CC Glass + CC Plastic + CC Blobbylize | Effects of After Effects

[Music] cc glass cc plastic and cc blobby lies all produce unique looking effects but they have very similar controls in the way that you set them up so that's why we'll look at all three of these effects in this video now cc glass and cc plastic are both found under the stylized category while cc blobby lies is found under distort let's start with cc glass and i'm going to bring my logo out into this composition but i'm not actually going to apply the effect to it let me just scale that down to say 80 and then i'm going to bring out this stock photo of this kind of pool metallic looking ripple and i'm going to set this to my comp size by right clicking going to transform and then down to fit to comp width now all three of these effects use a separate layer as a source for the distortion they produce and to get this texture and the distortion layers to match i want to make them both the exact same dimensions so i'm actually going to pre-compose this layer by pressing ctrl shift c or command shift c and i'll call this ripple texture make sure that move all attributes is checked and click ok and now i have a cropped version of that texture the same size as my comp and i'm going to do the same thing for my logo ctrl shift c call this logo and then move all the attributes click ok and now both of these layers are exactly the same size with that out of the way let's apply the cc glass effect to the ripple texture this effect has three categories surface light and shading we'll start in surface and look at the first property which is the bump map now if you're not familiar bump maps are just images that drive distortion and by default it's set to the layer that you're applying it to now i don't want my bump map to be the same as this texture layer i want to use the logo so i'm going to switch to that in this drop down menu and immediately my logo is showing through this layer but it's doing it in a way that almost looks like my logo is being pushed through this image it's very liquidy and soft and a pretty convincing result let's take a look at the other controls i have the ability to soften this out more to the point where it's even a little bit hard to tell what the shape is of that bump map or i could go in the opposite direction and really chisel this up make it a much sharper beveled edge so that we can see the defined parts of my alpha channel a little bit more in that distortion now if i zoom in nice and close you can see that the edges are a bit chattery and that's because right now we're basing the bump map on the lightness channel of my logo so it's taking the lightness value of every pixel and mapping that to the bump but i could change that to the alpha channel and it'll get a lot cleaner because now it's ignoring all the color information and just looking at the transparent or opaque pixels i'm going to reset the softness back to its default of 20 and then zoom in here nice and close if we take a look at this line right here this part of the ripple that's going through you can see that it's really distorting around the contours of this displacement from the bump map and it gives it a very convincing look for being a reflective property that's actually bent but i can control how this looks with the height and displacement properties so if i increase the height it's going to make it look like that's raising off of the surface even further or if i even go into a negative direction then it's going to look like it's being pressed into the material that we're applying the effect to i'll set that back to its default and then we'll look at the displacement i'm going to turn this all the way down and as i do this watch this line of the ripple right here i'll even just set it down to zero and you can see now that that is no longer being distorted around the contours of this displacement so now we're effectively just adding in light and shading to our image without any real distortion so it's not as convincing that displacement value is what will allow you to basically control how the reflection is being distorted on that material or if i go in a negative direction almost like a refraction like light is passing through it and being bent in the opposite direction all right i'll set that back down to its default and really quickly i want to show you what this effect does on a layer where the bump is the same as the layer you're applying it to so i'll grab the cc glass and apply it to my logo zoom in and then open up the surface properties our bump map is set to the logo and i'm going to change the property again from lightness to alpha so obviously this has a much different look we're getting a lot of weird holes in the image but we can control that with the displacement if i turn that down then we're not going to get that clipped out semi-transparent part of my image and if i turn the displacement all the way down then we're again just using this basically like a bevel and emboss effect if i turn it off and back on you see that it's not affecting the alpha channel it's just adding in lighting which again i can control with the height and softness properties so if i turn the height to a negative number it's going to look like it's being indented into that background and if i turn the softness way down it's going to be a lot more chiseled under the contours of my alpha channel but what if i wanted it to actually look like glass like the name says cc glass well maybe i'd want to put in a fill effect just before cc glass and add maybe just a little bit of color a little bit of blue click ok and then change the blend mode from normal to say screen and that gets us a lot closer to something that looks a little bit more like glass i could also increase the softness definitely increase the height to give more of a defined edge to that overall look and we're getting there obviously you could combine this with more effects to get a more convincing looking glass image but taking out those original colors goes a long way all right let's turn that ripple texture back on and we're going to skip over the light and shading categories for now and go straight to cc plastic so type out plastic apply that effect and turn cc glass off now just like cc glass we have surface light shading surface bump light shading so let's open up the surface bump and compare it to the surface properties for the cc glass effect instead of bump map we have a bump layer but it's essentially the same thing i need to select my logo as the bump layer and that's going to define how this distortion is being mapped onto the texture now obviously this is producing a much different looking result but the controls are very similar the property is defaulted to luminance but i want to change that again to alpha so that it's all applied uniformly and from here we have softness and height just like in cc glass so if i turn the softness up it behaves a little bit differently than cc glass instead of embossing or debossing the image we're applying it to like cc glass does this is more like plastic wrap like a translucent material being wrapped around the texture we're applying it to based on the alpha channel of our bump map and this softness value is expanding that matte almost like the minimax effect does it's just expanding or contracting that alpha matte from my logo layer if i increase the height value we're going to get something that appears to have more height to it just like before or if i turn that down to a negative value it's going to look like it's going inwards so that's very similar to the height value of cc glass let's reset these two back to their defaults and then look at cut min and cut max these two are unique to cc plastic if i increase cut min by even a value of just one it's going to remove everything based on the alpha channel of my logo so now where my logo was transparent we have transparency in the cc plastic effect again that softness value is what's expanding that matte outwards but if i want to keep that softness the way it is i could just increase the cut min to choke that mat further while preserving that softness let's set that back down to zero and then look at cut max if i turn that down from a value of 100 then it's just going to go in