14
The Perspective Effects
The king of the Perspective effects is without question the 3D Camera Tracker effect, introduced in After Effects CS6. It’s extremely powerful and remarkably easy to use.
Most of the other Perspective effects attempt to create the illusion of 3D, typically with things like beveled edges and shadows. These effects are somewhat obsolete, especially with the introduction of Photoshop’s layer styles in After Effects CS3. Layer styles allow you to add the Bevel and Emboss effect, which is much more powerful (and looks much better) than the bevel effects in this category.
However, the big problem with these layer styles is that they prohibit layers that they are applied to from intersecting in 3D space. So if you’re looking for 3D effects to apply to 3D layers, the Perspective effects can come in handy. Also, as we go through this brief chapter, I’ll be giving you some pointers for bevels and shadows that will work with either the effect or the layer style. The 3D Glasses and Radial Shadow effects are also quite unique effects that cannot be duplicated with layer styles.
While we’re talking about perspective and 3D in After Effects, I should probably bring up the new 3D capabilities in After Effects CS6, which allow you to create truly three-dimensional objects and text. However, this feature can be really clunky and slow, and virtually impossible to use unless you have an Adobe certified, CUDA-enabled Nvidia graphics card.
The 3D Camera Tracker Effect
The 3D Camera Tracker effect is used to examine a shot, and determine what a moving camera was doing. You just apply it to a clip that was shot with a moving camera, and it goes to work. Once it has completed its analysis, it is ready to create an After Effects camera that mimics the real world camera the footage was shot with! Not only that, but you can also use the individual points that the effect used in its analysis to create 3D text layers, solids, nulls, and shadow catchers. It’s truly incredible. Let’s look at how this works.
Open the 3D Camera Tracker.aep project from the Chapter 14 folder of the exercise files. This contains a shot with a shaky jib, craning up from some children playing, up to the sky.
Figure 14.1
A screenshot from both the beginning and the end of the jib sequence.
Go to the 3D Camera Tracker START comp. There’s only one visible layer: the jib sequence. Apply the 3D Camera Tracker effect to this layer. The 3D Camera Tracker begins to get to work right away. But it works in the background, so you’re free to work on other layers or comps within After Effects while it does its thing.
When it has completed its analysis, it will move on to the (usually brief) Solving Camera phase. In some rare cases, the camera solving portion might fail. You can usually fix this by giving After Effects more information about your shot. Most shots from professional cameras have a fixed angle of view, meaning that they don’t zoom in and out. However, if your shot does, you can change the Shot Type drop down from Fixed Angle of View to Variable Zoom. You might also notice in this drop down that you can specify an angle of view as well. However, I’ve never found this to be useful because the absolute angle of view changes based on sensor size, which is different from camera to camera. So even if you know the focal length of the lens used, you’ll need to do some more calculations in order to get the exact angle of view for your shot. Thankfully, After Effects usually just “gets it” and doesn’t need any extra angle of view information on most shots with a fixed angle. If you do need to change the Shot Type value, you’ll need to reanalyze the footage if you’ve already done so.
Many ways to track
In addition to tracking the camera by applying the 3D Camera Tracker effect, there are a host of other ways to accomplish the same task. For example, you can right click on a trackable layer and choose Track Camera. You could also choose Track Camera from the Animation menu at the top of the interface. And you can also now choose Track Camera from the redesigned Tracker panel, as seen in Figure 14.2. Regardless of the method chosen, the 3D Camera Tracker effect is applied to the layer and the analysis immediately begins.
In the Advanced section at the bottom of the effect in the Effect Controls panel, you can also change the value in the Solve Method drop down to give After Effects more information about your shot. I usually only mess with this setting (or any of these settings, actually) if After Effects can’t understand my shot. You might also find that you get better results by checking the Detailed Analysis checkbox, also in the Advanced section of this effect.
When your shot has been successfully analyzed and solved, there will be little track points all over the place. These are the points that After Effects has tracked to figure out where the camera is. What’s that, you say? You don’t see any points? That actually happens all the time, and I used this footage in particular because it creates very small track points. By default, the Show Track Points value in the effect is set to 3D Solved, which essentially means that the points get smaller as they go farther back in Z space. In this case, they’re all pretty far away. So, you can either switch the Show Track Points value from 3D Solved to 2D Source (which makes all track points the same size), or you can keep the perspective in the track points by increasing the Track Point Size value. Figure 14.3 shows what these track points look like with the Track Point Size cranked way up to 1200%.
Figure 14.3
With the Track Point Size value raised to 1200%, you can not only see the track points more clearly, but the tiny track points way in the back are now visible.
