Noble Logo: Rotation, Fade-Outs, & Rendering

Topics covered in this After Effects tutorial:

Adding Anticipation, Animating the Rotation property, Adding a Fade to White, Finding Missing Project Files, Exporting H.264 Video with Media Encoder

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

In this exercise, we’ll finish off animating the Noble logo. You’ll learn about animating with the Rotation property, creating a fade to white at the end, and how to deal with missing assets.

Re-Previewing the Final Movie

1. You should still have yourname-Noble Logo.aep open in After Effects. If you closed it, re-open it now by going to File > Open Project then Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Noble Logo. We recommend you finish the previous exercises (2A–2B) before starting this one. If you haven’t finished it, do the following sidebar.

   If You Did Not Do the Previous Exercises (2A–2B)

   1. If a project is open in After Effects, go to File > Save, then File > Close Project.
   2. Go to File > Open Project and navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Noble Logo > Finished AE Projects.
   3. Double–click on Noble Logo-Ready for Rotation.aep.
   4. Do a File > Save As > Save As. Name the file yourname-Noble Logo.aep and save it back into the Noble Logo folder.

2. If you don’t already have the final movie (Noble-Logo-Animated.mp4) open, re-open it from the Noble Logo > Final Movie folder.

3. Play the video, taking special notice of the animation we haven’t worked on:

   • After the text is done animating in, the entire Noble logo rotates slightly leftward as it scales up, expanding in preparation to scale down and rotate rightward.
   • Once the logo starts shrinking and rotating clockwise, the entire video starts fading out to white. This ensures the animation ends just like it started (with nothing on-screen at the end of the fade).

4. Keep the video open so you can refer back to it as needed.

Animating the Rotation Property with Anticipation

In real life, it often takes a bit of preparation to perform an action, so a person or object first does the opposite of what they are about to do to get that extra oomph. Think of a kid taking a deep breath before blowing out all the candles on their birthday cake, or a pitcher moving backward so they can then throw the ball forward at blazing speed.

This type of motion is called anticipation. It’s one of the 12 main principles that are used in both traditional and computer animation. We’ll incorporate it into an animation where the Noble logo rotates counterclockwise on its anchor point (while it scales up), in anticipation for clockwise rotation while shrinking down.

1. Change your zoom level at the bottom left of the Composition Viewer panel, to Fit.
2. Select the black square layer.
3. Press the letter S key to bring up its Scale.

4. Move the playhead to frame 68, when the black square will start its exit animation.

5. To the left of the Scale property, click the diamond to add another keyframe for this property.

   The diamond icon is used to add or remove keyframes, which represent the start and end points of animations.

6. With the layer selected, press Shift–R to display the Rotation property along with the Scale property that is already displayed.

7. Still at frame 68, enable keyframing on the Rotation property by clicking the stopwatch next to the property name.

   The Rotation Property’s Two Values

   The 0x portion indicates how many full Revolutions (times it goes back to its starting point) it will make. The 0.0° portion is the Tilt, as expressed in degrees. When you don’t want something to make a perfect 360° revolution, you change only the second part of the property.

8. We want to add an anticipation keyframe at frame 72, so move the playhead there.

9. Positive values rotate an object clockwise, and negative values rotate it counterclockwise. In the Timeline, change Rotation from 0x+0.0° to 0x–10.0° (that’s negative 10 degrees).

   This adds a keyframe where the black square and its child layers move counterclockwise, in anticipation for its more extreme clockwise exit.

   NOTE: To learn more about anticipation and the other 11 principles of animation, watch animator Alan Becker’s series of videos at tinyurl.com/12-anim-principles

10. Change either Scale value to 110%. The black square and all the little N pieces should all be scaling larger and rotating a little to the left.

11. Still in the Timeline, drag the playhead from frame 68 to frame 72 to see the logo get a little bigger as it rotates counterclockwise along its anchor point in the center, tilting 10 degrees.

    The difference between two Rotation keyframes determines how much it’ll spin or tilt. After Effects subtracted the first value from the second one to get the difference (0 degrees minus –10 degrees equals –10, which means it will tilt by that amount).

12. This animation is winding down, so it’s time for our Noble logo to bid us farewell. We want it to disappear at frame 78, so move the playhead there.

13. Change the Rotation to 0x+90° (the positive number moves it 90° clockwise).

14. Set the Scale to 0% to make the Noble logo invisible.

15. Drag a selection around the first 2 keyframes (at frame 68).

16. Go to Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease Out to apply easing to the beginning of the logo’s exit sequence. This means the animation be slower when the playhead goes out from (gets past) this set of keyframes.

17. Drag a selection around the second keyframes (at frame 72). Press F9 to Easy Ease them so we get a little “hang time” at this anticipation’s extreme pose.

18. Press the Spacebar to preview the animation. Nice!

Adding a Fade to White Using a Solid Color Layer

Noble Desktop may want to loop this animation. Looped video looks jarring unless it starts and ends with the same appearance. Our composition currently starts out white and ends with the letters still visible. To make it end the same as it started, we’ll create a fade to white for the end. It’s easier to think of this in terms of white fading in, rather than everything fading away. The end result will appear as if the letters fade away, but instead we’ll be fading in a solid white layer.

1. In the Timeline, click on layer 1 (named red-05) so the solid color layer we’re about to add will get added above all the other layers.

2. Go to Layer > New > Solid and set the following:

   • Click the Make Comp Size button.
   • Click the Color swatch at the bottom.
   • Select a White color by dragging all the way into the top-left corner (or entering #FFFFFF near the bottom right).

3. Click OK and then OK again.

4. After the logo finishes anticipating its disappearance, it’s a good time for everything in the composition frame to start fading away in opacity. The anticipation keyframe is at frame 72, so move the playhead there.

5. Let’s set the layer’s in point by moving its bar. In the Timeline, select the [White Solid 1] layer.
6. Hold Shift and drag the left end of its red bar until it snaps into place at 72.

7. To bring up the solid layer’s Opacity property, press the T key (for OpaciT y).

8. To the left of Opacity, click the stopwatch to create a new keyframe.

9. On the left side of the Timeline, to the right of Opacity, hover over the current value (which should be 100%) until you see a hand slider . Click and drag leftward until it reaches 0%.

10. So we can create another keyframe, move the playhead to frame 80.

11. Change the Opacity value to 100%, and it will automatically add another keyframe.

12. The length of the Work Area (the light gray area just below the playhead) determines how long the final movie will be. We don’t want to include all 150 frames, but we want to linger on white for a moment. Move the playhead slightly later, to frame 84.

13. Let’s crop the Work Area. Press N (for eN d) to end the Work Area here at frame 84, and the blue tab at the right will snap to it.

How to Find Missing Project Files

An important thing to remember about After Effects, is that it is referencing (that is, talking about) your files, rather than embedding (eating) them. It’s like a thin person who talks about food and has a full fridge, but never eats any of it.

1. When After Effects “imports” files, it’s actually pulling all the info about those files from where they live on your computer. To get a look, go to the Project panel.

2. Hover your cursor over the Project panel and press the Tilde (~) key (located below the Esc key) to expand it fill the whole window.

   TIP: Pressing Tilde when hovering over any panel will expand it to fill the window!

3. If they aren’t already open, swivel open the Assets and yourname-noble-logo-RGB Layers folders and find the File Path column. This is where After Effects is getting its information from.

   It makes sense to nestle the Illustrator file within an Assets folder, so let’s do so in our Class Files as well. However, changing a file’s location makes After Effects unable to find that file (as does switching computers or hard drives, or changing a filename).

4. Let’s move the asset anyway. In the Project panel, close up any open folders.
5. Press the Tilde (~) key again to see the whole interface once more.
6. Do a File > Save.
7. Go to File > Close Project.
8. Switch to the Desktop.
9. Navigate to Class Files > After Effects Class > Noble Logo.
10. Drag yourname-noble-logo-RGB.ai into the Assets folder.
11. Back in After Effects, go to File > Open Recent and choose the topmost file (which is your Noble Logo project).

12. You will see a warning saying that 20 files are missing since you last saved the project. (These are all the layers in the Illustrator file.) Click OK.

13. Look in the Composition panel in the middle of the screen to see that all the Illustrator layers from before were replaced with vertical color bars. If you can’t see them, drag the playhead between frame 52 and frame 72.

    Oh brother, that’s not what we animated! After Effects replaces missing files with color bars. Not to worry, there’s a solution to this!

14. In the Project panel, find the Search bar ) above the list of names.

15. Click into the search field and type miss

    Your missing file will reveal itself, and the rest of the stuff hides temporarily.

16. Double–click on the first missing layer listed, black square/yourname-noble-logo-RGB.ai and a dialog that lets you replace your footage files will appear.

17. Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Noble Logo > Assets and double–click on yourname-noble-logo-RGB.ai within that.

18. Success! A dialog that says 19 additional missing items have been found pops up, so click OK. If you were re-linking different files, you may have needed to double–click them one at a time.

19. In the Timeline, scrub through with the playhead to see all the layers are intact!

20. When you’re done, go to the far right of the Project panel’s search field and click the small x to clear it out.

21. So… How do we keep those pesky color bars at bay? One of two ways:

    • Keep your files organized using a similar file structure to our Class Files. If you need to move a project, move its entire Project folder.
    • After you’re done animating a project, go to the Project panel and select your Main comp. Go to File > Dependencies > Reduce Project, and then File > Dependencies > Collect Files to copy all the files you actually put into your main comp, into a folder. It’ll even give you a report telling you about all the effects and fonts you used in the project, but it won’t copy those for you. This is a great way to archive your projects once you’re done with them.

Rendering the Video

Now, for the grand finale: exporting our video and saving it for publishing! After Effects can no longer export H.264 videos on its own. We’ll be sending our project to Adobe Media Encoder (an app that’s installed with After Effects) for exporting. For this to work, After Effects and Adobe Media Encoder must both be the same version (such as 2020).

1. Make sure you are in the Timeline tab for the main composition (named yourname-noble-logo-RGB).

2. Go to the Composition menu and choose Add to Render Queue.

3. In the Render Queue panel that appears at the bottom, next to Output To, click on Not yet specified or the file name and:

   • Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Noble Logo > Renders.
   • Name it Noble-Logo.mov
   • Click Save.

4. At the top right of the Render Queue panel, click the Queue in AME button once and wait patiently (it may take a little while to see what happens next).

   This should launch Adobe Media Encoder—an application specifically designed to encode and process content for your desired output.

5. To make sure we see the same interface arrangement, go to Window > Workspaces > Default Workspace.

6. Then go to Window > Workspaces > Revert Workspace to reset to factory settings.

7. On the right you should see that yourname-noble-logo-RGB has been added to the Queue.

8. Below the Format column, click the small arrow and choose H.264 if it isn’t already.

9. Below the Preset column, click the small arrow and choose Match Source-High Bitrate from the menu.

10. Click the words Match Source-High Bitrate to customize these settings.

11. In the Export Settings window that opens up, a little further down, make sure you’re viewing the Video tab.

    NOTE: In this window, it’s important to scroll down to see more settings, only by dragging the scroll-bar on the right. Using the scroll-wheel on your mouse, or your track-pad, might accidentally change settings.

12. Click the Match Source button to make sure our export is the same dimensions as
    our sequence settings.

13. Scroll down in the Video section and check on Render at Maximum Depth so that our video exports at a high quality.

14. Below that, find the Bitrate Settings.

15. Set Bitrate Encoding to VBR, 2 pass. This refers to a Variable Bit Rate and number of encoding passes.

16. Further down in the Video section, under Advanced Settings, check on Key Frame Distance and set it to 30 to match it to our project’s frame rate.

17. At the bottom of the Export Settings window, check on Use Maximum Render Quality.

18. At the bottom of the window, click OK to exit out of the Export Settings.

19. Below the Output File column you’ll see the location/filename where it’s going to save. It should already be set to the Renders folder.

    NOTE: If it wasn’t the path you wanted, you’d click the blue filepath text, and set it to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Noble Logo > Renders.

20. To start the rendering/exporting process, in the top right of the Queue window, click on the green Start Queue button or press press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows).
21. Once it’s done rendering, click the blue filepath (below the Output File column) to go to the folder where the file is located.
22. Double–click on Noble-Logo.mp4 to open it and watch your masterpiece!
23. Go back and Quit Adobe Media Encoder.

24. Go back to After Effects and save/close the project.