recently we have been doing some Adobe After Effects tutorials to introduce us to the program so we are competent when we come to put together our own VFX pieces. We started at the very basics by learning how do create and make motion paths. I had some familiarity with motion paths because you can make them in powerpoint. However they are far more complicated in AE, in AE they act more like the pen tool in illustrator where you have to click, click then drag to adjust the curvature of the line.
The motion paths we did though were far more simple to begin with:
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| First we made some boxes accelerate and decelerate at different times depending on the path drawn.
We noticed that the dots on the lines indicated the speed the object was doing. Close dots meant fast and further apart dots meant slow.
 What we did next was to import some assets from illustrator (ball and hill) and create a motion path to make the ball roll up and down the hill. We had to draw the path and then using the handles make sure the line was equidistant at all times from the hill so the movement was smooth and concise. Using the graph editor as well allows us to create a smoother acceleration and deceleration.  Next we created a car with a chimney and using the opacity and motion paths we are able to make the chimney move up and down in a comical way and puff out smoke. We also make the cloud increase in size as it disappears out of the work space. Now because when we made this car we nested it in the other hill project we can import this car into the hill with all of its animation.  Using the curvature of the hill we can match a motion path to it and then add the car we watch as the car travels up and down the hill puffing smoke away. Because we nested this project in the first one any changes we make in the car workspace are added to the car/hill workspace which reduces time consumption massively. |
