Element 3D Character Animation - After Effects Tutorial

[Music] hello guys Costa here today I will show you how to make this animation working inside After Effects using element 3d please forgive me for using this voice synthetizer but this is my first tutorial and I am a bit shy not to mention that I am Italian and I thought you were old and be happy to hear mama mia pizzeria accent for 15 minutes straight anyway let's jump right in and create a new comp first thing we need to do is to track the camera if you don't see the tracker panel you need to enable it from the window tab okay now click on track camera and let after effect analyze your footage you will find the clip that I am using in the description but I encourage you to shoot your own clip anyway while the track who is finishing solving the camera we can open the Advanced tab to see if we get less than a point for average error Mamma Mia well not the best but I think I can work with it now scroll through the footage and try to find four points that are aligned to the surface then right-click and select create solid in camera try to align the solid to the table perspective hit R key to open up the rotation and move the axis you need do not touch the orientation though quick tip hold down control key when changing the numbers for a more precise input resize it and give it 50% opacity by pressing T on your keyboard let's see what we got nice celebrate the result by creating a new solid rename at element 3d and make it Campos let's add the element 3d effect to it and open up the scene setup what I normally like to do is to start working on a static object before getting into the animated sequence so I can see how it looks inside our composition I think the strange rounded thing called prophy will work just fine select an environment that kinda match our scene tweak its brightness just a bit and hit okay now it's the time to place the object inside our 3d space open up Group one from the element 3d panel then go to create group null and click create you will see this new layer added to our composition be sure to set the timer indicator at the very first frame of our footage we will make the object stick to the blue solid we created before so open up its position and copy the values by hitting ctrl C on your keyboard then open up the group 1 null position and hit control V we need to do the same thing for the orientation open up orientation on the solid layer hit ctrl C open to no layer orientation hit control V due to the after effects metric units our trophy has become very small we can resize it by going to the particle loop tab and change its particle size looks like the object is not fully aligned to the surface this is because we forgot to copy and paste the z-rotation that we previously changed on the blue solid layer last thing we can see is that our trophy is turned by 90 degrees on the x-axis we can change it from the particle rotation option on the element 3d panel boom just like that now we can finally hide the blue solid layer and give it a try I am feeling pretty confident about it let's create a light and make this ball shine set the typist spot parallel spot and don't forget to enable cast shadows what I like to do is to set the light position and its point of interest the same as our object location so I can better understand where the light is in the 3d space just copy the position from the null layer and paste it on the position of the light then open the point of interest by pressing the a key and paste the same values now let's go back to the light position and start tweaking the numbers trying to match our scene light quick tip hold down shift while changing big values for faster response where the F is our shadow don't worry stick with me open up the element 3d scene setup and create a plane make it huge really huge raise it just a tiny bit from the ground so that it overlays a little section of the trophy then find the match shadow material and drag it on top of our plane and boom oh that's awkward scroll down and find render settings open up the shadows tab and enable it here we go I told you now adjust the light position and its point of interest trying to make the shadow align to the real ones or just the way you like it it may need few attempts good now open up our light options increase the shadow diffusion and turn down the shadow darkness reposition if you need feel free to play with the cone angle and the other options as well let's see what it looks like looks like Darth Vader is standing up just outside the shot let's try to make the shadow blend with our scene a bit more open up render settings in the element 3d panel and pump up the blur radius of the shadow map open up the ambient occlusion tab enable it and increase the intensity as well as the radius this should give it that I am sitting on your table kinda Luke alright so now it's the time to give birth to our animated character don't be scared about the following steps it is something you can easily get done in just a few minutes let's go to mixable comm this is an Adobe website with tons of animations and characters you can download for free you will need an Adobe ID to log in well you should already have one if you got After Effects right right otherwise just create your account by clicking on the sign up button once you are inside you will see two main tabs characters and animations as you can see there are lots of cool animations that someone else already created for us lazy people you can even apply filters in the search box same thing for these beautiful 3d characters okay now let's start from choosing our animation I will search for backflip cause I'm not scared just click on the animation you like and it will automatically get loaded in this white window once you are happy you can go choosing your favorite character I will select the default robot because he is my friend but you can choose whatever character you wish to put it on top of the