Apple Motion: Slash & Burn Tutorial Pt1

[Music] [Music] hi this is simon upstall and welcome to another tutorial for apple motion and today we're going to be taking a look at this pretty cool effect that's based on a really rather brilliant idea by uh andrew kramer videocopilot.net and i do urge you to check out his original tutorial for after effects but here we're going to be doing it in motion so let's get started so first of all let's take a look at our project setup i'm going for 1920 1080 24 frames a second and a duration of three seconds so the first thing we want to do is let's bring in a gradient for our background come down here bring in gradient come to the inspector let's select the preset called grayscale let's open up the gradient let's switch to radial and then i'm just going to set up these start and end points here so negative 540 for x positive 544 y start 0 for x there and negative 540 there and then i'm just going to set this to full black and then this one here to let's bring it down to around 0.25 something like that next i'm going to create a new group so objection new group and i'm going to type in some text and then i'm going to scale it up brings up the baseline so negative 200 and then center it and central line so we've now got this nice big text so i've relabeled that group as text source i've called it text because but actually you can put any alter object in here as the source that you want to smash up we're going to be using text for the purposes of this tutorial so let's make another new group object new group first of all i want to bring in the generator called true shade tiles add into that group and come to the inspector i'm going to add an image mask and i'm going to use that text source as the mask source so let's set up the true shape tiles let's have a tile size of 15 and let's bring that white down to sort of mid gray somewhere like that then i want to import a texture so i'm going to bring in cracked concrete bring that in right click add image mask and again let's use the text source so with this image mask selected i'm going to come to filters stylize min max and let's enter a value of 10 and then i want to come to the blend mode for that layer and set it to multiply so i've called this group unmatted text and i'm going to make a new group for it to sit in or in fact i'm actually going to right click and just group that and this new group i've called unextruded text and i'm going to make another group out of that so right click group and so that new top group i've called extruded text and the reason for that is i'm going to come to filters stylize and bring in the extrude filter there let's set an angle of 240 to get us started let's have a distance of i think around 20 and let's bring the front and back brightness way down we really don't want to draw attention to this we just want something there give us a sense of depth something like that so then what we want to do is we want to create the slash and to do that we're going to make another new group and we're going to select the rectangle tool and we're going to draw a long thin rectangle like this come to geometry and let's set its width to 1920 and its height to something like 80. and let's just make sure it's centered up then we are going to come to filters stylize and crystallize and you see what this has done is it's give us a nice roughness to the edge so obviously we don't want this to be animated so we'll set the speed to zero now part of the problem of crystallize is that it creates sort of semi-transparent areas let me zoom in you can see this little gray areas in there we want to get rid of that so what we're going to do is we're going to add color levels we're going to switch to alpha and then we're going to just crunch it together like that so we get rid of as much of that semi-transparency as possible in fact we pretty much got rid of all of it there so i've relabeled that group as slash matt and we can in fact turn it on and close it on down and then what we're going to do is this group called unextruded text is where we're going to add this as an image mask so right click add image mask and we're going to use the slash matte as the image mask source and then we just need to invert it so now we've got our nice slash running through our text and come to properties we can rotate that and we're going to be linking everything to this you'll notice that the the extrusion also updates along with this which is quite good so that's that's why we created this elaborate nest uh before we added our extrude so i'm going to reset that rotation to zero so the next thing i want to do is i want to come to my unmatted text group and again you select the rectangle tool and i want to draw a rectangle something like that and this let's make sure we've centered it up come to the shape geometry this time yes let's go again for 1920 for the width but the height we want to be quite a lot larger than we had before so let's go for something like 150 and then come to style color let's set that to sort of a mid gray and then let's set its blend mode to multiply and then right click add image mask and add the text sources the image mask now what this is going to be is like the sort of the burning effect of the slash having happened but what we want to do is we want to roughen up those edges so let's select the rectangle and again let's use crystallize again set the speed to zero and let's have a size of around 25 and this time we can actually make use of that sort of semi-transparency because that's giving us quite a nice rough effect so you can see that's that'll help to