the opposite direction it'll take the pixels that were 100 opaque and start expanding the matte from that point again the further i go the more it looks kind of like that mini max effect but that's it for the surface bump category in cc plastic let me collapse that turn it off and we'll take a look at cc blobby lies i'll apply that and again we have three categories this time blobbiness light and shading so let's open up lobbiness go to the blob layer and change that again to my logo change the property from lightness to alpha and we're getting something that looks a lot like liquid metal it's very similar to cc glass except it's incorporating that alpha channel instead of just being applied on top of the texture it's using the texture combined with the alpha channel of our blob layer once again i can control the softness to make it have a much more chiseled edge or increase it to make it way softer and this is where the effect name makes a little bit more sense if i make the super soft to the point where two parts of the image are now touching where they weren't before they blob together this looks a lot more like liquid metal like mercury basically and this cutaway value if i increase it a bit is basically going to just choke that out and turn this all into little blobs so if i increase my softness a lot and the cutaway enough to where it disappears i could just set two keyframes at the beginning of my timeline and go forward about a second and then say reset these values down to what they were and maybe i'll even turn the softness down further so that i have a much more defined edge here i'll press u to bring up those keyframes and easy ease them with f9 on the keyboard and then play it back and just like that i have this kind of liquid metal transition of my logo revealing now something really fun you can do is shift the contents of that texture around prior to applying the effect and i'm gonna do that with the offset effect so let me bring that out turn off cc blobby lies for a second just to show you all this is going to do is allow me to shift the contents of the layer around within the layer itself so if i turn cc blobby lies back on and i zoom in here and then just shift that center to around we get something that looks very convincingly like a rotating environment with the reflection on top of this metallic object and because this is so distorted because of the softness and i could even turn that softness up further you'll never notice where that seam is where the texture repeats it's all covered up by the distortion and the displacement that these effects are producing this is a really great way to make a very convincing looking reflective material in after effects and basically cheating about it there's nothing 3d about this it's all just displacement and bump maps based on a texture if you stack some drop shadows and other lighting effects on top of this you can make something that looks very convincingly 3d let me just add some keyframes on this really quickly and we'll see how that improves the animation so now it looks like there's just a rotating environment or like the lighting is changing in my scene as this logo is being revealed it's a very cool effect alright now that we've looked at the first category of all these effects let's take a look at the light and shading which show up in all three of them we'll start with cc glass and i'll turn that offset off and collapse up my keyframes underneath the light category we have the ability to change what type of light we're using by default it's set to the effect light meaning an imaginary light that only applies to this effect the effect is generating it it doesn't change anything else about our composition we can change the light intensity uniformly across our entire scene to make it brighter or dimmer and we can change the light color to be tinted to any color we want and if i zoom in real close you can see that it's actually the light color it's not tinting the overall image because the parts that are in shadow on the contours of this displacement aren't getting that tinted color from the light i'll change that back to white and then we'll take a look at the light height currently we have a distant light set as our light type you can kind of think of that like the sun and we have the ability to change the height of that sun so if i turn this to a low number it's kind of like the sun is on the horizon if i change it all the way up to 100 it's like high noon where the sun is directly above us i'll turn that back down low and then we can change the light direction as well currently it's set to a negative 45 degree angle so the sun's basically up here but i can rotate this around to change where that light source is coming from now all of those controls show up in cc plastic as well so if i open that up we have the light intensity the light color and this behaves slightly differently if i zoom in remember this is more of a semi-transparent or translucent material that it's generating the light's going to come in at the color that we've set it to but come out in a distorted color so it's kind of like light dispersion through a semi-transparent object we can also control the light height and the light direction just like before but we also have the ability to change the ambient light color so i could change this to something and that will uniformly affect the entire image all right let's jump back into cc glass and cc blobulize again has those same light controls as cc glass and this time it's 100 identical there is no difference between cc glass and cc blobby lies on the light category all right let's jump back to cc glass and change the light type from distant light to point light what this will do is give me a point control that will act kind of like a light bulb that i can place anywhere in my layer and that's where the light source will come from so if i put it right in here and i turned the light height way down then you can see the light is radially being cast from that point giving us highlights all around it rather than just coming from a single direction and that also is an option in cc plastic and cc blobby lies now let's change the type of light we're using from effect light to ae lights and what this allows me to do is add an after effects light by going up to layer new light and i'll just make a point light that's set to intensity of 80 click ok and the effect is now interacting with the scene light the after effects light so i can move this around however i want and the effect is going to interact with it what this means is that if you have other 3d objects in your scene that are reacting to lights this effect will react with it which is great this shows up in all three effects cc glass cc plastic and cc blobby lies all right i'm going to change that back to effect light for now and we'll take a look at the final category which is shading this shows up in all three effects as well and all the controls are very similar with one exception in cc plastic all these properties can be thought of kind of like how the light is interacting with the material that the effect is producing so on cc glass we have this very metallic looking texture and i can control the overall ambient brightness of the scene i could increase or decrease the diffuse property of our material increase or decrease the specular highlights that it's producing adjust the roughness of our material as well as the metal property of our material all of these controls are found in cc blobby lies exactly the same as well as in cc plastic with the one addition of dust which if i increase that just changes how the light is basically passing through that object but that's the only difference in the shading category for cc plastic so hopefully that overview gave you an idea of how these three effects produce different results how they have similar controls and how you might use them to get a specific result that you're after all three effects are very powerful and can create some very interesting results but that's it for cc glass cc plastic and cc blobby lies 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: 11,071

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

Id: WPo-dkPiynI

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021