CC Bend It + CC Bender | Effects of After Effects

[Music] cc bend it and cc bender can both be found under the distort category and you might have guessed this already but they both will bend your layer in interesting and unique ways and if i open that up and apply it to my layer i have this both as an illustrator footage file as well as a shape layer and i'll actually apply it to both so we can see how this effect handles vector versus raster let's start with the illustrator raster version of my logo first immediately my layer is cropped and this can be one of the most confusing parts of this effect what this effect actually lets us do is bend our layer in a very smooth way but it's generating a distortion mesh which crops your layer based on the start and end position values so if i were to increase the start position's y value to bring it down towards the base of my layer that distortion mesh grows you can kind of see the bounds of it here it's kind of a rectangle and to make this really clear i'm going to add our trusty grid effect just before cc bend it and make my squares just a little bit smaller so we can see this is actually just cropping off our image to make this rectangle visible and if i move the endpoint's y position up then we can get it to at least show the entire vertical height of my layer i'll turn that grid off and we can see that's containing the entire logo but if i had anything out on the sides here of my layer then it's still going to be cropped off the solution to that problem is to just keep extending this end point upwards off the top of your layer until everything that you need to see is visible but once it is all visible you can start using the bend property to really distort it now this is constrained to the bounds of my layer so if i need to bend further than this then i'm going to use the grow bounds effect before cc bend it which will allow me to just extend the bounds of my layer further out there are lots of little workarounds like this for this effect so just hang on we're going to get through all of them i'll get rid of that grid effect and let's take a look at the controls we've already seen that the bend value is what controls how bent our layer actually is the start and end points determine where that bending takes place but what about this render pre-start value by default it's set to bend which is giving us this look but if we change it to say static nothing changes until i grab the start point and bring it up now this is cropping in on my layer so i'm going to move the end point out further but what's happening now is that everything below this start point is not being bent so if i adjust that bend value you can see clearly what's happening okay what's next we have mirror which is going to mirror everything below that start value so that start point is where everything is mirrored off of i move this around and scale it down a little bit increase my grow bounds then you can see that we're just getting that mirrored effect okay let me undo to get back to where we were and then the last option in here is none which will basically just crop off your layer whatever is below that start point is just going to disappear all right let's set that back down to bend and i want to point out that if i move this start point to say the center of my layer then that bend is going to be happening around that start point which obviously makes a big difference in how this looks so be sure to play around with your placement and finally we have this distort value which is set to legal the only other option is extended so let's take a look at that well let's bring the end value back down to where we're getting parts of my layer cropped off and i'll turn down this distortion so that we can see it a little bit more clearly if i bring that end value down we're cropping off not only the sides but also the top and bottom but if i add a grid effect again just so we can see this distortion mesh shape and i change the distort from legal to extended then the top and bottom are no longer being cropped off no matter how much i bend it we're always going to see that top and bottom so if you have a very skinny layer then you don't have to worry so much about the cropping with distort set to extended now if i push that end value up we are still going to control the cropping on the sides but the top and bottom will always be visible this way okay so those are all the controls but now let's take a look at how it's different on this vector layer it just completely disappeared when we applied the effect to it and that's because vector layers to after effects are the size of the comp it doesn't matter what's inside of your layer even though we see the transform controls here the width and height of this layer to after effects is 1920x1080 the size of my comp so i have to start by moving my start and end values where i want them to be so start goes down at the bottom n goes up at the top and again i need to move this upwards so that it shows the entirety of my artwork without cropping it off and then i can bend the layer just like before now because after effects is looking at this layer size as the size of the comp we don't get that same issue of it cropping off the sides which is really nice but if i click and drag my layer you can see those start and end points don't move with the layer which is extremely frustrating but there's a really simple expression that we can write that will lock these in place so i'm going to just double click on the start value which will bring it up in my timeline here and give myself a little bit more room and on the start and end values we're going to add an expression so alter option click on the start value and we're going to say value plus transform dot position and that's going to just take the value that we type in here and add it to the layers position value so i'm going to copy that really quick before i apply it and then add another expression to the end value the same thing just paste it in value plus