Let's Put Some Lipstick On This Pig, Part 2

Last time we left off just as things were starting to get interesting, as we had added faux scanlines, a hotspot, and a nice bulge effect to our fan-tabulous screenshot of the Library of Congress site. The whole idea, of course, is to inject a little va-va-voom into the traditionally boring subject of screenshots in a video, so let's continue on and finish prettying this sucker up.

If you haven't already, go back and complete part one of this tutorial, as we're going to pick up right where we left off with absolutely no recap. Kind of like Matrix Reloaded. Yeah, that's it. We're definitely in the same class here in terms of groundbreaking effects. Anyway, I digress. We had just finished adding the bulge filter to our souped-up screenshot, but I'm not happy with the "bulginess" of the bulge.

Step 5: The battle of the bulge

We're still in the CurveComp comp that we made before, and the Bulge filter needs a little tweaking. If the Effect Controls window isn't already open for the WindowComp layer, make sure the layer is selected in the Timeline and select Effect:Effect Controls from the menubar to open 'er up. Scrub the Bulge Height setting down to 0.7 (it was at 1.0), resulting in the before and after shot shown in Figure 1. Still bulgey, if that's even a word, but a little more understated. If only my trips to the gym yielded such dramatically slimming results.

Figure 1: The screenshot before (left) and after (right) the bulgendectomy.

Step 6: Let there be light

There's still something missing here, and that certain je ne sais quoi would most definitely reveal itself with a hint of that 3D light feature After Effects so thoughtfully offers. The first thing we need to do is flip the 3D switch on the WindowComp layer, so go ahead and click the 3D icon in the Switches/Modes area of the Timeline (fig. 2). This ensures that whatever lights you add will actually affect the image. Now go ahead and add a light by Control/Right-clicking in the Timeline window, and selecting New:Light (fig. 3). In the resulting settings window, name it NurnieLight, set the intensity to 125%, the Cone Angle to 120 degrees, and the Cone Feather to 80%. Leave the color at the default white and the Casts Shadows option unchecked (fig. 4).

Figure 2: Click the little 3D icon (highlighted) to make the WindowComp layer a 3D one.

Figure 3: Control or right-clicking in the Timeline is a shortcut to the New menu. Same goes for the Comp window as well.

Figure 4: Use these here settings for your light.

Now, just bear with me here. In the Timeline, twirl down the settings arrow for your NurnieLight, twirling again when you see the Transform sub-section. Enter in the coordinates for the Point of Interest and Position settings as shown in Figure 5, which will place the light and where it's pointing at an angle to your screenshot (fig. 6). Once everything's entered, your screenshot should have a nice, soft gradient effect spanning its width.

Figure 5: Just use these coordinates for your light and no one gets hurt.

Figure 6: Putting the light on an angle yields a soft gradient effect.

At this point, I'd like to thank your for your indulgence, as I just gave you a bunch of numbers to input there without any explanation. Your reward, of course, is that you are now free to play around. Try changing the Active Camera view to a custom setting (fig. 7, top left) and using the various Camera tools (fig. 7, bottom left) to find a view you can work with, and then try dragging the light position and focus settings right in the Comp window itself (fig. 7, right). Go ahead and mess with the Light Settings too (fig. 8) in case you want to up the intensity or make the Feather softer or harder or whatever. Get the look you want, and when you're ready, we'll continue.

Figure 7: Change your view, use the Camera tools, and drag the light around for even more hijinks and debauchery!

Figure 8: You can also mess with your light settings right in the Timeline by twirling down the Options arrow.

Step 7: Yet another comp

Now things are really going to come together in yes, another new comp. Select Composition:New Composition from the menubar, and then enter in the settings shown in Figure 9. This will create a new comp called ScreenFinalComp with a resolution of 720x540, which is the resolution I almost always use when I'm not sure where the final sequence will end up. This way, I can downsize the comp for DV or D1 output (either square or non-square pixels), or go even smaller for a CD ROM or Web clip without having to deal with the horror and emotional scarring that goes with scaling up. Anyway, back to the task at hand. First, we're going to create a relatively simple background for our screenshot to hover over later.

Figure 9: Behold, I give you Comp settings.

If it's not active already, click on the ScreenFinalComp tab in either the Comp window or the Timeline to bring it to the front. Then create a new Solid by Control/Right-clicking (again, either in the Comp Window or the Timeline) and selecting New:Solid. You'll get the Solid Footage Settings dialog box, so while it's there and all, you might as well name your solid Bed and click the Make Comp Size button to have the Solid size match your comp window. Keep the color whatever it defaults to (black in my case), and then click OK. Next, we're going to apply a simple Ramp (AKA gradient) filter to the Solid to complete the background. Select the Bed layer in the Timeline, and then go to the menubar and choose Effect:Render:Ramp. You should get a simple gradient in your comp window that flows from black at the top to white at the bottom (fig. 10).

