#After effects tutorial

[confusedananass]

(instagram)

Tutorial in After Effects under the cut.

• Create a new composition and call it Split.

• Write your text, pre-comp it, call it Text or whatever you want.

• Create a mask from the center to one side (top/bottom), change anchor point to the top.

• Bring down Scale property and unlink it, keyframe the text to go from 100% to 0% in 1s towards the anchor point.

• Cut the layer at the end.

• Duplicate pre-comp.

• Select the bottom one, click M to bring down mask properties, invert the mask and move anchor point to the bottom (so the text scales to the bottom).

• Duplicate Text pre-comp one more time. Select it, press M and delete the mask, move anchor point to the center. Create new keyframes to scale it from 0 to 100 in 1s (properties unlinked). Select both keyframes and delay it by 1 frame. It makes the text look like it’s scaling from the center.

• Change bottom and top text color by adding Fill effect to the pre-comp.

• Easy ease all keyframes.

• Select all pre-comps and duplicate them, put them at the top and put them at the back to extend your animation (or arrange in your preferred order if you’re doing a phrase like me). So far it should look something like this:

• Create new comp Wave of 10s, add your Split comp.

• Create new Solid layer, call it Map, add Gradient Ramp effect, make white at the left, black at the right and hide the layer.

• Select Split pre-comp, Right-click → Time → Enable Time Remapping and extend the layer to the end.

• Add loopOut() expression to Time Remap.

• On Split pre-comp add the effect Time Displacement, on Time Displacement Layer select your Solid layer (Map), and on Source select Effects & Mask.

• Change Time Resolution (fps) to 250-300.

• Add Fast Box Blur effect, change Blur Radius to 0.5.

• To bring back the sharpness add Curves effect, change the Channel to Alpha and change values (see screenshot).

• Play around with Max Displacement Time [sec] on Time Displacement effect depending on the look you’re going for. I set it to 0.5.

• Now this whole animation is driven by our Solid layer (Map) we created. So if you make any changes to it, the animation changes too. For example, you can change Ramp Shape to Radial on Gradient Ramp effect, and see how it changes your animation.

• I additionally added some texture on the text, used Track Matte and added wiggle(5,500) expression to the Rotation property so texture would be constantly moving. Also added some additional effects to the new Adjustment Layer on top such as Roughen edges, Turbulent Displace, Posterize Time and Noise. Let your freak flag fly - it’s a matter of taste and creativity of what you do with it. Your animation should look something like this:

[lookatmeallthetime]

Hey, wanna make some mountains? In honor of the launch of the music video I just finished, here’s a tutorial on how to build out 2D layers in 3D space in after effects.

Getting Started

First of all, build your vector layers. You can build them as shape layers directly in After Effects, but I prefer Illustrator. Here’s the file where I organized the vectors for each scene:

I highly recommend using Overlord for moving shape layers back and forth between illustrator and AE. It can preserve layer positions relative to each other or center vector shapes in comps, group and ungroup layers, all kinds of nice things. But also, Adobe software costs enough as is. Look up one of the many tutorials about pasting vectors into shape layers and get your vectors in there!

Wigglin

I wanted my vector layers to squirm a little. Originally it was to mimic the effect of paper cut animation, but once I moved away from that look it was to keep the background feeling alive and, sigh, like its own character. Everything except for very curvy layers (like the bridge in the first scene) has Wiggle Paths > Corners applied to it as a Shape Layer effect. This tutorial by Ben Marriott helped me get the wiggle paths + posterize time cutout effect I was looking for.

In order to keep the amount of wigglin’ consistent from scene to scene, I stored all my layer styles in their own precomp with a slider effect attached, applied Wiggle Paths to each vector, then connected the layer properties with the pickwhip. I ended up with an expression like

this = comp(“Wiggle control comp”).layer(“Wiggle parent”).effect(“Detail Slider”);

Apply it to the Detail attribute of your Wiggle Paths shape effect, and you can adjust the intensity of the look across multiple comps!

