T354 Week 14 - Spring 2008

Announcements/Reality Check:

• Your final project storyboards and/or script are due Thursday (4/17)
• FInal Quiz will be next Thursday (4/24). It's cummulative and will cover material from the first two quizzes (Use them to study) and the AE content we've covered since then.
• This is our last week covering new content for AE. Next week (week 15) is dedicated to finishing your final projects. We will review them during our scheduled final exam time (8 am Tuesday, April 29).

Agenda:

• Turn in & review homework
• AE Tips & Techniques

Please place your homework in your week 14 folder.

[Review Work]

Final Projects

Please remember that the Pre-Production component of your Final Project (proposal and script/storyboard) is worth 20 points. I'll give anyone until next Tuesday (April 22) to re-submit their Final Project pre-production work. That will be the last chance to turn in your proposal and script/storyboard.

It is imperative that you add your own design flare. These projects must demonstrate your design skills and proficiency at composing with After Effects.

Your Final Project must have legal integrity. Do not use any un-licensed images or sounds in your production.

You need to do more than moving still pictures around and animating text over video. You need to come up with a design approach- a text treatment, a color scheme, repeating visual motifs. I want to see you apply the elements of design into your projects. (Remember to apply William’s C.R.A.P. approach.)

AE Tips and Techniques

Adjustment layers

These are invisible layers that you can apply effects to. An adjustment layer will affect all layers below it.

Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s less capable. You can mask them, animate them, and alter their opacity.

You can create an adjustment layer by navigating to Layer -> New -> Adjustment Layer

[Make sample adjustment layer]

Any layer can be turned into an adjustment layer by checking the “adjustment layer” box. This will turn off its image, but you can then apply any number of effects that you wish. Why do this? Some layers contain interesting alpha channels or masks that serve well for an adjustment layer.

[play with adjustment layers]

Fun with Masks - Converting a Mask into a Motion Path

There are several fun things one can do with masks in AE. For starters, be sure you can draw straight and curved masks using the pen tool.

• Start with a plain old black solid
• Use the pen tool to make an interesting mask
• Use the "Convert Vertex" is you need to convert linear points to bezier points
• Press M to reveal the Mask properties for the solid you just used
• Click on the "Mask Shape" parameter and press copy (Command - C)
• Select any other layer you'd like to use the mask as a motion path
• Reveal (press P) and select the layer's position parameter to highlight it
• Paste the Mask info into the position parameter (Command - V)
• Check out what you just did!

Note: Whenever you paste Mask info of one layer into Position values for another layer, AE will make this 2 seconds long. But since the middle keyframes are roaming, you can drag the beginning and ending keyframes wherever you want.

Mask Morph Tutorial (for Katrina!)

Go to http://library.creativecow.net/articles/zwar_chris/morph.php

Expressions

There's an interesting article/tutorial on Expressions on Creative Cow by Dan Ebberts. Check out this link for more info.

Introduction to Expressions

While Parent layers Transform Properties will be carried out in the Child Layer, Expressions allow for more complicated ways to connect different layers together. Instead of passing down all of the Transform Properties as in Parenting, Expressions let you connect a specific attribute to another layer's specific attribute- and the interesting thing is that the parameters don't have to match. For instance you can tie one layer's scale value into another layer's opacity.

Expressions are based on the JavaScript language and allow you to link layers together without keyframes.

You can create expressions with the pick whip tool or type in commands manually.

Remember that you can get to a property’s expression control tool by pressing Shit/Option/=

You should see 4 icons followed by an Expression field:

• On/Off switch
• Graph overlay icon
• Pick whip tool
• Expression language menu

To view only properties with expressions, select one or more layers, and then press EE on the keyboard.

To show the expression field in the Graph Editor, choose Show Expression Editor from the Choose Graph Type And Options menu at the bottom of the Graph Editor.

There is an entire forum on the Creative Cow website dedicated to AE Expressions:

• Creative Cow's AE Expressions Forum

You can go there to learn more about Expressions. The AE manual also has some useful examples.

The simplest way to use Expressions is to use the pick whip tool to link one layer’s parameter to the same parameter of another layer.

When the parameters match it's easy (scale linked to scale), but when the parameters don't match (some will need to be done). AE's built in help is uesful. Don't forget about the Expressions Forum on Creative Cow.

In-Class Exercise

• Make a 15-second animation that incorporates, audio, and another layer that is tied to that audio using expressions. (Feel free to google up something on Creative Cow for this)
• Include at least one text layer (or any other type of layer) that looks like it has depth.
• Call this movie "express" and place a 720 x 480 (DV, H.264, or MPEG4) movie in your Week 14 folder.

 

AE TIP: Making Text (or other layers) look more 3D

The main problem in AE is that all layers, even 3D layers are flat. There are some 3rd party plugins that give text an extruded, 3D look (Zaxwerks & Boris). Outside of these and true 3D software, here are a few things you can try that can help give an illusion of depth.

• Bevel Alpha - This uses the alpha channel info and creates a bevel effect
• Emboss - This command (found under stylize) also can give an illusion of depth
• Radial shadow - This coupled with one of the other effects can also help

One trick I use for 3D text is this: Duplicate your 3D text layer. One of these layers will serve as a moving backdrop, providing the illusion of depth. Use Parenting or Expressions to tie together the layers or some of their Transform values (rotation, position, scale, etc.) Move the anchor point of the layer that will serve as the "background" to a negative number of say, around -12.

In-Class Exercise (5 points)

• In this exercise, you will create at least 2 Masks and convert them into position values for two other layers. Be sure to modify the duration of the default 2-second movement to something else.
• Play with anything we've done in the last few weeks or try something completely different (try adjustment layers, expressions, etc.) Use 2 specific effects (of your choice) to do two different things
• Make a 720 x 480 (DV, H.264, or MPEG4) movie called "thursday" and place it in your week 14 folder.
• Make a brief document in Textedit or Word called "info" that describes what you did. Place it in your week 14 folder as well.

 

Homework:

• Revise Final Project pre-production materials as needed. Tuesday (4/22) is the drop-dead due date for getting any points for pre-production work.
• Bring in any media/materials you need for your final project.
• Tuesday is a Final Project work day, class evaluation, and review for the quiz
• Extra credit / grade improvement opportunity: You may re-submit any Homework assignment you can improve or that you missed. You must specify the exact week's assignment (eg. Week 9's homework that was due during Week 10) and fill out a critique form. If all of your grades are good, you may also turn in an entirely new project. Just be sure to turn in a detailed critique form describing what you made and how you made it.

 

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