Apple Motion 5: "CAMERA PROJECTION" TUTORIAL - PART ONE

hi this is simon from tokyo productions and welcome to another tutorial for motion 5 and today we're going to be looking at a technique for creating camera projection or rather a simulation of that effect so here's how it looks now as I say this is a cheat but in actual fact it works extremely well and I think you'll be quite pleased with the results so let's have a look how it all works I've got a new project here it's as usual 1920 1080 it's 24 frames a second and it's 10 seconds long and I'm going to come to my file browser and I've made a sample image that you can use to follow along this with this tutorial and I'll put a link to that in the comments so let's bring that into our project to get started the first thing we're going to do is to make a clone of this layer so we're going to right click and make clone layer and then we're going to drag that out into a new group I just want to call this base layer reference and I want to lock it then I want to add a camera so that's object new camera and switch to 3d but because we've locked that reference group it doesn't change and that's what we need so the next thing I'm going to do is come over to the library and I'll look for generators and we will select grid and we'll bring it into that second group that we've made the 3d one and we'll stick it above the clone layer and then we'll click on the inspector tab here we'll set the background pasty down to zero the background width will set to a hundred and the height to 75 and let's just set the line width to one so it's a little bit less obtrusive so the next thing we want to do is to concentrate on building the left-hand side of our alleyway so I'm going to call this group left and first of all I want to select both the clone layer and the grid and come to their properties and I want to open up the crop and what I want to do is I want to crop it so that we are only getting this wall up to the point at which it ends so that's round about here so I'm going to select the right-hand crop and I'm going to drag it upwards till we get something like 10:30 to 10:30 10:30 - so that's both of those cropped let's just turn off the reference so you can see what I mean so there we go then what I want to do is I want to select this group and I want to adjust its anchor point now the anchor point currently is in the center of the frame I want to make it on the extreme left hand edge so don't forget my project is 1080 so what I'm going to do is move the anchor point to minus 960 on X and then I also need to move the x position to minus 960 so now if we view the overlays you can see my anchor point sitting there at the extreme left hand side of the screen so I'm going to do now is twelve in the rotation for that group and what we want to do is we want to angle it backwards so that's an angle of 90 degrees on Y so this is where we do our clever fake camera projection I'm going to take my X scale for the group and I'm going to increase it until I get to the edge of that wall just round about there let's try 30 to 40 I happen to know that works and there's one other thing I've forgotten to do which is to come to the group here and I want to switch it to flattened and I also want to come to the camera and adjust its farplane because you see that despite the fact that we've extended that group all the way to the end the camera is not seeing it that far back so that's because the farplane of the camera here is set to 10,000 so I'm going to set it to something huge like 100,000 and then you can see that it extends all the way back to that edge okay now we've flattened this group what we can do is we can use the four corner controls down here so let's select that and open up the controls let's hide the transform so that gives us a bit more space what I want to do is I want to adjust this corner and this corner so that's the top right and the bottom right so first of all let me adjust the top right and what I'm going to do is I want to square up my grid and that's why I put the grid in so I've you'll see that that grid is now reaching the top of the frame and I'm going to do the opposite with the bottom right so that's bring it down with a negative value and as you see as I scroll in that field there we've now squared up our grid - just slightly adjust the top as well not exactly critical but the closer you can get it the more it's going to merge the reference and now you can see the value of having that grid in there if I turn the grid off you can see that my new layer is exactly in line almost exactly in line with the reference and we've done that by lining up that grid to effectively cancel out the perspective because we've been doing it to the group that contains the left-hand wall and the grid we've affected the the wall as well so now we've got that set up we can create our right-hand wall so let's duplicate this left hand one by right clicking duplicate and let's call it right and let's turn off the left-hand wall for the time being so okay let's look at the properties for this group let's reset that for corner transform for the time being and let's open back up the transform here we want to set the anchor point to the right-hand edge of the screen this time so let's set an exposition of 960 and we'll set the X anchor point to 960 and the other thing we need to do is we need to come into side the group