all right so if you haven't noticed
already take a look right now and you're
gonna want to go ahead and get comfy
because this is not a short video this
is gonna be a full in-depth the tutorial
for beginners and After Effects is Gabe
come on come on okay so literally this
is the most requested tutorial that I've
gotten from you guys and this is on the
award-winning software that's been using
movies from Avengers to avatar I used
After Effects for over 200 shots it just
freakin blows my mind this stuff that
you can do with this software so you
guys know that I love talking about
After Effects I mean it's practically my
job but sometimes I get DMS and comments
are just like whoa whoa whoa Nate slow
the fuck down we just need you to talk
about the absolute basics of After
Effects you don't need to be getting
hype about plugins or kpop edits all
this extra stuff that you know that's
exactly what we're gonna do today I'm
gonna be taking you through building one
of my all-time favorite effects it's
actually the first effect that I ever
learned in After Effects about nine
years ago and everything that you
learned from doing this effect actually
translates into most VFX shots making it
one of the most useful and also one of
the most cool let's just roll the clip
okay so without further ado here it is
After Effects basics 101 let's get right
into this I'm excited I know you are too
let's go okay so I know After Effects is
just one of those programs that seems
impossible to get into I know when I
first started I was like what the fuck
is going on why are there all these like
extra things all these things like
compositions and layers and what is it
but the way that I was able to finally
understand it was to think of it more
like Photoshop but for video that just
seems to make way more sense so if
you've used something like Photoshop
before and you're making that transition
to After Effects that's gonna make your
life a whole lot easier and if you don't
know anything about Photoshop just
imagine all the cool crazy stuff that
people do with photos yeah you're gonna
be able to do all that cool crazy stuff
but with videos and don't worry we're
gonna make this as easy as possible for
you to get into it so you don't need to
be a super expert or can start from
absolute ground zero anyways this is a
point where you sit back you get comfy
take a hit you grab a coffee you do
whatever you need to do to get in the
zone because we are starting this in
three two one
alright okay so we're gonna make this
lit fire my hand effect which is
surprisingly simple to do before I learn
how to do this effect After Effects felt
like just a monster
I cannot tame but trust after you learn
these effects After Effects is gonna
feel like your book that was not good
okay so what is After Effects and what
is it being used for for those of you
that haven't read the Wikipedia Adobe
After Effects is a digital visual
effects motion graphics and compositing
software it's used for all sorts of
things in post-production and film
television shorts I've seen it like
literally used so much since it's come
out it's really good at doing things
like tracking keying compositing
animation and it's okay if you don't
know any of those terms because we're
gonna be talking about them using real
world examples I'm not just gonna ramble
off about them right now all you need to
know though is that it's super dope and
we're gonna talk about it so let's just
open up After Effects and get right into
the software here so as you can see
right now
in after-effects now if this looks
completely foreign to you that's okay
over here is a project panel where all
of your media clips all of your files
from like you know illustrator files
pictures videos whatever it is if it's
gonna be using your project
you're gonna put in your project panel
right over here and then over on the
other side of it we have right side
here's where we use all of the cool
tools and effects and gonna have things
like our text adjustments things like
all of our effects and whatnot I
normally put like different
miscellaneous things on this side at the
bottom is a timeline which works as
you'd expect from left to right up and
down we'll get more into the timeline in
a bit and all the way up at the top we
have super useful tools that we're gonna
be using throughout the project and at
the very very top you're gonna see all
the different tabs for the settings
right here in the middle we have our
main composition window so this is
basically where you're going to be
putting all of your After Effects where
the magic is gonna be happening right
here you're gonna see it so let's just
go ahead and start with the first window
that you're gonna see when you open up
After Effects and this is the first
window that you see in After Effects now
if you've used Premiere Illustrator
Photoshop pretty much any Adobe program
this is gonna look super familiar to you
if you have not it's okay this window is
what comes up every time that you start
up one of the programs and all its gonna
ask you to do is open up a new
composition or open up one that's recent
so we're just gonna go ahead and start
from the very basics let's go ahead and
click on create a new project and bam as
you can see I'm in After Effects okay so
so I want you guys to go ahead and give
yourself a quick pat on the back because
if you've made it this far you guys have
honestly sat through some of the biggest
hurdles when it comes to understanding
After Effects which is the UI itself for
being able to understand that you guys
just got it yeah all right okay so the
first thing that you're gonna need to do
to make this super lit effect pun
