Bob Donlon’s Adobe TV Blog

And what a beautiful ship it is . . .

After many long months of work by our incredibly talented and dedicated engineering teams CS3 Production Premium is now shipping!

To celebrate, let’s make some fireworks. It’s almost July 4 anyhow.

Start off by creating a new composition in After Effects, in whatever resolution you wish to work in (File > New Composition). In the Composition Settings dialog, set the Duration to 4 seconds (0;00;04;00).

Create a new solid layer in your Comp by selecting Layer > New > Solid. In the Solid Settings dialog, click Make Comp Size and then click OK.

Go to the Effects menu and select Simulation > CC Particle Systems II. RAM Preview and you’ll see some sparks.

We’re actually not gonna have to do all that much to make this look real pretty. What we’ve got now is a constant stream of sparks. Let’s set some keyframes for the Birth Rate of these particles to give us a single “pop”. Drag the Current Time Indicator (CTI) in your timeline the beginning of the comp and then set an initial keyframe for Birth Rate by clicking on the stopwatch to the left of its name in the Effect Controls Panel.

Set the Birth Rate to 40, then move the CTI ahead 5 frames and set the Birth Rate to 0. RAM Preview again and you’ll now see that “pop” but we still have some work to do in order to make this more convincing.

Twirl open the controls for Physics and set Gravity to 0.2 (which will keep the particles from falling away so quickly) and set Resistance to 10 (which will keep them from traveling too far away from their point of origination, also known as the Producer).

Then twirl open the controls for Particle and set Max Opacity to 50%

Now let’s duplicate what we’ve done a few times to create a short sequence. First, trim back the tail end of the Solid layer to make it 2 seconds long by clicking and dragging the right-hand edge of the clip to the left until it lines up with the 2 second mark on the timeline.

Duplicate the layer by selecting Edit > Duplicate, and then change the position of the Producer by first selecting the CC Particle Systems II effect in the Effect Controls Panel, and then clicking-and-dragging the Producer in the Composition Viewer to a new location.

The Producer is a small circle with a cross inside it.

Repeat the above step 3 more times until you have 5 copies of the layer, each with its Producer in a different location.

Now to have these fire off in a sequence, select all 5 of the layers then go to the Animation menu and select Keyframe Assistant > Sequence Layers.

In the Sequence Layers dialog, make sure Overlap is checked. When one layer fires, we want the next one to fire 10 frames later, so this is basically a math problem which depends on your frame rate:

If you’re working in 30fps enter a duration of 1:20 (0;00;01;20)
If you’re working in 25fps enter a duration of 1:15 (0;00;01;15)
If you’re working in 24fps enter a duration of 1:14 (0;00;01;14)

Click OK, RAM Preview, and then sit back and watch the show.

To customize further, try changing the colors of the particles as well as playing with the different Physics parameters. Happy 4th of July everyone, and here’s to the most exciting release of video tools in Adobe’s history!

Posted by Bob Donlon at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Puppet Tool, which is one of my favorite new features in After Effects CS3, is bound to bring out the Frankenstein (or at least Frankenberry) in most people. It’s the easiest way to create animated characters from still images, and I’m going to be showing you how it works using a production still from our “Aquo” shoot up in Whistler, BC.

These little birds were just about everywhere, and I thought it would be funny to have this one peck the heck out of that bike tire. The first step here is to separate the “character” (in this case the bird) from the background using Photoshop. I used the Quick Selection tool to select the bird (you can see the selection in the image above), removed it from the background, and then used the Clone Tool to clean up the background plate (Photoshop 101 stuff.)

The bird, the background, and the cleaned-up plate.

Next, import the Photoshop file into After Effects, making sure to select “Import As Composition” in the import dialog. Once it’s imported, double-click it to load it up, then select the Puppet Pin Tool, which is that new push-pin looking thing on the right side of the After Effects toolbar.

The next step is to place pins on the character based on how you want it to move -- the fewer pins you use the better the results are likely to be. First select the layer in your timeline, then select the Puppet Pin Tool, and click on the image to place the pins. For my bird, I put one on his head, foot, tail, and back.

To animate the pins, you can twirl down the controls for the Puppet Tool in your timeline and set keyframes, but the easier way is to motion sketch. Just hold down the Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Win) key and when you place your curser over a pin it turns into a stopwatch.

Clicking and dragging records your mouse movements in realtime, and you see an outline of your character as you draw. It’s really easy to record an animation this way. You can do multiple passes, to animate as many pins as you want, and you see the ones you’ve recorded play back as you record new ones so you can easily synchronize motion.

I started out by doing a pass just wiggling the tail, and then I did a pass of his head pecking away at the tire. I then animated the scale of the scene to zoom in over time. Here’s what I got:

Now this is a really simple example, you can go in much deeper with this tool. Holding down the Puppet Pin Tool in the toolbar reveals the Puppet Overlap Tool and the Puppet Starch Tool.

The Overlap Tool controls which parts of the character cross in front of or behind of the others, and the Starch Tool pretty much does what it says it does – it keeps unwanted warping from occurring. You click on the character to apply either of these tools.

Just a reminder for those of you that haven’t downloaded it yet, After Effects CS3 is in Public Beta over at Adobe Labs, so you can start using it right now until we ship it in a few weeks.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m finally back home in San Francisco for awhile and have adjusted to one time zone for the first time in a really long time. The past few months traveling the globe and spreading the word about Production Premium CS3 have been both exhilarating and exhausting. I’ve gotten to meet so many of you in so many parts of the world I’d never expected to find myself in and see the incredible work being done with the tools we make here at the Adobe factory.

For the next few months you won’t be seeing much of me out on the road, but you will be seeing a lot more content from me online (with a 6-week hiaitus thrown in there when my baby arrives later this summer). My colleague Jason will be grounded as well as he is in the same boat (impending Fatherhood) so you’ll be seeing some of our talented Adobe colleagues like Karl Soulé presenting at the types of events you’d normally find me or Jason at.

But enough about the minutia of my professional life. In the spirit of changes and transitions, I’d like to show you how to create an animated DVD menu transition using Encore and After Effects. One of the things that makes Encore unique is its tight integration with AE, so the process here is rather simple.

What I’ll do is create a transition so that when the user clicks the “Play Movie” button on the DVD menu, the menu will animate away to black and then the movie will begin.

I’m going to use one of the menus in Encore’s Library as the example here, so you can follow along if you wish.

The Library has loads of royalty-free content like menus, buttons, and design elements that can be easily modified, so you can do something quick like I’m doing here, or use the elements in the Library to save time when doing custom menu design. In this case we just want to see the template menus, so click on the first button on that row of buttons in the middle of the panel. That toggles the Library’s display to show only menus. By default, it shows you the menus in the General category, but you can search within any of the categories by pulling down the menu at the top of the Library Panel.

Making sure you have the General category selected, scroll down and locate the Entertainment Menu. Double-click it and you will see it appear in the Project Panel. To load your new menu in the Menu Viewer, double-click it in the Project Panel.

At this point you can customize the menu by, for example, changing the text by using the Text Tool along with the Character and Paragraph Panels (as I’ve done) or sending the menu to Photoshop for modification by right-mouse clicking (or cmd-clicking) the menu and selecting Edit Menu in Photoshop. But for now, let’s just take what we’ve got and create the transition. Go to the Menu menu (this always cracks me up – there’s a menu called “Menu) and select Create After Effects Composition.

