Finals and Course Evaluation

Our Final is at:

Wednesday 12/12

3pm-6pm

And here's a link to the course evaluation:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Lanier_Christopher_DART_480

Monday: 11/26

Hi everyone. My apologies, but I'm not going to be in class on Monday – my wife's stepdad has been very ill this semester, and I'm in Arizona to spend some time with him before he passes on. I'll be back by Wednesday's class. I'll want to view your "3D Environment" project on Wednesday, so please post it to the youtube account before then.

Including this Monday 11/26, we have four class periods left. I'm sorry for really breaking momentum around the thanksgiving week by missing a class on either end – but please dive in this monday, so that we can close out on a strong final project. I'll want to check in on wednesday about your concept for your final "short film" (or, alternately, the tutorial you will present at our final). Remember, your "short film" can be quite brief – creating special effects is usually time consuming, and I'd much rather see a really tight 1-minute film than a really half-assed five-minute one. The running time is far less important than the feeling it has a beginning, middle and end – that the film seems to come to a satisfying resolution, and doesn't just feel like an exercise.

See you in a couple days - and looking forward to hearing your concepts.

What's due Wednesday, Nov 6th

Bring at least two finished layers to class wednesday - they can be photo composites or drawings – they should simply be two layers in the virtual environment you are creating. The environment itself should have at least three layers, but have two of them finished in class so I can step you through distributing them in 3D space.

Digital Matte Painting

Some links and references for the next project: Matte painting.

(And here's a link to some professionally shot greenscreen resources you might want to play around with).

http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/greenscreenplates.html

The After Effects section of this tutorial starts at about 12 minutes in:



A nice breakdown of classical Matte painting strategies starts at about 7 minutes in:

Green Screen Tutorials

Here are some Tuts and references we'll be looking at:

Cheat Sheet for Blowing Things Up

BOMB TUTORIAL CHEAT SHEET

The things he used:

A side fireball

Flames

Debris

Dust wave

Smoke (turned black)

Dust fall (off the ledge)

A flash/glow

When there is a harsh edge to some of the elements, he created masks on the elements with a little bit of feathering.

1. Making a matte:

Layer > New Solid, call it matte

Use pen tool on the matte layer

Toggle switches to have access to the Track Matte, and on the layer you want the Matte to apply to, select "Alpha Inverted."

(And actually, I was right in class, one of the advantages of using a matte layer instead of a mask is that you can apply the matte to multiple layers – you just need to specify which matte layer you're using through the "Track Matte" option)

2. Time remapping (to adjust the timing of any of your fire/debris/smoke elements:

Right click on layer, go to Time > Enable time rmapping

Set keyframes on the layer, which you can move forward or backward on the timeline to speed up or slow down portions of the footage.

3. Color correction

He used Effect > Color Correction > Curves and

 Effect > Color Correction > Tint

You can also adjust the Alpha channel in curves.

4. The glow effect

He added a new adjustment layer, created an ellipsis to mask it (with feathering), then:

Effect > Stylize > Glow

In the "Glow" effect, under Glow Colors he picked "A&B Colors," which allowed him to set the colors.

He keyframed the opacity of the adjustment layer to "flash" it up.

5. Using the smoke effect - changing its color from white to black

Effect > Color Correction > Tint

In the tint window, he selected "map white to:" and chose black.

Effect > Color Correction > Curves

In the curves, he boosted the aipha channel so the smoke appeared thicker

6. The "reactive lighting" – reflections from the blast

He created a new orange solid, and used the pen tool to draw the underside of the ledges.

He changed the layer blending mode to "classic color dodge"

Then to make the light fall off from the source, he selected the layer, took the ellipse tool and drew out a circle with its center at the blast source, did a subtract and invert on the mask, then feathered the mask. Then he keyframed the opacity of that layer. Note: the last ellipse mask should be at the bottom of all your mask layers.

FLYING TUTORIAL CHEAT SHEET

Shooting tip: make sure you have plenty of footage (shot with a tripod) of your scene without any actors in it -- so you have an empty environment you can use to "fill in" the spot where your actor is, one s/he's supposed to have left the frame.

Marking a point in the timeline:

Pull marker icon from far right of timeline (just above the top layer), or move the playhead to where you want the marker and hit *. To edit the marker label, doubleclick the marker and a dialogue window will show up.

To duplicate your layer, select it and hit command-D.

To cut the footage in the layer, hit alt-]. (alt-[ will cut footage at the at the start of the playhead).

To freeze-frame your footage, right-click on the layer, and in the new menu go Time > Freeze Frame. (It's a little confusing in the tutorial, bur he's freezing the second layer from the top, and then cutting the topmost, unfrozen layer at the point where he want time to freeze on that second layer).

Mask out your actor on the frozen layer.

"Soloing" a layer - if you click the box below the circle (next to the microphone icon) on a layer, it will hide all non-solo layers.

To change the position of your masked actor - select your masked layer, and hit "P" to reveal the position values (rotation might be relevant too, if the actor is spinning as well).

The "hitch" on the jump initially in the tutorial is caused by the moving footage essentially repeating the frame that's frozen in the frozen layer - so he cuts the moving footage back by a frame.

For the blur effect, you can right-click on the layer (or alternately go to the "Effects" menu) and keyframe some blur options.

The video copilot action essentials toolkit is here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/products/action2/

For the rain effect – Layer > New Solid (or Command+Y).

On that layer, Simulation > CC Rain

To blend it with the other layer, he toggled switches/modes (there is a button below the layers that allows this - otherwise, hit F4). Then he chose "screen" as a blending mode.

Colorista, which he used for color correction:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista-free/

How to do a camera shake:

Set two keyframes in the Position property of your footage layer, select them, go to:

Window: Wiggler

Adjust the paramters there, and apply.

Tutorial here:

Next assignment

"Stunt work" – making someone fly:

What's Due Wednesday, 9/26

Come to class with a script for your face transformation project. This can be a quick script – maybe it's only 20 seconds – but it should be a script. It can be serious or funny. And the transformation doesn't have to be a demon face - it doesn't even have to be realistic. It just needs to be a transformatio of some sort. We'll devote the first hour of class to having you shoot the video (so bring your camera if you have one). Obviously, if you're planing on using the in-class hour to shoot the video, you should write something that can be captured on the school grounds.

Face Warp Tutorials and "Cheat Sheet"

The most confusing part of this tutorial is the section on "reverse stabilization" in the first part. I found this to be a useful resource in sorting that out:

Stabilizing and Reverse Stabilizing Footage in After Effects

MORE DETAILS FROM THE TUTORIALS

When filming, make sure the actor's face stays square in frame (this will make the tracking easier).

When tracking the footage, in the Tracker window, click "stabilize motion" in Tracker window. Make sure your track type is selected as: stabilize (this is a different setting than from the previous tracking exercise – that track type was set to "transform"). Select both Position and Rotation.

The corners of the eyes are usually good tracking points. Under "analyze," click the "play" button to analyze forward. If the track isn't doing a great job, you can go to middle of footage, reset track points, then analyze forward and analyze backward. Also, you can manually adjust points frame-by-frame (click on the frame and re-position the big square targets). Hit "Apply," then you will get your footage floating with black corners (as the edges of the tracked footage rotate through space).

To fix the black edges, you'll pre-compose the footage. To keep track of which is which, use this naming convention – call your first comp "Original Footage," and the new comp "Pre-Comp Footage."

Layer > Pre-compose > Move all attributes into new composition. This is the one you'll call "Pre-Comp Footage." A "pre-comp" is essentially a nested layer of series of layers in another composition.

This is where it starts to get confusing in the tutorial. But here's a summary.

View both comps ( "Original Footage," and "Pre-Comp Footage") stacked instead of tabbed (pull one of the tabs down until they both pop out).

Increase size of "Pre-Comp Footage" (in Composition > Composition Settings).

In your  "Original Footage,"  comp, make anchor point, position and rotation visible.

Alt-click on the stopwatch for each of those layers to see the expressions. 

Pick-whip FROM "Original Footage," TO "Pre-Comp Footage." Link the following properties.

FROM Position TO anchor point.

FROM Anchor point TO position.

Rotation goes to rotation, and AFTER you do that, add the "*-1" to the expression on "Original Footage." 

Once you've done this, you should have your footage reverse stabilized. Your subsequent adjustments for the demon face (or sunglasses, or what have you) should be don on the "Original Footage" comp. In the "Original Footage" comp, for example, you can bring in sunglasses on a new layer, and parent that layer to the "Pre-Comp Footage" layer. It will then inherit the motion values from the "Pre-Comp Footage" layer.