animation here on the right side you can see the animation is made by 176 frames keep it in mind okay now just click the download button leave the format as FBX 30 frames per second with skin and no keyframe reduction download it unfortunately element 3d is not able to accept the FBX format as a sequence so we need to do one more step before getting to it I promise this is the last one go to blender.org and download the latest version of it I know what you're thinking I am NOT going to learn another 3d software I don't have time I don't want to well you don't have to we well use blender only as a converter from FBX to obj you can download it and install it in just about three minutes anyway in my personal opinion blender is an amazing free open-source 3d software you will not regret to have it on your computer ok let's get back to us just follow what I do click outside the pop-up then press the a key two times to select everything then hit the Delete key now let's go to file import FBX and search for the file we just downloaded on Maximo calm select it and click import FBX here on the timeline you can see all the keyframes our animation is made of set the time indicator on the last one then go to frame and click on set and frame let's go to file export and select wavefront obj very important note here on the left side you need to check the animation box make sure that bright materials is also checked leave the rest as default now let's choose a destination to export the file I will create a new folder on my desktop then just simply click export obj it will take a few minutes depending on how many keyframes the animation is made of once it reaches 176 we know that we are good to go okay now it's finally time to jump back into After Effects I almost forgot what we were doing oh right open up element 3d and click on import not this one go to file import and then choose 3d sequence find the folder where we exported the animation then select the first obj file and click open force the alignment to the bottom and boom wait what where the heck is our big boy Keep Calm and click on normalized size here he is we can now say goodbye to our trophy We will miss you rounded brother anyway if we play with the frame offset we can see the animation has been successfully imported alright now just click OK as you can see everything is already looking pretty good this is why I prefer to setup element 3d before importing my sequence not to mention that from now on things will become a bit more heavy for After Effects the process right it seems our big boy is a bit too big turn down the particle size to give him some reasonable dimensions nice time to see what we have created looks like the shadow is a bit messy and we also have to trim down the composition to fit the 176 frames because the animation is resetting itself find the last frame of the animation and press any key on your keyboard to trim down the composition ok now we have to fix the shadow try to reposition the light by moving its position values we need to find the best spot for the shadow surface open up the light options and lower the shadow darkness even more all right let me see looks pretty cool I guess ok now duplicate our life by hitting ctrl D make the second light as ambient type open the light options and set the intensity way down because all this light attracts too much attention let's go back to element 3d I think I will name him Jimmy if we opened Jimmy's layer we can see he is made of two separate materials we can customize his aspect by replacing them with our favourite ones I will give him a dark green plastic look Jimmy you look awesome okay too many jokes let's get back to business we need to add some motion blur to their party the usual motion blur does not work very well with 3d objects so we are going to fake it create a new adjustment layer put it on top of everything and rename it for your convenience open up the effects panel search for time then select time warp give it the speed of 100 enabled the motion blur checkbox and set the control to manual leave the rest as default if we play the footage we can see that our animated character has gained some motion blur this definitely helps blending our green buddy with the footage ok now for the finishing touches let's select the element 3d layer minimize the element panel then go to effects color correction curves try to play a bit with the curves till you are happy with the way it looks now we need a layer for mixing everything together so create a new adjustment layer and put it on top of everything go to effects color correction and select curves once again make an S curve to gain some contrast then play with the other shapes to achieve your personal color grading since I am a lazy person I will apply taints effect to it this is kinda like placing a big slice of cheese on top of everything this should helps hiding all the little and accurate details give it an amount of 7 or 8 though and here we have it this is a nice simple project that introduced me into the 3d VFX world some time ago and I thought to share it with you guys try to experiment with it find your unique combination of characters and animations and be creative it would be awesome if you would like to share your results with me I will look forward to it if you have any questions or suggestions please leave a comment down below if you enjoyed the video don't forget to drop a like if you didn't drop a dislike but if you ever want to see Jimmy again please consider to subscribe see ya [Music]

Channel: Costa VFX

Views: 179,923

Rating: 4.9607277 out of 5

Keywords: Element 3D Character Animation, After Effects, Tutorial, How to, Create animated character in After Effects, 3D Tracking, AE, E3D, obj sequence, Adobe After Effects, how to 3d animate, 3d character, 3D community, in real world, element 3d tutorial, mixamo, blender, Costa VFX, CostaVFX

Id: XDI9tIPPNHs

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019