This is a video tutorial for Adobe After Effects I found on StumbleUpon that teaches you how to create a video like that used in the iPod Nano commercial.

http://ayrshire.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/nano/index.htm

If anyone is familiar with After Effects and believes they can write quality tutorials for other visitors, please contact me at “admin (at) animation-software-tutorials.com”

Thanks,
Admin

Original (left), Displacement Map (background) applied (right)

Using a displacement map

- Create a new Composition and place a still image or your movie footage onto a layer. (I created a new white solid with a circle mask applied. I then added Effect/ Generate/ Ramp to the white solid and made the start color red and the end color yellow)

- On another layer place footage or image that will act as the displacement map. It would be good to make it grey-scale so you can see how it is effecting your main footage when the effect is applied. (I created a new white solid the size of the composition, then added an Animation Preset to the white solid. Find the Effects & Presets window and click in the arrow in the top right corner of the window and choose Browse Presets. This will open up Adobe Bridge (which could take a second or two) Now just find an animation that you like, I chose Smoke Rising ffx. I then double clicked the effect to add it to my solid)

- Once you have your effect that you want to act as the displacement layer we then have to pre-compose that layer (so it is a self contained footage rather than a solid with effects). Choose the displacement map layer and choose Layer/ Pre-compose

- Select our main footage layer (not the displacement map layer) and choose Effect/ Distort/ Displacement Map. Immediately we should see a minor change to the image, but we now need to adjust the values to get desired effect.

- Set the Displacement Map Layer drop down list to source your displacement layer.

- Now play with the Max Horizontal Displacement and the Max Vertical Displacement to see how your image changes. I’ve used a value of Max Horizontal Displacement = 5 and Max Vertical Displacement = 45

- Well, that’s the basic concept of displacement maps. Take some time to try different background images and animation as displacement maps and adjusting values.

Usually when you’re keying blue or green screen you really only want one particular subject or object on screen and the rest of the background is redundant. So you usually create a rough matte or mask around that subject restricting the area to only where the action that you want is taking place. We call this a garbage matte. This garbage matte also limits the area of background key color (blue/ green) and allows for a more precise key.

You can do this manually, but a really quick and precise way to achieve a great garbage matte is using Auto Trace function.

- Bring in your footage and ensure it is selected.
- Select Effect/ Keying/ Keylight (this gives us a basic key)
- Select Layer/ Auto-Trace
- A dialogue box should appear
- Make sure “Preview” checkbox is on (this way you can see you results on your footage before applying)
- Check the radio button for “Work Area” so it applies to the whole duration and not just the current frame.
- Set the “Channel” drop down menu to “Alpha”
- Keep “Tolerance” at 1 pixel
- Keep “Threshold” at 50% or adjusted to suit your footage
- Keep “Minimum Area” to 10 pixels
- Keep Corner Roundness to 50%
- Check the box “Apply to new layer”
- Select “OK” and it should start to process (may take a minute)
- This should have now created a new layer with a close mask to the footage underneath

- Now we want to expand this mask/ matte a little
- Select the Auto-Trace solid
- Select Effect/ Matte/ Simple Choker
- In Effect Control window - Set Choke Matte between -10 to -20, enough to give a bit of room around the edge of the footage
- In the Timeline window - Set your footage layer TrackMatte drop down menu to “Alpha Matte”
- This tells the layer to use a transparency reference from the above layer

- That’s pretty much it. You may want to play with the settings in Keylight to pull a closer key, but it should require a lot less tweaking than if you didn’t already pull this great garbage matte.

Original (left), Matte Only view of keyed-out subject (center), and composite of subject with new background (right)

Using the difference matte

- Create a new Composition and place you movie footage onto a layer.
- Select that movie footage and find a frame that consists only of the background. Save/ export that background as a still image file and re-import it back into the composition. Alternatively use After Effect 7’s new freeze frame feature Time/Freeze Frame as a separate layer. Make sure the duration is at least as long as you original source movie file where you want the effects to take place.

(If there is no full-background frame in the shot, you may be able to assemble the full background by combining parts of several frames in After Effects or Photoshop.)

- We no longer need to actually see the difference layer because we are just using it as a reference. So you can make it invisible by switching off the video in the timeline.

- Ensuring that the original movie source layer is now selected, choose Effect/ Keying/ Difference Matte.

- In the Effect Controls panel, choose Final Output or Matte Only from the View menu. (Use the Matte Only view to check for holes in the transparency.)

