CMG Keyframes

Managing Moving Masks

Bringing some predictability and control to animating Mask Shapes in After Effects.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | November 05, 2003

In After Effects, each mask vertex (the yellow squares) interpolates in a straight line from old to new positions. The red lines illustrate some of these paths. The First Vertex is the largest box - in this case, the one in the upper left corner of the M and I.

Masking is one of the core features of After Effects. Most know how to create and edit Mask Shapes; fewer how to control the way these shapes animate - which is important, especially with the popularity of creating cel or Flash type animations these days.After Effects can seem to have a twisted mind of its own when interpolating between two different Mask Shapes. In reality, it has a very narrow, simple mind. However, there are some tricks you can employ to coax it down a path closer to the one you want. When you need even more precise control, you can employ the Smart Mask Interpolation keyframe assistant, included in the Professional edition of After Effects (including CS3 Professional). Read More

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A Track of the Clones

Combining the enhanced tracking and cloning features in After Effects.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | September 05, 2003

One of the most significant but underused sections of After Effects has to be its vector-based painting engine, introduced back in version 6. One of the capabilities of this engine is the ability to clone one area of a piece of footage onto another area, including cloning from different points in time. As sexy as that sounds, in the real world cloning can quickly become tedious, especially when the object you are trying to replicate (or eliminate) is moving. Fortunately, other features in After Effects - including Expressions and its Motion Tracker - can greatly ease the pain. In this column, we'll walk through such a task. These same general techniques can probably be applied to other compositing/motion graphics programs as well. Read More

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Between Dimensions: 3D Into AE

Transfer camera data from a 3D application into After Effects to better integrate graphical elements.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | July 28, 2003

The logo was rendered in a 3D program; the walls were created in After Effects. Both use the same camera data, so their perspective shifts match as the camera moves.

Many 3D artists use After Effects as a finishing tool: tweaking colors, improving the composite, and blending other layers such as greenscreen footage into the final scene, with the goal of creating a realistic image. By contrast, our primary focus is creating abstract motion graphics, so for us the tables are turned: We use 3D programs (most often Maxon Cinema 4D plus Zaxwerks Invigorator and ProAnimator) almost as utilities, to create elements to integrate into our purely graphical worlds.In the old days, this process was somewhat separated, limiting what we could do: For example, a dramatic camera move in 3D would often look silly composited over a stationary 2D scene unless you did a lot of work to approximate the shifts in perspective. However, ever since After Effects gained its own concept of 3D space back in version 5, it has become much easier to tie these two worlds together, keeping the same shifts in perspective for both 3D and After Effects elements. For example, we might create, texture, and animate a logo in 3D, and then composite other 2D elements around it in After Effects. Read More

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More Motion, Less Control

For more realistic camera moves, try introducing some imperfections.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | December 17, 2002

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of using a camera to pan and zoom around still images. Popularized by Ken Burns in his documentary on the Civil War, it is a great trick for any occasion when you don't have moving video for a scene. You can simulate this by simply animating the position of a still image in virtually any compositing or video editing program. However, there are a number of refinements that can make your life easier, and the end result more realistic. Read More

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Pulse Rays

How to make light ray effects even cooler.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | November 28, 2002

Light ray treatments, where streaks of color extend from type, a logo, or image, are popping up everywhere these days. But you've no doubt heard the saying "familiarity breeds contempt" - and we have to admit, many of those treatments are starting to look a bit...familiar.

