Apple Motion: Cell Division Tutorial

hi this is Simon Opstal and welcome to another tutorial for motion 5 and today we're going to be taking a look at this classic cell division effect now I have no idea how scientifically accurate this is I looked at the various reference images and quite like these colors but I've no idea if they're right or not but the main idea of this was to show you how to do that cell dividing trick so let's get started my project has ever is 1920 1080 24 frames a second and it's 10 seconds long so the first thing we want to do is we want to make the basic matte object that is going to drive this whole effect so I'm going to come down here to the shape menu and select the circle tool and holding down the shift key I'm going to drag out a circle like that now it's blue but I want to make it white and I want to come over to the geometry and let's go for a radius of 200 and what I'm going to do is I'm going to duplicate it and I'm just going to offset one of the circles like that and then I'm going to select this group and I'm going to come to filters blur Gaussian blur we want an amount of 400 and then we're going to come to color and levels now what we want to do here is we want to remove all these softness that the blur has created and to do that we're going to select the Alpha here and the levels tool and let's open up the histogram here just so you can do this quite easily so I'm going to set a black in value of 0.5 and a white in value of 0.5 1 and you can see we've now got a very very tight crisp shape now just watch what happens when I move these two circles and you can see we've got that nice sucking cell dividing effect so this is what's going to drive the whole effect I'm just going to add one more filter to make this a little bit more organic and that's distortion under water I'm going to move that to the back of the group like that we want this to just undulate very very gently so I'm going to set a speed of 0.1 and the refraction will go for 35 let me just set up an animation so that this is ready to go I'm going to do is I'm going to come to around 2 seconds let's select both of these and let zero their position so they're in the same place then what I'm going to do is hit a keyframe then I'm going to step forward to around seven seconds and I'm going to drag the second circle up there and the first circle down here and that gives us this is an animation what I'm also going to do is I'm going to add a new wriggle effect to these positions so that once they've separated they continue to sort of or undulate a bit so I'm going to select the circle position add parameter behavior wriggle this one I'm going to search subtract let's reduce the frequency down to point 2 and let's set the noisiness down to zero and let's copy that on to the other circle set the mode to add and that just gives us a little bit more randomness so as I say this is just the source for everything else that's going to happen so I'm going to call this group mad and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to make a clone of it make right click make clone there and I'm gonna turn off that Matt group so I'm going to call this group edges and with the clone layer selected I'm going to look for filters stylize edges and you'll see that this has given us this nice edge effect that's going to be the sort of outer membrane for the effect now if we look at the alpha channel for this you'll see that this is solid and we don't want that so what we're going to do is we're going to come to filters color and we're going to select channel mixer and this is a way of making an alpha channel out of the illuminance so down here under the alpha output we're going to set the Alpha alpha to zero but we're going to select one of the other channels say red for the Alpha and then if we look at the the Alpha itself you can see that that's just the outline that's what we want so just to check this the estates of the Alpha I'm going to add a background so make a new group call it BG move it to the back come to I had objects generators let's look for color solid let's turn it to a very dark blue like that so we can get a better feel for for this alpha channel so the next thing I want to do is make an animated plasma a fill for the inside of the cell so what I'm going to do is again make a new group and to this group I'm going to add generators clouds I said only just right-click on it add image mask and we're going to use our mat as the image mask so I'm going to come to the clouds generator open up the gradient and I want to make this color here sort of mid gray something like that and then I want to hold down the alt or option key and drag it to around about here select the white one I'll done the auto option key and drag it to around there and I'm gonna switch the method to turbulent and I'm just going to reduce this speed down to 0.3 so now this is giving us something that looks like that what I want to do again with this is I want to make it transparent using the luminance a natural fact what I can do here is I can grab that channel mixer effect I'll down the alt or option key and drag it on to the clouds like that and that's given us that transparency there what I'm also going to do is I'm going to duplicate this clouds so right click duplicate and I'm going to delete those image mask and the channel mixer and I'm going to turn it off comment come over here and I want to make these gray ones black like that then I want to select my original clouds layer like that come to filters distortion and look for bump map and I'm going to use this second glance as the source for the moment that and you can see immediately that that's made it much much more interesting and much more sort of gloopy and Plasma like so I'm going to call this group cell Phil