How to use the Simulation Effects in Adobe After Effects CC (Explained Ep. 16)

[Music] hi everyone my name's Justin OD show and in this episode of every effect and after-effects explained we're gonna be taking a tour through the simulation effects folder these are some of the most powerful and unique effects available in After Effects so the first one we have is card dance this will allow us to split our image up into different rows and columns or almost like cards and animate those cards in different ways so for example I'm going to go to layer new solid and I'm just going to create a new solid layer and on here I'm going to add the gradient ramp effect that we showed in our generate video effects episode and I'll just leave it like this just for example I'll drag that underneath the clip and on the clip we can choose the gradient layer to be that black solid now let's make sure we have effects and masks chosen and now under the XY & z positions we can drop those down and we can create a little bit of offset on each of those so I can choose the source of that offset to be anything from the intensity to the red or green blue channels but if I just choose intensity you'll see that I can split this shape up now into some rows and columns so for example if I was to go to that gradient ramp layer and change it to something like a radial ramp instead you'll see how the gradient can start to affect the cards just by having different types of gradients and you can adjust the amount of columns and rows individually or you can just make them follow each other so in this way you can make these cards kind of dance in different ways and shapes that you want so this tool can get really powerful once you start linking it with expressions and different animations or you can use it in abstract creative ways and keyframe it back into your original image not only can you make these gradient layers the effect you can also just make other video clip layers the effect in this case you'll get a much more random and jittery look if you want a cool example I've done a full separate video on making cards react to music if you want to see some different ideas so I'll link you to that video if you want to explore this effect in some other ways after that we have caustics this another really cool one that allows us to create kind of a water ripley effect on our clip so in the caustics effect controls we have a choice between the bottom the water and the sky so for example if I set the water surface to that black solid layer that we created with the gradient and make sure I choose effects and masks because the gradient ramp is in effect you'll see the whole clip take on this kind of blue look which is what I have chosen as the surface color but you can make it any color you want really and if I do something like animate this gradient so let's say I add a wave warp from the distort video effects folder which we had to Episode on as well if I create this wave warp which animates through and I use that as the caustics layer you see how it's taking that black and white color information and using it to ripple and distort this new image so you can use it on video clips you could even use it on text layers or shape layers allowing you to get different unique results for distorting or rippling intro text or titles like that and it also lets you choose to use another layer as the bottom or the sky as well to get different reflections and colors into your layer and you have options on how much distortion that goes how light or gentle the water acts next up we have CC ball action now this one just kind of creates a bunch of balls out of your image if i zoom in real close you can see it just kind of makes everything into particles up close and you can animate them to make them dance and jumbled around and you can also change the spacing and the sizing between the balls next up we have CC bubbles this will create bubbles in this case since I applied on the layer it's kind of reflecting those orangish colors that were in the layer so you can make them bigger or smaller that that looks pretty cool made them really big and you'll see the reflection of whatever layer you had inside the bubbles another one like that is foam this one creates kind of bubbles however in this case generating out of a middle point regardless of your layer and you can actually make the bubbles be anything you want so under the rendering section the bubble texture you can they have a bunch of preset ones like tide or magma wrap but you can also choose a user-defined one and you can create your own bubble so for example if I set a shape or another layer as the bubble then that shape or other PNG or logo or text will emanate out of this middle point and it'll act as the bubble so this is a different one foam it's different than the CC bubbles but similar ideas to them going back in order now we have CC drizzle this one will act as if raindrops are falling on top of the image so if you look closely you can see these raindrops that are animating on top of the image almost as if we're looking top-down like a bird's eye view or even if you're just working on solid layers such as this you can add the bubbles or the drips on top of solid color layers for animation or using them with other layers like we've been doing displacements and you can choose the amount of ripples on the bubble and how long they last in duration and how often they come another one we have is si si hair this one kind of creates little thin hair fibers out of your image and it kind of bases it based on the contrast in your image so you can see in this case it'll look at what something you can kind of see the lines from the original image if I do it on this tree you'll kind of be able to see the lines of the tree and if you don't want to use the original layer you can choose a different map layer like a different gradient map layer and these hairs are transparent so if you had another layer underneath you will be able to see that other layer underneath so you could use something like this to create grass texture if you need it or maybe even actual hair that you could put on a shape and then put on somewhere where you needed hair texture there's lots of ideas where you might need some then texture like this to animate next up we have CC mr. mercury probably one of the coolest ones in here it'll just make your image kind of flow out like mercury or some sort of liquid metal and you can adjust all things about it like the radius the X&Y position so how far it flows it's just really cool even with the default settings but you can change the direction and you see the mercury droplets will like melt into each other and they're reflecting the original layer so if you put them on and different layer you'll see that reflect that layer so we have all type of settings on how fast you want them to go