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Gobos and Gels

To project interesting lights, you have to cast interesting shadows.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | November 06, 2002

Finishing our tour of 3D lighting in After Effects, we'll discuss gobos and gels. For those new to lighting, a gobo is an opaque object that blocks off some of the rays cast by a light, either to more carefully control where they fall, or to give the impression of light streaming through an object such as a window blind or the leaves of a tree. A gel is a translucent object placed in front of a light, which colorizes the rays cast by it. It is generally a solid color, but can be a graphic. Here are a few different approaches to replicating these inside After Effects. Read More

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Lurking in the Shadows

Managing shadows in After Effects requires tweaking both the settings and relative positions of layers and lights.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | October 03, 2002

The second stop in our overview of 3D lighting in After Effects is the subject of shadows. In the Dark Ages (before version 5, when After Effects got 3D), in order to fake the all-important perspective clue of one layer darkening another layer behind it, we needed to use plug-ins such as the stock Drop Shadow effect, Real Shadows from Red Giant Software's Image Lounge, and CC Radial Shadow (formerly part of Cycore Cult FX; now included with After Effects). With the introduction of 3D space in After Effects back in version 5, the correct casting of shadows between layers became somewhat "automatic" - as long as you know how to set it up. Read More

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Blinded by the Light

3D lighting in After Effects can be powerful, subtle…and confusing.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | September 02, 2002

The 3D implementation in After Effects is very flexible. You can selectively place some layers in 3D space, and leave others in normal 2D. If you don't create a camera, the composition reverts to a default camera. If you do create a camera to fly around your 3D layers, you don't need to create lights - by default, the layers keep their original colors, as if perfectly illuminated. Or, you can add 3D lights to your composition.Lighting is probably the most subtle and powerful aspect of 3D in After Effects, as it can create wonderfully moody shifts in brightness and color, as well as "automatic" shadows without needing to tweak Drop Shadow effects for each layer. Lighting is also probably the least understood aspect of 3D in After Effects. Therefore, we're going to spend the next few columns discussing lighting tips and tricks, starting this column with the basics: the differences between - and uses of - diffuse, specular, and ambient lighting effects. Read More

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Mangling Music Masterfully

Going beyond the basics in editing music.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | December 18, 2001

If you are fortunate enough to have music custom-composed for all of your visual work, this article is not for you. However, if you are regularly handed music you have to make work underneath your visuals, and that music is not exactly the length you need, read on. We'll discuss how to find the best places to slice it, whether you are trying to reduce its length or need to repeat a section to make it longer. We'll then show how to cover your edit points and introduce variations. This will help you create your own custom version of the track, better suited to your needs. Click here to download source and project files you can use to follow along. Read More

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Making 3D Effects Behave Like 3D

Making older 3D plug-ins follow 3D cameras in After Effects.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | November 05, 2001

Expressions can make "fake" 3D plug-ins such as CC Sphere track After Effects' 3D cameras.

After Effects is, at heart, a 2D program: All layers have no thickness. You can arrange them in 3D space, illuminate them with 3D lights, and fly around them with 3D cameras, but if you view the layers on-edge, you will still see that they have no thickness.A number of clever plug-in effects work around this by taking an image and the camera, rendering what it would look like if it actually had depth (such as extruded text, or an image wrapped around a sphere), and then render the result back to a flat 2D layer. Although a great stride trick, there are some limitations. Read More

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Urban Legends of Video

A trio of common myths and misconceptions that arise when working with video.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | July 24, 2001

Like urban legends, there are a few pieces of "conventional wisdom" that float around the motion graphics and 3D communities about how to handle video. They are oft-repeated, but several are simply not true. Some are based on wishful thinking; some on a germ of truth; some from articles or manuals which are incorrect. Yes, you probably already know all of these - but they certainly have caught out colleagues of ours.Not surprisingly, many of these legends are based around the subject of frame rates and interlaced fields. Fields in particular are an area where traditional video diverges perhaps the most from the computers we're creating our video on, and for that reason are easiest to misunderstand. Read More

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Expressive Animation

One of the most significant features in After Effects is an easy-to-use scripting language called Expressions.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | July 09, 2001

One common use of expressions is to set up automatic relationships between layers, such as having a minute hand rotate 60 times a fast as the hour hand, and the second hand rotate 60 times as fast as the minute hand. Rather than have to keyframe - and edit - three layers, you can keyframe just one layer and have the others follow automatically.

