Random Gang Beasts Bullshittery - Update #4 (Patreon)

Good evening everyone. It's the start of the 4th week of work on the latest bullshittery and everything is going well. I've completed 12 minutes and 27 seconds out of the 15 minutes duration. Before the end of the week (probably Thursday or late Wednesday) I'll have reached the end and will begin the quality assurance work. Polishing what I've done.

I just wanted to talk about an element of the editing process that some people might find interesting. Specifically how I animate the text the way I do and some little magical things called Null Objects.

Null Objects are essentially invisible squares that exist on almost every scene where text is moving in After Effects.

Back in the olden days of the DayZ Bullshitteries, the text was added directly onto the timeline with very limited movement in Sony Vegas. And where text was moving it was usually keyframed directly onto the text objects.

These days however, I'm able to export each individual clip into Adobe After Effects. Within which any changes are automatically reflected on the Adobe Premiere editing timeline. For example, let's take this clip here, cut from a stream.

What I would do is identify which characters are speaking, which ones I think could use text (provided it enhances the specific joke), and exactly when they start/stop talking in order to minimise keyframing. At which point I would place a Null Object square ontop of each of them.

That Null Object I can then move across the composition with my mouse/arrow keys, updating its position every few frames. After Effects will automatically move the square from point to point as the time progresses, so all I need to do is compensate for changes in direction, or motion of the player camera.

For this reason, it's not always frame-by-frame as many viewers think, as that would be inefficient. It is simply as many keyframes as are necessary to create the illusion that the text (or in this case square) is full attached. You simply need to compensate for movement. The twists and turns of the character, where they look, etc.

Now its also for this reason that automated tracking can be unhelpful. Because automated tracking does do it frame by frame, even when no motion is occurring. This can lead to a characteristic skittishness that needs to be smoothed out with mass deletions of keyframes. Furthermore, note that automated tracking doesn't know what you want when it comes to trying to put a square above someone's head. Heck, it doesn't even know what a head is. It's just looking for clear points of contrast or colour. So in many cases, manually adding the keyframes can be more efficient. Though is naturally pretty tedious.

Now, once you continue this for as many characters as you need, the end result is this:

So each speaking character now has an floating square above their heads, allowing you to adjust where it doesn't look right. And if you then add a text object into the scene and parent it onto a specific Null Object, it will inherit all of its properties - especially movement.

Additionally in most scenes, I find it helpful to create what's called a Null Controller. This is an invisible square that all other squares (AND the video footage) are parented to, adopting its properties. Meaning that if I choose to alter anything, for example the "scale" of the Null Controller, then everything zooms in at once, rather than having to alter the scale on every Null Objects individually. For example, here is a Null Controller that is pinned to the wall. And all other Null Objects are parented to it.

This is where automated tracking is extremely useful. As it excels at keyframing very clear and immovable points, which game footage almost always has in the background. Automated tracking is excellent for any background work and stabilisation. But not for text over character heads. It's also useful if I want to draw a viewers attention away from the motion in the foreground, because the brain is hardwired to try to read text...even if it's in the background like this.

So why do all this? Why go to this effort rather than just keyframing the text like everyone else?

The reason is, I can mess with the properties of the text safe in the knowledge that its position/scale is covered by a Null Object. And I won't interfere with it with any later experimentation.

For example, if I place some text into a scene and want to make it spin, I can do that safe in the knowledge that it'll always follow the red guy's position. Rather than having to compensate for every bounce in the XY keyframes of the rotating text

And more recently, if I enable After Effect's 3D text tool, I can do the same in three dimensions. 

And more specifically for me, this lets me swing the text in any direction I wish to make it look like it's inheriting a character's momentum. For example, Digby's text falling with him in the previous bullshittery. Without Null Objects, this is harder to achieve.

So when I say "adding text and animations" in the updates, this is mainly what I mean. Putting in the necessary Null Objects, providing their keyframed motion, setting up Null Controllers and tracking them to the background for camera movement. The final part is adding the text itself.

Giving the final result.

I'm telling you, I have dreams about Null Objects these days. They haunt me. 

Anyway, hope that proves interesting. The work continues. And thank you kindly for your generous support everyone :)