stop and same place
as the first test. And to fix this problem, you can just select
the second text. It here. Press P on keyboard. We can just move in
z space just a bit. So just click on this value in this space and
move it to the right. In this case is
you can see we are adding this kind of
3D looking effect. Once again, we can just
select this text and press Control D to duplicate it. Move it a bit further to have
another kind of animation. And we can change
this text to black. So now we have this more
kind of complex animation. These both layers make
it go a bit sooner. But also you can press U on keyboard and spread
these keyframes. It will go a lot slower. We can always see that something is going
on on the screen. Once again, this second layer, we can press B on my
keyboard and move it a bit in the space,
just like this. Now we have this white layer, red layer, and black layer. And let's press 0 numpad
to see our result. So basically this is how
you can add this kind of cool-looking effect if you
don't want to use cards. And by the way, if you want to adjust the position
of this text, you can always select
these both layers. Just select one of them, hold Shift, select other one. And with this, we can just left most loop and select
this layer below. In this way, we apparent
these layers to this one. Basically if we will change the position or
scale of this one, it will apply automatically
to these layers as well. In this case, you can just
select the selection tool, select this layer, and
now we can just move it. And as you can see, all of these black and red layers
are stuck to this main one. Okay, So this is
how you can animate some texts and add to
your 3D environment. And in the next video, I'm
going to show you how you can add a carts into your shot. You see on the next video.
4. Creating Card Animation: In this video, we
are going to add all of these cards into our shot. Let's cut these texts layers because we don't
want it anymore. We can just simply
select all of them and we can click on this
eyeball to hide them. We can also click here on Shy button and click here
too shy, all these layers. By clicking here, you can always see all of them and
then enable it later. So let's hide them and
height here as well. Let's add our cards. We can go to File Import pile. These images are cards will be also available in the
resource tab to this class. Let's select one of them, hold Shift, and
select all of them. And click Import. Also, it's a good idea
to save your project because Adobe After Effects
can crash from time to time. So let's go to File, Save As, and save your
project wherever you want. I'm gonna call it
class and save it. Okay, so now we want
to add our cards instead of these ones which
we used in our video. By the way, you don't really need to have a cards
in your hands. If you don't have
any cards at home, you can just simply make this
motion like you're throwing something because we will add
all of these cards later. Okay, so now we've
tracked our camera from previous video and we want to create a null
object around our hand. So select your forage, go to Effect Controls. And this 3D camera
tracker, which we had. Once again, if you
don't see these dots, you can press Control Shift H. Maybe you just disable them and Control Shift H once
again, to enable them. You can always
change this value of track point size to see
these points better. Okay, so now I see my
points and I want to select the point which
is stuck to my hand. Because from this point, we will make the animation
of laying out cards. Let's select this point, rightmost liquid
and create null. Basically we've created null, so we would know where
this point in 3D space is. Now we can just select
this track null. Press P on keyboard, and we will get the exact
position and x, y, z axis. And this is really handy
because now we can just select any of the cards. You can just simply
click through them. See here a little preview
which card you can use. Let's start with the first one. We can just left
mouse click hold and drag and drop
here and release it. Now it's just on our screen. And to make it in 3D, you are simply can click
on this icon here, which will make this layer
3D. Left mostly here. You can see it's jumped,
jumped in 3D space randomly, and it's not the
correct position. This is why we've
created this null, which knows exact
position around our hand. So once again, we can
select this null, press P on keyboard
to see the position, the select your card and press P to C position of this cart. So we can just select
this position, press control C to copy. Then select this position of card and press
Control V to paste. And now discard jumped to
this place of our finger. You can see it's about
if the correct place, which is perfect for us. We can always press S on keyboard to change
the scale of discard. It would look something
like our reference, which is real-life cards. This size looks good. So make sure that your card is about your size of your hand. And now we can just
animate this card. We have this first position from where it will fly from our hand. And we need to create a
position where it will stop. Let's create our first keyframe. We need to select this card, press P on the keyboard
to see position. And at the beginning
of this layer, we can just create a keyframe is simply clicking on
this stopwatch here. Let me just click to
create a keyframe. And once again, keyframe
is a point in time. We should remember the
value of property. So this keyframe remembers
this point in time, which is 0 seconds, this value of position in XYZ
of this property position. If we will move here and later, just about 1.5 seconds, we can just move in
z space towards us. We can just left most lick
on this z-space value. And if you will hold Shift, it will move a lot faster. Now it comes towards us
and with these two values, we can just move around in our frame to make sure
that it will look like. Basically with these
two keyframes, we've created this
animation where it flies from our hand
here and here, as you can see, we
don't have this layer. It's got it to this
moment of this keyframe. So basically it means that