You’ll get a dialog prompting you to save your menu as a PSD which will then open up in After Effects. I recommend you save this PSD as well as the AE project you’re about to save, in the same folder as your Encore project in order to keep everything together.

After Effects will launch and create a new project for you, with a single composition that contains all the layers of your menu. Go ahead and save it.

Double-click the Comp to open it in the Composition Viewer.

Yes, this is After Effects and not Encore -- the interfaces are nearly identical . . .

At this point there are unlimited creative options as this is a standard After Effects composition. For now, we’ll do a simple transition to black using the Burn Film effect, which simulates what happens when motion picture film gets stuck in the gate and burns away. In order to have the effect apply to the all the layers in our menu, we’re going to Pre-Compose them.

Select all the layers in your Timeline, then select Layer > Pre-compose

In the Pre-compose dialog, accept the default setting “Move all attributes into the new Composition” and click OK.

Now, apply the Burn Film effect by selecting Effect > Stylize > CC Burn Film.

The main parameter in this effect is Burn. Click-and-drag on the value for Burn in the Effect Controls to see how it effects the menu.

One thing about this effect is that once it “burns away” the image, it reveals whatever is beneath, which is in this case nothing. In order to make this look like an actual frame of film burning away, we want white to be revealed. So let’s create a new solid layer by selecting Layer > New > Solid.

In the Solid Settings dialog, click the Make Comp Size button, and make the color white, then click OK. Then, in your Timeline, drag the new White Solid layer below the Pre-comp layer.

There we go. Now for the finishing touches. Let’s have the image start to burn away from the area of the Play button by moving the center of the effect. Select the Pre-comp layer, then go back to the Effect Controls. Click on the name of the Effect CC Burn Film, and you will see a cross-hatch appear in the center of your Comp. Drag it to the middle of the Play button.

Now it’s time to animate the transition. Three seconds should be about right, so select Composition > Composition Settings and in the Duration field select all the timecode and type in 300, which represents 3 seconds and 0 frames.

When you’re done, click OK. Next, set an initial keyframe for the Burn parameter by clicking on its stopwatch in the Effect Controls, and then set its value back to 0.

Move the Current Time Inditator (CTI) in your timeline to 2 seconds (0;00;02;00) and change the Burn setting in the Effect Controls to 100.

Select Composition > Preview > RAM Preview and see what you’ve got.

The last step will be to have the transition fade to black at the end, so make sure your CTI is back at 2 seconds and select the White Solid layer. Hit the letter T key on your keyboard to reveal its Opacity settings, and then click on the Stopwatch for Opacity to set a keyframe.

Move the CTI to the end of the timeline and change the Opacity setting to 0. RAM Preview and here’s what you should have (click to play back):

Now, let’s get this baby over to Encore. All you need to do is click and drag the Comp from the AE Project Panel to the Encore Project Panel. This can be done by arranging the apps side-by-side, or by using the cmd-tab or alt-tab keyboard shortcuts to toggle between applications.

You can also go to Encore’s File menu and select Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition, then drive to your AE project and select the comp.

Finally, let’s weave the transition into the navigation of the DVD. For this next step you’ll need to import a piece of video and put it in a timeline, and this will be our “Main Movie”. Go to your flowchart and click-and drag from the Play button in the Menu to the Main Movie timeline.

Then set the transition for the Play button by going to the Properties Panel and clicking the Transition tab. Click on the Pickwhip (the little swirl) and drag it to the After Effects comp in your Encore Project Panel.

You’ll see a Transition icon appear in the Flowchart, in the link from the Play button to the Main Movie timeline. To preview your navigation, right-mouse-click on the Menu and select Preview From Here. Click the Play button and watch the magic happen.

Other ways of incorporating animated transitions into your menus is to do them from one menu to the next (e.g. to transition from the Main Menu to the Scene Selection menu). With some imagination, this can be one of the most creative and fun parts of DVD creation.

Hey, would you rather see these tutorials as a podcast as opposed to written in my blog here? Please send me comments and let me know . . .

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

If anyone’s seen my camera, please let me know, I seem to have lost it. I’m not joking --it’s a Canon Power Shot that’s been scratched up really badly from getting knocked around in my travels. I turned my office upside down yesterday looking for it, and in the process came across a disc with some photos from the CS3 demo asset shoot with UVPH that we did in NYC late last year.

So let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on in that photo above. Our actor friend is standing on a treadmill that one of the UVPH guys found on the street. They took the control panel off, and that’s what the guy kneeling on the floor is playing around with. They also painted the treadmill Chromakey Green to match the psyche which is painted the same color. The whole idea is to key all that stuff out so we wind up with a shot of the actor running in “mid air”.

A few takes with the right framing is all we needed. We did lots of scenes like this with several actors, all doing various activities. Have a look.

Pretty neat, huh? Here's how we shot the rock climber:

Some stuff painted green and some imagination is all you need.

A short note – I was interviewed this week for an NBC TV program called Tech Now. It will air this weekend in the following cities and times: Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on KNTV San Jose/San Francisco; Saturday at 5 p.m. on KNSD San Diego; Throughout the week on WNBC Digital (4.4) New York (which is available on most cable systems there).

You can also watch the podcast here no matter where you live.

I’ll be in a story about the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, talking about how anyone can do “Star Wars type effects” themselves using After Effects.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yep, I'm making up words again. That’s jetlag talking. But through the jetlag I’m going to try and show you how to create a 3d model from a photograph using some new integration we’ve done with Photoshop CS3 Extended and After Effects CS3.

A lot of what we do here at the “factory” is try and take things that would take you hours or even days to do and give you ways to do them in a matter of minutes. Sometimes that takes looking within and seeing what bits of this app could be used to help someone working in that app. The “secret sauce” in this case is something called Vanishing Point Exchange (vpe).

You might be familiar with a feature of Photoshop called Vanishing Point, which is typically used when working with still images to define the perspective of a scene or object. What vpe does is let you take the geometry data generated by Vanishing Point and make use of it in other applications. In Creative Suite 3, you can now export the vpe to After Effects where before your very eyes a 3d scene is automatically created, something that would’ve taken huge buckets of time in the past.

I’m going to be starting with a photo I just snapped here in my SF office:

Thrilling, isn’t it? No, really, we do have a very beautiful office here – it’s just that I wanted to start with something simple for this tutorial – something with good, clear corner perspective.

You need to have Photoshop CS3 Extended to export the vpe, but you can still follow along with the next step, which is to create your planes in Vanishing Point, if you’re using the Standard edition.

With the photo open in Photoshop, select Filter > Vanishing Point. You will start by defining a plane in the photo, and you want to look for the easiest one to define. In my photo, it is the wall on the right side. It’s a matter of clicking on the 4 corners, lining up each edge with the edge of the plane you’re defining, and you’re done. If your plane is red, Photoshop is telling you it can’t get a read on your plane, so try again ‘til you get it (just use the hard edges in your photo as your guide). Once you’ve got a good plane it’ll look like this:

If you look at my cursor, on the right, you can see I am dragging to the right to extend the plane just past the edge of the photo – that’s about where you want to be. You can adjust the first plane after you've drawn it, and do take advantage of that capability because it is imperative to get this first plane right. If you don’t the whole rest of this will be messed up.

The second most important thing is to get the second plane right. For this I’ll use the left-hand wall. Create a new plane by holding down Cmd (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) on the left-hand control point on the original plane, and drag a new plane to the left (if your second plane is in a different direction than adjust that instruction accordingly). It is important to add your additional planes in this matter, as the planes need to be connected in order for this to work.