create the sense that the the flashes has burnt through the letters so next i want to create the effect of a burning edge and to do that i'm going to bring in a texture so i'm going to make a new group and i'm going to import the texture called burn textures and i'm going to add an image mask to that now i want to dig in here and i want to use the extruded text as the source and i need to turn the extruded text back on again and then i didn't need to add one more mask add image mask and i'm going to use the slash matte as the source and i want to switch it to subtract and invert and now you can see we've got this texture happening just on that inner edge there of the of the extrude and we're going to do a little bit of processing of that to make it look more fire like a little bit later on so i've renamed that group burning edges let's close that down let's make another group and import another texture and this is going to be rough edge and this is just a little rough if we solo that you can see it's just a few pixels high and it's an edge that we can use just on the two edges of our of our cutout so let's just move this up until we get to sort of around about there i want to slightly overlap that edge like that so that's 45 and then i'm going to duplicate it right click duplicate let's set it to negative 45 on y so it's the other and let's rotate it through 180 degrees so it's not the same so we'll add an image mask to this group right click add image mask and this time we will use our original text source as the matte source and uh turn that on and off you can see that's given this effect of a kind of a groove that the flashes has ripped into the material and that's quite nice you might need to just color correct that but i think that's probably not too bad just as it is so i've renamed that grooves close that down so there's one other effect i want to do and that's to create more destruction we've obviously we've got this effect of the uh the the kind of darkening effect but i actually want a sort of a textural like a bit of a dent into that so in order to do that i'm going to make another new group and i'm going to import again the cracked concrete just going to scale it up just so it fits like that and i'm also going to import the element called uh where are we height cracks icon that one there just need to invert this so let's come to sorry color negative and then i'm going to set its blend mode to add so i've called this group bump we can close it down and turn it off now what i'm going to do is i'm going to find the group called unextruded text and i'm going to right click make clone layer i'm going to drag that out into a new group and then what i want to do is i want to just apply a rectangular mask to this something like that and we want to reset it and let's just check its size let's go for 1920 and let's go for a height of 150. so let's select that clone layer filters stylize and indent we're going to use the bump as the height source we can turn off stretch to fit so i'm going to bring the brightness and the ambient right down the highlight brightness right up and i'm going to reduce the depth to around five i think five and now you can see we've got this interesting destruction i think i'm going to rotate that light so we've got 270. so what we need to do is we need to feather out that mask so the edges are less sharp so we've got as much destruction as we like let's go for around 50 60 something like that and you can see how that's that's really sort of added some really kind of nice funky um destruction there and i've renamed that group destruction because that's what it is so let's close that down and now let's bring in our um slash effect so i'm going to make a new group import and i'm going to import this thing called slash fire and again it'll be in the comments okay so that looks like this now obviously we don't want it starting right at the beginning so let's come along to i don't know about sort of 15 frames move it to there so slash through like that so basically this is an instant effect um and one of the things we're going to do to disguise the fact it's instant is to make yet another new group and we're going to bring in generators lens flare and let's just make this pretty huge we don't want any streak so let's turn down the streak intensity we don't want that ring radius we just want this really bright intense hit like that and um let me turn that off briefly and explain why i've parked that frame so we want it really sort of pretty much where the the slash hits the middle of the of the object of the frame in fact so what we're going to do is at that point if we're happy with that i think i probably am so you know size 3000 intensity we can maybe even reduce the fall off we just want wanted to be a really bright flash i'm going to hit i and then o on the keyboard and you see that's shortened it down to just one frame and what that's going to allow us to do is to kind of disguise the fact that we're basically just going to cut everything else on so one of the easiest things we can do is to come to the slash mat open up the rectangle and come to its properties and if you look what happens when i animate that opacity is quite a lot of it goes away so let's at this point here have an opacity of zero and we'll step forward one frame and have the opacity at a hundred percent obviously we need to take care of some of the other elements but you can see that the actual slash into the the the object has occurred just at that point because of our animating that map okay so various other things we just need to bring on manually so uh