Shatter | Effects of After Effects

[Music] shatter is found under the simulation category and i think this is one of the most fun effects in after effects and really one of the most powerful effects it allows you to completely disintegrate a layer but do it in such a controlled way that it can be used in so many different types of ways so i'm going to go ahead and apply it to my logo here and immediately we're going to get this wireframe grid preview and that's controlled right over here with this view property it's set to wireframe plus forces by default now this effect is very old obviously computers have become much more powerful and are able to handle a lot more than they did when this effect was created so you likely don't need a wireframe preview to be able to work with the shatter effect but it still serves a good purpose and we're definitely going to be looking at that in a little bit but for now i'm just going to switch this to rendered which is the top option on the list and this will give us the final result and then just press the spacebar immediately my logo shatters into a bunch of pieces and they're all rectangle shape it kind of looks like bricks this is the most basic example of what this effect will do it will take your layer and shatter it into a bunch of little pieces now you'll notice right away that this is getting cut off by the transform bounding box of my layer so what i'll do is just delete that effect and then pre-compose this layer i'll call it logo and move all the attributes to the new composition that way the new pre-comp is the size of the comp i'm already in and if i apply shatter to it now it's going to size to the comp and those shattered pieces will render throughout the entire scene now this is a pretty complex effect it's going to take a while to get through everything but let's just start at the top and work our way down we've already looked at the view options there are more but we'll get to those in a little bit with any of these views we have the option to render everything that this effect produces just the layer that we've applied it to you'll notice that disappears as soon as the shatter simulation happens or just the pieces so no source layer only once the simulation starts do we see those pieces and they start to fly off and the logo disappears this is great if you want to separate the source layer from the shattered pieces or maybe you want to have a couple of instances of shatter to have different sizes of pieces and more fine-tuned control of how your shattered pieces look i'm going to change that back to all and we'll go to the shape section this is where we choose what all the shattered pieces shapes actually are and this is a great point to switch our view from rendered back to one of these wireframe views if i go just to wireframe then we're going to see just the shape of those pieces that are shattering apart so the pattern is set to bricks and sure enough that looks like a brick wall we have lots of patterns to choose from if you go to that list there are many presets in here one called eggs and it's the shape of eggs what you'll notice as i scrub through this is that this is actually 3d geometry i believe this effect was introduced into after effects in the early 90s so the fact that we have 3d geometry accurate true 3d geometry inside of after effects at that point is pretty amazing so you can choose from any of these options glass is probably one that you'll be looking for because it shatters in this very glass-like pattern but you can even use a custom shatter map if we go to the pattern and all the way at the top is custom my tiles are going to go away until i choose a custom shatter map layer so i'm just going to make a new solid layer and i'll call this shatter map click ok and we'll just generate a checkerboard so i'll add the checkerboard effect and change the blending mode to normal and my color of those checkers to black and i'll make this a little bit bigger so now i just have a solid black and white checkerboard turn that off go to my logo and choose that layer as the chatter map and change it to effects and masks as the source so that it actually sees those effects and right away that checkerboard pattern is now being used to generate the 3d geometry driving this simulation it's using those brightness values of the checkerboard to carve out the 3d geometry needed to create this shatter and there's this cool little checkbox right here that says white tiles fixed if i check that on then the white tiles aren't going to go anywhere they stay in place and if i change this back to the rendered view then we can see what that looks like i'll play it back and only the black tiles are the ones that are shattering out now if i uncheck white tiles fixed then everything's going to break and this shatter map can be absolutely anything so it doesn't have to be a regular pattern like this checkerboard i could instead do a fractal noise bring that out now this is a very random shatter map i'll turn this back on and we'll take a look at what that looks like so much finer details now it does take longer to render because there's a lot more information in that shatter map but it gives a very different look now you'll notice that there are lots of smaller pieces and then some bigger chunks that are falling at different rates and exploding at different velocities we're going to get to that in a little bit but your shatter map determines some of that information if i change this back to wireframe you can see just how complicated that shatter map actually is so take that into account when you're creating shatter map you might want to turn the complexity down if you're using something like fractal noise and then it'll be a little bit easier to process and generate