Thursday, June 18, 2009
Two great websites
I've recently stumbled upon two great websites that offer a massive collection of tutorials for After Effects, so be sure to check them out! Creative Cow http://www.creativecow.net/ and Video CoPilot http://www.videocopilot.net/
Friday, June 12, 2009
Automatically key game physics in Blender3D
Blender3D's game engine is an amazing feature of Blender and makes physics based animations extremely easy. This quick tutorial will show you how to capture the physics from the game engine and record them into the IPO for use in your animation.
1. Create a physics based scene to run in the Blender game engine
2. Enable the recording of game physics to the IPO by selecting the option from the "Game" menu at the top
3. Press the "P" key to start the game and press the "Escape" key when your game has finished
4. Check out the IPO curve editor or use the arrow keys to flip through your animation frames. You will notice that the physics from the game engine have all been keyed!
1. Create a physics based scene to run in the Blender game engine
2. Enable the recording of game physics to the IPO by selecting the option from the "Game" menu at the top
3. Press the "P" key to start the game and press the "Escape" key when your game has finished
4. Check out the IPO curve editor or use the arrow keys to flip through your animation frames. You will notice that the physics from the game engine have all been keyed!
Creating key frames in After Effects
This is a simple but useful tutorial for Adobe After Effects. Keying will allow you to create animations of objects rotating, changing transparency, changing location, and more.
1. Select the layer you want to create key frames for
2. Choose what you want to animate (location, opacity, rotation, size, etc.) and open the related menu (for example: type "R" for rotation, "T" for opacity, "S" for scale, and "P" for position)
3. Move the time indicator to a spot where you want to apply the transformation to the object and click the stopwatch icon. This will create a key frame in your timeline (the small diamond that appears)
4. Repeat these steps to create another key frame. Now move the time indicator between the two key frames you have created, you will notice that your effect was automatically animated.
5. If you want to quickly change the properties of a key frame already on the timeline, simply double click the key frame and a menu will pop up allowing you to change the key frame's properties.
6. If you wish to delete a key frame that is already in the timeline, simply select the keyframe and press the "Delete" key
I hope you found this tutorial helpful, and as always please feel free to leave comments or questions
1. Select the layer you want to create key frames for
2. Choose what you want to animate (location, opacity, rotation, size, etc.) and open the related menu (for example: type "R" for rotation, "T" for opacity, "S" for scale, and "P" for position)
3. Move the time indicator to a spot where you want to apply the transformation to the object and click the stopwatch icon. This will create a key frame in your timeline (the small diamond that appears)
4. Repeat these steps to create another key frame. Now move the time indicator between the two key frames you have created, you will notice that your effect was automatically animated.
5. If you want to quickly change the properties of a key frame already on the timeline, simply double click the key frame and a menu will pop up allowing you to change the key frame's properties.
6. If you wish to delete a key frame that is already in the timeline, simply select the keyframe and press the "Delete" key
I hope you found this tutorial helpful, and as always please feel free to leave comments or questions
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Camera tracking with Blender3D
Recently I've been doing a lot of visual effects work and thought it would be good to share some methods I've been using. I wanted to start with using Blender3D to place 3D objects into your footage. A simple example of the final effects can be seen here
In this tutorial I will show you how to achieve this effect using Blender3D (available for free here) and pfTrack from Pixel Farms (Available for purchase here). While pfTrack is a commercial application, there are free alternatives such as Voodoo Camera Tracker, available for download from DigiLab here. Now to start the tutorial:
1. Open up pfTrack and create a new project (File>New Project)
2. Import the footage that you want to insert the 3D object into (File>Import Footage)
3. Go to Tracking>Track and Solve.
pfTrack will now analyze your footage and determine the motion of the camera. pfTrack does this by following the motion of pixels during the footage. Depending on the size of your footage, this may be a slow and painful process.
4. Once pfTrack has finished analyzing your footage, right click the "Camera Exports" list item with the 3D icon next to it (located in the far left bar) and click "New"
5. Choose the 3D software you are using from the "Format" list (we will be using Blender3D in this tutorial). Next, click "Browse" to choose the location in which your script will be saved.
