Bring 3D Model Animation in Video with After Effects Maya Live Link Tutorial

in this video we'll composite 3d model and animation into video use after effects and maya all right so now let's drop in our background footage and let's create a conversation for it and as you can see uh this video is a 1080 hd video and here's a frame rate so we're going to reference it later um and select this video in this layer and i'm going to go to the tall menu animation and track camera once it's done you'll see these are colorful points and these are the tracking points all right uh so here we're going to create a camera a track hammer and then let's create a few law objects as the reference point and later on we're going to place model on it so place your cues around any of the spot you want to create a model um right click and create a node okay so repeat this process right click create a null here and create a node and here and no object here one here maybe one around here all right so now if i select all of them and here are the tracking points the tracking null i've created right and maybe i want to create one up here so i'll select the background voltage press e for effects and select these 3d camera effects and then i'm going to right click and create another object here as well here we go and maybe here one more all right once uh you have done this process and let's rename all these no objects so here i'm going to say track i'll just remove that space check no 1 [Music] 0 1 for name convention and here's a 2 0 3 4 and i've created 13 clicking no objects okay so that's the first step now let's go to save our project and i'm gonna save as we're gonna say demo step one now we'll link after effects with the maya so i'll go to windows extensions and open autodesk maya live link so if you're using the nab computer we already got this installed uh and if you're using your own computer let's install the plugin if you google autodesk maya live link you should find this page all right and you can just download the install and you'll need your adobe id in order to install the uh the extension and then after you install the plugin when you go back to after effects you should see this one right and now you can see that it's not connected so we'll open maya and in my eye if you go to file and uh you will see adobe after effects live link so this uh plugin is installed by default you don't need to install anything so now if i open it you can see that is connected to background conversation which is important effects and if i switch back to after effects now you can see that it's connected to maya already all right so now we're going to select the track camera and all the track low objects i've created and then drag and drop it here so now it will be updated to maya so now if you switch back to maya okay if you switch back to maya and you should see this camera and all these uh small objects so these are the track low objects we created in after effects and this is the camera uh so here's the timeline right and if i just click on the timeline and drag and you can see the camera movement so that is the camera in um after effects so here's a few things we have to do before we get started as you can see here in my uh the frame rate setting is at 24 frames per second right and in after effects as i mentioned earlier see here's the frame rate of our background conversation is 29.97 all right so that's to see first we have to go back to maya we have to change the frame rate to 29.97 so that will match our after effects project and second time is the length of the video okay as you can see if i switch back to after effects the video has 14 seconds and 26 frames so if i open calculator here i already calculated the number so if uh we have 14 14 seconds times let's say 29.97 so that is about 420 frames right 14 frames plus 26 frames so the total runtime of our project should be around uh 446 frames so now if i switch back to maya so here we need to get that time so 446 frames right so now if i grab my timeline and you can see that here the animation keep going keep going and here it ends up here right uh to be safe i can get longer time i can type 450. right see the camera stop and there around 446 or 47 so that will make sure we have the whole time um for our project right and then what i want you to do is um sorry if i let's go down so if you scroll down here you see the tool menu okay so click on that so it will open the double side window for your project all right and then um for next window i want you to click on paddle go to perspective and select this one so this is the a after effects 3d track camera so now if you connect it you are looking from that camera's perspective okay so if you click on here and empty spot here so you are activating this window to preview so now if i click on play button you can see this is okay so this is uh what we see from the camera right let me pause so this is how it looks and if i go back to after effects and this is how it looks right there's a tracking node right so now that means if we place any model into the scene and place it on this marker and we render it and we can composite it with our background footage then let's see if you click on any of this window and hit space key you will full screen that perspective as basically again you're going to jump out and show the two window display click on here space key enter that space key to exit and then i want you to go to tour menu display and heads up display and check on camera names so this will show the camera name so which view the camera is okay so this is from the after effects camera and this is from the perspective camera okay um and then for orientation so if you hold down option key which is alt key on windows and then with your mouse nav key you can orange around and then still with the option key and with your mouse right key you can zoom in zoom out and with option key still check on and then use your mouse middle key you can pin around okay so that is the orientation tools and then i want you to also go to windows and check on outlander so between the onlander is the fire hierarchy so these are all the objects that is in your project right so uh this is the camera from after effects and these are the track loads alright so next i want you to go to the access folder and bring in the science fiction building model the obg model and drop it onto the perspective camera window and we'll import all the models so now if you go to all enter you should see these buildings are imported right so by default this building should be huge right should be huge and what i want you to do is select all of them and then scale them down to scale them down um you can use uh r key hit r key on your keyboard or you can just use this button click on this button on your tool menu and then click on the center square you can scale them down on both x y and z okay and here i can also go to this tab you can click here to open or close so this is the channel box and basically we can manually type a value so here let's try point zero two for x y z and smaller okay now you can see we can see that in our a after effects track camera window now let's move these buildings to these uh track laws so i'll go to downlander and connect uh each of the building and if you hit w key for move tool or you can just click on this button under two manual and you can move them to different spots and then we can zoom in and you can hit space key to full screen so it's better for us to look in the scene so we can place our first building to here so what you can do is hold down v key while you're in the move tool hold down v and then move it and you're going to snap the building onto these markers all right so now let's select the second building vk check on and then you can snap it onto one of these marker and you can see how it looks in here right so we can move the building snap it to different spots [Music] here maybe here and here all right so if we jump into the after effects window and this is how it looks and if i switch back to after effects as you can see we got our frame in here however in maya we don't know where exactly the frame can cut so what i want to do is click on here this button so this is the render setting if you click on that and here you can check on arnold render or if you are on my software that's