Welcome.
My name is Andrew Kramer, and I'm a visual effects artist.
Designer, and I love VFX, right?
Like, I love any time a big studio releases their demo reel
and they show all the work they do and like, it just blows my mind.
But my favorite are the ones taking some unusual thing
and turning it into something that nobody would expect.
And that's kind of how I like to use After Effects.
Now, talking about like, unusual visual effects,
I wondered if this effect called CC Ball Action could be used to create
some kind of like a sand simulation
and the result was actually really cool.
So let me pull up in this quick project, OK?
In this particular effect, this effect called Ball Action
and it basically turns all of the pixels into these little little balls and it's 3D
and you can change the size, you know, make them really small
and then you can sort of choose the way that
it like twists or, you know, kind of like disperses basically.
So one of the things that I figured out is that one of the options
in the CC Ball Action is to use a color channel.
And so what I did is I took a texture
and you know, just added like a gradient to basically and animated it.
So this texture sort of animates.
And then when you use the
Ball Action effect, you can actually map the twisting effect.
So here's what it looks like normally, right?
Like it just kind of twists or whatever, right?
But if you use the red channel, you can sort of fake it sort of falling down.
And so you can see like there's green and there's red.
So the problem is there's no transparency, right?
So this is like compositing every little problem.
There's a you know, you have to keep figuring it out.
So how do I get the green out of there?
So there's another effect called a channel mixer.
And basically what you can do is you can just fade out the channel
and we're only sort of left with the red channel.
So by being able to now kind of have some transparency, I made it monochromatic.
That's how we kind of turn it into that and just give it
sort of like a sand tent color, you know?
It actually like looked pretty good.
So I was like, all right, well, let's keep it going.
So then I took a couple extra copies of it.
And if you add a curves adjustment with like a like a red channel curve,
you can sort of change the velocity of the sand.
So, you know, as it kind of peels off, it could go a little bit faster,
a little bit slower.
And in order to create enough particles, you just layer
it together and I didn't want to stop, right?
So like, I just started playing with it a little bit
more and adding additional layers, adding even things like
a burnout for the way that the sand sort
of like cracks off of it and then a texture on top of it.
So I'm not saying this is the best looking effect,
but the fact that you can take such a very simple plug in
and build on it and add things like
the smoke elements and all of a sudden it actually works pretty good.
And that's the thing that sort of helps you blend together different visual
effects, challenges, and there needs to be that glue
because you're not always going to have the perfect element
and you need to find something that kind of pull it together.
So admittedly, this is the process for how I work.
Like it's finding little things along the way and you don't really realize
how they're going to become necessary later on.
There is one last thing I kind of want to talk about, which is why doing
these kinds of experiments is like really important to help you be a better artist,
be more well-rounded, you know, when you face these kinds of challenges.
So at one point in time, I did this project
that was like very challenging, like the most challenging project.
And in this sequence,
I thought back to a lot of tutorials that I've created some ten years ago.
Things like this Shockwave Effects
you know, where you take the fractal noise and you wrap it into like a circle
and things like this particle storm moving through this reflective ball.
Very reminiscent.
I did this submerged tutorial where like I travel down with like a
like a camera projection, a city effect.
So I'm using all of the techniques and all the things that I've learned.
And then finally when I have this project,
I'm able to sort of call on all these different things,
kind of pull it all together.
And so that's why I love After Effects, because it gives you that freedom,
that flexibility.
And I'm Andrew Kramer.
Thank you so much for coming out. And we will see you next time.
it's definitely good to be back here at NAB,
bringing back all those good memories.
Fun to finally see everybody face to face again.
It's been a couple of years since my last presentation.
And so to get back up on stage in front of the lights and just put it out
there, it's feels right.
It's been a lot of fun this year at NAB and definitely excited for the next one.
You can just tell that everyone is excited to get back together
and it's just going to get better from here.