that 3d geometry but i want to show you one more thing before we move on if i add a gradient ramp right on top of that fractal noise and i'll just put it at kind of a random angle and then bring the fractal noise after it and set its blend mode to overlay now we're going to get that gradient affecting the brightness values of that fractal noise and maybe i'll just make it a little bit more linear across the screen we'll go back to this logo layer to the front of the animation you'll notice that there's basically nothing on the left or right shattering anymore and that's because it takes that shatter map into account if i move the shadow map below the logo you'll be able to see that detail and how it follows that pattern actually this might be even easier to see if i turn the fraxel noise off when we put the checkerboard back on it's taking these squares right in the middle right in the center of that gradient and everything to the left of it is basically staying one piece if i move forward you'll see that and everything on the right it's a little hard to see let me switch this back to rendered everything on the right is shattering out at a different rate now to make this even clearer i'm going to go into my logo and turn on the background layer and that way we can see the entire shape shattering out as i scrub through here you'll notice that the left side of the frame is staying really solid and it's taking a lot of these black tiles with it from the right side that's because the effect is looking at all of the black tiles and how they're touching basically and turning that into a single piece of geometry but this left half of the frame the reason that's getting grouped together is because that's being affected by the gradient ramp if i turn that off we don't get that anymore this effect is taking anything that is 50 percent gray or darker and combining it into a single piece of geometry as long as those colors are touching if i adjust my gradient ramp interactively you can see that pushing it over or pulling it in further to the right is affecting how that geometry is broken up same thing for the right side if i pull this in more or less of that is kind of going to fly out so this obviously has a lot of potential for customization on how the actual shatter simulation looks but let's not dive too deep into that i'm just going to turn that off for now go back to my logo and change this to say glass so it's shattering into these glass pieces and why don't we just make the background black i'll turn that off so it's nice and easy to see the next property is repetitions and this is how much the tile is going to repeat so since we can see the entire frame shattering now because of that green background i'm just going to turn that repetitions up and you'll see that my tile is shrinking down we begin to see some repetitions though so if you're applying it to the entire frame like i am that's going to be pretty noticeable but if i go back into my logo turn that background off then we're just shattering my logo and at the background with it and it's not nearly as noticeable so i could find a spot where it's shattering and really turn those repetitions up so we have lots of tiny little particles and i could even switch this to my wireframe view to see how that's being broken up and maybe just crank this up to 200 this is probably a ridiculous amount of geometry but as you can see it's able to render it fairly quickly so let's switch that back to the rendered view and see how it looks on my logo not bad at all now this effect does not support motion blur if i turn it on and it's on in my comp you'll see that nothing has changed that is unfortunate but you can use an effect like cc force motion blur just on top of the shatter effect and this does a really great job of artificially generating motion blur it is a little bit slow but it's something that you'd probably apply at the end as a final pass anyway and just make sure that your motion blur samples are high enough that you get nice smooth blur on all of those pieces all right i'm gonna get rid of that effect go back into shatter and change those repetitions back down to the default of 10 and turn my logo background back on so we can look at the next property which is direction if i just go a frame or two forward so we can see the entire shape of that shatter this is just the rotation of the tiles and the more repetitions you have it's going to rotate all of those together you can also change the origin so you can shift around that texture if you don't want it to be aligned to the center of the frame and then next we have extrusion depth this is exactly what it sounds like it's the depth of the extrusion of this 3d geometry so if i turn this up my pieces are going to get a lot thicker and you'll notice that my pieces are actually moving around when i'm doing this because the extrusion depth is affecting the mass of every piece that's being shattered and this effect actually accounts for mass when shattering these pieces out and simulating the physics so the extrusion depth actually plays a role in how the pieces actually fall now if you want this to look like thin glass then you probably want to turn that extrusion depth down see that there's just a little bit of an edge there with all the lighting and shading or if you want it to look like it's big ice chunks you might want to increase that a little bit so they look a lot thicker but it's completely up to you how you want it set i'm going to reset it to its default as well as the origin and that's it for the shape section next up is force 1 and force 2. these are what cause the shatter simulation to start and what determine how violent of a shatter it actually is so let's go into force one and take a look at what options