We can use the blur effects inside After Effects in some really unexpected ways. We can use them
to manipulate shapes to create depth to create some reactive shadows and even some cool looking
vintage effects let's get stuck in using blur to create uniform around edges this is perfect if you
want to round the corners of something that you've animated as a stroke or that is an unusual shape
first we should add the blur effect now any blur will do gaussian is the safest and easiest Carl
Friedrich Gauss would never lead as astray so let's add that to our layer and let's blur it
by around 20 pixels which blurs out the shape but in doing so completely destroys our pointy corners
and now we can do something a little clever by clamping down on the alpha Channel we can do
that with a few effects but the simplest one is levels so let's add the levels effect and choose
the alpha Channel now at the moment we have a nice soft blurred Edge but if we move in these
triangles in this histogram towards the middle it will clamp or crush or squeeze the alpha channel
so the pixels that are kinda transparent will become fully transparent and the pixel is kind of
opaque will become fully opaque and once they're close enough there will be nothing in between it
is good to leave a slight Gap here though because because if you get too close the edge just becomes
a little too harsh and Jagged and just to just do crusty to be enjoyable so let's leave a slide Gap
here and that's barely noticeable even at 800 and now we've got nice round corners and now we can
increase the blurriness to increase the radius and the roundness of those Corners we might need to
tighten up the levels a bit if we blow it a little further and we can also just whereabouts on the
histogram these triangles meet in order to expand the edge or bring it in closer this effect is
also really helpful for shapes like this where we might want rounded inner Corners now you can use
a rounded cap on its stroke but the insides are still pointy and even if we play with the inner
roundness of the shape it doesn't give us a nice consistent look so let's remove that stroke and
paste that blur and levels effect onto the shape that blur is far too much so let's reduce that
and move these triangles back to the middle and now we've got consistent straight lines down the
star and a nice rounded end on the inside and the outside and that roundness will stay consistent if
we scale it up or if we adjust the path in any way which does come in handy next is using the
same effect stack of blurring levels but this time applied to an adjustment layer for a quick Blobby
liquid look so let's create a new adjustment layer on top of everything and let's rename it effects
because we always label our layers and we're going to paste on those same effects again and now when
our layers get close to one another they kind of melt together and it's kind of gluey a little bit
slimy but you know a nice slimy this happens again because without this levels effect the
edges of these shapes have been softened so much and the levels effect doesn't know or care that
they are separate shapes it will just round the edges of them both together once they are close
enough that their blurs overlap we can push that blur really far to get some way more interesting
Blobby results and even when we change the color of one of the shapes we get this nice gradient
as they're kind of mixing into one another which can be kind of cool too now we can use a similar
method to achieve a completely different look but still using the blur to degrade our image
and then trying to salvage it back with another effect and getting some marvelous artifacts in
the process so let's again create another adjustment layer add our gaussian blur and
let's start by just blowing it to 5 pixels so it's just the slightest softness and now we're going to
add a sharpening effect regular sharpen is fine unsharp mask if you're feeling fancy and let's
increase that sharpen amount up to 300 until it's about as clear as it was before the blur and now
we can see the effect it's creating the sharpen is essentially undoing the blur creating more
contrast and defined edges where we just remove them but it's having to work harder and over
compensate for that blur and we get this kind of nice sort of halo effect where our edges now have
a dark and a light side and that gets more obvious the more contrast there is between those colors
and it isn't exactly like but it is reminiscent of maybe a dodgy CRT screen or just some messed
up footage and you can use this really subtly to just remove that clean digital Sheen if you're
going for a more gritty style or you can increase them both to make it really obvious at a certain
point if you increase the sharpen too much it will kind of break around some of these areas
though or you can approach it really subtly but then copy and paste those effects and add
the blur and sharpen again and again and again and again and again and it can also be a really
good compositing technique to unify everything underneath it with that same depravity in this
project I've got some stock footage and textures and they just don't quite look cohesive these
astronauts look pretty obviously like 3D models and they just look a bit out of place with
these textures and that smooth gradient in the background but adding that blur and sharpen over
the top puts them in a more similar World it gives them a consistency which just makes it a little
more believable and of course that pairs very nicely with texture add noise and other effects
to make your work look nice and roughed up so by reducing the Fidelity of your image you're
covering your tracks and you're getting away with it because no one could identify you at the scene
we can also create some really neat reactive Shadows so let's create a new shape layer and
