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Suggestions for AE newbie
Hoping someone might point me in the right direction to find a plugin that may assist in creating a photo montage for an anniversary. I am still somewhat of a novice in AE and would like to do something similar to this presentation, which seems like it may have used a template/plugin of some sort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdjn91WSM8&feature=related
Best,
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3 Replies
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This is a really easy effect to do without any sort of extra plugin. It just takes time. There are a few tricks you can use, that might not be obvious, to make things easier down the road.
Simple explanation: place your photos and text in AE’s 3d space and animate your camera to each one. That’s really all they did. The rest is spice.
There is a lot you can do that will make this very easy, but it is a bit time consuming. Let me walk you through this as best I can without making a video tutorial.
Here is an example project to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. (My AE machine isn’t online and is not in the same room as the computer I’m typing this on, so I hope it’s all the same)
I created the example project in about thirty minutes. Of course, this will take longer for you, since I assume you’ve got more than 3 pictures.First, copy your pictures so you don’t mess up the originals then open Photoshop and get to work! Make all of your pictures the same size by cropping them. Also, color correct them and do whatever you can to make them look good in Photoshop before worrying about AE. And SHRINK THEM. Do not use a full 10 megapixel image in After Effects, much less 40 of them in 3d… Unless you plan to zoom into the pictures, make them the same size (or, for this project, even a little smaller) than your final video is going to be. If it’s standard American TV, that’s a maximum of 720×480.
If you have a lot of pictures, you can set up an action in Photoshop to automate it for you.Now, on to the AE steps!
1. Import all of your pictures into AE. (If they’re all numbered in sequence import them as an image sequence, rename the footage in the project window to Pictures and skip to step 3.)
2. a. If your images are not all in a numbered sequence then create a folder in your project window called “Original Pictures”.
2. b. Create a new compositon the same size as your pictures and call it “Pictures”
2. c. Place all your pictures in the new composition
2. d. With your playhead in the new composition at frame 1 press Page Down on your keyboard to move to frame 2
2. f. Select the top picture, scroll to the bottom hold shift and click on the bottom picture. This should select all the images
2. g. Press Option+] (or Alt+] on a PC) to trim all the pictures to 1 frame long
2. h. With all the pictures still selected right-click (or on an older Mac option+click) on any picture and choose Keyframe Assistant>Sequence Layers. Make sure you choose no overlap.
2. g. You should now have all of your layers in a lovely sequence. If you RAM preview (by pressing 0 on the number pad) you should have a ton of images flashing by very, very quickly. If you want to you can change your composition length to match the length of your image sequence, but it’s not necessary.
If it’s too short go to Composition>Composition settings and change the Composition length, adding minutes.
If it’s too long put your playhead at the last image, drag the work area to the playhead, and then click Composition>Trim Comp to Work Area.DON’T FORGET TO SAVE OFTEN
3. Drag Pictures (whether it be the comp you created in Step 2 or footage you imported in Step 1) to the New Composition button to create a new comp the size and length of Pictures.
4. Click Composition>Composition Settings and change the comp size to be twice the height of its current height. Name this new comp “Pics”
5. Move your Pictures layer position up to the top of the comp window
6. Duplicate Pictures and rename the new layer “Reflection” and move it below Pictures in the timeline.
7. Select Reflection and move its layer position to the bottom of the composition. You should now have two identical images one at the top of the window and one at the bottom.
8. With Reflection still selected press S to reveal the scale properties. Click the chain to unlink the two scale properties. Change the second value (the y scale) to -100. You should now see where this is going.
9. Play around with Reflection to get it to look like a reflection. I will provide some things I did.
9. a. Press Q or click on the mask tool. Drag a rectangular mask around the bottom half of Reflection, but make sure that on the sides and on the bottom the mask extend well beyond the boundaries of the layer (and the composition).
9. b. Press MM to reveal the mask properties. Change it from add to subtract. Under feather, put in a good amount to really feather it. (How much is up to you and depends on the size of your photos.
9. c. On Reflection apply Effect>Blur>Fast Blur choose repeat edge pixels, make sure it’s both horizontal and vertical and give it a blur amount (up to you how much)
9. d. On Reflection apply Effect>Blur>Fast Blur do not choose repeat edge pixels and choose to blur horizontally only and give it a blur amount (how much is up to you)
9. e. On Reflection press T to reveal the opacity property. Lower the opacity of Reflection. How much, again, is up to you, how about we try 50% for now?DON’T FORGET TO SAVE OFTEN
10. Create a composition the size and length you want for your finished project and call it “Main” and create a new solid the same size as your composition. Make it a very light grey and name it “Background”.
