Motion Graphics for Designers

This course is designed to allow those new to animation and post production techniques to get the most from this immensely powerful software. Whether you are an architectural designer, modeler, planner or engineer Adobe After Effects CC allows you to create stunning motion graphics and visual effects that help tell you share your design and analysis in a visually compelling format.

The emphasis throughout this introduction is on practical exercises. These exercises will cover basic effects, project settings, video layering techniques, creating masks, text animation, using filters for special effects and rendering your final project.

What are the 5 things you will get out of the course?

• Be confident in creating After Effects projects from scratch without guidance
• Understand the After Effects interface and its operation
• Understand the keyframing (simplest form of animating an object) workflow
• Confidently use the extensive effects palette
• Produce animated and motion graphic videos suitable for web, media and more

You need no previous experience to attend this course.

Adobe After Effects Essentials Training Outline
Every Monday in May, 18:30 GMT to 21:30 GMT

May 4

Getting Started
• Workspaces – selecting a layout and resetting the windows:
• The Project window, timeline and viewer
• Setting Up Your Database & folder structure
• Creating Compositions – Comp settings
• Essential viewer window settings
• Creating assets within AE
• Arranging objects in the viewport
• How layers work in the timeline window
• Object properties – the basics – Position, Scale, Rotation, Anchor Point and Opacity

Animating
• Manipulating object transforms
• Navigating the timeline, playing scrubbing and zooming
• Simple animation – your first keyframes
• Position animation and Bezier curves
• Manipulating keyframes
• Using the keyframe navigator
• Adding ease to improve animation quality
• Copying and pasting keyframes
• Proportional scaling of keyframes on the timeline
• Using hotkeys to reveal keyframes and properties
• Adding Motion Blur – Adjusting the global motion blur settings

May 11

Adding Effects
• The effect controls palette
• Ensuring that you explore effects completely – good workflow practices
• How effects work with keyframes
• Combining effects together
• Adjustment layers

Best Practices & Importing Different Files
• Exploring the interface in more detail, switches, modes and time controls
• Ensuring correct workflow vector files
• The collapse transformations switch
• Importing video footage
• Trimming and time manipulation of layers
• Sorting, finding and working with assets in the project window
• Importing Photoshop files
• Importing Illustrator files
• Layer modes
• PreComps – Why Precomps are vital
• Sending Projects To Others

Questions and Answers

May 18

Keyframes - A Deeper Look
• Hold keyframes
• Reversing animation the right way – avoiding “Bezier twists”
• Roving keyframes
• Auto orientation

Track Mattes & Masks
• Track Matte Types - Luma & Alpha
• Editing masks
• Using masks to reveal and hide layers
• Animating Masks
• Other mask uses for paths and effect controls

May 25

Creating a Basic Logo
• Anchor point issues
• Pre-composing base elements for better workflow
• Adding effects to build our sequence
• Parenting Layers
• A simple expression - “Wiggle”
• How Wiggle works – what the numbers do

Text
• Using basic presets as a start point
• Text presets – a special case
• Creating your own text animators
• Saving text animators as a preset

Rendering
• Rendering & Media Encoder - Best Practices

Q&A and Troubleshooting

This course is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction, showing you how to use Cinema 4D, the industry standard 3D application, to create rendered still images and parametric concept massing animations for design reviews and client presentations.

During the course, you will learn to set up a project, understand Cinema 4D's interface, work within a 3D environment, model and render objects adding texture and lighting effects to them and create some basic animation sequences.

By the end of the course, the delegate will have the tools to create full 3D scenes and create finished output.

This course is designed for anyone who is new to Cinema 4D and wants to learn to create 3D stills and animations.

No previous experience of Cinema 4D or any modelling program is required.

Cinema 4D Essentials Training Outline
Every Wednesday in May, 18:30 GMT to 21:30 GMT

May 6

Cinema 4D Basics
• Welcome to the cinema 4d interface
• Using layouts and 'workspaces'
• Setting up a project
• Frame rate and unit sizes
• Understanding the various windows, toolbars and viewports
• Navigating around a 3d space and using hotkey navigation
• Managing project settings correctly

Creating Objects in Cinema 4D
• Understanding basic object types and parameters
• Understanding the various types and forms, their settings and parameters
• Creating basic objects ‐ primitives
• Manipulating objects, moving scaling and rotating
• Using the attributes manager
• Understanding object properties

Understanding the objects hierarchy
• How the object hierarchy or objects list works as an organizational tool
• Cinema 4D's parent and child structure ‐ understanding parent and child relationships
• Using the list to hide and display objects
• Using null objects to control the hierarchy

May 13

Using Modifiers and Deformers to modify, distort and manipulate objects
• Creating deformers and using them correctly within the object list
• Types of deformers ‐ uses for animation and modelling
• Deformer limits

Making spline or outline objects to edit and create objects
• Creating basic outlines with the bezier pen
• Making shapes and paths
• Bezier types, interpolation and curve interpolation
• Smoothing beziers
• Text splines
• Using illustrator paths

Creating more complex models using different constructor objects
• Extrusion objects
• Lofting ‐ making surfaces from profiles
• Lathing ‐ spinning objects in a virtual lathe
• Arrays ‐ multiple objects from a single source
• Booleans ‐ combination objects
• The combine object ‐ turning separate elements into one
• Using subdivision surfaces for making smoother models

Using editable objects, points edges and polygons to create any shape or surface
• Points, edges and polygons ‐ the different editing modes
• Understanding detail level ‐ how many polygons?
• Using the tool setting in the attributes manager
• Using the selection tools
• Understanding objects tags
• Face normal
• Alignment functions
• Avoiding common polygon problems

May 20

Creating and working with materials to change the colour, texture and properties of objects
• Making new materials and shaders
• Enabling material properties
• Colour, texture, reflectance and transparency
• Bump maps to enhance surfaces
• Using bitmaps and procedural textures
• Applying materials ‐ material tags
• UVW mapping ‐ how to align textures with objects

Creating environments for objects and cameras
• An infinite ground plane ‐ the floor object
• Making skies, skylight objects and physical skies
• Creating "props" to assist with reflections
• Hiding environments for reflections

May 27

Adding lights and Cinema 4D cameras to give viewpoints
• Understanding the range of light types and light techniques
• Working with different light ranges and falloff
• Shadow types and their parameters
• Adding visible lights
• Create light setups (daylight, interior light and studio light)
• Adding skylights
• Creating and using a camera
• Setting lens settings and parameters

Creating simple animations using animation and Keyframing
• Basic animation techniques
• Understanding the animation workspace
• Getting things to move with keyframes
• Using the timeline to animate an element or function
• Using keys and curves
• Animating and object on a path
• Previewing an animation

Rendering and output to create still or animation sequences
• The cinema 4d renderers
• Rendering set up ‐ size and frame rate
• File types ‐ exporting frames and animations
• Adding global illumination for more realistic rendering
• Adding more effects to the renderer
• The cinema 4d picture viewer
• Rendering for print and video