Super Jump Effect AFTER EFFECTS TUTORIAL

Okay, camera's recording. Hey, what's up guys, welcome back. Today, I'm gonna be showing you how I created the super jump effect inside of After Effects. First, I'll go through and show you all the footage that I had to shoot for this effect, and then do a step-by-step walkthrough inside of After Effects. So, with that being said, let's jump right into it. My footage, I shot six different clips. The first one was of me wearing a GoPro on a head strap, and I jumped up into the air, acting like I was taking off. I shot all of my footage as wide as possible so I could rescale and reposition them however I wanted to when I was editing. Then the second clip was filmed with a GoPro as well. I made sure I was standing in the same spot and jumped up in the air and acted out like I was landing. I added a practical element here by using a leaf blower to blow up a cloud of dirt. Then the third shot was the drone footage. I made sure to start the drone right over the same spot that I recorded the GoPro clips, and then took off directly straight up into the air as fast as the drone could go. I made sure to shoot this immediately after filming the GoPro landing shot so that the shadows on the ground wouldn't change. Then around 200 feet, I tilted the camera up as fast as it could go and steadily brought the drone to a stop. Then I immediately started bringing the drone back down and then tilted the camera to look back down to the ground and then finished bringing the drone all the way down to the point where it took off from. For the fourth shot, I hung from a pipe above a green screen while wearing the GoPro. I set up a light to recreate the lighting conditions from outside and used a leaf blower to make it look like my shirt was flapping in the wind. We also waved some branches in front of the light to create changing shadows on my body. This was to create the look like if I was actually rising up through the air and the lighting was changing on my body as the sun's peeking through those trees. While recording this footage, I made sure to start with my legs hanging straight down and then lifted them up acting like I was jumping off of the ground. And then for the landing, I let go of the pipe and landed on the green screen. The fifth shot was filmed with the GoPro on a tripod and it was just of my arms in front of a green screen. I also made sure the lighting on my arms matched the lighting of all the other shots. And the sixth and final shot is just a handheld shot. It doesn't have to be of anything specific, just one with handheld motion to it. This is going to be used later to provide motion to the drone shot. Now I'll take all of that footage and we can jump inside of After Effects. So inside of After Effects, I have all of my footage imported and I have my super jump composition created. In that composition, I've started off by adding three clips. The shot of me wearing the GoPro, jumping up off of the ground, acting like I'm taking off, the drone footage, and the other shot of me wearing the GoPro, the one where I'm landing on the ground and the leaf blower is kicking up the dust. So the first thing that I'm going to do is right click on that drone footage layer, go to time, enable time remapping. And it's going to create two key frames. One where the beginning of my clip would have been before I trimmed it and one at the end. Then what I did next was go to a point in the drone footage, right when the drone stops rising up in the air. And I'm going to add a key frame at that point. Going to make sure that key frame selected, hit F9 on the keyboard. This will turn it into a bezier key frame and make the transition into and out of that key frame smoother. Then I'll take this beginning key frame and drag it over to the right, getting it closer to the key frame that I just created. And doing that speeds up the clip in between these two key frames. Now, if I play that back, you can see how much it sped it up for this portion of the footage. Then I'll go to the point right before the drone starts descending back down to the ground and I'll create another key frame here. I also want to make sure that's a bezier key frame too. Then I'll take this key frame and slide it to the left, getting it closer to that first one that I created. And I'll grab that last key frame, sliding it over to the left as well. And I'll right click on this key frame, go to key frame interpolation and change the current settings to linear. Now I'll play this back so you can see what the time remapping did. The clip is sped up as the drone is rising and then tilts to look at the skyline. And at that point, the clip goes to real time. This was for the point where I'm supposed to be lingering in the air for a bit and looking around. And the clip speeds up again as the drone tilts down and descends back to the point where it took off from. You can easily adjust the speed of this time remapping effect by sliding these key frames around. The closer the key frames are together, the more the clip will be sped up. So after I was happy with the speed of the time remapping, I'll trim this clip to start at the first time remapping key frame and end at the last one. And then drag that drone footage over to line up with the GoPro takeoff footage. Then I timed both of those clips up to look like a fluid transition from the GoPro footage into the drone footage. Then after I'm done with that, I'll do the same thing with the GoPro landing footage. Drag that over to meet up with the end of the drone footage, then time those up so that it's a smooth transition between those two as well. Also on the GoPro takeoff footage, I made a cut right at the point when I'm crouched down, ready to jump up in the air. And I sped up the part of me jumping by right-clicking, going to time, time stretch, and changing it to a factor of 50. This helps give my jump a burst of energy and makes it a smoother transition into the sped up footage of the drone. Next, I added in the clip of me hanging from the pipe above the green screen. And I trimmed that clip to start right when my legs start lifting up off of the green screen. Then I added the key light effect. Use the screen color eyedropper to select the green screen, change the view mode to screen matte, open up the screen matte tab, and adjusted the clip black and clip white sliders until the green screen was completely black and my body was completely white. And I also like to increase the clip rollback to about two. And then I'll change the view to final result. Then hit G on the keyboard to bring