and was going to give a little bit of color so I'm going to come to filters color levels and I'm going to grab the red and I'm going to reduce this slider here till we're left with this sort of cyan color may be really really reduce it like that and I possibly also just reduced the green a little bit so it's a little bit more bluey okay then I'm going to take this cell and I'm going to duplicate it we call it small F just to identify it so with this one I want to just change the color of it so come back to my levels here let's reset that what I want to do is make this yellow so I'm going to select the blue and bring down C value like that then I want to shrink it down a bit so it's not sitting right over the top of the other one so I'm going to select the image mask there come to filters stylize and I'm going to grab min Max and I can set that radius to 35 what I'm also going to do is set the blend mode of this entire group to color Dodge and that gives us this nice effect here but I also want to do is just soften off the edges of that image mask so it's not just a perfect circle so I'm going to come to blur Gaussian blur and let's make that I don't know 65 or something and that's looking a bit better what we could do is come to that clouds and very very slightly change the speed of that and let's go for 0.35 or something and then that's supposed to be too different let's go for 0.3 one just wanted to peek through occasionally yes I think that's probably quite good okay so that's the self fills what I now want to do is create nucleus so again I'm going to make a new group so object new group don't come to add objects add a new clads generator I'm going to reduce the horizontal and vertical scale to 24 reduce that speed down to point 1 let's open up the gradient and I just want to make this gray again I'm going to bring it in a bit and the white I want to make a little bit more gray I just don't want too much contrast in this so just enough contrast to separate them out a bit hold on the alt or option key drag that towards the lighter one hold down the alt or option key and drag this one into there just so we've got a little bit more detail in there then obviously we want to mask this so right-click add image mask we want to use our mat as the image mass source and what we're going to do is we're going to shrink it down so we just have got a nucleus in the middle so again we want to apply a blur and our levels directly to this image mask so what I'm going to do is come to filters select Gaussian blur filters and select levels instantly Gaussian blur again to 400 and I'm gonna do something slightly different with this so come on to the Alpha here and a game twirl open the controls for opacity I want to push push it all up to this right hand side here so what I'm going to do is set a black in value of 0.9 three and a white in value off point nine four and I think you can see that's not given us this nucleus in the middle there so again let's just do a bit of collar ization on this clouds layer here let's come to filters color levels I know on this chippy kind of yellowy so what I'm going to do is grab the blue and bring that way down like that what I'm also going to do with this group here is set its blend mode to multiply let's call this group nucleus and I also want to add some glow to it so I'm going to come down to glow and add glow can set the radius to 70 and the threshold all the way down to zero and let's bump up your pasty a bit thurston that's quite good then I'm going to duplicate it right click duplicate here I'm going to set the radius to 100 bring your pasty down just a little bit crease the threshold and also if you want to colorize those edges so what I'm going to do you remember I used a kind of blue color for that cell fill there I'm going to copy that levels I'm going to paste it onto edges and that's got the same color and that's looking a little bit more like it's part of the same thing so then I want to add a some lighting so what I'm going to do I think is close everything up and make a new group at the top object new group and put everything into that and then add object light keeps 2d just turn this master group to 3d now what I want to do is attach the light to the two different nucleuses so select the light properties right-click on the position add parameter behavior link if we come into our mat here I'm going to grab the first circle and drag it into there now the problem is the Z position is at zero as well see here which means it's not doing any illuminating so we just need to very slightly tweak the behavior linked behavior to offset that so 20 on Z and I just wanted to give the effects of the lights slightly above so I'm going to go for 40 on Y and actually it's going to come down from the top right here so let's also go for forty on X must be a bit too much listen let's reduce those down to about thirty each and let's just duplicate that light right-click duplicate and here behaviors let's use the drop down menu to navigate to our Matt group Matt and will use circle copy because that's the second circle and that puts the light onto there like that but I think I also want to do is I want to come to these cell fills and turn off their lighting so lighting turning off same with the other one here cell Phil turn that off same with the edges turn that off this is what we've got now so what I want to do is now make it a look a little bit less sort of flat and dull and to do that I'm going to make a new group object new group let's call this group displace let's add two things to it first of all add objects generators generators cellular and then add object generators generators noise so I'm going to turn off the noise that I'm being the seller I'm going to increase the size to about thirty the speed I'm going to reduce down to run two point three three what I want to do here is I want to set its scale to two hundred clones it to be more kind of bigger grains effectively and I'm also going to set its blend mode to overlay right now I'm going to come down to the nucleus group here and let's add distortion bump map put that down below the too close there and let's use that displace group as the source for it and let's increase the amount to point two and the effect is quite subtle but it's just given us a little bit more organic quality to that let's now cut let's close up the nucleus group let's come down to the cell fill smaller group here and again let's add filters distortion bump map and again that's a Hadley displace to that and hopefully you can see let me just zoom in a bit you can see how well that works on the on this layer here what I'm going to do is just set that direction to negative 45 and the amount to negative 0.2 no just one problem here is that we need to set the displace group to fixed resolution because we've scaled that a noise element and you'll see the difference that makes its constraining it to the right place and now we want to come down to the other cell fill here I'm going to hold down the alt or option key and copy that bump map from the smaller one on to this one I'm just going to set it up a little bit differently let's go for ten and point one on that I think you can see how this is sort of adding a lot more interest to this so then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my master group here and I'm going to add filters distortion glass Distortion so let's increase the amount to 500 all the way up and increase the softness to iron and around something like that and this is giving us this really nice sort of Cheerilee like quality like that and there's one more thing I want to do and that's to come down to the mat group and again add distortion bump map because I want to be able to just distort the the outline a bit more and again I'm going to use displace as this source for that nothing you can see then we've just roughened up the edges of those and it just kind of looks a lot more interesting I think so it sort of brighter slightly brighter nucleus I think so what I'm going to do is come and make a new group and add object generators look for lens flare but first of all what I want to do is add a circular mark to it so holding down the alt or option key with a circular mask tool selected from down here I'm going to drag out a circle roughly like that maybe just a bit larger than the size of our actual cells and come to feather and I'm going to feather it in like that let's come to the lens flare itself I want to increase the fall-off to 10 don't want any streaks and I don't want any radius so now we just got this sort of nice bright blob there and what we can do is we can link its position to the position of the the two different circles so come over to properties add parameter behavior link and from the drop-down menu we will look format and the first circle there well duplicate this lens flare come to its behaviors from this drop-down will select that circle copy and that's our other one there what a way to do is add an extra lens flare so objects generators and flare with the just item tool selected and we're overlays turned on I'm going to move it up to that top corner there let's have a size of 2500 and a fall-off of 2.5 and I think that outer color I want to make it a little bit more blue rather than what it is something like that that's fairly good what I also do is come down to my background here I think and add a generator object generators clouds went a nice big scale so 128 by 128 they're what any speed let's open up the gradient copy this black over to around here and a game to there that's holding me on the alt or option key this color here I'm going to make slightly cyan something like that this one here I'm going to make very slightly redder than anything else sort of something like that this color here I don't go for something like with this and let's come over and just adjust the opacity down to about 20 percent it's very subtle but it just gives a little bit more just a little bit more interest there and finally let's add some particles so down here in my background group I'm selecting the circle tool hold down the shift key and drag out a circle let's Center it up let's make it white let's come to the Jama tree set that radius to 10 come to style set the feather to negative 10 so we've got nice soft fading circle then come up to object make particles let's select rectangle for the source arrangement random fill size 1920 by 1080 emission range let's set some 180 birth rate let's set 250 life let's up to 3 speed let's at 24 and then it for the color let's choose over life I've got the gradient let's make this sort of something like that let's click in the middle let's make it a little bit more white unless what sort of grey or other we also want to do is create a opacity tab there by clicking on that top bar click on the left one there just scroll down here to it as a pasty turn that down to zero let's make another a pasty towel up there on the right and set that down to zero so what they'll do is they'll fade in and out and then all we need to do is just adjust the scale let's go for a scale of 30 and a scale randomness of 50 I know we don't go this nice these nice drifting particles just always helps to add a bit of depth if you use particles like that okay so that's pretty much it thanks for a machine dude for watching hope to see you again another time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Simon Ubsdell

Views: 6,476

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Id: QrhTwe9hJsY

Length: 23min 30sec (1410 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2019