This NEW After Effects Update Changes Everything!!!

a massive update for Adobe After Effects just dropped and it's about to take your projects to a whole new level as you might know Adobe recently released an update allowing you to import 3D models in After Effects I also made a video about it and concluded that it's a great addition but it was still missing a few key features and the biggest missing feature just got added the ability to import animated 3D models that's huge previously if you wanted to add something like a dragon it to your video it would have look pretty lifeless and static but with this latest feature you can make it look something like this and that's exactly what we're going to create today now you can of course use any footage you want but if you want to follow along with the exact same footage as me you can download it from the link in the description below once you've done that we can open up after effects and get started all right so here we are in the beta version of Adobe After Effects here in your Creative Cloud app just select beta applications and download After Effects beta and the first thing we're going to do is add a 3D camera tracker effect um and check advanced detailed analysis so that if we import our 3D model later it will stick to one place and while after effects is tracking the footage we can already search for our 3D model I got mine from sketchfab here the demon Dragon it's free to download and already animated and I think it looks great so just select download model and then here download the gatf version and when we come back we can see that after effects already tracked our footage and this right here looks pretty good so we can just select a tracking dot right here um I take this one right click on it and then just select create solid and camera and now we can see that it's tracked perfectly next we can import our drag so just unzip the zip file and then drag the scene file right here in After Effects and then just import it in the timeline we can call it Dragon right here and click okay and now we can see our 3D model here at the top so just move it down maybe rotate a little bit The Anchor Point is at the wrong place for this model so just press Y and then move it up like this maybe a little bit more forward and yes now we can just move it around maybe a little bit closer to the camera but if we press play now we can see that it still doesn't move so like in the previous version of After Effects but if we now go to the dragon layer unfold it then we see a new option right here the animation options just unfolded and under name select flying or however it's called for your model and if we now press play we can see that our dragon is animated perfect that's already working as the next step we can animate our Dragon to fly into the distance so first of all maybe make him a little bit bigger so he seems a little more scary and then just press P for the position create a key frame in the beginning and move the dragon right here um out of frame and then go one frame further and drag him all the way into the distance and move this key frame to the end so if we press play now we can see that it's already working but we still need to fine tune it further to make it really look good so go to the one view option right here and change it to two views and the second window will pop up right next to it and this window here is the top view you can change it to whatever side you want but I'm going to leave it here as the top view and with this view we can just fine tune it a lot better so maybe just select the first key frame right click on it then key frame interpolation and change the spatial interpolation to continue use Bia or however you pronounce this and click okay and now you get this handle here at the bottom so that you can further fine tune your graph next we can create a key frame for the orientation move to the end and then maybe rotate it a little bit more um maybe make it straight or something then move to the beginning and change it here before we're moving on with the next step make sure that you're happy with your dragon fly path because once we're done with the next step it's really hard to do changes okay let's say I'm happy with this animation right here so let's just go to the point where have flaps this wings um that's right here for me because if Dragon would really exist they would always fly fast when they flap their wings and then gradually become slower until they flap their wings again and then they would become faster again that's exactly what we're going to add as well so just go to the point where flaps the wings and create a key frame and then move on to the next time where have flaps the wings and create another key frame and here another one next we can open up the graph editor and select one of these key frames right here and just move them down and then we can do the same for the other ones another Dragon always gets slower the closer he is to the next key frame if you want to reduce the effect you can also just select the key frames here at the bottom and move them up like this and like you can see if I were now to change the end position of the Dragon right here it would only affect the area between this key frame and this key frame right here and all of this in between would just not update and that's why it was so important to get the fire pass correct before as the next step we're going to light our Dragon so that it just fits a lot better into the scene to do it I went to poly haven.com and found this HD right here which matches the lighting of our footage pretty well so just select 4K HDR and download it right here and then then just drag it into the timeline and we can just disable it and move it to the Bottom now to make this hdii affect our 3D model we need to create a new light so right click new light and select environment light right here click okay and then here under Source we can just select our Misty Farm Road and there you go it now looks a lot more realistic I feel like the back of the Dragon should be a lot brighter though so just create a new Spotlight and then here in the left View we can just move it above our dragon and turn the light down like this maybe still move it a little bit higher and check the perspective from Top View and now we can just parent the light here to the dragon so that the lighting is consistent the brightness is still way too low so let's just increase it to 2,000 or maybe 1,000 and that looks a lot better now the only thing left to do is compositing but we currently can't apply any effects to the dragon so just duplicate it turn it off and move it to the bottom this duplicate is only for the light and then select a dragon and press control shift C to precompose it call it dragon and press okay um now we can apply any effect we want to the dragon but it looks a lot worse than before and that's because our cameras and lights all don't affect him anymore we can easily change it though by just pressing this little button right here and then everything is like before but we can now apply any effect we want so I'm just going to start with a curves effect and now we can just go in every channel and adjust it to match the direct to the footage but if you're struggling with that you can also solo each channel so here at the bottom we can for example select the red Channel and then just select the red curve and adjust it to match the dragon to the footage and then switch to the next Channel and adjust this one as well well and once you're finished you can just select RGB and see if it's better and still do some little adjustments to make it perfect as the next step I'm going to add a plugin called creates light rep and what this plugin does is just taking the background color and wrapping the light around our model which makes it look so much more realistic if you want to use this plugin as well you can download it for free I'm going to link it to you in the description down below just select your background layer right here and then blend with original maybe 80% and here you can really see how much it's improving our shot as the next step we want to add grain to our Dragon so just search for a match grain effect select final output and again use the video as a source and if I turn it on and off you can really see how much of a difference it makes if you want you can also still adjust it right here maybe the size is a little bit too big so I'm going to scale it down but really match it to your own footage footage if we look at our Dragon we can see that he's so much sharper than our footage so to change it just add a fast box blur effect and change the radius to 0 comma 0 6 maybe or even eight yeah eight looks good and the last effect that we need to add is motion blur unfortunately we can't just take the motion blur box here at the bottom maybe they will still add this in the future but for now we need to do a work around so just add a pixel motion effect set this harit to 16 and move it in front of every other effect this effect only looks at the dragon as a 2d layer and not as a 3D layer so it can have some mistakes but I think for this shot it will totally work and yeah that's basically it maybe you could still adjust the curves effect to make it look even better or maybe create an adjustment layer um and with lumry effect do some color grading really do whatever you want have some fun with the scene and then you should end up with a result quite similar to this now this feature is great but it's still missing a lot to replace actual 3D software so if you want to see how it compares to blender then watch this video here I recreated the same shots in both programs so that you can choose the right software for you

Channel: BSP Studios

Views: 47,293

Keywords:

Id: Gd8nJQxxKhE

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024