If the plane doesn’t line up right, you’ll need to rotate it. Hover your curser over the same control point you were just using, and hold down Opt (Mac) / Alt (Win) – your curser turns into a little bendy arrow. Use it to adjust the angle of your second plane – a task you can also accomplish in the “Angle” widget at the top of the Vanishing Point UI.

Continue adding and adjusting planes, repeating those steps, until you’ve got your planes all defined. If I weren’t in such a hurry to write this, I would’ve also refined this by adding planes to those brown columns on the left-hand wall, which would add more realism, but you can go ahead and do that on your own time ;-)

Here’s what I wound up with:

Now it’s time for that “secret sauce”. Go up to your fly-out menu (that little triangle-in-a-circle that you see in all Adobe apps) and select Export for After Effects CS3 (.vpe)

Create a new folder somewhere on your hard drive, because Photoshop is going to spit out a bunch of .png image files (one for each plane you drew) and a .vpe which holds all the geometry data. Go ahead and save. Then close out of Vanishing Point and save your PSD, you’re done there.

Now, switch over to After Effects CS3 and select File > Import > Vanishing Point (.vpe)

You’ll see a bunch of new stuff in your Project Panel, including a new Composition. Double-click the Composition and you’ll see that AE has built for you a 3D scene based on the vpe. It has arranged all the exported planes (each of them an individual layer in the .png format) in 3d space.

Select your Orbit Camera tool (letter “C” on your keyboard) and rotate your scene to see the 3d glory. I did a quick animation on my camera and got this:

You can also see that there was a bunch of white space where my Vanishing Point planes extended past the edge of my photo. That's fixed easily by selecting the layer in the AE Project Panel, then selecting Edit > Edit Original which opens that layer in Photoshop.

Then it's generally time to use the Clone Tool, Healing Brush, or whatever tool suits the need. In my case I used the Clone Tool to “fill in the blanks” (here it is “in progress”).

Here it is, cleaned up a bit (not 100% yet, but with 5 min. in Photoshop I was able to get it 95% of the way there – in 15 more minutes it’ll be perfect).

I want to do a users gallery of this kind of stuff, so please send me comments if you’ve done anything cool with this technique.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This year was my 10th consecutive NAB, and for the first time I didn’t get to take a vacation immediately thereafter (therefore protecting my sanity – meaning I no longer have my sanity as I went directly from NAB to the AsiaPac Creative Suite 3 Launch Tour). There are so many things that went on at NAB that are just starting to emerge from the crevices of my brain.

One of those things I’d like to share with y’all today, a gem of a tutorial created by Steve Holmes who took the new Shape Layers feature in After Effects CS3 to a new level. If you saw any of his presentations in our NAB Theater, then this’ll be a step-by-step reminder, if not, then you’ll want to try this out yourself in the AE CS3 Public Beta (which you can download now for free if you’re an owner of AE7 or Production Studio).

You’ll need to start with a piece of video that has an alpha channel (like, for example, the footage I’m using which is an actor we shot on greenscreen then chroma-keyed to create the alpha).

Then, you need to create a path (i.e. outline) of the alpha for each frame, which AE can do automatically with the Auto-trace feature. The general idea is that you can create a Shape Layer by copying and pasting a path from things like a piece of Illustrator artwork or the traced alpha of a piece of video.

Make sure the layer containing your video is selected in your timeline, then select Layer > Auto-trace and the Auto-trace dialog appears.

Make sure you have Work Area selected at the top of the dialog, and check the Preview button at the bottom. You’ll see a preview of the outline – if it looks good to you then accept the default settings and click OK. If not, you can modify the settings until the outline looks the way you want (the settings let you make the outline more or less refined – I’m using the default settings myself but do feel free to experiment here).

It may take awhile for Auto-trace to think if you have lots of frames (it is going frame-by-frame and creating a mask based on the alpha for each frame). Once it’s done, you’ll see your first frame with its brand new mask. Drag the Current Time Indicator to the right in your Timeline and you’ll see that you now have an “animated mask” of the alpha of your video.

Making sure your layer is still selected in your timeline, hit the letter M key on your keyboard to reveal its Masks properties. Twirl down Mask 1 to reveal the Mask Path and its keyframes.

This is what you will need to copy and paste into your shape layer. Click the words Mask Path to select all its keyframes and copy to your clipboard. Go ahead and delete this layer, you don’t need it anymore.

Now, create a new shape layer by right-mouse-clicking (or ctrl-clicking) in any empty space in your timeline. Twirl down its controls, and from the “Add” flyout menu that appears on the right, select Path.

This creates a path for your shape layer which is what you will be pasting the copied keyframes into. Twirl down the controls for Path 1 to reveal its Path parameter. Click the word Path to select, and paste in your keyframes (note, you must have “Path” selected, otherwise you will be pasting the keyframes into the Mask of the layer, which will make this whole thing not work).

Now you need to add a Fill and/or Stroke to your layer, which you can also do from the Add flyout menu. The swatches for Stroke and Fill will appear at the top of the UI -- in addition to selecting solid colors you can apply gradients by opt-clicking (mac) or alt-clicking (win) the swatches to cycle through different gradient types. Here’s what I chose:

RAM preview and see what you’ve got.

Then, for added dimension, add a Repeater from the Add flyout menu. Twirl down its controls, then the controls for Transform: Repeater 1.

Manipulate the Scale property (start by scrubbing the X value – i.e. the first number – to the left) to stack the copies closer together. Then, add more Copies.

At this point, it’s up to you to experiment. Try playing with the other controls in Transform: Repeater 1 to see how you can make the copies fade off into the distance, twist around, and animate in an uniimited number of geometric patterns. I keyframed my Anchor Point, Rotation, and Offset to get this:

Thanks again to Señor Steve Homes for coming up with another great gem.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

First on the hit parade of new features in CS3 is a big one for After Effects users. It's not an "eye-candy" feature, so you won't see it in our shorter product demos, but it means so much to so many people since the number one request by After Effects users is to make the app render faster.

One of several ways in which we've made After Effects CS3 both RAM Preview and Render faster is with support for Multiprocessing.

The new Multiprocessing Preferences dialog in After Effects CS3

If you've got a multiprocessor and/or multi-core system, After Effects farms out each frame of your comp to each processor, so it can RAM Preview and Render multiple frames simultaneously. You will need 512MB RAM for each process, since After Effects will actually launch background processes to run on your multiple processors, but as long as you've got enough RAM you can render 2 frames at a time on a 2-core system, 4 at time on a dual/dual , 8 at a time on some of the new high end Windows machines (and the 8-core Macs that we expect to see any day now).

Posted by Bob Donlon at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Having accidentally destroyed several of my computers’ keyboards over the years by spilling liquid on them, I decided to write today's blog entry about keyboards and the next think you know I knocked an entire container of orange juice all over my desk.

Well, I was saved this time by virtue of this great little After Effects keyboard cover from KB Covers that Steve K gave me a few weeks ago. I wasn’t going to write about its protective nature until . . . well . . . you already know what happened.

KB makes a nice line of rubber keyboard covers with keycaps for After Effects, Photoshop, and several other apps. Keycaps (i.e. key overlays that show you what specific keys do in an application) are a major helper when you’re learning keyboard shortcuts, and since you can work so much faster in AE by using both hands you should learn as many keyboard shortcuts as you can.

If you’d prefer to have a keyboard with the AE keycaps built right in, there are several on the market (Google “After Effects Keyboard”) but one of the things I like about the KB Cover is that I can easily switch it to the Photoshop version or remove it entirely if I want to do some straight typing. Then, of course, there’s that built-in-spill-proofing . . .

