Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE

Adobe After Effects Tutorial at Creative COW

Mathew Fuller

©2010 CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.

Article Focus:
In this AE video tutorial, Mathew Fuller covers some advanced techniques for extracting depth from 2D still images to create 2.5D moving graphics inside After Effects.

This tutorial is also available as a podcast.

Comments

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Dust particles
by James Saleska

How did you create the animated dust particles for the soldier? I would love to create something similar for a project I am working on.

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by tuan dang

dude, your website promo is freaking awesome. i can't wait. the 2.5d on the surfer was amazing on the promo.

tvandang

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by tuan dang

can you give me some more techniques? you use the animated dust particles for the soldier, the luma matte, and what else during your project? i assume using displacement map is another good one too. please, please. thanks!

tvandang

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by tuan dang

wow, i really likes this. i know you have more tricks:-) i like the concept of extracting part of the waves and make it into a luma matte. that was so cool. i was using camera mapper from digieffect but this technique is so much more powerful. thanks a bunch!

tvandang

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by Jeffrey Leonard

Every time i do the Luma part, it just stays as a mask and doesnt transfer into the data. IE i was trying to do a snowboarding example.. and every time i would set the bottom color data to Trkmat Luma the Luma that i created... it would basically do nothing..

•

Viewer control
by Michael Krupnick

How did you manipulate the viewer with mouse gestures?

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@Michael Krupnick
by mathew fuller

If you would elaborate on this I could answer it for you.

The higher they fly... the much.
http://www.morecompletefx.com/reel.html

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@mathew fuller
by Michael Krupnick

You were scooting blithely all over the screen! And resizing and repos-ing the view. Okay, in C4D I know how to do it, but you were doing it in AE! I'm so jealous. I went thru all the help topics, but found nothing about "grabbing" the view and revising it. C'mon, now,; tell me: it's too cool.

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by Shaun Au

How did you get the mid layer(surfer) separated from the original photo? You didn't explain that part. I'd think you have to clip out the surfer first, then stamp/clone the wave behind of him in Photoshop. If that's the case, then the process is not that simple since some of the photos with complext background are very hard to separate.

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@Shaun Au
by mathew fuller

Shaun Au
Look at the comments below... I explain it. I guess I should have gone into that deeper... but yes your assumption is correct.. and it's very very easy to paint out a surfer over waves.

Nate Vander Pla
I didn't choose the puzzle image... Creative Cow did.

The higher they fly... the much.
http://www.morecompletefx.com/reel.html

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by Nate Vander Plas

Nice tutorial, but I must say the true 3D image of the puzzle was a bit misleading. I thought it would be a tutorial on using Photoshop 3D in AE.

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by kurt hudson

ahh ok I take it back it was 5 in the morning.. he must be about to fall asleeep..

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by kurt hudson

great tutorial but I only made it halfway thru I could not bear to listin to this guys voice anymore it sounds as if hes about to start crying.. show some enthusiasm!

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by Mike Daniels

Awesome! Thanks for the vid and the quick response!

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by mathew fuller

Yes, I first cut out the surfer onto his own layer and then painted over him on the background using the clone tool. Backgrounds that are random like waves.. trees... or sky are quite easy to paint over and you'll never know. Patterns like wallpaper or chain link fence... that's another story.

Just remember it doesn't have to be perfect because the surfer covers most of what I cloned in... it just has to be good enough to be convincing. What's convincing??? This must be judged on a case by case basis.

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by Mike Daniels

I'm doing the same kind of stuff for a show I'm working on. I'm curious...with offsetting the surfer from the original picture, I'm assuming you made a separate layer in photoshop and masked him out. That being said, what do you do to the now original background that still has the surfer in it to rid it of his presence so as to not see the 2d surfer when zooming in? Do you edit it a bit with the clone tool and try to just get the waves w/o the surfer? Or maybe because he (masked out surfer) is closer in Z Space he just covers his 2d self. I'm very curious to know because this looked amazing! Very good! I hope to hear from you soon.

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by Jeff Hight

Awesome tutorial. Is the secret to a great tutorial doing it at 5:21 in the morning?

Thanks!
Jeff

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Re: Advanced 2.5D Animation in AE
by Juan Urquhart

Really loved it, waiting for the new one...the football players...:-)

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