I Will Quit My Job Today (music video) + Q&A

[elbramtsol]

Hi everyone!!! I'm happy to say that I have made a new music video. I hope you guys like it!
Lets make a deal... if you like it share it

[Johnny]

Totally thought this was spam and was delightfully surprised!

[elbramtsol]

Thanks!! Heheheh maybe I should select another name then!!! XD

[ddrake]

Totally thought this was spam and was delightfully surprised!

...maybe I should select another name then!!! XD

You could at least put "(music video)" in the subject line. Nicely done.

[elbramtsol]

Thanks for your suggestion!!! hahaha I did!

[Little Yamori]

Fun, looks like you used a lot of After Effects

[mattchee]

Very amusing and fun to watch!

Would love to hear about how it was made. Also guessing there was After Effects involved... a little motion tracking?

Anyhow, great work!

[elbramtsol]

Very amusing and fun to watch!
Would love to hear about how it was made. Also guessing there was After Effects involved... a little motion tracking?
Anyhow, great work!

Hi! Yes it was a lot of tracking! Thanks for the kind words. I would like to post a making of. But for know I would try to explain some things:

• The character was made the old fashion way (well... the old smartbones fashion way). I created all the turns inside a smartbone to animate easily that 3D-ish look.


• For the backgrounds all the bathroom scenes are actually images, so no tracking there. But a lot of editing in photoshop because there's no perfect image that meets all the expectations of our imagination XD. Here is the bathtub scene (the photo had whine and roses in the spot where I wanted to put the character):







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• The footage I recorded it myself. For the tracking I used a beautiful/time saver/mighty/powerful/program called Mocha (It came with After Effects). It uses a technology called "planar tracking" instead of "point tracking" so it tracks an area rather than key points. Its so easy that hurts:


NOTE The tracking is 2D, so is limited to some uses. (but I used it in all my tracking in this video so it's useful for a lot of things)

Hey I hope this clarifies some things but if you have any question please let me know. I know how it feels to want to learn more and this forum is the place were I learned all about Anime Studio. This community is the strongest "feature" of Anime Studio.



¿WHAT I WANT IN RETURN YOU ASK? Well... a share of the video and complete loyalty for my future projects l is required.

[djwaterman]

That was really cool and cute.

[mattchee]

Hey I hope this clarifies some things but if you have any question please let me know. I know how it feels to want to learn more and this forum is the place were I learned all about Anime Studio. This community is the strongest "feature" of Anime Studio.

¿WHAT I WANT IN RETURN YOU ASK? Well... a share of the video and complete loyalty for my future projects l is required.

That was incredibly enlightening and educational! Thank you so much for sharing! I definitely agree that the community is the one of the best features of Anime Studio!

I will have to check out Mocha... I started digging into After Effects a while back, and sort of got sidetracked by character animation (which I found to be tedious in AE). That's how I ended up here with Anime Studio. Anyhow, this kind of brings it full circle and opens up some possibilities of what I can do.

You have a loyal follower! LOL

[funksmaname]

Really nice ideas in this, and great execution.

with the tracking, did you just add the rotation of the character by eye once it was placed on the plane?

Keep up the good work

[elbramtsol]

Really nice ideas in this, and great execution.
with the tracking, did you just add the rotation of the character by eye once it was placed on the plane?
Keep up the good work

Thanks! Yes, it was animated by eye but I use a little trick to help me. I use an ugly (but very useful) stabilized reference layer that I bring into Anime Studio. It's made in a way that allows me to animate the character as if it will be in a still background:


Is kind of hard to explain how to do it because it involves a specific type of stabilization and I only know how to do it in After Effects, so this next explanation is going to be kind of specific about HOW TO CREATE AN UGLY AND STABLE REFERENCE MOVIE FOOTAGE USING MOCHA INSIDE AFTER EFFECTS But I hope you get interested in AE because it is a great tool, specially if you like to incorporate Anime Studio's exports into live action footage.