Posted by Bob Donlon at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you work with After Effects, sooner or later you’re going to have to get your beautiful AE composition onto a DVD (and if you don't then what the heck are you waiting for???). I had to do this myself the other day and used an incredibly simple workflow in Production Studio that involved AE and Encore DVD to create an auto-playing DVD without any menus (a DVD that, when inserted into a set-top player or computer, starts playing automatically).

First, create a new project in Encore DVD. The first thing you’ll be asked is your Television standard. If you’re in North or South America (except Argentina & Brasil), Japan, the Philippines, South Korea or Taiwan it’s NTSC. For everyone else it’s PAL.

Next, bring your After Effects comp into Encore DVD using the Dynamic Link feature. You can either drag the comp from the AE Project Panel into the Encore DVD Project Panel, or select File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition.

If you use this menu selection, you’ll need to drive to the location of your AE project, then select the comp that you want to open in Encore DVD.

Next, you’ll tell Encore DVD what MPEG-2 encoding settings to use. All video gets encoded to MPEG-2 for DVD and you want to use encoding settings that will make your video look its best. Start by selecting your Dynamically-Linked AE comp in the Encore DVD project panel. Then go to the File menu and select Transcode > Transcode Settings > NTSC DV High quality 7Mb VBR 2 Pass. This is a great preset for most AE work (and if you’re working in PAL you’ll see the PAL presets in that menu instead).

If you know about encoding you can also select Edit Project Transcode Presets and create your own custom encoding settings. What the preset above means is that it will encode your video to MPEG-2 at a bitrate of 7 megabits per second, doing a 2-pass Variable Bit Rate encode. This is always a great place to start with MPEG-2 encoding settings.

Okay, now you’ll need to put your AE comp into an Encore timeline. With the Dynamically-Linked comp still selected in your Encore project panel, click on the New Item button (looks like a little page at the bottom of the project panel) and select Timeline.

Your video (and audio if there is any in the AE comp) will now be in a timeline. Now it’s time to tell your DVD what to do after it finishes playing your AE comp. In most cases you’ll want it to stop, or maybe you’ll want the playback to loop instead. Either way, go to the Properties panel (in the upper-right hand corner of Encore’s UI) and in the End Action pulldown select either “Stop” to stop playback or “Link Back to Here” to loop playback.

Now, click on the Disc panel, which should be nested behind the Project panel.

You need to tell the DVD what to do if the viewer clicks the “Title” button on the DVD. Go back to the Properties panel (which now shows the properties for the disc) and in the Title Button pulldown select the first chapter of your timeline.

Last but not least, it’s time to burn the disc. In the Disc panel click the Build DVD button and the Build DVD panel opens.

In this panel you can give your disc a name, specify how many copies you want, then click the Build button to burn your DVD. Encore will take care of all the AE rendering and MPEG-2 transcoding behind the scenes.

Of course there is always more than one way to skin a cat. You can also Dynamically-Link your AE comp into Premiere Pro, put it in a timeline, select Window >DVD Layout, and output your DVD from there. One good reason to do it in Encore DVD, though, is if you’re thinking about adding menus or custom navigation somewhere down the line. You can use the project I just walked you through as a foundation to build on, quite easily I might add.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you started in video after the mid-90’s there’s a good chance you never used a tape-to-tape, linear, A/B Roll system or a flatbed (I’ve used the former but not the latter, which gives my wife bragging rights in that department). Today, for most people, the definition of “post production hardware” is a computer and maybe some bits and pieces plugged into it, but in the old days you needed a roomful of expensive and complicated gear to get anything done.

Software like Adobe’s DV Rack simulates a lot of the gear you’d find in an old-school edit suite like a broadcast monitor and waveform/vectorscopes.

The first thing you learned in old-school editing school was how to read those scopes --they’re key to making sure your video is broadcast legal. You’ll also find them in Premiere Pro by opening your Reference Monitor (from the Program Monitor’s flyout menu) and selecting the scope you want from its flyout menu (the flyout menu is the little round button with the triangle inside it that’s in the upper-right corner of every panel in Adobe’s video & audio tools).

The YC Waveform Monitor and the Vectorscope in Premiere Pro.

The basic idea is that TV screens, unlike computer screens, display an image comprised of Luma (brighness) and Chroma (color). The three channels that make up a video signal are Y (Luma) Cr (Chroma Red) and Cb (Chroma Blue), also referred to as YUV. Broadcast legal for NTSC video is within the range 7.5 IRE and 100 IRE on the waveform monitor (IRE stands for “Institute of Radio Engineers” for those of you keeping score).

7.5 IRE is black, and 100 IRE is white, and everything else needs to fall in between in order for video to be “broadcast legal” (exception is in Japan where they use NTSC with 0 IRE black). You can see the IRE scale on the right hand side of the YC Waveform Monitor in the image above.

If your video isn’t broadcast legal it will not be aired, and even if it will never be broadcast it will cause many TV sets to produce an annoying “buzz” in the audio.

Now you may be thinking “my videos aren’t for broadcast, they’re not even for a TV set, and I don’t need to worry about this.” Well, one reason you should care is that video looks completely different on a computer screen than it does on a TV screen and if your video is going to be viewed on a computer monitor (e.g. on the web) or a handheld device (e.g. iPod) you should color correct it. Computers display images in terms of RGB or Red (R) Green (G) and Blue (B) so if you want your video to look its best you’ll need to compensate.

In computer land, 0 RGB is black and 255 RGB is white. The problem is that when you convert video black (7.5 IRE) to computer black it actually translates as 16 RGB, not 0 RGB where it should be. Likewise, video white (100 IRE) translates to 235 RGB, not 255. So what you wind up with is less contrast, and blacks & whites that aren’t true. Color correcting your video can fix this and here’s a quick and easy way to do it:

If you’re editing in Premiere Pro, once you’re finished and done apply the Levels effect to your entire sequence. Start by nesting your sequence in a new sequence by clicking the New Item button and selecting Sequence

Accept the default settings in the New Sequence dialog, then drag your existing sequence from the Project Panel into the Video 1 track in your new sequence (this basically flattens all the layers in your original sequence so you can apply the Levels effect to the whole thing at once).

In the Effects panel, type “Levels” in the Contains field, and drag the Levels effect onto your nested sequence in Video 1. Open the Effect Controls panel and twirl down the controls for Levels

Since your video has levels of 16 black and 235 white, change the settings for (RGB) Black Input Level to 16 and (RGB) White Input Level to 235. See the difference?

Your blacks & whites are now where they should be, and you’ve regained the full contrast range in your video.

In After Effects, the same thing can be done by creating an Adjustment Layer, dragging it to the top of the layer stack in the Timeline, and applying the Levels effect to it (using the same settings above).

Remember, if you have graphics, photos, or other elements in your Premiere Pro edit or After Effects comp, you’ll have to take that into account when applying the Levels effect – but for many cases this is a great way to make video look its best on a non-TV viewing medium.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been a Mac user since 1988, when I bought my first Mac Plus with a whopping 1 megabyte of RAM and a 20 megabyte external hard drive the size & weight of a couple of bricks. The Mac was, more or less, the only platform I used until a few years ago when I worked at Anystream who develops only for Windows.

