Add fake lights with CC Light Rays

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Course contents
SECTION: 5
Inspiration 4:15
SECTION: 13
Swinging text 10:36
SECTION: 14
Puppet tool 5:54
SECTION: 15
Effects & presets 6:56
SECTION: 17
What now? 3:56

Questions

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Course info

53 lessons / 6 hours

Overview

Motion graphics are an essential part of video creation and editing. From moving titles across the screen to stabilising your footage to smooth out the bumps or replacing a sign in the background. Ubiquitous, subtly powerful, and for the beginner, a bit mystifying. You need to learn motion graphics. You need a tutorial that will help at every step of the way, without leaving you drowning in details.

If you’ve ever made a video, you’ve probably already discovered that it’s all the little extra infographics, titles and animation that make your project look professional – and you’ve probably already wondered which is the right After Effects tutorial that will let you access the potential.

After Effects is the industrial strength tool for putting the motion in your graphic designs and content. It can also appear to be pretty deep, so getting guidance from a pro that understands how to teach, as much as how to use, After Effects is going to be the key that unlocks your potential.

How about a motion graphics tutorial taught by a working professional who just happens to be great at teaching too? Daniel Scott has been working with animation and motion graphics for over a decade and is the founder of Bring Your Own Laptop - they've been helping people learn design and animation all over the world for just as long.

 



 

Daniel, an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, will take you one manageable step at a time through motion graphics in a series of small practical projects that come together to unlock Adobe After Effects, animation, and infographics. These tutorials give you the complete foundation that you can build on for years to come. Learn the principles and the specifics of producing content, in a way that you'll understand and remember. And stay awake.

Just 3 hours long, and very hands on, you’ll take on specific tools and techniques one at a time so you can easily comprehend each aspect of the tutorial, and see all the parts of creating motion graphics before you get intimidated by the scale of what you can do. From zero to hero, as we like to say.

You get downloadable exercise files that match the course, so no time wasted trying to match project settings or finding material to work with. And you can use the end results in your own projects or portfolio – you can customise them to suit your needs as you grow in understanding.

To learn motion graphics is to unlock the door on the magic that makes your video or web content stand out in the crowd. Daniel is going to provide you with the motion graphics tutorial you’ve been looking for to get more than your foot in the door – you’re going to be able to create beautiful animation and infographics. You’ll be empowered to use After Effects the way it was meant to be used, and to create your own creative content, even during the tutorial itself.

What are the requirements?

  • This course is for absolute beginners

  • You'll need a copy of Adobe After Effects CC 2015 or above. A free 30 day trial can be download from Adobe here.

What am I going to get from this course?

  • Create beautiful motion graphics

  • Animate compelling infographics

  • Choose the correct video settings.

  • You’ll learn how to exporting your video easily.

  • You’ll be able to create slick type animations.

  • Rendering your video for Youtube & Vimeo.

  • Create titles for interviews.

  • Add music to your motion graphics.

  • Trim & editing video.

  • Add watermarking your video.

  • Fixing shaky footage.

  • Color correct & fix any bad footage.

  • Add a vignette to your video.

  • Learn how to use your skills from Illustrator & Photoshop

  • How to use green screen footage

  • How to mask like a pro.

  • How to animate infographics like bar graphs, line graphs & pie charts.

  • How to use camera to make 3D type.

  • Animating static images using parallax

  • Plus basic character animation.

  • + More…

What is the target audience?

Yes:

  • This course is for people who want to start earning money as a motion graphics designer.

  • This course is for beginners wanting to learn to use After Effects for motion graphics and infographics.

  • No previous After Effects or animation skills are necessary.

No:

  • This course is NOT for people who have a good understanding of After Effects already. This is for new people only.

Course duration 5 hours+ your study.

Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Downloads & Exercise files

Download Exercise Files

Transcript

Hey there, in this video we're going to look at faking some lights to try and make this parallax image that we’ve done, to make it look a bit more believable, or cheap and nasty, depending on how far you go with this exercise.

So, I'm going to twirl this all up so it all looks nice and neat. If you haven't got this file here you can download it from the production files, or exercise files. And that is in-- jump to the website, and download the production files, and you can grab this one. Otherwise, you can use it for any video, it doesn't have to be a parallax. Just see this one here, we've got this parallax thing where the sky is moving differently from the background. And do I like it? It's okay. But adding the lights to it, it's pretty easy to do.

We're going to first of all, add an 'Adjustment Layer' because it's always supposed to add it to this layer rather than straight to any of these layers here. It's easy to do 'Adjustment Layer'. I'm going to rename it. Instead of 'Adjustment Layer' I'm going to call this one 'Lights'. I'm going to use the one in here, so 'Effects Panel'. 'Effects & Presets', type in 'cc light', and you find 'CC Light Rays'. We want to click, hold, and drag it. And drag it on to the lights. Need this little dot here.

This thing here can be moved, and you'll see, when you move it you can decide, you can put in a glint on that rusty old car, which is unlikely. I'm going to put that into the trees. I think the Sun's actually behind this, in that cloud photograph, but you can't see it in the sky. We're going to fake it, let's pretend it's just behind here, just about to come out from this little bit.

In terms of the intensity, you can play around with how intense it is. So you can have this thing-- watch when it moves. Whoah! Hitting space bar to get it to preview. It's probably not much. That's the big man coming down, visiting his old car. We want it a little bit more just subtle. I'm not going to say subtle, I'm going to overdo it. It's like finding the-- running it in the Lens Flare in Photoshop. When I first found that, I overused it. You're probably going to end up doing the same thing with this.

You see the light behind there? So, if you're using a different image through the tree is really great because there's a lot of texture in there. So it's sparkling all these lights. You can play around with the 'Radius'. What kind of lights come through. That will be like a crystal ball type thing. So I'm going to 'undo' that. You can play around with a few of these different options, but what you can do, say if it's not really-- it's coming out, but it's not so very exciting, what we can do is animate the center all the time, to fake it, and move it along.

Say I want it to come off this. It's working, it's doing okay but I'm going to get it to-- I'm going to turn down the-- not so good. But I'm going to get it to move because at the moment the center is moving off into the trees, I want it to follow the car. So I'm going to start it here. I'm going to set a key frame for the center, and after this time, I'm going to drag it down here. You'll notice that I’ve got a key frame. If I twirl this down, actually I hit you to give me my key frames. There's one there, and one there. It just means that it's moving. Just clicking on the car.

This is the opposite of what I wanted to do. It's a bit slow now, so I'm going to do the opposite. Instead of moving along with the car, I'm going to get it to move-- give me that guy. I'm going to move it kind of along here. Just kind of sparkle as it goes along. You might have to move the centers to kick it into gear, and make sure it's moving, otherwise, like Dan, just sitting over there, and not doing anything. Still not doing a huge amount. But, that's it. Light rays, nice and easy, nice simple way to add a little bit of subtle effects. You can crank it right up, and make it not subtle but that's 'CC Light Rays'. Let's hit 'Save'. Let's go to the next video.

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