intended is you're gonna need a video
clip that you want to put fire on so I'm
just gonna go ahead and use this clip
that I took with my phone just to make
it nice and easy
plus I'm using the DSLR right now to
film this tutorial BAM right here we
have that clip at first it looks like
I'm just you know talking to the camera
said I want to go ahead and be able to
put fire in my hand as if I was like a
dragon and just you know spy Road
fire into my hand that's what we're
gonna do right now so let's go ahead and
import that click now there's two ways
that you can import an After Effects the
first way is super easy and really the
only way that you should be doing it
which is by dragging and dropping but if
you want to take the long way you can go
ahead and click all the way up and file
scroll all the way down the import a new
file go over right and then navigate on
your computer the different folders and
yeah I never mind just don't do it that
way
drag and drop it because that's going to
make your life way easier in the long
run but if your computer is not working
for some reason that's the longer way to
do it so once we have that in our
project panel we're gonna want to go
ahead and click on it and drag it down
to this cool little icon that has all
these little shapes in it and this is
called the make composition button and
we're just gonna let go once it's on
there and bam we have a brand new
composition made with the exact same
settings as that footage and what that
means is that if we shot in 60 frames
per second at 1080p our composition is
going to be 60 frames per second at
1080p we should on 24 it's gonna be in
24 and yeah you kind of get the gist of
it if you've used something like Final
Cut Pro or Premiere Pro you would know
that having your sequence matching your
film settings is gonna make the process
a lot faster but in this case that does
not work for After Effects because the
higher the frame rate and the bigger the
resolution is the slower the programs
going to work it does rendering entirely
different and I'm gonna show you how you
can go ahead and make it run nice and
smooth for your computer so you're gonna
want to go ahead and click on this
button right here which is one of the
most important buttons when it comes to
previewing and After Effects and this
one will let you change the resolution
from being either a hundred percent
which is full resolution or you can dial
it back to like one half which normally
works pretty well or even one-fourth of
your computer's running super slow
alright let's get out all that technical
jargon is take you right into making
this effect also important to note is
that After Effects works best for sure
it seems so even though I may have
something like a 10 minute video I'll
probably only be doing things inside of
30 second compositions at most even then
I would most likely lower down the frame
rate from being something like 60 frames
to something like 24 just to be able to
make sure that I'm not putting too much
effort into rendering whenever I'm
working on on After Effects on this
computer unless it's like for something
super commercial that needs to be in 60
frames most of the time you're going to
be able to get away with 24 any lower
and your video
is gonna start looking like you came out
of a flipbook so yeah those are just
some things to keep in mind okay so
super important we're also going to
right click in the timeline and select
create new null object and what that is
is basically an invisible square now we
can link things too and it will be able
to control stuff and this is gonna be
really important because our tracking
data is gonna go onto this null object
which is then gonna go on to our fire if
that makes absolutely no sense and I
just lost you just stick with me for a
like ten more seconds because it's gonna
all make sense
I swear trust me on this one all right
so okay so right now if this video clip
was at a party and my friends were to
ask me if it's late I would want to say
yes but right now there's no fire in it
so we're gonna have to go ahead and add
some fire to it so let's go ahead and
pull up a fire clip now you can use any
clip that either you find online or that
you're able to procure yourself procure
clips that work especially well will be
ones that are on a black background
because it's a really easy way to take
those out so I've even been able to just
take a video of like fire at a fireplace
and just lower down the settings to make
it super dark and it's only getting the
fire that works pretty well but I don't
leave a link you can Google free fire
the effects and you'll probably find the
clip of fire burning on a black
background and you can use that for this
one though I'm gonna be using video
co-pilots action essentials once you
have a clip downloaded you're gonna want
to import that into after-effects next
step that we're gonna do drag down this
clip from the project panel into the
timeline and BAM just like that we have
a super dope lid effect now I'm just
playing we got to do a little bit more
to it so now we can have fun with this
clip because it's inside of the
composition so if you click and drag
anywhere once that layer is selected
you're gonna be able to move it around
okay so let's reposition the fire
roughly where my hand is so it looks
like you know it's coming from it and if
your screen just looks like a big black
screen with some fire on it that is
completely fine what you need to do in
order to get it to look like this is
change the blending mode which I'm going
to show you how to do that right now so
if you don't see the blending mode
setting what you can do is press the f4
key on your keyboard and that should
