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Repairing and Retiming Footage with After Effects

Designing Backgrounds with After Effects

After Effects Material Controls are Often Overlooked

In the rush to design, many motion graphic artists skip the advanced controls inside the Material Options category. These are essential as the refine how a 3D light interacts with your 3D layer. The properties that affect appearance the most are Diffuse, Specular, Shininess, and Metal.

The only changes made to the scene above were modifications to the Material Options. No other settings with lights were modified. The Material Options are powerful controls that are often overlooked. When you're first exploring Material Options, try lowering or raising their values one property at a time.

1. To start, drop all of the values to 0% to remove the effect of the lights.
2. Next slowly increase the Specular value. This will add a hotspot to your layer (it may get quite blown out). This value controls how reflective the layer is. The bigger the number the brighter the reflection.
3. Raise the Shininess property which will cause the light to show specular highlights. The bigger the number the smaller the highlight.
4. Use the Diffuse property to soften the results generated by the Specular and Shininess properties. This will soften the transition between lights and darks.
5. Raising metal property will lower the color distinction between the darker areas and the highlight, but the highlight will still be brighter. It also affects how much the layer's color influences the color of the reflection.

Creating 3D in Illustrator with the Revolve Command

A line or a shape is all you need to create a 3D object. By default, the extrusion will rotate around the left edge so position the vector object accordingly.

2. Choose Effect > 3D > Revolve. Check the Preview box so you can see the effect update as you make changes.

With the Preview box checked, changes will update so you can experiment more easily. For complex objects, the screen may take a moment to redraw.
By default, Illustrator revolves objects around the left edge. You can change this to the right edge using the from pop-up.

3. If you object has a fill, you can use the cap command to make it appear solid or hollow.

4. Use the Angle property to set the number of degrees to revolve the path. While you can use any number between 0 and 360, I typically start with 360˚.

With the Preview box checked, changes will update so you can experiment more easily. For complex objects, the screen may take a moment to redraw. You can use the Offset slider to expand the path to create a ring-shaped object.

If you experiment with this effect, some pretty cool options are possible. Try using a dashed line and creating an irregular path. In this case a basket shape is possible and you can create abstract 3D objects for motion graphics work. Technique adapted from RC Concepcion.

From the new Adobe Press book – Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques