hey what's up ladies and gentlemen I'm Ignace Aleya and today it's another
filmmaking Friday so in this filmmaking Friday I will be
showing you how to create some really cool glowing neon footsteps in Adobe
After Effects just like in a preview you saw it's a really cool effect that you
see in a ton of music videos and it just got me intrigued I tried to experiment
with a few techniques none of them works until the last one so
first I experimented with the 3d camera tracker from Adobe After Effects which
didn't give me good results because of the reflections in the floor so that's
not a right way of doing that then I tried to use mocha to track the entire
floor which is also not a good solution it didn't really track them very well
because it's a tree the kind of movement but then at the end of trying everything
I came to this technique also using mocha which is a tracking software that
comes with After Effects so if you do have After Effects you will have mocha
if you don't know that it should be in there integrative so yeah we're going to
be using that in combination to After Effects in order to create these results
alright so if you want to use files to test it on I actually provided you'll
link to download in the description below it's completely for free so you
can test out this technique with the same exact footage that I'm using so you
can follow along with this tutorial and if you enjoy watching this video be sure
to give it a like also subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bar so
you get notified when I upload new videos that would be a great help and
without further ado let's jump into Adobe After Effects alright so here we
are in Adobe After Effects and I have my original footage right here so this you
can download in the description below and as you can see right here the ground
is very reflective so we see the lights and they're actually moving in the
reflections because of the depth we do have some things that we can use to
analyze this footage with a simple 3d camera tracker
I wish you have in After Effects treking and you click on your footage that won't
work in this case because of all the reflections and you could mask out these
reflections but then you have these reflections over here so it gets really
really hard really simple 3d camera trackers so in some occasions this
solution could work but anyway I found a better way to be 100% sure the track is
perfect so what
do is drag this footage into a new composition and as you can see we are
going to check out our footage and you can right click on your footage go to
interpret footage main we can see it's 24 frames per second that's actually
very important in a second but yet we're going to cancel that for now we have an
mp4 video file but one problem is if we're going to send this to MOCA which
is a tracking software and that comes in well it comes with Adobe After Effects
you can go to animation and then click on track and mocha AE if your going to
click that and some well sometimes it doesn't work with a video file so it's
very important that you first export this video file as an image sequence and
then re-import that video file as an image sequence with 24 frames per second
so if you're not following just and do as I do so you click on your video
footage and go to composition and add to render queue not to Adobe Media encoder
to render queue actually it could work in media encoder as well but I'm just
trying to save some time and stay within After Effects
so right here we are going to select our JPEG and we're just going to jump
quickly in the JPEG function for me it automatically checks on resize I don't
want to do that so I'm not resizing my footage and I'm going to click OK then
I'm going to click here on the output to find my destination folder create a new
folder and rename this to image sequence ok open that folder and just save it
over there and then go render it shouldn't it shouldn't take too much
because it's an image sequence in JPEG format so as you can see it's going
pretty fast here ok so once the video footage while the image sequence is
exported you go right click import and file go to that image sequence click on
the folder and click on the first image make sure import jpg sequence is checked
on and then import that now we will have imported an image sequence but as you
can see right here the FPS isn't right it's 30 FPS so if we right click
interpret footage main we can see that it's currently set to 30 FPS which means
it's going to playback faster than it should be so reset that to 24 and then
if you click OK that image sequence will now be 24 frames per
second so drag that on top of your footage and you will see that it's the
exact same length and yeah there we go so now click on that footage layer from
the image sequence and go to animation track in mocha AE that's going to open
up mocha and here we go so it's going to recognize that file it's going to know
that it's a 200 and well 234 frames along and yeah everything is going
automatically just click OK and import that video file so right over here I'll
go to the first footstep that is just still on the floor until it actually
moves up and then I will go over here to this spline tool over here and then we
can click and just make a small selection it doesn't have to be too big
here but there we go right click once you're done maybe make it even smaller a
little bit more like this less of the food because it's actually going to move
now we want to track it forward
a little bit more like that okay and now we want to check it forward once the
track is done we go to export tracking data and go for the second option where
the motion blur is supported then copy to the clipboard go back to After
Effects and go to the beginning of your timeline right-click and create a new
null object there's no object we're going to rename do footstep a1 and then
go to edit and paste you will see that all your tracking data is pasted only
the beginning isn't pasted because we didn't start from the beginning with the
tracking so that's no problem and but here we can see that it's perfectly
tracked to the floor so that's exactly what we want so now we're going to click
on our footstep oh one and actually duplicated a few times 1 2 3 4 5 6 for
example we have well 7 which is okay but before the first footstep we're going to
drag this into our composition and actually if you don't if it's not long
enough just right click and go to time freeze frame and then we're going to
make it a little bit longer and shift it over to the beginning of where the food
is almost lifting off that's over here and we'll drag it over here and then for
the no we want to do the same thing and shorten it over here so we have our
first footstep now what we want to do is actually make it 3d so if you don't see
that just press f4 on the keyboard and that will shift through these menus but
we want to move it over here go and make it a 3d layer press W on the keyboard to
go into the rotation tool and just kind of rotate it to fit to the floor and
also resize it in order to fit that foot ok so once you've done that we can now
parent this to our nose so what we want to do is click on this pick web tool and
