Making of Intergrated Practice: Week 4: 16/10/18: After Effects workshop week 4: Tracking, Puppet Pins and 3D

In week 4's After effects workshop in Making of integrated practice, we looked at three different elements tracking, puppet pins and 3D effects.


I was feeling rather curious about the element of tracking and wondered how it may help my understanding of animation and the programs use. James, out tutor explained to us that the element of tracking is used for different purposes such as applying motion graphic material to live action footage. This peaked my interest and could be of use to me in either group projects or my own work.

One element of tracking we looked at was camera tracking, where we would analyse the footage, what we want to achieve and how to fix it. Our first example was in an image sequence piece and James pointed out that the issue in this was the camera shaking. To help fix this he taught us how to track the movements to a certain point in the footage.


We followed his directions by right clicking on the selected layer, select track and stabilise and track motion. In the footage was a small box which was called a track point. James showed us that the box would mark the search area on the

footage and would follow the footage locking onto the image in that specific image on that frame. James directed our attention to the tracker in after effects that the box was connected to. It was linked to the footage and the tracker that in this instance focused on the ear of the actor and by clicking the play key on the tracker the box followed the footage as it played.


However this lead to our first issue the movement of the actors head. While the tracker followed and captured the key frames which I learned could be viewed on the time line using the "U" key, it doesn't take into account the head movements, we were told these would need individual key frames. When we applied this it looked much better.

James then taught us how to link shapes to the tracking data in the footage. We created an arrow using the pen tool, then we were shown how to link the data. He told us not to link it to the tracking key frames but instead to create a null object layer which was an element we used in first year when doing multiplane backgrounds. We created the object through the new layer function then right clicked on said layer and select edit target  and set the link to track data. This made the arrow follow the character as it moved.


Our next exercise followed a similar

principle. We learned that in the tracking there was more than one setting and this was perspective corner pin. This function would track elements like signs and allow us to replace it with our own motion  graphics elements. When moving the corner pins in the tracking box we couldn't touch the lines just the inner area.  When doing the tracking it was important we did it on a section of footage that was viewable and not blurred otherwise we couldn't capture it properly.


What happened next was very surprising and that was when we replaced the sign with a solid shape of our own. We first created a new comp using a solid shape separate from the footage then by clicking the edit target function  it trimmed it down on the tracking footage to the size of the sign. I was amazed when I saw this happen.

The next task was face tracking which was a topic of interest as we learned how to isolate an actors face and how to track its movements much like Adobe Character animator. We were shown how to isolate the characters face using the ellipse tool on a shot where the actor looked more relaxed. This created a mask on the target area and we could then use the tracking feature called face tracking outline only which focused on the outline of the face.

When playing the tracking forward I was amazed to see how it tracked the actors face movements as the footage played. One area I particularly enjoyed was applying some motion graphics to the footage. However I did find it rather complicated, James demonstrated there was a danger of mixing up the eyes from right to left as we look at an image differently and can't tell at certain angles. I created some shapes for the eyes and eyebrows and linked them to their respective tracking keyframes such as the inner eye/inner eyebrow and as the footage played it moved along side it.

I was very impressed by this and I felt it could be of use in the future.


We then moved onto an element that I had recently became familiar with, puppet pins. Over summer I learned of an element in After effects that moved certain parts of my motion illustration and how it could improve my understanding of motion comics and now we would be looking at it in further detail.


The idea of the puppet pins was that they would create points in an illustrated piece that we could move around like a normal puppet or create a wind effect in bandages.


Example:

However James showed us that when we build a puppet in After effects we could apply the pins to it when we precompute it together in a new composition. However when I messed around with the pins it did move certain areas without pulling on the rest of the puppet whilst others just pulled and squashed the rest of the limbs and body.


I felt this would only be useful in creating blowing in the wind effects for motion comics.


Our final area was looking at 3D effects in After Effects and lighting. We were told we could create 3D set like elements much like in Maya and likewise add some lighting effects such as a spot light. Learning from last year 3D effects

could be applied to 2D layers by clicking the cube symbol. We brought in textures from the internet and made them into a small 3D room. We could work with the room as a solid object in the null function instead of using the individual layers.


I was rather intrigued when we could create a spot light in the piece by right clicking on the layer and applying the light function it generated a spot light much like in Maya renders.


I found this was similar to something I had learned many years ago and could prove of valuable use for green screen footage.

Looking back on this session I feel I've gained further insight on After effects and learned new elements that could help in my animation course and in my motion comics. I would think I found the tracking exercises rather complicated as I had to connect certain elements together and found what to do rather hard to understand and may require more time to experiment with this further. In hindsight I should've asked more questions about the process as I had missed a few key elements when demonstrated.


I could see the sense in learning this as it would be of use to us later in the course. In conclusion I rather enjoyed the session and may continue to experiment with these techniques further in the future. In future I shall try and ask for a second opinion on my work and if there's time see how I could experiment with this further in motion comic work.