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Spinning Objects In After Effects
Hi all, at this flash example here https://www.flashden.net/item/strongpagestrong-flip-with-motion-blur/3386, the page spins I spoke to the guy who created and he said he created the whole spinning effect in After Effects and it was really easy, I have used After Effects a bit but thought maybe there was a Filter or something which can be applied to create this effect… If anyone has any idea would be greatly appreciated!
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12 Replies
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Create plane solid to any size you want.
set initial keyframe on rotation set at 0
then, another keyframe set at anytime interval you want and rotate it 360 degrees or 1
Chapter one of AE basics.
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Hi Tom
It’s likely that the guy who did this page spin simply created a white solid, made it 3D, and rotated it on it’s Y-axis.
I also noticed that the shading of the white solid changes slightly as it turns. This could indicate that he made a single point light in his composition and pulled it back a bit so that it isn’t to close to the white solid.
The only effect I can think of right now that would give you a similar look would be to go to Effect > Perspective > Basic 3D. This will make an object appear 3D, but it won’t actually take up 3D space, nor will it’s shading be affected by lights during its rotation.
This stuff is really basic, but if you are new to After Effects it can be hard to figure out if you have no instruction.
P.S. Don’t forget to turn on your motion blur switches!
Jack Hamilton
http://www.j-ham.com
critstrike@gmail.com -
I think on page one it would mention that you’d need to set the layer to 3D.
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Also note the difference between 360 and 180 degrees of rotation.
Pity the Flash-animated text effect isn’t accurate on both sides. I hate flash with a passion i normally reserve for Photoshop and Motion but is there only the one center flop effect or was the programmer merely taking a shortcut and using the same effect twice? It’s those details that can really sink a good effect.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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Jack thanks, I got it to spin haha very excited I know it’s simple but I am a complete noob in AE… I couldn’t see where the motion blur switches were?
Also in the example there was a bit of width in the spinning image, can that be done in AE… Probably makes no sense, but when my image spins you can see there is no substance so it doesn’t really look 3D… Hopefully that’s somewhat clear…
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Hi again Tom!
First of all, don’t worry about being a noob in AE. Everybody is a noob at some point. But I’m glad you are headed in the right direction with the effect you are looking for.
Now, I’m not sure which way you went about getting your page to turn. If you went and used the ‘Basic 3D’ effect, then it will be hard, if not impossible, to get the depth you are looking for out of the page. Basic 3D doesn’t operate in 3D space, so it looks very flat and…basic.
But, you can turn the page into a 3D layer and have it operate in 3D space very easily. If you look in your timeline window, you’ll see your layer (It’s probably named ‘White Solid 1’ for you). So if you select that layer, you’ll see to the right of it’s name are a bunch of switches that look like checkboxes. Above each switch is an icon that will tell you what each switch does if you hold your mouse pointer over them for a moment. The last switch on the right is the 3D layer switch. If you check this on, you’ll enable your layer as a 3D layer. Once you do that, if you twirl down the ‘Transform’ properties of the layer, you can rotate it on any of it’s three axis.
(By the way, if you already knew all this, i’m sorry for the redundancy)
So now you have your ‘page’ in 3D space, and a quickk way to create some depth for the page would be to create a light to generate some nice shading on the page. So go to Layer > New > Light and create a new Point light. I would just keep the default settings. Now you can manipulate the light in 3D space. So if you move it back on it’s Z-axis, away from the page and towards your ‘camera’ so-to-speak, it will create a very nice looking bit of shading on the page while it rotates.
Also, the motion blur switch you are looking for is in the same area that the 3D switch is. It’s 2 boxes to the left of the 3D switch. However, turning this on won’t make your page have motion blur, it will just enable to page to generate motion blur while the master motion blur switch is on. The master motion blur switch is located in the timeline window above the area where your layer information is. It has an icon that looks like a ball with trail behind it. So as long as you have those two switches turned on, your page will have cool looking motion blur while it’s turning!
I hope this has helped you out Tom. Feel free to contact me if you need any more help!
Jack Hamilton
http://www.j-ham.com
critstrike@gmail.com -
Hi Jack,
Wow! It’s looking so good, very exciting now I want to do a heap of things to it!
My only thing is the turning is front and back of a page… So I imported 2 images front and back, I thought putting the back image behind the front and having them both spin on the y-axis would work but it just shows the back of the front image reversed… Does that make sense? Any idea of what I could do in that situation?
I also thought it may be nice to add some easing in/out on the motion… Is that possible? Sorry for all the questions but I’m getting excited!
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Hey Jack… Another little point I have noticed is my version when the page gets to 90 degrees and it’s a sliver, just before and after that it’s pretty much black… I guess that’s to do with the shadow… The example doesn’t do that though… Can I control the amount of darkness?
I tweaked the lighting, wow it really makes all the difference!
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Hi again Tom,
One way you can get your your page to appear to have a front and a back is to keyframe the opacity of the front page so that when it is at 90 degrees, it’s opacity goes from 100% to 0%.
One way to eliminate the darkness of your page while it’s turning is to go into that layer’s Material Options, which you can find right below it’s transform properties. So, if you turn it’s Shininess property down from 5% to 0% it will look a lot more like the example you are basing your effect off of.
And to have your movement ease in and out, all you have to do is select all of your keyframes for the page’s rotation, right click on them and select Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease. That will give you that easing in and out of the movement look you need. 🙂
I hope this helps you get the effect done the way you want it!
Jack Hamilton
http://www.j-ham.com
critstrike@gmail.com -
Hi Jack… Wow awsome!!!!
Ok 1 more little finnicky point 🙂 As the page is spinning, it’s on quite a sharp angle… Meaning that the right hand page comes out very close to the viewer and the left hand side goes to the back quite far… Can I make that angle less extreme?
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