Apple Motion 5 Tutorial: Fiery Planet Part 1 - Creating the Elements

hi there this is Simon from Tokyo productions and welcome to another tutorial for motion 5 and this time we're going to be looking at creating this fari planet scene and as you can probably imagine there's quite a bit of work involved in getting that effect and it's gonna take a while but hopefully it'll be worth all the effort so let's jump in and get started I've got a new project here and I've come to my project properties and I'm going to set it up to be 2048 wide by 2048 high and I'll have a frame rate of 24 frames and a duration of 20 seconds so I've got a square project as you'll of gathered the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to come to the library generators and add a clouds generator so what we're doing here is we're building up a library of textures that we can use to create the planet and then we need to render them out and composite them in a separate project ok let's come to the inspector for this clouds and let's set the horizontal scale to 20 and the vertical scale to 20 and the speed down to zero because we want it static and let's set the method to turbulent and now let's duplicate that command D come to its properties blend mode and set that to screen next let's come to the library filters and let's come down to distortion and we're going to add the underwater filter let's come to its properties I'm going to set the size to 0.5 and the speeds to 0.2 and the refraction to 50 and I'll set the mix value to 30 then we're going to duplicate this command D and I'm going to set the speeds down to zero and then I'm going to duplicate that three more times commands D command D command D and I'm going to make some changes to each one of those so the first one let's copy I'm going to set the size to 0.4 the refraction to 75 the next one the size to 0.3 the refraction to a hundred the next one the size 2.2 refraction to 1 to 5 and the next one size to 0.15 and refraction to 150 just to create this much more interesting texture if I turn turn those off you can see how much more boring the the raw clouds is turn that on we've got a lot more fine detail in there so next I'm going to take one of those the second copy the one without the animation and I'll hold down the Alt key and drag it to my original clouds layer to make a copy and let's do a bit of setup on this I'm going to set the size back to 0.5 the refraction I'm going to set to a hundred and here I'm just going to duplicate it twice commands D come on D and I think I'll set the bottom mix the lowest under water I'm going to set that mix value to 50 so what's all that going to look like when we're finished well let's just quickly add a sphere filter to that top group just to see what's going on and let's set the radius to a thousand and you can see that that has created quite an interesting complex texture okay so this is just for the purposes of demonstration I'm going to delete that now and I'm going to call this clouds medium close it up and hide it and I can make a new group I'm going to come to the library generators and I'm going to add another clouds let's come to the inspector and let's set the horizontal and vertical scale to eight and the speed right down to point to this time we'll leave the method at normal and we're just going to make a change to the first layer strength and we're going to set that to 0.75 and I think you can see that that's created a really nice dense texture or very refined detail okay I'm going to call this clouds small and close that up and hide it again and I'm going to make a new group command shift n let's call this group caustics come to the library generators and unsurprisingly I'm going to apply the caustics generator to that group I'll come to the inspector so I want a much smaller sized point zero three I want to reduce the speed 20.2 and the refraction to 100 and I'll increase the brightness to fifty and now I've got that nice dense mesh the next thing we're going to do is we're going to add an image mask to this main caustics group I'm going to hit command shift M now we need a source for that image mask so I'm going to come to the library and again I'm going to add a clouds generator and I will drag that clouds on to that image mask like so I could also do that in the inspector if I wanted to drag that to the mask source well there let's first of all set up the image mask source channel to luminance there we go and let's come to the clouds generator and play with the controls again so let's set the horizontal and vertical scale to 20 like so and the speed 20.2 let's twirl open the gradient will click on this white tab and we'll set its location to 40 and we'll set the method to turbulent now we've got a really interesting complex mask for those caustics so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to come to the library filters and again we're going to apply from the distortion menu we're going to apply the underwater filter and we're going to apply it first of all to the clouds generator which is the source for the mask like so come to the inspector we're going to set the size to 1 the speed to zero and the refraction to 150 and you can see we've added even more complexity to that mask now let's hold down the Alt key and drag that underwater to that top group making a copy of it let's come to the inspector I'm just going to reduce the refraction to 75 and the mixed value to 50 and then I'm going to duplicate it command D and increase the refraction 250 this is all in the interests of increasing the complexity of the texture okay so I think we're pretty much finished let's close that up what we're next going to do is we're going to render out each one of these textures so command e well use ProRes LT and we'll put them into a folder that were called tutorial textures and we'll keep the names of the groups so clouds medium clouds small and caustics render those out and we'll move on to the next stage of the project first of all though we'll save this as planet textures if we want to come back to it okay so let's move on ok so I'm in a new project which I've made 1280 by 640 just to give it a little bit more of a cinematic look it's 24 frames a second and the duration is 10 seconds so I'm going to come to the file browser and the folder tutorial textures where I rendered out those textures we're going to import those and we're going to change the order move caustics to the top and then we're going to select caustics and clouds small come to the inspector properties set the blend mode to screen and then we're going to come to the top of this group library filters scroll down till we get to distortion and we're going to add that