Parallax

I’m guessing you’re here for the parallax effect and notes on laying out out vector shapes and textures in 3D space. This tutorial from Camp Keyframe lays it out better than I could, but here’s the short version:

1. Set all your layers to 3D

2. Set your workspace to 2 views and select top view so you can see how your elements are positioned on the z-index

3. Make a null, set it to 3D, and make a camera.

4. Parent null to camera and adjust the position so its z-index matches the z of the camera.

5. Parent null to camera and use null for camera controls hereafter.

6. Parent all unparented layers to null, adjust the null’s scale property, and unparent your layers once they’re where you want them. What we’re doing here is scaling layers as we push them back in the frame, preserving the layout of our original vector comps while arranging them in 3D space. (Even shorter version - mountains are big but far away, rocks are small but close up.)

7. Once your layers are all unparented, move your null around to text the parallax view. Now you can move your camera to pan left and your layers will respond.

Two side notes:

1. If you want an element to follow the motion of the camera, leave it parented to the null and it will stay where you put it in the frame as the background moves.

2. You see that little pixelated line in your switches? That pre-rasterizes your layers. This makes render times way faster because it’s inserting your precomp as a 2D plane, but if you want to blend scenes, turn it off to use your precomps in 3D space.

One more thing!

Even if two elements on screen aren’t touching, you’ll still get nasty collision renders if they’re on the same z-index. Select everything and press P to show your element’s position, and make sure the z is different for each of them.

Final step: textures!

Let me start by saying I did this step incorrectly on this project. If I could do it again, I’d export my shape layers to Procreate, use them as clipping masks, and scribble on them real nice and export them as transparent 2x pngs.

What I did instead was try to get spray and scribble and brush textures in Illustrator. Illustrator does not want to do this, it doesn’t like doing this, and it didn’t like me much by the end of the process. The one benefit was it was easy to name them the same as their corresponding shape layer, which made compositing easier.

Once you’ve imported them as layers, not a png series), it’s just a matter of copying and pasting the scale data (you can copy all dimensions at once if you select the attribute name rather than any one value) and position data. Make sure to set your texture layers to 3D and watch for z-index collisions!

Closing thoughts

I wrote this up in order to be useful to the community and find other folks who are at or near where I am as I learn After Effects. If this was useful to you or there’s something you think would be interesting, please comment or share your work!

[shehabeditz]

Custom 3D Logo Animation Tutorial in After Effects & Element 3D

[filtergrade]

Cool Black and White Waves Background After Effects Tutorial

[stoopidprizes]

Machine Head edit for no sleep nights

website is jacquelynserrano.com

[rhandzgraphix]

Scratch Texture Parallax Effect Slideshow in After Effects Tutorial

[invisiblelightnetwork]

Check out this VFX breakdown for Lightning Bird, our independent short film! 🎬🎥 We used Blender and AfterEffects to create everything you see on screen. We're so proud of what we were able to achieve and can't wait to share it with the world. Keep an eye out for our film coming soon!

[confusedananass]

Just take a moment to chill.

instagram

Everything I did in After Effects and all effects I used can be seen under the cut.

Used simple rotation animation on plants and fingers with loopOut("pingpong") expression so they would keep rotating back and forth for eternity. Added CC Bend It effect to each of them and keyframed them to bend a little. Pre-composed.

To make the smoke, I made a new composition and created a simple triangle. And applied these effects to it:

Grow bounds - Pixels 150;

Wave warp - Wave type Sine; Wave Height 100; Wave Width 200, Direction ~+69; Wave speed 0.5; Pinning - Left edge (make sure you pin it on the side where you want the smoke to come from);

Wave Warp 2 - Wave Type Circle; Wave Height 100; Wave Width 300; Direction ~+106; Wave speed 0.2; Pinning Left Edge;

Bezier Warp to distort the shape even more, adjust as needed;

And I slapped this smoke pre-comp on my main comp like it was nothing.

Overall effects I used on Adjustment layer over the whole project:

Noise - Amount 5%;

Posterize time - 12;

Roughen Edges - Border - 2; Edge Sharpness 5; Fractal Influence 1; Scale - 1000; Complexity 2;

Turbulent Displace - Amount 2; Size 100; Complexity 1;

Turbulent Displace 2 - Amount 30; Size 2; Complexity 2;

Not a whole lot, but it's something. Honestly documenting this will help me remember better on what I did because I forget how to do basic shit. Ha.

[motiondx]

After effects Tutorial Create Motion Graphics Background

[shehabeditz]

Golden 3D Logo Animation Tutorial - After Effects Intro - Element 3D Tutorial.

📌 Watch Full Tutorial: https://youtu.be/tDZeUfXD0LM

#aftereffects #3DLogoIntro #3DLogoReveal #aftereffectstutorial

[marcanimation]

'ello folks, my Cleanup tutorial is finally done and out! hope you find it useful

[lar-arts]

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story

[antoniosvivaldi]

Rotoscoping Tutorial by @antoniosvivaldi​​

Hi everyone! I’m excited to announce my long-delayed Rotoscoping Tutorial - requested by a number of people over the past calendar year. 

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create the cutout gifs like this (and seen in most of my gifsets under this tag) with Rotoscoping on After Effects. I’ll also provide additional examples and a number of things that I do to optimise my giffing / Rotoscoping workflow (e.g. useful shortcuts & other things to be aware of).

This is the structure of the tutorial:

Why Rotoscoping? Photoshop video timeline’s limitations

Photoshop workflow pt 1: Preparing your gif

After Effects workflow: Interface, shortcuts, and Rotoscoping tools

Photoshop workflow pt 2: Assembling your gif; with multiple examples

Bonus content: Rotoscoping tips* & workarounds to common issues

For quick reference, here are example gifsets (and where Rotoscoping is used in the posts) that I will mention in the tutorial:

Example 1: Cutout gif effect | panels 2 + 4

Example 2: Changing a gif’s background colour | all panels

Example 3: Cutout gif effect in a shape | all panels

Example 4: Putting it all together | panels 1, 3, & 5

What you need & need to know:

Software: Photoshop & After Effects (After Effects 2021 or later for Rotobrush 2.0)*

Hardware: 16GB RAM required to run later versions of AE*

Difficulty: Advanced; Knowledge in making gifs, applying layer masks, and using video timeline interface assumed

Key concepts: Rotoscoping (AE) / Video Timeline (AE+ PS) / Layer Masks & Groups (PS)

Supplementary files: tutorial resources

*I’m currently running the latest version of PS & AE on an M2 Mac, but I’ve also used older versions (CC 2015 & 2020) on Intel-based Macs. I’ll outline some known compatibility & performance issues, and workarounds later in this tutorial that could help streamline your giffing workflow.

Tutorial under the cut. Like / Reblog this post if you find this tutorial helpful. Linking this post / the example gifsets in your post caption, will be greatly appreciated if you read this to create effects seen in Examples 3 + 4.

1) Why Rotoscoping?

My Rotoscoping journey is motivated by the shortcomings on Photoshop - namely the limited options to manipulate the Layer Mask keyframes in the video timeline interface, as well my need to gif more efficiently.

Suppose I want to cutout this subject or recolour the background of a gif on Photoshop: I personally classify the gifs that I prepare on PS into 3 types based on the motion of the subject

These are the common Photoshop-only approaches when attempting to mask the subject in the gif.

Case 1: minimal motion in the subject → a simple layer mask will do the trick

Case 2: some linear panning of the subject in the gif → using the Layer Mask Position keyframes in the video timeline interface will do the trick

Case 3: subject moves around a lot (e.g. zoom motion) → Unfortunately this is where a Photoshop-only workflow will require frame by frame masking. Layer Mask Position keyframes only apply positional translation (but not transformation / rotation) on the layer mask

Enter Rotoscoping on After Effects: Instead of resigning to frame by frame procedure on Photoshop, I opted to make my life easier by learning to Rotoscope on After Effects. This essentially provides me an opportunity to cutout / recolour a wider range of gifs with relative ease.

2) Photoshop pt. 1: Preparing your gif

Prepare your gif the usual way - whether you screencap or import frames from video.

Then your Photoshop should look like this:

Now, I shall walkthrough & explain my personal giffing workflow (as of 2023) after loading the gif frames. To speed up the process, import my gif prep action file to Photoshop.

Going to Window > Action, you’ll see a set of actions under the “gif prep” folder. 

