Butterfly Magic Particles - After Effects Tutorial

[Music] what's up guys this is Vox ID and welcome to another After Effects tutorial in this tutorial we're going to be creating a butterfly rig then we're going to use the trick to have our butterfly fly around a logo and also just as finishing touches add a layer of particles and this is using particular so you will need to have particularly installed in order to create these trails but if you don't want to use any trails you can still follow the tutorial and you won't be needing any plugins to setup this butterfly and for the rest of the animation so let's get started right away let's create a new project and let's create a new comp or actually I will import my butterfly texture first so I will double-click and now if I drop my butterfly texture into a new composition here you can see this is the butterfly image that I'm using and this is just an image I grabbed on Google if you search for a butterfly and also add to the search of PNG it will give you a lot of different images with butterflies that also have transparency so it's important that your image has transparency it doesn't necessarily need the transparency you can still grab your pen tool and then just create your cutout mask but it's a lot easier to just grab an image that has transparency so this will be the image that I am going to be using but you can use or any image with any butterfly that you want so let's go ahead and go to the composition settings here and for my rig I want to use weight and height of 1500 and duration should be let's increase this to 600 so I know my animation composition will be around 300 frames which is roughly 10 seconds so I'm giving the rig composition a duration of 600 frames just so the composition will be long enough to offset it or play around with it all right and let's hit OK let's scale this butterfly down alright and I will name this composition let's go to settings here and I will just change the name here to rig alright and and let's go ahead and grab this layer and pre-compose this butterfly layer so ctrl shift C and let's just name this butterfly precount so it's very important that the layer you're using for your rig is exactly the same height and weight as your composition and just pre composing your layer will solve this problem and also I will be using my utility box scripts so this is a free script available on my website and I will place the link to download the script in the description of the video so you can follow that link and on the page you will find all the necessary information on how to install the scripts so it's very easy to install and use and once you install it you can just run it from your window and you can see here that it's already running utility box version 1.6 and I just have it docked over here to the right alright and with utility box I will grab this layer and let's go to my grid tab and for my grid I want to split this layer into let's say 15 columns so the first value here will be 15 and then it also needs a value over here so I don't want any rows and I'm just going to use a value of 1 so this will just split this layer into 15 horizontal pieces which you'll see in a second so select your layer and hit split over here and I can now go ahead and close this now you can see I have 15 individual layers that I can then use I'm going to go ahead and grab this middle portion over here so this will be our eighth layer and I will just rename this well let's go back and I just want to rename this layer to body so now I have seven pieces over to the left that will be our word left wing and then we have seven guys over to the right which will be our right wing and this layer over here is just our original layer and I can go ahead and just delete this guy so let's actually just color code this layer so I'm just grabbing the first seven layers and I'm going to make this sign and for my rest of the layers so for my right wing I'm just going to make this orange just so it's easier to work with alright so now I want to add new adjustment layer and this will be our water controls alright and let's go ahead and for this guy I want to add an expression and a slider controller and this slider this first slider control I will rename to bend and I will duplicate this and the second one I will rename to flap alright so let's take care of our band controller so what I want to do is grab the Y rotation for all of these layers so let's just grab a layer here and let's press R for rotation and I want to be able and I want to link the Y rotation value to a slider so when I change the slider web value all of these layers change it their rotation right so let's go ahead and go to our first layer press R for rotation and let's drop down our effects here and I only need to bend for now let's go ahead and I'll click our Y rotation to add an expression and I will just pick whip our slider value and now as I increase the slider value I can also affect the wire rotation I also want these layers so all of these layers are and I want them to rotate not from the center of the layer rather from the edge of the layer so this edge here and I'm going to go ahead and let's grab all of our left-winger layers and I will press a for my anchor point and I'm just going to move this over on the x-axis until it aligns with our