just start drawing some arbitrary rectangles around the place that should be plenty and
to this layer we are going to add the effect CC radial fast blur and if we move the center
around it's blurring our rectangles away from this point let's increase it to make it more
obvious and let's set the zoom style from standard to Brightest there we are that is
looking nice almost looks like light leaking through holes in a window which you could
use this effect for as well and if you want a different color shadow to your shapes we can
add a fill effect and then add the effect CC composite back over the top as well now we've
got some shadows and to attach that Center Point to another layer all we need to do is
alt or option click the stopwatch next to Center and then drag that pick whip up to the position
property of that layer and when we move that around it looks like it is casting the Shadows
yes hello sorry I'm in the middle of a tutorial now I'm afraid I can't plug my master motion
design course at the moment yeah yeah despite the incredible response from the students I have I've
seen the testimonials on bedmarriot.com yes yes the student collab project did come out
recently it was it was a lot of fun yeah really great work that was one of my favorites too
all right is that everything okay bye-bye sorry about that let's get back to the camera lens blur
is the Rolls-Royce of blurs the Andrew Kramer of blurs it replicates the blur you get from an out
of focus camera much more than other blurs we have an absolutely wild cast of settings here
where we can tweak the shape of the bokeh and the highlights it's more realistic more pleasing just
more satisfying that satisfaction comes with the price and that's processing power and render time
so keep that in mind if you need to make haste on a project but the feature in camera lens blur
that I'm excited about is the blow map a blow map takes some reference footage uses its black and
white values to adjust which parts of the image are blurred or not if they're white it is the max
blur in your settings if they're black no blur at all and the Grays are all somewhere in between now
I'm going to be going through the creation of this whole animation during an online session at Adobe
Max this year but I do want to show off how I used a blur map to create this focused effect and make
it look like all the shapes on the outside are gradually going out of focus and how you
can create custom blow maps for your animations to get similar results so starting with the animation
already done we need a blur map so let's duplicate this tunnel main comp call it tunnel main blow map
and go inside that duplicate so what we want is our Center layer to be one color which will make
it white and then the layers beneath it to get darker and darker and darker until they're black
at the very edge or we could do the opposite with black in the middle white on the edge as long as
it's black to white it is very easy to invert later in our effect settings if you do have a
simpler scene you can just grab your layers and change the fill color of them to between black and
white but because we have so many stacks on top of one another we can do something a bit clever
to cut down the time so first let's make this top layer white which we are controlling its color
with the fill effect so it will turn that white we are going to copy that fill effect with controller
command C select all of our layers here except for the background and paste that white fill onto them
so now they are all white and now we're going to drag down all of their opacity properties really
low down to about four percent and because there's more of them stacked on top of one another in the
middle that is lighter and they get darker towards the edge lovely to make that more obvious though
let's change the blending mode to add and to an adjustment layer on top of all of them let's add
a curves effect to really increase that contrast so we have full control there that is exactly what
we want we've got a perfect black and white blur map ready to use so back in our main comp let's
drag in our blow map and we can actually hide it it doesn't need to be visible for our camera lens
blur effect to perceive it but while we're here let's keep it visible and change its blending mode
to multiply because now we're getting some really nice accurate Shadows which only affect the outer
edge layers so let's keep them on and now let's add to our adjustment layer at the top camera
lens blur let's pump up the blur way up to around 50 so it's very noticeable and from the blur map
let's select our layer tunnel main blur map and it is blowing the center more because our Center
was white so we can just check invert blow map so now it is blurring our edges our dark areas of the
blow map and now we've got really nice shallow depth of field effect going on and we can even
rack focus by changing the blur focal distance property so we can make the center back out of
focus or make somewhere in between the most out of focus so once you've finished animating your scene
you can duplicate the comp make everything black and white depending the depth of your scene and
then with camera lens blur you've got complete control troll over what is in Focus now the
compound blur effect also has a blur map feature but the blur doesn't look quite as good and you
deserve the best so it's okay to treat yourself every now and again don't be so hard on yourself
sometimes it's nice to step away from it all for a bit and remind yourself that your value is not
confined to the work you produce your productivity or whether what you're doing makes sense to anyone
else at all anyway I hope these blur tricks help you out in some tight spaces or through
some tough projects and I also used a blur map in a bit of a different way to create this animated
ink bleed so if you want to go deeper you can check that one out I'll see you in the next one