A tutorial written by Steve Holmes // Energi Design
Cutting-edge motion effects using some real-
graphics require cutting-
edge techniques. And often,
those techniques rely on 3D
programs to create realistic
set-ups for modeling,
lighting, animation and
camera angles. But, as
always, After Effects can
create some really stunning
Tutorial Project Specs:
Adobe Illustrator CS5
Adobe After Effects CS5
HDTV 1280x720px
8 seconds @ 29.97 fps
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give the illusion of true
world studio techniques. 3D, beautiful lighting and
In this tutorial, I’m going depth—but at a fraction of
to share with you how the construction and render
we built the “clean room” time.
for a sports channel
interstitial background,
using techniques in both
Adobe Illustrator and After
Effects which combine to
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 BUILD A WALL 1 Let’s start out in Adobe
FOR THE ROOM Illustrator. I am using CS5
here, mainly for the fantastic
Shapebuilder tool techniques
I’ll show you later, but most
things here can be done in older
versions of Illustrator.
Create a new RGB document
2000px wide by 1000px high,
then select the Rectangle tool
(M), position it at the top left
corner of the document and click
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to bring up the dialog box. Enter
2000px x 1000px and click OK to
create a rectangle the same size
as the document.
In the Color panel, click
the Stroke swatch and set it to
None, then click the Fill swatch—
making sure RGB is selected
from the fly-out menu—and
change the fill to an almost-white
grey of 220, 220, 220.
ADD LIGHTING GLOW 2 Now, in the Appearance panel,
TO WALL select the Fill and go to the FX
button at the bottom, and choose
Inner Glow. In the dialog box, set
the color to white, the Opacity to
75%, the Blur to 100px and leave
Edge selected.
This now adds a light glow to
the inner edges of our wall shape,
which will beautifully mimic
light bouncing off translucent
surfaces when turned into four
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walls in After Effects!
You can also enhance the wall
(as I have in this case) by adding
new white objects or shapes,
and applying Outer Glow in the
Appearance panel, which again
adds to this illusion of items
glowing and reflecting light from
other sources.
When done, go to File > Save,
name the file “Walls.ai”, and
close it.
RINSE & REPEAT 3 Now, repeat the exact same
processes to create the shape
which will form the ceiling and
floor layers.
Create a new Illustrator
document, this time 2000px x
2000px, and once again create a
new rectangle at the same size
as the document. Remove the
Stroke, change the Fill to the
same light grey color, then select
the Fill in the Appearance panel
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and apply the same Inner Glow
effect with white and 75% opacity,
but apply 140px Blur this time,
set to Edge like before.
When done, go to File > Save,
name the file “Roof and Floor.ai”,
and close it.
Now we can go into After
Effects and quickly assemble
these items into a 6-sided shape
to form our clean room.
IMPORT FILES & 4 In After Effects, create a new
CREATE NEW project, then double-click in
3D COMP the Project panel to bring up
the Import dialog box. Locate
both Illustrator files that you just
saved, Command/Ctrl-clicking
them to select them both, and
click Import.
Now go to Composition >
New Composition, and create
a new 1280x720 comp called
“Room Comp”, at 29.97fps and
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0:08:01 in length, with the these layers from a different
Background Color set to white, angle. You may wish to hit C for
then click OK. the Unified Camera Tool and
Now, drag both Illustrator right-drag to zoom out a little to
files from the Project panel into see all of the layers.
the Timeline at 0:00, then click
both the 3D and Continuous
Rasterization switches for both
layers, in the Switches column of
the Timeline.
Finally, hit F11 to switch to
Custom View 1 so we can view
 RENAME LAYERS, 5 Select the Roof and Floor layer When you click away, After
DUPLICATE & in the Timeline, hit Return to Effects will slide the layer up
ADJUST PROPERTIES rename it and call it “Roof”. Hit R 500px from its current position
to reveal its Rotation properties, (half of 1000, the height of our
and set the X Rotation value wall remember?), to form the
to -90°. You can see this rotates Roof.
it backwards, but it’s still in
the center of the wall. So hit
Shift-P to also reveal its Position
properties, click in the Y value
(360) and enter “360-500”.