one of them is those edges where are they they so the burning edges there so let's just add here frame 22 so frame after our flash we're going to hit i on the keyboard there so that it won't have been there before same thing with the destruction and same thing again with those grooves that grows group so i on the keyboard in each case just to bring it on instantaneously and you'll probably have noticed also that there's that darkening effect that we created inside the text group so dark edges there again select that hit i on the keyboard and then if we go back it all happens at that point and the flash basically takes our eye off the fact that it's it's it's all happening so fast we don't we don't really need to worry about exactly how it's happening so let's now talk a bit about color i'm going to take my slash fire element there and i'm going to come to color and colorize and i'm going to stick with that default color for the time being and i'm going to copy that and the other thing we need we need to be sympathetic to this color is that inner fire so where's our burning edges let's come to our burning edges that burnt textures element select that and paste that on and now those two have got the same basic color now that's that colorize is running out because i copied it from the slash fire so what we need to do is we need to come to the end of the timeline and hit o in order to extend the full duration so what it would be nice to do is to link these two colors together so that when we change one the other changes as well i'm just going to rename this group slash fire so we can identify more easily and so this colorized copy on the burning edges i'm going to select the remap white and add parameter avia link and i'm going to link it to slash fire slash fire and then select colorize remap white to all now if i adjust this color here both of those are the same color now let's have a look at that those burning edges because obviously you want them to be a lot more intense than that so then that burnt textures let's add a color levels and let's just bring down the black just to increase the contrast sorry bring bring bring this black value inwards and the white value inwards as well just so we've got that much more sort of intense like that what we might also do is just reduce the intensity of that colorize effect so let's go for 0.6 or something just so it's not quite so colorful and that's better now what's what works better with these colors is it's just not to over over saturate them so you you know really just kind of nudge in from white in each case and it's going to look it's going to look better similarly if we wanted to go that way you'll need to kind of adjust the relative values of these depending on the color you pick so let's stick with that for the time being what i'm also going to do is i'm going to add to this slash fire i'm going to add a color uh opening xr tone map and what i want to do is really punch that through a lot so i'm going to go from maybe like five there so it's much more intense maybe not quite as much maybe four so really really kind of hits you quite hard so i want to add a couple more elements the first of which is going to be some smoke so again let's make a new group so object new group and i'm going to import again this is going to be in the comments the thing called smoke alt there and that looks like that just going to reduce its intensity well first of all set its blend mode to screen reduce its intensity down to about 10. we want to be this to be quite subtle now obviously we need to retime this so it appears behind the actual slash so so that's starting at around frame 11 or something what i might actually do is just make it not appear until that point there so if we select it and then hit i on the keyboard and then it won't appear until after our flash again a little bit of slight of hand there so i've renamed that group smoke now what we need is some particles and to do that i've made a separate particle project that we can import again you'll be able to link to it so i'm just going to open it up where are we particles and again i'll i'll do a tutorial explaining how i've made this so what i'm going to select that group i'm going to copy it you can now close this and at the top here i'm just going to paste it so again now we've got these particles we need to delay when they start again we need to delay them really pretty much until the flash happens so i'm going to select the emitter that's starting at frame frame 21 like so now the moment they're white and that's not terribly helpful but also what we're going to do is we're going to come into the emitter and depending on what you've chosen as your foreground colors we're going to colorize it accordingly so i'm going to here under color mode i'm going to pick from color range and we've got two colors to play with we could be more fancy but i'm just going to be fairly basic so i'm going to pick a darker color of the foreground for the darker color there select this one here select that tab you see that allows me to change the color and then i'm going to select kind of something flight off the edge there so we've got a mix of those two colors and what i think i want to do is i want to move this down behind everything else so not not all the way back but let's just move it down so if you want wondering how that's done it's sent backward there it's command forward square bracket just to move it back progressively until it's where i want it i want it underneath the text like that now obviously as things stand it doesn't look very good it just looks like these little