In a recent column we discussed the Parenting feature that was originally introduced in After Effects version 5. Parenting is an excellent way to group objects together, or to have one already-animating object also follow another. Expressions offer a different approach to making one object do what another does, yielding even more control. Many right-brain artists are scared off by expressions, as they do involve math and programming (very left-brain activities), but learning just the most basic form of expressions will help alleviate a lot of tedium while working on a project - they're like having a sharp, unpaid intern! Read More

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Parenting Skills

An overview of using parenting in After Effects to group objects and create coordinate animations.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | June 05, 2001

Parenting is the ability to link one object to another. Once this bond has been established between parent and child, if you move, scale, or rotate the parent, the child is affected in the same way, grouped together as one complex object. A child can still have its own animation; if the parent happens to be animating as well, the child follows it around while it also does its own thing.In this way, parenting is similar to nesting compositions. Before parenting was introduced in After Effects version 5, the best way to group objects was to place them in their own composition, and then nest this entire comp into a master comp. We could then animate this nested comp as a group, with all of its objects dutifully following along and executing their own animations just as if they had already been pre-rendered as a movie. Parenting is useful to people who have trouble getting the hang of nesting comps, or who like to keep everything in one comp to more easily coordinate keyframes. Unlike nesting comps, however, applying effects to or altering the opacity of the parent will not affect any of the children. Read on to learn how to set up these chains yourself. Read More

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Open Wide: Creating That Widescreen Look

Widescreen can have different meanings, depending on how you have to deliver. Here's some tips on creating that widescreen look.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 27, 2001

For years, the widescreen look has held a certain allure. Most widescreen imagery originated as film that was reframed for television, implying "classy", "expensive" and "not of video." Now, with the arrival of high-definition television, widescreen also means "cutting edge" and "the future", and more clients want that look. The question is, how can you achieve it without hi-def sources? As strongly as our hi-def future beckons, the reality is that many productions for some time will need to be created or repurposed to standard definition. Read More

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Enter a New Dimension: Moving Into 3D

Learning a 3D program can be an important career move for an editor or graphic artist.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | October 18, 2000

In this redesign of PAX TV's on-air look, the primetime promotional end caps are filled with light and translucent shapes. Simple flat characters and shapes were exploded and hit from a number angles with different-colored lights. Multicolored light rays add dimension and energy. (creative director: John LePrevost of LePrevost Corporation; art director/designer: Wendy Vanguard of Manna-Design; realization: Chris Meyer of CyberMotion)

Because of either lack of time, or simple Fear of the Complex and the Unknown, many editors and 2D graphic artists resist learning how to use a 3D program. And that may be unwise. More graphic design is incorporating 3D elements - from the ubiquitous extruded flying logo, to cool lighting effects, to wireframes of simple geometric shapes added as visual spice. Your clients may not even know this is "3D", but they know it's a look they want...and if you can't supply it, they'll look for an artist who can. Don't worry - you don't have to create Toy Story 3 single-handedly - but some basic skills will more than pay back the moderate effort invested. Read More

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Elements for Editors

Making sure others can use what you create.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | May 05, 2000

As motion graphics artists, we're often asked to supply elements for an editor to use in a final composite or program. These might include single frames of text, titles that build on in stages, or a fully animated title. If the production is a corporate video, chances are that the elements need to build in sync with a voiceover. However, final audio is rarely finished by the time we have to create our elements - at best, we have a scratch track. This puts the responsibility on the editor to time these elements over the final version. The image these go over may be live video, or a loopable animated background which you might also be hired to create. All these variables add up to the need to supply individual elements to the editor, so he or she can decide on how the animation should build and sync to the script. Read More

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2D Texture Mapping

Recreating 3D texture mapping and aging techniques in a 2D compositing program.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | April 05, 2000

Plain solid-colored text is not convincing when composited on top of another surface (top). Applying it with blending modes (above) can help it blend into the layer behind it. Displacement mapping (below) further distresses it with the background, making the text appear as if it was physically applied to it. Finally, using a copy of the background as a luminance matte (bottom) makes part of the text transparent, which ages it.