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 CREATE & POSITION 6 With the Roof layer still selected,
FLOOR, OFFSET WALL press Command/Ctrl-D to
ANCHOR POINT duplicate the layer, then hit
Return to rename it “Floor”. Hit P
to reveal the Position properties,
and in the Y value (-140) enter
“140+1000”. This now drops the
Floor layer down 1000px to sit
perfectly at the bottom of our
Wall layer, which is still in the
center.
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To form the four walls, we do This now aligns this wall to
need to duplicate and position the “front” of the room cube,
4 of them—but we can greatly but more importantly leaves the
lessen the time to do so by rotation point in the center of
offsetting the Anchor Point of the comp...
the layer first.
Select the Walls layer, hit
Return and rename it “Wall 1” to
keep it simple. Hit A to reveal
the Anchor Point property, and
change the Z value to 1000px.
DUPLICATE & ROTATE 7 Now for the easy part! Duplicate
WALLS, CHANGE the Wall 1 layer, which creates
BLENDING MODES Wall 2 automatically, and hit R
to reveal its Rotation properties.
Change the Y Rotation value to
+90°, and you’ll see it rotates into
perfect position along the “left”
side of the room cube!
Repeat this process twice
more, changing Wall 3 to be +180°
on the Y Rotation, and Wall 4 to
be +270°.
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The final step is to Select
All (Command/Ctrl-A), and
under the Mode column in the
Timeline, set all of the layers to
Alpha Add to ensure their edges
combine perfectly.
Be sure to Save your file at
this stage.
CREATE NEW VIDEO 8 Back over in Illustrator, create shape vertically and horizontally
PANEL SHAPE a new RGB document at centered in the document.
1280x720px. With the Rectangle In the Color panel, remove
tool positioned roughly in the the Stroke, and set the Fill to
center of the comp, Option/ black for now.
Alt-click to bring up the dialog
box, and create a new shape at
960x540px.
Hit V to go back to the
Selection tool, then use the
Align to Artboard section in
the Control panel to align the

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 CREATE & ALIGN 9 Rather than use a rectangle for
CIRCLES FOR EDGES the video panel in our scene, I
want to have a shape which
has two square corners, and
two rounded corners—both of
different radii.
Hit L to select the Ellipse tool,
and click in the lower left of the
document to bring up the dialog,
and create a circle at 100px size.
Click OK, then click in the upper
right corner of the document to
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create another circle, this time Align options to align the circle
at 160px size, then click OK bottom and left to the rectangle.
and press V to go back to the Easy!
Selection tool.
Now, select the 100px
circle and Shift-click the main
rectangle to select them both.
Now, without the Shift key, click
AGAIN on the rectangle to set it
as a Key Object (for alignment),
noting the thicker blue border.
In the Control panel, use the
TRIM CORNERS WITH 10 Deselect the shapes, select the
SHAPEBUILDER TOOL 160px circle, Shift-select the
rectangle, click again on the
rectangle to set it as a Key Object,
then use the Align options to
align the circle top and right to
the rectangle.
Now the cool part (and
the CS5-specific part), the
Shapebuilder tool. We want to
“use” the circles to define the radii
of those corners, and this used to
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be a point-based delete and join
function, but we can do it faster.
Select All, then press Shift-M
to choose the Shapebuilder tool.
Hover the cursor over the top-
right corner of the rectangle, and
you’ll see it highlight the segment
we wish to remove... The cursor
is currently a +, so hold down the
Option/Alt key to show a - (for
removing a segment), and simply
click on that top-right segment...
Illustrator removes that segment
from the rectangle, using the
circle as a cookie-cutter!
Repeat the exact same
process for the bottom left
segment—now that was easy!
Hit V, then select and
delete each of the circles as the
background shape is complete.
 NAME LAYERS & 11 In the Layers panel, double-click
DUPLICATE, CREATE the name and change it to “Back
OFFSET PATH Panel”. Select the panel shape
and Command/Ctrl-C to copy it
to the clipboard, then deselect it.
Press Command-Option-L/
Ctrl-Alt-L to create a New Layer,
naming it “Video Panel”, then
press Command/Ctrl-F to Paste
in Front, and change the Fill
color to red for now.
We want this top video area
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to be smaller than the main area,
and this is an instance where
scaling an item won’t work, as
the corner radii won’t line up. So
go to Object > Path > Offset Path,
set it to -40px and click OK.
You now have a 40px smaller
version of the path, but the
original is still there. Select the
larger original red path and
delete it to leave the smaller one.
STYLE BACK PANEL 12 Select the larger black shape on
the Back Panel layer, and in the
Color panel click on the Swatch
icon and set a White stroke.
In the Stroke panel, set the
Width to 8px, and click the Inside
icon to ensure all 8px appear
inside the dimensions of the
shape.
In the Color panel, select the
Fill icon and change it to White
also, but then in the Appearance
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panel, twirl down the Fill item
and click on Opacity, then
change it to around 35%.
This adjusts the opacity of
the Fill only, different to using
the Transparency panel—a very
handy option to keep in mind for
future design work.
CREATE FINAL LAYER, 13 Once again deselect all items,
RE-ORDER & SAVE then bring up the New Layer
dialog (same shortcut as step 11)
and call it “Blur Mask”. Use the
Paste in Front shortcut to lay
down a copy of the original outer
shape, and change its fill to blue
or another color to differentiate it
from the other items.
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Drag the Blur Mask layer
down to the bottom of the Layers
panel to rearrange their order—
so it is backmost—then go to File
> Save and name the document
“Video Panel Layers.ai”.
Close the document, and
jump back to After Effects.
IMPORT LAYERED 14 Double-click in the Project panel comp to open it, then turn on the
COMP & CREATE to bring up the Import dialog box, 3D and Continuous Rasterization
3D LAYERS then locate and select the Video switches for all 3 layers in the
Panel Layers.ai document. Timeline. Be sure to hit F11 to
At the bottom of the dialog view from Custom View 1 again,
box, be sure to set the Import As then hit P to reveal their Position
option to Composition - Retain properties.
Layer Sizes, then click Open to
import the layered AI file as a
layered AE comp.
In the Project panel, double-
click the Video Panel Layers