shapes here but as soon as we turn on motion blur you can see it's like though you will be able to buy those once we've got the lighting and everything else sorted out i think that smoke is probably the timing of that smoke is probably not quite right and it needs to move forward a bit more or i'll move back a bit more so it's more in sync with the with the flash like that i think there you go something like that i'm going to turn off motion blur for now because it slows us down obviously now one of the things we need to do is with this particle emitter i've set it up to be 300 wide and 90 high 90 is pretty good for the height but obviously 300 is not going to be covering our long text here so it really you need to adjust this depending on the the nature of your text i'm just going to turn on adjust item and the overlays there just so you can see the bounding box here right at the start and if i increase the width like that one kind of wants to go for something like that where you're almost at the width of the the object itself and you know you can increase the number of particles if you want so i've set the birth rate maximum there at 500. let's go up to 750 we'll have more particles depending on what we want to do you know there are various things in here that you can adjust but we won't get into that here and as okay as i say you know turning on motion blur is going to make the whole thing work at the end of the day and you might want to add a smaller particle layer above the text but i'll leave that to you to do so one of the things we might want to do with this effect especially if we're creating a you know effect for to publish to final cut or something like that is to be able to choose the direction of the the the cut as it were and the moment obviously we're coming horizontally left to right but if we select this slash matte and rotate it some of the stuff updates but not all of it and in order to get it to update we're going to need to do some linking so obviously those burning edges are working just fine those grooves are not working so let's select that grooves group and then on the rotation add parameter behavior link and from here we can select the slash matte group as the source and now you can see those grooves are matching that we need to link the matte for this destruction layer so where's the destruction layer let's come to that so this rectangular mask here again let's right click on the rotation add parameter behavior link and from the drop down menu we need to select slash matte group and now that runs along with it as well the other thing is this darkening effect here remember there's a darkening effect and that's down in here dark edges again rotation right click add parameter behavior link from the drop-down menu we're going to select slash mat and group and now i think we've got everything apart of course from the emitter which i've forgotten let's select the particle emitter there's that down here emitter and right click on the rotation add parameter paper link from the drop down select slash matte and group and now the particles are shooting off in the right direction as well ah one more thing of course and that's our slash itself uh so where are we there and and the smoke sorry we've got two more things to do so slash fire let's select that group let's link it i'm sure you know by now slash mac group and where's our smoke smoke let's select the group and then add parameter behavior link and link it to slash mac group now pretty much everything is going just fine now there is a problem which is that both our smoke and our slash are not quite big enough once we rotate them so i'm going to select that slash fire element open up the scale and i'm going to increase that x scale to 125 takes care of that and where's our smoke going to do the same thing here increase that x scale to 1 2 5. and just one one final problem here because our slash light element has got an edge to it here we'll need to mask that i'm just going to come back to this slash mat just return that to zero and select that slash fire element come to the rectangle mask tool and just draw kind of a rectangle mask like that reset let's make sure it's sufficiently wide so let's go for 1920 and then let's just reduce the now the height is good so let's go for you know 600 on the height but then let's also go for 100 on the feather and you can see that just softened off the edges of that glow made it a little bit more maybe just go for 150 just to be super safe and now we can come back rotate that slash mat 20 degrees and you can see everything is now updating just going to turn off motion blur because it's slowing us down a bit so i'm going to close down some of these groups everything is closed down i've renamed the lens flare group as lens flare and just going to bring the smoke down behind it so just above that smoke group i'm going to make a new group i'm going to select everything apart from lens flare and background and drop it into that new group there and i'm going to make this one 3d and we can add some light so let's add a light and let's move that over its position let's move it over here up a bit like so uh open up the zed and set that to 150 let's duplicate that again move it over to the bottom right like so and maybe with this top one sorry about the fly increase the intensity to 150. now there are certain things that that have gone wrong which one of which is that the slash fire thing here doesn't want to be illuminated by the lights we need to turn that off so select that group open up the shading lighting or rather stage turn the shading off and now that's full intensity and again the same thing with the burning edges which need to be self-illuminated so select the group turn the shading off and the other thing we can now do is to add a camera so what we're going to use the camera for is to create some camera shake i'm going to park at that point there where my flash is i'm going to come to the cameras position and i'm going to right click add parameter behavior wriggle i'm going to set the amount to about 20 the apply mode to add and subtract the frequency up to 10 and then i'm going to hit uh well yeah let's hit i on the keyboard there just so it only starts there we're not interested in anything before that and keyframe the amount there and now let's step forward to around 40 frames and reduce that amount down to zero and now we get that big hit as the as the explosion happens as the rip happens and that's going to help especially when we turn on motion blur because it's all going to shake rather nicely one one tip about motion blur is you don't need to live with this default shutter angle i often find it's actually better to reduce that down to 180 it's not only quite a lot faster to render it also just looks a little bit more realistic i think so i would i would do that so command j on the project will take you to the the project properties and you can adjust the shutter angle there so one more thing i want to do is a couple of things actually let's adjust the camera rotation so we get a little bit more drama so i'm going to go for positive 10 on the x rotation and like negative 15 on the y just so it's looking a bit more like that a bit more drama again everything more or less works uh what something's not working is my slash there uh i probably didn't increase it enough so let's increase that to 150 for that there you go and the other thing i want to do is just work a little bit on the look of the text let's move that camera over a little bit on on x so i can just oops just like that just so initially it's centered up with our new rotation there so around negative 75. so i'm going to open up my extruded text group so if i alt or option click on the group it opens up everything underneath it uh and we can do a little bit more work i think that extrude probably i over did the darkness of it we can just increase it a little bit more just so we're a little bit more aware of it there so front and back shading just up those two a little bit uh then what i want to do is i want to come to this uh correct concrete element there inside that unmeted text group and add a color levels to it and then i'm just going to take the black out there and just increase that so we've got a flatter a flatter look overall and that'll increase the effect of come to the end here you can see that if i turn that on and off we've got more of a kind of contrast between those unburned areas and the and the burnt areas might also just come to that true shade tiles we took the level down to sort of mid gray maybe we could just increase that just a little bit like so it's really quite questioning getting a good balance between the actual text element and the bits that we've brutally chopped away with our with our slash and i think what i might do is also just increase the width of that dark element there we can do that by because that's that's a rectangle shape we can do that by coming to its geometry and increase that maybe to 200 maybe even 250 and then we could just reduce that opacity down to about maybe 50. so it's there outside the edges of our indent burn as well the other thing i think we could do is is reduce the intensity of this true shade tiles element so i'm going to take the black color and just bring it much closer to the other one so it's pretty faint something like that i think we don't want to make too much of a statement over that we just want a little bit of of sense of that that texture and i think that's working better maybe we could increase that white value somewhere around there so one other thing i would suggest is that we apply filters hawaii super glow and if you don't own this already then you then you really should go and check it out because it really is a fantastically useful uh plugin and and you can see how immediately that just kind of gives us so much more kind of photorealism if you don't want to do that let's turn that off or delete it in fact we could come into the burning edges we could clone that burning edges element so right click make clone layer we could add a filters blur gaussian blur set that amount to something like 36 and then set the blend mode of this to add and it sort of creates a a sort of a glow it's uh kind of a cheats glow might might might be enough for this uh so i think i've covered pretty much everything there's one thing that i would always advise you to do when you're working in motion and that's just to make everything a little bit sharper because the nature of apple processing is that it's all a little bit soft and fuzzy so i would take my extruded text group and add filters sharpen unsharp mask and you can see that just kind of just brings the whole thing to life you're suddenly not squinting at it you've got it in in focus and i just think it looks it looks nicer [Music] so i hope that's been interesting thanks very much indeed for watching and do check out the follow-up tutorial in which i'll be looking at creating some of the elements that have gone into making this project

Channel: Simon Ubsdell

Views: 2,881

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Id: Wsom8LuqWt0

Length: 35min 53sec (2153 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021