Inside Adobe After Effects let's go ahead and create a new composition.
Go up to After Effects Composition menu, choose New Composition which is Control + N
or Command + N on the Mac of just click on the icon below where it says
Create a new Composition. Now for the Preset inside the Composition Settings,
click on the drop down menu and now we going to be working with the HDTV 720
by 25 frames per second. duration: 20 seconds is okay
and for background color I am just going to use black.
Click OK and click OK. Now I want to change the name of Comp 1
to have another name so I am just to click on the field name, hit Return on
my keyboard and then rename this to Main Comp.
and then hit Return on your keyboard. Next go to After Effects File menu, choose
Import, select File and from the exercise folder
you are going to see two JPGs. Click to import
the leaf JPG which we are going to click
and drag this and put it on its own composition which is the leaf
composition. Now the goal here is
to extract leaf from its background and for that we're gonna start off by using an
effect. Go to After Effects Effect menu, choose Keying and select Linear Color Key.
Now the way the effect works is
a Linear Key compares each pixel in an image
to the key color you specify and the way we are going to specify the key color is by using the
eyedropper. So select the Eyedropper tool inside the Linear Color Key and click on the original image.
if the color of a pixel closely matches the key color
it becomes completely transparent so in this case let's zoom in and see it is
transparent indeed and you
as you can see it is not, especially
in the petiole of the leaf so
here what we need is we need add
more color to the key color range and we going to do this by using
that plus eyedropper inside the Linear Color Key effect panel to increase to Matching
Tolerance in the level of transparency. Go ahead and
click again the original image and looking at this I
think we have much better selection.
OK. We need to Invert this
so go back to After Effects Effect menu
Effect, choose Channel and select
Invert. We don't want to invert the RGB but you want to invert the
Alpha channel
but as you can see we have and a lot of jagged
edges which actually we need to shrink this a bit.
Alright so how are we going to do this? Return to After Effects Effect menu,
then choose Matte and select Simple
Choker. Now the way the Simple Chocker effect works
is, it will shrink the edges of the Matte in small
increments to create a clearer matte and we going to achieve this by scrubbing
this Choke Matte field. Now you don't wan to go
overboard here because if you do you're going to lose the petiole
of the leaf so you want to back off a little bit
I think a value of 1.3
looks OK. That looks pretty good.
Now we got the leaf transparent, back to the main composition,
click on the leaf and bring it to After Effects timeline.
Go up the After Effect File menu to Save this
As, give it a name of
leaf, and click the Save button.
Now we are ready to add
some particles. In order to add
particles into our scene all we have to do is go to the After Effects Layer menu.
choose New and create a new Solid (Ctrl + Y / Cmd + Y). Inside the Solid Settings I am going to change the name,
instead of Black Solid 1 I will give a name of Particle.
feel free to give any other name
and then click on the Make Comp Size button.
and click OK. Now we will make the Leaf
invisible
and then go to After Effects, find the Effects & Presets panel and inside the search bar
type Particle and
immediately finds After Effects CC Particle World effect.
Double click on it and its on the
Particle layer. We are going to get rid off some the
visuals, for example going to the Grid & Guides option,
uncheck the Grid Floor field,
the Horizon, the Axis Box, the Position and
Radius. I am going to skip the Birth Rate and Longevity
and move to the Producer option. If I scrub this a bit you can see
we have the
the particles which are emitting from one single point.
We need to open this up so ti emits from more than just one
point
and we got to accomplish this by using the Radius X,
Radius Y and Radius Z.
So open this up, make it wider
like so I'm going to stretch it up a bit
and then make it a bit deeper using the Radius Z.
OK. Press the Spacebar to see the preview.
Now let's go to the Physics option.
From the drop-down menu we need to find something
that resembles the Wind effect so for that I am
going with the Direction Axis option
because I want this to go to a particular direction
as you can see we're getting close to what we what
because this is blowing basically to one direction
now its blowing in one direction but
the gravity which basically determines how fast the particles
fall it needs to slow down a bit so
bring this up
and it blows a little higher up.
Now let's move on the the Particle option.
For Particle Type instead of Line choose the Texture
QuadPolygon which I am going to replace with the leaf. So under the
Texture click on the drop down menu and choose Leaf which is an option
since we brought it in After Effects timeline.
So select the Leaf and run the effect by
scrubbing the timeline.
Ok, here is the problem,
we don't have a lot of leaves
on the composition, more leaves need to be
born.
We need to increase the Birth Rate of the particle emitter
which is how many particles are being born per second.
Up this quite a bit so more particles are born per second,
like so.
The Longevity is basically how long do the particles last
on a screen before they disappear.
Looks good but problem is particles
move too fast so I'm going to add a
a bit of Resistance here,
a bit of friction. So for the Resistance
use 1.5 or so
and we have the right amount of particles and resistance rate.
It looks very natural.
Continue this...
Roll back to beginning of the timeline
and notice the particles have disappeared...
but actually they haven't been born yet.
Move the particle layer to the left
off a bit
so this way the particles have started already
emitting few seconds before, all you have to do is
click an extent this, the layer duration.
OK, let's play that from the beginning, press the Spacebar on your keyboard to preview the composition.
Go to After Effects File menu, choose
Import File and import
the bench which is inside the exercise folder and click the Import button.
Drag the Bench image inside the timeline
under the particle layer/
Its a gigantic photo so we need to resize it/
Press S on your keyboard to up the Scale and
scale this down.
Play this again by pressing the Spacebar on your keyboard.
Now we need to
add a bit of a contrast.
on the bench image itself.
Go to After Effects Effect menu,
choose Color Correction and select Levels.
You can also type inside
the Effects & Presets panel, Levels
and double click on it. The goal here it to
bring some of the shadows so scrub the Shadows slider to the right.
OK. Press the spacebar on your keyboard to preview the composition.
Now if you find yourself that you want to increase the size
of the particles,
select the Particle layer,
scroll down and find the Birth Size option and increase it a bit.
OK
Be very careful not to overdo it.
Use 0.3 for Birth Size and use 0.3 for Death Size.
OK. Press the spacebar on your keyboard to preview the composition.
We have quite a lot of particles on the
scene which we replaced them with the leaf.
Ctrl + S (Win),
Cmd + S (Mac) to Save the project.
Taking this even further you can create a variation
by changing some colors and give a different tone to the After Effects composition.
For example I can select the bench layer and go up to After Effects Effect menu,
choose Color Correction and then select CC Toner.
Now by default CC Toner inside After Effects comes with this earthy colors
but feel free to change the Highlights, the Midtones, the Shadows and
so on...
In this case I do like how it looks but we need to
blend the effect with the original image.
Go to the Blend w. Original option and
up the percentage to 50% or
so and then since we applied that effect
let's go ahead and blend the leaves
into this earthy color
tone. Return to After Effects Effect menu, choose
Color Correction and and select Tint.
You can always go to the
After Effects Presets panel and type
Tint, double click on this
on the Leaf layer.
So select a leaf layer and double click on that.
On the Tint effect
Map to Black option use a
green darkish color,
something like that and for the Map White To
choose a yellow color
like so. Return to the Main Composition
as you can see now we are using different colors,
some different effects and we have changed the overall tonality
of this composition.
So don't forget to save, Ctrl + S (Win), Cmd + S (Mac).
Thank you for watching 3rd Element training tutorials with Elias Sarantopoulos.