THE LIQUIFY FILTER

Effect > Distort > Liquify

You can keyframe the distortion percentage overall.

CHANGING COLORS 

You can do this via an adjustment layer, which has a mask attached to constrain the effect to a specific part of the footage.

Layer > New > Adjustment Layer

You can apply a number of effects to the masked area – glow, color correction, etc.

Bonus link: Transformation scene playlist

Motion Tracking "Cheat Sheet"

Here are a few pertinent points, extracted from the Motion Tracking tutorial:

1. You must define a "Null Object" - a layer in which the tracking data can be stored. Eventually, you will apply the motion information stored in the Null Object to other layers - namely, the layers of your text items.

Get the null object by going

Layer > New > Null Object

2. Set your After Effects project to "Motion Tracker View" to pull up the appropriate windows.

Window > Workspace > Motion Tracking

3. In the "Tracker" window, make sure the target for the tracking data is set to your Null object.

4. You can create a text layer by clicking on the capital "T" in the toolbar (if you'd like to manipulate the text in ways that go beyond what the character and paragraph windows give you - or even beyond what the "effects" menu will give you, like blur, warp, or bevel edges – you can always bring in text that has been manipulated in another program as a graphic).

5. To get the motion tracking info to map to your text layer, use the "pick whip" (the spiral to the right of your layer) to go from your text layer to the Null layer.

What's Due Monday (9/17)

The next project is a project where you'll be using motion tracking to either 1) stick text into an environment, so that the text has a sense of "camera shake," as if it's embedded in the scene that's being captured, or 2) the text is following some moving element in the shot (of course, you can use both approaches if you wish).

Instead of doing one shot with one title, I want you to film an entire  sentence. The sentence must be at least five words long (and think of marrying each word to a separate shot - so that the whole sequence should be at least five shots long). You'll be creating a sentence, word by word and shot by shot – but also think of the "visual sentence" you'll be building, image by image.

I want you to storyboard this project – this can just be pencil sketches on paper – mainly for compositional reasons. Because you'll be integrating text into your shots, you'll want to plan a bit beforehand - so that you have room in the shots for the text to fit, without crowding out elements of the shot, or making the shot feel unbalanced.

By Monday, you should come to class with all your shots, and a hard copy of your storyboard (which you'll turn in). Give thought to fonts you'll use, as well as where the words will be placed in frame.

Motion Tracking links and resources

A clone video Nick passed my way:

Snow Clones

Motion Tracking Tutorials:

Basic –



More advanced –

Tracking an object that moves through the frame:

http://www.surfacedstudio.com/tutorials/after-effects-motion-tracking-tutorial/

Step-bystep breakdown of motion tracking elements (for CS3, but still applicable):

http://www.cgsutra.com/adobe_after_effects_tutorials/a0008_motion_tracking/how_to_track_motion_in_after_effects_cs3.php


Madame Tutli Putli:

https://vimeo.com/17081933

Two articles on the motion tracking process used in Tutli Putli:

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/Eyes_are_the_Window_to_Madame_Tutli_Putli/

http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/node/44525

Some After Effects Performance Resources

I'm going to look into getting more RAM installed on our lab machines.

In the meantime, for better RAM preview performance, I'd recommend either changing the composition settings to a lower resolution (Composition: Composition Settings), and/or changing the RAM Preview options in the "Preview" window (by default, the preview window should be in your right column - there is a "resolution" setting there that can be tweaked.

More info on RAM previews from Adobe.

More general tips:

8 Ways To Increase Productivity and Render Speed

Dealing with various source footage:

Importing and interpreting footage items

Workflow guides for various cameras and formats

"Cloning" project cheat sheet

Trimming footage - open the layer with the footage you want to trim, bring your cursor to beginning or ending of the clip, then clip and drag in to shorten the clip.

Link:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e94a.html#WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e70a

Or: trim it in the footage viewer. That is to say, bring the footage into a new layer, then doubleclick the layer to see the footage view. Once you see it there, you can select in and out points for that instance of the footage.

Creating the masks - use the pen tool. Once you've created a mask, you can access parameters of the mask by opening the layer. "Mask Feather" is one of the options. (there are also various layer blending modes in the mask layer).

Adding keyframes: select the stopwatch, move the playhead, then hit the keyframe control at the far left of your layer.

If you want to move one vertex of a mask, rather than the whole mask, click on the mask - then click off it, and return to the mask, clicking the specific vertex you want to click.

