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Animating Silhouetted Hair
Hello,
So I apologize for my first post on this forum being a question, but I’ve only recently begun using After Effects, and since I edit on Avid its kind of like entering a whole new world as well. So I’ve had success teaching myself what I’ve needed to know so far (Particles are fun) but my current task has me stumped. I have a photo, similar to the one attached (can’t use the exact one for confidentiality purposes), and I’m trying to animate the hair. Since its a silhouette I feel as though a basic animation should be possible. All I’m trying to do is create some type of appearance that the hair is blowing in the wind. It doesn’t have to be perfectly fancy, just good enough to add movement to the still image and play for 20 seconds or so.
Thank you in advance for any help.
Nick
Setup: Macbook Pro Retina (Mid 2012), 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M Graphics Card. Dual 4TB mirrored external HDs, Apple Thunderbolt Display, Dell U2713H Display, Yamaha HS5 Studio Monitors through a Scarlett Focusrite 616, Wacom Intuos Tablet and a Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard
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5 Replies
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One method would be to use the Mesh Warp effect. Apply it to the hair layer and set keyframes for the distortion mesh by dragging the points of the mesh to different positions over time so as to impart motion to the hair.
You will need to first separate your photo into layers so as to be able to apply the effect to just the hair layer and not distort the background.
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Puppet tool would work. You may want to look up some tutorials first, it’s not exactly super intuitive.
Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb. -
You can probably get away with a Turbulent Displace on the hair.
You’ll have to make a separate layer that just has the hair. Draw a mask around the hair, then duplicate the layer and inverse the mask for the body Probably need to shift this mask some so there is overlap on the scalp.
Then apply Distort>Turbulent Displace to the Hair layer, create an evolution keyframe, go later in time and create a new evo keyframe with a higher number, then play with the size and amount to get what you need.
You could combine this with other peoples suggestions if you wanted to get all fancy…
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Come to think of it, a better approach might be to put the Turbulent Displace on an adjustment layer, and then draw a feathered mask on it over the hair…
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Thanks everyone for the responses. I ended up trying the various solutions, but I’m pretty new to AE and ran into a time crunch. So I ended up going with the original suggestion of mesh warp. It required a good bit of keyframing to try and recreate a natural kind of flow, but it did the job well enough.
Thanks everyone!
Setup: Macbook Pro Retina (Mid 2012), 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M Graphics Card. Dual 4TB mirrored external HDs, Apple Thunderbolt Display, Dell U2713H Display, Yamaha HS5 Studio Monitors through a Scarlett Focusrite 616, Wacom Intuos Tablet and a Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard
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