I love using Premiere Pro and Encore on Windows (as well as the rest of Production Studio), but I’ve always had a fondness for the Mac OS. This is why I’m personally excited, on so many levels, to be able to show you this:

We announced today that Adobe Production Studio is coming to the Mac. That’s Premiere Pro on the Mac above, and we’ll also have Encore and the rest of Production Studio available for the Mac when we release the next version (that's expected to ship in mid-2007).

All the features in the Windows version will also be in the Mac version (including some new ones, but it’s still too early to talk about that . . .). True cross-platform, baby. It’s the first time Premiere Pro and Encore have ever been on the Mac (of course the original Premiere had its beginnings on the Mac, but that was a completely different app than Premiere Pro) and the tight integration between all the apps in Production Studio, with features like Dynamic Link which let you drag & drop your After Effects compositions into Premiere Pro and Encore without rendering, can now be enjoyed by Mac & Windows users alike.

You gonna be at Macworld next week? Stop by the Adobe exhibit and see the first ever demos of Production Studio on the Mac, being given by the venerable Dave Helmly.

I’ll be at Macworld as well, so if you see me make me buy you a beer or something. I live here in SF and know some pretty good places to get thrown out of…

Posted by Bob Donlon at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When the “Cops” style shows were at their peak of popularity, flipping through the TV channels was like it is with poker tournaments today -- you couldn’t get away from ‘em. Quite often a few of the faces involved in whatever scuffle was being shown would be blurred out “to protect the innocent” (or, more likely, to protect the broadcaster from getting their pants sued off for the lack of a signed “talent release”).

Well, thank goodness that fad has mostly died out (although the poker tournaments are still with us like a bad hangover on a red-eye home from Vegas). But there are still situations where editors need to obscure something (or someone) in a shot, and there are a few different ways to do it. How it gets done depends on if your subject is moving.

I’ll start with an example that answers a question posted in a comment here a few weeks ago (BTW, for those of you posting comments, I need to personally approve the comment before it shows up on the blog, and due to the massive volume of “comment spam” I get on a daily basis I’m only able to sort through and find the real, non-spam comments every week or so – that’s why it can take so long to see your comment appear). The writer of said comment had a project where he was shooting a computer screen with a spreadsheet on it and he wanted to blur some “sensitive” parts out. I assume this was shot locked-down with a tripod (if not, it should be) so this would be a non-moving subject. We can take care of this one in Premiere Pro.

I’m going to use a different visual example, a locked-down shot of a car with a licence plate I want to get rid of. You need to start with a clip that’s already cut into a timeline. Locate that clip on your timeline, click to select it, then select Edit>Copy. Move the Current Time Indicator (CTI) to the first frame of your clip, and select the video track above it by clicking on the track’s name (it will turn highlighted indicating that it’s selected). Select Edit>Paste, and you’ll have a duplicate copy of your clip sitting right above the original.

Go to your Effects Panel, and in the Contains field type “Gaussian Blur”. Locate the Gaussian Blur effect, then click & drag it to the duplicate copy of your clip on the timeline. Then, go to the Effect Controls Panel and twirl down the controls for Gaussian Blur. Change the Bluriness value to 30 (or whatever value sufficiently obscures your shot).

Now, it’s time to crop this layer so only the area we want blurred out is blurred out, and the un-blurred original copy of the clip is visible below. Go back to your Effects Panel and type “Crop” in the Contains field. Drag the Crop effect to the duplicate clip in the timeline, and then in the Effect Controls click the name of the Crop effect to select it. This will reveal the direct-manipulation Crop controls in the Program Monitor (it’s the outline around the frame with the boxes at each corner). Drag the corners of the Crop controls to isolate only the area you want blurred out.

And that’s all there is to it, as long as you have a locked-down shot with a non-moving subject. If you are dealing with motion, though, it’s time to go over to After Effects. You can select your clip in the Premiere Pro timeline, select Edit>Copy, then Edit>Paste it right into an After Effects timeline.

Over in After Effects, I’m going to use a shot with some actors walking around and blur one of their faces out. The way I’m going to have the blur follow the face as it moves around the frame is by using the Motion Tracker. If you’re using the Standard version of AE then you don’t have the Motion Tracker – so if you need to do this sort of thing you should upgrade to AE Professional.

First, create an Adjustment Layer above the video layer in your AE timeline by selecting Layer>New>Adjustment Layer. Then, go to your Effects & Presets Panel and type “Gaussian Blur” in the Contains field, and drag the Gaussian Blur effect to the Adjustment Layer. Select the Adjustment Layer, go to the Effect Controls, and change Blurriness to 30.

Then, go to the Toolbar and select the Elliptical Mask Tool by holding your mouse button down on the Rectangular Mask Tool and selecting the Elliptical Mask once the pop-up appears.

Make sure your CTI is at the first frame of your timeline, then in the Composition Viewer draw a mask around the face you want to obscure.

To soften the edges of the masked blur, click on the Adjustment Layer in the timeline, hit the letter “F” key on your keyboard to reveal it’s Mask Feather property, then change the Mask Feather value to 8 or so.

Now you’ll need to move the Anchor Point of your layer to the center of your mask (because that’s where we’ll need the motion to be centered). Click on the Adjustment Layer in the timeline once again, then select the Pan Behind tool (it’s the one just to the left of the Elliptical Mask Took). Click-and-drag the Anchor Point of the layer, which by default is dead-center in your Comp, to the center of the mask.

Then, deselect the Pan Behind tool by hitting the letter “V” key on your keyboard.

Okay, now it’s time to motion track our actor’s face, then apply the tracking data to the masked Adjustment Layer so it follows the actor as she moves through the shot. Call up the Motion Tracking workspace by selecting it from the Workspace pulldown menu in the upper-right corner of the interface. Select the video layer in your timeline, then, in the Tracker Controls panel, click the Track Motion button. The Layer panel opens (should be nested with the Composition Viewer) showing the video and a Track Point. Drag the Track Point on to the nose of the actor (or whatever point is appropriate).

It’s worth mentioning here that you’ll have different tracking challenges based on the footage you’re working with, and you’ll want to try and find something to track that has a good amount of contrast. If your track point moves out of view – e.g. the subject turns their head away – you can always track your shot in sections.

Making sure your CTI is at the first frame of the timeline, click the Analyze Forward button in the Tracker Controls – the button that looks like a “Play” button.

The Motion Tracker plays through the shot and tracks your subject. If it isn’t tracking well on your footage, try adjusting the sizes of the inner and outer boxes of the tracker, or clicking on the Options button and checking “Track Fields”. More info on tweaking the AE Motion Tracker for optimal results can be found in AE’s help system by selecting Help>After Effects Help.

Once you have an accurate track, click the Apply button in the Tracker Controls to apply the tracking data to the masked Adjustment Layer (you may need to click the Edit Target button in the Tracker Controls first to make sure that the Adjustment Layer is selected as the target). Click OK in the dialog that appears and your masked blur now follows the motion track.

If you need to get your finished shot back into Premiere Pro, simply use the Dynamic Link feature – drag the Composition from your AE Project Panel and hover it over Premiere Pro on your Windows Taskbar, then drop it into the Premiere Pro Project Panel.

Motion Tracking is a major timesaver for tasks like this (imagine having to manually keyframe that mask over a really long shot) as well as any situation where you want to have an effect or a layer or any other part of your composition follow a moving object within footage. It can also be used to replace entire elements, such as an ad on a moving bus or the contents of a computer screen, by using the Perspective Corner Pin tracker. It’s definitely worth learning how to use, and you’ll be able to say “we’ll fix it in post” with a much higher degree of confidence.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The new technology just keeps rolling off the assembly line at Adobe Labs. It seems like every time I return from traveling (was working in Mexico City last week) there's something new to talk about -- and this time it has to do with . . . (hold on to your hats, folks) . . . Color Theory!!!!!