select the grid and the clone and we we need to cancel out the crop there and we're going to do the opposite crop so we're going to crop the left-hand sides to 1032 so now we need to flip the rotation around the other way so that's minus 90 on Y and you can see we've now got our anchor point on the left there we're stretching back into Z space and we need to do the same trick of adjusting our for corner transform so let's hide the transform there this time we want to be affecting the bottom left and the top left so I'm going to start with the top left Y and again I just want to be looking to square up my grid so there we go and what did I say I said bottom left so we need to come down on the bottom left again I want to square up my grid like so cancelling out to the perspective and if we turn off the grid and we turn off the reference you can see that my wall on the right hand side is now lining up as well let's turn off the grid in the left hand side let's come to the camera and just in case you don't believe me let's open the camera transform there let's open up the position and you can see that if i zoom in or other if I track in with the camera we've actually got the beginnings of our camera projection what we need to do though is we need to create a floor and we need the background image at the back so let's just make sure our camera is back at the zero position on x y&z no rotation or anything and what we want to do is make another duplicate so let's duplicate that right hand group so right click duplicate and let's call this floor so let's turn off the right and left so we can see what we're doing let's turn the grid back on for this group now in this case we want to adjust the anchor point so it's hanging off the bottom edge of the screen so let's just cancel out everything on the transform there and let's reset off for corner and we'll also come in to our grid and our clone layer and just reset that crop of the time being so reset grid reset clone and in this case we want to crop it down just to the bottom of those two walls right at the back there so I'm going to select the grid in the clone layer let's hide Lee transform so we can see have a bit more space so we want to crop the top so let's see how we're doing there so let's come down there and zoom in a little bit just to check how we're doing we can come down a little bit further probably to around say five seven four zoom back out again and then we want to set the anchor point for the group which is up here in the middle down to the bottom so let's select the group let's open the transform back up again I want to move it down to minus 540 on Y and set the y anchor point to minus 540 you notice this is a two-step process so you need to move the anchor point and move the position you could do it manually but then you it's hard to get the exact numbers so much better to type them in okay so now what we want to do is we want to roll this backwards so let's set a negative x rotation of minus 90 and then you've probably guessed that what we need to do is again to square up a grid but first of all let's turn back on our reference and we want to scale it so it's reaching back to the bottom of that wall again we want to scale it on why in this instance so stretch it out I happen to know that the correct value here is five six five five on Y and again what we need to do as I say is to square out the grid so let's hide the transform so we can get access to the four corner okay we want to affect the top left and the top right so let's start with the top left and we need to move it this time on X rather than Y so again we're looking to square up the grid so I'm dragging that value it's quite a long way this time and let's do the same thing with the top right on X move that across so we're squaring up the grid something like that so now if I turn off my grid you'll see that my floor is lining up pretty well with the reference and I can turn on my right hand and left hand walls turn off the reference and open up the camera transform and you can see that floor is now working really nicely as well and you can drag up and down you see obviously if we come outside the extents of our image we're seeing some pretty odd stuff but we needn't really worry about that all you need to remember is to track the camera in sufficiently that you can start playing around and not run off the edges of your image okay so let's reset the camera position bitingly reset button here on its transform and let's put in our background and to do that I'm going to take my original image in the reference group right click make clone and I'm going to drag that out into a new group and I'll call this group background and I just want to move that down just above the reference group so you can see that that's now sitting in the back there but so we can get some really nice parallax we want to move that a really long way back so I'm going to select the group and I'm going to come to this Z position and I'm going to enter a value of minus fifty thousand pixels and you'll see us now absolutely tiny but we can fix that by increasing the scale so I'm going to crank up the scale till we fill the screen again right so that's pretty nice now if I move my camera for example left and right you can see that I'm getting some really nice parallax with that distant background now let's add some lights so I'm going to come to object new light and