"set frame delay for timeline” (highlighted in yellow) will set all of your entire gif’s frame delay to 0.03s

“convert to timeline“ (highlighted in red) will take you to the Video Timeline interface

To play an action, press on the Play button (highlighted in green)

i. Set the frame delay of the entire gif to 0.03s. (play “set frame delay for timeline” from my gif prep action pack)

I work with everything in 0.03s frame delay (or equivalently 30fps) at first. It’s always possible to change the frame delay of the final gif to 0.05s before uploading onto Tumblr.   

ii) Convert this gif to a Smart Video Layer (play “convert to timeline” from my action pack)

Note: I personally don’t resize the gif just yet. That’s because Rotoscoping in full video resolution will render higher quality details around the edges as well as more flexibilities later on in the editing process.

Performance optimisation: If your computer has 8GB of RAM or less, you might find it helpful to crop / resize your gif to Tumblr dimensions now for a less sluggish performance in After Effects later on. 

(I have giffed on a desktop with 8GB of RAM and it’s quite slow at rendering individual frames of a 1080p short clip on AE)

iii) Add colouring adjustments on the gif. This will save you A LOT of time when you Rotoscope gifs that are originally very dark / poorly lit (e.g. the uncoloured Taylor Swift gif shown just above). 

If you usually colour your gifs at the very end of your giffing process (i.e. after sharpening), this will be a bit of a change.Nevertheless I still highly recommend adding some base colourings now to at least increase the contrast between the subject and the background.

iv) To minimise lagging on After Effects, simplify this gif file as follows: 

Flatten / Unsmart this gif file back to frame animation mode: play “flatten” (highlighted in red) from my gif prep action pack

Set the frame delay to 0.03s: play “set frame delay for timeline” (highlighted in green)

Convert the simplified gif file back to the video timeline interface: play “convert to timeline” (highlighted in yellow)

After “unsmarting” and converting back to the video timeline, your interface should look like this

And voila! This gif PSD is now ready to be imported to After Effects for Rotoscoping work!

3) After Effects: Interface and useful shortcuts

Open After Effects and Import (Cmmd / Ctrl + I) your gif PSD that you’ve just prepared.

After importing your gif PSD to After Effects, the interface should look like this. 

In the screenshot below, there are two compositions: the imported gif (highlighted in green) & another composition file made from selecting the imported gif (highlighted in red)

For the rest of the workflow, we will edit from the clone composition (the one highlighted in red), so select this one.

Before we take our plunge into the Rotoscoping, here are a few useful shortcuts to remember. I’ll explain the Roto Brush tool in the next section.

Preview the previous: fn + up arrow

Preview the next frame: fn + down arrow

Add to Roto Brush selection: holding Shift while you’re using the Roto Brush Tool

Subtract from Roto Brush selection: holding Alt while you’re using the Roto Brush Tool

Change Roto Brush size: while holding Cmmd / Ctrl, click + drag your mouse left / right

4) After Effects: The Rotoscoping Process

To access the Rotoscoping tools, click on the Roto Brush icon (highlighted in red in the screenshot below)

Then you’ll get the following dropdown options with two Rotoscoping Tools

Roto Brush Tool: This is where you add / subtract your Rotoscoping selection in your composition

Refine Edge Tool: Paint around the edge of your selection for more refined edges. Very helpful for Rotoscoping fuzzy edges / hairs

To make some Rotoscoping selection, first grab the Roto Brush Tool and click on the subject you want to cut out from your composition. 

When you’re Rotoscoping you’ll see this in the Effect Controls panel. 

There are two versions of Roto Brush:

Version 2.0: The Rotoscoping selection is powered by AI for higher accuracy when you propagate the frames. 

Version 1.0 (Classic): This is the legacy Roto Brush Tool that uses a lesser algorithm. Recommended only if Roto Brush 2.0 is unstable on your machine due to RAM issues.

And two quality settings for Roto Brush 2.0:

Standard

Best

Note: I am currently unable to use Roto Brush 2.0 with Best quality model on my machine to compare the differences myself, so I’ll link this page that explains the two quality settings.

Note: if you’re using an older version of After Effects you’ll see this instead. This corresponds to Roto Brush 1.0 / Classic in the newer versions of AE.

When you’ve made a selection using the Roto Brush Tool, you’ll see the pink lines around the subject. This is the region that you’ve selected to Rotoscope!

