Shadowing Practice: How to actually make eye-catching 3D Scenes | After Effects - Learn English Speaking with Video

Mastering 3D camera is one of the most powerful skills a video editor can learn.

However, most editors get it wrong.

There are missing pieces that separate crappy scenes from the ones that genuinely grab attention.

You see, a perfect 3D scene starts before you even open After Effects.

Literally half of the success is to prepare great looking images.

For example, here you have the same scene but with different quality of assets.

The scene on the right is crispier, brighter and more lively.

I'll cover how to get these assets in a second.

So, once you have the images, you need to properly set up the layers to get that 3D feel.

And then make sure that there's one point of interest.

Everything around it is supposed to supplement our main subject.

These elements should be significant, but not significant enough to overshadow the main point of interest.

We don't want to cause too much destruction.

Lastly, to bring together everything and make the scene even more compelling, we can spice it up with some effects.

We'll be going through the whole process of how to create that scene inside After Effects.

But first, let's get back to images.

So here's my quick way to get them.

Let's take that Greek sculpture as an example.

So I usually go on Pinterest to find inspirations and drop them into ChatGPT.

Then I ask Chat to create a prompt describing this style.

I also add some stuff I want in particular, like confident posture or keyboard on shoulder.

With the ready prompt I bring it to Nano Banana Pro.

And after a few iterations and adjustments it eventually gets it right.

By the way this is not a promo of these models, you can use anything you want.

However, something I wanted to promote is Motion Essence.

It includes 100 pre -built animations for After Effects

that save a ton of time and I use them in all my videos.

For more info you can find them in the description below.

So now we're gonna get into the sauce.

Alright so we are back in Adobe After Effects

and remember guys you got all the necessary assets for this tutorial in the description below.

So first things first I'm gonna show you the comp settings.

Today we're gonna be working with 1920x1080 then the primary is gonna be set to 30 and duration to 10 seconds.

Let's hit okay.

Alright so now we're gonna head over to the project panel

and what I'm gonna do is grab some of the assets onto the timeline line.

So let's select these three and we're just going to drop them here.

So what you want to do is have the sky on

the bottom then metal is going to be in the middle and figure on top.

So right off the bat what we need to do is introduce the 3D camera.

So for this I'm going to right click go over to new camera

and here what you want to do is pick the preset

of 35 millimeters then the type is going to be set to tunnel camera and we're going to hit okay.

I preferably like to keep my camera on the bottom

so I'm going to drop it here and I'm going to create a new null object.

So let's right click go over to new null object and let's call it cam control one.

Now I'm going to parent the camera to the null

and then what we're going to do is select both layers and I'm going to change the color to cyan.

So cyan is going to be responsible for controlling the movement that way we know what we have here.

The next step will be turning on the 3D

so I'm going to do it here

and now we need to create the distance between the layers to actually get that 3D feel.

So for this I'm going to head over here and I'm going to pick custom view one.

So now with these tools over here you can control the view

so you are not messing up anything about the scene you can just see it from the side.

So here you have the orbit tool then you have grab tool and zoom out zoom in tool.

So what we need to do is just spread out the assets a little bit.

So here we have what the camera sees

so we go back that's exactly what we see

and then I'm going to go back to custom view one

and I'm going to start pushing these assets a little bit further away.

So now if you grab the selection tool you can actually select the layer

and then play around with the arrows to adjust the position.

But now a pro dip.

If you have After Effects 26, you can do it all at the same time.

So let me just show you it's going to be easier to understand.

So I'm going to select everything from the top to the bottom in terms of these three layers

and I'm going to hit P.

So now this third value is responsible for Z position.

So with this, I can actually kind of change that blue arrow.

So if I hold down control plus alt and I start dragging this you're gonna notice that everything is changing proportionally.

So this is an extremely cool feature that is gonna make it

so much faster but

if you don't have After Effects 26 you can just push these layers individually

but I'm just gonna keep doing it so it's in perfect proportions.

So I think something along these lines should do

and then I'm actually gonna scale down the figure because if we go back, that's how it's going to look.