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ADJUST Z VALUES 15 In order to avoid intersecting This leaves a 2 pixel gap
layer problems (as they all exist between the Back Panel and the
in exactly the same 3D location), Video Panel (which is going to be
we always like to offset the Z axes a mask), into which we can insert
by a pixel to be on the safe side. a video clip...
Deselect the layers, then set
the Z Position for the Blur Mask
layer to +1px, and the Video
Panel layer to -2px, leaving the
Back Panel at 0px.

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 IMPORT VIDEO & 16 Double-click in the Project panel Drag the clip into the
INSERT 3D LAYER to bring up the Import dialog box, Timeline at 0:00, between the
locate a video clip (preferably Video Panel and Back Panel
HD) which you wish to display layers, click its 3D switch, then
in this 3D video panel, and hit P and change its Z Position
import it. value to -1px.
For this project, we used a
clip from the Rubberball brand
on Artbeats.com of marathon
runners (file name RP-FH137-97),
which is HD and was shot on the
Red One camera—very nice!

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SCALE & MASK VIDEO 17 Hit S to reveal the Scale property mask for the video layer, which
for the video layer, and drag now gets the same rounded
it down to get as much of the corners as the outer shape!
video into the red mask area as Perfect!
possible (leaving a small amount
of overlap for safety).
Then, in the TrkMat column
in the Timeline, set the video
layer to “Alpha Matte Video
Panel” to use the red shape as a