transform.position and now if i click on that effect and zoom out we can see those points all the way over here i just need to click and drag them to align them where i actually want them to be but now what's going to happen with that expression is it's going to take the values that i just set and add them to the position value of the layer so no matter where i move it those are going to move with it so from here all i need to do is move this point value up so that it's not cropping off my layer and i can distort this as much as i want again if i move that start position value here i can move this one up a little further and then it'll bend from the middle and just for fun let's take a look at a little example i have this barbell graphic that i've just animated very simply to kind of bounce upwards and we can use the cc bended effect to give this a little bit more cartoony personality so let's add that in and set up our parameters so i'm going to actually put the start value right in the middle of the layer and then move the end value to the outside edge of the barbell now this is cropping the top and bottom a little bit so i'm going to move this outwards so that i can see the entire thing but now i can bend it from the center of the layer so let's just start by adding a keyframe aligned with these position keyframes on the bend property we'll start it at zero and then as it moves up i want it to bend downwards so let's bend it this way and then once it starts slowing down into that peak and falling back down i want it to reverse directions and then a similar thing once it gets to about here i want it to change directions again just a little bit back up maybe negative two and then finally coming to a rest at a value of zero again then i'll just go into my graph editor quickly and easy ease all these keyframes and then just sweeten it up a little bit by extending out the influence of each one of these handles and just like that we have something that looks a little bit more playful a little bit more cartoony without a whole lot of work cc bend it did all the heavy lifting now cc bender does things a little bit differently so let's apply that to this layer and we don't immediately get any kind of cropping if i adjust the amount value then it's going to bend it in a similar way to cc bend it where the value is set to static instead of a start and end point we have a top and base point so this point right here is my base if i set it to be aligned with the top of my eyes and then adjust the amount everything below that base will not be distorted and if i move the top point up further then the distortion will just be less if i move it down nice and close it's going to get really extreme now we have this checkbox called adjust to distance which basically maintains that distortion based on how far away the top is from the base so we're not going to get that crazy wild distortion out to the side with that checkbox checked but let's just reset the effect for a second and i'll put these points where i want them the base to be at the bottom of my layer and the top to be at the top and take a look at these options right here we have some funny names bend pretty much makes sense it is different than cc bend it where we were getting a distortion that was much more like a noodle this is almost more like a slant but it does implement a little bit of a curve keeping that base point planted but the next option is called marilyn and that distorts it in a much different way and then we have sharp again completely different and then finally boxer which is similar to bend but it has a little bit of different shape to it this is going to make a lot more sense if i switch to just an illustration of a person with cc bender applied to this layer which i will point out is a shape layer we're not getting any kind of issue with this being a shape layer other than those points still staying where they're supposed to be so we could implement that same expression to lock those in place but i'm not going to move them around so i'm not worried about it again by default bend is just going to kind of sway this character back and forth i'm going to hide my overlays just for a minute but if we change it to say maryland and adjust this amount it becomes a little bit more clear why these styles are named this way marilyn which i have to assume is a reference to marilyn monroe is more of a sway in the hips it's keeping the feet planted and the head planted the top and the base both exactly where they are and doing this curvy bend in the middle of the layer and i could even bring that top point down below the head so that only the shoulders down are distorting and now my character really looks like he's just swaying his hips around if we go to the next option which is sharp it's basically the same kind of distortion but instead of being smooth and curvy it's going to be this nice sharp point so just a different look with the same type of distortion and then finally we have boxer and what this one is going to do is basically sway from the feet if you imagine a boxer if you were facing them you'll see them dodging punches by swaying their bodies left and right so hopefully that clears up why these are named the way that they are and you understand the differences between these two effects and can see when you might want to use one over the other but that's all for cc bendit and cc bender hey thanks for watching if you enjoyed this tutorial then check out the other ones here on my youtube channel and if you like my teaching style then definitely check out my longer form content on skillshare and school of motion and if you want to support more tutorials like this one check out my patreon you can find links for all that stuff in the description of this video [Music]

Channel: Jake In Motion

Views: 8,643

Keywords: After Effects, Animation, Motion Graphics, Mograph, Motion Design, Tutorial, Adobe, Adobe After Effects

Id: L46aRRGkb58

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021