Digital Tutors - Bringing Photographs to Life with 3D Layering in After Effects

In this series of After Effects tutorials, we will learn how to create a 3D fly-through effect in After Effects with assets created from images that we break down in Photoshop.

We begin in Photoshop with the images and start to dissect the photos to get the parts we need for building our shot. We learn a few masking and painting techniques to fill in the gaps for some of the areas that are covered up in the photos. Then, we dive into After Effects and start building our scene by laying the ground, sky, and tree layers.

After we've added and built the assets we need, we start to layer on the atmosphere effects. We create dust and fog particle systems using Trapcode's Particular plug-in. We also add a few lens effects to make the whole shot feel more realistic.

We finish off the tutorial with two lessons on sound design to make your entire video a truly immersive experience. This training is perfect for the intermediate After Effects user who wants to learn how to create a motion design project using realistic looking assets and sound to bring it to life. By the end of this training, you'll have created your own scary forest scene complete with a seamless camera transition from one composition to the next. You'll have also learned some of the basics for creating a project that uses sound in After Effects.

Bringing Photographs to Life with 3D Layering in After Effects content:

1. Introduction and project overview

2. Isolating the ground in Photoshop

3. Placing the trees on their own layers and erasing the backgrounds

4. Masking the area around the figures and placing them on individual layers

5. Creating a character using parts of multiple characters

6. Preparing the images and border for the cards

7. Setting up the After Effects project and importing the assets

8. Placing the ground layers and sky

9. Adding a Camera and Null Object

10. Positioning the trees in Z-Space

11. Placing the people and setting keyframes for their movements

12. Animating the man's face using Liquify

13. Refining the Camera movement

14. Adding a lens flare to mimic a light source

15. Using the bird video

16. Creating dust particles with Particular

17. Making dynamic fog using an image and Particular

18. Changing the mood of the scene with an adjustment layer and adding a vignette

19. Creating a new composition for the cards

20. Setting up two lights for the card composition

21. Placing the cards in the scene

22. Animating the card's positions

23. Refining the card animation

24. Creating the transition from our cards comp to the forest comp

25. Changing the color of the main card using the Tritone effect

26. Adding dust particles to the card comp

27. Creating a PNG sequence

28. Adding lens effect to the shot to add realism

29. Designing the ambient sound for our scene

30. Adding punctuating sounds for our scene