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ADD NULL & PARENT 18 When we work on these 3D
scenarios in the studio, having
a series of layers like this can be
awkward if the size needs to be
increased later on, so we use a
Null Object to control them.
At 0:00 in the Timeline, go
to Layer > New > Null Object,
then click its 3D switch in the
Timeline.
Deselect it, then select the
other four layers, and in the
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Parent column in the Timeline,
click the small @ symbol
(Pickwhip) on any layer, and
point it to the Null Object to
define it as their parent.
Now, if we wish to change the
size or position of all the layers at
the same time, we simply adjust
the Null.
 ADD CAMERA & 19 Now let’s add the camera and get
ADJUST VALUES this scene wrapped up. At 0:00 in
the Timeline, go to Layer > New >
Camera, and choose 24mm from
the Preset drop-down menu. Be
sure to uncheck Enable Depth
of Field in case yours is set to on,
and click OK.
Hit P to reveal the Camera’s
Position values, and set them to
640, 1260, -1900, then hit Shift-R
for the Rotation properties, and
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set the X Rotation to +15°. Now
this sets the Camera in the
position I personally wish it to
be (because I’ve done this scene
before)—at the back of the room
and close to the floor, looking
upwards—but it doesn’t have
much context without our walls...
Before we add the room, press
Command/Ctrl-K for the Comp
Settings, and set the Background
Color to white.
 ADD ROOM, 20 Now, at 0:00 in the Timeline,
COLLAPSE drag the Room Comp from the
TRANSFORMATIONS Project Panel into the Timeline at
the bottom.
& SCALE
Click its 3D switch to make
it a 3D layer—but you’ll notice it
shows a 2D layer of the comp, in
3D space.
What we want to do is
“unlock” the 3D information from
that comp and allow those 3D
walls and floor to respect the
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same 3D angles as the Camera of Finally, hit S for the Scale
our current scene. property, and set the room to
Most people would copy and 200% size. Perfect, and easy!
paste layers from one comp to
another in this instance (which
is viable), but a cool—and
tidy—way is to simply click on
the Continuous Rasterization
switch for the Room Comp in
the Timeline... and you’ll notice
it says Collapse Transformations
instead.
ADJUST VIDEO SIZE 21 Now our Camera is perfectly
& POSITION positioned near the floor and
the “back” of our 3D room, and
the video panel looks a little
small... and this is precisely why
the Null Object was created and
parented to!
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Select the Null, and show its
Position and Scale properties,
then set either to suit the size and
position of your elements in the
scene (in this case, 160% size and
520px on the Y axis). Handy little
thing, eh?
 ANIMATE CAMERA 22 Finally, we want a nice slow
WITH NULL OBJECT camera rotation around the
central focus of the video panel,
and for this we can use another
Null Object as a rotation anchor
point for the Camera.
At 0:00 go to Layer > New >
Null Object, and once again be
sure to click the 3D Layer switch
for the new Null in the Timeline.
Select the Camera, then
use its Parent pickwhip icon to
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parent it to the new Null Object. see a smooth rotating camera
Now, select the Null, show its move inside the room!
Rotation property, and set the Y Feel free to adjust either
Rotation value to -30°. keyframe values to suit your
Click the Y Rotation project, and keep your eye on the
stopwatch to add a keyframe, safe areas.
then hit the End key on the
keyboard to jump to the end of
the Timeline, and change the
Y Rotation to +30°. This adds
a second keyframe, and if you
scrub the Timeline you can now
ADD FINAL EFFECTS 23 Finally, let’s do something with
WITH ADJUSTMENT that blue panel that’s sitting
LAYER behind the video—it’s not there
to be seen, but for a better use. I
added that in so we could use it
as an Adjustment Layer which
blurs out the background behind
the panel in the 3D scene.
In the Timeline, click the
Adjustment Layer switch for the
Blur Mask layer, and it’ll look like
it disappears.
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Go to Effect > Color
Correction > Brightness &
Contrast, and in the Effect
Controls panel set the Brightness
to -30—you can see the
background room through the
panel edges now getting darker.
Go back to Effect > Blur &
Sharpen > Fast Blur, and set the
Blurriness value to 15px, and
now you can see the background
blurring slightly also.
FINISH & EMBELLISH 24 The project at this stage is
essentially finished—and as I
mentioned at the start, we’ve
rendering, yet achieving much
the same effect!
As this is a fully-functioning
Project Assets & Software Links:
Artbeats: RP-FH137-97 (HD clip) »
Adobe After Effects CS5 »
Adobe Illustrator CS5 »

ended up with a “clean room” 3D scene in After Effects, you

effect which really looks like it
was built, lit and rendered in a
3D package.
Those Illustrator shapes with
an Inner Glow effect applied
really do look the part, and
save hours and hours of time
in construction, lighting and
can continue to embellish it with
more elements and animation
to suit your tastes, and when
finished you can render out your
final piece.
Enjoy the clean room!

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A few words about
Steve Holmes // Energi Design

Award-winning British For the last decade, he graphics industry as one

designer Steve Holmes is has spoken on Adobe’s of the After Effects “heads
the Founder and Creative behalf at design seminars of state”.
Director of Energi Design and conferences all over With Energi Design now
in Sausalito, California. Europe and America (NAB, settled in San Francisco,
After studying design Siggraph, HOW Design California, Steve runs
and typography for print, Conference) on the subjects the studio as Creative
and being studio manager of design, typography, web Director, and their design
at two design and print design and motion graphics work has garnered no less
production companies, he between After Effects, than three Webby Awards,
established Energi Design Illustrator and Flash. one W3 Award and one
in London in 1994, creating Moving to California in Davey Award in the last
layout, web design, and 2002, he worked alongside three years for their Flash
video motion graphics Total Training for 3 years design, motion graphics
for clients such as Nike, as their Director of Design and commercials for clients
Warner Bros, Disney, & Animation Training, such as Adobe, Hiball
Coca-Cola, Virgin Atlantic, hosting multiple award- Energy Drink, Artbeats,
Sainsbury’s, Toyota and winning video training Virgin America, Sotheby’s
Cadbury’s Chocolate, to series, and is widely International Realty and
name but a few. recognized in the motion Le Tourment Vert Absinthe.

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