we have first we have position this is where that shatter is going to take place so again if i go to the first couple frames of the simulation and just shift this over this is changing where the point of shatter is actually happening from so imagine a baseball being thrown at a window this is where that baseball is hitting the window and starting the shatter so let's say that i want to put the baseball throw right here well the tile for this pattern is kind of aligned to the center of the frame so i might want to go into the shape and shift the origin around to match that force point so now it's shattering from that point and it looks like the glass is actually breaking at that point as well but it stops right here and that's because of the force radius i'm going to skip over depth for a second and take a look at that if i turn that radius up or down it's going to control how far out from that point things actually break so if i make this really small then it's going to kind of look like stronger glass where the object is being thrown through it and most of the glass doesn't shatter or if i make the radius much larger then it can just completely obliterate the entire screen to the point where we don't really see any of those pieces sticking anymore just the whole thing is completely shattered i'll reset that back to its default and we'll go to the depth option next you can think of this as how big of an object is shattering this plane of the glass if i switch this from rendered to wireframe plus forces and then i add a camera to my scene by going up to layer new camera i'll just set this to be a 50 millimeter camera click ok this effect can actually respond to 3d cameras and after effects i just need to come down to the camera system and change it from camera position which is the effects camera to comp camera and now that i did that the perspective is updated to match the scene camera and i can orbit around to see this from any direction again this is really impressive that an effect as old as it is works like this in 3d alright so now that i've rotated the camera i'm going to switch this to the wireframe plus forces view and we can actually see this blue sphere this is a representation of that force so if i back it up you see that it's aligned right with that glass i'll rotate around so you can see this big blue sphere is pushing through this plane which is what's causing that shatter i can move it around with the position so let's say i want to move it to that side and now it's going to shatter over here and we've already looked at the radius that's what this is doing right here but if i adjust the depth this is basically the z position of that force so if i back it up far enough to where it's no longer touching that glass you can see there's a separation now and i scrub forward nothing is going to happen so this is actually how you can animate or time the shatter whenever you want so if i wanted it to happen 10 frames in then i'm going to set a keyframe at the depth right there and then go forward maybe three or four frames and bring the depth into a point where it hits that glass and maybe i'll just set it down to zero so it's aligned that center point of the sphere to the plane of a glass i'll press u to bring up those keyframes and now you can see that force animating forward and hitting that glass but it doesn't happen until i set it to now i can make this take longer if i drag this out and maybe even easy ease these keyframes now my force is going to move a lot slower so you can completely control the timing using that depth property let me undo back to where we are at the faster animation and take a look at the strength property you can kind of think of this like how much energy is being transferred from this force to the glass so if i turn it up the shatter is going to be much more intense that glass is going to fly out of there really quickly if i turn it down on the other hand down to a very low value then the glass is just kind of going to break and then slowly fall and drop to the ground so that's what the strength property does i'm going to reset it back to its default now let's look at force 2. we have the exact same set of controls but we're not really seeing anything in this wireframe plus forces view and that's because the radius is set to zero as soon as i increase this we get a second sphere so this just gives you a secondary set of controls for shattering either a different part of the frame or allowing the pieces to maybe break at a lower velocity i'll turn the strength down of that one so that it just first breaks those pieces slowly and then let's say right here i want another force to come in and really shatter those pieces well i'm actually going to move the position of the second force down and then to the left so that they catch these pieces as they're falling down and let's make the radius bigger as well so i'm going to align it just before it starts touching those pieces and i'll orbit around so we can see this force again set a keyframe for the depth and then go forward maybe three frames bring that depth forward really far and turn that strength up a lot press u to see those keyframes and then play this back so force one and then force two and maybe i'll space those keyframes out a little bit longer so one and then two so let's switch this to our rendered view so we see this from the front i'll change this actually to the camera position so we're looking directly at it we have force one and then force two so that's how you can use the two forces together now you don't have to only have one initial hit let's say that i broke this side of the frame and then i wanted to move the force one from that point over and up to the right side of the screen so that it shatters more of