fine it doesn't matter which one you are on uh here for image format let's check on jpeg and this setting matters so for the image size i want to set hde 1080 okay so that exactly the same uh image dimension as our conversation after effects all right and renderable camera change it to the after effects track camera all right so make sure these two spots you set it correctly and then close the window and then okay and then go back to the after effects track camera window preview window and go to the view and go to camera setting and check on resolution gate okay so this will turn on the resolution gate so that is exactly the same as what you will see here in after effects right however as you can see the perspective is a little bit different we are looking um the ground at a specific angle however if i zoom into after uh maya as you can see the all the buildings are straight so what i can do is i can select one of these buildings and rotate it this way tilt it this way right so this is after effects so building supposed to be in this way so you can experiment with uh with it and to see what degree what angle is the best so here i feel about uh 24 to 30 degree on the axis it should be good so here i'll just do about 26 okay so copy this value for rotation x and paste it to all these other buildings [Music] okay so double check you get all of them and then this is how it looks okay and the perspective should match with uh what we see in after effects and then as you can see here we have more markers okay there we have more markers that hasn't been used so we can just duplicate these buildings and place them there uh right now i kind of feel the grid is a little bit annoying so i can just go to show here and check off grid if you scroll down to the bottom of the menu you should see that so check off grid and then uh select some of these buildings okay so here you can see it in honor so i surrounded the building f and hit command d to make a duplication and then hit w key for move and hold down vk to snap it to a different spot and then use r key sorry use e k for rotation so you can tilt it to different angles so it will look different from the track camera's view and then i can select uh maybe this building and hit command d to make a duplication w key from move and v k to snap it to the back and hit e k for rotation and rotate to a different location different degree and then here the same so i'm going to repeat this process [Music] and here we go one more so gonna duplicate this one [Music] actually here we have two more so going to maybe do we need this one here one more so i will duplicate this one or maybe that one all right so now we get a 13 buildings in place and we can uh full screen and check how it looks and also don't forget to save your my project here i'll also save it as demo step one okay now let's drop in the spaceship model into the scene right and also it's a huge so we're going to scale it down okay so if you go to different time you can see that the window is set to the default uh position right so maybe we can just go to the perspective view and scale it down so it could be easier and then go into changes orientation [Music] and we can move it out from the window right so here let's create some animation so if i go to frame maybe frame 100 i want it to fly across the scene so at frame 100 here we can create a keyframe so to create a keyframe select the model and hit s key and then you will see that it created a a red line and here at the 100 frame so that is a keyframe and then if i go to frame 180 and i can move it to here all right and then i can hit s key again to create another keyframe so now if i play if i click on the track cameras window okay and if i play you should see how it looks [Music] right since uh the animation just stopped here and um and if the camera keep going we should still be able to see the space shape so i want to net it to fly a little bit further at about 320 frames and create another keyframe so now this is how it looks and this is how it looks in the after effects cameras window fly out of the screen and never come back [Music] okay so now let's um get this shot back to after effects um so since this is the first lesson on this i will not to net you to do a full render so the full render is another story so here we'll just do a test render a draft render all right so in order to be able to use the test render in after effects we'll have to create a green uh a green screen here in the background so go to the tool menu create and polygon primitive and a plan so this is a plan and then we can use the scale tool to scale it up and place it underneath all the buildings [Music] all right and make it a little bit bigger and then i want you to go to windows and rendering editor and hypershade so hypershade is a place where you can create all different materials and textures for your model just need to know here let's create a new material a number material and let's name it a green screen okay and here down below down below i want you to change the intendances so if you just click on this window and pick up a green color a green screen color okay and then for the main color just drop this slider all the way back to black so this will make this a few material as the green screen color so now we can select the plane we have created and right click on your green screen material and assign material to selection so this is how it looks okay and then we'll select this uh green screen and hit command d to make a duplication and move it further and then i want to rotate this way and we can just go to this window here uh we can change the rotation x to 90 degrees so this will cover the background so now if i uh okay if i double check see here we have a gap so we may want to make this a little bit bigger and also bring this one closer to the buildings so it'll cover the whole building so just a double check make sure we cover the whole background okay and then enter the 3d cameras view and then uh you know you can just click on empty spot make sure you are not select any of these objects so next step we're going to do rendering here double check the render setting right make sure here preset as hd 1080 and the rainbow camera set as the after effects track camera all right and then we'll go to windows and play blast and click on here this is square which is the options and here are the settings i want you to change so time range set as a time slider so it's going to render the whole time slider and check on view and here and also the format changed to av foundation and encoding as h264 so this will render it as a video and i also want you to check on save to file so this is going to save this our project scale set to one second to render 100 of the resolution we have set here from render setting as well and then you can change a name and then change it to a location okay and click on play blast so we're going to render once it's finished you should see your video here and you should also find the video under the location you send it to and then we can go back to after effects okay and here let's save it to step two all right and for step two i'm going to drop in the playblast render i just done so this is the drop render as i mentioned right uh so let's drop in this video into the scene and as you can see this is the uh film gate which is a frame right so let's go to skill and scale it up and let it match the frame here so i experimented with it so 130 should be a good number so it will match the size of the window and then let's go to here for effects and it's get a key light effect and get rid of the green screen background and if you play you should see that here let me change it to quarter preview so now if you play you should see that all the buildings will stick on the ground and here we get some animations once you are satisfied with it and you can go to file and export add to adobe media encoder and we can start to render so that's our workflow for compositing 3d models and animations use maya and after effects

Channel: DIGA Hub

Views: 3,701

Keywords: Bring 3d model into video, composite 3D Model animation in video, compositing in 3D, Maya After Effects live link, animate 3d model in after effects, camera tracking

Id: 5rivmmVlnVg

Length: 26min 8sec (1568 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021