To bring out some details around the edges, grab the Refine Edge Tool and paint around the edges

Then the interface will look like this

To view the Rotoscoping selection that you’ve made more intuitively, you could click on the following buttons.

Personally I like the viewing my selection using Toggle Alpha (the second box from the left) & Toggle Alpha Boundary (the 3rd box from the left)

Toggle Alpha

Toggle Alpha Boundary

Note: If you aren’t happy with the initial Roto Brush selection, you can always add (press Shift while using the Roto Brush Tool) / subtract (press Alt / Option using the Roto Brush Tool) your selection.

After you’re happy with your Rotoscoping selection in the first frame of your composition, press fn + down to view the next frame.

Repeat pressing fn + down and fix the selection along the way (e.g. I subtracted a small area from my Rotoscoping selection with the Roto Brush tool to make the edge look cleaner).

After fixing the selection along the way, go back to the composition file (select the clone composition again) and you will see that a cutout gif is made!

To export this, go to File > Export > Add to Render Queue. You’ll be redirected to the Render Queue panel at the bottom of After Effects. 

Highlighted in red: click to change export setings

Highlighted in green: click to change save destination

Highlighted in yellow: click to render video

To preserve the transparency of your cutout gif, you need to change your export settings in the Output Module. 

Under the Video Output section, change your Channels to RGB + Alpha. Press OK. Then Render the video.

5) Photoshop pt. 2: Assembling your final gif

The essence is to drag the cutout gif (aka the video file that you’ve just rendered on AE) into a new PSD composition file. This will be where you’ll do the rest of your giffing. Your workflow will contain the follow steps:

Make a new blank PSD composition file in Tumblr dimensions

Enable the Video Timeline

Follow the instructions detailed in the individual examples i.e. drag the cutout gif into the PSD & adjust the timeline start / end points

Exporting the final gif. If you’ve worked in 0.03s frame delay all the way up to here, just play the action that I’ve provided in the tutorial in the following order to set the frame delay to 0.05s.

EXAMPLE 1: finalising your cutout gif | sample gifset

After enabling the Video Timeline in your PSD composition file you’ll see something like this

Go to your folder, drag the cutout gif you’ve made on After Effects, resize / reposition, then press Enter. 

And also make sure to adjust the Video Timeline’s start / end values.

Add some finishing touches. Because I did the Rotoscoping at full HD resolution, I’ll also need to sharpen my gif in this step.

After you’re happy, you can export this into a gif file and do what you usually do to change the frame delay to 0.05s. 

Notes on my “Unsmarting” approach:

To prevent accidentally writing over a PSD composition file that I’ve spent time editing, I personally render this into a short video (File > Export > Render Video) and use the following export settings (to prevent quality loss)

Then I open the rendered clip and play the actions in my gif prep action pack as follows:

flatten: this “Unsmarts” the clip / video

set frame rate: this sets all frames to have 0.05s frame delay

This is the final interface that I get before I pull up the Save For Web window.

EXAMPLE 2: changing your gif’s background colour (for Case 3 gifs) | sample gifset

From your folder, drag BOTH the cutout gif (rendered on AE) and the original gif to your blank composition. 

Important: you need to make sure that both layers are properly lined up in the composition file (i.e. selecting both layers when repositioning / resizing)

 On Photoshop, press Enter twice and place the cutout gif on top of the original gif from the Layers panel. Then you should get something like this

Select both layers and resize / reposition them in your PSD composition until you’re satisfied with the placements.

The basic idea here is to add some adjustment layers / other things in between the cutout gif and the original gif. To do this, select the original gif layer in the Layers panel.

Then you can start adding.a bunch layers e.g. textures, onto the composition.

And then here’s the exported gif!

6) Fancier Rotoscoping examples

Note: knowledge in using layer masks / groups and making shape / text layers assumed

In the next two examples, I’ll show you how to combine the two previous examples with shape / text layers.

