Matrix effect using time remapping

Hey there, my name is Dan. In this video we're going to look at creating the Matrix effect using 'Time Remapping'. It’s not really the Matrix effect its just that kind of cool slo-mo things, kind of look like the bending bullet type thing. Let's go and do that, let's bring in a video.

So, in After Effects files, we've got one in here called 'Time Remapping', there he is, 'Time Remapping'. And let's make a 'Comp' from it, 'New Comp'. There it is down here, that's our skate boarder, doing a click flip. What we want to do now is, we want to do a couple of things.

Say, let's forget the Matrix thing we just want to speed it up, or slow it down. What you can do is, with it selected down here you can go to 'Layer', 'Time', there's one here called 'Time Stretch'. Now what it does is, say its 28 seconds, you want to cut it down to 10, its going to shrink it right down. You can drag either the percentage, or the time. I'm going to make this a lot quicker. So you can see, it shortened it up, watch, its working, its gone a lot faster. And Bam!

But that's not what I want to do, so I go 'Edit', 'Undo'. That's what if you want to just speed it up, or slow it down. What we want to do is a bit more when it gets to this click flip. So I want him to go quite fast, but when he gets to this click flip I want to get it really slow about here. So let's go and do that.

This thing is called 'Time Remapping'. So with the layer selected we're going to go to 'Layer', 'Time', there's one there called 'Enable Time Remapping'. Nothing really happens, you get a couple of key frames either side, for you. And this little thing called 'Time Remap'. So what we want to do now is, you leave those two key frames alone, and what we want to do is put two key frames either side of that thing. In this case, its him doing a click flip, so I’m going to have it just about here. And I'm going to force key frame in by clicking the little diamond. And then, afterwards, drag my play head just where he lands, I put in another key frame. Then what we want to do is drag him apart. So think of this as one long rubber band. And we're going to grab it, and stretch between these two points here.

What happens is, that gets stretched out, and goes slow, then when its here, it gets a bit slack, because they're joining up. And it goes a bit faster on these bits. So I'm going to preview it now, its not going to look beautiful just yet. There's a couple of things we need to do, but just gives a sense of what's happening. He's cruising along. I should really trim up this video, its a bit long. But then when he gets to here he launches into a slo-mo, really bad slo-mo, I understand.

There's two things we need to do to make this look nice. First of all, we need to change these down because at the moment it kind of launches into slo-mo. The way to kind of ease it into it, you can hold down… if you're on a PC, hold down the 'Control' key, if you’re on a Mac, the 'Command' key. Just click these, there's an easy way to add a bit of blending between these two key frames. So instead of just launching into it, its going to slowly get into it. Still not very nice but at least its not like suddenly becoming slow. So that's going to be the first part.

The next bit is something called 'Frame Blending'. Now 'Frame Blending' is-- at the moment what its doing is because its slowing down, its just pulling the frames apart and its going to be slow, so jump, jump. What we can tell After Effects is to be a bit more clever and blend the frames to make this kind of composite thing. To do that, we need to do-- its kind of motion blur globally. And then you need to turn it on per layer. So turn around globally, and then down here, can you see this layer here has about the same option. This one here has two options. Motion Blur just has one, on and off. This one here has one, two, and off. So one, two, off, one, two, off.

In this case, you try with both depending on your footage. Generally though, the second one here, first one, no, second one, yes. It’s this one here, this 'Frame Blending'. That one there tends to do a better job. It’s going to take a little bit long to render. I'm going to start mine here so its not far away. Watch this, hit 'space bar'. Now, it should do more of that kind of matrix… Boom! Nice! Does some weird things with the lights, which is kind of cool. Now, depends on how far your key frames were, how far apart you've had them, say you find its taken a bit too long, it did take a bit too long, didn't it? so twirl these in here but a little bit closer, so its not as extreme. So its slow but a whole lot nicer than without the 'Frame Blending', if I turn it off globally, jumpity jump, jump. 'Frame Blending' on. Smooth. That's how to use 'Time Remapping', and kind of make that kind of matrixy slow down type effect.