edge so this will give me a perfect value of 100 100 200 300 and so on and now I will just have to reposition these layers because they offset in the opposite direction and I will just move them in back into place here all right so the anchor point values stay the same and I'm just offsetting the their position all right and now as I rotate my layer again you can see that it's rotating from the edge instead of from the center of the layer alright let's set this back to 0 and let's copy this Y rotation value so I'm just grabbing this property hit control see - copy grab all of these other layers and press ctrl V and now as I go to my controls and increase the bend you can see that they're all rotating at the same time using just this one value alright let's set this back to 0 and what I want to do now is link all of these pieces together and I want to create sort of like a chain of hierarchy and let's grab this outer segment part so this guy over here and I want to link this layer to the layer next to it so in this case it's going to be this guy so I want to link this first layer to this layer and then this layer to this other layer and let's see what it looks like so I'm going to grab the last segment for this left wing and I'm just going to parent it to the layer below it and then grab this other layer and parent it to the layer below it and just continue this until we reach our last layer which will be our 8 therefore this or left wing so now I'm creating a hierarchical order and and now as I go to my controls and increase the bend you can see that it's creating this nice sort of like page flip effect and let's just do the same for our right wing as well so let's grab all of these layers first and let's press a for our anchor point and let's change the anchor point so it's right on the edge alright so I'm just making sure that these values look alright and now I'm just going to move them back into place and let's go to any layer and go to Y rotation and let's go to controls as well and prepare our band value and I will just link the Y rotation as well to the slider value the only problem here is that we need this to rotate in the other direction so we can just multiply this value by a negative 1 value this will just rotate in the opposite direction and create asymmetrical animation alright so now I can grab this Y rotation select all of my other layers and press ctrl V to Oh pasted the expression and let's go to our controls and see if this works alright so getting the right effect and let's set these to zero and let's create our word chain so I'm going to look for my most outer segment which is this guy over here and I'm just going to link it to its a predecessor until we reach our last segment alright let's see how the band looks now so pretty cool and this will help add a lot of elasticity and just create a more organic and natural animation to our butterfly flap and now let's take care of the actual flap right now and what I want to do with this is let's grab this eighth layer here which is the first layer in our chain let's go to our rotation and let's go to the expression here and let's prepare our flap value and I'm just going to go ahead and for this expression I am just going to backspace to erase this expression and pick whip our flap value alright and then I can simply copy this value though the other head of the chain which is this layer so this is where the chain starts for our right wing go to rotation and let's paste this expression ctrl V to paste and also I want the rotation for this layer to be the other way around so I'm just going to multiply this value by a negative one and let's take a look and see what we got so if I go to my controls now and increase the flap I'm just creating a regular flap and as I increase my band I can also give this a nice organic attach to it alright and now let's actually just go and set up our animation and actually if I let's grab a camera fast and just turn this around and see how this will actually look in 3d so you can see that the band really helps sell the effect of the flap a lot more and just creating much nicer animation this way and let's see how we can animate this let's go ahead and at frame 0 I'm going to set a keyframe for our flap at around maybe somewhere around this position set a keyframe and let's press u to show our keyframes let's move over maybe 5 frames and let's set this flap to be on the other side now so maybe somewhere around this position and I can simply repeat these keyframes by adding an expression and the expression will be loop out and that's with a capital o let's open and close parentheses and in between parentheses I will type quote ping-pong and end quote and this expression will cycle a cycle through our key frames and just repeat them throughout the whole composition all right and let's also go to our bend and let's set up some band deformation so let's increase the band value maybe to 8 let's add a keyframe and let's press ooh let's go to frame 5 let's set the bend on the other direction all right and I will also just copy this expression and just paste it for these other keyframes and also I want to move these keyframes out so select all of them and press f9 and now as I make a quick Ram preview you can see now that this is the animation and this will be fine for now we can