Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 20:01:16 -0600 (CST) From: Mark Jacobson To: 810-088-12-spring@uni.edu Subject: Generating the Dial Comp ... Lesson 12 of textbook... Hello After Effects (VE, A, and MG) students, Here is a summary of today's class: 1. We already did the following from Lesson 12 - Final Project. a. Creating the Grid Floor Comp... b. Creating the Radar Comp... 2. Today, Monday March 7th, we did the Creating the Dial Comp. Pages 287-290 of Lesson 12 of the After Effects Apprentice textbook. 3. What is a common way that many graphic designers work that is illustrated with this example? "create elements in another program such as Adobe Illustrator, then animate these elements inside After Effects." 4. What is the Dial.ai file? a. the .ai extension is used for Adobe Illustrator files. Dial.ai is an Adobe Illustrator file. - - b. Dial.ai has four layers. AE has layers, as you know. Photoshop has layers. Flash has layers. Adobe Illustrator has layers. c. The four layers are: inner ring outer ring event names guides d. We imported the Dial.ai file using File menu > Import, or the control+i shortcut, or the double click in the Project panel technique. Import Kind: Composition Footage Dimensions: Layer Size e. Trish and Chris Meyer like to work in Black and White in the Illustrator software, and wait until later in After Effects to apply the color needed for the Comp. The AE Dial COMP that got created when we imported probably has a BLACK background color. Change it to WHITE so you can see all the layers that came in from Illustrator. 5. Remove the GUIDES layer. It is not needed. 6. "A common trick is to 'WIPE ON' illustrations by progressively revealing their paths. This is NOT as staightforward as it seems." Why? Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program. Adobe After Effects is a bitmapped, pixel-based painting category program. Vectors from Illustrator get "RASTERIZED" into pixels as soon as they are brought into After Effects. If you are in AE and need to gain access to those Illustrator vectors so you can paste them into AE as MASKS, then this CREATING THE DIAL COMP lesson is what you need. Vector graphics and bitmapped (pixel-based) graphics are two totally different approaches to computer graphics. The Illustrator file contains VECTORS: The INNER RING layer of the Illustrator file contains 11 different vector graphic objects: 10 lines and 1 circle. When that layer is imported into AE it is rasterized into just pixels, a bitmapping of which pixels are black and which pixels are white. 7. Edit menu > Edit Original in AE with the Inner Ring layer selected takes you where? It takes you to the Original Footage source file, in this case, Dial.ai, which is the Adobe Illustrator file. 8. How do you SELECT all 11 of the vector elements that Inner Ring layer is made up of? Alt key + LMB click (LMB = Left Mouse Button) selects all 11 "Paths". 9. What next? Edit menu > Copy these 11 paths to the clipboard. Switch back to Adobe After Effects and Edit menu > Paste the 11 PATHS from Illustrator to the Inner Ring layer of After Effects Dial COMP. Type M to see that there are now 11 masks. 11 masks are applied to the AE layer. 10. Effect menu > Generate > Stroke command. What does the book say that this STROKE does (on default settings)? a. We have 11 MASKS (the former 11 Paths or vectors from Illustrator). b. Applies a two pixel wide white stroke to the FIRST mask it finds. The first mask is the one highest in the layer. c. All masks changes it to be applied to the other 10 masks. d. Change color to RED, change width to 5.0 instead of 2.0 to make it more dramatic and easy to see, and finally we hide the original rasterized pixels of the imported Illustrator layer. Paint Style - On Transparent hides the original Inner Ring. Its as if we made them Opacity 0 percent. Now only the RED 5.0 or 2.0 wide STROKE effect is visible. 11. Animate the STROKE EFFECT on the Inner Ring so at 00:00 CTI it is END = 0 percent and at 02:00 it is END = 100 percent. 12. Apply the above steps to Outer Ring layer. 13. Color the Event Names ring using Effect > Color Correction > Tint. 14. Go 3D with all of the layers. Recall usefulness of the F2 function key. F2 = deselect all. Type R to reveal the Orientation and Rotation parameters. 15. Inner Ring - set Y Rotation to +60.0 degrees. 16. Outer Ring - set X Rotation to -60.0 degrees. 17. Use wiggle(1,25) for Orientation expression for Inner Ring. Use wiggle(1,25) for Orientation expression for Outer Ring. Alt + click on the stopwatch for Orientation property allows adding the wiggle() EXPRESSION. Orientation wiggle causes the Inner Ring and the Outer Ring to gyrate up to maximum of +25 and minimum of -25 degrees from the original setting for Rotation X, Rotation Y, and Rotation Z. So for the inner ring, we would have: Rotation X 0.0 degrees + or - 25 -25 to +25 Rotation Y 60.0 degrees + or - 25 +35 to +85 Rotation Z 0.0 degrees + or - 25 -25 to +25 18. Rotate the Event Names ring with Rotation Z, but not too much or the viewer will not be able to read any of the Event Names! ------------------------------------------------------------------- Pages 287-290 of Lesson 12 of the After Effects Apprentice textbook. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Next brand new topic up on the agenda for class on Wednesday and/or Friday will be: Cameras - The 3D Camera Page 200 Adding a Camera Page 200 The Camera Tools Page 201 The Camera Settings Dialog Page 202 Moving the Camera Page 202-203 Camera and Auto Orientation Page 204-205 Notice how long this email message is. It is notes on just 4 pages of the Trish and Chris Meyers book that we covered in class today. Read and take some notes on your own on the pages 200-205 material on Cameras. If you also have AE at home or have time to go to the lab, try some things from page 200-205 as well as take some notes. Go through the exercise again on your own sometime. I always learn more the 2nd or 3rd or 4th time I go through the same After Effects example from the book or the web. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Pages 287-290 of Lesson 12 of the After Effects Apprentice textbook. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Two more classes, four more days, and spring break is here! :-) Mark