EXAMPLE 3: Placing your cutout gif into a shape / text layer | sample gifset

Add a text / shape layer to your blank PSD composition

We want to prepare a masked group so in the Layers panel:

Make selection from layer: Cmmd / Ctrl + Click (highlighted in red)

Make a new group: click on the folder icon (in yellow)

Create layer mask: click on the icon (in green)

After duplicating the masked group you’ll get something like this in the Layers panel

Drag your cutout gif into the PSD composition

Place the cutout gif into the masked group on top

Select the mask of the top group and paint (in white) over the region you want to reveal for the cutout gif

Add some finishing touches & export the gif!

EXAMPLE 4: Putting it all together | sample gifset

You follow the same approach as in Example 3 to prepare the masked groups, but you need to drag two gif layers in (and resize them using the approach outlined in Example 2)

Place the gif layers as follows

While selecting the mask of the group on top, paint (in white) over the region that you want to reveal in the cutout gif

Now select the original gif (placed within the other group) and add some adjustment layers

After adding some finishing touches & exporting the gif, I get this!

Note: you can do even more overlay effects in the background portion of example 4. There will just be more masked groups + adjustment layers

7) Bonus: Some useful Rotoscoping / giffing lifehacks

GIFFING LIFEHACKS:

— Use best quality footage that you could find & Rotoscope in full video resolution, for better details around the edges

— Poorly lit scenes & low contrast edges are harder to Rotoscope (e.g. Toy Story set / TS evermore set).

If you’re new to AE, I would recommend choosing videos with well-lit gifs with simpler backgrounds and high contrast edges (e.g. Maisie Peters Cate’s Brother set)

— Use Rotobrush 2.0 if you’re using After Effects 2021 or later. It’s more difficult to Rotoscope / change background colour for gifs with a lot of movements with the classic Rotobrush tool. If the scene is tricky, you might want to switch to the “Best” quality model.

HARDWARE-RELATED PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION:

— The recent versions of Photoshop require at least 8GB of RAM. If you have less RAM, it will still work provided you have enough scratch disk space. For better performance, it’s best to close other applications when you’re using Photoshop.

— The recent versions of After Effects require at least 16GB of RAM. If your machine has less RAM than this, there are some workarounds to prevent your machine from hanging: 

Essential: close other applications that you’re running on your computer

Resize your gif down to Tumblr dimensions & sharpen it before importing to After Effects.

Install an older version of AE 

8) Bonus: Some known software + hardware issues, and workarounds

KNOWN ISSUES ON PHOTOSHOP:

I currently have minimal issues in my giffing workflow, but I’ll nevertheless outline a few common known Photoshop issues for anyone who needs some workarounds.

— Video Timeline interface missing: this affects Apple Silicon Macs (i.e. M1 / M1 Pro / M1 Max / M1 Ultra / M2 / M2 Pro / M2 Max)

Update to newer version of Photoshop (updated 2022 or 2023)

Open Photoshop with Rosetta

— Scratch disk full error: This is a common issue with machines that lack RAM & have nearly used up internal storage. Editing video layers in the timeline interface uses a lot of memory hence will require a lot of scratch disk space. 

Make sure that you have enough free storage space while using Photoshop. Alternatively you can use an external hard drive as a scratch disk.

KNOWN ISSUES ON AFTER EFFECTS:

These are a few issues that I have personally ran into over the course of giffing on multiple devices & multiple versions of After Effects.

Note: Inputs from M1 / M2 Mac users with regards to experiences on using the After Effects Rotoscoping tools are welcome!

— Rotobrush 2.0 set to “Best” quality model causes AE to crash: this affects anyone who’s using MacOS Ventura

I’m currently experiencing this issue on my M2 Mac. The workaround right now is to change the Roto Brush 2.0 quality setting to Standard. 

This is due to some software compatibility issues on Adobe’s side specifically with MacOS Ventura. Fingers crossed that they will properly fix this bug in the future updates!

— Cannot re-open project files with Rotoscoping: this affects anyone using the initial release of After Effects 2020 (I had installed this on an Intel-based machine and it sucked)

The only option here is to update to a later version of After Effects.

8) More useful Rotoscoping resources

Rotoscoping + Keyframes Tutorial by @jenna--ortega​

Rotoscoping + Masking Tutorial by @usergif​

Rotoscoping For Beginners in After Effects | Motion Graphics Tutorial

I hope you enjoy reading this! If you have any questions / need any help related to this tutorial, feel free to send me an ask!