Tutorial
Combustion 2 for After Effects Users
Page 4 of 4

More Illustrator fun
Now, if you want to get your hands really dirty here, you could go about the task of reorganizing and renaming large numbers of paint layers like the ones you saw earlier in the imported Orbit Monkey Illustrator artwork. And the reason you may want to undertake such an, ahem, uh, undertaking is that once your vector art is in Combustion's Paint format, you then can animate any part of the Paint object. And I'm not just talking about resizing, rotating, or whatever else falls into the general transform category, I'm talking about animating individual vertices in a vector shape over time. Let's go back to our good buddy the Orbit Monkey and do a quick exercise on his cape in order to better illustrate (no pun intended) this concept. To keep things simple, we're going to pick up right where the last exercise left off.

Let's do us some twirlin'. In the Workspace, twirl down the arrow next to the Composite - Illustrator layer, then the arrow next to the OrbitMonkey layer, then the Paint Layer, then the OrbitMonkeyPaintGroup layer, which will reveal a hierarchy that looks like figure 13.

Figure 13. Here's what you should see in the Workspace after all the twirling.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Of course, if you've prematurely twirled, you're one step ahead of me here. Anyway, double-click on the FilledPath 1085 layer, which will in one swift stroke switch the Viewport to Paint edit mode and select the orange cape in the Workspace. Now click on the Toolbar tab right next to the Workspace tab, which, in a surprising turn of events, will display Combustion's Toolbar. Since we're working on a Paint operator here, the Toolbar will have a whole bunch of icons in it that may bear a passing resemblance to some of
Figure 14. The Edit Control Points tool is selected here.
the tools in the Illustrator toolbar. We're concerned with animating individual vertices here, so we want to change the bounding box that's currently surrounding the cape into something that will let us mess with the points. To do that, we're going to change from the Edit Object mode the Paint operator is currently in to the Edit Control Points mode by clicking on the Edit Control Points icon (which is shown selected in figure 14). Presto! No more bounding box around the cape; instead, we've got the cape outlined and its control points are nice 'n visible. OK -- now comes the fun part.

In the Timeline, click the Animate button, which will turn it an angry red. If you've been following from the beginning, you've got 120 total frames to work with, so move the current frame to frame 30 by doing any of the following:

a) scrubbing the yellow marker in the timeline to frame 30;
b) clicking in the blue frame indicator space and manually entering 30;
c) clicking frame 30 in the Filmstrip;
d) some other method of advancing to frame 30 that I somehow missed.

Yes indeedy, Combustion sure has a lot of ways to do the same thing. Anyway, now that you're at frame 30, click on a few of the cape's control points and, for lack of a better term, mess with 'em. Repeat this process at frames 60, 90, and 120, and then click the Animate button to turn it off. Double-click on the Composite - Illustrator layer to bring you back up to the overall composite level, and then press the Play button (or the spacebar) on the timeline to see your masterpiece. Mine is shown here as a QuickTime clip, and if you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're probably wondering if it's too late to submit an entry for the Best Animated Film Oscar.

monkey.mov - Damn, this is some outstanding work, if I do say so myself.

Warts and all
Ah, but it's not all milk and honey in the land of plenty. Remember, Combustion isn't made by Adobe, so there are some frustrations associated with bringing Illustrator files into Combustion. In the interest of full disclosure, here's a rundown of a few things I came across that may anger, frustrate, or otherwise stymie After Effects users:

  • No drag and drop. You can't import assets, Illustrator or otherwise, by dragging them from the Mac Finder or the Windows Explorer directly into Combustion's workspace.
  • No shape pasting. Forget about copying Illustrator shapes and pasting them directly into Combustion like you can in After Effects.
  • Mucho reorganization. As I said earlier, "you'll find a veritable mess of subgroups, filled paths, and stroked paths." Be prepared for a lot of trial, error, and renaming in order to figure out what's what once Combustion converts your Illustrator artwork. Of course, the simpler the artwork, the less of an issue this becomes.
  • No continuous rasterize. I rarely use this feature in After Effects anyway, since I almost always end up adding some filter to my Illustrator files, which takes that option off the table anyway. Just make your artwork much bigger than you'll need (either in Illustrator first, or in Combustion with the technique we used in the first exercise here) and scale down.
  • Illustrator 8 or lower. Seriously. Combustion will only take files in Illustrator 8 format, which becomes a real bummer if you've used features from Illustrator 9 or 10 that don't take very nicely to being "version-ed" down.
  • Complex artwork need not apply. Just open any of the samples that ship with Illustrator 9 or 10, try to save them as Illustrator 8, and watch the carnage ensue in Combustion.
  • Don't screw up. There's no equivalent of the Reload/Replace Footage function with Paint operators (though, of course, there is for other footage types in Combustion), so if you somehow destroy your artwork beyond recognition once it's in Combustion, you're pretty much hosed and will have to start fresh at the import stage.

    My general advice with Illustrator files is that if you don't really need to edit your artwork in Combustion directly, you may be much happier exporting images out of Illustrator as a bitmapped file type and then importing the image into Combustion from there. That way, you still can edit your source Illustrator file if you need to and re-export. More importantly, you can reload or replace the source footage if and when the file needs changing.

    The final word
    While the exercises done here are somewhat crude examples of how Combustion handles Illustrator artwork, hopefully you now have a better general idea of how to approach using Illustrator files in Combustion. In upcoming tutorials we're going to explore some other issues facing After Effects converts, such as an overview of Photoshop files, translating the Combustion interface, and probably some others I haven't even thought of yet. So, until next time, kids.

    When not fleeing the paparazzi or spending his vast fortune associated with the fame and notoriety of being a DMN contributor, Kevin Schmitt can be found with his eyeballs glued to his computer screen, attempting to use some of the hardware and software he rants so incoherently about. An award-winning animator, artist and multimedia producer, he is currently a freelance designer located in the enormously bustling megalopolis of Charlottesville, VA. Whether you're looking to "give him the business" of either the figurative or literal type, feel free to drop him a line. He's ready to believe you!



    Prev 1 2 3 4

    Related sites: • Broadcast Newsroom • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • Digital Webcast • DTV Professional • DV Format • Hollywood Industry • Presentation Master
    Related forums: •
    [an error occurred while processing this directive]




    		•