toggle between the different settings
that you get for your layers so what
we're going to want to do is go over to
blending mode and change it from normal
into screen and basically what that does
is all this kind of like math stuff that
you don't have to worry about with
inverting pixels and multiplying them
and stuff but at the very core of it
it'll take out all the blacks make those
transparent
it'll make whites seem a little bit
brighter to the footage below it so this
is gonna work perfectly for something
like a fire effect which we need all of
the black background to be removed but
you still want to keep the fire in there
and you want it to make the rest of the
footage look a little bit brighter okay
so this effect already looks pretty cool
but it doesn't follow my hand like it
would if I was a human torch so what
we're gonna do is we're you need to
track this clip to my hand once we have
it in a nice like general location I'm
gonna go ahead and click this little
eyeball icon which is gonna toggle its
visibility so it's out of the way while
we do all of the tracking now tracking
and after effects is it's okay there's a
lot of better ways to do it but here's
this simplest way which is to go up into
the window go all the way down to
tracker click on that all of a sudden
you're gonna get a new panel that pops
up if it's not docked already just go
ahead and dock it to the side make sure
it's fully expanded so we see everything
there from the position rotation scale
forward and backward settings and make
sure that everything is there because
tracking is gonna be the next step that
we talk about now another thing to note
is whenever we're tracking we're not
gonna be doing this in the composition
window it's gonna look like it's in the
composition window but really it's in
the layer viewer window which is pretty
much like right next to it it's gonna
look exactly the same except when
whatever we're in the composition window
that motion track buttons are not gonna
work that's just a little way to make
sure that you're actually doing it right
is to see that those buttons are
actually highlighted and if not then
just go ahead and double click on that
layer and it's gonna take you up into
the layer viewer ok so to get a nice
clean track we want to use a point of
contrast in the image and what that
means is like you see these lines on my
hand and how this part is white but this
parts like a black line these are really
great points of contrasts that we're
going to be using and we're gonna tell
After Effects to use those points by
choosing those two boxes that you see
right there first one on the inside of
gonna be telling it what to track and
the outer box is gonna be telling it
what pixels to also look for for that
tracking so it's pretty much like what's
its reference area and I'm gonna go
ahead and select a little sliver on my
hand here one of those like melanin
rings I don't know what these are why
don't one of these pretty much and
that's gonna be able to work for a track
you don't have something like that you
can go ahead and just like draw a little
dot with the sharpie or a little X with
the Sharpie on your hand and that'll
also work we're gonna go ahead and click
this little right arrow which is gonna
select it to motion track forward and in
time so every time my hand moves a
little bit you're gonna see that little
tracking dot change its position if we
want it to go in the backwards direction
hit the backwards arrow the single arrow
icon is going to make it go ahead
through the entire sequence until it
loses its track whereas the one right
next to is just gonna go one frame
forward or one frame back this is just
really useful if you need a fine tweak
the track if it's not working out all
the points inside of it can just click
and drag it if it needs to be corrected
and if the computer didn't get it right
now this track is looking pretty good I
only needed a little bit of tweaking
together just right once everything's
looking nice and good I'm gonna go ahead
and make sure that the target is set to
our first note I'm gonna go ahead and
click apply now the position should be
the only thing that is selected right
now because I didn't really rotate my
hand that much so we can go ahead and
use X&Y position which is pretty much
the X&Y coordinates of the track so okay
so once we have that track applied to
our null object you want to go ahead and
parent now our position of our fire so
it's not just staying in place but
actually following that null object and
the way that we do this is by clicking
on this little spirally thing called a
Piqua tool we want to go ahead and just
drag that over to the lair if we have
the fire already in the roughly same
position as we needed it to be then
you're gonna see that it's gonna look
like it's following the hand almost
perfectly there might be a little bit of
overlapping here and there which we're
gonna clean up in a bit so to clean up
those parts where it overlaps in order
to make this fire effect look like it's
actually matching my hand and my fingers
what we're gonna do is use the liquify
effect in order to get this effect we
can right click on the layer go all the
way over to distort and press liquify or
you're gonna see me do with the short
way which is by using FA
console plugin that i talked about in
this video right here check it out if
you got time so the cool thing about
liquify is that it's gonna let us use
this brush tool and all you're seeing me
do right now is slowly just kind of
adjusting the fire to look like it's
roughly matching up my hand just
clicking and dragging here it doesn't
have to be perfect what i'm gonna do
once it's in a nice general rough
