Advanced 3D After Effects Motion Graphics Tutorial

in this video you are going to defy the limits of After Effects and do things that were thought were impossible in After Effects especially when it comes to 3D if you look at 3D software like Cinema 4D they have specific 3d motion graphic features that basically allow you to make objects react to other objects this is usually not possible in After Effects but in this video we are going to explore how we can do this and we are specifically going to do this in 3D if we take a look at at the actual promotion video

in here we can see that we have this little object this orb that wherever it is going the layers are reacting to it so in this case in here they are changing the color and the direction and rotation Etc and if we take a look at this scene for instance they are being attracted by it and as it passes they just rotate a little bit in here so if we go to another scene now in here we can see that we have this little orb that as it is passing in here these objects are actually

playing an animation so as it passes they play this animation where where they jump up and rotate let's now see this actually in action in one of these scenes so in here I have this fector and when I move this around you can see the floor the object on the floor reacting to it and we can move this in the x-axis or wherever we like so if I use the y axis in here you can see it affecting the other objects as well so every object is reacting to it so let's jump into a new

composition over here and let's just start building our scene step by step to achieve this effect so I'm going to click on the rectangle button in here and I'm going to do a quick shape layer and let's open this up and make sure that it is of around size 150 or even 160 so let's say make it 160 and roundness I'm going to give it a roundness of 20 so that it have some rounded edges and I'm going to rename this to square great so I'm going now to position this somewhere around here and I'm

going to duplicate this nine times to have nine squares actually 10 squares so and this last Square I'm going to position it right over here at the edge now let's pick all of these squares and click on the distribute horizontally button and this will automatically distribute them for you just like that perfect so now let's pick on all of these layers command D on your keyboard and we can start placing them upwards just like this just to create this grid of layers so let's do the same thing in here let's pick all of these and

command D on your keyboard and we're going to place these above just like that perfect and let's do that one more time let's place them right over there and now we can place them above the other layers just like that now we can pick everything and we can place them in the center in here to have everything organized like that and like that very quickly have built this grid of squares so the next step is to actually turn these to 3D so let's pick all of these and turn them to 3D just like that now

let's introduce a CA so layer new and camera and something around this settings would be good maybe we can change the focal length 230 and then we can simply use the orbit tool to orbit like that wonderful now we can pick this and orbit back like that and then we can pan a little bit to arrange these in our scene like this of course you can have more squares in here it's you can build however you like so let's make this fit up to 100% and now I'm going to introduce a new layer add new

and it would be a null object great so we're going to change this to a 3D object as well and as you can see it is centered in our scene right over there and let's rename this to fector it is very important to use this exact name since this is important for what we are going to do later on so we have our affector ready in there let's continue building our scene so I'm going to pick all of these squares make sure that your scene is set up to Advanced 3D not classic 3D so Advanced

3D and then we are going to with them all selected we are going to open them go to Geometry options and we can go to Bevel depth in here and right above it there is bevel style we're going to change that to convex and we're going to go to Extrusion in depth and we're going to ex through them to something that we like so something around that now if we look at these we can see that we have these beautiful 3D shapes all layered out right over here so let's hit you on our keyboard to

close everything and now we can introduce some lights layer new and lights from here I want a point light and I'm going to make it a little bit downward in here and somewhere around here let's open that go to light options and we're going to reduce its radius somewhere around that and increase its intensity like that great so around 200% would be great and we're going to link that so parent to the affector so now if I position the fector above in here and I move that fector we can see all of those shapes being

revealed and of course we can move this down up or down however we like the next step would be to have another Point light so command D and this one I don't want it to follow the effector so let's hit none and this one we can place it somewhere else in our scene so somewhere around here maybe and we can open that up go to light options and increase its radius so somewhere around here and like this we are creating this very nice Dynamic scene in here and let's add another light and we can place

that around let's see around here great so our scene is almost done the only thing is I'm going to pick both of these lights and decrease their intensity to around 1 %. great so we are almost there now before we continue I wanted to just humbly ask you if you could leave a like or a comment below this would really help me to reach more people I have some very exciting tutorials plan out so also don't forget to subscribe if you would like to see more content like this so now we're going to go to

the fector and we're going to start bringing in some effects over it so that this effect can take place where the these little squares get attracted or change position depending on this little object in here so I'm going to go in here and I'm going to type in slider and let's bring in a slider control and this one we're going to rename it to radius perfect now let's duplicate this and this one we're going to rename it to radius strength make sure that these names are exactly like this since it is very important for the

following steps so the next one would be scale two so duplicate that once again and we're going to rename that to scale two and as you can imagine this would actually affect the scale and just to keep things simple in this example we're going to just scale and position let's now add another control it is now 3D Point control and let's drag and drop it right over there and this is going to be renamed to position XYZ finally I would also like to add a color control so let's add a color control drag and drop

it right over there and this one we're going to rename it to color from and let's duplicate this command D and rename that to color two perfect so this is all set up and now we can start playing a bit with this and bring in the magic so as you can imagine to do this whenever we have an object that's going to relate to another object we're going to use expressions but don't worry I'm going to make this quite simple for you I have written all these Expressions down right over here you can simply copy

and paste them like me and I have also placed them on my website so you can go to my website and every expression is separated for instance this one is four color and you also have an explanation of what these do if you would like to go through that but if not you can simply drag all of this and simply copy and paste copy this in your expression now if you don't want anything to do with Expressions I have actually done a preset for you that you can simply apply to any layer and it would

do this whole process for you automatically we will see how that works at a later stage so let's start from here I'm going to start from the position I'm simply going to copy this command C on my keyboard go to the square in here hit P open that up and hit alt on my keyboard while I click the stopwatch to open the expression field and we're going to paste that right over there let's type in the next one which would be let's see right over here which would be scale and I'm going to copy that

and let's go to S for scale and click on the stop P while holding alt and paste that right over there great now let's go to the next one and in this case I have X rotation y rotation and Z rotation I haven't added a property to control those in this case I'm going to skip this part but if you would like to add those simply go to the fector add a 3D Point control named rotation XYZ and then you can simply copy and paste the X rotation y rotation and Z rotation as well but

in this case I'm going to copy the color so let's go to color command C on my keyboard copy that and let's go to this Square in here and then going to open that go to contents we are going to go to the fill let's open that by holding alt on our keyboard and click on the stopwatch and now we can paste it right over there perfect so that's all the copy and pasting of Expressions that we need to do so now the next step is actually to populate all of these layers in here with

the same Expressions so to do that it's going to be fairly simple let's close this and open it once again let's make sure everything is closed in here and we just have transform in this case so I'm going to go to the position and I'm going to go from here and click on copy expression only and now I need to select all of the other squares so just select them hold shift to select them all and simply paste right over here and now let's do the same for this scale so copy expression only and paste

them on all the other layers and now for the actual color so let's go to contents in here open that up go to fill color copy in here command C and the thing about color is actually that we cannot just paste it in here on all of the layers automatically in here but we would need to go in every layer in here so let's go in the first layer from here let's open the contents and open the rectangle in here go to fill and we need to paste that over that property so select color and

paste it right over there it would have been best in this case to actually apply the the color expression before I start applicating all of these squares since that would save me a bit of time so very quickly I'm going to add these over all of these squares and then we can resume so I have added all of those color properties of course in your case it's best to add those before when you have just one square and then just duplicate so now we can go to the fector as you can see everything has vanished

in here so let's go to the F vector and start playing with the values right over here and this is where the real magic would happen so first we need to increase the radius we need to increase the radius a little bit more so I would like to increase it to somewhere around 500 maybe and now you can see the magic happening so when we hover over these layers and as you can see the scale is set to zero so they are scaling down to zero and if we increase the radius strength it will affect

the whole like the whole radius the same way so if we add that to around 400 for instance you can see how that would work and if we in decrease it to zero it would be more gradual most of the times I like to keep this at zero now let's change the scale to around 50 for instance and let's go to position XYZ so this is X this is y and this is z and I'm going to keep the X at zero going to play with just the Z in this case great so now as

you can see the layers are being attracted up like that and if we maybe scale to let's say 11 1 like that they're actually now increasing in size great so this looks already very nice of course the color is off now but we have this little control that we have done which we can change for instance from color from we can change it to the blue that we had before somewhere around that perfect and now you can see the magic happening in here very very nice great and this one we can give it any color

so we can make this nice purple like our example and you can see how that works great so this is how this this thing would work and if this one is more far away as you can see it doesn't affect it so this is really great and the great thing is that we also have this little light in here this is is making the effect looking even better and we can make them maybe the opposite direction so let's make the 100 and like this you can see it affects it in the opposite direction it repels

them so you can see the value that this gives to your projects so let's bring that back to minus 100 and of course if we had added the rotation control in here we could even rotate them so let's now go to the project window and I'm going to add the orb so in this case I have this little 3D sphere orb in here that I have already done if you are interested in knowing how you can create these kind of forms we can actually make a whole video on this so let me know in the

comment section in the comment section below so I'm going to Simply drag and drop this inside of our composition here and one thing that we can do we can turn this to a 3D layer and we can then link it to the fector and play around with the position Etc but since we are using Expressions we're going to use a nice simple expression to help us with this so I'm I also have this typed in here if you would like to see this you can simply go to the link below and simply copy and paste

this and I'm going to place this over the position so I'm going to leave this to a 2d layer and click on position and we're going to paste this right over this right over this and this is basically taking the 3D value and changing it into a 2d position value so like this this orb we don't have to worry about the liting of the seene this orb would stay basically the same and it would still follow this F Vector so wherever this goes that orb goes now over this little 3D sphere in here I'm going

to add a glow effect from here and we're going to increase the radius in here somewhere around here and that looks quite good so I like how this looks so this is basically how my scenes are set up as you can see you have the F vector and wherever it goes the layers react to that and you can of course key frame this layer to make the animation in this example we're going to see how we can do the same thing but using the preset so let's now go to the fector as you can see

