PPP3 - After Effects & Motion Comics

3D Layers & Camera Setup

To avoid sending too much data over the network at University, create a local Cache folder for your work within After Effects.

After Effects > Preferences > Media & Disk Caches

Change the location to the scratch disk, make AE its own Cache folder and reduce max size to 50GB.

Import Animation Ready File, change format to Composition. Keep it editable, do NOT merge.

Reduce the Composition resolution down to 1920x1080 in Composition > Composition Settings

- Change all layers in composition into 3D layers.

- Set up  views in your Project Window (Front + Top). Similar to Orthographic view in Maya.

- Transform the Z position of each layer to give the effect of separate 3D layers. (Parallax)

Now make a Camera to view the 3D Layers through.

Layer > New > Camera

- Enable Depth of Field so you can adjust focus and aperture of the camera in the composition to convey depth better.

- If you enable global Motion Blur this will also help too.

Camera Options

After you've set up the parallax, depth of field on the camera and its position you can animate the camera to appear like you're flying through the scenery.

2-View look of Camera's POV

Puppet Tool

- Using the 'Space Scene' PSD file provided, create a new project.

- Select the Claw layer.

- Select the 'Pin' tool, ticking the Mesh box next to it.

Once the Pin is placed on the Claw layer, an elastic Mesh should appear on the layer

After putting a few pins in the Ship and Astronauts legs and arms, I got something ridiculous like this:

The Ships legs in particular are a little to bendy and look too organic.

- A way to fix this is starching a puppet.

- Hold Left-Click on the Pin Tool to bring up the Starch tool selection.

After this, reset the Legs positions under the Composition Layer Effects menu.

- Apply starch to the Top and Bottom joints of the Leg meshes.

One last thing with Puppet-making in AE is overlapping.

- Holding Left-Click on the Pin Tool again will bring up the Overlapping Tool for you to select.

- Apply a dot onto the place you want to overlap (The Astronauts Hand for example)

- Apply the extent to which you want this dot to effect the mesh. (The entire arm of the Astronaut)

- Then reduce the 'in Front' percentage in order to give the value of what distance you want the Astronauts hand to have in terms of depth.

I really like the effect you can get with the effect of parallax and depth perception in After Effects. A great example of seeing it in the cinematic world is the trailer for Guild Wars 2 created in 2009. The entire trailer is compiled from various pieces of concept art for the game forged into a narrated 2D story with movement.