What up, guys! Jordy here
for cinecom.net
and welcome to a very exciting
After Effects tutorial.
I'm going to show you guys how
to track today, inside After Effects
and kind of recreate the shot that you've seen
in the beginning of this video, right here,
where Yannick is kind of opening this interface
and then he has this cool looking radar.
Now, it is a beginner's
tutorial on how to track,
because, once you know how tracking works,
you can actually just assign anything to that,
so, this is really the foundation of,
well, kind of making these things.
It is, however, recommended that you do know
like the very very basics of After Effects,
like importing clips, etc.
So, if you don't know
yet how to do that,
I definitely suggest to first watch the
video in the description below,
that gives you an introduction, like a real
starting introduction, to After Effects.
But, assuming that you already know how
to do that, let's get started with the tracking
and, by the way guys, later
down the road, in this tutorial,
I have an awesome surprise
for you, guys.
So, make sure to stay
tuned for that.
So, I have the original shot
here as well, with Yannick,
without the interface, things
on its wristband, and such,
and what I'm going to do here from my project
panel, is drag this clip into a new composition,
by dragging it to this
icon right here.
So, we're going to scrub a little
bit forward here in this layer
to the point where he's kind of pressing
this button here, and at this point,
you want to make sure that this display
is coming out of that wristband,
so we're going to start the
tracking from right here.
Head over to the menu here on top,
select Window and click the Tracker panel,
that will open up this thing right here,
and we can actually select two
kinds of tracking in here,
Track Camera or Track Motion.
The Track Camera is a more
automatic tracking tool,
it actually works better,
if it works,
and that is a little problem
that we are running into often.
If there isn't enough contrast in your shot,
then the Track Camera just won't work,
and then you have to track it manually
with the Track Motion.
And that's what I'm going to select,
because most of the time our shots
are not always made for
the automatic tracking.
So, just click on that Track Motion
and now you can kind of see that we
have this tracking point number 1.
And, of course, we are going
to assign this tracking point
to a certain point
that we want to track.
That's pretty obvious.
So, we can click on that tracking point and kind
of enlarge these two squares, as you can see,
and the larger that they are, the more
accurate that the tracking will be,
but also the longer that
the tracking will take.
So, I'm going to scrub a little
bit down here on this clip,
you can do that by taking the Hand tool,
and I suggest you learn the shortcuts,
because it is H for the Hand key,
and now you can kind of just scrub
a little bit lower to his wristband
and take back the Arrow tool here on top,
or press the V key on your keyboard
and just drag that point
to this light right here.
And the reason I'm doing that is because this
light has a very big contrast to its surrounding.
If we would drag this here, this tracking
point, to this knob right here
it is just not going to work that well,
because there is not much contrast.
After Effects is going to need much
contrast, like this right here.
And often, what people would also do is
kind of just draw their own tracking points
if there isn't enough data.
And you can see that, as well,
on these green screen Studios
where they kind of have
these tracking marks.
But then, afterwards you also have
to remove these tracking marks,
so that's kind of the
downside to it.
Just make sure that you have in your
recording a clear contrasty point
that you can put your tracker on.
So, the middle square right here is going to say
"Well, hey, this here is the tracking information"
and the outer square is going to say "Well, hey,
this is the area where that tracking point is in".
And I'm going to take some extra data
here around that tracking point
to make sure that it
will stick there.
Now, currently we are only tracking
the position with one tracking point,
and you also want to track
the rotation information,
because Yannick is going to, like,
move his wrist up and down.
So, here on the right side, inside our tracker,
we're going to enable the rotation as well,
and you can, as well, enable the scale if,
for example, the camera would come closer...
...or further away from Yannick, then
you also want to track the scale.
In this case it's not, so I'm
not going to enable that.
Again, you kind of want to large
that tracker a tiny bit, like so,
I'm going to scrub a little bit down here
and take that second tracker here
to the second light here, as well.
You could take something else, like
this knob, will probably work well too,
because there's a big contrast between
this knob and its surrounding.
You know what? Let's go
with this one right here,
perhaps make it a little
bit larger, like that,
and, once you've got your
two tracking points in place,
what you then want to do is
press here this Play button
and you want to keep your eyes at all
time on these two tracking marks,
because, once that they're going to go off
you want to hit that Stop button,
and it's already off with the first frame,
After Effects must really hate me.
So, to fix this issue, what you have to do
now is go back a couple of frames,
and you can do that by holding
down your Control key,
and then pressing the left Arrow
key on your keyboard.