11. Place your Pics comp into Main and click the box to turn the layer 3d.
You should now have your picture with a reflection and when you press 0 on the Num pad for a RAM preview you will see your pictures extremely fast with reflections.12. With Pics selected and your playhead at the first frame Click Layer>Time>Freeze Frame.
Now when you RAM preview nothing changes; it’s just one picture with a reflection. Much more peaceful, yes? Trust me, all of this setup is to make things much easier for you later on.13. Click Layer>New>Null Object and name the null Text Z Position
14. With Text Z Position selected apply Effect>Expression Controls>Slider. In the timeline, twirl down the properties on the layer and twirl down effects until you can see the slider’s property.
15. Press Command+T (or Ctrl+T on the PC) or click the text tool and click in your composition window to create a text layer. Type in a caption to go with the picture you see. Then click the box to turn the text 3d.
16. Make the size and style of the text what you’re going to want throughout the project (if it’s English text I would suggest making it left-justified) and a bit in from the left side of the photo.
17. Parent the text layer to Pics by dragging the pic whip from the text layer to Pics.
Now when you move Pics you should see your text layer moving along with it. Make sure you undo any moves you did before you carry on to the next step.18. With your text layer selected press P to reveal the position property. Option-click (or Alt-click on a PC) on the stopwatch to apply an expression. Clear out what’s written and put a left-bracket ( [ ) then drag the expression pic whip to the text layer’s first position property, type a comma ( , ), pic whip to the position’s second property, type a comma, then pic whip to the slider’s property on Text Z Position and put a right-bracket ( ] ).
The expression should read [transform.position[0],transform.position[1],thisComp.layer(“Text Z Position”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”)]19. Press enter on the number pad. Nothing should look different in your composition window. However, if you then go and change the slider on Text Z Position layer to a negative number, you should see the text move closer to you.
What we’ve done is made it so that you can change the x and y position of the text layer if you need to, but how far it moves from the picture in the z axis is determined by the slider on the Text Z Position layer. This is all part of making it easy to fix/change things later.
Leave the slider as a negative number (like -90, perhaps) so the text is a little closer to you (in front of the picture).20. Click Layer>New>Camera
You can change these settings to whatever you want for the final look, but for now just use something like 35mm21. Click Layer>New>Null Object, click the box to make it a 3d layer, and name the null Camera Control.
22. Parent the Camera to the Null.
Now when you rotate the Null’s Y rotation (press R to reveal the rotation property), the camera will orbit around the picture and text.
Put it back at 0 before you move on to the next step.23. Move Camera Control’s y position (press P to reveal position property) up a bit so the attention is clearly on the picture and not centered on the bottom. You don’t want to be looking at the reflection, it should just be there to add spice; you don’t want to be going “LOOK AT ME AND THE REFLECTION I DID!!!”
NOTE: You will not be touching any animation on the camera at all with the exception of the camera’s z position. Everything else will be done by animating Camera Control.
24. Turn off the eyeball on both null objects (Camera Control and Text Z Position)
25. Move Text Z Position , the camera and Camera Control to the bottom of the timeline under Background so they’re not in your way.
Your layer stack should look like:
Text layer (it’s name will be whatever you typed)
Pics
Background
Camera Control
Camera 1
Text Z positionDON’T FORGET TO SAVE OFTEN
Now it starts getting interesting.
26. Select your text layer, hold Shift and click Pics to select it too.
27. Press Command+D (Ctrl+D on the PC) to duplicate the text layer and Pics. Move the duplicates to the top of the timeline.
28. Select just the new Pics layer and press U to reveal all keyframes for that layer. “But wait,” you might say, “I didn’t set any keyframes at all!” Au contraire mon frere! Remember way back in the day, when you clicked Layer>Time>Freeze Frame? What that did was turn Time Remapping on for your Pic comp and create a hold keyframe at that moment in time. Now’s your chance to see why!
29. Click on the value that popped up and put in 2 instead of 1. You should see it change to the next picture in your sequence. (You don’t have to worry about all the 0s and :s. Just click the number, it’ll select all of them and type in 2)
30. On the new text layer change the text to be a caption to match the new picture.
31. On this new text layer change it so that the new Pics is its parent.
32. Move the new Pics somewhere else (press P to reveal its position properties), right, left, forward, backward…it doesn’t matter right now; just move it. The new Pics and the new text layer should move together.
