Archive for June 2014

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When we Handover the Video Footage to the Tracking Software, it has no Idea about what is there in the Footage and has no concept of motion or direction. So in order to define these things we can generate a track data of the moving object in the footage and can make another object of our choice to follow the exact same path with the help of the Motion Tracking feature in our preferred software. What these programs with Motion Tracking feature does is follow a point (or points) in the footage that we assign through the Tracking Tool and extrapolate the motion of that point across the time the point is in the view. This feature registers the track data, or path of the target object in the view and then uses this data to:

a. Make one Object Follow another - Add Motion to the Static Picture so that it will travel with the Target Object.

b. Stabilize the Footage - Removing the Jittery Camera Motion from the Shot.

Motion Tracking Procedure

The most important thing for this procedure to work well is to place tracking points on the Key Part of the Footage which we can call as Tracking Targets. The best Tracking Targets can be the areas on the footage with clearly defined and consistent shapes with distinct edges. These Tracking Target Areas should also have Contrasting Color or Brightness compared with the pixels around them. It is always a good idea to view the footage till the end in order to see the consistency of the Tracking Target, the less the feature changes size or shape, the better it is.

Motion Tracking A Wide Panning Shot

01 The example that I have chosen for a better explanation of this method is to put a cut out of building from some image or video footage and place it into the video footage with a basic noodle pan. So we will start by bring in the footage that have been provided along with this lesson into the composition. Play it forward and backward few times in order to look for some good contrasting points in the footage that can be tracked. As we need to get the track data of the position as well as the rotation from the footage we would require looking for at least two points in the footage at a fair distance from each other. These points also should stay in the view till the end in order to get the right track data information.

02 But in this case we don’t have any good or strong point on the footage that stays in the view till the end of the footage. Therefore all we need to do in such cases is to find two or more separate pair of points in the footage that can be tracked in groups separately and then link there data together into one fluid null object. We will try to approach this a little differently than we normally do. We will bring in two new null objects into the scene and rename them as 'First Half Data' and 'Second Half Data' respectively.

03 We will motion track the footage in two locations and apply the tracking data of first half of the footage onto the first null and the tracking data of second half of the footage onto the second null. Double click on the footage in order to open it into the 'Layer Footage' viewer and bring up the 'Tracker' controls from the 'Window' menu. Click on 'Track Motion' in order to bring in the 'Tracking Feature' for the storage of Position data. In order to get another 'Tracking Feature' for the storage of Rotation data, check the option box for 'Rotation'.

04 The Tracking Features comes with two separate boxes one surrounded by another. The Inner Box is the Match Box - The pixels within the box are analyzed for pattern matching. The Outer Box is the Search Box - It defines the area the software will search for a match in each frame. Large amount of time is required for the computation of tracking data on each frame by bigger Tracking Feature. Also they should be large enough to sustain the sudden shift of the pixels between the frames as these pixels needs to stay in the Search Box in each frame for the tracking process to complete appropriately.

05 Finding Good Tracking Points in the footage is one of the most important issues in the Motion Tracking Process. Most Tracking Algorithms work by following the Edge Contrast in the footage, so high contrast edges are preferred. Also the Contrasting Edges of the Tracking Targets needs to be good in both X and Y axis or in other word the Tracking Targets should have good Vertical and Horizontal edges to lock onto. Circular object make good tracking targets because they have nice edges both horizontally and vertically.

06 Now we will move these Tracking Features to a good location on the footage like a good contrasting point which remains visible in the footage with a constant shape and color for a longer duration of time. Also make sure that the two Tracking Features are having a fair distance between each other in order to make the 'Rotation' tracking parameter to track and store the data correctly. We will also increase the size of the Tracking Features in order to make them sustain the sudden shift of the pixels that might come due to the jitters of the hand held camera moment.

07 Select both the Tracking Features in the view-port while making sure that the Time Slider is on the first frame of the composition and press 'Analyze' forward. The program will step through all the frames in the footage, moving the Tracking Features in each frame to keep them locked onto the Tracking Targets. This is the data collection phase, therefore finding good good tracking data is obviously a prerequisite for a good motion track. As soon as we find a 'Tracking Feature' is about to move out of the frame we will stop the tracking procedure.