So we definitely need to play around with the scale a little bit.

So let me just scale it down.

Something like that should do.

So that way I know that within that rectangle is our figure.

So we're going to be able to see it just like that.

But now the problem is that meadow and the sky are too small.

So we can't change the position, but we need to scale it up with scale.

That way it's just going to stay in the same distance.

It's just going to be bigger.

So I'm going to select these two, hit S, and I'm going to bump the scale for both of them.

All right.

Then I'm gonna take sky only and I'm just gonna bump it up individually.

Then I'm gonna take our figure and I'm gonna place it a little bit lower

so we don't see this just like that.

I think this should do.

And now right off the bat I'm gonna introduce the text.

So for this I'm gonna grab the type tool and I'm just gonna type in motion.

I'm gonna scale it down by changing the font size

and then I'm gonna hit enter and we're just gonna type in design.

Now let's just select design and bump up the font size.

By the way, I'm using the left paragraph and something like that should do.

So now we need to also turn it into 3D and we need to place it in between metal and the sky.

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So I'm just going to place it here, turn on the 3D and we can head over to our custom view one.

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And I'm just going to make sure it's right over here.

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So let's push it away with blue arrow.

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And now I know that it's right in the perfect position.

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So let's go back.

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And now it's the same problem.

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We need to scale it up.

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All right movement looks kind of cool.

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We can actually take the metal and I'm going to drag it a little bit lower.

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Right way better.

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And let's also take the text and have it right behind the metal.

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All right before we add other assets what I'm going to do is actually start creating the movement for the camera.

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So first thing I'm going to do is just set up the perfect position.

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So I'm going to head over to the cam control one hit P

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and I'm just going to get closer with the position.

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Right just like that.

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Then I'm gonna go a little bit lower with Y.

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Okay and now let me just place a keyframe then I'm gonna move forward let's say maybe two

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and a half seconds should do maybe a little bit less

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and now I'm gonna play around with Y position so we kind of want to move upwards

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and then let me just select these two right click go over to keyframe assistant

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and we're gonna click on easy ease and now I'm gonna head over to the graph editor.

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So what we want to do here is select the second keyframe and push the peak towards the left.

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Now let's do the same thing with this and we're gonna have this movement.

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We might even extend it a little bit more just like that.

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Okay here we have the full graph.

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Smooth and clean.

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Alright so that's what we have so far and now we need to introduce another movement going back.

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So we're just gonna zoom out.

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So this is actually the reason we use the new object because now we can overlap the keyframes.

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So if I just use the camera I wouldn't have the ability to connect the layers

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and our movement would have to stop at one frame.

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So let's say if I zoomed out we would have a rough stop over here and then it would start going back.

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And with the new objects what we could do is just create another one

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or actually let me just show you a better way.

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We can just hit ctrl d for this one, hit you, delete the last keyframe and parent one to two.

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So now I can also control the movement with this

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so I'm just going to push it forward

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and then let's say we're going to have the time indicator here and I'm just going go back with the position.

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All right, looks cool.

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I'm just gonna go a little bit lower, go back.

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I actually started even earlier and then I'm gonna head over to the graph editor

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and we're just gonna play around with the graph.

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I would probably speed it up a bit.

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All right, pretty cool.

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Let's smooth it out.

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You always need to play around with the graph, tweak the keyframes and it should be good.

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All right.

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I like it.

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I'm going to go back.

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And now when we've got the second movement, what I want to do with this is make sure to add that extra 3D feel.

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So for this, we're going to need more assets.

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So I'm going to take the tree.

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I'm going to place it over here on top.

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So what we're going to do is turn it into 3D.

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I'm going to head over to the custom view one.

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And now let's make sure that the tree is in front of the figure and it's more towards the right.

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Let me just zoom in.

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Place it right on the right side.

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Right on the right side.

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And I'm going to probably lift it up.

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So I think this should be good.

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We can actually go back and see what's going on here.

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All right.

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It should be more like that.

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Okay.

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Now I'm going to duplicate the tree.

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Push it towards the left.

