FREE DOWNLOAD - Layer Bender for After Effects (How to Curve Layers in 3D)

hey After Effects users I have what I think will be a really handy tool for you all it's a completely free download I call it layer bender and it will let you bend curve or curl any layer in After Effects so text images footage pre-m layers solid layers anything that you put in the pre-m can be curved and you get a lot of control over that curve so you can see with the controls I can tell it where the bend should start and how wide the bend is and you can even curl layers into a spiral uh as you may have guessed this is done by breaking up the layer into a bunch of segments and you can delete segments or add more segments to make the bend smoother and also you can select any of those middle segments and rotate them to add a new Bend to the layer so you can have multiple curves so in this tutorial I'll go over the controls and I'll show you some important things like how to add segments and how to change the dimensions I should mention that there is another way to curve layers in After Effects if you go here and change the renderer from classic 3D to Cinema 4D then each 3D layer will have these geometry options and you can curve layer and add segments um so why do I even bother making this tool well not everyone wants to use the Cinema 4D renderer not Everyone likes the Cinema 4D renderer it's a lot slower and it's not always compatible with people's projects I did a test where I opened a bunch of my own projects that I made with the classic renderer and when I switched to the Cinema 4D renderer for about 80% of those projects it completely screwed it up uh because something in the project wasn't compatible with that renderer so I just never use it CU I don't like it um I don't know maybe I'm doing it wrong maybe you guys understand it better and you think it's great and whoop-de-do for you but I stay away from it uh so this tool is for people like me who want to use the classic 3D renderer uh I actually developed this for another project because I needed curved projection map for a template called infinite Horizon uh that template will let you drop in your landscape footage and make a variety of really trippy perspective bending scenes and you can curve your land or oceans in different ways you should go watch the demo video cuz it's really cool it's got scary music and everything I'll leave a link for that in the description all right um let's talk about layer Bender uh this is a template so the the way that you'll use it uh you'll probably want to import it into your existing project so just go to file and import and file and choose layer Bendera and it'll appear in a folder here uh this comp has your bended layer and this comp is the pre-m so you put your footage or text or whatever you want into here uh this comp is HD so 1920 by 1080 pixels it can be any size you want but there are some steps you have to follow before you can change the dimensions and I'll go over them in a minute um you can hide this layer with the Grid or delete it if you want I'll just uh leave it alone and we'll look at the the bended layer comp so we have 21 segments to this layer by default and you can see they're each parented to the layer above it um now you probably have another comp that you're working in and you'll want to transfer this bended layer to that comp so to do that just select this segment one layer first and hold down shift and select the segment end layer then you can copy and paste all the layers to your other comp uh you have to do it in that order because it preserves the order of these layers when you paste them all right notice how the the top layer says control layer all the other layers are ultimately parented to this first segment so you can move scale or rotate this layer to move the entire thing also this is the layer where the customization controls so if we look in our effect controls panel we have these layer Bender controls here so we can choose which direction we want to bend from Left Right top or bottom and the Anchor Point of our bended layer changes accordingly uh you can adjust the bend angle and this incremental Bend lets you curl it or curve it into a spiral for a tighter spiral use a a lower Bend angle and a higher incremental Bend Bend start lets you choose where to start curving the layer it's at 50% now uh that's 50% of the layer's width so it starts curving at the middle of the layer uh Bend width is how tight the curve is that's also a percentage of the width Gap control you might see Tiny gaps uh between segments and they look like lines uh you can try selecting all the segments and setting the blending mode to Alpha ad or you can increase this Gap control and it will extend the width of the segments so that they overlap a little and you can see if I crank this way up you get this Jagged effect and then scale beginning and scale end you can stretch the first or last segments if you want and then we have some instructions here so you can quickly reference how to do these two basic things uh changing the dimensions and adding or deleting segments uh by the way the full instructions are in the layer comments here or in the instructions comp so you don't have to read these uh but these are the some different things that you can do um so let me show you how to add or remove segments first because that's easier all you need to do is set the bend angle to zero and then you can delete as many of the the middle segments as you want any layers between segment two and segment end or to add segments you can duplicate the middle segments or copy and paste them and then move them down to the bottom above this segment end layer and these numbers don't have to continue in the right order but I feel better inside when they do so to keep them in order I'll copy and paste one of these uh one at a time down to the bottom as many times as I please um now we need to parent all of these those new layers to the layer above it and the fastest way to do that is with this little spiral icon this is called pick whipping so just pick whip each layer to the layer above it by dragging that spiral to the layer and uh don't forget to do that for the segment end layer as well and then you're done you can bend this layer now to change the dimensions of the layer uh we have to add a couple more steps so first like before I'll set the bend angle to zero and then I'll reset the transform properties of my bended layer so I'll expand the segment one layer and next to transform I'll click the reset button then I'll select all my segments and set their parenting To None now I can open the pre-m by double clicking one of these segments uh command K or control K to open the composition settings panel and I can change this to whatever I want I'll do 3,000 pixels wide and 500 pixels high and then I'll go back and we need to parent them again so just pick whip all the layers starting with segment two uh segment one doesn't need it and then it's ready Freddy that's about it I hope you find the effect useful for your motion designs the link to download it for free is in the Des description and there's a bunch of other really cool free stuff for After Effects users on the website as well as some really fun templates that are not like any other After Effects templates you can find uh the latest is Solaris which will let you create realistic Sun animations or shape shift which lets you make some really unique uh perspective bending transition effects for your footage there's also landscaper uh landscaper lets you create custom 3D Landscapes and after effects almost any kind of landscape you can imagine you can create it and it comes with tons of nature effects and an automatic Sky to adjust the lighting and you can easily add bodies of water like lakes or rivers or oceans also 30 finished Landscapes come with it so you can just drop some 3D title into those and they're ready to render another recent and popular template is creation trippy effects which is a huge collection of trippy animations that you can customize as well as trippy effects for your footage so lots of ways to imitate the look of being high or drunk and just a lot of other creative and interesting looks for your footage and lastly I'll show you creation artifacts which is a huge collection of art looks for your footage uh so you can turn your footage into just about any artistic medium you can think of like pencil sketch or paintings clamation uh paper cutouts chalk on chalkboard and a whole lot more uh so I hope you poke around on the website um that's it I'll see you in the next video which that's a weird thing to say cuz I don't see you and you don't see me but there it [Music] is

Channel: Creation Effects

Views: 5,905

Keywords: after effects, curve, bend, layer, 3d, adobe after effects, free, how to bend a layer, how to curve a layer, tutorial, curving, curl, bending, classic renderer, free download, renderer, cinema 4d, text, solid, shape, footage, image, graphics, segments, template

Id: uN3bdviK4qI

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2023