Figure 10: This gradient isn't all that fabulous.

This basic gradient isn't too tremendously compelling, so we're going to muck around with the Effect Controls for the Ramp effect to give it a little color. If the Effect Controls window isn't already open, activate it by selecting the Bed layer in your ScreenFinalComp's Timeline window, and then choosing Effect:Effect Controls from the menubar. We're going for a purplish/reddish gradient that goes from top left to bottom right, so just enter the settings you see in Figure 11. If you really want to match things up to what I'm doing, the RGB value for the Start Color is (100, 55, 145), and (30, 0, 0) for the End Color. After all of that, your gradient should look something like Figure 12.

Figure 11: Here's your cheat sheet for the Ramp effect.

Figure 12: This gradient, on the other hand, is fabulous.

OK, now we're set to add our screenshot to the background we just made. Drag the CurveComp comp from the Project window to the Comp window. Once it's there, click the CurveComp layer in the ScreenFinalComp Timeline and press the 'p' key, and then hold down Shift and then press the 's' key. This will twirl down just the position and scale properties. Scrub the Scale property to about 65%, and set the position coordinates to 360, 270. Your screenshot should now look like Figure 13. We're definitely getting there.

Figure 13: The screenshot after it's placed over the gradient and scaled down.

There are just a few things left to do to this comp before I turn you loose. One, I'd like to have a drop shadow effect for the screenshot, but instead of a true drop shadow (which AE most certainly can do if you like), I'm going to use the Glow effect to make the drop shadow look extend around all of the sides of our screenshot. So, with the CurveComp layer selected in the Timeline, go to the menubar and select Effect:Stylize:Glow. Make sure the Effect Controls window is active, and set the following parameters:

• Glow Threshold=100%
• Glow Radius=150
• Change the Composite Original pulldown from Behind to On Top
• Change the Color Looping pulldown from Triangle A>h4>A to Sawtooth A>B
• Set Color A to black

These settings are all shown in Figure 14. What we've done is set the Glow effect to radiate a soft, all-black "glow" from behind the screenshot (fig. 15), which will definitely help us later when it comes time to animate the shot itself.

Figure 14: What your Glow settings should look like.

Figure 15: Ahh. A nice drop shadow-y effect using the Glow filter.

The last set of things we'll do is to activate both the 3D and Motion Blur switches for our CurveComp layer. We also have to activate the comp-wide Motion Blur setting as well, so go ahead and flip all of those switches (fig. 16). Our comp is now, as the children say, ready to rock.

Figure 16: Make sure these highlighted boxes are active.

Step 8: Getting jiggy with it

Now, the fun part. Rather than go through the tedium of you matching keyframes with me, you get to do whatever you want in terms of animating it. The overall idea, though, is that we're ultimately going to add some nice pans and zooms to show parts of our shot. At this point, I like to have only the position, scale, and rotation (AKA orientation when 3D is involved) properties open in the timeline and add keyframes to just those properties to get the motion I want (fig. 17). When it comes time to zoom closer, I like to use the scale property instead of the Z position property (keeping that at 0), if for no other reason than to keep those keyframes independent of each other. The ultimate result is shown in Figure 18, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say looks a little more compelling than if we just threw the flat screenshot out there to stand on its own.

Figure 17: Here's what my Timeline looked like after keyframing the screenshot's position, scale and rotation (orientation).

Figure 18: The finished effect.

Lessons learned

I hope the point driven home here is that there are quite a few relatively simple things you can do to a simple screenshot to make it a more interesting visual. Any one of the things I did in both this tutorial and the previous installment can serve as a point of departure for you to do your own experiments. Want to use another effect than the bulge I used? Fine. Dispense with the scanlines and/or hotspot? Go for it. Put a moving background in there? Knock yourself out. Do a few of these moves and cut 'em together? Glorious. The bottom line is that you don't have to spend a lot of time, money, or effort to add a little spice to a notoriously boring subject.

Ah, but we're not quite done yet. I'm going to be milking one last, related installment out of this series. Next time we're going to go back into our screenshot a bit and add some animation to that as well, so we can do site tours or interactive demos or whatever in conjunction with the techniques we've gone over so far. So, until, then, night-night kids!

Filed under: Tutorial on January 22nd, 2004

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