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And we can actually play around with the Z position.

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So it differs a little bit from this tree.

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So I'm going to hit P.

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Move it closer to the figure.

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Probably have it like that maybe scale it up a bit.

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We can scale up this one as well and let's reveal motion and I think this should do.

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So this just adds that extra depth and now I actually prepared some of the other assets.

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Actually we head over to icons.

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Here you have all of them.

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So I'm going to select them from 12 to 1 by holding shift.

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Then I'm going to place them on top.

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Let's maybe start them at around this time.

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So now they are kind of piled up.

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So what I'm going to do with this is select them all, turn them into 3D, and I'm going to head over to our custom view one.

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So I'm just going to place them somewhere here, maybe even in front of the tree, the trees.

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And yeah, let's do it like that.

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I'm going to go back.

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And now I'm going to use scale in order to scale them down.

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And now I'm going to place them, let's say, maybe here.

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So now if you have After Effects 26 you can actually easily set them up

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but if you don't have it you would need to go icon by icon.

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So just place one over here then go to the third one place it here

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and that's how we would have to do it.

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But I'm just gonna select them from 1 to 12 hit P

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and hold down ctrl plus alt and we're just gonna play around with x position.

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All right that's so much faster.

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Okay, I think this should do, and let's see how it looks.

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Right, really cool, but I feel like it's a little bit too close to the camera, so what I'm going to do is take them all, just like that, and we're just going to push them closer to the figure.

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So if I go back to the custom view one, we're going to see them here.

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I think this should be the perfect position.

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Let's go back, and here we actually need to scale them up.

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I'm going to use the same trick as before, so select from 1 to 12, and with Ctrl plus Alt, Extend.

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All right, let's see.

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So they are not revealing as harshly as before.

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I'll probably just scale them up a little bit more.

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Hit P, Extend, Adjust.

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So we got the fundamental setup.

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So what we need to do is actually add a little bit of wiggle to the camera.

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So that's the reason we picked two -node camera because otherwise if I open it up, we wouldn't have point of interest over here

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and with an old camera you have it so what you could do is hold down alt click on the stopwatch

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type in wiggle damn wiggle and in brackets 1 .8 let's click away

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and that way we're just going to have a little bit of a shake especially you can see it

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when the camera is stationary so that's pretty cool

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so now is the time to stylize this whole scene

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which is going to make it so much better

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so for starters we're going to apply an adjustment layer so I'm going to right click go over to new, adjustment layer, and what do we call it?

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Let's say effects.

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So now the first thing we want to do is color grade our edit.

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So I'm just going to apply Lumetri color.

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And here we don't have to do a lot of things.

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We just need to head over to color wheels.

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Just take the shadows towards the blues, which is making so much difference.

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Damn.

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Before, after.

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It's kind of blending everything together.

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I really like it.

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And then I'm going to head over to curves, and I'm just going to create a slight S -curve nothing over the top just a little bit

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and actually you know what we're not going to apply anything else here

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so I'm just going to rename it to color

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and then we're going to create another adjustment layer

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so I'm going to right click over to new adjustment layer let's call it effects this time

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and I'm going to place them below the color

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so what we want to do with this is apply an effect called radial blur

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so this is going to give us this effect

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and it's definitely a little bit too strong

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so we're going to take it down to four and also we want to take the ellipse tool.

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I'm gonna have the effects selected and I'm just gonna double click on this.

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So that way we have a nice mask

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so I'm just gonna invert it so it targets the sides and I'm gonna double click M.

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So now I'm gonna feather it out just like that

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so it's nicely blending together and I can just play around with the expansion.

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Actually I think the expansion is fine so I'm gonna leave it like that.

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I'm just gonna add a little bit of feather and also I'm gonna probably take it down to two.

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All right this looks pretty cool already

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but now what I'm gonna apply here as well to the sides is a little bit of chromatic aberration.

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So you can either use VR chromatic aberration.

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Where is it?

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VR chromatic aberrations or you can go with the plugin which is called quick chromatic aberrations 3.

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This is a little bit better and it's free.

