#after effect tutorial

[marcanimation]

'ello folks, my Cleanup tutorial is finally done and out! hope you find it useful

[foervraengd]

Adobe is a bad company, brand and product just for introducing the hell that is After Effects. Every time i have to use AE i pray for the death of adobe and that the ceos and share/stakeholders and whoever designed the UI and workflow a slow and gruesome fucking suffering. You think the ai shit is evil? Try staying calm using literally any fucking feature in AE for ten minutes. Adobe needs to die because of AE.

[lar-arts]

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story

[antoniosvivaldi]

Rotoscoping Tutorial by @antoniosvivaldi​​

Hi everyone! I’m excited to announce my long-delayed Rotoscoping Tutorial - requested by a number of people over the past calendar year. 

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create the cutout gifs like this (and seen in most of my gifsets under this tag) with Rotoscoping on After Effects. I’ll also provide additional examples and a number of things that I do to optimise my giffing / Rotoscoping workflow (e.g. useful shortcuts & other things to be aware of).

This is the structure of the tutorial:

Why Rotoscoping? Photoshop video timeline’s limitations

Photoshop workflow pt 1: Preparing your gif

After Effects workflow: Interface, shortcuts, and Rotoscoping tools

Photoshop workflow pt 2: Assembling your gif; with multiple examples

Bonus content: Rotoscoping tips* & workarounds to common issues

For quick reference, here are example gifsets (and where Rotoscoping is used in the posts) that I will mention in the tutorial:

Example 1: Cutout gif effect | panels 2 + 4

Example 2: Changing a gif’s background colour | all panels

Example 3: Cutout gif effect in a shape | all panels

Example 4: Putting it all together | panels 1, 3, & 5

What you need & need to know:

Software: Photoshop & After Effects (After Effects 2021 or later for Rotobrush 2.0)*

Hardware: 16GB RAM required to run later versions of AE*

Difficulty: Advanced; Knowledge in making gifs, applying layer masks, and using video timeline interface assumed

Key concepts: Rotoscoping (AE) / Video Timeline (AE+ PS) / Layer Masks & Groups (PS)

Supplementary files: tutorial resources

*I’m currently running the latest version of PS & AE on an M2 Mac, but I’ve also used older versions (CC 2015 & 2020) on Intel-based Macs. I’ll outline some known compatibility & performance issues, and workarounds later in this tutorial that could help streamline your giffing workflow.

Tutorial under the cut. Like / Reblog this post if you find this tutorial helpful. Linking this post / the example gifsets in your post caption, will be greatly appreciated if you read this to create effects seen in Examples 3 + 4.

1) Why Rotoscoping?

My Rotoscoping journey is motivated by the shortcomings on Photoshop - namely the limited options to manipulate the Layer Mask keyframes in the video timeline interface, as well my need to gif more efficiently.

Suppose I want to cutout this subject or recolour the background of a gif on Photoshop: I personally classify the gifs that I prepare on PS into 3 types based on the motion of the subject

These are the common Photoshop-only approaches when attempting to mask the subject in the gif.

Case 1: minimal motion in the subject → a simple layer mask will do the trick

Case 2: some linear panning of the subject in the gif → using the Layer Mask Position keyframes in the video timeline interface will do the trick

Case 3: subject moves around a lot (e.g. zoom motion) → Unfortunately this is where a Photoshop-only workflow will require frame by frame masking. Layer Mask Position keyframes only apply positional translation (but not transformation / rotation) on the layer mask

Enter Rotoscoping on After Effects: Instead of resigning to frame by frame procedure on Photoshop, I opted to make my life easier by learning to Rotoscope on After Effects. This essentially provides me an opportunity to cutout / recolour a wider range of gifs with relative ease.

2) Photoshop pt. 1: Preparing your gif

Prepare your gif the usual way - whether you screencap or import frames from video.

Then your Photoshop should look like this:

Now, I shall walkthrough & explain my personal giffing workflow (as of 2023) after loading the gif frames. To speed up the process, import my gif prep action file to Photoshop.

Going to Window > Action, you’ll see a set of actions under the “gif prep” folder. 