this for me is the fun part because it all suddenly starts to really make a lot of sense so that's really all of sudden pretty dramatic the difference between that and that it's only lighting up the front part of our scene at the moment but what we want to do is have a string of lights running back towards the back of the scene so let's duplicate this light so right click duplicate come to properties and let's set this value to minus 5,000 that's the Z value to move it back you can see how nice this looks with these lights starting to illuminate further back into the scene but leaving these areas of shadow between so let's duplicate that light again right click duplicate and come to the properties and again let's move it back by 5,000 pixels so that's minus 10,000 pixels all looking very nice right click again duplicate properties - 15,000 now let's go again right click duplicate properties minus 20000 and I think we can probably do one more right click duplicate properties minus twenty five thousand let's duplicate this one more time in this light is going to be the lighter for our extreme background layer so right click duplicate properties and this one we want to set to minus 48,000 and I want to set the Y position to 5000 let's come to the light controls and I just want to reduce the fall-off to 1% and that's now giving me enough illumination to see our background but it looks like late at night evening whatever we want to call it now the problem about this is that we've got some lights in this building here this industrial tower we want this layer to be affected by the light because it looks quite nice like when we do that but we want those lights to be nice and bright so there's a trick I want to show you about how we could composite that to make a a better effect so I'm going to come out it down to that background group come to the clone there inside it right-click duplicate and then I'm going to come to the library and I'm going to look for filters I'll come to the color correction section and I'm going to grab threshold and add it to that at 2nd layer that I just created if I come over to the inspector properties let's set its blend mode to add and I know if I turn that on and off you can see how that's adding illumination to those lights in the background there when I might also do is open up the lighting tab here and turn off the shading lighting shading off and that's really punching them through let's come back to that filter and adjust it a bit I'm going to set the light color here to be a sort of orange II ready orange II kind of thing don't worry about that cloud because I'm going to saw that out in just one second so somewhere up there nice and intense and what we want to do is just crop off anything that's outside our tower so I'm going to select the crop here turn on the overlay and I'm just going to crop it down so we don't see that let's need the absolute minimum we could crop in our sides not really necessary there we go so turn off the overlays and you can see how that really kicks those lights through makes a really nice result there so that's quite a useful trick to know using the threshold of a kludge that creates a luma key button it's quite a quick way of doing it and we've been able to colorize it as well at the same time okay so I'm jumping around a bit here but let's now set up an animation for our camera so let's select the camera let's come to the library come to behaviors basic motion and let's add a throw to the camera and we'll come to the inspector let's open up the throw velocity here and I'd like to enter a Z value of minus 300 sorry minus 300 and a y value of 50 so that's going to rise us up as we go back into the scene so here we go a preview it's looking quite nice right again as I say I'm skipping around all over the place what I want to do is add a little bit of animation to one of these lights so I'm going to select this third light up here that one there come to the light tab select the intensity click on this triangle of the right-hand edge add parameter behavior randomize what I want to do is set the amount to 50% and the apply mode to subtract has increased the frequency to 20 and the noisiness to 0.75 and now if I play that you can see that light is flickering and that's quite an interesting effect just adds some more life to the scene okay so another thing I'd like to do is have my lights kick on sequentially so I'll have my first light on from the very beginning but then I'm going to come to one second on the e time line how that value down in the time code window there I'm going to select the second light up and I'm going to hit I I'm going to come to two seconds on the timeline select the next slide up which is our flickering light and again hit I on the keyboard let's have a look how that works just those two so one two it's quite a nice effect so we can carry on doing that will come to three select the next light up hit I come to four seconds next slide up hit I and five seconds next light up hit I that final light is our light in the distance so let's call that light distant and we'll leave that on throughout and let's come back to the beginning and see how that works with some nice sound design that's going to be really quite cool have this that classic light turning on sound that only exists in movies but is always very effective okay so what's really going to bring this to life I think