Transcripts
1. Introduction: This class is all about animated gradients and
Adobe After effects. I'll show you three
different methods to create smooth and
dreamy gradients. Let's jump right in
and get started. Can't wait to see
your class projects.
2. Getting Started & Class Project: Getting started with this class, you'll need Adobe
After effects to follow along and to create
your class project. I will also be using
Adobe media encoder to demonstrate an
exported animation. The class project is to create a gradient
animation of your own. You can download a
completed version of the project files on the
project and resources page. It might help if you get
stuck on one of the lessons. Feel free to post your project
to the project gallery. I always love seeing
what you create.
3. Method 1: For our first method
for creating gradients, first, I'm going to create a new solid layer to create
our gradient on. I'm going to go up
to layer new solid. The color of our solid
really doesn't matter. The first method, we're
going to be using a built in effect called the
four color gradient. We'll search for it in
the effects and presets. We'll add it to our
new solid layer. The four color gradient effect gives us four points
with a whole bunch of stopwatches to help us control the animation and the
color of the points. For this animation, I'm going to leave the colors at
the default colors, and I'll press the stopwatches
for the four points. 0.10 0.2 0.3 and 0.4. I'll bring up the new
keyframes by pressing the key. I'll move over 1 second
on the timeline. These icons here will help
us select our points. I'm going to select 0.1, and I'll move it across
to the other side. Now I'll select 0.2
and move it down. Now I'll do the
same thing for 0.3, and I'll move it up here. And once again for 0.4. When you preview the animation, you can see that
we've already created a basic gradient animation. I'm going to repeat
this step a few more times to create a
looping animation. I'll keep moving
over 1 second on the timeline and moving our
points across the screen. For this last animation, I'm going to copy and paste our first keyframes to
create a perfect loop. Control C and control
V to copy and paste. I'll press N on the
keyboard to shrink the preview area to where
our last keyframe is. Now let's preview the animation. Up here under the effect, the blend option will control how much the
colors blend together. By turning the number up, you can create a softer gradient. The jitter option will add a little bit of grain
to the animation. We'll turn it up to 100. The jitter option is meant
to help with banding issues, which we'll talk about
later in this class. The opacity option just changes the opacity of
the effect on the layer. If we turn down the opacity to 50% and we add a new layer, we'll go to layer new solid, and I'll add a white layer. I'll name it BG for background. Now we can place that background
under our cradan layer. It creates a much
lighter gradient that's softer on the eyes. And of course, you could
go into the colors and just turn down the saturation and get a very similar look. But I wanted to demonstrate
the opacity option. Plus, one of the advantages of the background method
is that if you go into your background
and change the color, you can get some pretty
cool color combinations. Now I'm going to show you how
to create an endless loop, the easiest way that I know how. We can create a loop by
selecting our gradient, right clicking, and
going to precompose. Make sure move all attributes into the new composition
is selected. Optionally, you can name
the new composition. I'll just name it gradient. To create a loop, we
just have to right click on our new
gradient composition. Go up to time, enable
time remapping. We'll go to the last frame with animation on it,
which in our case, is 120, and we'll place a new keyframe by clicking
the keyframe button. Now, this part is important. We need to go to the end of the timeline and
delete this keyframe. Now to create a loop, we'll
have to add an expression. We can click and click on
the T remap stopwatch. And in the field, we'll type
out the loopOut expression. It should pop up
in the list here. I'll double click on it, and now we'll exit out of the field. Now we'll expand the timeline. And when you preview
the animation, it'll be a continuous loop.