go to the null now it's combined and it should track perfectly to that location
on the floor okay so perfect that's absolutely
amazing one thing we want to do is because there's motion blur in this
and this footstep is actually perfectly shark we want to do a few things here so
we're going to click on the footstep oh one go to effect blur and sharpen
Gaussian blur that's the first step that we're going to do wish it's over here
maybe something like three or five even let's go for five now we're going to
click on the motion blur enable enable motion blur for that layer and also
enable motion blur for decomposition and now we have motion blur on that footstep
which is going to integrate a little bit better with our footage so now we're
going to do a second footstep and then I'm going to show you how to design them
so we have the second footstep right over here what we want to do is go back
to mocha and delete our tracking data so we're going to just click on that layer
over here and click on the trash icon and then we have it over here so we're
going back to our first step one and now we have two so two is about to come what
we'll do is go back to the spline tool and don't select too much that's really
essential and just select a small part of that area right click to make your
selection and then just drag it forward and here we do have a mistake because
our foot is still included so what I'll do is actually redo that quickly and
just exclude the foot so we start over here go over here maybe go a little bit
around it and there we go right click and maybe move this in a little bit more
so it's definitely small enough maybe move it forward a little bit because
it's also still a little part of that of that location so check it forward let
it do its thing and the cool thing is actually a the further into your footage
that you're going so for example the last foot it's going to take less time
to track because you're actually always moving further into time so that's also
really cool so it doesn't take that much time in total okay so there we go we
have the track done let's go to expert tracking data support motion blur copy
to clipboard go back to After Effects and now we want to create a new null
object so new null object and we're going to the beginning of the timeline
it's essential that you go to the beginning of the timeline control V or
edit paste to paste your checking data then
go to the next footstep wishes right over here there we go and we're going to
trim that no all the way over here go to the project manager and then import foot
Oh - and what you can actually do is just delete this and just click on foot
step a one duplicate that put it on top make sure it's not linked anymore and
actually go over here and link it over here go to this no and just move it over
and we're going to zoom in a little bit and just rotate it like that try to get
the perspective going I think we're almost there doesn't have to beat that
perfect but yeah the more time you spend on something usually the better your
results okay and here we have a second foot step we're going to trim this to
the same length of the no rename that node to foot step out - and I'll click
on foot step oh one that we duplicated go to foot step out to any composition
project manager and then go alt and drag it on top of that foot step or one
that's going to replace that with the exact same settings but now it's
composition with sample two so that's a simple trick and now we want to parent
it again to that null so if we're going to play this one again it's tracking
perfectly okay so we have two foot steps down let's just continue into masking
because now it's just continuing doing the same thing over and over again go
back to mocha track the third foot and then bring it into a null and and so on
and so on so I'm just going to quickly go to foot
step a one go to the effects and copy the Gaussian blur place that on the new
foot step and there we go so now what you don't want to do is actually mask
mask it out over here because your footstep is actually lifting and so
we're going to click on foot step oh one go to the mask tool and just mask
something around that something like this
and then go to F subtract five maybe and then press M on the keyboard for the
mask path click on a stopwatch for the mask path and then move 10 frames
forward move it over here and now just go frame-by-frame and just kind of make
this mask fit a little bit according to the foot movement so right here we're
almost taking off and I think we're there so that's foot step a 1 maybe we
can trim it a little bit more here let's preview ok so there we have a foot step
ok so we're just going to do one foot step here because it's yeah basically
the same thing just I look back at this procedure and you have to do that over
here and do all the foot steps so yeah that's basically it so now we're going
to focus on coloring these footstep so I'm going to jump into foot step a 1 and
I'm going to click on the layer a 1 go to general effect generate fill and
we're going to fill this with for example a nice sign light color and
click OK then click on the fill copy ctrl C a sit on the second layer and
this we're going to make it like a darker blue and to give some kind of
contrast and the color copy that and paste it to layer 3 so go back to the
original footage and now we have something like this we can go to the
mode and maybe go for it and add the blend mode and go for effects and
presets and now I'm going to just add perfect glow which is one of our presets
which you can download for free on our website so I will put a link in the
description below and just apply that to your layer and now you have 8 nice and
glow to here so we can lower the threshold maybe
increase the intensity and what I want to do as well is go and search for solid
composite and just put that on top of the globe that's just going to make it
work better and just make it black I'm also going to the project manager and
I'll click on the 16 bits per channel make sure you're working in 32 is going
to allow us to work with a little bit more color and it's going to make it
look a little bit more pleasing to the eye in the glow so let's see what we can
get here I think we're almost there so here we
have our first footstep down then for the next one maybe we'll want to go for
a yellow orange kind of tone so you want to jump into that footstep again go to
effects generate fill and go for a nice yellow ctrl copy and paste it
okay sound role copy and paste it over here so now we have our second foot step
go back to the original foot step click on here and just copy the consulate
composite just until the end of the globe copy ctrl C and then paste it
beautified step over here change the blending mode to a screen or an additive
so that's maybe what I did wrong here on this one I'm going to change it to an a
screen the additive is a little bit too intense in my opinion but there we go so
now we have a second foot step which is really really cool so that's basically
it for this tutorial all right so that's it for this video I
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next one good bye
you