here we will have nothing. We don't see this card. And once this layer starts, it will appear on our screen. Now we've created
this first animation. We can make it a lot more
interesting just by adding some rotation to this card to see at this
position and rotation, we can just select this
layer and hold Shift. And then press R on keyboard. In this case, we will
see our position which we bring up before
and also rotation. We can just simply create a keyframes for
this x, y, and z. And move to the start here at this moment in time
where it's flying it out. We can just simply rotate, discard a bit more, just like this to add
some random rotation. Second thing which
we want to do is to select these keyframes. Press F9, which basically
means that this motion will start fast at the beginning and
slow down at the end. And to increase this
motion even more, just by clicking on this work area border and set it here, we can press 0 or numpad
to see how it looks. We already have this bit first moment at the start
and slower at the end. But if we will select these keyframes and click
here at graph editor, we will see this kind of graph. What we want to do is to zoom in by clicking here and move it. Then just choose one
of these handles. Basically it's a point
of these handles. We want to choose
this one, yellow one, and drag to the
left and make sure that this lines will
turn to orange. It means that you will
set to this baseline. Once you'll move up or down. Once it will line up
orange, just like this. It means that you've
done everything right and you can release it. This will create this
kind of arc motion, which means that it will
start really fast here at the beginning at maximum speed and then slow down at the end. So now if we will go out
from this graph editor, we can press 0 or numpad, and you can see this
really fast moment at the start and
slow at the end. We can just adjust
where it will start. Basically, we want to move
this layer so it will match here where all cards
are starting to flatten out. So let's set it here. We can always adjust
this position so it will play
out from our hand. And then let's scroll through
to see how it flies out. We can express as your
numpad to see how it looks. It looks pretty good,
but I would recommend to select these keyframes
and squish it together. So this motion will look as fast as your
cards in your shot. This is why it's
really good to have real-life cards so you could have a reference
how it should look. So this speed looks about similar to real
speed of the cards. And final thing which we want
to add is some motion blur. You need to select this card and click here to add
some motion blur. Just let mostly here and make sure that to
enable it here as well. As you can see it
lighting up blue. It means that it's
enabled by clicking here you can see that I'm
adding this motion blur. It with this motion blur, it will look like it really has some velocity and it would
look even more realistic. So let's press your numpad
to see this moment. And as you can see, we've added our first card and
the next video, I'm going to show
you the quickest way to add more cards in your seam. See you in the next video.
5. Adding Lights Finalizing the Look: Let's add more cards into RCM. As you can see now we have
only one of these cards. And if we will see all
this video by zooming out, you can see that
it's too far away. So basically here it's empty. And as you can guess,
we'll just need to make more of these
cards in our shot. The easiest way to
add more cards into our shot is to basically
duplicate this first one. We can also delete this track null because
we don't want it. So let's say this for scarred and press Control
D to duplicate it. Now we can just simply
select other kinds of card. For example, this one,
and select this one here. Once you've selected this card here and select this color here, you can just leftmost
click on this one, hold and drag it on
top of this one. You need to click Alt
on keyboard as you can see how we can Alt
and I'm holding it. And it will allow to
replace this card, which we already have. We'll discard which
we have here. Once again, left mostly here, hold Alt and drop on top of
this card and release it. And as you can see, it's
changed to car 212 card stem. We've simply just replace it. Now, we want to select
this card Stan, and press U on the keyboard. To see these keyframes, we can just simply move
to these keyframes here. Make sure that you've placed your time course or on
top of these keyframes, you can hold shift
on keyboard and it will stuck to
these keyframes. And to make sure that
you're on top of them, these all dots will light
up blue, just like this. For example, if you'll set
your time cursor about here, it will not lead up. And if we will hold Shift and set it on top of
them, it will light up. It's really important because
now we can just simply move this cart and other kinds of
direction just like this. And maybe even move it a bit farther away
from the camera. And we basically created
this kind of other kind of animation and placement
of this card. Here's a little good trick, how you can place your
cards in your shot. Basically, you want to
skip a bit like here, and then just select all of these keyframes and
move it to this moment. So basically, you can change the position
of this cart and rotation to make sure that in this part of the video
it also will look great. Let's move it just like this and add other
kinds of rotation. We can always press S on keyboard and
make it a bit bigger because it's a bit
closer to the camera and it makes sense to make
discard a bit bigger. Let's also press U on keyboard
to see these key frames. Once again, once you've
set wherever you like, you can just go back and move
these keyframes to adjust this animation to see
if this animation still looks pretty fast
and exactly as we want. The thing is why we move all of these governance
because if you will set your time coarser about here and start to
change the deposition. It will create another keyframe and add unwanted animation. Make sure to not create
any more keyframes. Just select them
