#motiontestmonday

For this week's Motion Test Monday, I dove in to the world of looping animations and projected textures.

Going in to the motion test, my objective was to make a bright and poppy looping animation that didn't have an obvious loop point. Most looping animations you see around the internet usually involve just one object, but that's not too exciting. I wanted to make a scene that had many looping objects, all with their own animation and timing.

I achieved this by using a variety of plain effectors to control the rotation and scale of various cloners within Cinema4D. By approaching the loop this way, each pillar of cloned objects could have it's own unique action. It also allowed me to control when I wanted that specific portion to loop, whether it be at frame 45 or frame 82, it didn't matter. When coupled with other cloners doing their own thing, it makes a complex landscape of geometry moving in a way that doesn't fee at all generic. Because I used this technique, there are plenty of different small animations to explore, so viewers can always find a new element to enjoy.

When it came to lighting and texturing, I wanted to make a bright and inviting palette, but I also wanted to add a wonky twist some how. By using projected textures rather than traditional UV mapped textures, I could make gradients stay in place rather than being associated with the object that they're applied to, and this really adds the element of wonkiness and fun that I was looking for. This also allowed me to approach the scene from more of a design standpoint, where I could pick and choose exactly what colors I wanted, and exactly where they would fall. In addition to that, I went ahead and added a sub-suface scattering material to all of my objects, which allows some light to penetrate the objects, adding to the "chalky" feel of the materials.

When it came to compositing, I really didn't have to do much at all. The animation already looped directly out of Cinema, so that was taken care of. I really only added some slight levels to crunch my values a bit, because the SSS made the entire scene feel a little flat in the render. I multiplied my shadows back on top of my scene, with a slightly cool tint, at a low opacity to top the whole thing off.

Here’s another trapcode particular experiment that I’d like to call the Viscous Jelly Ball.

This one’s a bit tricky to explain, but the key is to set up a particle emitter in a pre comp that can be used do drive many different effects. If it’s set up in a pre comp, any changes you make to the emitter will be automatically updated throughout the project, all the way up to your main comp.

The effect is built off of one particular emitter for most effects, and then another for the colored balls inside.  I created a custom particle for the main emitter that basically is a circular gradient from white in the center to grey on the outside. In combination with Particular’s shadowlette from main feature, I created a black and white particle emitter that can be used to drive a displacement map (to warp the background for a sort of fake refractive effect), a depth map (to drive a camera lens blur for blurriness) and a luma matte for other effects (such as contrast, hue/saturation, etc. so that that you can dynamically distort the transparency of the blob based on the particle arrangement).

I recently came across an interesting technique that creates the effect of blobby-connections between geometry in close proximity in After Effects. To achieve the effect, blur your objects (so that you create a blurred overlap between them), and then crunch the alpha using either a curves or levels adjustment effect. This eliminates the alpha channel gradient caused by the blur and leaves a rounded off edge connection… you can learn more about the effect at around the 7 minute mark of this tutorial on School of Motion - http://www.schoolofmotion.com/project/30dae_24_toonshade/.

Anyways, I wanted to try to apply the effect to Particular (a third party particle plugin for AE) to achieve a stylized, cartoony flame. I created the flame using a bunch of upwards wind, tweaking the turbulence for flame-like motion, and then applying the blob technique I just mentioned. Once I had one layer of the flame, I duplicated it, changed the random seed, and varied the particle life span to get the different layers of flame.

To get the movement of the flame, I used After Effects’ often forgotten “Motion Sketch” tool, to draw out the motion on my tablet in real time. I applied the motion to a null object, and then attached the particle emitter to the null. To add a bit more complexity to the motion, I added a bit of random motion (simple wiggle expression) to the position of the null object.

Once that’s all done, SOUND DESIGN! I added some crackling fire and torch sounds to complete the effect.

Check out the Newfangled Studios blog each week for new videos, motion graphic tests, and awesome animations and to learn more about visual effects! Newfangled Studios strives to create innovative and dynamic motion graphics, so come take a look and see what they are all about!

For today's Motion Test Monday, Motion Graphic Artist Fred Kennedy embellishes simple animations using animated particles in After Effects.  Here’s a technique for creating a stylized paint effect using animated paint stroke elements as particles. The particles are emitted using the layer emitter option of the Particular Particle Generator (particles are emitted from a composition containing simple shapes or text). The final result has a nice level of intricacy and movement, though it is based on a very simple base animation.

Nesting pre-comps is a crucial practice in After Effects. For this week's Motion Test Monday, animator Cory Fanjoy wanted to put nesting to the test to make a complex and colorful transition. By repeating the same small, simple animations, he arranged a grid with offset timing and position to create an overwhelming pattern transition. After layering them on top of each other for an interesting color gradient effect, the motion test was complete.

The entire transition was created by repeating 6 different 2 second 40x40 pixel animations.

Smoke effects are tough to achieve without specialized and computational heavy smoke simulators. They generally rely on 3d software, long calculations, and long render times.

Motion graphics artist Fred Kennedy created this smoke effect inside of after effects using the Particular particle generator. The goal was to create a realistic smoke trail that could be manipulated on the fly and rendered quickly inside the 2.5D After Effects environment.

The trick here is to use a smoke element as a particle. This way particular’s particles have two levels of smoke detail - one, the emitted particles themselves and the turbulence, air resistance, and rotational velocity that guides their movement, and two, an actual smoke element that behaves as you would guess… just like smoke. Using a smoke element as a particle really sells the effect because it adds the realistic intricacy that particular doesn’t do so well to create.

Fred attached the smoke emitter to a null object with motion driven by the Motion Sketch utility in After Effects. Motion Sketch allows you to record a hand drawn gesture with a tablet and apply it’s speed and direction to an object.

On the final composite of the smoke, Fred colored the smoke with a tritone effect. A couple tricks to squeeze some more detail out of the simulation was another layer of Turbulent Displacement, as well as AE’s unusual “Vector Blur” effect. The vector blur adds a blur to a layer based on the direction and velocity of the layer’s movement (from what he can gather…). What it does in this context is that it connects some of the smoke particles along their paths to create a bit of a more wispy quality to the smoke. It’s also great for flame effects. To go along with the smoke theme, Fred created a layered heat distortion effect using footage of a flame to drive a displacement map and blurriness.

The end result is a somewhat realistic smoke effect that can be used for accents, transitions, and atmospheric effects, and you never need to leave After Effects.

For this week's motion test Monday, animator Cory Fanjoy really wanted to create a looping animated gif, to sharpen up some of his animation skills. Cory wanted to keep it simple, so that he could focus on the timing of the animation. After mixing together a couple of transitions, a handful of bright colors, and some clean animation curves, this bad boy was the result!