Finishing the Beast
Finishing the Beast
In order to give our animation a more film like look, we should add some motion blur. This is accomplished by checking the box under the letter M. Lets apply this to both the Atomic and Café layers.
The Production Bundle version of After Effects (the one we purchased) has a few extra tools. One of those is the Wiggler. The Wiggler provides random values for animation setting creating unique effects. Lets apply it to the café layer.
Jump to the end of the comp and select the café layer. Twirl down the scale property and add another keyframe here by clicking the check box. It should have the same value as the last keyframe, 90%. Now lets select both the last keyframe and the 2nd to last by shift clicking. Select Window>The Wiggler from the tool bar. The default setting are ok so we will leave them be except for magnitude which we will change to 15% (this gives the Wiggler the ability to adjust values ±15 or 75% to 105%). Since the Wiggler is totally random results will be different each time.
We could end here but lets add a bit more of a splash. Import the file Particulars2.mov. Move to 1;15 and drop in on the timeline above ninjasymbols. You will notice that it has changed your background to black. We simply need to change its mode to Add (F4 if modes aren't visible).
This layer fades itself in as the clip plays back but it end abruptly. Jump to maker 6 and twirl down the opacity for this layer. Click the stopwatch which should be at 100%. Press the O key to jump to this layers out point and drag the opacity down to 0%. Preview these changes.
Again this is nice but lets add one final effect using a plug-in. Create a new layer by selecting Layer>New>Solid. Set its name to Flare. Click on the Make Comp Size button. Make sure black is its background color. Set the in point for this clip to 5;25. Select Effects > Knoll Light Factory > Light Factory LE (you did remember to install this didnt you?).
Drag the flare into the center of the image. In the effect controls, start the brightness and scale and angle stopwatches. Jump to time marker 6. Drag up the brightness to 140, scale to 1.9. Jump to time marker 7. Drag brightness down to 80, scale down to .8 and angle to 0 x +50. That takes care of the effect, now we need to change its mode to make the background transparent. Modes adjust how the layer will be transparent and it depends on the background color. Add, Screen, and Color Dodge all work with black backgrounds (as do Lighten, Difference, and Exclusion but with weird results). Lets apply add but feel free to play around. Preview your changes.
This project looks done. To make sure, turn on the high quality setting for all your layers and preview to RAM.
Our final phase is writing out the project. After Effects can export to many different format but for this, lets export to Quicktime. Different settings will result in different file sizes and quality.
All done. Now save.
