Week 7

In this weeks lesson we played about with the particle effects within after effects.

to start i added a solid to the composition. i then added the particle playground effect, and set the shape of particles to faded sphere.

i used the velocity parameter to make the particles shoot upwards, and turned the gravity to zero. i then used Gaussian blur to create a smoky effect.

the last effect i added to the layer was a ripple. this creates waves in the layer, and when used on the particle cloud it created a wave effect in the smoke. i then key framed the gravity up and down to make the particles rise and fall.

the second technique we learnt was the pick whip. this can be used to parent layers and objects together.

we used the pick whip to create an expression for us, which would normally have needed some scripting. i used two null objects to control the animation of some text. firstly the text layer was created and then two null objects added.

i then rolled down the layers so i could see the transform options. alt clicking on the clock icon for a parameter creates and expression. i then used the pick whip to connect the text layers scale to one null objects position, by dragging from the pick whip icon in the text layer to the position in the null layer.

i then did the same for the rotation of the text, and connected it to the scale of the second null layer.

this image shows the expression panel open. the red text indicates an expression is being used. the box to the right is where expressions can be typed.

i then keyframed the null objects position and scale and created the animation.