For those of you that think I've geeked way too far out this time, stay with me. Color Theory is one of the fundamentals of graphic design (including motion graphic design), and since most people come into motion graphics on a "sideways" path (i.e. without having gone to design school) it's something that not everybody understands. One of the many reasons you learn Color Theory in design school or art school is to help you understand how colors relate to one another, which is the first step to being able to create an appropriate color palette for a motion graphics project.

In a project for a corporate client, it's often the case that the client will require that only their brand palette be used, so that their brand identity is reinforced. But even if you don't work with these constraints it's a good idea to create a working palette for your projects as it helps you to keep a cohesive look and feel. I like to use the analogy of a music ensemble -- there are a set of instruments each with their own sonic characteristics (i.e. timbre) but it's also how those instruments sound together that makes up the texture & feel of a piece. There’s a reason to use a string quartet, as opposed to, say, the Stanford University Marching Band to convey the mood of serenity. I think you get my drift.

So, being that having a color palette for a motion graphics project is important, and being that our goal here at Adobe is to create tools that make you more creative & productive, we rolled out a new web-based application called Kuler last week. It's free to use and you can access it at kuler.adobe.com

Kuler lets you create and share color palettes, as well as browse & download palettes created by other Kuler users. It’s designed to help you create palettes based on the rules of Color Theory, so even if you haven’t got a clue you can create tight, logical palettes with just a few clicks of the mouse.

When you first launch Kuler, you’ll see the screen above showing some of the highest rated palettes created by the growing community of Kuler users (you can see one I created based on the colors of the old “Good ‘n Plenty” candy box). To create your own palette, click on the Create button and you will be presented with Kuler’s easy-to-use palette creation interface:

To start with, adjust the sliders under the first swatch to set your base color. In my example, I’m using red. Then, you can create several color palettes based on the rules of Color Theory by clicking on the names of the rules, which are (with examples):

Analogous: Matches colors with adjacent hues

Monochromatic: Focuses on one color with varied intensity and lightness in a single hue

Triad: Spaces your colors in a triangle around the wheel for a contrasting theme

Complementary: Uses the opposite two colors on the color wheel for a simple theme based on two hues

Compound: Combines interesting colors from multiple hues

Shades: Creates subtle variations of the base color’s hue

Custom: Lets you drag individual color circles around the wheel with complete freedom

It’s easy to see, from the examples above, how many possibilities there are just staying within the rules of Color Theory. But it’s also easy to expand on this by dragging the color circles when you’re within a rule – thereby using the rule as a jumping off point to creating a palette that will look cohesive and pleasing.

Once you’ve created a palette you can save it, publish it for other Kuler users to use (if you wish) and then download it as an Adobe Swatch Exchange file that can be opened in Illustrator CS2. You can also use the swatches as they appear in Kuler to sample with the eyedropper tool in After Effects, Photoshop, or most other Adobe tools. Use this as the basis for the colors you use in your backgrounds, text, and other colored elements in your projects .

As someone who came into motion graphics “sideways” and didn’t learn Color Theory until I took a post-grad class at Pratt Institute after I’d already been working in the field a couple years, I can’t emphasize enough how much better a designer you’ll become by broadening your understanding of color. Whether this is a new concept to you, or you’ve had this down cold for years, give this great new (and free) Adobe tool a spin on your next project.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Quicker than I could scarf down a slice of deep dish in Chicago earlier this week, I got a comment from Steve K. on my last posting, imploring me to show how to do the Ben Kurns Effect (a.k.a. Pan & Scan, Pan & Zoom, Ken Burns Effect) in After Effects. Steve’s been the Product Manager of AE for years now, and it amazes me that he still never misses any opportunity to promote it. Besides, I love showing cool stuff in AE so I figured I’d take it a step further and show y’all how to do a 3-D Pan & Scan in AE. This has become a pretty popular technique, lots of doc-style shows and films are using it. The first film I saw that used this at length (and by “at length” I mean for the entire duration of the film) was The Kid Stays In The Picture. Almost the entire movie was photographs busted up into layers in Photoshop, then animated in 3D in After Effects.

When done correctly, this is a much more dynamic and interesting way of panning & scanning. The third-dimension adds tremendous depth (literally and figuratively) to what could be just another stab at “being like Ben Kurns.” Oh Ben, why did you step in front of that subway train all those years ago, why?

So, start off by opening your photo in Photoshop. Remember that you want your photo to be as high-res as possible, especially if you’re planning to zoom-in in great detail.

Then, you need to break apart the key elements of your photo into individual layers. In the case of my example, below, I need to separate myself, the airplane, and the background. To start off, create a selection around the foreground element (usually a person) by using the Magic Wand, Marquee, and Lasso tools (Photoshop 101 techniques).

Once you have your foreground element selected, cut & paste it into a new layer. What you’ll wind up with is the foreground by itself, and the background with a big gaping hole in it.

Next, use the Clone tool (a.k.a. the Rubber Stamp tool) to fill in the hole in the background. In my example, it was pretty easy to fill in the sky, but a bit more challenging to “recreate” the airplane since my body covers a good deal of it.

Now it’s time to repeat the first two steps -- this time selecting the airplane in the same manner as before, and cutting & pasting it into its own layer.

Then, once again, use the Clone tool to fill in the blank areas in the background.

So what you’ll wind up with is a Photoshop file with each of the key elements on its own layer.

Now we’re ready to bring our Photoshop file into After Effects. Switch over to AE and select File>Import>File. Select your Photoshop file, but before clicking the Open button, make sure you have “Import As: Composition” selected in the pulldown menu in the lower-left corner of the Import File dialog. This will bring the Photoshop file into After Effects with all its layers intact. If you were to select “Import As: Footage” it would flatten the layers and then there’d be no point to doing anything in 3D.

You’ll see a new Composition in the Project Panel, along with a folder containing the individual Photoshop layers. Double-click the Comp to open it, then change the comp settings to your desired format & resolution by selecting Composition>Composition Settings.

Pull down the Preset menu and select your format (I’m using NTSC DV for this example), and at the bottom of the Composition Settings dialog enter your desired duration. 5 seconds is a good place to start (00;00;05;00).

Next, you need make your layers 3D by checking in their 3D Layer checkboxes.

Then, add a Camera to your timeline by selecting Layer>New>Camera. The Camera Settings dialog appears.

Pull down the Preset menu, and select 35mm. This will simulate a 35mm film camera lens – applying different lenses will give you much different results so after you complete this tutorial go back and experiment with the different lenses to see what’s possible.

Next, we’ll stagger our Photoshop layers in Z-space (depth). This will give them the effect of being in 3-dimensional space. Select all 3 layers on your timeline, then hit the letter P on your keyboard, which will solo the Position property. Each layer has 3 coordinate values: X (horizontal), Y (vertical), and Z (depth) – although you won’t see the values labeled as such. Adjust the Z position of layers 1 and 2 to bring them closer to the camera – in my example I moved Layer 1 (me) to -600 and Layer 2 (the airplane) to -300. Negative values bring the objects forward in Z-space, while positive values move them further away.

I’ve moved the camera to the side in the screencap below to give you a sense of how the layers look staggered in Z-space.