up the pen tool and made a mask around my body. Then I brought this layer over to start at the same time that my drone footage starts and made sure that it was on top of the drone footage. Then I rescaled and positioned the green screen clip, matching it up as close as I could to the GoPro takeoff footage. It'll have a smoother transition between the two clips, the closer that you can match these up. Then I made sure I was at the beginning of the green screen clip, hit M on the keyboard to bring up the mask path, hit the stopwatch and then went through and cleaned up the mask. There were parts when the leg of the C-stand was showing or the floor and my knee left the mask a few times. So I just went through and cleaned all that up really quick. After I was done cleaning up that mask, I cut this clip so that it would end about three frames after the drone started tilting up. Then on this other portion of the clip, I went through and cut it so that it would end right when I was letting go of the pipe and landing on the green screen. Then I made sure this clip was perfectly keyed out and that the mask was cleaned up as well. Then I'll drag this over, making sure it's on top of the drone layer and that they end at the same time too. And I'll trim this clip to start a few frames before the drone is done tilting down. Then I added the shot of my arms in front of the green screen and pretty much did the same thing. Keyed out the green and then made sure that these clips were above the drone footage and the shot of me hanging from the pipe. I also made sure that the position on the green screen footage of my body matched up with the beginning of the GoPro landing footage. This makes the transition from the drone clip into the GoPro landing clip more seamless. Next, what I need to do is adjust this part right here. You can see the green screen footage is floating with the camera as the drone tilts up. And I don't want that. I want it to look like the camera is tilting past my body. And this is the case for both when the drone is tilting up and when it's tilting down. But first I'm gonna take care of the tilting up part of the footage. So I'm gonna hold down Control and select the footage of my body and the footage of my arms. Then I'll make sure the time indicator is about three frames from the end of those clips. Hit P on the keyboard to bring up the position and hit the stopwatch. This will create a keyframe on both of those clips. Then I'll go to the end of these clips, grab the footage, and drag them down out of the frame. And this will create the ending keyframe for both of those. While both those clips are still selected, I'll also come over here and turn on motion blur for both of those. Now if I play that back, you can see the camera tilts past my body and there's some realistic motion blur. And it actually looks like the camera's looking up and that my body's staying in the same place. Then I'll pretty much do the same thing on the green screen shots for when the drone is tilting down, but instead I'll animate those green screen elements to come into the frame since the drone's looking down towards my body. Then after I'm finished with that, I'm gonna make sure my drone footage is selected, go up to the effects and presets tab and type in pixel motion blur and add that to the drone footage layer. I'll leave all the settings the same except the shutter samples. I'll bring that all the way up to 20. And you can see right here, it adds some extra motion blur to the drone footage. This pixel motion blur does slow down the real-time rendering though. So what I did was uncheck this for right now. And then after I was finished up with the effect, I came back in and turned it on. Then I'll go back to the effects and presets tab and type in radial blur and I'll add that onto the drone footage layer as well. I'll change the type to zoom and bring the amount down to zero. Then I'll make sure the time indicator is at the point in the drone layer right after the drone's done tilting down. Then I'll come over to the radial blur effect and hit the stopwatch for the amount, creating a key frame while it's at zero. Then go to the end of the drone layer and bring the amount up to 10. Then I'll select the GoPro landing layer and make sure my time indicator is at the beginning of that clip. And I'll add the radial blur effect to that as well. Then change the type to zoom and create a key frame for the amount while it's at 10. Then I'll go forward about six frames and change the amount down to zero. This added continuous motion blur from the drone layer into the GoPro landing layer. And then just like I did for the pixel motion blur, I'll turn off the radial blur effect on both of these layers just for right now. And then after I'm done with the final effect, I'll come in and turn these back on. Then I'll select the drone layer and make a cut right before the drone starts tilting up to look at the skyline. At this point, the drone footage is separated into two different parts. I'll make sure that I have the part selected when the drone is rising up in the air, still looking at the ground right before it tilts up. I'll right click that, go to pre-compose, rename this drone track, and make sure move all attributes into the new composition is selected and then hit okay. Then with this pre-comp selected, I'll go up to animation and select track camera. Open up the advanced tab and select detailed analysis and I'll let that analyze. After that's done analyzing, I'll select some of these track points on the ground close to the area where I jumped up. And I can select those by clicking my mouse, dragging it around and then letting go. Then it creates a target and I can right click that target and select create solid in camera. Then I'll trim that track solid so it's the same length as the drone track composition. And now if I play this back, you can see I have a solid perfectly tracked into my scene. And I'm gonna use the information from the solid so I can track in a dust wave around the area where I took off. So I'll take some stock footage of a dust wave and add that into After Effects. I found mine on Action VFX. They make great high quality stock footage and I'll leave the link to that website down in the description below. After I have that dust wave element inside of After Effects, I'll add that to the composition, making sure it's above the drone track layer and underneath all my green screen elements. Then I'll change the view mode to screen and I can do that by coming down here, hitting toggle switches and modes and changing the