my frame i can do that press u so we can see those keyframes and actually let's make it happen even a little bit later so we have force one force two and then force one moves up and to the right to shatter more of the frame there's so many options here now i'm going to go ahead and get rid of the depth of force 2 and turn the radius back down to 0 so it doesn't affect anything and then i'm going to get rid of these keyframes on the position in depth and let's say that i want to animate that force 1 a little bit more precisely well i'm just going to add a null object by pressing ctrl alt shift y and i'm going to name this force 1 and then double click on that position for force 1 so i see it down here all i want to do now is link it to the position of that null object by using the property pick whip right here i'm going to click and drag to that position and now wherever my null object goes that's where the position of the shatter effect is going to go so i'm going to make the radius of this much smaller let's switch to our wireframe and forces one more time turn that radius way down go into my shape and align that to the center of the comp i'll just reset the origin and turn the repetitions up to say 150. so i have a ton of little shards showing up now we'll go back to our rendered view and i'll just take force one and move it to the bottom left set a position keyframe move forward a little bit and just randomly position this in different parts of my comp and that way it'll just make this random shape and i'll just change the arc of this motion path a little bit to give us something that's a little more unique and then easy ease these first and last keyframes and control click on these three in the middle to have them be auto bezier so that null object now travels along this motion path nice and smooth and eases in and out of some of those keyframes but nothing is shattering and that's because of the depth of that force one so i'm going to click and drag on that towards a value of zero until we start to see shattering happen and let's change back to our comp camera and the wireframe and forces view just so we can see exactly what's happening if i rotate this to the back side you can see right there the sphere is just barely touching the backside of that glass i might want to bring that forward all the way to a value of zero actually so now it's poking through let's go back to our rendered view and to our camera position and what's going to happen now is we're basically drawing on a shatter throughout the entire comp and you can control that size with the depth or the radius kind of like a brush width so if i wanted to make that smaller i'll just turn that radius way down low and we've just got this carving out happening on top of our comp but something that you'll notice is that those pieces are actually falling behind the glass we're hardly seeing any of them fall forward to fix that i can adjust the depth a little bit it needs to go in a positive direction so that is shooting those pieces forward and not backward but that's an important distinction to make you can set the depth at the front of the plane to shatter things backwards as well so it's very powerful and you could even link this up with say some text if you wanted to make it look like it was carving out of a piece of rock or something like that now let's take a look at the gradient property this is going to allow you to control the timing of the shatter using a gradient layer so i'm going to just duplicate the shatter map and i'll rename this gradient layer and we'll get rid of the fractal noise and the checkerboard i'll turn this on so we can see it and this is now just a gradient ramp moving from left to right and i'm going to make it perfectly aligned to that comp so just set these points so they're from top left to top right and we have a gradient from black to white i'll unsolder that layer and choose it as my gradient layer source right here and make sure to choose effects and masks as the source now this is going to be easier to see if i go into my logo and turn that background on and we'll turn the background off of this main comp and if i scrub through this nothing is happening and that's because the shatter threshold value is set to zero so even though i have a force right in the center of my frame and it's poking through that plane that's ready to be shattered nothing happens until we increase that shatter threshold so i'll go forward in time and increase it and my layer starts to disappear so what happens if i keyframe this i'll go forward one second in time and set a keyframe at zero then go forward to say three seconds and turn this up to one hundred percent i'll zoom out a little bit press u so we can see those keyframes and then play back nothing happens for the first second and then the shatter wipes across the screen from right to left even though my force has not moved let's change this to wireframes plus forces and the comp camera so we can see this from a different angle the force is not moving at all nothing happens for the first second and then the shatter moves across that plane the reason this is happening is because the gradient layer is determining the timing of the shatter regardless of where the force actually is so i'm going to turn that force up on the radius so that it covers the entire plane and now all of those tiles are going to shatter across the frame it starts with the lightest pixels and moves in the direction of the darker pixels i could invert that just by clicking on invert gradient so now it's going to move from left to right i also could have left that unchecked and just modified my gradient layer swap those two colors and now it's going to go from left to right i could also change this to say a radial ramp