Living in “Toytown” – Recreating The Tilt-Shift Effect in AE
Tutorial Details
- Requirements: Just After Effects... enjoy!
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Run Time: 13:47 min
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Until recently this effect has been created in-camera using specialized lenses. In this tutorial, Richard Bird gives an overview of how the “Tilt-Shift Effect” can be quickly recreated in post-production without the use of 3rd party plug-ins by remapping the depth of field, use of simple color correction and altering the frame rate.
Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in September of 2009.
Tutorial
Download Tutorial .flv
File size: 74 MB
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Bello! …
Wow! Freaking awesome, so creative!
congrats!
i saw an ad like this the other day and i was shocked to find out it was lens that created this effect.
Fantastic work!
http://www.vimeo.com/keithloutit
The godfather of this effect.
Yes! I love their work. The Bathtub series is amazing. I really want to give this a go myself.
isnt this just the tilt-shift effect that you get when you use the tilt-shift lense on your cam ?
that shouldnt mean that you should use this lense, its very expensive ^^
so long,
nice effect nice tut :)
Well, I would expect more from a visual effects pro…
haha… well you know how plain and boring the British are….
I never thought it’s be that simple too but it was great anyway.
hum…dont want to sound negative but I’m pretty sure we have had several tilt-shift tuts in Topher’s roundups, he even made one himself. But anyways, apart from that it is a good explanation of the effect.
looks great!
Nice, good work.
Thank You!
Thanks, Richard! I appreciate the explanation of the overall workflow and the details regarding each effect and its use in creating this particular look. Blessings!
i loved this new idea,thanks richard,its very awsome ;)
………………rock on After effects
Hello Richard
Your Pacing on the tutorial is Great and Clear. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
This has always been something of a great visual for an AE dummy like me, and I am really happy to know there are actually tutorials that can teach me how to make such stuff myself… thanks :)
excellent tutorial… simple, short, and the result is simply awesome. Thank you, Richard!
A different method than I have seen demonstrated before. I will try it. Thanks!
But, as almost everybody else, does you (tutorial-guy) forget to mask out certain objects.
I think this process over complicates what is an extremely simple thing to do within after effects. Sure, some many want to take the long way around but there are much quicker ways to get to the exact same result.
Personally, the brightness/contrast adjustment that you added (granted, it may have been the recording) just washed out your footage. From what you say though I believe this was your intent and I’m not sure why, as a ‘model’ would be very vibrant in colour and not washed out. Hence, I think, adding this adjustment actually took away from the result rather than enhancing it.
Richard Bird
did you watch panorama
they had this effect
i was thinking , this sould be on tuts thanks
Awesome, great work…
Nice look!
Yeah, the Telekom use this atm in a commecrial. Great effect. Thank you for this!
And I’m really happy to know how they did it =D Thanks for the great tut und the awesome explaination!
That is awesome! I’ve always wondered how this effect was created! Thank you!
Is there any way i can get the footage for this tutorial?
Nice! But isn’t there a EXPRESION with wich someone could DELETE frames in between? for example, in HD there are 30fps maybe someone should write an expresions that DELETES frames every amount of frames, like if the expresion says “DELETE “n” QUANTITY OF FRAMES EVERY “n” AMOUNT OF FRAMES” With that we could fake STOP MOTION isn’t it right?
Or you could use the posterize time filter and do exactly the same thing essentially :D Why over complicate it?
Check out Maltaannon’s tut on this! Its better!!!
NOW THIS IS A TUTORIAL!
This is wat AE tuts should always be about.
Anyone got any good footage that I could use to try this effect?
Not always easy to make this kind of footage as it is best if it is taken from an elevated position.
Thanks in advance
Hello Everyone
Thank you for all the comments- it’s great to get feedback!
The thing I enjoy about an effect like this is that it’s open to a lot of personal interpretation- if you give 10 people the same footage, you’ll get back 10 different results.
If people are interested – or feeling shortchanged!- I’ll try to make a more in-depth sequel: the hardest thing for me in recording this was ‘what to leave out….’ : originally this tutorial was half an hour long and talked about codecs, and how to choose a picture, and manipulating the focal plain, etc etc, – so for those who want to get into that stuff, speak up and I’ll talk to Alex about it.
Again, thank you all for taking the time to give feedback, I look forward to reading your comments.
Cheers
RB
Hi Richard,
Nice tut, you probably don’t remember me, we met at a pub with Julian and talked about BSG amongst other things. Saw Mr Ryde at the weekend, looking forward to seeing the results.
But I saw similar tutorial on along ago (in march)
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/index.cfm?featureid=1844
AE TUTS Keep up with the quality
The Dollhouse effect is something that is used a lot nowadays in stuff that is mostly outdoor. It is a great opportunity for novices to learn how to get this particular effect.
nice tutorials i,m thank you very match
Thank you!
great tutorial i like you explanition on the tutorial good job and tank you very much :D
200
Hi. I like to see a lot your videos, i am always training in AE.
Just for curiosity, do you know where can i find plugins for Sony Vegas ???
Thanks so much for the tutorial :D
great tut. has inspired me to make one. i was looking around vimeo and found this one. i think he/she made it the same way by the looks of it.
http://vimeo.com/6330063
its soo cool :)
While this tutorial is good, and well explained. After experimenting with this, I feel going the in camera way is really the best and simplest way to do this. Yes tilt-shift lenses are expensive, but the beauty with DSLR is that lenses like this are easily available and very cheap to rent in most city, In montreal I can rent the Canon tilt-shift 24mm (perfect for this effect) for about 25$ a day… considering you’ll need to shoot original footage anyway to use this effect professionally. the “fake it in post” is a very dangerous route to go down, and often the harder way of doing it… lesson I learned from hollywood vfx pros.
Nice tut. Been exploring this method a bit lately and really enjoy this effect. It can be used for so many things other than the toy town effect (although that’s pretty clever).