And just do that until where your tracking
point is at its correct position here.
What I'm going to do here is maybe decrease
the size of that middle tracking point,
because perhaps this finger here
was a little bit in the way,
so, let's see how it will
go now, press play,
and now it's sticking better on that, 
this looks good, alright.
Make sure that you keep your
eyes on these tracking points
and if anything would
go wrong, then just...
press stop, oops! Right here,
it's okay, we have to stop.
But that's okay because, apparently,
we're already at the ending,
because, at this point right here, where
he presses the last button on his interface,
the interface can go away, so, we don't need
the rest of that tracking information anymore.
So, that is fine.
Let's now assign this information
right here that you can see,
these, all these points,
to a new layer, because that is
exactly what you want to do.
Head over to your Layer Menu here
on top, select New and say Null Object,
this is actually just
a nothing object,
it's really nothing but we can assign
something to it, like tracking information.
With this layer selected, then I'm going
to hit the Return key on my keyboard,
and rename this to the...
Wrist Band Tracking.
Then select your clip again and,
from the tracker window right here,
say Edit Target,
and you want to make sure
that the Wrist Band Tracking
that we've just created that
layer is selected in here,
press OK and then hit Apply.
And make sure, also here, that
it says Apply Dimensions X and Y,
always do that, press OK,
and now all that tracking information,
as you can see here, all these keyframes,
are now inside that Null Object.
So, that Null object here should stick perfectly
on that wristband, as you can see over here,
and that is a great thing now,
because once we had this in place,
we can now link anything that
we want to this wristband,
so, let's do that, we're going to use
the Rocketstock interface pack,
and, again, you can find a link to that
one in description below the first link,
and I've got it already imported
here inside After Effects,
there are basically tons of
science fiction elements
that you can use to kind of create your
own interfaces and bells and whistles
for your next science-fiction project.
And, what is also great for
the more advanced users
is that you can actually get
all of these source files as well,
the After Effects project file
that they have created this in,
so you can kind of tweak
those things even more.
But the whole idea of this pack
is that you can just drag and drop
to create your own sci-fi scene
in just several clicks,
and that's also what
we are going to do.
So, I'm going to start with a frame,
we've got it right here, Frames,
and I'm going to select frame #03,
right here, and you'll see that we
have an In, a loop and an Out.
And, actually, we have an incoming
animation of that frame,
we have a loop, which is just the
middle or the standing frame
and then we've got an
outgoing animation.
So, typically you always want to select the
In loop and Out animation, right here,
And just drag that here into
your composition on top, like so,
here are those three layers, I'm going to
drag them a little bit more to the right side
so I can actually see them,
and we are going to start
with the In animation here,
then the loop animation is going to come
next, so I'm going to drag that next to it,
and you can actually hold down
your Shift key on your keyboard,
so that it will kind of snap to
that ending of the first clip,
let's take that outgoing animation
here, as well, and drag that...
...to here by holding down
your Shift key as well.
So, now we have the entire animation,
the framing is coming in like that,
the framing is there and the framing
will go out with this animation.
Now, sometimes, when your
action is not that long,
you don't need that loop animation,
and it is probably for this case as well,
yep!
So, we're just going to use the in and the out
animation, drag them next to each other,
and we're going to
position them here,
where Yannick is pressing this button and
the tracking will start, so that is at this point
right here, you can also just select
that tracking layer, right here,
press the U key on your keyboard
to show the keyframes
and that way you know when that
animation starts, so, that is right here.
So, I'm going to select these two layers, you
can do so by holding down your Shift key again,
and dragging them to the right side
so that they can start at that point.
And, as for the outgoing animation, it has
to stop when your tracking is going to stop,
so that is going to be
somewhere right here,
just drag it a little bit more
to the left side, like that.
And now I'm going to trim the incoming
animation here from the right side, like that,
hold down your Shift key again
so that it can kind of snap
to that second layer here,
the outgoing animation.
And everything goes well,
let just play this back,
you'll see that we have a nice
animation of that framing coming in.
Now, we are going to add tons
of more elements here in this framing,
so that's why I'm not going to
link it yet to the tracking information.
But what I'm going to do is group
this actually, so that I can link the group
to that tracking information
and work in that group
to add some more elements in it.
So, select these two layers here,
right click on them and say Pre-compose,
give that a name, for
example "The interface"
and press OK, make sure that it says "move
all attributes into a new composition".
Press OK.
And now you can see that these two layers
here are in one layer and this is actually
a new composition or a group
that we have just created.