how much gravity pulls on them they're kind of just generating out of the center and you can also choose the animation from just explosive or twirly you have different settings and you can choose the way that they blob in and out and you can generate them just on gradient layers as well so don't think you have to draw in a video you could do like a colored gradient and mix it to make all types of different sort of flowing liquids next up we have cc particle systems this one again it kind of generates these particles almost like hair type at first out of the middle so they're kind of flowing out like sparks and you can adjust all types of things about them such as the birthrate like how often they're coming out of the middle the original position the radius and all that and also the physics of them so the gravity that resistance on them the way that they come out like twirling or explosive different types of directions or flowing up like fire so you can imagine all the different types of times that you might want to make sparks fly out of something and you can choose the color as well so if you don't want red suggesting flames you could do any sort of special color effect you want next up we have particle world so where the particle systems with 2d particle world allows you to work in 3d so I can spin this whole floor around after that we have CC pixel Paul this one we're gonna have to animate a little bit to see what happens but if I change the start time for example from zero and then I move over and I increase it a little bit you can see that it kind of explodes your image out into these different polygonal shapes and you can change it from just regular polygons or textured or squares so you have different options and you can also change the spacing amount the rotation and just different amounts but it kind of cracks your image in this way and you can reveal a layer that's behind it or a title or text next up we have CC rainfall so whereas the drizzle was creating distortions kind of flatly on top of our image the rainfall actually generates rain that drops down so on this nighttime shot it can actually look pretty realistic and where it was kind of raining anyway and I can change the size the amount of drops and the shape and the like the gravity of them the amount of wind and the direction so you can create pretty realistic rain if you need it to add that to your scene after that we have CC scatter eyes so this is kind of like the ball action or the pixel poly that we looked at it allows us to scatter our image out but in this case not into balls or anything just scattering it into pixels and it also allows us to twist the image so I can twist all of those scattered pixels right or left and remember not only can you do these for video clips but you could do them for shape or text layers so you can create cool effects where the text just kind of explodes out into pixels or just Wiggles like this similar to the rainfall is the snowfall so again this time just creating like gentle snow that's falling and it behaves a little bit differently and looks a little differently but you have all the same options adjusting the size the amount of the snow the color and tint the opacity the wind speed and all that so you can tweak all the settings to try to get some realistic snow for your scene if you needed it after that we have CC starburst again this is another one of those that burst things like the ball action and these stars will animate out towards you kind of like we're moving through space so I'll make the enemy out towards you and you can adjust the amount of scatter and the size and speed so you can see here if I have the scatter set to nothing you see how it just constantly zooms in as if we're moving through space this can be a cool way to create star fields or text titles or just if you want to generate a star field background next up we have particle playground so this is kind of like the particle world it generates a large number of particles that we can animate out from the center point so we can choose all different things about it like the gravity and the spacing and the size and the amount that's coming out and we can also not only just use particles and different colored particles but we can choose different shapes or layers to make the particles so for example if I had this PNG of a B shape or whatever else on another layer and I set the particle layer map to be that shape now we have a bunch of B's flowing out of the center and we can animate those in different ways after that we have shatter so this just again allows this kind of break through our image like in some of the previous ones now whenever you see the wireframes like in this and the foam you can always just choose to view the rendered final image it just does that to kind of save rendering time so if I go back to my layer time 0 it'll automatically apply that shatter through and if I view the final rendered image you see what happens and we can change certain settings about it such as the force and the radius of different things and we have all different types of shatters to go so like puzzle pieces or whatever and whatever it shatters into we can reveal another layer behind so do it for transitions you can do this on text you can do all types of cool 3d shatters with this and lastly we have wave world this one allows us to create a wave distortion kind of like imagine the drop the drizzle droplets on just one layer so this is the wireframe but if I change it back to the height map we see what it does it creates differences between black and white contrast depending on let's say like the higher it is the darker or lighter it is and so we can use these as layer masks for other layers for example like we had with the caustics effect if I use the caustics effect on this layer again just to wrap up this tutorial and I changed the water layer to that clip with the effects for the height map then I have the information that we created from the wave world being used as the kind of displacement or distortion map for this caustics effect so you can use it as a lot of different type of effects and layers use black and white information for the displacement or layer mask so can come in handy for lots of different combinations so that's a brief tour of everything in the simulation effects folder in the next episode of the series we're going to be going over everything any stylize folder so if you're not subscribed to my channel definitely do that so you don't miss any of my new videos I'm covering all of the effects in Adobe After Effects in this playlist episode by episode thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next episode

Channel: Justin Odisho

Views: 23,805

Keywords: justin odisho, editing, filmmaking, video editing, photo editing

Id: HWmax5ukRq4

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020