- Select the background file from the Difference Layer menu.
If the difference layer is not the same size as the source layer, choose one of the following controls from the If Layer Sizes Differ menu:
Center Places the difference layer in the center of the source layer. If the difference layer is smaller than the source layer, the rest of the layer is filled with black.

- Adjust the Matching Tolerance slider to specify the amount of transparency based on how closely colors must match between the layers. Lower values produce less transparency; higher values produce more transparency.

- Adjust the Matching Softness slider to soften the edges between transparent and opaque areas. Higher values make matched pixels more transparent but do not increase the number of matching pixels.

- If there are still extraneous pixels in the matte, adjust the Blur Before Difference slider. This option suppresses noise by slightly blurring both layers before making the comparison. Note that the blurring occurs only for comparison and does not blur final output.

- Before closing the Effect Controls panel, make sure that you have selected Final Output from the View menu to ensure that After Effects renders the transparency.

So using Animate a stroke path tutorial as our starting point. We will now look at adding echo effects.

- Create New Composition and create a new solid.
- Add a bezier path to the solid (this is the path that your stroke will follow) and add Stroke Effect to the solid.

- In the Stroke Effects Panel
set Color to desired (I chose red)
Click stopwatch and set Brush size 3
Set Brush Hardness to 100%
Click stopwatch and set Start 0.0%
Click stopwatch and set Start 2.0%
Paint Style set dropdown menu to On Transparent

Go to the point in the timeline where you want your stroke animation to finish and change these values in Stroke Effects Panel, which should automatically set keyframes for the ending.

set Brush size 50
set Start to 95.0%
set End to 100.0%

See how the Start and End values of the stroke are never more than 5% difference. We now have our animated stroke.

We will now add an Echo Effect

- Ensure your solid layer is selected
- Add an Echo Effect by navigating to the menu Effect/Time/Echo
- Set Echo Time (seconds) to -0.020
- Set Number of Echoes to 40
- Set Decay to 0.85

You should notice that your animated stroke now has a trail that fades off

By adjusting the values you get get longer trails, less/ more fade. This technique helps add volume and a 3-dimensionality to you stroke.

After you get the hang of this technique, it can be used for all types of write-on and playful effects.

- Create a new composition to your desired dimensions and duration (Composition/New Composition)
- Create a new solid the same as comp size, color is not important (Layer/New/Solid)
- Select the pen tool from the toolbar menu at top.

- Ensuring the new solid layer is selected in the timeline; use the pen tool to draw a line squiggle, curve line, whatever line, but not a closed shape. Draw this directly in the composition window.

- Still with the new solid selected; choose Effect/Generate/Stroke

- In the Effects Control Panel
- Click the stopwatch on brush size and set to 6
- Click the stopwatch on Start and keep set to 0
- Click the stopwatch on End and set to 10
- Set the Paint Style drop down to “On Transparent”

- We have now set our keyframes for the beginning of the Timeline, now we want to go to the end of the Timeline and set the next set of keyframes.

- In the Effects Control Panel
- Set Brush Size to 3
- Set Start to 80
- Set End to 100

That’s it. Render it out or just play it back within After Effects and have a play with the settings.

After Effects 7 has introduced us to a brand new unified interface. In this video tutorial, CreativeCOW leader, John Dickinson demonstrates how to navigate that interface.

Click here to launch the videoÂ

New Interface

Overall a more cohesive interface. Window panels are scalable relative to other panels. Much more similar to professional editing software interface. Consistent toolbar runs along the top. Multiple view for when working in 3D. Easy drag and drop panel management.

New workspaces - Easily switch between default workspaces designed for optimal layout when working between say, animation, effects, motion tracking, paint, text, or undock (like AE6).

Cool keyboard shortcut: tilda key (just left of 1 key) will maximize the current panel you are viewing

Managing work paths - Adobe Bridge is good at managing your project assets. But, it’s a good idea to leave Adobe Bridge open because it takes such a long time to load when launching that if you might use it more than one in a day, then just don’t quit it.

HDR or 32-bit image processing - If possible, work with your projects in 8bit to save memory and processing and when ready for final render, bump it up to 32bit to see the much higher quality and larger range. Not all effects/ filter will work with 32bit.

Create Photoshop file direct in After Effects.

Lots more presets and effects direct in AE without plugins.

Better, more in depth graph editor.

Much better frame blending with pixel motion and time warp.

Lens blur and Smart blurs.

Export to Macromedia Flash Video.
So that provides a good overview of what’s new in After Effects 7.0. I’ll try to get into more detail about some of the above special features in future tips and tutorials.

For further detail of new features check Adobe’s features list