Now we’re ready to do some cool stuff. With the effect selected in the Effect Controls panel AND with the Selection tool selected, click and drag a marquee around (or shift click) some of those track points. I chose a few along the fence. One of the neatest little features here is that a little target appears to show you the 3D plane that it’s thinking that you want. If your target is askew from the way you want it, then whatever you create based on those points will likewise be askew. I kept adding points and/or reselecting until I got a target that was flush with the fence, as seen in Figure 14.4. Note that if your targets are too small (or large), you can adjust their size using the Target Size value in the effect.
The track points’ vanishing act!
As you work with the 3D Camera Tracker effect, you’ll notice that you’ll frequently lose the track points. In order to see them, you’ll need to have the EFFECT selected in the Effect Controls panel. Having the layer selected is not enough.
Figure 14.4
After selecting track points, I get a target flush with the fence, letting me know that After Effects “understands” the plane that I want to put some 3D text on.
What we want to do is add some text that sticks to this wall. After getting that target with your track points selected, right click and you’ll see all kinds of things that we can do with these points. We can create text, a solid, a null, a shadow catcher, cameras for either of those, and we can also create individual text layers, solids, and nulls for each of those selected track points (five in my case) in one click of a button. For this example, choose Create Text and Camera. I chose to type the text “It was a good day …,” but you can choose whatever you want in whatever font you’d like. I also used the RGB values 120,110,110 respectively, but again, feel free to use your own color scheme.
Figure 14.5
With track points selected, right clicking will give you a menu that allows you to create objects that will exist at that same point in 3D space!
Next, you’ll probably want to use the Rotate tool (shortcut: W) to set the correct orientation of the text. You can also move the text along either the X axis (side to side) or the Y axis (up and down), but DO NOT move it along the Z axis (towards you and away from you) or it will not appear to be attached to the fence. We could add some lighting (or at least fake it with a gradient) and maybe some motion blur or some defocusing blur (perhaps with the Fast Blur effect), but even as it is, it looks pretty good and tracks extremely well with the fence.
Figure 14.6
As you can see in this frame later in the composition, the text sticks to the fence quite nicely.
I decided to take this a little further and create more text in the latter half of the footage. This time, I used track points in the trees at the end of the sequence. Not that the track points in these trees are only visible with Show Track Points set to 2D Source, as the maximum Track Point Size of 10000% still did not make them visible. I also added a little blur and color correction to these text layers (and converted them to shape layers so you wouldn’t have any font issues). You can see my results in the 3D Camera Tracker FINISH comp in this project, if you’re interested.
You could use these track points to create a solid that becomes a sign that replaces a billboard. Or you could use these track points to create a null that you attach footage to for compositing. The point is that this effect gives you the tools to stick stuff into video footage to create the illusion that it was there already. And it does a pretty freaking amazing job at that.
The 3D Glasses Effect
The 3D Glasses effect is a unique effect in this category, and it typically caters to a very specific audience, although 3D is becoming more and more common. The purpose of the effect is to create anaglyphic video. Anaglyphic video displays offset red and blue colors and is intended for a viewer wearing 3D glasses, which usually have a blue overlay over one eye, and a red overlay over the other. This forces one eye to see one image, and the other eye to see another, and this creates the illusion of three-dimensional depth. Although you can make 3D motion graphics on your own in After Effects, 3D video is typically created by using two clips from a stereoscopic camera or from footage created with multiple virtual cameras in a 3D application. You can then use this effect to combine those elements into a single stereoscopic file.
So, in this section, I’ll show you how to create a quick sample of an anaglyphic video. Even if your workflow doesn’t include stereoscopic 3D, this look is so retro and recognizable, you may find it useful. To follow along with me, open up the After Effects project 3D Glasses.aep from the Chapter 14 folder of the exercise files. This project contains a clip from the public domain horror classic, Night of the Living Dead. Who better than zombies to teach us about creating anaglyphic video?
Figure 14.7
The HoRrORaMa! composition in the 3D Glasses.aep project.
There are two copies of the same clip in the HoRrORaMa! composition, simply offset in time. The LEFT layer will become what viewers see out of their left eye, the RIGHT layer will be seen in the right eye. First, select the LEFT layer, and apply the 3D Glasses effect to it. In the Effect Controls panel, change the Left View value to the LEFT layer, and the Right View value to the RIGHT layer. The composition will now appear split with the LEFT layer on the left half of the composition, and the RIGHT layer on the right. This is because the 3D View property in the 3D Glasses effect is set to Stereo Pair. While this view is useful for comparing the left view with the right view, this is primarily a working view only. Change the 3D View property to Balanced Colored Red Blue to complete the effect.
Offsetting the blue and red views
You can use the Convergence Offset property in the 3D Glasses effect to control the offset of the blue and red colored views. Adjust this property if the final result has too much depth (or not enough) after viewing with 3D glasses. Also be aware that the audience’s distance from the viewing surface can also affect the 3D depth effect.