4. Method 2: In our second method,
we're going to be using solid layers and masks
to create our gradient. First, we're going to have to
create a series of solids. We'll go up to layer new solid. The color doesn't
matter right now. We'll duplicate our layer. Going to duplicate it four
times to get five layers. Now, the first thing
you're going to want to do is create a color palette. Or you could use
my color palette. I'll provide it for download
in the project resources. I'm going to drop it
into the composition. I'll scale it down and
put it up in the corner. Now to change the
colors of our layers, I'm just going to
use a fill effect. You could, of course, go into the solid layers properties and change the color that way. I'm going to copy my fill effect and paste it onto
all the layers. Control C and
control V to paste. Now that we have a
fill on each layer, I'm going to go through
and choose my colors using the color picker to choose the colors from
my color palette. There we go. Now I can delete my color palette
from the timeline, and now we can begin to draw some masks on top of
our solid layers. I'm going to do this by
grabbing the Pen tool. And just in case you
weren't aware already, when you draw something
on top of a solid layer, by default, it creates a mask, and it cuts out the
rest of the layer. If you drew something and
it doesn't look like this, toggle open the masks and see that your
mask is set to add. It should be set
to add by default. Now I'll do this
for every layer. Now, make sure you do
this in the right order. I'm going downwards
through the layer stack. We won't need to draw a mask on our bottom layer because it can be thought of
as our background. So now I'm going to work a
little bit backwards and generate the animation first and then we'll
create the gradient. So there's a few ways you
can go about animating. We could use keyframes on the mask path and generate
animation that way, if that's something
you would like to do. You would toggle open
the mask and go to mask path and just
set key frames. Go through the timeline, and then you would edit the
points of the mask path. But I'm going to show
you another method, which is what I like
to do, and it's using effects to
generate animation. So I'm going to undo
these keyframes. There's a couple of effects you can use to generate animation. First I'll quickly show
you the wave warp effect, and that effect generates
animation automatically. In the wave warp
effect controls, you have control
over the height, width, and wave speed. I'm going to remove the
wave warp effect and show you the effect that I like to
use to generate animation, and it's the turbulent
displace effect. I like animating it using
the evolution option, which creates a slower, more blobby like animation. Instead of using keyframes
to generate the animation, I'm going to use an expression. I'll click Alt and click
the Evolution stopwatch. In the field down
here, I'm going to type in time times 50. And if you're not sure
what this expression does, I'll explain it quickly. Time times 50 is telling the evolution to rotate
50 degrees every second, and you can see what that does
when we click the preview. It's a very slow
blobby like animation. We can copy this expression by clicking on the
evolution option, going Control C, and then pasting it onto
our other layers. So now all the layers should
have this animation on them. Now, finally, to
generate that gradient, we'll select all our
layers and press F, which will bring up
the mask feather. And by bringing up
our mask feather to a number that is really high, you begin to see a
gradient is forming. I think 200 is good. So I'll add 200 to the mask
feather for all the layers. There we go. Now, of course, just like anything
in after effects, you can always go back and tweak things to get it to
look the way you want. For example, let's say you don't want five
colors anymore. You can just go back
and edit your fills. I'll change this blue color to yellow color,
just for example. You could also change the
speed of the animation if it's animating too slow by just
going into the expression. A quick way to get
to your expression is to double click
on this evolution. It'll bring it up
on the timeline, and we'll go into this field and change it to time times 100. I'll do a quick copy and paste and paste it
onto my other layers. Now all the layers should
have that animation. And you can also edit
the mask feather to get a softer gradient. Remember the F key will
bring up the feather. We could turn up these numbers, and you could easily go into the mask path and change the shape of
the gradient as well. All depends on the style of
gradient you're going for.
5. Method 3: The next method
involves remapping black and white values using
an effect called colorama. I'll quickly give you
an introduction to Cloama and then we can
start creating gradients. I'll start things off by
going up the layer new solid. And I'm going to
add a gradient ramp to this new solid layer, a simple black to
white gradient. Now I'll add the Cloama effect to give you a demonstration
of how it works. So almost 100% of the time
when I've used Cloroma, I use it for this output cycle. In the output cycle,
you can remap black, white, and gray values
using this wheel. The wheel represents our
gradient in a clockwise motion. I'll change it to one of
the presets, solarize blue. This preset only has
two colors on it, which should make it
easier to explain. So like I said,
our gradient ramp is just going from
black to white, and this wheel
represents our black to white gradient in a
clockwise motion. When we move our blue tab, hopefully you can see
what's happening. I'll change the color
by double clicking. So now that remaps our
color from black to yellow, and it's remapping that
gradient ramp's colors. I'll move the tab
back to the middle. And you can see now
it's remapping it from black to yellow in the middle
and then black at the end. You can add a new color
by double clicking on the wheel and you can remove
a color by dragging it. Now let's take a look at what happens when
we use something like a fractal noise effect
instead of a simple gradient. I'll turn off the
colorama effect, and I'll delete
that gradient ramp. In effects and presets, I'll look for fractal noise. If you've never used
fractal noise before, it's a noise generator
that you can create texture and animations. First things first,
we'll need to move our fractal noise
above our colorama. I already have some
numbers planned out, so I'm just going to plug
them into the settings. Contrast, I'll change to 40. Brightness to negative 25. Complexity, I'm going
to turn down to one. Under the transform menu, I'm going to change
the scale to 600. So what we've
essentially done is created a really soft noise. I'm going to add some animation by using the evolution option. I'm again going to
use an expression that we learned about earlier. I'll hold the Alt key and
press the evolution stopwatch. In the field, I'm
going to write time times 100. There we go. We've created some really soft, black, white and gray noise. Now see what happens when we turn our Cleama effect back on. I'm gonna change the black
color by double clicking. Maybe I'll change it to
a really light purple. I'm going to change
the yellow color just a little bit
to make it softer. And there we have it.