and move that bright spot to the center of the frame instead of the top left corner and now it's going to shatter from that center point outwards or wherever i put that bright point now because my gradient is getting clipped off to this black from this point on it gets to a certain point in that shatter where everything else remaining just shatters so if you want to have a nice smooth shatter you need to make sure that you don't have any clipped off areas like that if i brought the black in the exact same thing is going to happen it's going to get to a point where everything else in that gradient layer is the same value and everything that part of the gradient represents is going to shatter at the same time again you don't have to use just a standard gradient you could make this a lot more interesting if we say add a fractal noise maybe turn the complexity down to 3 and scale it up a little bit i'll turn that layer off so we don't see it and change my shattered view back to camera position and rendered and now the pattern is going to be much more random with the way that it's shattering because we're using a random pattern on this gradient layer if you don't want to be quite so random instead of a fractal noise we could bring that gradient ramp back in i'll set these two points and then add say a turbulent displace rate after it increase the amount so that we get something that's a little bit more random than just a straight gradient and maybe change it to turbulent smoother and i'll probably want to change the shatter shape to something a little bit more detailed and turn the repetitions up but now it's going to shatter from left to right but in a little bit more of a random pattern because of that turbulent displace i could make that amount a little bit more extreme i don't want to clip anything out but now it's going to be a little bit more organic than just a linear gradient so that's just one way that you can use the gradient layer i'm going to get rid of those keyframes and reset the effect one more time now let's take a look at the physics of how these pieces are actually falling if i get to a point where those pieces are really shattering out i can change the rotation speed if i increase it then those pieces are really going to rotate a lot they're going to be moving very quickly or if i change it down to a speed of 0 then they're not going to rotate at all they just fly out and stay oriented the way that they were originally if i increase that a little bit again we can change the tumble axis right now it's set to free meaning that all the pieces can tumble in any direction or i could change it to none and again that's going to negate the rotation speed it's effectively saying these pieces may not rotate we can also choose any axis to tumble on so if you only want them to rotate on the x-axis you can do that and now you can see that they're all just rotating that one direction and if i zoom in nice and close and increase or decrease that rotation speed you can see exactly what that's doing i could change that to the y axis and then they'll rotate in that direction only or a combination of two i'm going to set that back to free so they can tumble any direction they want and then we have a randomness control this does exactly what it sounds like the higher the value the more random the shattering is going to be you see some pieces are flying really extremely and others aren't moving quite as fast if i turn that randomness all the way down to zero then everything is going to move very uniformly let's get back to where we were the next property is viscosity and this was a little bit more difficult to wrap your head around but it's actually not that complicated this determines how quickly the pieces are going to start slowing down after they've been shattered so if i turn the viscosity up to its maximum and i play this back see how the pieces kind of explode out and then just float down imagine if something exploded or shattered underwater there might be an initial force that really shot those pieces out but then the water would slow them down and then sink to the bottom that is the viscosity of the environment basically now this is moving much more slowly than probably water would allow maybe this is moving through paint or honey something really thick very viscous i could turn this down and then it won't be quite as extreme it's still going to shatter out but then slowly fall so the higher that number the quicker it's going to decelerate and if you turn the viscosity all the way off there will be no deceleration whatsoever i'm going to increase this back up to a higher number because the next property is more visible with this setting which is mass variance so the pieces blow out really violently and then start to float down if i turn up the mass variance it's going to randomize how much mass difference there is between shattered pieces and this affects how quickly they fall or how easily they move through that viscosity so let me play this back and you'll notice that some pieces are dropping a whole lot faster than the others and some of them are hardly moving at all so the more mass there is to an object the quicker it's going to move through that viscous environment next we have gravity so we can control how everything is affected uniformly by gravity if i increase it to 6 things are going to fall twice as fast if i change it down to 0 things aren't going to fall at all they're just going to explode out and continue in the direction that they were moving when they were shattered now i can't invert the gravity by changing that to a negative number but i can change the gravity direction so if i change this back to a value of 3 and change my gravity direction to 0 now the pieces are going to shatter and