location i'm gonna click on the
stopwatch icon right next to this
torsion mesh which is gonna create a
keyframe which is basically a point that
holds all of the data for where that
distortion is and as we scrub through
the timeline i'm gonna slowly make
adjustments to this distortion mesh and
all of those adjustments are going to be
reported in time as keyframes ok so
right now i'm gonna click and drag on
the layer in the timeline and move it
forward in time that way the fire starts
only when I open up my hand and that'll
just make the transition part a whole
lot easier so it's just not sitting
around and floating in the beginning
shots so this is looking pretty good but
I think I want to add fire to the rest
of the fingers and what we're gonna do
is basically the same thing that we did
before but I'm gonna add in slightly
different fire effects from the same
pack and I'm gonna go ahead and slowly
just make these adjustments with to the
position the rotation and making sure
that just slightly looks like it's in
the general rough location
okay so that looks pretty clean okay so
for the fingers I thought that it would
be cool to try to make them 3d but I
ended up scrapping this idea so that's
kind of why you see it looking like it's
3d if you want to be able to mess around
with 3d and After Effects you're gonna
want to click on this icon right here
which looks like a cube and that's gonna
enable 3d inside of that layer
specifically when you pull up rotation
by pressing R it's going to give you
orientation X Y Z rotation and then same
what positions are gonna be x y&z that
way that you get the full depth of being
able to move around this object in 3d
space so also I noticed that my fingers
are further away from the camera then my
thumb is and the forefront of my wrist
and so to make this effect blend in with
realism I wanted to add depth of field
but without setting up the camera doing
it super extra we're just gonna add a
quick Gaussian blur to each of the
fingers and the dista dust the settings
accordingly toward the blurry is so the
highest bhajan blur radius is set to the
furthest finger now if we want to see
all the keyframes on our timeline for a
certain layer you can press the U key on
the keyboard and if you want to see
specific ones such as position scale and
rotation
you just press P s R and holding down
shift and any of those shortcuts will
open up more tabs than just one at once
and bam that's already looking pretty
good except if you notice the fire does
not match the original footage at all so
we're gonna get into the next process
which is color correcting and adding a
little bit of additional V effects to be
able to make this fire blend and look
like it's actually coming from my hand
and not like we just slapped it on there
in After Effects so in order to do that
first thing I always love to do is add a
glow and I don't just add one glow I
tend to add two glows because most
things that glow I realize have both a
kind of like an internal or a tighter
glow radius and then other ones tend to
have like a like a fatter one outside
they're just getting all the ambient
light so without getting too geeky into
it
so you're gonna have to blows now it's
got to look super funky at first that's
because we haven't changed any settings
yet so the first thing that you're gonna
see over where that project panel is
it's not going to become an effects
panel that's where we're gonna be able
to tweak all of the effects all of the
settings of this fire right now first
thing I want to change is the threshold
and change if there's something that
this looks a little bit more natural a
little bit more spread out and the next
thing is going to be the radius which is
gonna change it from being so tight and
closed up right by the fire and actually
like having the rest of the glow affect
the rest of the scene so you can
actually see it on my hands on my
clothes and on the background already
this is starting to look pretty good but
we're gonna add one more glow effect and
just have those settings slightly
different so that it looks a little bit
more like a natural effect so right here
or the cool part about After Effects is
once we have an effect set up so if we
have both of these glows set up before
one of these we can adjust press control
sheet and select the other layers and
press ctrl V to copy all of the encase
all of those effects I'm gonna want to
go ahead and duplicate the original
footage there's at the very bottom layer
and I'm gonna make a quick mask using
the pen tool super important tool in
After Effects and this is actually a
process called rotoscoping that's just a
really like long and geeky way of saying
making a mask over video I'm gonna go
ahead and select just little areas it
doesn't have to be super clean and super
perfect it could be pretty rough cuz I'm
gonna blur this out in a bit but we're
just gonna go over the rough areas of
where my fingers are that I want to
cover up the original flame yeah that's
looking pretty good so so once we have
that selected we're gonna take that
layer that has only the mask of my
fingers now in order to get it less hard
I'm gonna go into the mask settings and
increase the feathering that way it gets
a little bit more blurred out and
already this is looking pretty cool so I
can go ahead and right click in the
timeline to create a new solid and this
is gonna be our track mat or basically
all of the information about where these
pixels should be turning on and the way
that we're gonna set this up is that
we're gonna go ahead and press M on the
keyboard for the layer that has the mask
and press ctrl C to copy it and then