sphere filter again there we go come to the inspector and as we said we're going to make the radius a thousand okay so the next thing I want to do is to add a camera alt command C I'll switch to 3d and that'll enable us to reframe the planet now if I just come to the cameras Z position and move it back you can see that that's made a mess of our sphere and that's because the planet is this sphere is being applied to a 3d group so in order to avoid that let's make a new group command shift n put our planet group into it and make our planet Group not 3d so turn it off there's a toggle here instantly for 3d you can also use control D and that means that our camera is operating as it should so let's just zoom to a point where the planet is full frame and then let's get to work on some of the compositing first of all I would like to clone the clouds medium so I'm going to hit K to make a clone of that I'm going to set the blend mode to multiply and I will rotate it through 60 degrees and I think I might just reduce that to 50% so then that's just giving me a bit more complexity I'll also take the caustics small and clone that s'okay and I will rotate that also through 60 degrees and then I'll clone the clone so okay again and I'll set the blend mode of this new layer to add next I just want to add a levels control to the caustics so levels color correction levels and apply that to the caustics come to the inspector and I'm going to just drag down the white just to give it nice lot of so somewhere around there that's white value let's go for 0.75 so there we have it so the other thing I want to do is adjust the speed of the caustics because I don't they're dramatic enough so I'm going to come to the properties timing and set the speeds to 175 and that's why it was good to have rendered out more of that texture than we needed so now you've got enough there we go a little bit more dynamic next thing I want to do is I want to animates the effect of the planet rotating and I'm going to do a little bit of a cheat in order to achieve that I'm going to select that planet group come to filters distortion and I'm going to use the twelve filter and I'm going to drag it down below that sphere come to the inspector and I will set the amount to 0.75 the 12 degrees to 45 degrees and then I'm going to open up the center and I'm going to right click on the Y value and I'm going to select add parameter behavior rate and I'm going to type in a value of 0.001 and that well now just give me that nice appearance of rotation off the planet so I'm pretty happy with that next I'm going to add another color correction filter to that planet group let's put it at the bottom there come to the inspector and this is where I want to colorize it so first of all let me just adjust the gamma the overall RGB gamma set that to 1.5 and then I'm going to hide these 212 and sphere by using these show/hide options here so we can get conveniently to the blue value and I'm going to set a black in for the blue of 0.75 and that's colorized it for us and let's now save that as planet planet build we're going to come back to this project and to add some more to it and the next step is that we're going to build the corona of fire that goes around the edges so first of all we need to build a fire element so we'll make a new project and this one we will also make seven twenty 24 frames a second and we will have 30 seconds because this is a pre render we want nice lot lot of media so first of all we are going to come to the library add a generator generators and it's going to be clouds again we'll add that I'll come to the inspector and now I want to set the height of this to be 1280 it's square let's make a few changes let's set the horizontal scale to 10 and the vertical scale to 40 and the speed will increase 2.8 let's do our same trick with the gradient by clicking on the middle and setting that to 90 again punching up the blacks isolating the whites well leave the method at normal and let's play again with our layer strengths first layer 0.5 second layer at 0.75 third layer one and E fourth layer 0.5 now what we also want to do is to get those clouds to move upwards like they were flames so how we're going to do that well we're going to come to the Y offset and we're going to right click add parameter behavior and we're going to select rate the rate value is going to be 0.3 and now if we play that you can see we've got the cloud streaming upwards the next step is to add a few effects I'm going to add a 12 filter so filters distortion 12 and I'm going to add that to the clouds come to the inspector and I'm going to set the amount to 0.25 and the 12 value to 0.25 and the mix to 75% and I'm going to show the overlays and I'm going to just move this down to about there right I'm going to call that 12 left and I'm going to duplicate it I want it to be more or less in the center so bring it over here and what have we got we got 0.25 let's set the twirl here to just 1512 C and then we'll duplicate it again 12 ah it's going to be on the right so let's move that over to about here and I want to set the 12 to 20 percent so that's good turn off the overlays and we want to add one more filter to this layer valve so I'm going to come to the distortion again and apply underwater the inspector I'm going to set these size to one speed 20.2 and the refraction to 75 next we want to add a mask to this operation so let's come down to the rectangle mask and let's draw something roughly like that let's zoom in shift said let's show the overlays come on forward slash let's tab through till we get to edit points it's held on the Alt key and then click along the top roughly like this doesn't really matter how many points you have exactly and then let's make a sort of a bit of a sawtooth like so let's drag around all those points and set the interpolation to smooth let's zoom out a bit I think I want to drag those points well down and then I want to add a behavior so come to behaviors shape wriggle shape I want to set the wrinkle two points and tangents the frequency let's go down to 0.5 and let's have zero noisiness to keep it nice and smooth and see how that looks it looks like we need to edit our shape a little bit so show the overlays let's go to the transform mode bring that in a bit bring that down a bit okay obviously much too sharp so the way we're going to sort that out is we're going to come to filters blur and we're going to add a Gaussian blur to the mask this is a useful trick actually because you can you can obviously feather the mask but you can only feather it uniformly in all directions whereas if you use a filter blur filter you can feather the horizontal and vertical separately which