Figure 14.8
The final 3D Glasses settings.
Figure 14.9
After creating the anaglyphic effect. Now you just need some 3D glasses and some popcorn.
The Bevel Alpha Effect
Before we get into the Bevel Alpha and Bevel Edges effects, just remember again that these both pale in comparison to the layer styles in After Effects. They should only be used when you’re going for a beveled look to 3D layers that you want to intersect each other in 3D space.
The Bevel Alpha effect creates the illusion of 3D by adding highlights and shadows around the edges of the layer it’s applied to. I’ve created a little project called Bevel Alpha.aep you’ll find in the Chapter 14 folder if you’d like to play along here. Essentially all we have here is some text that has been converted to a Shape layer.
Figure 14.10
The Bevel Alpha.aep proejct.
Apply the Bevel Alpha effect to the BEVEL ME Outlines layer. Instantly, you’ll notice the highlights and shadows around the edges of the layer that give the illusion of 3D depth.
Figure 14.11
The Bevel Alpha effect applied to the layer.
The four properties this effect has are quite simple. Edge Thickness controls how large the “bevel” is, although the effect starts to kind of fall apart when you increase it too much. The shadows and highlights start to overlap in unnatural ways.
Figure 14.12
After increasing the Edge Thickness value to 6, we see some visual ugliness in the way shadows and highlights overlap.
Light Angle controls what direction the light is shining from. This can be animated to create the illusion that a moving light is being shined on the layer.
Light color controls the color, but it doesn’t work too well. It only tints the highlights, and most colors neutralize the shadows, which essentially removes the bevel.
Light Intensity increases the contrast of the highlights and shadows of the bevel. This is good to use when you want to create the illusion that there is brighter light shining on an object.
Tricks with Beveled Layers
Whether you’re using the more powerful Bevel and Emboss layer style effect, or one of these bevel effects, the beveling effect is great for subtle text effects like our example here because you can animate something simple like the Light Angle, or maybe use a wiggle expression to control the Light Intensity value. Another idea is to apply a composition light to a layer with a bevel effect. The bevel effect (whether it’s an effect or a layer style) will not respond to the light. Normally, this would be terrible, but in this case, areas of the beveled object that are in the dark will still show a subtle highlight. It’s a cool effect. See Figure 14.7 for an example of the bevel effect still visible in the dark.
Figure 14.13
The layer with Bevel Alpha and a composition light applied. Notice that the effect does not respect the light, making it glow in the dark.
The Bevel Edges Effect
For the Bevel Edges effect, I’m going to open up the Bevel Edges.aep project in the Chapter 14 folder. It’s just a simple rectangular shape layer if you’d prefer to create it from scratch. Once you apply the Bevel Edges effect to this flat rectangle, you’ll see that this is a much more intense chisel-type bevel than what we saw with the Bevel Alpha effect.
Making buttons
This chiseled bevel look is great for creating buttons, say for DVD output. This is becoming much more common because Adobe Encore (which integrates with After Effects) can create Flash movies in addition to optical media, such as DVD and Blu-ray.
Figure 14.14
A simple rectangle with the Bevel Edges effect applied to it.
The four properties available with the Bevel Edges effect are the exact same properties available with the Bevel Alpha effect and they do the same thing, so I won’t recap them here.
But I will point out a significant difference between these two bevel effects. The difference is in their name. Bevel Alpha bevels an object around its alpha channel. The Bevel Edges effect curiously bevels the edges of the entire layer. Figure 14.9 shows what happens when we apply Bevel Edges to the text in the BEVEL ME composition (also included in the Bevel Edges project for convenience).
Figure 14.15
Bevel Edges applies a bevel effect around the edges of the entire layer.
The Drop Shadow Effect
If there was a Hollywood Walk of Fame for overused effects, the first effect to win the honor would be, without a doubt, Drop Shadow, followed closely by Lens Flare. The Drop Shadow effect adds a shadow to an object (typically underneath it), to create the illusion that the object is floating off of the surface. Drop shadows in general help an object to stand out from its background.
If you’d like some practice, you can open up the project Drop Shadow.aep from the Chapter 14 folder. Basically we have some green text on a light gray background. These colors are making this text harder to read than it should be.
Figure 14.16
The Drop Shadow.aep project.
So we’re going to take this text, and drop shadow it like it’s hot. Apply the Drop Shadow effect to the Drop it … Outlines layer. Notice how it instantly makes the text stand out from the background layer.