08 Press the 'Edit Target' button and set the 'Motion Target' layer to 'First Half Data' null object. Now in order to apply the Tracking Data onto the Target Layer hit 'Apply' and select 'X and Y' as the Apply Dimensions. 'The First Half Data' null object sticks to the footage perfectly and the track looks pretty good. Now what we need to do is to motion track the second part of the footage. Select the 'First Half Data' null object with the tracking data and move the Time Slider to its last key-frame.

09 Double click on the footage again in order to get into the Layer View of the Footage. Hit 'Track Motion' once again in order to get another set of tracking points. Hit Rotation here as well to track the rotation of the second half of the footage as well and place the Tracking Features on a new set of points that stays till the end frame of the footage. Make sure that we are lined up to the last key frame of the Tracking Data from the first tracker while pressing Analyze forward once again.

10 After finishing the tracking procedure hit 'Edit Target' and choose 'Second Half Data' null object as the target object. Once again hit 'Apply' and choose 'X and Y' as the Apply Dimensions in order to link it to the Tracking motion data from the Tracker 2. Jump back to the main comp, where we now have two null objects with the tracking data information of the footage. Now we are ready to link the Tracking data from two nulls together into one by parenting the 'First Half Data' null object to the 'Second Half Data' null object.

11 What our last step has done is to enable the 'First Half Data' null object to continue its motion even after the First tracker stops tracking at around 4 second as it take the track data information from the 'Second Half Data' null object. This way we can parent our external element to 'First Half Data' null object and it will reposition itself based on both the trackers. This is a really good way to link trackers together that go off the frame.

12 Now in order to put our external element in the footage we will jump to the last frame of our footage and render a single frame out of the After Effects by clicking onto Composition menu and selecting 'Save Frame As - File' option. Now we we will take this single frame into Photo-shop where we will place a Clock tower from the provided images in the project folder in between the buildings. Make sure that the we Matte Paint the Clock Tower in a seprate layer so that we can export it separately from Photo Shop and place it in After Effects.

13 Import the Photo-shop file that we created in the last step as a Composition and double click on the composition to dive inside the it. Copy the two Clock Tower layers and paste it on to the last frame of Main Composition. Now in order to establish a connection between the clock towers and footage we will link the clock tower layers to the 'First Half Data' null object. Finally we will color correct the clock towers in order to match them to the background layer. As the last and the final step we will put a camera shake in the footage to make it look more dramatic and believable.

14 Create a new composition with the name of Camera Shake and drop the main composition into it. Press 'P' in order to bring up the Position parameters and create two key-frames for it, one on the first frame of the composition and the other one on the last frame of the composition. Open up the Wiggler Parameters from the Window menu and select the Position Key-frames on which we are going to apply this wiggle effect. Inside the Wiggler settings change the 'Noise Type' to 'Jagged', select 'All Dimensions Independently' inside the Dimension options and change the Frequency and Magnitude Value to 4.0 and 16.0 respectively.

15 Ram preview the composition in order to notice the black borders that came because of the footage displacement. So in order to get rid of this we will increase the size of the composition to 110. Once we are done with all this we can enhance the output with some other color correction techniques which I will explain later in the lessons on color correcting a footage and achieving a movie look.

01 In this lesson we will learn how to Rig a 2D Character with IK inside After Effects. Open the 'Casual Guy 01' After Effects file from the projects folder. The file contains 2 compositions with the side pose and the front pose of the character each having separate layers for each part of the body. The file contains the minimum number of layers possible for rigging a 2D character.

02 We will start rigging process by pinning down the joints of the 'Front Left Arm' layer with the Puppet Tool which can be found on the main tool bar. Before starting the Pinning process make sure that the value of 'Expansion' is set to 1 while the 'Triangles' value is set to 550. With the Puppet tool selected click on the middle of the shoulder to create the 1st Puppet Pin Point, and then on the center of the Elbow, Wrist and Hand for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Puppet Pin Points respectively.

03 The important thing while rigging a character in AE is to always rename the Puppet Pins according the parts of the body that they represent. Like the 1st Puppet Point can be renamed to 'Left Shoulder' as it represent the shoulder of the left arm and similarly rename the rest of the Points.

04 Now we will convert the Puppet Pin Points into Bones with the help of Bones button on the DUIK toolbar. This actually creates a Null object onto the Puppet Pin Point which acts as its controller. So we will create null object controllers for the Puppet Pin Points one by one by selecting and hitting the bones button. Also make sure to start the controller creation process from the Shoulder while ending it up with the creation of Hand controller.