"set frame delay for timeline” (highlighted in yellow) will set all of your entire gif’s frame delay to 0.03s

“convert to timeline“ (highlighted in red) will take you to the Video Timeline interface

To play an action, press on the Play button (highlighted in green)

i. Set the frame delay of the entire gif to 0.03s. (play “set frame delay for timeline” from my gif prep action pack)

I work with everything in 0.03s frame delay (or equivalently 30fps) at first. It’s always possible to change the frame delay of the final gif to 0.05s before uploading onto Tumblr.   

ii) Convert this gif to a Smart Video Layer (play “convert to timeline” from my action pack)

Note: I personally don’t resize the gif just yet. That’s because Rotoscoping in full video resolution will render higher quality details around the edges as well as more flexibilities later on in the editing process.

Performance optimisation: If your computer has 8GB of RAM or less, you might find it helpful to crop / resize your gif to Tumblr dimensions now for a less sluggish performance in After Effects later on. 

(I have giffed on a desktop with 8GB of RAM and it’s quite slow at rendering individual frames of a 1080p short clip on AE)

iii) Add colouring adjustments on the gif. This will save you A LOT of time when you Rotoscope gifs that are originally very dark / poorly lit (e.g. the uncoloured Taylor Swift gif shown just above). 

If you usually colour your gifs at the very end of your giffing process (i.e. after sharpening), this will be a bit of a change.Nevertheless I still highly recommend adding some base colourings now to at least increase the contrast between the subject and the background.

iv) To minimise lagging on After Effects, simplify this gif file as follows: 

Flatten / Unsmart this gif file back to frame animation mode: play “flatten” (highlighted in red) from my gif prep action pack

Set the frame delay to 0.03s: play “set frame delay for timeline” (highlighted in green)

Convert the simplified gif file back to the video timeline interface: play “convert to timeline” (highlighted in yellow)

After “unsmarting” and converting back to the video timeline, your interface should look like this

And voila! This gif PSD is now ready to be imported to After Effects for Rotoscoping work!

3) After Effects: Interface and useful shortcuts

Open After Effects and Import (Cmmd / Ctrl + I) your gif PSD that you’ve just prepared.

After importing your gif PSD to After Effects, the interface should look like this. 

In the screenshot below, there are two compositions: the imported gif (highlighted in green) & another composition file made from selecting the imported gif (highlighted in red)

For the rest of the workflow, we will edit from the clone composition (the one highlighted in red), so select this one.

Before we take our plunge into the Rotoscoping, here are a few useful shortcuts to remember. I’ll explain the Roto Brush tool in the next section.

Preview the previous: fn + up arrow

Preview the next frame: fn + down arrow

Add to Roto Brush selection: holding Shift while you’re using the Roto Brush Tool

Subtract from Roto Brush selection: holding Alt while you’re using the Roto Brush Tool

Change Roto Brush size: while holding Cmmd / Ctrl, click + drag your mouse left / right

4) After Effects: The Rotoscoping Process

To access the Rotoscoping tools, click on the Roto Brush icon (highlighted in red in the screenshot below)

Then you’ll get the following dropdown options with two Rotoscoping Tools

Roto Brush Tool: This is where you add / subtract your Rotoscoping selection in your composition

Refine Edge Tool: Paint around the edge of your selection for more refined edges. Very helpful for Rotoscoping fuzzy edges / hairs

To make some Rotoscoping selection, first grab the Roto Brush Tool and click on the subject you want to cut out from your composition. 

When you’re Rotoscoping you’ll see this in the Effect Controls panel. 

There are two versions of Roto Brush:

Version 2.0: The Rotoscoping selection is powered by AI for higher accuracy when you propagate the frames. 

Version 1.0 (Classic): This is the legacy Roto Brush Tool that uses a lesser algorithm. Recommended only if Roto Brush 2.0 is unstable on your machine due to RAM issues.

And two quality settings for Roto Brush 2.0:

Standard

Best

Note: I am currently unable to use Roto Brush 2.0 with Best quality model on my machine to compare the differences myself, so I’ll link this page that explains the two quality settings.

Note: if you’re using an older version of After Effects you’ll see this instead. This corresponds to Roto Brush 1.0 / Classic in the newer versions of AE.

When you’ve made a selection using the Roto Brush Tool, you’ll see the pink lines around the subject. This is the region that you’ve selected to Rotoscope!

To bring out some details around the edges, grab the Refine Edge Tool and paint around the edges

Then the interface will look like this

To view the Rotoscoping selection that you’ve made more intuitively, you could click on the following buttons.

Personally I like the viewing my selection using Toggle Alpha (the second box from the left) & Toggle Alpha Boundary (the 3rd box from the left)

Toggle Alpha

Toggle Alpha Boundary

Note: If you aren’t happy with the initial Roto Brush selection, you can always add (press Shift while using the Roto Brush Tool) / subtract (press Alt / Option using the Roto Brush Tool) your selection.

After you’re happy with your Rotoscoping selection in the first frame of your composition, press fn + down to view the next frame.

Repeat pressing fn + down and fix the selection along the way (e.g. I subtracted a small area from my Rotoscoping selection with the Roto Brush tool to make the edge look cleaner).

After fixing the selection along the way, go back to the composition file (select the clone composition again) and you will see that a cutout gif is made!

To export this, go to File > Export > Add to Render Queue. You’ll be redirected to the Render Queue panel at the bottom of After Effects. 

Highlighted in red: click to change export setings

Highlighted in green: click to change save destination

Highlighted in yellow: click to render video

To preserve the transparency of your cutout gif, you need to change your export settings in the Output Module. 

Under the Video Output section, change your Channels to RGB + Alpha. Press OK. Then Render the video.

5) Photoshop pt. 2: Assembling your final gif

The essence is to drag the cutout gif (aka the video file that you’ve just rendered on AE) into a new PSD composition file. This will be where you’ll do the rest of your giffing. Your workflow will contain the follow steps:

Make a new blank PSD composition file in Tumblr dimensions

Enable the Video Timeline

Follow the instructions detailed in the individual examples i.e. drag the cutout gif into the PSD & adjust the timeline start / end points

Exporting the final gif. If you’ve worked in 0.03s frame delay all the way up to here, just play the action that I’ve provided in the tutorial in the following order to set the frame delay to 0.05s.

EXAMPLE 1: finalising your cutout gif | sample gifset

After enabling the Video Timeline in your PSD composition file you’ll see something like this

Go to your folder, drag the cutout gif you’ve made on After Effects, resize / reposition, then press Enter. 

And also make sure to adjust the Video Timeline’s start / end values.

Add some finishing touches. Because I did the Rotoscoping at full HD resolution, I’ll also need to sharpen my gif in this step.

After you’re happy, you can export this into a gif file and do what you usually do to change the frame delay to 0.05s. 

Notes on my “Unsmarting” approach:

To prevent accidentally writing over a PSD composition file that I’ve spent time editing, I personally render this into a short video (File > Export > Render Video) and use the following export settings (to prevent quality loss)

Then I open the rendered clip and play the actions in my gif prep action pack as follows:

flatten: this “Unsmarts” the clip / video

set frame rate: this sets all frames to have 0.05s frame delay

This is the final interface that I get before I pull up the Save For Web window.

EXAMPLE 2: changing your gif’s background colour (for Case 3 gifs) | sample gifset

From your folder, drag BOTH the cutout gif (rendered on AE) and the original gif to your blank composition. 

Important: you need to make sure that both layers are properly lined up in the composition file (i.e. selecting both layers when repositioning / resizing)

 On Photoshop, press Enter twice and place the cutout gif on top of the original gif from the Layers panel. Then you should get something like this

Select both layers and resize / reposition them in your PSD composition until you’re satisfied with the placements.

The basic idea here is to add some adjustment layers / other things in between the cutout gif and the original gif. To do this, select the original gif layer in the Layers panel.

Then you can start adding.a bunch layers e.g. textures, onto the composition.

And then here’s the exported gif!

6) Fancier Rotoscoping examples

Note: knowledge in using layer masks / groups and making shape / text layers assumed

In the next two examples, I’ll show you how to combine the two previous examples with shape / text layers.

EXAMPLE 3: Placing your cutout gif into a shape / text layer | sample gifset

Add a text / shape layer to your blank PSD composition

We want to prepare a masked group so in the Layers panel:

Make selection from layer: Cmmd / Ctrl + Click (highlighted in red)

Make a new group: click on the folder icon (in yellow)

Create layer mask: click on the icon (in green)

After duplicating the masked group you’ll get something like this in the Layers panel

Drag your cutout gif into the PSD composition

Place the cutout gif into the masked group on top

Select the mask of the top group and paint (in white) over the region you want to reveal for the cutout gif

Add some finishing touches & export the gif!

EXAMPLE 4: Putting it all together | sample gifset

You follow the same approach as in Example 3 to prepare the masked groups, but you need to drag two gif layers in (and resize them using the approach outlined in Example 2)

Place the gif layers as follows

While selecting the mask of the group on top, paint (in white) over the region that you want to reveal in the cutout gif

Now select the original gif (placed within the other group) and add some adjustment layers

After adding some finishing touches & exporting the gif, I get this!

Note: you can do even more overlay effects in the background portion of example 4. There will just be more masked groups + adjustment layers

7) Bonus: Some useful Rotoscoping / giffing lifehacks

GIFFING LIFEHACKS:

— Use best quality footage that you could find & Rotoscope in full video resolution, for better details around the edges

— Poorly lit scenes & low contrast edges are harder to Rotoscope (e.g. Toy Story set / TS evermore set).

If you’re new to AE, I would recommend choosing videos with well-lit gifs with simpler backgrounds and high contrast edges (e.g. Maisie Peters Cate’s Brother set)

— Use Rotobrush 2.0 if you’re using After Effects 2021 or later. It’s more difficult to Rotoscope / change background colour for gifs with a lot of movements with the classic Rotobrush tool. If the scene is tricky, you might want to switch to the “Best” quality model.

HARDWARE-RELATED PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION:

— The recent versions of Photoshop require at least 8GB of RAM. If you have less RAM, it will still work provided you have enough scratch disk space. For better performance, it’s best to close other applications when you’re using Photoshop.

— The recent versions of After Effects require at least 16GB of RAM. If your machine has less RAM than this, there are some workarounds to prevent your machine from hanging: 

Essential: close other applications that you’re running on your computer

Resize your gif down to Tumblr dimensions & sharpen it before importing to After Effects.

Install an older version of AE 

8) Bonus: Some known software + hardware issues, and workarounds

KNOWN ISSUES ON PHOTOSHOP:

I currently have minimal issues in my giffing workflow, but I’ll nevertheless outline a few common known Photoshop issues for anyone who needs some workarounds.

— Video Timeline interface missing: this affects Apple Silicon Macs (i.e. M1 / M1 Pro / M1 Max / M1 Ultra / M2 / M2 Pro / M2 Max)

Update to newer version of Photoshop (updated 2022 or 2023)

Open Photoshop with Rosetta

— Scratch disk full error: This is a common issue with machines that lack RAM & have nearly used up internal storage. Editing video layers in the timeline interface uses a lot of memory hence will require a lot of scratch disk space. 

Make sure that you have enough free storage space while using Photoshop. Alternatively you can use an external hard drive as a scratch disk.

KNOWN ISSUES ON AFTER EFFECTS:

These are a few issues that I have personally ran into over the course of giffing on multiple devices & multiple versions of After Effects.

Note: Inputs from M1 / M2 Mac users with regards to experiences on using the After Effects Rotoscoping tools are welcome!

— Rotobrush 2.0 set to “Best” quality model causes AE to crash: this affects anyone who’s using MacOS Ventura

I’m currently experiencing this issue on my M2 Mac. The workaround right now is to change the Roto Brush 2.0 quality setting to Standard. 

This is due to some software compatibility issues on Adobe’s side specifically with MacOS Ventura. Fingers crossed that they will properly fix this bug in the future updates!

— Cannot re-open project files with Rotoscoping: this affects anyone using the initial release of After Effects 2020 (I had installed this on an Intel-based machine and it sucked)

The only option here is to update to a later version of After Effects.

8) More useful Rotoscoping resources

Rotoscoping + Keyframes Tutorial by @jenna--ortega​

Rotoscoping + Masking Tutorial by @usergif​

Rotoscoping For Beginners in After Effects | Motion Graphics Tutorial

I hope you enjoy reading this! If you have any questions / need any help related to this tutorial, feel free to send me an ask!

[invertedspoon]

"it's morally okay to pirate adobe products" HOWWWWW. HOW. HOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. DO I DO IT.

[lucdoodle]

YOUR WORK IS SO COOL!! I do have a question: as a novice artist myself, what do you use to make your animatics look so clean? What software do you use for drawing/editing, how do you upload it, etc. I’ve been trying to figure it out but am having a hard time. Could you explain it to me as if talking to a drooling baby ? Thank you sm 😂♥️

They look clean because i treat each frame as if they were lineart for a fanart (instead of considering them animatic frames(tm) where it would be okay for them to look a lot more rough)

i honestly don't recommend this approach ATRFFYHGJGJHHVGJ XD

Anyway here's how i make animatics!

first i make screen-sized rectangles with the lyrics on the bottom (depending on how i want the animatic to look like, i leave more rectangles for each lyric) (and if that's for a short ~25 seconds video, i don't bother writing the audio below the rectangles)

Then sketch out the ideas until im satisfied with the plan

dedicate a folder for each frame

draw the frames

then i upload all the frames + the audio into Adobe after effect (i have no idea how after effect works but i try my best XD)

then BAM ya got yourself an animatic!

[asjjohnson]

...Um. Super, super late DP Invisobang 2023 art?

The fic by Rockity Sock is still an unpublished WIP so far, but it's really nice and will hopefully be completed and published later.

It begins at the end of the Ultimate Enemy episode, with Dan getting trapped in the thermos. And... I'm not sure how much I can say without spoiling it, but a lot of really cool stuff happens. It's a psychological type of fic, about different types of prisons and punishments, and has time stuff and pocket dimensions, and redemption stuff. (I was only planning on drawing one illustration for IB, but when I saw the WIP, I wanted to see so many things animated. So many awesome visuals. I wish I could've animated them all.)

This is the part I did animate:

He just walked for now, searching for the tiniest crack. The darkness went on for seemingly forever though, and no matter how far he walked it kept on going Dan kept moving He tried his best to break through the walls but every ectoblast he formed fizzled out. Fading into the darkness. Oh, now it makes sense. His powers are being limited, it takes him a few more tries to believe it. The fact that he’s trapped with nothing whatsoever. Endless hours spent, and wasted. Powers he has built up from the ground with no mentor, ones he trained endlessly after a decade. Gone, disappeared, muffled. Limited. Dan let out a laugh, one with no humor. A laugh that turned into a cackle, he couldn’t stop.

Here's Rockity Sock's AO3 account: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockitysockity and tumblr account: https://rockitysock.tumblr.com/

(I also uploaded the video on deviantArt and YouTube)

[xponentialdesign]

Another iteration, another new color scheme, extract from this one we originally built 6 years ago in the recording of a tutorial

[the-cosmos-withinus]

Shadow Puppets AU - Daily Quests

[taxonomicons]

WWDITS Episode Idea: The documentary crew is sick and they allow the vampires to film with the cameras on their own.

[confusedananass]

(instagram)

Tutorial in After Effects under the cut.

ALRIGHT let's get into it. Straight to the point, no nonsense tutorial.

• Create a new composition 1080px x 1080px, let’s call it Design.

• Write some text, turn it into shapes (right-click → Create → Create shapes from text).

• Animate the path so the text stretches like so in a few seconds time. When animated, right-click on a keyframe and select Keyframe velocity and change coming & going velocity influence to 85%:

• Create another new composition and call it FX. Add your Design pre-comp in this composition.

• Add a new Solid layer on top, call it Displacement map. Now we’re gonna add a bunch of effects on that solid layer.

• First add Gradient Ramp. Make it so the white color would be on the right side (End of Ramp) and black would be on the left side (Start of Ramp);

• Next add a Tritone effect and change the Highlights color to black and Midtones color to white.

• Add Fast Box Blur and change Blur Radius to 100.

• Then it’s time to add Fractal Noise effect, and change Fractal Type to Swirly, Noise Type to Spline. Then bring down the Transform panel and uncheck Uniform Scaling, make Scale Width 60, and change Scale Height to a very high number, such as 10000.0.

• Add a keyframe to Evolution at the beginning, and the second keyframe at 2 seconds rotating the slider for one rotation. Add an expression loopOut() on these keyframes so it loops.

• And lastly change the Blending mode to Overlay (at the bottom of the effect).

• The last effect we’re gonna add is Turbulent Displace. Change Displacement to Twist, Amount to 150, Size 130. Add the same keyframes to the Evolution as we did previously on Fractal Noise and loop them with the same expression.

So far your work should look something like this:

• Then it’s time to add colors! Create another new composition, add your FX pre-comp to it, add a background with a new solid layer (CTRL + Y).

• Then add Echo effect to your FX pre-comp, change Echo Time to -0.030, Starting Intensity to 0.03, Decay to 0.94.

• Next add Gaussian Blur effect, make the Blurriness 10.

• Add Colorama effect, change Get Phase From to Alpha. Then go to Output Cycle and change the color presets (Use Preset Palette) to let’s say Solarize Red (it doesn’t really matter, we’re gonna change the colors, we just need it to have two sliders instead of a lot). Then grab a bottom slider and put it on the left side and choose the lighter color you want. I chose pink.

• Now duplicate your FX pre-comp. We’re gonna change some parameters on the effects.

• So the first thing you want to do is change Echo Time to -0.005, Starting Intensity to 1.

• On Colorama go to Modify and uncheck Modify Alpha. Then go to Output Cycle, and add more colors like you see in the screenshot.

• Duplicate your FX pre-comp one more time and delete all the effects on it.

• Last thing to do is add an Adjustment Layer (Ctrl + Alt + Y), add the Noise effect, and make the Amount of Noise 15.0%.

• And you're done!

[amamozarte]

Check out my kind of shitty Devil May Cry 3 AMV

[davealgonquins]

“You will see to it that they conduct themselves at all times with the utmost orderliness and decorum; I’m placing you in command.” aka another spider-verse crossover edit that no one asked for

[takeru-tenkuuji]

undefined

i’ll never be (apart from) you

[antoniosvivaldi]

Oh I’m sorry I have GOT to ask! How did you do the text animation in the first gif of 718688291365502976/pscentral-event-15-favourite-ships-kanej?? It’s just. It’s so beautiful

Hi anon! I've used After Effects to create the text animation in the first panel of this post. I'll show you the basic idea of how I've created the animated text effect here :D

What you need:

A cutout font (the font that I've used is Trouble Child Outblack by @justlikethistrain)

Adobe Photoshop with Video Timeline feature

Adobe After Effects

Supplementary files: gif prep action pack / golden outline layer style / assorted textures

Difficulty: advanced; knowledge in gifmaking with the video timeline interface assumed

Note: This tutorial assumes that you're working with all of the composite gifs in a Photoshop composition file and using the video timeline interface

Other useful tutorials to refer to: Text overlay effect / After Effects text animation / clipping mask vs layer mask

Tutorial under the cut. Like / reblog if you find this useful!

1) Photoshop: Preparing your gif panel

Setting up your PSD composition panel: Create a blank PSD file and set it to Tumblr dimensions (540px x 540px in this particular gifset)

Enable Video Timeline and drag all of the component gifs from your folder to the PSD composition file. Resize / move these gifs around until you're happy with the placements.

Trim the timeline work area so it's the same length as the shortest component gif you've added to the PSD composition file. You can also add some textures & additional adjustment onto this panel.

2) Photoshop: Exporting your base gif

I highly recommend exporting the base gif right now, to ensure a smoother experience scrubbing through the video timeline when adding finishing touches later on in the workflow.

My preferred method is to render the composition as a video clip from File > Export > Render video.

To get the optimal export quality, I use the following settings:

3) Photoshop: Preparing your text layer

Make a new Photoshop composition file of Tumblr dimensions

Drag in the video clip that you've just rendered (the base gif) to this composition file

Add a new text layer in your PSD composition file and set the colour to white then tweak this layer until you're happy with the text placement.

For performance optimisations on After Effects, I duplicate the PSD composition file and delete all other layers. This PSD file contains only the text layer that will be animated.

4) Photoshop: Adding overlays & decorations on the text layer

This step allows you to preview the text effect without the animations (i.e. allows you to tweak the texturings & colourings)

Duplicate the text layer. Set the bottom layer's (highlighted in red) blend mode to Exclusion and apply the gold outline layer style to the top layer (highlighted in green). Make sure the Inner Shadow is disabled!

The panel now looks like this

I want to have the liberty to use different colours & textures on the bottom text layer with animation, so the next thing I do is to right click on the bottom text layer and select "Group from Layers"

To change the colour of the filled text layer to purple:

Collapse the Group that you've just created

On top of the collapsed Group a purple Colour Fill layer,

Set the Fill layer's blend mode to "Colour"

Right click on the Fill layer and select "Create Clipping Mask"

Now the colour of the filled text layer is purple

After adding more textures & decorations on the text layer (with photo negative effects) I get the following:

5) Photoshop: Adding overlays & decorations on the text layer

To avoid performance issues on After Effects, I make a new PSD file of the same dimension. With both the PSD files open, I select the text layer (highlighted in red) while holding Shift, I drag this to the blank PSD file (see the green arrow)

Holding Shift ensures that the layer's placement is preserved when it's copied to a separate PSD file.

In the new PSD file, I set the text layer's blend mode to "Normal"

6) After Effects: Animating your text layer

Make a new project on After Effects and drag in the text layer PSD file. Import this file as a Composition

Also drag in the base gif video clip to the AE project.

While we won't be exporting anything with the base gif visible, having this file in the project file is useful if you want to have a better picture of how the animation will look in tandem with the gif.

Double click on the composition. Hide the colour fill and background layers. Then right click on the text layer, go to Create > Convert to Editable Text

To be able to preview the animation with the base gif, drag the video clip to the composition file and below the text layer. The visibility of the layer can be toggled on / off anytime in the After Effects workflow

Now we prepare the text layer to be animated. Because the final animated effects is 3D & has motion blur, right click on the text layer and select "3D layer" (highlighted in green) and Switches > Motion Blur (highlighted in red)

Go to Animation Presets > Text to browse through some presets that you could use to animate the text layer. For this gifset, I've used a preset within the 3D Text folder called "3D Random Spike Tumble in".

While selecting your text layer, press U to view the keyframes and you can adjust the position of these keyframes until you're happy.

For more finishing touches, press U again to tweak more options in this preset. In this case, I do to Animato 1 > Range Selector and changed the Colour Fill to #fff (the default colour is light yellow)

Then do you File > Export > Add to Render Queue

Click on the Output Module and use the following settings to render the text layer as a video file with transparency

Then after specifying the folder in which you'll export the video to, click "Render" to render the video file containing your animated text layer.

7) Photoshop: Adding the animated text & finishing touches

On Photoshop, drag the rendered clip containing animated text, to the PSD composition file with the static text layers.

Duplicate the animated text video layer

Drag one of the layers inside Group 1 and set the blend mode to "Exclusion" (Highlighted in green)

Move the other layer to the top and apply the gold outline layer style with Inner Shadow disabled (highlighted in red)

Hide both text layers (highlighted in yellow)

By scrubbing through the timeline, I've noticed that the animation didn't look clean enough, so I'll add some finishing touches

By selecting the upper text layer containing layer styles, go to the timeline and add opacity keyframes going from opacity 0% to 100% a few frames apart

Once you're happy with the finishing touches, flatten / render your PSD composition file, change the frame delay to 0.05s and export your gif and voila!

I hope this helps 💖

[softsinnamonart]

whyyyy does after effects have to cost money WHYYYYY