is what we're going to do in this case so I'm going to turn the horizontal down to about two and then I'm going to set the amount to let's say 300 yeah that'll do and you can see that I've got relatively sharp sides which is what I want but I've got a nice soft upper edge we need to turn on the overlays again and shrink that back down again because the blur has increased the height okay and we want to do one more thing which is to add a 12 filter to the enclosing group so come to distortion again select 12 apply it to the group come to the inspector amount 0.25 and let's say the 12 itself to 0 let's move the center down to there let's right-click on the 12 value add parameter oscillate and let's set the amplitude to 15 and that'll swirl the whole thing quite nicely okay so that's another element done and we can render that out command II pro result e again and let's put it into our tutorial textures and Koretz call it fire element and render that out ok so next we're going to take that fire element that we've just built and turn it into that complete Corona so first of all well let's set up our project again we're going to go for 2048 by 2048 24 frames a second and let's have a duration of 20 seconds again come to our file browser let's grab that fire element and bring it in that's assumed out the first thing we need to do is to reset the anchor point of that fire element so it sits at the bottom of the element rather than in the center so let's switch the Anchor Point tool and then just drag down till that sits on the bottom and switch back to our transform tool next we need to make a replicator so I'm going to hit L and that makes a replicator let's first of all set the properties of this group to screen before we forget and then come back to the replicator itself we'll set the shape to circle and the arrangement to outline and then we'll turn on a line angle and we'll also turn on additive blend let's move the replicator itself to the center of the screen by hitting the reset button come back to its properties now we want to set the radius in this case to 600 and we'll have 15 points let's also set angle randomness of 15 now this is looking like a rather strange mosaic at this point but it will come together very shortly and that's because we need to set this scale down to 25 what we also need to do is because all those are pointing inwards we need to set the angle to 180 you'll probably noticed that all the all these cells are using the same start frame and we can change that by coming down to source frame offset and we'll type in a value of 12 and now they're all distinct which is far better what we also want to do is add a little bit of movement to the individual cells so what we're going to do is we're going to come to the scale randomness right click on the y scale randomness and we're going to add parameter behavior oscillate you'll set the amplitude to 25 and the speeds to 8 and that means that let me just set my render preview to resolution to 1/4 so it'll keep up there's a bit more differentiation okay so that's our first replicator element and I'm going to call this one main fire and then I'm going to duplicate it and I'm going to hide the original main fire by clicking here hidden and I'm going to close it up like that the second is going to be called layers so let's make a few changes to this replicator we'll set the number of points to seven on the scale randomness I want to set an X scale random value of 10 just so they're a little bit different again right so then what we need to do is to come to the oscillate behavior here for that fire element I'm going to change the amplitude from 25 to 125 and I'm going to set the speed to 12 so now we play that we can see we're getting these surges of fire right in order to make that a little bit more interesting we're going to do is we're going to come to the filters distortion and we're going to drag her out twirl again and we're going to edit so that flares group and what we need to do with that is set the amount to 0.1 3 and the 12 to minus 45 degrees turn on the overlays come on forward slash and I'm just going to drag that Center to the base of that flare there I'm also going to set the mix value to 75 and if I turn off the overlays and we'll watch that you can see that it's doing nice things to that flame as it shoots up so let's just turn on the overlays again come on forward slash duplicate the twelve commands D and bring it over to here so that's the other one that's doing dramatic shooting up and again that just just adds extra value to that okay obviously in this particular instance we're only really interested in what's happening to these two we can leave the others behind because they'll be more or less hidden under thee they the existing fire while we're at it let's save this project and let's call it replicate a build and we need to make one more replicator let's close up that flares just turn it off let's take that main fire command D to duplicate it I'm going to drag that to the top and I'm going to call this small fire because I want a ring that's just going to fill in with little small smaller flames fill in all the gaps let's come to the replicator properties set the number of points to 30 but what we'll do is we'll come to the scale and bring that down to 15 there we go we'll come to the oscillate behavior and in this instance you really don't want too much of it we'll set the amplitude right down to two but maybe Liebherr increase the speed to nine so we've got a different speed to the rest of the fire and what that's going to do is going to fill in any small gaps so there you go that was a pretty quick way of achieving that effect it's a lot quicker than manually positioning and multiple instances of the fire element as you can imagine okay so now we need to render this out main fire flares and small fire so that's command II Perez LT again and rendered out to the textures folder with the appropriate name and then we'll start compositing it with the planet and I think to be realistic we probably need to save that for part 2 of this extremely long tutorial I'm sorry about that but believe me the attention to detail does pay off in the long run so I hope you can join me for the next part thanks very much for watching

Channel: Simon Ubsdell

Views: 7,482

Keywords: Free, Flames, Techniques, Generators, Apple Motion, Motion Graphics, Design, After Effects, Tricks, Adobe After Effects Software, Motion (Software), Fire, Motion 5, Andrew Kramer, Animation, Composite, Apple Inc. (Organization), Video Design, Compositing, Tutorial, Tokyo, How To, Effects

Id: hC3R2yoRGzM

Length: 32min 39sec (1959 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 12 2014