we're just gonna click on the dark solid
or the solid that we just created and
click paste or ctrl V to paste in all of
that mask and from
once we have that looking pretty good
I'm gonna go ahead and put that layer
right above the duplicate of the
original footage that we had just turn
off the mask I can set the options to no
there just delete it entirely and then
I'm gonna click over to where you see
track Matt and where it says none
instead I'm going to change it to alpha
Matt which is gonna mean pretty much
only turn on this layer for the pixels
that are visible above it if you've used
Photoshop before this is kind of like a
clipping mask but just a little bit
different and what I'm gonna do with the
duplicate footage this is going to be
like an additional lighting that we're
gonna have on top of the hand to look
like it's being affected by the fire in
order to do that I'm gonna change the
blending mode to either a door screen
which is gonna make it brighter and once
we have that working with the track mat
everything is only gonna get brighter
for those pixels being affected by the
track mat and so if you parent this to
the null object that's gonna stay
roughly in the same place for that time
throughout the timeline based on that
track and I think it's gonna work pretty
well for this effect because my hand
stays roughly in the same position the
entire time already this is looking
pretty cool so I can change the time
that the track mat is on so it's not on
for the entire duration of the
composition but only on whenever we need
it to for this fire effect I added
curves which is an effect that I talked
about in the 10 best effects for After
Effects it's really useful for a color
correction last up just to put a little
bit more finishing touches on it we have
a plug-in called heat distortion which
is just my all-time favorite from Video
Copilot
and what it does is it's gonna make
those nice ripples inside of the video
and make it look as if heat is literally
emanating from this fire and causing
like all these little optical
distortions in it so yeah it looks super
cool it's pretty easy to do off of the
bat it doesn't look super clean so
that's why I went ahead and I increase
the noise scale so that's really really
big and I also change down the
distortion amount and tweaked with the
complexity settings so that everything
looked a little bit more natural for
this scene but whatever you're doing at
home make sure that you're adjusting the
settings according to your footage it's
gonna take a little tweaking here and
there moving things up and down back and
forth because your footage is gonna look
different and these for the most part
are pixel based algorithms that that's
why I'm not giving you too specific of
numbers I don't want you to worry about
that as much as just being able to get
the overall look down and understand
what it is that you're trying to achieve
when you're making a VFX shot it depends
so for this one I'm going for a little
bit of realism but also fantasy so it's
okay if it looks a little bit silly
because it is me making fire come out of
my hand so once that clip looks nice and
ready to go we're gonna go ahead and
click on composition at the top and
click add to render queue all of
exporting and after-effects is done
through the render queue or through
media encoder but I tend to love to keep
it inside of After Effects so I've
noticed a little bit faster render times
and sometimes I get a little less errors
so we're gonna go ahead and click on
this right here which is gonna change
our render settings I'm gonna make this
instead of an avi which is gonna come
out as a huge huge file let's just make
this a QuickTime and if you have a CH
point 2 6 4 on your computer installed
then just go ahead and click on that
because that's gonna be a really nice
codec that's gonna keep the file sizes
down and the quality up it's one of my
favorites to use you don't have that
setting in your computer you're probably
gonna go ahead and have to download
something like k-lite or even after
codecs in order to get the full width of
different codecs so you can export After
Effects but it's ok if you don't for now
because there's plenty that you can use
just for at home right now we're gonna
go ahead after we have that set go ahead
and click OK then we're gonna click on
the output folder which is gonna choose
where the file is gonna get saved so
let's just go ahead and call this fire
in my hand click OK and then once you
have that ready just click render and
we're gonna have to wait probably you
know 10 to 20 minutes depending on how
fast your computer is if you have a
dinosaur you know expected this to take
you know much longer but this computer
runs pretty fast so this is actually
just gonna take one second that's it
let's take a look at the effect and if
it looks nice and cool it is ready to go
alright and just like that you went from
a complete After Effects noob to a
master or them more like a novice you
know I highly recommend you guys check
out other tutorials to get more into the
intermedia and more advanced stuff but
this was hopefully a great introduction
after effects and you know if you guys
like this we're gonna go ahead and make
a part two with some of my all-time
favorite effects and how to make them
step by step as always I hope to catch
you in the next one peace I want to know
what you guys think let me know in the
comments down below was this tutorial is
there anything else that you guys want
to learn the after-effects leave it down
below
who knows maybe you're gonna see it on
the next video maybe not
you know if it's recommended enough it's
definitely gonna be there bones don't
butter them film