So, let's double click on that
group, it's right here,
and we can work now
solely on this interface.
Let's add like another framing to it,
I'm going to select frame # 05,
take again the in animation
and the out animation, like so,
hold down your Control key, by the way,
to select multiple clips in here,
drag them to your composition, like so,
and just move them a little bit
more to that side here.
And it is ok that they are not
as long as the other one,
because this one here might
come in a little bit later.
And perhaps we might want to
change the scale a bit of that,
so with that layer selected here, I'm going
to press the S key on my keyboard,
which stands for the Scale, and that
will open up that property in here,
so, let's increase that
a tiny bit, like so,
and I kind of want to make sure that
also that second animation here
is the same scale value to it,
so select that scale in here,
hit the control+C on your keyboard to copy
that value, or command+C for the Mac users,
and then select that second layer here and
press control+V to paste that onto it
and it will have that same
scale information as well.
So, we have already a very unique kind of
framing here, so that's pretty cool.
The next thing that we're going to do
is add kind of a background to it,
so I'm going to close the frames
in here and go to the grids.
And I have found this pretty cool
grid here the Incoming grid,
drag the In and the Out here
to your composition here,
and I'll just drag that
to the left side,
and this time we
do need that loop,
so let's drag that
one in, as well.
that's going to sit
in the middle here.
so we have the grids
coming in here, like so.
Of course this grid is a bit too big so, 
again, you wanna select one of those layers,
hit the S key,
scale that down so that it kind of
fits here, in that framing, like so,
select that scale, hit
control+c, select this...
...and select the other two
grid layers here, as well,
and hit control+V to paste
that scale property to it.
So, we have something like this now,
a very nice looking interface board,
so that's pretty cool.
Alright guys, I'm going to dress this a little bit
more here with a couple of things,
we have some code in here
as well, just drag that into it,
position that anywhere you want,
make sure that it's
always trimmed.
You can kind of just keep on doing this,
drag any kind of element to that...
...interface, to design,
whatever that you want.
Alright guys, this right here
is my interface design,
let's go back now to Dangerous
Yannick, the composition here,
where you can now see that entire
group here with that interface,
and that's linked now
to his wristband.
The first thing I want to do is make sure
that the null object here is in a 3D space,
and also that group here
is also in a 3D space.
And I can just do that by enabling here
this little box that I've just clicked
and that way I'm telling:
hey, this is a 3D object.
And we're going to need that so that we
can rotate this object in a 3D space
to kind of match it with the
same position as Yannick.
So, once we've done that I can just select this
layer and hit the R key on my keyboard,
which stands for the Rotation.
and now you can see that
we have an X, Y and Z rotation.
So, just move these values around and kind of
make sure that it fits within the scene,
something like this
might be ok.
Let's drag that to the
correct position as well,
And once that is done we're going to link
this group to the tracking information,
and we can do that from
the Parent tool right here,
which you can drag to
this wristband tracking.
Let go, and now you can
see here on the right side,
that it is now parented, or
linked, to this null object,
or that tracking information.
And if we are going
to play this back,
you'll see that this layer is perfectly
on that wristband, like so.
And always make sure
that with your interface
that, you know, Yannick is
pushing some buttons here,
that they are on the correct position like,
for example, right here he's pressing this...
...this circle, it's not really
in the correct place.
So, I'm going to double click
here on my group again
and kind of move this
circle a bit to that site,
let's go back to Dangerous Yannick,
this looks a lot better.
And, while doing that, make sure that
you are copying that transform information
to the end animation as well.
else, it will kind of jump, as you can see here,
because it still has that old position here.
And now you'll see that everything
is kind of in place,
and at this point here,
it kinda like slides down,
and I have found this pretty cool
arrow animation right here
and I actually want to rotate that, because
he is sliding down at this point, right here.
So, I'm going to double click again
on that interface and rotate that,
like so, about 90°,
position that right,
let's go back here at dangerous
Yannick and see how that looks,
that looks pretty good.
Might want offset a little
bit more to the right side.
And now it is in the correct
position, look at that!
looking great.
Now, when Yannick is going to
press that button right here,
we actually want to
bump that a little bit
so that it looks like he is really
actually pressing that button.
So, again double-click
on your interface,
and select your circle animation
out, because we are on that point,
right here, of that circle,
hit the S key on your keyboard 
to open up the scale,
and create a keyframe
for that scale property.
And that way we can
animate the scale.