fall upwards you can change this to absolutely any angle you want and you can even animate it so let's say that i started at this weird 80 degree direction go forward and i just rotate that gravity to the opposite side then it's going to start flowing in one direction and the gravity shifts and now it's going in a different direction all right i'm going to get rid of those key frames set this back to 180 and the next option is gravity inclination gravity inclination is the direction in z space that these pieces are falling so if i set this to its minimum of negative 90 then the pieces are going to fall backwards and the gravity direction isn't going to change anything anymore because it's at its minimum value of negative 90. so pieces will fall away from the camera let me turn that viscosity down a little bit so we can really see that those pieces explode out and then fall away from the camera if i change this to the maximum value of 90 then they're going to fall towards the camera so this would be a great way to have a transition flying towards the camera but if i turn this to some place in between so let's rotate it a little bit backwards then we can still use the gravity direction to point that gravity in a specific direction you can use both of them together all right let's reset these two values and move on to the next property which is textures and this might be a little bit easier to see if we change the shape back to bricks just so we have a regular pattern and i'll turn the repetitions back down to 10. you'll notice that we have options to choose layers for front side and back these are the actual textures that are applied to the 3d geometry of all of these pieces so let's just stop right here and we'll take a look at the properties we can change front side and back mode are all set to layer by default what this means is it's taking the color information from the layer we've applied it to to texture this 3d geometry but i could change the front mode from layer to say color and then it's going to change to white because that's what my color property up here is set to but i could change that to any color i want if i wanted these pieces to just have a flat solid color i could also change this to tinted layer and if i do that and choose a color like maybe this bright pink click ok then it's tinting the front faces of those layers i'll go back to the beginning you can see it's completely changed my layer but only on the front face i could also change this to color plus opacity and then it's going to just fill it but then give me the option to dial it back a little bit if i wanted to or i could say layer plus opacity and what this is going to do is allow me to turn just the face of those pieces up or down using that opacity slider you can see here and here especially it's the actual opacity for that face and then the final option is tinted layer plus opacity so again it'll tint the layer first and then allow us to turn the opacity of it down and you can use these modes for any one of the faces so i'm going to change that front mode back to layer and then say i want the sides of this to be a tinted layer plus opacity and tint it maybe a darker green click ok and i could turn the opacity of the sides down a little bit if i wanted i actually don't think i need to so i'll just leave it like that and then on the back side let's just make that the flat green color so change the back mode to color and now the back side of those shattered pieces are all going to be that dark green maybe i'll make it a little bit more saturated and brighter so we can see it more easily now there's a little bit more dimension to those pieces breaking off but that's just using the built-in modes i could change the side mode to say a layer and then choose a different layer it's currently using the layer that we've applied shatter to but i could just quickly make another checker board i'll call this checkerboard and apply the checkerboard effect change the blend mode to normal and the color to black now i have this checkerboard texture that i can select as the sides layer i'll select that checkerboard change it to effects and masks and now the sides of my geometry have that checkerboard pattern applied and i might need to change the size of those checkers to get them to show up on all sides but there you have it all right let's reset this effect one more time go back to rendered and take a look at the camera system we've already seen camera position and comp camera which allows us to switch between the camera position controls which are right here allowing us to just rotate this scene however we want shift it around and even animate the z position and focal length in and out as well as control the transform order to any one of these options but we could switch that to the comp camera if you're more familiar with after effects 3d controls and you want it to interact with other layers in the scene then the comp camera is definitely your best bet but there's one more option here called corner pins if i choose that option this makes the corner pin section available what this allows you to do is use these corner point controls to match the perspective of a surface basically so if i bring out this picture of a floating phone and i align these corner points to it then it's going to very quickly be aligned to the surface of the phone now obviously the dimensions of my comp are much different than this phone so actually let's just rotate this picture sideways and then align those corner pins one more time i'll move this one up here down here and you'll notice that that 3d geometry is shifting its perspective to match however i set these corner points which can be really useful for alignment if i wanted that phone screen to shatter i could even