it is empty in this case I only have 10 squares just to keep everything simple in here I'm going to go to the effects and presets and it's already installed in here for me under my user presets in mograph presets so let's go to the mograph fector and we can simply double click on that and that would add this effect for us over the affector and as you can see the great thing about this is that everything is very organized in here so you can see the affector and this properties the radius and radius strength

and then you can see the affected properties you also have a section for special properties which we can apply to any property so for instance if you had a blare you can apply the same expressions and techniques that you have done to that blare layer or any other property we'll see in a few minutes how you can actually use the power of this of these special properties so let's close that and now let's go to these all of these squares and I would like to animate these so to do that I'm going to go to

the m graph 3D layer and these are in 3D so I am adding the 3D layer if you are using the 2D you're going to add the 2D layer so double click and it will do everything automatically for us if I move this around you can see the effect is already happening in here of course the scale in in this case let's reduce it a little bit in size and we can play with the position as we have done before so we can position that downward for instance and in this case we have the rotation

already applied as well so we can rotate them like that and however we like just like that very nice and now we can as you can see see the power of this in this case the color is not applied automatically that's a specific preset in here so we can go to double click on u in here go to the color field in here and then simply go to m graph color property if I pick the null in here the fector and move it over that layer we can see it changing color as well of course

you can apply it to all the other layers as we have done before so now let's see this scene and how we have made this where the actual null layer the affector is triggering an animation in here and as you can see in this case it is triggering an opposite animation so these are going up and these are going down so let's see how we can do that I have already set up the objects in here just the same way as we have done before and I already have the the color expression written in there

so we don't have to worry about copying and pasting in there so that is done already so and now in this case we are going to use a plug-in so in this case it is necessary to use this plugin since we are going to use one of those special properties that we can apply apply these Expressions to so now let's pick all of these layers pick all of them and go to our plugin here called Mega motion and with this we can add any animation you have 2,000 animations that you can choose from and in

this case I would like to add a middle animation and I can type it in in here since I know what I would like to add so that would be a bounds roll so let's find this 3D Loop bounce XR so as you can see you can see a little preview in here of how that would look and we can simply click on apply instead of applying it to all of the layers in here I'm actually going to apply it to one single layer in this case so let's apply it to this layer in here

1 2 3 shape layer 1 2 3 so simply click on apply like that and we can see the animation happening in here over that just one lay let's solo it and if we play that you can see that that nice bouncing and rotation animation happening in here over this layer great so now the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the effect controls from here and from here we have some options that we can play with so the first one is Loop duration if we increase that to around

two for instance it would be slower so it would take more time for this animation to happen so I want this to be around 2 seconds so this is good perfect so that's the first step now I'm going to go over animation intensity in here and if you remember we have those special properties I am going to add this special property to this en intensity so let's see what this animation intensity actually does so if it is zero no animation would actually happen if it is set to 10% the animation would happen normally in here

and if it is set to anything in between so for instance five it would happen still but it would be less strong basically the animation so let's leave that back to 10 and now let's open this layer and find that effect so I'm going to find animation intensity from here and I'm simply going to go to mograph special property and simply double click on that to apply this expression to it and now if I go to the effect turn here I can propery one I can change it from zero to around 15 let's say 15

so that we we'll make sure that it is 10 when this passes over it so now as you can see no animation is happening at this part since the orb is not on it but when it passes it triggers the animation like that and that is how we do that now if I pick this effect that I have already done so let's pick this up copy it let's untick this so that we can see all of the other ones and I would like to start with the first row in here since this is animating upwards

as you can see and then we can see how we can flip the animation actually so let's pick all of these that would be to somewhere around let's see here and I'm going to Simply command V on my keyboard to paste to paste that great so I pasted that effect in here and now you can see that happening right over here with the animation and rotation Etc now let's pick this once again and this one this row I would like it to animate the opposite direction so I would like it to animate down in here

in this effect you can simply flip the animation so flip y- axis and Bam that simply flips the animation on the other side you can even change the rotation of this whole thing so if you would like to animate in this direction you can change the angle like that but let's in this case simply flip the y- axis and now I'm going to copy this command on my keyboard and I am going to paste this over all of these layers in here so let's select those and let's go to around this so let's paste them

actually right over there and then simply delete that layer if we need to so that one actually it has done it automatically for us so don't worry so in this case now as we paste those you can see this effect happening in here so let's preview it very quickly and like that you can see the animation happening wherever the orb is and if we would like to test this so let's see I have the effector here let's pick this up and let's actually remove the the key frames in here if I move this down you

can see now the animation is happening Less on these so if I place this the animation is only happening at this part where the orb is and since we move this down it is happening Less on these layers and more on these and wherever we move this the animation would happen so this is a great trick to enable these Motion Graphics properties inside of after effects if you're interested in mega motion you can simply check the link in description and you can even find a package with 23 presets that you can try out out of

course in the description you would also find a link for all the Expressions that we have used and also a link where you can get the presets that you can apply to any of the layers that's it guys if you are interested in more tutorials check out this tutorial where we actually see how we can bend 3D objects in After Effects [Music]