05 Once the bone controllers are set we will then link them to each other in order to make them follow a hierarchy. Select the controllers one by one starting from the 'B_Left Hand' controller and link them up to the upper joints. So in this case we will connect 'B_Left Hand' to the 'B_Left Wrist', 'B_Left Wrist' to the 'B_Left Elbow' and 'B_Left Elbow' to the 'B_Left Shoulder'. Select and rotate the controllers one by one in order to check the hierarchy.

06 Now in order to apply Inverse Kinematics to the bone setup we will require a controller for the whole arm at the wrist point. So for that select the wrist controller 'B_Left Wrist' and click Controller button on the DUIK toolbar. Once we are done with that we will now create the IK relation between the bones by selecting the bone controllers in a hierarchy while pressing the Ctrl and selecting the controllers one by one. Make sure to start selecting the controllers from 'B_Left Wrist', 'B_Left Elbow', 'B_Left Shoulder', and in the last the main controller 'C_B_Left Wrist'.

07 Hit the IK Button on the DUIK toolbar in order to finish the IK chain setup and to make the whole arm follow the 'C_B_Left Wrist' controller. Press OK on the dialogue box that appears after we click the IK Button. Check the rig setup by moving the controller in order to check whether the arm is moving as desired or not. Once we are done with the arm we will repeat the same procedure with the right arm and two legs of the character.

08 Once we are done with the limbs we will continue with the rigging process of torso which we are gonna do a bit differently here. We will start the rigging process of the torso by pinning down the points on the limb joints starting from the Right Thigh joint continuing to the Left Thigh, Left Shoulder, and Right Shoulder. We will further add the pin points on the torso with a point in the center of the Thigh Joints, a point in the middle of the torso for the belly, a point in the middle of Shoulder Joints and lastly a point at the top for the neck.

09 Next we will rename the Pin Points according to the parts of the body that they represent. Once we are done with the naming of the puppet pins we will then start assigning bone controllers to each of the Puppet Points starting from the 'Torso Right Thigh' while covering each and every point up to the top of the list.

10 After completing the Bone Controller creation process we will now link the controller of limb joints to the main central controllers of the torso. Select and link the Bone Controller of the Thigh Joints to the Pelvis Bone Controller and Bone Controller of the Shoulder Joints to the Chest Bone Controller. To further complete the rigging process of the torso link the rest of the Bone Controllers normally, i.e. Neck to the Chest, Chest to the Belly and in the end Belly to the Pelvis.

11 Select the Chest Bone Controller and create a new Controller from the DUIK toolbar. And once again in order to achieve the Inverse Kinematics for the torso we have to start selecting the Bone Controllers in a proper hierarchy while pressing Ctrl on the keyboard, i.e. starting from the B_Torso Chest, B_Torso Belly, B_Torso Pelvis and in the end C_B_Torso Chest. And in the end in order to finish the IK Chain setup hit the IK button on the DUIK toolbar.

12 Next step will be to rig the eyes of the character. Select and duplicate the Eye Ball layers (Front Left Eye Ball and Front Right Eye Ball) and place them over the Pupil Layers. Select the Pupil Layers one by one and inside the TrkMat options select Alpha Matte which will make the pupils to mask in case they move outside of the Eye Ball layers. And in order to make the Pupils move together we will parent them to a new Null object.

13 Select all the layers on the face and link them to the Front Face layer in order to make them move along with the Face layer. Now in order to make the face rotate from the neck joint we will move the anchor point of the face layer according to the neck joint. This will also make all the layers on the face rotate in the same manner. Also link the Front Face Layer to the B_Torso Neck layer in order to make it behave according to the movement of the torso.

14 Now we will start linking the layers to their parent layers in order to make the all the parts of the character follow a perfect hierarchical movement. So we will start with the 'Front Face' layer which will connect to the 'B_Torso Neck' Bone Controller. Further connect the 'B_Left Shoulder' to 'B_Torso Left Shoulder', B_Right Shoulder' to 'B_Torso Right Shoulder', 'B_Left Thigh' to 'B_Torso Left Thigh', B_Right Thigh' to 'B_Torso Right Thigh'.