Now it’s time to animate the Camera to create the 3D Pan & Scan. Click on the little triangle to the left of Camera 1 in your timeline to twirl down its properties. Click on Transform, then click on the stopwatch icons for Point of Interest and Position to set an initial keyframe for these properties. Position represents the actual position of the Camera in 3D space (thus the X, Y, and Z values) and the Point of Interest is what the Camera is pointing at. We’ll animate both of these properties.

Now, scrub on the X, Y, and Z values for Position to move the Camera to its starting point. Then, scrub on the values for Point of Interest to get your Camera pointing in the direction you want. Once you’re happy with the starting position, hit the End key on your keyboard, which will bring the Current Time Indicator to the last frame of your timeline (you can also drag the CTI all the way to the right). Then, modify the Position and Point of Interest to position the Camera in its ending position.

In my example, I’m starting zoomed-out with the Camera down and to the left, and over the course of 5 seconds I’ll animate it up, to the right, and move it forward to zoom-in.

After Effects will animate the Camera between the start and end keyframes. To see your animation, select Composition>Preview>RAM Preview.

You’ll notice that the Camera starts & stops on a dime – not very natural or elegant looking. Typically a real camera will ease out of its initial position, then gently ease in to its final position. Drag across the initial keyframes for the Camera’s Point of Interest and Position, then right-mouse-click and select Keyframe Assistant>Easy Ease Out (you can also select this via the Aniimation menu).

Repeat for the ending keyframes, but this time select Easy Ease In. RAM Preview again to see the difference.

OK, now we’ve got a nice, interesting, 3-dimensional pan & scan, but as Steve K mentioned in his comment, you have way more control of your animation in AE than you do in Premiere Pro. The Graph Editor (which we introduced in AE7) gives you an incredible variety of ways to tweek your keyframes – open it by clicking on the Graph Editor button on your timeline.

You can click directly on the keyframes in the Graph Editor to modify how the Camera animates – try pulling on the Bezier handles to change the curve of the Position and see how you can get a different feel by adjusting how the Camera moves out of its initial position and into its final position.

This whole technique I’ve just taught you is used pretty heavily in motion design these days, not just for panning & scanning photos – you see it all the time in TV commercials & promos. You can take it a step further by adding lights (Layer>New>Light) and adjusting the Camera’s depth-of-field, enabling shadows, etc. Hitting the letter “A” key twice on a 3D layer in the timeline reveals its Material Options where you can make these kinds of adjustments.

Well, that’s an intro to panning & scanning in 3-D using After Effects and Photoshop. Of course, you can also do this in 2-D without breaking the layers apart, and then it’s more-or-less the same as doing it in Premiere Pro (although AE does give you much more control with the Graph Editor).

Now I’m gonna go get me a slice of deep dish. Oh, wait, I flew back home to SF yesterday. Don’t know where I am anymore . . .

Posted by Bob Donlon at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Animated backgrounds are used in just about every area of video postproduction. You see them all the time behind “talking heads”, as part of DVD motion menus, as the foundation of interstitial graphics on TV (e.g. “here’s what’s coming up next”), and as elements in complex motion design pieces. In After Effects 7.0 we include an entire set of Background Animation Presets, which make it easy to get started, but it really isn’t hard to create your own animated backgrounds from scratch if you learn a few basic concepts.

The first thing you need to know is how to manipulate the Fractal Noise effect in After Effects, which is by far the most useful effect for creating animated backgrounds. To start off, create a new composition in the format of your choice (my examples below are in NTSC DV) and make its duration 5 seconds. Then add a new solid to your comp by going to Layer>New>Solid, and in the Solid Settings dialog click the "Make Comp Size" button. It doesn’t matter what color it is, just go ahead and click OK.

Then apply the Fractal Noise effect by going to Effect>Noise & Grain>Fractal Noise and your comp will look like this:

Next, to animate the noise, set an initial keyframe for the Evolution property by clicking on it’s stopwatch icon in the Effect Controls panel. If you can’t see the Effect Controls panel, hit the F3 key on your keyboard to reveal it.

Then, hit the End key on your keyboard, which will bring your Current Time Indicator to the last frame on your timeline. Turn the Evolution dial in the Effect Controls clockwise 2 rotations, which will animate the noise 2 cycles over the duration of the comp. To preview the animation, go to Composition>Preview>RAM Preview.

Not too interesting, eh? Well, that’s just the starting point. By learning how to manipulate the controls in Fractal Noise, and then adding some complimentary effects, you can achieve an incredibly wide range of looks. For starters, go back to the Effect Controls and pull down the Fractal Type menu at the very top of the effect. Try selecting each of the options and doing a RAM Preview to get an idea of the basic look of each. Once you’ve finished, select Dynamic Twist (which will look like fig 1. below).

Next, you’ll make the noise more abstract by lowering its complexity. In the Effect Controls, click on the setting for Complexity (the default is 6.0) and change it to 3.0 (figure 2, above). Next, to stretch it out and make wavy lines, twirl down the Transform property in the Effect Controls by clicking on the triangle to the left of its name. Uncheck the Uniform Scaling checkbox, and set Scale Width to 600 (figure 3) and Scale Height to 35 (figure 4).

Now RAM Preview again to see the results. Quite different from where we started out, eh? And the best part is the animation is the result of just 2 keyframes set on the Evolution property.

In order to make this more interesting, we’re going to apply 3 complementary effects: Levels, Fast Blur, and CC Toner. Levels (which works the same way as Levels in Photoshop) will let us adjust the brightness & contrast with a great degree of control, Fast Blur will make the background more abstract, and CC Toner will let us colorize the final result.

First, apply Levels by going to Effect>Color Correction>Levels. By moving the 3 triangles below the Histogram, you can adjust your black and white levels, as well as the gamma. Move the triangles so they’re about where I have them below.

You can see the result is much different from the Fractal Noise effect by itself. Try playing with the sliders below the Histogram to see what kind of looks you can get, then go back to the settings in the figure above.

Apply the Fast Blur by going to Effect>Blur & Sharpen>Fast Blur. Set the Blur Dimensions to Horizontal, click the Repeat Edge Pixels checkbox, and increase Blurriness to 300 by clicking & dragging on its value to the right, which will allow you to see the adjustment in the Composition Viewer as you make it.

Then add some color to your animation by going to Effect>Color Correction>CC Toner. Click the color swatch for Midtones, and select a vibrant blue color.

Finally, RAM Preview to see your finished animated background. Experiment by changing the Fractal Type, tweeking the Levels settings, blur amount, and mapping different colors in CC Toner.

Most of the Background Animation Presets in AE7 use this formula, or a variant thereof. Since the Presets are just a stack of effects & keyframes, applying them and then “looking under the hood” to see how they were created is a good insight into how to create more varied backgrounds. A good keyboard shortcut is “UU” (i.e. hit the letter U key on your keyboard twice in rapid succession) which shows you what properties on a layer have been modified from their default settings. By applying a Background Animation Preset, then hitting the F3 key to reveal its Effect Controls, then hitting the UU keyboard shortcut, you can get a good overview of how the preset was constructed. Then to see how it was animated, hit the “U” key on your keyboard which will reveal on the timeline only the properties that have keyframes. The example I just took you through is very similar to the “Red Speed” Background Animation Preset in AE7.

If you create an animated background that you really like, save it as a preset for future use by dragging the effects & keyframes from the timeline to the Effects & Presets panel. You'll get a dialog asking you to name your new preset, and then it's yours to use again and again (or share with others).

