﻿[Lang Belta - Language in the Expanse] Oye beltalowda. Welcome fo makin' space.
Ere xidawang video, mi am going fo show to dewe fo create wa serí dimensional asteroid belte
to kang fly through using bera da included effects fo efa effects.
For those of you who don’t watch the Expanse, then you really should. It’s awesome.
And a big chunk of its appeal for me is the accuracy with which they portray the solar
system and specifically asteroids. There are about 1.5 million rocks spread
out in a ring or belt between Mars and Jupiter. But the total mass of all the
asteroids adds up to about 3% of our Moon. Ceres is the largest rock, big enough to be a
Dwarf Planet and that accounts for 39% of the mass of the belt, but is still only 950km wide.
The history of the belt is still being written, but it starts in 1595,
Johannes Kepler predicted that there must be a planet between Mars and Jupiter, because the gap
observed by Tycho Brahe, was too big. In 1766, Johann Daniel Titius spotted a
mathematical relationship between the planets which become known at the Titius-Bode Law.
When Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, it matched this law, which had suggested
there should be a planet in that space. On January 1st 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi spotted a
tiny object in the predicted location. He initially thought it was a comet,
but it didn’t have a tail. So he concluded it was a planet and named it Ceres,
after the Roman Goddess of the Harvest. Fifteen months later, Heinrich Olbers
discovered and named Pallas. To quote Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy. “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean,
you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Ceres and Pallas were just points of light to even the strongest telescopes.
They looked just like stars, except they moved across the sky way faster.
In 1802, Herschel suggested that instead of calling these bodies: “planets”,
we should coin a new term: “Asteroids”. And I’m sure that had
nothing to do with him thinking these new discoveries might overshadow his Uranus.
Herschel wasn’t exactly popular though and people kept referring to them as planets.
It wasn’t until 20-odd years after his death that term “Asteroids” caught on.
And that was mainly due to new discoveries. It became “cumbersome”.
Oh, one last footnote. In 1846, Neptune was discovered which broke the Titius-Bode Law,
so that “rule” was discredited. So Piazzi and Olbers were looking in the right place,
for the wrong reasons. Thank goodness for YouTube Chapters,
am I right? For everyone who skipped the Tasting History knockoff, I’m going to use CC Particle
World to create a backdrop of particles. This is tricky, because CC Particle World
struggles to have particles occupy the same space. Older particles always appear behind,
but if an older particle is closer to the camera, it breaks the 3D illusion.
I’m then going to use Cinema4D Lite to create a close up Asteroid, so that we get the best
of both worlds. Let’s get started.
Here I am in After Effects, usual 1080p comp. And for those who are familiar with my work,
first thing I’m going to do is go to Layer… New… Null Object.
Make it 3D and make sure it’s called “Null 1”.
Now, duplicate this layer twice.
Name the first one Rotation.
Then hit P to expose the position properties, and set the X value to something like 20,000:
This is going to be the centre of orbit for our asteroid belt.
When you’ve done that, name the second null to be Position.
And make it a child of Rotation. So Position is in our field of view, but if I use
the rotation controls on the Rotation null, you can see it flies around in a massive circle.
To link ‘Null 1’ to Position, use this expression, I’m borrowing from
one of my earlier tutorials here. We’re going to link CC Particle World to
this null, and by linking it to these others, we get to control its position.
So, let’s go to Layer…. New… Solid Make sure it’s comp-sized and hit OK.
Name it Rocks.
Then I’m using a preset I made from another earlier tutorial, which is CC Particle World
linked to a NULL. Tutorial is linked in the description below. It covers linking CC Particle
World’s producers to this null. Now go to Effect ... Expression
Controls ... Slider Control. And name it Rocks amount
and set it to 10. Then use the particle world’s birth rate pickwhip
to link to the rocks amount slider. This gives us an easy to access slider
to govern the amount of rocks we create. Trouble is, CC Particle World’s birth rate isn’t
directly connected to an understandable value. And 10 is too high.
Edit the expression and add divide by 100 after the slider value.
Expand the Producer section and we have to set the Radiuses to 0.
If we give CC Particle World any sort of range, then the particles can overlap.
Now let’s animate the Rotation null.
Select that null and hit R to expose the rotation controls.
And at 0 seconds, set the Y rotation to be minus 45 degrees.
And at 5 seconds in, set it to +3. Because the newest particles are in front,
we need to generate our particles from the back towards the camera.
We can’t really see what’s going on. In CC Particle World, set the longevity to 100.
And expand Physics and set the velocity and gravity to zero.
In Particle, set the type to Shaded Sphere.
And up the max opacity. And go to Layer… New… Camera
and use the orbit tools to move around.
So we’ve got a very organised flat line. Not exactly random distribution is it?
Expand the Position Null’s position properties, and holding ALT click on the stopwatch.
In the expression’s area type: X equals wiggle brackets 15 comma 400
close brackets square brackets zero.
Semi colon, new line Y equals wiggle brackets 15 comma 400
close brackets square brackets one. Semi colon, new line
Z equals value square brackets two. Semi colon, new line
Square brackets X comma Y comma Z close square brackets.
Wiggle is a really clever expression that knows what property it is being applied to.
In this case a 3-dimensional one. So wiggle doesn’t generate a random value,
it generates an array of three random values. We want the X and Y to be random, but not the Z.
Incidentally, there is a more efficient way to write this.
But I thought it best to show you what’s going on.
And taking a look. That’s better.
And from the top. Yeah. Each particle is in its own z-plane.
And that’s the trick. Thanks for watching… [record scratch]
Yeah, you probably want me to show you the texturing and the C4D bit too.
Using the Rocks amount slider, set a keyframe at 0 seconds for 10
And then right click to set a hold keyframe. Then jump to 5 seconds.
And now, use the PAGE DOWN key to move back a few frames. And set a new keyframe to 0.
We’re going to stop generating the 2D rocks in the foreground,
so that we have space to add the 3D ones. For the texture and because this is a simulation,
I want to use something real-world, to help sell the effect.
I found this craggy rocks texture on the royalty-free site Pixabay.
Make a new comp, 400 by 400 pixels. And set the duration to just 30 frames.
Add in the texture. It’s way bigger, but that’s ok.
Expand the transform properties.
And set a keyframe at 0 positioning the texture with it’s top-left corner.
Then at 10 frames, set a new keyframe for the texture to have moved over
so that the top-right corner is visible. ALT click on the position properties
stopwatch and type: loopOut brackets quotes cycle end
quotes comma 2 close brackets. So the position property will now
constantly fly from the left to the right. Then set a keyframe for the anchor property.
Move one frame after the keyframe you set. And drag on the Y value until you can
see the middle indicator. Right click on the keyframe indicator
and convert it to a hold keyframe. Jump to 20 frames on the timeline and set
a new keyframe so that the bottom of the image is visible.
And scrubbing through the timeline, we now have 30 images on thirty frames.
Not exactly rock shaped though. Create a new solid,
make sure it’s white.
And place it above the texture. And using the elliptical mask tool,
draw a circle. You can hold SHIFT to keep the circle perfect and CTRL will centre the mask,
but we’re going to affect its shape quite a bit, so it’s up to you.
Now go to Effect… Distort… Turbulent Displace.
Set the amount to 80 And the size to 110.