15 Now as the final step of this advanced character rigging process we will create three more controller objects for a better control of the character. We will start by creating a null object and renaming it as the 'Lower Body Controller', we will then place it below and between the foot controllers. Select and link the Foot Controllers to the Lower Body Controller in order to create a common controller for the legs of the character.

16 We will now create another null object for the upper part of the character which we will rename as the 'Upper Body Controller'. Place it above the head of the character and link the main upper body controllers with, C_B_Left Wrist, C_B_Right Wrist, B_Torso Pelvis, C_B_Torso Chest.

17 In the end we will create a Global Controller for manipulating all the parts of the body together. So for that create a new null object and rename it as 'Global Controller'. Place it in the center of the character and link the objects on the second stage of the rig hierarchy to this 'Global Controller'. Upper Body Controller, Lower Body Controller, Front Left Arm, Front Right Arm, Front Torso, Front Left Leg and Front Right Leg.

DUIK Tools helps in easing down the process of animation in After Effects with its easy to use features like Bones, IK and Auto-Rig. DUIK tools provides us the power of animating objects and characters in After Effects using Inverse Kinematics and Bones. It provides us with bone controllers for separate parts of the characters and we can reproduce the exact 3D Program like methods for skinning and rigging of characters in After Effects. DUIK tools also helps us with an IK controller at the end of an arm, or a leg. Now one can animate the entire limb by just modifying the postion of the hand or the foot. But before starting the lesson we will learn how to download and install the DUIK tool that we are going to use to rig our character.

01 In order to download the free DUIK tools script type in 'duduf.net' in your internet browser's address bar and hit enter. Click on the DUIK: Rigging and Animation link provided on the website's home page and download the Free Script from the page that opens.

02 Once its downloaded copy all the java script contents of the folder and paste it inside the ScriptUI Panels folder which is usually inside the default After Effects Scripts folder, C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS6\Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels.

03 Fire up After Effects and inside the General Preferences menu under the Edit menu enable, 'Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network' option in order to allow the 3^rd Party Scripts and Plugins to work properly inside After Effects.

04 Now in order to access the DUIK tools open up the 'Windows' menu on the main toolbar and select DUIK from the drop down. A separate window for the plug-in will popup which can be docked onto any part of the After Effects interface.

05 Finally we are ready to start rigging our character using the Auto Rig feature of the DUIK tools. The Auto Rig feature in DUIK tools is based on actual layer names. We can only use the Auto Rig tool feature directly if we have an appropriate number of layers with similar names as of the options of the Auto Rig tool menu. But in this case we are having only one layer for multiple pieces, which forces us to use the puppet tool.

06 As we have already a layer for the head we will continue with dividing the parts for the body layer. If we look inside the Auto Rig tools menu we will find that we need a neck and a pelvis to complete the pieces for upper body. So all we need to do is to put two puppet points in the body layer.

07 Now we will convert the Puppet Pin Points into Bones with the help of Bones button on the DUIK toolbar. This actually creates a Null object onto the Puppet Pin Point which acts as its controller. Rename them according to the parts of the body that they represent like in this case Neck and Pelvis.

08 Similarly we will proceed with the left arm of the character and divide it into four separate parts as required by the auto rig feature with the help of puppet pins. We will further create bone controllers for the same with the names corresponding to the parts of the arm. Like 'L Arm' for the upper part of the arm, 'L Forearm' for the lower part of the arm, 'L Hand' for the hand and 'L Fingers' for the fingers.

09 Once we are done with the left arm we will repeat the same procedure with the right arm and two legs of the character. After completing the skinning process we will proceed further and hit the Auto Rig button on the DUIK toolbar. Make sure that we have not selected any layer while we hit the Auto Rig button. And as we have labeled the bones correctly, they all fits into their respective slots in the Auto Rig option window. Press OK on the window to complete the rigging process.

10 The auto rig might lead to some distortion in any of the limbs of the character like the left hand of the character in this case. So in order to correct it we will select the 'C_L Hand' layer controller that got created because of auto rigging, and disable the 'IK Orientation' check box. Similarly select the 'C_L Foot' and disable the 'IK Orientation' check box in its effects control window as well.

11 After finishing the Auto rig process we are left with the bones of Fingers and Toes of the character. So in order to link them to the IK controller we will parent them with their predecessor controllers, like L Finger to L Hand and R Toe to R Foot.