We find it useful to employ both 2D and 3D programs in our work - not just to create different looks, but also because techniques learned in one can provide inspiration for a new approach in the other. One example of this is in the area of texture mapping - making a computer-generated object or surface appear to have a physical texture, with real paint or decals applied to it. In 3D, advanced users wouldn't dream of leaving a surface untextured; they would apply treatments to make it appear more realistic (or surrealistic, if that's what the scene calls for). Then why do so many 2D artists settle for plain, solid-colored text? Sometimes, this is the best approach to clearly convey a message - but it can be interesting to consider texturing our 2D objects as well.There are a series of three tricks we employ to add texture to our text - especially if it is supposed to look like it has been applied to another object in our composite. Let's take the challenge of making some text appear painted onto a the side of a building to see how we would apply these techniques. Read More

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Luminance Ranges in Video

Different video systems have differing internal definitions of "black" and "white."

By Chris and Trish Meyer | January 17, 2000

It would seem like a simple concept: "black" is the darkest color you can have; "white" is the brightest color. However, not all video hardware and software think this way. Quite often, systems can go "darker" than black and "brighter" than white, allowing safety margins for certain situations. This means that some systems uses different values for black and white than others. This can cause a lot of problems for a video editor or artist who uses a variety of tools during a production, because images may shift in relative brightness and contrast for no apparent reason. Compounding this problem is a lack of accurate information about how to manage these shifts. But if you ignore them, the results can range from washed-out images to illegal color values.Therefore, you will need to take it upon yourself to be aware of the black and white definitions that different systems are using, and to translate between them as needed. We will also discuss the oft-confused analog concept of "set up" and how it relates to these digital values. It initially requires a bit of a mind-twist, but will pay off in the long run. We will be using After Effects for some of the examples later in this article, but these concepts apply to all systems - so read on... Read More

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Braving the 3D Elements

Daunted by the complexities of learning 3D? Here's a couple of simple tricks to create elements for your 2D work.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | July 28, 1999

Wireframes of a hand, text, and other objects, blended in with blurs and transfer modes to make them appear more graphical or even organic. 3D models from Viewpoint Labs; fonts from FUSE.

Adding a 3D program to your motion graphics toolset can greatly increase your creative options. However, many are daunted by learning an entire new set of skills. Relax: No one expects you to create a pod race or Jar Jar Binks your first month out. Instead, think of 3D initially as a way of generating graphical elements to composite into your 2D creations. We'll cover a handful of basic tricks well within the skills of most beginning 3D users. Read More

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Do Not Adjust Your Set

A trade show for designers: Report from the 1999 BDA Conference.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | July 27, 1999

In the motion graphics world, it is easy to become seduced with technology. New releases of software and hardware bring with them the promise of being able to achieve previously unimaginable feats. But at the end of the day, we don't deliver a spec sheet to our clients; we deliver art - and hopefully art that effectively communicates the ideas they want to get across.You know where to learn about gear; where do you learn about art?This article was written in 1999 after visiting the BDA (Broadcast Designers' Association) conference in San Francisco. The BDA is dedicated to those who create graphics-intensive imagery such as station identities, openers, and commercials as well as print, web, and set designs. In 1999, grunge type treatments were still all the rage; it's fun to look back now and see what from those designs still looks fresh and relevant, and what looks dated and odd. We've posted a companion article which includes focuses on specific studios and jobs.During and after the show, we had the opportunity to sound out a number of design studios on their approaches, what they felt the current trends were in both design and technology, and how this affected their work. The most prevalent idea was that good communication is often subtle and holistic, rather than focusing on one image or catch phrase which is supposed to bang the viewer over the head with The Message. And yes, your choice of tools can help you more easily realize your art. Read More

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