and delete them. If you would want to change
this kind of position, you always need to select
all of these keyframes, set it and the place
in time where you want to adjust it
just like this. Then adjust it as you like, and then just bring back here. And now as you can see,
we have this card, right? And our shot entire time. Just make sure to not add too much rotation and y-axis
because as you can see, it doesn't have
backside of the card. So this kind of rotation is not to want it sounds ongoing. This in z direction works best. If you did something wrong, you can always
press Control Z to undo to the part where you
have everything right? Okay, So let's create
another kind of card. Then I'm going to
show you how you can add some lighting in your seal to add more
3D feel to this effect. So let's say this carton, press Control D to duplicate it and select any other card. For example, let's select it something with the red color. Once again, select this card
here, which you'd like. Then this guy, which
we duplicate it, leftmost sleek, hold Alt and
drop it on top of discard. It will replace it. Then press U on keyboard. Set your time coarser on this
moment of these keyframes, and then you can freely change the position
wherever you like. Just remember that
this first value is changing deposition
from left to right. Second value up and down. And the z-axis is changing further away or
closer to the camera. And then just scroll through the video domains sure that
it has the proper rotation. So for example here you can see that it doesn't
work really well. So let's move these keyframes. Make sure that this card
looks towards the camera. So it will look well. Then once again, bring it back. Same thing we can do
with this card here. We can just press U on the keyboard to see
these keyframes. We need to make sure that it
doesn't have better edition. So let's change it a bit like
this and maybe like this. You can always adjust it so
everything would look nice. I don't want to waste
any time of this less and creating
all of these cards. Basically, you
need to just spend a little bit more time to add one-by-one discards
into your shot, makes sure that it looks right. You can always just
select any of the cards, press you select
these keyframes, set it to time coarser, and adjust the position
if you don't like it, how it looks, just like this. And bringing back this way, you can just add more and
more cards into your shot. Now let me show you how
you can add some light. Go to layer, new light, shows this point
light and click Okey. So as you can see
with this light, we added some shading
into our shot. So let's select it. And with the wheel on the mouse, you can scroll in or scroll out to see where this light is. Basically it's around here. And we want to place it around our fingers and to know displays around our fingers
is basically here at the start of any of these cards. Let's copy this position. Press control C to copy. That's this point
light press B to C, the position, so that the position and press
Control V to paste it. Now we've based our
light exactly the same place as our fingers. Then we just need to delete these keyframes because
we don't need to have any animation and just move it up and farther
away from the camera. And basically with this light, you can add some
shading to your cards. As you can see, it's
still will have some really dark
moments like here. If we will change
this z position, you can introduce sunlight
and we can create another light by going
to layer new light. And we need to change this
light type to ambient. We would have main light which
will cover all the screen. Let's click Okay. With
this ambient light, we will light up all the seam. Let's press T on keyboard
and change the intensity. And basically with this light, we're just will cover this really dark
parts of our scene. We can also select this
point light and press T and degrees a bit by playing with these values of intensity
of these both lights, we can add a bit more
shading to our cards. Now as you can see, we have a bit more shading
and it looks not so 2D dimensional
before and after. It's a good idea to use
some lights in your scene, then basically just
create more cards. Always press U on the keyboard. And also it's a good idea
to set your tie cursor to the beginning and change this four position
to other hand. Just like this, just
move it to the right. All cards will not fly
just from one hand. Let me quickly show you how
you can add another card. Just simply say discard, press Control D, select
other cards which alike. And you can even
use this one which I provided to this class, which is back part of the cart. Hold Alt, replace it, and press U on keyboard. Let's maybe move these
keyframes here and move it up. So make sure to use this
back part of the cart also to add some
randomness to your cards. Once again, we need
to go back and place these keyframes
closer together. This animation will
be a bit faster and just one-by-one at
all of these cards. In my case, I've used 20 cards. So 20 cards will be
a good amount to have in your seem to get
something like this. Also, as you can see, I've
used a bit larger size. So you can always just
select all of your cards, press S on keyboard and
you can make it larger. Let's tape, which I want to
give you is to make sure that you place your cards in
empty parts of your scene. For example, if you have this card overlapping
with this card, it will not look that great. So make sure to place them in
empty parts of your screen. And you need to
always scroll through the entire video to make sure
that they doesn't overlap. Just spend a little
bit more time to get the look which like, feel free to follow me
here on Skillshare. I post classes every week. I have glasses on
logo animation, as well as VFX and complex VFX. Also I have Adobe After
Effects fundamentals for those of you who starts
to use the software. And I also recommend you to
try this class which takes only 12 minutes and you'll get really powerful
result at the end. Just follow me
here on Skillshare to get classes every week. Thank you for watching.
M Jake, Lets Create VFX & Cool Stuff Together