We've essentially created a gradient animation, and this will work
with just about any effect that
generates gray values, not just fractal noise. In the latest version
of after effects, there's a new effect
called curl noise, and I was thinking we could try it out to create something. If curl noise doesn't come up in your effects and presets, you'll need to update to the latest version of after effects. I'll turn off our fractal
noise and our Cloama effects, and I'll go ahead and search for the curl noise effect and
add it to the solid layer. We'll need to bring the curl
noise above our colorama. Automatically, url
noise generates a really psychedelic
looking animation. Take a look at what happens when we turn our
colorama back on. Once again, I already have
some numbers chosen out, so I'm going to start plugging those numbers into
our curl noise. Turbulent speed,
I'll change to 20. Swirl, I'll turn down to 15. Smoothness, I'm going to
bring all the way up to 100%. I'm going to turn up
the flow softness, as well to 100%. Sample radius, I'll
turn down to 50. Edge definition, I'm
going to turn down to 0%. Now let's give that a preview. It looks like we've created something more like
a lava lamp effect. I'm going to go
into the colo ama and change the
colors a little bit. I'm going to change
the yellow color to maybe a darker purple. I'm going to turn up the
lightness of our other color. And we've essentially created
a really smooth gradient.
6. Banding Issues & Exporting: So as much as I try to stay away from the technical
side of things, when it comes to gradients
inside After Effects, we're going to experience something we call
a banding issue. Since banding is
a little bit more noticeable in
exported animations, I'm going to quickly
do up an export to show you what banding is. By the way, this is my Curl
Noise animation from earlier. I just changed the
colors on the Colorama. I'll trim my timeline
to 5 seconds. Head up to File, Export, add to Adobe Media Encoder, as this is my preferred
way to export. I have a saved preset
for my exports, but you can export your
animation however you normally export your animations or
choose a preset from this list. If you've never used
Media Encoder to export, I suggest choosing
something like YouTube ten ADP, full HD. Under the output file is where you would choose
to export the animation. And up here, there's
a green arrow that you click on to
export the animation. I'll do up that export, and I'll open the new
exported animation. Now, hopefully you can see
this in the screen recording. But you'll notice that our
gradient has a really choppy, blocky look to it, and this is what we call
a banding issue. I'll close this video and
head back into After Effects. Now, the easiest way to
fix this that I know how is to add a little bit
of noise to our animation. I'm going to create a
new adjustment layer and rename it Noise. In the effects and presets, I'll search for the noise effect and turn the amount
of noise up to 5%. It's very subtle, but it does add a little bit of
noise to our animation, and it should fix
our banding issue. I'll quickly do up a new export. And when we look at our
new export at animation, you can see that
our banding issue, for the most part, is fixed. You can only notice it a little bit if you
really look at it. I'm going to close this and
head back into after effect. I'm going to delete
that noise effect and quickly show
you another effect. And effects and presets, I'm going to look for the
Noise HLS auto effect. I'll change the noise type to grain and turn up
the lightness to 5%. Now, the only real
difference between this effect and our noise effect is that the grain is animated. You also have a few more
controls over the grain, like the type of the grain
and the size of the grain. Something else you
can do to help with banding issues is to change
the bits per channel. Click on this icon here, which is the bits
per channel icon. And in this menu, you can change it to 16
bits per channel, and that should help
with banding, as well. And I just came to learn as of recording this lesson
that apparently Noise HLS Auto is not supported when you switch
over to 16 bits per channel. It just goes to
show you that even after years of using
After Effects, you're always learning
something new. So if you do switch over
your bits per channel, I would just go with the
regular noise effect, something to keep in mind when you're creating your animations. Hopefully this helped. I can't wait to see your class projects. Hopefully you enjoyed this class and see you in the next one.
7. Outro: Gratulations. You've made
it to the end of the class. Now you can post
your projects for the project gallery so everyone
can see your animations. Thanks and see you
in the next one.
Tyler Bennett, Motion Graphics Designer & Photographer