6. Click "Okay" to close out the pop up. You will notice that a new item has appeared under the "Camera Exports" list item, right click this new item and choose "Export".
7. Close out of pfTrack and open up Blender3D
8. Open up the text editor in Blender3D and open the script pfTrack just exported
9. Run the python script (Text>Run Python Script). Blender3D will now key the camera's motion to replicate the camera in your footage
10. Switch Blender3D back to the 3D view. You will see all the motion points the pfTrack script added
11. Open up the background image menu (View>Background Image) and click "Use background Image"
12. Click the folder icon and choose your original footage and the click the "Auto Refresh" button
13. Switch to camera view (View>Camera). Flip through the frames using the Up and Down arrows. You will notice you footage playing on the screen and that the camera moves to match the footage
14. You can now insert any 3D objects you want. Make sure to check that the rotation, location, and scale match the footage by viewing the scene through the camera. Once you have inserted your 3D object, simply go to the render menu and click "Anim". You will now have an animation of your 3D object that matches the camera movements in your footage. You can then use a composting software like Adobe After effects to place 3D animation on top of your original footage.
I hope you enjoyed my first tutorial on this blog! Please feel free to post questions/comments.
In this tutorial I will show you how to achieve this effect using Blender3D (available for free here) and pfTrack from Pixel Farms (Available for purchase here). While pfTrack is a commercial application, there are free alternatives such as Voodoo Camera Tracker, available for download from DigiLab here. Now to start the tutorial:
1. Open up pfTrack and create a new project (File>New Project)
2. Import the footage that you want to insert the 3D object into (File>Import Footage)
3. Go to Tracking>Track and Solve.
pfTrack will now analyze your footage and determine the motion of the camera. pfTrack does this by following the motion of pixels during the footage. Depending on the size of your footage, this may be a slow and painful process.
4. Once pfTrack has finished analyzing your footage, right click the "Camera Exports" list item with the 3D icon next to it (located in the far left bar) and click "New"
5. Choose the 3D software you are using from the "Format" list (we will be using Blender3D in this tutorial). Next, click "Browse" to choose the location in which your script will be saved.
6. Click "Okay" to close out the pop up. You will notice that a new item has appeared under the "Camera Exports" list item, right click this new item and choose "Export".
7. Close out of pfTrack and open up Blender3D
8. Open up the text editor in Blender3D and open the script pfTrack just exported
9. Run the python script (Text>Run Python Script). Blender3D will now key the camera's motion to replicate the camera in your footage
10. Switch Blender3D back to the 3D view. You will see all the motion points the pfTrack script added
11. Open up the background image menu (View>Background Image) and click "Use background Image"
12. Click the folder icon and choose your original footage and the click the "Auto Refresh" button
13. Switch to camera view (View>Camera). Flip through the frames using the Up and Down arrows. You will notice you footage playing on the screen and that the camera moves to match the footage
14. You can now insert any 3D objects you want. Make sure to check that the rotation, location, and scale match the footage by viewing the scene through the camera. Once you have inserted your 3D object, simply go to the render menu and click "Anim". You will now have an animation of your 3D object that matches the camera movements in your footage. You can then use a composting software like Adobe After effects to place 3D animation on top of your original footage.
I hope you enjoyed my first tutorial on this blog! Please feel free to post questions/comments.
First Post
Well everything has to begin at some point, and for this blog this is that first stop on a hopefully long road. I will try to keep this blog updated often and keep it full of useful information. This blog will (eventually) contain tutorials and tips on a wide range of computer related subjects. These subjects will range from operating systems to various software programs. My main focus will be visual effects programs such as Adobe After Effects CS4, particleIllusion Studio, Blender3D, etc. but in no way will this blog be limited to these programs. Hopefully you will find this blog useful and informational. If you ever have any questions, suggestions, or praise please feel free to comment on any of my posts, it will keep me encouraged to keep posting. Here's to the beginning of something that is sure to be great!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)