isolate the texture from that photo and set it as the layer source and then replace what's behind it with something that looks like a broken phone screen obviously this would look a lot more realistic if we change to the glass and set the repetitions up a lot maybe turn the depth down to maybe .05 those repetitions are probably a little extreme but that's just a quick way to align your shatter simulation to a flat surface i'm going to change that back to camera position and reset these properties and the next option is lighting and this is how the geometry is actually being shaded so let me get rid of this picture we'll find a point where we can see the lighting on these individual pieces of geometry i'll make them a little bit thicker so it's easier to see and we have some controls that are familiar to other effects the light type is set to distant source by default so you can think of this kind of like the sun something that's extremely far away and lighting everything very evenly i could turn that light intensity up or down to make everything brighter or darker i could change the light color so if i wanted to be a little bit more of a warm light i could make that more orange or a cool light however you want that to look i could change the light position so if i wanted it to be appearing from the top right corner i could do that and if i wanted it to be much harsher lighting i could turn the light depth back and that's essentially moving that light backwards in z space or i could pull it out further to have more even lighting we also have ambient light to just fill in some of those shadows you don't want those shadows to be quite so extreme now i can go back up here and change it from distance source to point source and now it's going to be more like a light bulb attached to that point control so let's set the light depth to zero and now that light bulb basically is going to be right where that point is on both the x and y as well as z positions if i push that light depth forward then it's going to be in front of our shattered simulation and if i move it to a negative number it'll be behind that simulation next is first comp light so it can actually interact with one after effects light if i go up to layer new light i'll make this one a point light as well and turn the intensity up to 100 click ok now it's going to respond to that light now my camera is off to the side which is why this is oriented strangely but if i change my camera system to comp camera it'll make a little bit more sense now we can see that light i can move it around my scene wherever i'd like it to be and i can even increase the intensity just by using the intensity of that light the color of this light also affects the color of the simulation but it only works with one light if i duplicate this light and move it over here it actually interacts but my first light has been disabled that's what it means by first comp light whichever one is highest in the layer hierarchy okay i'm going to get rid of those two lights change this back to distance source close up lighting and finally we have material so let's switch to our camera position one more time and i guess i need to bring that light depth forward just a little bit so we can see that lighting a little bit more clearly and actually let's move it up into the right a little bit so we can really see that and i'll increase the intensity the material options allow us to modify the diffuse reflection so if i turn that up or down the reflected light will be more or less intense i can increase or decrease the specular reflection to make this look a little bit more glossy so the default there's no specular this is what it looks like very flat if i turn it up then it will be much more shiny much more glossy looking and then we have highlight sharpness which affects the specular so if i turn that up we're going to have a much more clear shiny surface basically and if i turn it down and then it'll be more of a rough material that hits that light much more uniformly and looks more like a matte material so you can really dial that in to look however you'd like the only thing we haven't looked at is these other view options like wireframe front view which if you compare that to wireframe is just a perspective shift it's the same difference as if we were to change to our front view in after effects my screen went blank because my camera system still set the camera position but if i changes the comp camera you'll see there's basically no perspective anymore on this front view i'm going to change that back to the active camera and change this back to camera position but in addition to that one view we also have a wireframe plus forces and then wireframe front view plus forces so let's say that you were just rotating this camera around within the effect and you really moved it around and now you want to just look at this simulation straight on without affecting the camera well then you would just switch this to front view and it will go right back to where you were but that is everything that shatter has to offer like i said it is a very powerful simulation effect and there are just so many things that you can do with it there's no way that i could cover all of them in one video fortunately it's been around for a long time and there are many tutorials out there that make great use of it so just do a little searching and you'll be sure to find some tutorials that take advantage of all the powerful features that shatter has to offer but that's everything you need to know about the shatter effect 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: 64,702

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

Id: UJI7cbilZYA

Length: 37min 46sec (2266 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022