After Effects #4 -- CC Particle World

hello in today's project we'll learn a few essential tools for your After Effects workflow first we'll practice the basics of removing or keying a green-screen or other background next we'll get our feet wet with After Effects --is particle generating plug-in cc particle world and finally we'll continue our exploration into color correction by using masks once inside After Effects import the project folder I've included a leaf with a white background as well as a few autumn scenes to choose from to get started go to composition new composition or hit command and on your keyboard title your project and set the resolution to 1920 by 1080 pixels for this project 10 seconds is just fine hit OK rather than begin with a cop we just made let's make a secondary comp from the leaf to do this just drag the leaf onto the create new composition button and a new comp will open we need to remove the white to give this image a transparent background this can be achieved easily in Photoshop but these next few steps are just as easy and you won't even have to leave After Effects first add linear color key linear color key identifies and removes color tones leaving a transparent background this is an entry level effect that may not be suited for difficult situations but it's just right for today let's tell After Effects to key out the greens you could keep out the white but I'm going to pair this effect with another one later and I want you to see them both so grab the eyedropper and choose a green linear color key did a decent but not perfect job of keying out our image so we need to expand the search and identify additional greens to do this choose the eyedropper with the plus sign sample from a remaining green area like from the stem that should do it we've keyed out the greens but we actually wanted to erase the to do this add the invert effect in effects and presets invert the alpha Channel in other words flip-flop the see-through and non see-through areas there's still a bit of a fringe around the leaf so let's clean it up with simple choker simple choker shrinks or expands an images border by fractions of a pixel increase the choke mat until you remove the remaining border if you've eaten into the stem you've gone too far your settings may vary but two pixels should be plenty for today's project return to the project panel and drop the leaf comp into the main timeline shut off the visibility choose any autumn scene and drop it above the leaf scale up or down as needed before we can add our particle generator we need a solid layer to hold it so go to the layer new solid or hit command Y on your keyboard name it particles and make the color black hit OK in the effects and presets search for cc particle world and add it to the black solid [Music] scrub forward to see particle world in action this effect generates particles that we can manipulate and animate according to a huge number of variables at first glance this effect may seem limited in application but like fractal noise it has limitless possibilities when you understand it fully you can create smoke fire dust tornadoes and thousands of other animations and effects particle world is far too dense to cover completely today so we'll just hit the basics but please feel free to experiment with sliders and elements that I don't discuss in class or this video this effect simulates 3d space but it's actually still a 2d layer for that reason there's no need to worry about setting our composition to 3d you can toggle the grids and guides to see where the particles will generate and what direction they'll move this grid is useful if you want to make the particles interact with the floor of your environment as we'll see later the birthrate dictates how many particles are generated per second longevity specifies how long the particles last before disappearing producer allows you to manipulate the position of the generator as well as the simulated 3d space where the particles are allowed to live today we're creating leaves blowing gently across the forest for that I'll increase the x-axis to spread them out horizontally the y-axis for Heights and the z-axis for depth play with these settings to find what looks good to you but remember that you can always adjust them later under effects you'll find about a dozen ways for the particles to emit from the generator they all have their uses but today direction axis is the best starting point velocity changes the speed at which the particles move along the x axis so today this will change how fast the leaves are blowing in the wind gravity and resistance affect how quickly and easily the particles fall moving the gravity down and the resistance up make it look like the leaves are falling slowly and even floating on the wind changing velocity to a negative number will blow the particles from the opposite direction and doing so for gravity makes the particles shoot upward floor allows you to specify how the particles interact with the ground if at all particles can bounce stick glide across or pass right through the floor you can choose whatever you like for this project but I made my leaves gently bounce across the ground under particle you can choose a different shape or texture for your particle by default it's set to line today change this value to textured quad polygons when you do this the particles disappear even when you scrub through the timeline that's because textured quad polygons requires you to tell After Effects where to look for the particles to do that just click texture layer and select the leaf pre-comp that we dropped in the timeline earlier from here play with the remaining values so you get comfortable with how the effect works we'll cover more elements later but you may want to adjust the birth and death sizes which affect particle size when they're generated and when they disappear as well as size variation which will keep your leaves from looking too uniform I also increase the max opacity to 100% so the leaves didn't look see-through turn the forest images visibility back on watch how the leaves fit into this world if you're not happy with their size speed or distribution you can return to particle world to alter these settings at any time when you're ready to move on we'll fix the colors open the leaf pre-comp and add the tint effect this remaps an image to grayscale based on the value of each tone in the image to make this green leaf look like it belongs in the fall remap the colors to ochres and oranges and yellows I can also decrease the tint amount so it blends with the original layer for the final stage of today's project we need to color correct the scene like always you can go for a realistic or stylized effect just so long as you understand how and why you get where you end up I'll quickly walk through my process but don't try to copy my settings rather experiment until you find what you want since my tinted leaves match the scene already I can make any subsequent color correction affect both the leaf particles as well as the forest and they'll change in unison thinking back in our Photoshop days we can remember that adjustment layers affect all layers beneath them in the layer stack I quickly create an adjustment layer by hitting option command Y for me this image was overwhelmingly yellow so I begin by adding the hue/saturation effect we've previously seen that altering the channel range can shift color tones along the color wheel but remember going too far will give you something kind of crazy since I knew this image was too yellow i isolated the yellow Channel and brought the saturation and lightness down remember this is only affecting the yellows I also slip the hue slightly to shift the yellow toward orange I brought down the red saturation significantly and shifted the red Channel as well next I added the curves effect which should be very familiar from our Photoshop days I brought down the darker ends of the scale and increased the lights to bring back some contrast that I lost by desaturating the yellows this increased the saturation too much so I brought the main channel saturation down as well using the hue/saturation effect by toggling the adjustment layer notice how far a couple of quick effects have taken the image from its original state finally I want a vignette so I added a new adjustment layer if I added this vignette to my current adjustment layer it would have masked out my color correction which I don't want to add a mask select the adjustment layer go to the shape tool and choose ellipse draw an ellipse however large you want your vignette to be I dropped a curves adjustment on the mask layer and brought the exposure down considerably I hit the disclosure triangle next to my mask and change the type from add to subtract this inverted the mask there's still a hard edge along the mask which is very unsightly so I feathered it until it looks smooth remember today's project has three parts first successfully keying out the green using linear color key invert and simple choker second manipulating the leaf particles using CC particle world and finally color correcting the image to make the scene suit your tastes have fun experimenting with particle world and think of other examples of how this powerful effect can help you bring your artistic vision to life [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Andrew Goodridge

Views: 17,871

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Id: b8yaAaOAGDg

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018