Just for fun, go to the Text Z Position layer and adjust the slider again. You should see both of your text layers moving in and out.
Also for fun, go into the Pics composition and change the amount of blur, the opacity or the feathering of the mask on the Reflection layer and when you come back to Main, you’ll see it’s changed on both your Pics.Your setup is now complete and you should be able to see what you do from here.
33. Repeat steps 27 through 32 as many times as you have pictures.
Select text layer and Pics, duplicate, move them to the top of the layer order, select the new Pics, press U and change the number to the next one (3, 4, 5, 6, etc.), change the text, parent the text to the new Pics layer, select the Pics layer, press P, and move it.
You’ll want to change the y rotation (press R to reveal rotation) on the Pics too. Positioning and rotation will all depend on how you’re going to move the camera.You may find it easier to position things by switching camera views. Click on Active Camera and choose Top View. You should see a top view of all your layers. You can use this for working out camera moves and layer placement from a bird’s eye perspective. Click on Top View and change back to Active Camera (or simply press Esc) to get back to what the camera’s seeing.
DON’T FORGET TO SAVE OFTEN
34. Now, to move the camera from picture to picture. Select the Pics layer you want the camera to look at and press P to reveal its position property.
35. Select Camera Control and press P to reveal its position property. Change the first value (x value) and the third (the z value) to match the value of the Pics layer’s position properties. The camera will now be looking at the Pic layer.
36. Press shift+R (to reveal its rotation properties while leaving the position properties visible) and adjust Camera Control’s Y rotation to the angle you want.
37. Press the stopwatch on the Camera Control’s position property and Y rotation property to set keyframes for them both.
38. Move ahead in the timeline a few seconds and adjust the Y rotation property again.
You’ll see it create a new keyframe. Click the checkbox to the left of the position property to create a new keyframe for it too (but at the same position).
Now when you do a RAM preview, you’ll see enjoy the camera smoothly orbiting the pic.39. Move ahead in the timeline a second after your last keyframe.
40. Select the Pic layer you want to move to next. Press P to reveal its position.
41. Select Camera Control (if you press U on Camera control it’ll show you the two properties you’re keyframing instead of all those extraneous rotation options) adjust Camera Control’s first and third position properties to match the Pic layer you just selected.
42. Adjust Camera Control’s Y rotation property to the view you want.
Now do a Ram preview. The camera should orbit a bit around one Pic, then move to the next one.
DON’T FORGET TO SAVE OFTEN and it doesn’t hurt to save a couple copies as you go along too; that way, if you mess something up you have a separate copy to go back to.
43. Now just keep doing that. Eventually you’ll have the camera moving between all of your pictures. You can set keyframes on the camera’s Z position property to move it closer or further from the pics.
If you’re almost finished on all this and decide your reflections are too bold and should be more subtle, all you have to do is go back into your Pics comp and lower the opacity of Reflection. If you decide your text should really be further from the pictures all you have to do is adjust the slider on Text Z Position. Perhaps you don’t like the blur on the reflection; remove it! Anything you do to Reflection will be reflected (har!) in the main comp.
Now, in the example you gave (and in the sample project I made for you), there’s a bit more blur because of adjustments to the depth of field on the camera, there’s a radial ramp giving a slight vignette look to the whole thing, and the camera’s path and other keyframes have been tweaked.
Feel free to save a copy and then poke around in the example project. I have an expression set up so the camera always focuses on the point where the null is. I opened the camera’s iris up to enhance the depth of field look, etc.Have fun and good luck!
Please post back with your results; we’d love to see your final project.– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Michael,
Just walked in the door and saw your post. Thanks so much for the response! I will definitely use the steps you’ve provided and see where it takes me. Regardless, thanks for your time and effort, it is much appreciated. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
Thanks again,
Eric
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Michael,
I really like this effect for slideshows. Thanks for posting. I’m trying to wrap my head around your example files and your projects steps but I keep beating my head against a wall…
I’m very green with AE and probably shouldnt be trying a project like this but…
In Step 6… “6. Duplicate Pictures and rename the new layer “Reflection” and move it below Pictures in the timeline.” I dont understand this: You’re stating to move the Reflection comp into the timeline but arent you working within the Pictures comp where each individual picture is a layer?
Thanks if you get to this,
Jason
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