Differences Between Layer Styles and Effects
In almost every instance, layer styles are significantly more powerful than effects are. So, what are the differences between Drop Shadow the layer style and Drop Shadow the effect? The Drop Shadow layer style adds more blending options, gives you the ability to use Global Lighting, adjust Spread independently of the blur of the shadow, and the ability to add noise to the shadow. However, the Drop Shadow effect gives you the option to view the shadow only. This allows you to duplicate a layer, and have its drop shadow as a separate, autonomous layer. You can then apply warp effects to the drop shadow layer to give the illusion that the shadow of the main object is being cast onto a more complex surface.
Figure 14.17
The same project with the Drop Shadow effect applied with the default settings.
The Shadow Color and Opacity properties are self-explanatory. Direction is easy to grasp, except it’s backwards from what you might think (maybe it’s just backwards from the way I think). With the bevel effects, the similar angle control determined what direction the light was coming from. In the Drop Shadow effect, the Direction parameter dictates where the shadow is in relation to the layer. Or, in other words, where the light is pointing towards.
The next property is Distance. This controls how far away the shadow is from the layer. As you increase the distance of a shadow from the thing that is supposed to be casting the shadow, it gives the illusion that the object is floating farther off the surface. You can see the result of this in Figure 14.18.
Figure 14.18
The shadow after increasing the Distance value, as well as increasing the opacity and softness of the shadow.
The Softness parameter is like a blur for the shadow. Adjust the color, opacity, and softness of the shadow to create a realistic composite.
The Radial Shadow Effect
The Radial Shadow effect appears at first glance to be the identical twin to the Drop Shadow effect. But in reality, Radial Shadow is more like Drop Shadow’s older, cooler pro-snowboarder cousin. Radial Shadow allows you to create a shadow as if it were being created from a three-dimensional light source. This is great for creating a shadow from 3D layers onto 2D objects, because 2D objects won’t accept shadows from 3D layers and lights. The Radial Shadow synthesizes another great feature that is reserved for 3D layers: Light Transmission. Light Transmission allows you to create shadows based on the color of a layer. Radial Shadow doesn’t quite get that cool, but it will allow you to create color shadows that vary in intensity based on the opacity of the alpha channel.
If you’d like to follow along, I’ve created the Radial Shadow.aep project in the Chapter 14 folder of the exercise files. This contains a red window with some variations in its alpha channel. Before we apply the effect, let’s solo the Art Window layer and choose Alpha from the Show Channel and Color Management Settings drop down at the bottom of the Composition panel (the icon that looks like overlapping red, green, and blue circles). This will show us only the alpha channel of the Art Window layer which will give us a window (no pun intended) into what’s happening with the transparency here.
Figure 14.19
The alpha channel of the Art Window layer.
The white areas indicate where the layer is completely opaque. The two rectangles that are completely black indicate where the layer is completely transparent. The three dark, wide bars, and the three light gray rectangles are areas of partial transparency. That’s important to remember going forward. You can now change the channel view back to the RGB composite view, and deselect solo from the Art Window layer. Apply the Radial Shadow effect to the Art Window layer.
At first, this resembles the Drop Shadow effect, except that it will not go beyond the boundaries of the layer. To fix this, click the Resize Layer checkbox at the bottom of the Radial Shadow effect in the Effect Controls panel. Note that if you apply this effect to a layer without any transparency, you might not see anything until you check the Resize Layer checkbox.
One of the properties that really makes this effect stick out is Light Source. Instead of giving us only a light direction, we can actually specify exactly where our light source is. This parameter also has an effect control point, which means that we paste tracking data into Radial Shadow. And, because Light Source has both an X and a Y value, we can easily link this property to things that we might use as a light source, such as the Flare Center value of the Lens Flare effect.
The other really exciting property that sets Radial Shadow apart from other shadows is the Render drop down list. Change the Render value from Regular to Glass Edge. This allows the color of the layer to be used in the shadow, depending on the alpha channel of the layer. So, in Figure 14.20, you can see the red
Figure 14.20
Changing the Render value to Glass Edge creates a stained glass effect where there are semi-transparent areas of the layer.
of the layer showing in the shadow where there are semitransparent areas in the alpha channel. This creates the illusion of stained glass. The Color Influence value controls how much color is allowed to be used in the shadow, where a higher value results in more color and a lower value desaturates the shadow.
Figure 14.21
Increasing the Softness value while Glass Edge is selected as the Render value adds color to the edges.
One quirk that you might notice with this effect before too long is that when you increase the softness value with Render set to Glass Edge, you’ll see the color of the layer in the edges. For those of you that don’t find this desirable, I haven’t found a workaround for this yet. It’s caused because anti-aliased edges have color applied to them under the “rules” of Glass Edge, and added Softness adds more blur to the edges. So, under the eternal decree of Glass Edge, that which hath been blurred, shall be colored, saith the Glass Edge.