always just go back and readjust these keyframes and if I want to slow our animation I'm just going to grab these keyframes and move them out and here you can see now the effect I can also go ahead an extra step and let's press f4 and let's grab all of these layers and let's enable a motion blur for them and enable motion blur for the composition and this also adds a nice motion blur to this the only problem with this is that if I select the frame here you can see that the motion blur effect is kind of separating our layers and I'm just going to turn this off for now maybe if you have something like let's add an the lair and if I go ahead and add my so if you have our SMB plug-in this will now take care of that problem and you can see it's creating a much nicer effect but you don't necessarily have to use motion blur this is just an extra step that you can add to your final render all right so that's a bit nicer but like I said this isn't really necessary unless you want to and have access to our SMB plugin let's delete this adjustment layer and let's go to our controls and press you for my key frames and maybe just make this set this back to five all right so I will get rid of the camera and this will be our butterfly rig and now we can go ahead and create our main composition so let's create a new composition here let's make this full HD so 1920 by 1080 I will make this maybe 250 frames long and the frame rate of 30 should be fine let's name this to mein kampf and hit OK and I can go ahead now and just drop my rig composition inside this main comp and all I have to do now is just set this to be a 3d layer and also rasterize our layers and now you can see that as I turn this around we're just having this nice butterfly this nice 3d butterfly layer which you can then use to animate it however you want and I can go ahead and just scale this down a bit all right then let's go ahead and add our logo and I will down drop this logo inside the main comp lets pre-compose this logo so ctrl C C and let's name this two logo folder and also make this a 3d layer let's go ahead and also drop a background and I will rename this layer to background let's just use a simple ramp for this or generate ramp and for my first color or rather n color I'm just going to set this to a nice blue and maybe set this as a radial ramp and let's actually just switch these points around and let's set these this start color to a blue and Mayan color to a dark alright then this should be fine and let's go ahead and add a camera now and 75 degrees angle view should be fine hit OK and let's go ahead and add a null object this will be my camp target let's make this a 3d layer and I will pair with the camera to our camp target so this camp target null object will make will make it a lot easier to animate our camera and let's set up our camera animation so let's go to the position for this camp target and I will press P for position and right click to separate dimensions and let's set this and let's decrease the Y position or rather increase until our logo is a bit of the screen so maybe our camera will start in this position and make a keyframe for the Y position there and let's go maybe to 150 and let's center our logo on the screen I will also maybe make a keyframe for my Z position and just push this out a bit and go to the beginning of my timeline and then just zoom this in a bit so this will be our camera animation and also just grab these keyframes and feather these out or actually just move these out by pressing f9 and this will be alright let's actually grab this rig and let's scale this down maybe a bit more let's add another null object and this will be my it's name these two butterfly helper and make this a 3d layer let's set this butterfly helper above all our grid and I will pair with this grid to this butterfly helper and for the position for this guy I also want to separate dimensions and also grab this rig and hit P for position and then just separate dimension let's go inside our costume view and see exactly what we are doing here so let's maybe adjust this rig layer a bit let's rotate this on the x-axis and also on the y-axis all right and if I go to my position settings and let's maybe increase the Z position so I'm just creating this separation from the center of our screen and as I go to my butterfly helper and press R for rotation if I increase the wire rotation you can see that this is creating the orbiting animation and I can see here that my butterfly layer is not aligned properly and maybe let's grab this layer and let's just rotate this guy until it's properly aligned here maybe go to the rotation settings and let's see this to 270 zero and zero and let's actually set the butterfly helper Y rotation to zero as well and I can see here that I want this rigged layer to be flipped on the z-axis 90 degrees and now as I increase the Y rotation we're having our proper orbiting alright and I can set a simple expression for my orbiting animation so this will be time x let's say 120 this will just automate the Y rotation value and just create this nice orbiting animation let's maybe decrease the position on the z axis here so bring it closer to our logo let's go in our active camera view and see what we have right so maybe decrease the scale even more for this rig and this will be fine for