mode on that layer from normal to screen. And this gets rid of the black background and then turn it into a 3D layer by selecting this box right here. And I'll go ahead and turn off this solid layer cause I don't need to see it. Then I selected the solid layer, hit P on the keyboard to bring up the position, clicked on that position and copied it by hitting control C. Then I selected the dust wave layer and brought up that position, selected it and hit control V on the keyboard. And this will paste the position information from the track solid onto the position of the dust wave layer. Then I'll select the dust wave, right click, go to time, time stretch and change that to a factor of 40. After that, I'll click and drag the dust wave element to reposition it in my scene so that it's directly underneath me. Also the dust wave element that I used wasn't a complete circle. So what I did was duplicate that footage, selected the top dust wave layer, hit R on the keyboard to bring up the rotation and change the Z rotation to 180 degrees. Then I dragged that down, piecing both of those together so I could create a complete circle. Also at the point when the dust wave is completely expanded, it starts going over the top of the house. But I want the dust wave to look like it's interacting with the walls of the house. So what I'll do is create a mask on each one of these dust wave layers. I'll mask around the area of the backyard where I want this dust to be contained. Then after I create the separate mask on each one of those layers, I'll hit F on the keyboard to bring up the mask feather and go in and change the feather on both of those masks to 200. I also turn on motion blur for both of these layers. Then next thing I'm gonna do is hold down control on the keyboard and select every layer in this composition except the GoPro landing layer and the GoPro takeoff layers. Then I'll right click, pre-compose all of those, name this drone handheld, select move all attributes to a new composition and select okay. And this is the point where I'm gonna use the footage with the handheld motion. I'm gonna open up the drone handheld composition and add that handheld footage into this comp and stack it on top of all the layers. When I recorded this handheld shot, I made sure to pan slightly to the left and right. And I wanna time this clip up so that the beginning of the pan starts right at the point after the drone is done tilting up into the air. So inside of this drone handheld comp, I can slide this footage around. I just clicked and dragged my footage over until the pan started exactly where I wanted it to. Then I'll go back into the super jump composition and I'm going to add warp stabilizer to the drone handheld comp. I'll change the result to no motion and the method to position, scale and rotation. And then I'll let that analyze. After that's done analyzing, I'll go back into the drone handheld composition and I'll delete the footage with the handheld motion. Now, if I go to the super jump composition and play this back, you'll see that the handheld motion from that shot was applied to this drone handheld composition. I did this to give the drone footage some organic motion and so that it looks like the footage was shot with a GoPro rather than a drone. Adding this effect does crop in on the drone handheld composition though. So I wanna scale down and reposition these green screen elements a little bit. So to do that, I'll go into the drone handheld layer and do the rescaling and positioning in this comp. When I move them around, it'll look a little funky like they're not gonna match up. But when I go back into the super jump composition, I can see what the final effect will look like. So I just jump back and forth between these two compositions until I have the exact position and scale that I want of those green screen elements. Keep in mind that when you're moving around these green screen elements, the stopwatch for the position is already engaged. So anytime you move the position around for these, it's going to create a new key frame wherever your time indicator is on that clip. If you go through and create multiple key frames, it'll cause the green screen elements to jump around in a really weird way like this. So when I was repositioning these, I left my time indicator in the same place, which was about at the halfway point of these clips. After I'm done with that, I'll come back into the super jump composition and I need to rescale the GoPro takeoff footage to match up better with the drone handheld composition. So I'll select both of those, pre-compose them together, and then scale and position that so that it's closer to the drone handheld composition. Again, this doesn't have to be exactly perfect, but the closer you can get, the more seamless the transitions will be between the clips. Then the very last thing I have to do is add a shadow in for this part right here. As you can see, when I'm transitioning from the GoPro into the drone footage, the shadow disappears. So to create the shadow, I'm going to duplicate the GoPro takeoff footage, rename the bottom one shadow, and then trim that down to only one frame. Then I'll right click on the shadow layer, go to time and select freeze frame. Then I'll trim that freeze frame down to about three frames. Then I'll drag that shadow layer over to start at the same time that the drone handheld composition starts. And then on that shadow layer, I'll create a mask around my shadow and then increase that mask feather to about 140. After that, I'll just simply key frame the position and animate this out of the frame as my body's taking off up into the air. I also turn on motion blur for the shadow layer. And now when I play that back, you can see how it created the shadow. Then the only thing I have left to do is go back in and turn on the pixel motion blur and the radial blur. And now after all that, I'm finished up. I'll add in my sound effects and some color grading, and that gives me my final effect. All right, guys, that's it for today's video. Thank you so much for watching. I'm excited to say that I just went over 90,000 subscribers and I'm coming up on 100,000, which is crazy because that's been a milestone of mine for a really long time. So thank you all so much for subscribing. I really appreciate it. Starting today, I'm going to be on a consistent upload schedule. I'll be posting at least once a week and that will be on Tuesdays. So stay tuned for a new upload every Tuesday from now on. But all right, guys, thank you again so much for watching and I'll see you soon.