Pulling It All Together in After Effects

If you have Adobe After Effects, you can apply all that you ve learned and create a sample special-effects clip.

In the ch27 folder on the companion CD, you will find a sample AVI video clip of the Golden Gate Bridge ( GoldenGateBridge.avi ). You can use the starship Targa file created earlier in this chapter to composite the starship bitmap onto the video clip and make it appear as if it s flying from the background out toward the camera and then zooming out of view.

Open After Effects and begin with the projects box, which is by default on the upper-left corner of your interface. Then follow these steps:

1. Right-click/Ctrl-click within its interface, choose New Folder from the pop-up menu, and name the folder whatever you like (see Figure 27.14).

   
   Figure 27.14: Creating a new folder for your project

2. You need to create a new composition that will create the timeline information that you need to create your very short movie. So right-click/Ctrl-click again on the projects box interface and select New Composition (see Figure 27.15).

   
   Figure 27.15: Creating a new composition

3. Import your two files into the projects box by right-clicking/Ctrl-clicking once again and choosing Import ’ Multiple Files. You can use the /Ctrl key to select multiple files; then click OK. Notice that you get an Interpret Footage dialog box for your starship.tga file (see Figure 27.16). This is because you saved an alpha channel with it, and After Effects recognizes that fact. Keep the default (Straight - Unmatted), click OK, and After Effects will designate the transparency of this file.

   
   Figure 27.16: Tell After Effects how to interpret the alpha channel.

4. To stay organized, drag the composition files and the two imported files into the folder you created earlier (see Figure 27.17).

   
   Figure 27.17: Drag the project files into their folder.

5. Before you start compositing, right-click/Ctrl-click your preview area, select Composition Settings, and make sure that you are using DV format of 720 —480. Make sure the aspect ratio is set to DV/D1 NTSC (0.9), as shown in Figure 27.18.

   
   Figure 27.18: Composition settings

6. Now drag your Golden Gate Bridge file from its folder onto the preview area. Do the same for the starship file (see Figure 27.19).

   
   Figure 27.19: Drag both files into the Comp window.

You have the beginning of your composited short. After preparing starship.tga in Photoshop CS and saving it with an alpha channel, After Effects blocked the areas that were designated as black in the alpha channel. As a result, you see only the starship. Now let s make it fly!

Make It Fly, Baby!

Now let s have some real fun! If you look at your timeline, you will notice that both of your files were placed in their own layer and organized just as you would have done in Photoshop. With the starship on top, you can now make it look like it will fly from the background to the foreground and out of view while in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you adhere to the rules of perspective, you know that anything in the background will appear smaller and anything in the foreground will appear larger, so let s animate the starship to be smaller in frame 1 and large in the last frame.

1. Put your playhead on frame 1, open the Transform properties ( next to the starship.tga title on the left side of the timeline), and choose Scale.

2. Click the keyframe symbol on the left side of the Scale timeline (see Figure 27.20). A diamond appears at frame 1, designating a keyframe at frame 1.

   
   Figure 27.20: Setting a Scale keyframe

3. Click on the starship to activate it in the preview area. You will see a box with handle bars surrounding the object. Click and hold one of the corner handle bars and drag it to resize the ship smaller ”about 1/10 the size of the viewing frame. Finally, place the ship in the upper-left side of the frame (see Figure 27.21).

   
   Figure 27.21: Resize the starship and move it up.

4. Now place the playhead on the last frame and resize the starship to be 2/3 the size of your preview frame.

5. Place the playhead back on frame 1, and press the spacebar to preview your animation. The ship resizes but it doesn t move (see Figure 27.22).

   
   Figure 27.22: The starship grows large but in the same place.

6. Select the Position property underneath the Starship layer. Once again, place the playhead at the first frame and make a keyframe (see Figure 27.23).

   
   Figure 27.23: Place the ship in the upper left when the Scale is small

7. Place the playhead on the last frame and drag the starship down to the right corner and off the frame. A keyframe will automatically be set for you (see Figure 27.24).

   
   Figure 27.24: and then place it in the lower right when the Scale is large.

8. Go back to frame 1 and press the spacebar again. Now your ship is really flying!

A Little More EFX!

Now you ll add just a little more of an effect by adding some motion blur to give the spaceship some movement:

1. Click the Effects palette and double-click Directional Blur. In Figure 27.25, notice that the dialog box enables you to specify the direction as well as the length of the blur. In addition, it enables you to specify when and how much of the effect will take place. Set these options according to your vision.

   
   Figure 27.25: After Effects Directional Blur options

2. Specify when you would like the effect to begin and end by setting your playhead to the desired frame and then selecting a keyframe in the Directional Blur dialog box. Notice that the effect settings are transferred to the timeline on its own layer as a subset of the Starship layer. Figures 27.26 and 27.27 give an example of how the effects were applied in the beginning and end of the ship movement on the timeline.

   
   Figure 27.26: Directional Blur applied to the ship s starting position

Figure 27.27: Directional Blur applied to the ship s ending position

Don t be afraid to play with these effects because the best way to learn about After Effects is to experiment.

The only thing that remains now is to render the effect into the format and dimensions that you see fit. To begin a simple render:

1. Choose File ’ Export and, from the submenu, choose your format (see Figure 27.28). I chose the QuickTime format in this example.

   
   Figure 27.28: Exporting your composited movie

2. A Save As dialog box appears; tell After Effects where you would like the file to be saved to. Make sure that you have plenty of disk space available.

3. A Save As dialog box appears; tell After Effects where you would like the file to be saved to. Make sure that you have plenty of disk space available.

4. All you have to do now is specify the format, color , and compression settings in the Movie Settings dialog box (see Figure 27.29). This is another area where experimentation will serve you best. To test these, in the beginning render only short clips so that you don t have to endure the long render times.

   
   Figure 27.29: Choosing video settings on export

Now that you have a fairly good understanding of how Photoshop CS can aid you for video production, the galaxy is truly the limit.