12 Next and the last step will be to rig the eyes of the character. Select and duplicate the Eye Ball layers (Left Eye Ball and Right Eye Ball) and place them over the Pupil Layers. Select the Pupil Layers one by one and inside the TrkMat options select Alpha Matte which will make the pupils to mask in case they move outside of the Eye Ball layers. And in order to make the Pupils move together we will parent them to a new Null object.

1 We are going to start this lesson by creating a simple animation of circle ring sweeping with the help of Ellipse Tool. Create a circle in the center of composition and delete the 'Fill' sub layer in order to remove the color filling inside the circle and leave the stroke on the circle. Increase the stroke amount to 110 and change the color to orange.

2 Add in Trim Paths effect to the Ellipse 1 Layer which will help us in trimming down the stroke shape from the end or the start. Now in order to create a sweeping circle animation we will animate the Start and the End parameters of the 'Trim Paths' effect one after the another. Create a 20 frame long animation cycle of the 'Start' parameter stating from the 1^st frame, while another 20 frame long animation cycle of the 'End' parameter starting from the 11^th frame, catching the 'Start' parameter. Select all the key frames and press F9 in order to give a smooth touch to the animation.

3 Now we will create some more Shape Animations by manipulating the copies of this circle sweep animation. Select the shape sub layer 'Elipse 1' and rename it as 'Orange Circle Sweep'. Create a copy of the same and rename it as 'White Circle Sweep' and place it under 'Orange Circle Sweep'. Increase its stroke value to 360 and change the stroke color to white. Select all the Trim Paths 1 keyframes and move them 5 frames ahead in order to make the white circle sweep shape layer follow the orange circle sweep shape layer.

4 As discussed earlier we will now be creating some copies of the circle sweep animation in order to generate a much nicer look of multiple circles sweeping and creating something. Create a copy of the 'White Circle Sweep' and rename it as 'Blue Circle Sweep'. Place it at the bottom and decrease its size to 125 while also decreasing the size of the stroke to 125. Change the color of the stroke to Blue and reverse the current animation of the sweep to counterclockwise by just moving the starting key frames at the start of the animation to the end, and re organizing the key frames a bit so that the animation matches the other circle sweeping animation.

5 Lets add some other cool things to the animation so far, like dashed lines. Duplicate the 'Orange Circle Sweep' shape layer and rename it as 'Dashed Circle Sweep'. Change the color of the stroke to yellow and decrease its stroke size to 16. Also decrease the size of the circle to 340 in order to place it between the previous shapes. Dive inside the Stroke 1 parameters of the 'Dashed Circle Sweep' layer and press the '+' sign on the Dashes parameter twice in order to get Dash, Gap and Offset parameters for the shape layer. Increase the value of Dash and Gap Parameters to 78 and 29 respectively.

6 Now we will create the trails for the thick white circle. Duplicate the 'White Circle Sweep' and rename it as 'Trails 1'. Temporarily change its stroke color to black so that we can differentiate it with the base thick white circle easily. Change the stroke width to 25 an re organize the key frames in order to make this circle sweep follow the main white thick circle sweep like a trail. Place the 'Trail 1' circle sweep at the outer edge of the white thick circle by increasing the Circle size value to 1140. Duplicate the Trail 1 layer and decrease its size of the circle to 462 in order to place it at the inner edge of the white thick circle. Select both the Trail layers and change the stroke color back to white.

7 In order to add something more to our animation so far, lets add a new conical shape layer facing downwards and rename this shape layer as 'Triangles'. Add a repeater shape layer effect to it as we want it to repeat 6 copies of the shape in a circular array. Dive inside the Transform: Repeater 1 parameters and bring down the Position value to 0 while increasing the rotation value to 60 in order to complete the cycle of shapes array.

8 Now we will make these triangular shapes to move outwards, and for that we will create a group inside Triangles shape layer with the name of 'Triangle Offset' and put the Path 1 layer inside it. Dive inside the 'Triangle Offset' shape sub layer and inside the 'Transform: Triangle Offset' parameters create some key frames for the Y Position in order to make the triangle shapes move outward individually starting from the center. We can play with the scale parameters in order to create the spawning of the triangles effect.

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Motion Tracking In After Effects

Advanced Character Rigging with DUIK Tools

Introduction to Rigging with DUIK Tools

Introduction to Motion Graphics in After Effects