now and let's grab our butterfly helper press P for position let's drag this down Oh actually adjust the Y position not the Z one so I'm dragging this layer down until it's off the screen I will set a keyframe for the Y position and then I will just drag this layer up until its of the screen on the top here all right now we have our nice orbiting animation so pretty cool let's actually make a quick Ram preview see if the speed is all right all right so this is not bad and that you can go ahead and readjust these keyframes and values to create the effect you're going for and I will just stuff let's grab this rig and let's go to our opacity and just fade this out as it leaves the screen all right so here it leaves the screen and I'm just fading this guy out and let's take a quick look at how we can create some nice particle trails let's go ahead and make a new solid and I will pre compose this solid and this will be our word let's rename this composition to particle generator all right let's hide this layer here I don't want to see this layer let's step inside this comp here and I will make this composition maybe 250 by 250 and I will actually just delete this gray layer and double click this ellipse tool to create a new shape which will be just a circle and this will be used to as a layer to generate our particles let's go back in our main comp let's go to the beginning of Y of our timeline and let's actually unhide this so we can see what's going on and make this a 3d layer I will place this particle generator above our butterfly helper and I will also parent this to our butterfly helper annal and let's go to our rig settings here and grab the transform property and hit ctrl C to copy go to our particle generator and hit ctrl V to paste the the exact position that our rig has and now as I scroll my timeline let's go to our particle generator and let's increase the scale for this guy now and let's also rotate this on the x-axis and let's go to opacity and I can see that the we pasted the opacity as well and I will just remove the key frames for opacity and set this to 100% and now let's now rescale this a bit and scale this down a bit so what we've essentially done here is we created this circle layer and we parent it to our butterfly helper and gave it the initial position that the butterfly layer has and this will now follow our butterfly and we can use this layer to generate some nice particles and now let's go ahead and hide this layer now sort the particle generator layer let's create a new layer control Y and we'll name this particle trails let's go ahead and add our trapcode particular effect and now let's solo this layer for a bit and let's go to emitter and set this to be a layer emitter and for our layer emitter I'm going to use a word particle generator and now you can see we already have some one ice particles going around let's unsolo this layer now and let's say this layer to add blending mode and let's just go ahead and increase the particles and I want to set the layer sampling to particle birth time all right and let's go to particle and let's set the size to be 1/4 now I will set the life to be 2 and maybe go to our size over life and let's just use this preset over here for our graph alright so getting closer I also want to obscure 8 this these trails with the logo and let's just increase the particles for a bit so I want these particles to interact with our logo and I can go to visibility and set the obscuration layer to be a word logo holder layer and now you can see that the particles are behind our logo when they have to be all right now let's go ahead and maybe set the life to be 2.5 so just increase the duration a bit and maybe let's readjust this graph a bit so they in a little faster let's go ahead and go to physics and let's go to air and make sure just the let's get rid of the velocity settings here and the emitter right Z so now we're creating this nice uniform line and if I go to my turbulence field now and increase the effect position now you can see we're creating the original effect that we had in the preview and now let's give these some colors and I will set the transfer mode to add in my particle tab and let's say the layer RGB usage and now let's switch this to RGB sighs well wrote so this guy and then now I have access to my color and I will use the over life settings here and for my color over life I'm going to use this preset gradient and for my first color I'm going to use a violet so let's go with a light violet for my second color I'm going to use a nice blue so you can kind of see the effect now and I will just set the size maybe to 0.3 and maybe just increase our particles per second all right so this is pretty much how I set up our particles you can also go ahead and just add a glow to this and whatever effects you may want and this is completely up to you and now this is pretty much the effect let's make a quick Ram preview all right so that's it for this tutorial thanks for watching so far don't forget to drop a like if you learn anything new subscribe and stay tuned for more tutorials and amount

Channel: Voxyde

Views: 79,163

Keywords: after effects, butterfly, rig, animation, path, tutorial, motion graphics, flap, wings, expression, beginner

Id: g182oASq9Mk

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2016