Let me see if I can explain it correctly, I would try to simplify it as much as I can.
I tracked the footage using the technique explained in my post above. Important: That means that the tracking information is taken from the exact spot where I plan to put my character. (You will see how easy is to create a stable reference with this technique! Just stay with me )

In After Effects (AE) you do it like this:

1. Track that spot baby.
Once you track your footage with Mocha you have to copy that information and paste it on a layer inside AE. I will paste mine into a "Null Layer"( A Null Layer is basically a blank layer useful in a variety of situations just like this one XD) You will end up with a lot of keyframes of Position, Scale, Rotation and more.

We are only going to use Position in this example.

2. Stabilize that footage. That's it. You're done.
In AE you can animate the Anchor Point (The Origin in an Anime Studio's Layer). The important thing to learn here is that Position and Anchor points are opposites to each other. So knowing that you just have to paste the keyframes of the Position of the "Null Layer" in to the Anchor Point of the video itself!


3. Why don't you believed me in step 2? Export that ugly reference layer! We're done! But seriously, Is not always necessary to create that reference. I use it only when I need to see exactly where the character will be standing, for animate it to follow the perspective of the camera, as well to interact with other objects of the scene.



4. What is happening here? How does it work? Let me see if I can say this without making it sound harder than it actually is...

Well, When you record something in the real wolrd you introduce movement in still objects by moving the camera, Mocha tracks the selected area and stores that movements in keyframes... specifically in POSITION keyframes. And because the ANCHOR POINT is the opposite of the POSITION the layer moves exactly like the camera, in the exact moment, but exactly on the opposite direction. It cancel the movements of the camera! Is like magic but with science and stuff.

Does any of this makes any sense? I really hope it does! English is not my first language

[mattchee]

It's making sense to me, so far.

So much information that is filled with awesomeness! But now I have a few more questions, of course! If you would be so kind to continue making my brain explode...

The image stabilization trick is used just for the reference layer, correct?

How does it all get put together back in After Effects? IE - using the tracking information with the final animation?

Thank you so much for sharing so much great info!

[mattchee]

Wait, I think I kind of get it.

You bring the animated character clip into AE, and then pair it to the null object with the tracking data, correct?

[elbramtsol]

How does it all get put together back in After Effects? IE - using the tracking information with the final animation?

Wait, I think I kind of get it.
You bring the animated character clip into AE, and then pair it to the null object with the tracking data, correct?

Indeed my friend, you are correct! Here is a more detailed answer for everyone else.

That's a great question! Well, right now here's what you need so far:

1. The footage
2. The tracking information from Mocha
3. The animation exported with alpha from Anime Studio. (Use QuickTime animation+ codec).

So... let's put this stuff together to create awesomeness! This is surprisingly the easiest part of all. Lets start from Mocha:

1. Mocha stuff. Once you have a good tracking you just have to copy that information from Mocha. Use the "Export Tracking Data Button..."


In the pop up window I use the option called "After Effects Transform Data" and then I click the Copy to Clipboard button.


2. Now let's make together a trip to After Effects. Once in there we are going to paste the tracking information into a Null Layer.

What is your obsession with Null Layers? Why can't you just paste the tracking information on the Layer of the animation itself?

Well first, don't yell at me when you haven't even subscribe to my beautiful and sexy YouTube page: http://youtube.com/stufftoons ;P And second thing is that using Null Layers will give you a lot of benefits. A great way to work inside of AE is to use Null Layers as parents of other layers. It obviously depends of the situation, but this is one of them. Here is why:

When you paste the tracking information into a Null Layer and make the Animated Character Clip his child your character will use the tracking information but you will be able to move it, scale it and rotate it around if you need to tweak things. On the other hand, if you just paste the tracking information into the animation you'll be stuck to that fixed position, scale and rotation. (Yes, there are ways to still move it around but why complicate things? Just use a Null Layer and everything will be alright.)

3. Thats it! Don't forget that the live action footage layer is just the background, dont change its scale, position or anything becasue then the tracking information will not match. Just remember that any other object, character, text, etc. that you want to follow the movements of the camera needs to be a child of the Null Layer:


If any of you have more questions please don't hesitate. Speak up