Posted by Bob Donlon at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The HOW Design Conference wrapped up yesterday in Las Vegas, and thus I survived my 2nd trip to that town so far this year. It was a close one, though, as the conference was inexplicably held at the same place and time as the eBay Live! conference, and though the hallways were extremely packed with people it was no problem telling who was going to what conference (believe me).

It was actually one of my favorite speaking gigs of the year -- I delivered some presentations on taking existing design assets from Photoshop and Illustrator and animating them in After Effects. The HOW attendees are largely graphic designers working in the print medium (although many work in web & video as well), and most had never seen this sort of thing before.

After the sessions, I got a lot of questions regarding the animated posters that I showed in my talks (Adobe had a poster design competition for the conference and here are some of the winning entires).

These posters were created with Photoshop and Illustrator, and we brought them into After Effects with their layers intact and animated the individual layers to great effect. I'm currently not able to post the finished video files, but I did want to post instructions on how we did the animated masks for the animated poster below (designed by Rozina Vavetsi):

Animating masks is one of the fundamental techniques in After Effects, and this is a very basic example of how to do it.

First, you need to import your Photoshop or Illustrator file as a Composition, which will keep all of its layers intact. With Illustrator files, it can be a good idea to import the file as "Composition-Cropped Layers" if you have many layers since it makes it easier to select your layers in the AE Composition Viewer when you're animating.

This menu appears in the bottom-left of the File Import dialog when you are importing an Illustrator file. Make sure to select "Composition" or "Composition-Cropped Layers" when importing layered Photoshop or Illustrator files if you want to work with the individual layers.

You will then see a new Composition in the After Effects Project Panel, as well as a folder containing the layers of your PS or AI file. Double-click the Composition, and the timeline will show all the layers of your original file.

The four layers of the Illustrator file in the After Effects Timeline."

So, with the "Tree Lady" poster above, we animated masks to reveal the branches, to make it look like they were growing out of the woman's body. Each of the branches was on its own layer, and we did several masks on each to reveal each segment of the branch individually. So, using this example, here's how you animate a mask. First, select the Pen tool from the Toolbar.

The AE Pen Tool (keyboard shortcut is the letter G).

Then, select the layer in the timeline you want to mask, and draw a simple mask around the area of the image you want to reveal over time. Start by drawing the mask where you want it to be at the end of the animation, and then we'll back up in time and change it to where it's going to be at the beginning.

Click on the first mask point you created to close the mask (Left), and only the portion within the mask will be visible (Right).

To animate the mask, hit the M key on your keyboard, which will reveal the Mask Shape property for your layer in the Timeline. Decide how long you want the animation to last (this example is 10 frames), and move the Current Time Indicator in the Timeline ahead in time by that many frames. Click on the stopwatch icon for Mask Shape to set a keyframe (this represents where the mask will be at the end of its animation).

The inital keyframe in the timeline.

Then, drag the Current Time Indicator to its original position. Select the Selection Tool in the Toolbar (shortcut: letter V key on the keyboard), and one-by-one, select and drag the mask points to where you want them to be at the beginning of the animation. In my example, I dragged the 2 upper points down and to the left. As soon as you make a change, you'll see a new keyframe on the timeline, where the Current Time Indicator is positioned.

The beginning mask shape of the animation (Left), and its keyframe in the Timeline (Right).

Hit the spacebar on your keyboard, and you'll see your mask animate. You can add as many masks as you want to each layer, so the next step would be to draw a mask for the next branch on the layer, and have it begin animating as soon as the first animation ends.

Once you're finished, you can control the timing of the whole shebang by nesting this Composition into another Composition and using Time Remapping, but that's a whole other can of worms and I'm putting the "Gone Fishin" sign on the office door for the weekend.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Years ago, I did a bit of work in Web Design. This was before there was a Dreamweaver or GoLive, when you had to write all the HTML code manually. That was enough to send me running for the hills, and that's why I got into Broadcast Design where you didn't have to deal with any of that.

Well, After Effects has had a Javascript-based programming language called Expressions for a couple of versions now. It's something that I avoided like the plague at first -- I mean, how do you make heads or tails of something like this:

columns = 10; //number of columns in grid
tHold= .2; //hold time (must be less than tmin)
tMin = .5; //minimum cycle time (can't be zero)
tMax = 1; //maximum cycle time
gap = this_comp.width/columns;
origin = [gap,gap];
xGrid = columns - 1;
yGrid = Math.floor(this_comp.height/gap) - 1;
start = 0;
end = 0;
j = 1;
while (time >= end){
j += 1;
seedRandom(j,true);
start = end;
end += random(tMin,tMax);
}
targetX = Math.floor(random(0,xGrid));
targetY = Math.floor(random(0,yGrid));
seedRandom(j-1,true);
x = random(); //this is a throw-away value
oldX = Math.floor(random(0,xGrid));
oldY = Math.floor(random(0,yGrid));
if(targetX == oldX && targetY == oldY){
origin + [oldX,oldY]*gap;
}else if (time - start < tHold){
origin + [oldX,oldY]*gap;
}else{
deltaX = Math.abs(targetX - oldX);
deltaY = Math.abs(targetY - oldY);
xTime = (end - start - tHold)*(deltaX/(deltaX + deltaY));
yTime = (end - start - tHold)*(deltaY/(deltaX + deltaY));
if (time < start + tHold + xTime){
startPos = origin + [oldX,oldY]*gap;
targetPos = origin + [targetX,oldY]*gap;
easeOut((time - start - tHold)/xTime, startPos, targetPos);
}else{
startPos = origin + [targetX,oldY]*gap;
targetPos = origin + [targetX,targetY]*gap
easeIn((time - start - tHold - xTime)/yTime, startPos, targetPos);
}
}

OK, I know some of you programmers out there are gonna write me and say "oh that's grade-school level", but for the rest of us it's enough to make us put our heads in a 500 degree oven.

Well, the reality is that simple Expressions are actually easy and can save you loads of time when creating animation while opening up a wide range of creative possibilities.

First off, you can use the Expressions LIbrary to have AE plug the code in for you. When you Alt+Click (Opt+Click on Mac) on the Stopwatch icon to set a keyframe for a property, it opens the Expressions Editor for that property. You'll then see a fly-out menu icon (the little circle with the triangle in it). Click it, and you'll see all the categories of Expressions.

In addition, some really useful Expressions are very easy. Take "Wiggle", for example. This puts random motion on a property over time, and the code looks like this:

wiggle(4,10)

Not as daunting as that first set of code, eh? What the (4,10) represents, is the frequency & amplitude of the wiggle (frequency=4, amplitude=10). So let's say you apply this to the Position parameter of the layer, it will move it at a frequency of 4 times per second, at a maximum of 10 pixels each time. Give it a try and see the results. If you want it to move more frequently, set a higher frequency -- if you want it to move over a larger area, set a higher amplitude.

If you haven't already figured it out, I didn't write the Expression at the beginning of this post. That one came from the AE Expressions Lab on an incredibly useful Expressions & Scripting resource called MotionScript.com. This site, created by Dan Ebberts, has a set of pre-baked Expressions that you can simply copy & paste into your AE projects. This is probably one of the easiest ways to get started with Expressions, and no, not all of Dan's Expressions are as complex as the one I pasted above.

One last thing -- there's a hidden goodie in one of the Project Templates included with AE7. Go to File>Browse Template Projects, and once Bridge launches, double-click the thumbnail that looks like this:

What you'll find in Template Project is a set of comps that have loads of neat Expressions (also created by Dan Ebberts) that you can copy & paste into your own projects.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)