Stepping ahead one frame. Page up/down (fn key plus arrow key if your keyboard doesn't have "page up" and "page down")

Due when we get back, Wednesday 9/5

When you get back on Wednesday, have all your footage shot for the cloning project. On Wednesday I'll introduce you to the After Effects interface, and show you how to use keyframed masks to "clone" your actors.

And here's the link to Celtx, the scriptwriting software Forest mentioned:

Celtx.com

updates on what's due when

Per our conversation last class, this is what I'm asking for next week.

On Monday, come to class with your footage shot for your "non post production" special effect. You'll have the class time to edit the footage together – then you'll present the finished clip on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, we'll take the class time to shoot footage for the "cloning" project. Come to Wednesday's class prepared with a short script for your "cloning" film. We'll read the scripts in Wednesday's class.

Monday reminder, and laying the groundwork for "Cloning" assignment

A big reminder: you'll be presenting your own (non-post production tweaked) special effect in Monday's class.

We'll also be getting introduced to the After Effects interface, and starting to work our way into the first AFter Effects assignment – the "cloning" assignment. I'll want you to have your footage shot, and ready to be manipulated, by Wednesday of next week (8/29). We may have some time in Monday's class for you to shoot at least some of your footage.

Here are a couple of tutorials I'll show in class to lay some groundwork for the cloning project.



And here are some cloning project parameters:

1. It doesn't have to be too long. One or two minutes is plenty.

2. There must be one shot where there are at least three "clones" of the same actor in frame.

3. There must be at least one moment where two of the clones physically interact – where one visually crosses the space the other one is occupying.

4. You'll get extra points for creating an interesting scenario – some sort of "story" to frame the action. Think of this as an opportunity to create a short film, not just to do an After Effects exercise. That's the difference between the footage in the first tutorial and the second tutorial – the first is just an exercise, and the only reason you'd watch it is to learn the exercise – the second has a bit more intrinsic value, to be watched on its own terms.

Special Effects as Stylization of Reality

I'll be showing several clips in class that show special effects being used to "stylize" reality (rather than trying to "fake" reality). Here are a few online clips, in addition:

Georges Melies:




The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari



Sin City:

Terrible Special Effects

And for a couple laffs:

The Manster (last 10 minutes):

 

Megalodon:

Assignment: Special Effects (two parts)

I'm giving you two assignments right out of the gate: one that's due next class, and one that's due a week from the first class.

Due Wednesday (8/22), I want you to bring a scene or shot from a movie or TV show that shows some sort of special effect that you find interesting or effective. If it's on youtube or vimeo, embed it on this blog, or at least have the link ready. You can also bring it on DVD for us to project. I'll want you to show the clip, then explain to the class what you like about it. If you know, or can find out, how the special effect was actually achieved, I'd like you to present that as well. If you can't find a definitive answer, I want your best guess as to how the special effect was accomplished. The highest grade you'll be able to get on this assignment, if you can't present how the special effect was achieved, will be a B+.

Due this coming Monday (8/27), I want you to present a "special effect" of your own devising to the class. As I said in class, I think the essence of "special effects"" is to make the viewer believe that they've seen something that didn't actually happen in real life – something beyond what a camera could capture without post-production interference. You will present something that you shoot and edit yourself (you're encouraged to work in teams), that shows something that did not actually happen in "real life." I don't want you to use any special effects software to get your result - you can build models or costumes, use double exposures, and any sort of framing or editing trickery you like – but the special effects you use should be "practical effects." You choice of the effect is up to you. Is it a car crash? A monster attack? A ghostly haunting? A stunt? A firefight? A natural disaster? An act of magic? A space flight? Time travel? That part is up to you to figure out. This doesn't have to be shot on HD video – a video camera on your phone or computer will be sufficient. It's more important that this be clever than pretty.

In class I talked about the difference between effects that are supposed to be "realistic" and effects that are intended to be stylized. You can choose to go either route for this project.

Welcome - Fall 2012 Class

Welcome to the "After Effects and Special Effects" class.

The syllabus can be downloaded here.

And here are links to tutorials for some of the effects we'll be covering in this class:

Cloning (using and keyframing masks):


Motion tracking for titles:


Physical Transformation:


"Stunt work" – making someone fly:


Green screen effects, digital "matte painting," and virtual cameras:


Simple animation with puppet pins:

Linked out.

Particles and light streaks: