now what do we do? We're going to use a null object. So go to layer new and click null object. We've used these in the past and this is basically an invisible object that we can attach properties too in our tracker panel, click edit target and make sure that it's applying to the null object that we created. So for you it might say Noel one for me it says Noel nine. Just because I've been working on this project file. So I've created a bunch of other Noel objects but make sure it's on the null object that you've created in this timeline. And then click Ok once you have that target selected, click apply Now before you do that or before I do that I'm going to show you that if I drop down our bird settings you have this new motion trackers drop down. If I drop that down, we see our tracker one that we've done. If I drop that down even more we see all of these key frames. These are key frames for the position and all kinds of things of this track point. Now if I click apply we're going to s...

ay apply dimensions to X and Y. Yes because I wanted to apply to the X axis and the Y axis. You'll notice the key frames turned red because in my no object. Now if I open that up under transform we have key frames applied to the position of this null object. Now nothing happens if I play through this that it you know, nothing is going to change. What can we do with the null object though? We can attach things to it. So if I go and I add some text tweet tweet little Bird and let's make sure that's a good size, I'm going to make it white using the Garman default font, don't use that that often put it right here and let's just go actually to the very beginning and position it where we want. Maybe we want it up here right now. Now if I play through this nothing happens. But if I go back to the very first frame and I parent the text layer to the null object using the pick whip tool and dragging to the whole nine or this drop down menu under parent. If you don't see that, just click the toggle switches modes button down here. Two no nine. Now whatever the null nine does happens to our text layer, that is pretty incredible. Right? Really cool. So what you can do if you had any sort of mistakes in the tracking, you can go in and we can move this around. So say I go to this frame and I thought oh it didn't move enough, I can move our not our text actually we want to move the knoll and we can do that just by clicking and dragging the position key frames. So let me just go crazy though and put it over here and you'll see what happens whoops, that frame goes all the way over here but then this next frame goes back to where it was tracked. So you gotta be careful, you gotta be subtle with it. If you move one frame you might have to move all of the frames after that a little bit um depending on how it was tracked, one thing I did too, make this look a little bit better was add a little bit of motion blur to the the text itself and enable it on our timeline right there, that motion blur just helps a little bit, makes it look a little bit more natural to me. So that's the basics of motion tracking. So you can imagine you can attach text to a train going across your frame or two, you know, really anything moving in your clip, we could also attach sort of effects, say we want to change the color of this bird food or this treat that's the bird is getting. What we can do is go up to Laird knew adjustment layer. Now if you don't really care about this, go ahead and move on to the next lesson. But I wanna just go through the visual effects side of things more than just the motion graphics side of things and then go into your effects and presets. Go to Hugh and saturation and add this hue saturation color correction to the adjustment layer. I'm going to put that right above our bird. Now let's change the hue and you'll notice that everything changes. Not just this, this little bird food. So what we want to do, right? Let's go back to the very beginning is create a mask around this adjustment layer. So I'll just go in here and I'm just doing this really quickly. But you know you can do this a little bit more slowly. If this was for a real project, go around here, let's press f to add some feathering and there's different ways to do this. This mask is just that easiest way, the quickest way. Now if we parent the adjustment layer to the null object and we play through this, this adjustment affects this area and it sticks with it. If it wasn't attached to the null object, it would just stay in that one area. Crazy. Right? So this is how you can, you know, you can imagine if you wanted to add like flames or something on someone's hands, you know someone's moving around and you attach the flames to the motion of the hand or the person running by or or if you want it to be on a house on caught on fire, you can attach it to the house. And even if your cameras moving the flames will be attached to that house. So let me just delete that because I don't really want that. And so this is the basics of motion tracking and the next lessons, we're going to get a little bit more in depth with the other versions, which include both rotation and scale tracking.

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Philip Ebiner

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Tracking Text and Visual Effects to Video Clip

Tracking Text and Visual Effects to Video Clip

Lesson Info

80. Tracking Text and Visual Effects to Video Clip

Lessons

Class Updates & My Favorite CC 2020 Updates

Understand the After Effects Workspace

Starting a New Composition

CC 2018 Update - Starting a New Composition from Footage

Adding Media to Your Project and the Timeline

Using the Basic After Effects Tools

Create a Perfect Circle, Alignment, and Shape Colors

Working in the Timeline

Layer Properties

Quiz: After Effects Basics

Animating in After Effects

Position, Scale, and Rotation Animations

Tips to Make Your Animations Look More Nautral

Using the Graph Editor

Challenge - Bouncing Ball

Solution - Bouncing Ball

Quiz: Animating with Keyframes

Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

Adding Layer Styles like Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Gradients

Shape Effects - Trim Path Animations, Wiggle, and Zig Zag

Quiz: Shapes and Solid Layers

Track Matte Animations - Make Layers Appear and Disappear

Using Pre-Compositions to Group Layers

Easily Reverse Complicated Animations

Playing with Time

Blend Modes

Stabilize Shaky Footage

CC 2018 Update - Previewing and Favoriting Fonts

CC 2019 Update - Responsive Design Time

CC 2019 Content Aware Fill

CC 2019 Create Motion Graphic Templates

Quiz: Important After Effects Skills

Intro to Motion Graphics Projects

Clean Lower Third

Logo Reveal Animation Bumper

Colorful Transition

Text with Mask Path Animation

Text Bubble Animation

Weather App 1

Weather App 2

Weather App 3

Quiz: Motion Graphics Projects

Flat Animation Challenge

Phil Designs his Flat Animation Scene

Animating Fireworks with the Repeater Effect

Removing Green Screen Background

Adding a Background that Matches the Foreground

Adding Motion to a Still Image with the Puppet Tool

Adding Movement with the Ripple Effect

Quiz: Flat Animation Challenge

Intro to 3D

Swinging 3D Text Animation

Build Out Your 3D Composition

Animating Our 3D Scene

Create Stars in After Effects

Quiz: Green Screen (Chromakeying)

Using the Rotoscope Tool

Cleaning Up Your Edges

Finishing Our Rotobrush Animation

Quiz: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool

Easy Screen Replacement with Masks

Replacing a Screen Version 2

Screen Replacement with Mocha

CC 2019 Update - Native Mocha AE Plugin

Quiz: Rotoscoping

Using the Puppet Pin Tool

Animating Your Puppet Pins

Animated Blinking Eyes

Adding Perspective with Animated Clouds

CC 2018 Update - Advanced Puppet Pin Tool

Quiz: Screen Replacements

Applying Text Animation Presets

Create a Page Turn Effect with CC Page Turn