Go a couple of frames forward, you can
hold down the Control key on your keyboard
and just press the arrow
key to the right side now,
1, 2, 3, 4 or something like that,
increase that scale like that, and go
a couple of frames forward again,
and decrease that scale.
and you can kind of see that we have this bump
if we are going to play this back, like so.
And this is kind of that animation,
as Yannick is pressing that button.
looks pretty cool.
But, you know what? As he is pressing
that button he's also enabling something.
So, we are going to change the
color as well, of this circle button.
So, again, double click
on your interface,
and I'm going to head over to the
Effects and Presets right here,
if you can't see that just head over to the
window and select the Effects and Presets,
it's somewhere right here,
Effects and Presets.
So, I'm going to search in here for the
HLS, and that will bring up the color balance.
Drag that effect on to circle #12 out,
which we are doing an animation on,
and that should pop open
your Effects Controls,
and this kind of works the same as in
Premiere Pro, you had your Effects Controls,
where you can change
the effects properties.
And with this Hue,
right here on top,
you can kind of just change the color
of that circle, as you can see,
but we are going
to animate that.
You can do that from here, but we can
also open up this layer even more,
open up the Effects, open
up the Color Balance,
and create a keyframe for the hue,
just on a point where he's kind of pressing
that button, so that is somewhere right here,
enable the animation, that
will create a keyframe for it,
go a couple of frames forward,
and just kind of change that hue to
whatever you want, for example green,
which is pretty cool because
he's enabling that,
which is now pretty obvious
that it turns green.
And look at that!
Alright guys, if you want to make
sure that all these elements
are a little bit more
prominent in the shot,
then you can also go into the Effects Controls
and just search for the Glow effect,
right here, and drag the best Glow
on that entire group,
and you can see it will kind of
glow up a little bit more,
making it more prominent.
Alright, this looks
pretty awesome, guys.
Now guys, in the beginning I said that
I had a little surprise for you guys,
let me just reveal that
surprise right now.
As you know, we are always giving
away the project file for free,
which you can download
from the description below,
and, normally, when we are
featuring a payed product,
which is the interface from
Rocketstock here,
we are not allowed to
share anything of that.
But Rocketstock told me:
Hey Jordy, whatever you are using 
today in your tutorial, well, just...
...well just put in your project file and
make it available for anyone to download.
So, everything that you are
seeing here today, guys,
you can actually download all of those
elements, the entire project file, for free,
from the description below.
And that way you can kind of play
around with these sample elements
and create or recreate the scene
that we are doing right now.
So, that is pretty exciting guys, thank
you so much Rocketstock for that.
Let's continue with the tutorial,
because the next thing we are going to do is
kinda enable now this radar here, on his eyes,
and, also here, this radar
on his wristband again.
So, we're going to create
a second tracking.
Once the interface here is gone,
we can go over to his eyes,
by selecting that layer,
opening up the tracker here on the
right side, click the track motion,
I'm going to go a little
bit faster now through this,
because you guys
know how it'll work.
And I'm actually going to track
this eyebrow here on top,
because if we would track his eyes,
and every time that he blinks,
then these tracking points
will kind of go wild there.
And again, I wanna select the rotation
and also the scale this time,
because Yannick is going
to walk forward,
and there's going to be like a little bit of
difference here in the scaling, as well,
because Yannick is going to come closer
and further away as well, from the camera.
So, I'm going to select the outer
side here of his eyebrow,
perhaps make this inner square
a little bit smaller, like that,
and the outer square
a little bigger.
Alright, this looks
pretty good, I guess.
Let's try it out, let's drag
this, press the play button,
but make sure that you are keeping
an eye on those two tracking points.
Alright, we have attracted the
entire thing, look at all those things.
Yannick really can't walk
straight, look at that.
His head is just moving
around all the time.
That is actually good, that means
he is looking around
at his enemies.
So, again, head over to the menu here
on top, say Layer, new Null object,
give that a name, for
example Eyes...
...Tracking, or actually just
one eye doesn't matter.
Go into the Edit target
here of the tracker
and this time select the
layer Eyes tracking,
press OK and say Apply.
X and Y, ok.
So, that null object
now is on its eyes
And, what we're going to do now is go
back into the Projects panel right here,
and I'm going to go into the
circles of the interface pack,
and select Circle #06, which
was pretty cool actually.
drag that into the composition,
kind of move these
clips here, or layers...
...to the right side.
and let's see at which point that
they have to start right here,
so, let's move that In animation
to it, that loop is right here,
and then the outgoing
animation right here.
And, to make it ourselves a bit more convenient,
also here select all of these layers
right click and say Pre-comp,
this is going to be the Eye Radar.
Move it a little bit forward,
and that's now also mapped
to his eye,
so we can kind of decrease
that size of that group here,
position it over
his eye, like that,
make sure that we have
3D as well enabled here,
the same thing goes for
the tracking layer as well,
and, once we've got
the circle in place,
we can parent that with the
whip to the Eyes Tracking.
Now, if you believe that the
scale was still a bit too much,
then, don't worry too much,
you can decrease that
scale, or reposition it,
if you want so, it will always remember
to keep it linked to that tracking.
So, you can make adjustments
at any time,
and also, here I'm going to
go to the Effects and Presets
and add that glow effect to
the eye Radar, like that,
so it's a bit more prominent,
as you can see,
so it's actually sticking up
pretty good to his eye,
look at that.
so let's have a look at what we have already here,
Yannick is coming in, he presses this button,
interface comes out of it
and enables his radar,
so it's following his
eye there as well.
And the next thing we're going to do
is kind of add this Radar here on top...
...of his wristband.
And this is going to work the exact
same way as we've done before,
so I'm going to go
very quickly over this,
select that layer,
open up the tracker,
say Track Motion,
and I'm also going to say
Rotation and the Scale,
move these two tracking points to a
very contrasty point that we have,
and hit play.
Alright, the tracking has been done, head
over to layer and say New Null Object,
name this layer the Wrist
Radar Tracking, whatever...
say Edit Target, select the Wrist Radar Tracking,
press OK and say Apply and press OK.
And we have a very nice radar here,
inside the Rocketstock interface pack
right here, and it's
called the Radar #04,
if I'm looking here
on my paper.
Drag this three here again
into your composition,
kind of aline that together with the tracking
like that, with an incoming animation,
a loop and an outgoing animation.
Like so, make sure they
are aligned correctly,
Something like this
would be okay.
Select all of them, right
click Pre-compose,
name this Radar,
enable the 3D space, press the R key
on your keyboard and just kind of...
...rotate this around so that it
sits on the correct place,
like that, and you might want
to reposition it as well,
just drag that onto that
wristband, like so,
and perhaps we might want to
decrease the scale of that too.
Once that is done, make sure that you
also enable the 3D for the tracking here,
and then just parent that to
the Wrist Tracking layer.
There we go, and now that radar
is also attached to his wrist.
But we're gonna add some
more 3D effect to it,
and that can be very easily done
by actually duplicating this layer,
with that layer selected just press the Ctrl+D
key on your keyboard, to make a duplication,
and, at a certain point here
in time, we're going to...
..animate the position
of that second layer,
just hit the P key on your keyboard to
open up the position for that layer,
go a little bit forward in time and just
drag here the z-axis a little bit higher,
like that.
Now that layer will kind of open up,
showing itself more like a 3D object,
looks pretty cool.
And if you want so, you can give
one of these layers a different color
by going into the Effects
Controls again,
Where is it? Effects & Presets,
search for that HLS
color balance,
drag that onto that radar layer right here
and just offset that hue a tiny bit.
Look at this, guys,
pretty awesome!
The last thing that we want to do
to give that final touch,
is to enable motion blur, because
Yannick is moving around as well,
you can kinda see some motion blur
here, as he is moving around his head,
so we want to make sure that same motion blur
also applies to the elements that we've applied.
Very easy,
like we've done with
the 3D space,
we're also just going to enable
motion blur inside After Effects.
Just hit this checkbox right here,
all the way on the left side
and you want to enable
that for all the layers
that have these sci-fi
elements into it.
And, once that is done, we are going to
enable the Global Motion Blur
from the button
here on top.
And now you will kind of see here, as
Yannick is moving his face around,
that also, that will kind of
have some motion blur to it.
It will render a little bit slower
now with that motion blur,
but the results
are pretty cool.
Alright guys, let's have
a final look to it,
Yannick here, look how tough
he is, coming in there,
now he's not making goof of himself
anymore with that interface on him,
and he has this nice
radar, look at that!
with just a few drags and clicks
we have created our own sci-fi scene.
Alright guys, thank you so much for watching,
sorry that this has been a pretty long tutorial,
but I hope that you do learn
 something new in here,
how tracking works, and make sure 
to download the project file as well,
so that you can actually use these
elements that you've seen in this tutorial.
Thank you again
for watching,
and, as always...
...stay creative.