is some particle action the first thing I want to do is I want to add a little bit of a flame to the top of this building like it's burning off oil or something so let's make a new group right at the top so object new group and I'll call this group effects and I'm going to come to the library I want to look for particle emitters and I'll come to pyro and I want to look for the one that's called fire plume and I'll bring that into my effects group I want to come to the inspector properties and I want to set its blend mode to lighten and then I want to adjust its position so minus seven forty seven one six Oh on Y and minus forty-nine thousand on Z and then we need to scale it up a lot so we want to go for three to four oh that's all right is it at my obviously got an incorrect value somewhere other here nevermind I shall just bring it down on Y move it across on X like so possibly scale it up just a little bit more right I want to turn off the smoke component there and I also want to turn off the oscillate and I want to come down to the lighting and always with flame and lights and anything like that you want to turn off the lighting so that looks quite good we don't want that initial flare-up phase or at least I don't so I'm going to select the fire plume on the mini timeline it's fully on by two seconds so what I'm going to do is I'm going to drag that back two seconds so minus two seconds there come to the end of the timeline hit Oh to extend it back out again and you'll see the snow flaring away from the top of that building and looking quite nice next what we want to do is to add some fog I think so let's come to the library again we are in our particle emitters section let's come to nature and I want to look for fog the floor and I'll drag that into my effects group as well it's come up the inspector properties need to select fog the floor let's just reset all of that so it's in center I just want to set the opacity down to 5% so it's really quite subtle and I want to set the Y position to minus 200 let's now come to the emitter controls here and at the moment it's a 2d effect subvert so I want to switch it to 3d and I also want to come to the shape once I've selected 3d gives me the option of selecting box and that brings up a whole separate set of controls let's adjust these size by twirling up in these sides controls there let's have a width of 960 the height of 150 so it's not too high and a depth of 1500 and you'll see now that's a really nice foreground effect really helps to add the feeling that we're moving through this scene in 3d ok let's add some background fog as well going let's come back to the library still in particle emitters still in nature let's look for the thing simply called fog and again drag that into the effects group let's select it come to the inspector properties let's reset all these values by hitting the transform reset button and certain Z position of minus 5000 and I want to increase the scale to 500% now to come back to the emitter again we want to switch it to 3d again we want to switch it to box and we can probably live with that 300 by 300 arrangement let's come back to the properties and again let's reduce that opacity right down to 5% so if I toggle that on and off you see we've got this nice atmosphere stretching into the back of our scene as well as that swirling fog right in the foreground so that's looking good I also want a little bit of a plume of smoke that's like coming out of a event here down on the left-hand side so again I'm going to come back to the library I'm going to come to the smoke category and there's something called smooth smoke left so let's bring that in to that group there now I want to make sure it's below the fog and fog the floor so I'm going to come to object send to back and that'll put it at the back of this group let's come to the inspector let's come to the properties I want to set an exposition of minus 9 20 a y position of minus 5 20 and a Z position of minus 5 1 to 0 and you can see we got that coming out of the gutter down here just add that is a little bit extra interest to the scene again maybe we don't want it appearing so let's come to about 3 seconds yes that's fully on at 3 seconds so let's on the mini timeline let's just drag that back three seconds watching for that new timeline display - 3 come to the end of the timeline hit Oh to extend it back out again so in my demo I had a rather flashy effect of the scene exploding at the end but that's outside the scope of this too because those elements were derived from video co-pilots great action essentials collection and really if you want to do anything of that nature I really recommend you check that out so I hope you're not too disappointed in not seeing that and I hope there's been enough of interest in this tutorial to at least show you about how to cheat camera projection for a pretty interesting result camera projection is used very widely in the visual effects world for creating quasi 3d environments and it's a really effective tool so I hope you find a use for it in your own project thanks very much indeed for watching and I hope to see you again on the next one you

Channel: Simon Ubsdell

Views: 136,420

Keywords: Motion (Software), Apple Inc. (Publisher), camera projection, Tutorial (Media Genre), 3D

Id: rR6Eh1TTQO4

Length: 28min 55sec (1735 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2015