Week 6 session of integrated practice was the final after effects workshop and this time we'd be looking at the use of sound and Data Visualisation. James our technician / tutor taught us that After Effects could do a lot with sound and as an example piece we made a simple double speaker system using solid shapes. We started by importing a music soundtrack from our computer files and imported it into a 1920x1920 sized composition document in After Effects. We then constructed a speaker using rectangle and circle solid shapes, and for elements which James called the woofer and the tweeter two circles were made in the same shape. These were duplicated layers.
What I found of interest was how James showed us how to convert the music track into key frames in after effects and this was by right clicking on the sound track, selecting key frame assistant and convert audio to key frames. This was very interesting as it meant we could adjust the music how we saw fit. This could be viewed in the graph editor. The sound was duplicated twice and renamed low and high keys then we created some Null object layers which were name audio amplitude and these were duplicated and named the same.
In the layers there was a slider and James told us to link the scale option in the footer and tweeter to these points and what this did was make the two elements respond to the music and move in a beat much like a traditional speaker. I was amazed by this in how we could accomplish this should we find a need for it in our creative collaboration projects. Annabeth showed us a similar method of using lip synching in after effects using a similar principle.
Annabeth our course tutor then brought our attention to an element called data visualisation, a way of creating animated graphs for presentations. An element she told us could be of use in our projects.
We started by creating 3 solid shapes in the size of our 1920x1080 composition, this was then followed by inputting the data for the graph. Said data was as follows;
A- 35%
B- 20%
C- 45%
These were labeled A,B,C so that we would not get confused as naming layers was important to this process as we were taught last year. We entered the data via the use of the scale tool, but we needed to unlink the sizes so it would be thinned down and the position and anchor points were set at zero placing them at the side of the canvas.
I felt I couldn't keep up with the instructions as they were coming so fast and it was hard to follow along and I wasn't the only one in the group having this issue. I was also confused as to how this would lead to a graph diagram. However Annabeth then explained it to us, and suggested nesting our composition into another one. This was something I was familiar with. Annabeth showed us an effect in the program called Polar coordinates. The way this worked was it would warp the rectangle slides into something new based on the settings and in this case it was rectangle to polar and it changed the rectangle piece into a circular graph.
I was amazed when I saw this and when we animated the slides of the original composition to come forward one by one it turned into an animated graph. Annabeth told us we could add numbers and animate them so I did just to add more to the graph.
Looking back on the session I feel I've learned a lot from the exercise and that certain aspects could be most useful in our creative collaboration projects. However one thing that I struggled with was keeping up with the instructions shown to us, and thought I was lagging behind. I also struggled on understanding some of the instructions given to us. In hindsight I could've asked Annabeth for more advice on the lip synch task to make sure I could perform it right and use the right commands and effects.
I could see the sense in the use of the graph as it could help my group project in displaying facts on bees for instance and I could sense that Stephan our team leader was thinking the same thing.
In conclusion I have found the workshop most informative and hope to put what I have learned about sound and data visualisation to good use and try and expand upon this for use in motion comics.
In future I shall ask a tutor to repeat the instructions so that I don't lag behind and ask for a second opinion on the more complex exercises.
What I found of interest was how James showed us how to convert the music track into key frames in after effects and this was by right clicking on the sound track, selecting key frame assistant and convert audio to key frames. This was very interesting as it meant we could adjust the music how we saw fit. This could be viewed in the graph editor. The sound was duplicated twice and renamed low and high keys then we created some Null object layers which were name audio amplitude and these were duplicated and named the same.
In the layers there was a slider and James told us to link the scale option in the footer and tweeter to these points and what this did was make the two elements respond to the music and move in a beat much like a traditional speaker. I was amazed by this in how we could accomplish this should we find a need for it in our creative collaboration projects. Annabeth showed us a similar method of using lip synching in after effects using a similar principle.
Annabeth our course tutor then brought our attention to an element called data visualisation, a way of creating animated graphs for presentations. An element she told us could be of use in our projects.
We started by creating 3 solid shapes in the size of our 1920x1080 composition, this was then followed by inputting the data for the graph. Said data was as follows;
A- 35%
B- 20%
C- 45%
These were labeled A,B,C so that we would not get confused as naming layers was important to this process as we were taught last year. We entered the data via the use of the scale tool, but we needed to unlink the sizes so it would be thinned down and the position and anchor points were set at zero placing them at the side of the canvas.
I felt I couldn't keep up with the instructions as they were coming so fast and it was hard to follow along and I wasn't the only one in the group having this issue. I was also confused as to how this would lead to a graph diagram. However Annabeth then explained it to us, and suggested nesting our composition into another one. This was something I was familiar with. Annabeth showed us an effect in the program called Polar coordinates. The way this worked was it would warp the rectangle slides into something new based on the settings and in this case it was rectangle to polar and it changed the rectangle piece into a circular graph.
I was amazed when I saw this and when we animated the slides of the original composition to come forward one by one it turned into an animated graph. Annabeth told us we could add numbers and animate them so I did just to add more to the graph.
I could see the sense in the use of the graph as it could help my group project in displaying facts on bees for instance and I could sense that Stephan our team leader was thinking the same thing.
In conclusion I have found the workshop most informative and hope to put what I have learned about sound and data visualisation to good use and try and expand upon this for use in motion comics.
In future I shall ask a tutor to repeat the instructions so that I don't lag behind and ask for a second opinion on the more complex exercises.
Comments
Post a Comment