Hey everyone!
This is John Dickinson from motionworks.net back with another Sapphire tip for you.
This time, we're going to talk about transitions in After Effects and transitions in After
Effects are often overlooked but there's definitely more to them than meets the eye.
I particularly like using transitions with Type especially the Sapphire transitions because
there's a huge range to choose from.
So let's take a few moments taking a look at some of the setups I've created using Sapphire
transitions.
In this first example, I have this horror text here which I've pre-composed and I'm
using the Sapphire grunge effect to fill this up with this grungy look and this is one of
the grunge presets called Quentin which shifts with Sapphire.
To learn more about how to use grunge with text definitely check out the grunge tip.
But for now, I just want to show you how you can use Sapphire transitions to reveal this
text in a spooky way.
So first of all, I've used Sapphire dissolve glow and if just play this back, you can
see how the text is dissolving in and it's also glowing at the same time.
It's got a nice spooky feel to it.
And for dissolve glow, all I've done is I've increased the width-Y to give it that nice
stretch look, kind of a classic horror feel, and I've animated the dissolve percent but
just press the U key to reveal the keyframes.
You can see I've started it at 100 percent and I'm dissolving back to 0.
And that's revealing the text because you don't have to use a transition to transition
from one layer to another.
You can see here I haven't chosen a background source, it's set to none so it's a great
way to transition text in and with Sapphire dissolve glow, I've been able to combine a
dissolve and a glow into one transition so it saves me having to add a glow effect and
animate that and also animate a pass key keyframes.
Let's just turn in this background here.
This is also Sapphire grunge-- one of the Sapphire grunge presets that I've loaded up--
and to wipe this off, I've used Sapphire WipeClouds.
So let's just select this layer and turn on WipeClouds.
And for WipeClouds, I've just animated the Wipe percent.
See I've started on 0 and this gives us a nice spooky Wipe.
So, in this case, I haven't had to use something like fractal noise and create a matte and
then animate that.
I can just apply the Sapphire WipeClouds effect and animate the Wipe percent.
So you can see how the Sapphire transition effects have saved me a lot of time.
Let's take a look at another example.
In this example, I have this music text and I have Sapphire Wipe circle applied.
Let's just turn that on and you can see if I just drag through that, I'm revealing that
text using a circle.
And to create this manually using standard After Effects features would take a little
bit of time.
But with Wipe circle, I can just apply the effects and animate the Wipe percent which
is what I've done here.
To make this look more interesting, I've used Sapphire Wipe tiles.
And you can see, I've set the tile shapes to stars.
And if it's some sort of music-related thing or television or movies, stars are definitely
a good shape to use so I've combined two transitions in one.
Now I've also got this background layer and this background has Sapphire Wipe star applied.
You can see I also have Wipe percentage keyframes here from 4 percent-- we just turn this layer
on-- from 4 percent, which fills the frame with red, down to about 87 percent or 88 percent,
which makes a star just fit inside that circle.
So Wipe star-- not necessarily being used as a transition but allowing me to create
a really quick star shape and animate that in quickly and easily.
And I've got one more layer sitting above that which is also a red solid and I've got
Sapphire Wipe tiles applied to that.
And you can see, I'm not doing anything as far as transitions go with Wipe tiles but
I've just set it to Wipe percent of about 25 and that's given me this star shape which
is filling up this background.
And we don't see that in the transparent areas because I have this button clicked here which
is preserve transparency-- that's a really nice way to crop out those areas.
So I'm using the transition purely as a device for creating a more interesting background.
In the next example, I've created more of a Thriller style and you can see I have this
Thriller text applied and I've started off with Sapphire Wipe line.
You can see, I've set the border a color to white and I'm animating the Wipe percentage.
You can see I'm animating that from 57 percent to around 38 percent just to reveal that text.
So that's an interesting reveal.
But I've made it more interesting by adding Sapphire dissolve tiles.
You can see I've also animated the dissolve percent for dissolved tiles and that gives
out a really nice interesting fractured look.
So combining two transitions together to reveal the text.
Now I've duplicated that text and put it on top and for the duplicate, I have both of
those effects applied but I've just modified the dissolved tiles setting slightly to break
the text up even more.
So turn that on and off.
Just like that to add a little bit more detail.
And then, duplicated the text again, and for this one, once again, we still have the same
Wipe line and dissolved tiles.
But this time, I've used Wipe dots as well just to fill it up with dots.
And you can see Wipe dots doesn't have any animation.
It's purely used just to fill that top layer with some dots.
If I adjust the frequency, you can see that can change the amount of dots in there.
So layering Sapphire transition effects on top of each other can result in some really
interesting looks.
That is also that I haven't fully completed the dissolve so that we're left with this
nice fractured look at the end-- not too much because definitely want the text to be readable
but that's much more interesting than fully dissolving all of those layers.
Just having standard white text again.
So even if I didn't actually add any animation to this, I could have set this up in this
way using Sapphire transitions to get a really nice grungy look to this text.
And in the last example, I have this comedy text and I have Sapphire Wipe dots applied.
And if I just adjust the Wipe percent, you can see, I can Wipe the text on and off.
But what I did for this was I duplicated the text a couple of times and you can see here,
I have exactly the same text slightly different color and a slightly different frequency and
Wipe percent and by doing that, I'm getting this kind of 3D or faux 3D look.
And then, adding another layer and modifying that slightly again, you can see I've made
that even darker that helps even more to make this look like it has some depth.
Then by adding the text again at the bottom and actually not applying any effects to this
one, you can see that's just filled with this orange-yellow.
I'm getting this really nice effect where this text looks like it has 3D holes in it
and I haven't created any animation for this at all.
I just used Sapphire transitions to create this look.
So go ahead and explore the Sapphire transitions which you can use to add even more muscle
to your Sapphire effects library.
Thanks for watching and be sure to click on the link above to download a free trial of
Sapphire for After Effects and check out the Sapphire transitions for yourself.
Also, follow Boris FX on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to stay up-to date-with the latest
information and training materials on Sapphire, Continuum, Mocha Pro and all of the Boris
FX products.
For now, this is John Dickinson from motionworks.net.
Have fun and I'll see you in another tip.