It’s Social Media Movember…. No that’s already a thing. It’s Social Nedia November…
yeah, that’s sounds dumb
Look, I’m going to show you how to make a Tweet preset.
Hey and welcome to Makin’ and this is part 1 of a four-part, one-a-week special series
where I’m going to show how to create very similar things, but using different techniques.
I could have bundled them up into a single video, but c’mon, I’ve got to think of
my search optimisations!
In this episode, I’m going to show you how to make a preset for a text layer, to make
it look like a Tweet… you know from Tweeter. For when you want to display a comment from
Twitter.
Now you could just take a screenshot of the Tweet, but then scaling it up makes it look
blocky. I mean, what about 4k amirite?
The really clever part is that I’ll also show you how we can save Twitter’s logo
as part of the preset.
Let’s get started.
First things first, add some text using the Text tool and to make it look like a quote,
shove an @ symbol on the first line for the Twitter handle and then set write the text
on the next line.
Now we’re going to start, just like with my Text box tutorial and go to Effect > Blur
& Sharpen > Fast Box Blur.
Set it to about 18
Then go to Effect > Channel > Shift Channels
And set the Take Alpha From to Full On.
Now we need to make some space for the logo.
So go to Effect > Styliize > CC Repetile
And set Expand Left to 60
I know you can’t see anything yet.
So let’s make it white.
Effect > Generate > Fill
And set it to White
And let’s round the corners.
Effect > Matte > Simple Choker
And set that to 50
But I want an outline to this white box.
So let’s go to Effect > Stylize > Find Edges
And set its blend with original to about 75%. So it’s subtle, but still there.
Now finally, let’s bring back our text, by going to Effect > Channel > CC Composite
Cool
So, by stacking everything into one layer, I can save this as an Effects Preset and whack
on any text I choose.
But let’s do a bit more to make it look like a Tweet.
Go to Effect > Generate > Circle.
And colour it Twitter blue:
Hex code: 1DA1F2
Now we can’t see anything else, that’s because the the Blending Mode of the Circle
effect is set to None.
Change it to Normal
And set the radius to about 37
Now to set the coordinates of the circle. We can’t just position it as these coordinates
are based on the comp, so if the text is not in exactly the same place next time I use
the preset the circle will be off it’s mark.
So...expand all the properties in timeline so that you can see the circle’s stopwatch,
the layer’s position, the Fast Box Blur’s radius and the Repetile’s Left amount.
I find it’s easiest to add a keyframe to each of these values, then hit the U key so
that becomes all we see.
Hold ALT and click on the Circle’s position.
And type
X = transform.position[0]
Plus
thisLayer.sourceRectAtTime().left
New line,
Y = 540;
New line
Square brackets X comma Y
Which gets the layer’s position in the comp, plus the width of the layer. And for the moment
I’ve fixed Y at 540.
And you can see the circle is positioned right where the text begins. So we need to move
it a bit left.
Minus
And use the pickwhip to link to CC Repitile
Cool, but a bit far.
Let’s add back the blur radius
Plus
And pickwhip the Fast Box Blur.
Maybe half the blur radius.
Now I could have just used the numbers here, but I wanted to make it easier to only have
to adjust the blur radius or the repetile radius to have an effect.
Y is a little simpler now that we have done X
Edit the expression and replace the 540 with
transform.position[1]+thisLayer.sourceRectAtTime().top
And then plus
And use the pickwhip to link to the blur radius
Alright. So we have something you could use here.
But let’s add in the Twitter logo.
A quick Google search finds loads of good contenders. I’ve taken this one and brought
it into After Effects.
I need to convert this into a mask, and the easiest way to do that is through Layer > Auto-Trace.
Set the channel to Blue. And click OK
Hmm. Didn’t work. Weird.
If your image doesn’t have an alpha channel, use a keyer to remove the background.
And try Auto-Trace using Alpha instead.
And yay! We now have a mask of the logo.
But it’s huge.
Copy the mask onto our Text layer
Set it to None, so we can still see the Text
And then click to select the mask and making sure all the points are selected, right-click
on one of the points and choose Mask and Shape Path > Free Transform Points
And scale the logo right down, until it fits in the circle.
And then go to Effect > Generate > Fill
Set the fill mask dropdown to Mask 1 and the colour to white.
Sweet.
But if I was to save this as a preset now, the mask’s position won’t be linked to
the circle.
But this expression from Mikey Borup comes to the rescue.
Mikey designed this expression to make easy to reposition animated masks, but we can adapt
it pretty easily for our preset purposes.
I didn’t know about Mikey’s channel until I was looking for a solution for this problem,
but now that I’ve found it. Well, frankly, I’m ready to give up. Dude has some great
tutorials.
But I suppose, you’re still watching this video, so I’d better finish.
The expression is in the description below, go ahead and copy it, then holt ALT and click
on the Mask Path’s stopwatch and paste it in.
Mikey’s expression covers most of it, but I made sure tPath was pickwhipped to the mask
path and offsetPos is linked to by circle’s center property.
Oh. That’s really weird.
Break the expression by clicking the equals sign.
Ah, I think I can see what to do. The clue is in the offsetPos variables name. It’s
offsetting the mask from somewhere.
Let’s move the mask to the layer’s anchor point.
But if we grab the mask, the anchor point disappears from our view.
So turn on the Title/Action Safe hud, so we can see the center of the comp.
And drag our text layer until it’s anchor tag is lined up with the centre cross.
Then make sure all the mask points are selected, and drag the mask onto the anchor point’s
position.
And click on the equals sign. Almost lined up. Uncheck the equals again and use the arrow
keys to nudge it a bit and check back.
OK, that’s it.
All we need to do now, is save the present.
In the timeline, expand both the Mask and the Effects sections, and hold SHIFT and click
on Mask 1 and each of the effects until they are all selected.
Then go to Animation > Save Animation Preset.
And that’s it - next time you want to flash up a tweet, just copy the text from it, paste
it into a text layer and add your tweet preset.
There’s one saved in the description below, but it’s more fun to build yourself.
I think this method works well for two scenarios. One, you need to have a whole bunch of tweets
appear onscreen and it’s far quicker to use a preset than anything else
And scenario two, you’re planning on producing the video your working on in different resolutions
- this way, you definitely don’t need to scale up a screengrab.
Next time, YouTube Comments. This episode was very expression heavy and while it works,
there is another way - one which will let you import into Premiere Pro to use directly
inside that program, without needing to dip into After Effects during editing.
Sounds cool? Great, then I’ll see you next time on Makin’ Social Media.