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You just need to look it up and now

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if I just start playing around with the position you're gonna notice that RGB split over here which is looking pretty awesome.

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I'm gonna set it up to three maybe let's set up to five.

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And now something I would like to do is play around with the blur a little bit.

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So you can either head over to the camera

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and open up camera options and turn on the depth of field and then just play around with the aperture.

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You can bump it up and make sure that the focus distance is set on our figure.

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But the problem is that everything is blurry now so I kind of want to see what the text says.

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Also I want to see the icons.

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So what I'm going to do with this is actually disable it and we're going to create another adjustment layer instead.

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So I'm going to go to new, adjustment layer and I'm going to zoom out a bit and we're going to call it blur.

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So let me just apply fast box blur to this, bump it up, actually a little bit too much and now we're going to grab the rectangle tool

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and with this layer selected I'm just going to create a mask in the middle like that.

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So that's what you should have.

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Now we need to blend it together a little bit more

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so I'm gonna hit F bump up the mask feather all right

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and now I'm gonna place

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that blur right on top of the meadow I believe all

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right that's cool it's kind of blending together the horizon a little bit more

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but I feel like the text is not visible enough

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so I'm gonna turn it down and and and

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and that's good also I'm gonna bump up the feather okay 200 should do

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so this was before and after all right

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so the only thing that's left is just adding motion blur

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so I'm make sure to turn it on on all the layers

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that have 3d on and now it should work beautifully all right

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so here we have the fully loaded scene let's see it

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all right looks really good

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if i wanted to take it to the next level i

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would probably just add a little bit of movement for the icons maybe the text animation for the text

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but in general i think

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that 3d scene is perfect i especially like the colors the colors are a game changer here all right so with

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that being said hopefully you enjoyed this tutorial make sure to check out the video on the screen

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and I'll see you in the next one.

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Cheers guys!

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 281 sentences and 3341 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:58. The speaker talks fast, about 223 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
layer noun	/ˈleɪ̯ɚ/	A single thickness of some material covering a surface.
select verb	/sɪˈlɛkt/	To choose one or more elements of a set, especially a set of options.
asset noun	/ˈæsɛt/	A thing or quality that has value, especially one that generates cash flows.
bump noun	/bʌmp/	A light blow or jolting collision.
adjustment noun	/əˈd͡ʒʌst.mənt/	The action of adjusting something.
custom noun	/ˈkʌstəm/	Frequent repetition of the same behavior; way of behavior common to many; ordinary manner; habitual practice; method of doing, living or behaving.
zoom verb	/zuːm/	To move fast with a humming noise.
blur verb	/blɝ/	To make indistinct or hazy, to obscure or dim.
icon noun	/ˈaɪ.kɑn/	An image, symbol, picture, portrait, or other representation, usually as an object of religious devotion.
graph noun	/ɡɹæf/	A data chart (graphical representation of data) intended to illustrate the relationship between a set (or sets) of numbers (quantities, measurements or…
blend verb	/blɛnd/	To mingle; to mix; to unite intimately; to pass or shade insensibly into each other.
feather noun	/ˈfɛðə/	A branching, hair-like structure that grows on the bodies of birds, used for flight, swimming, protection and display.
introduce verb	/ˌɪntɹəˈdus/	To cause (someone) to be acquainted (with someone else).
extend verb	/ɛkˈstɛnd/	To increase in extent.
mask noun	/mæsk/	A cover, or partial cover, for the face, used for disguise or protection.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
zoom out verb	/ˌzuːm ˈaʊt/	To decrease the focal length of a zoom lens in order to obtain a reduced magnification of the image, or a wider-angle view.
bump up verb		To increase something suddenly.
hold down verb		To restrain; to check.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
bring together verb		To cause people to do something together; to bring about togetherness.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 175 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, gonna, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: feather /ˈfɛðə/, smooth /smuːð/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, destruction /dɪsˈtɹʌkʃən/, shake /ˈʃeɪk/
Long words — get the stress right: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, individually /ˌɪndɪˈvɪd͡ʒ(u)əli/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like layer, select, asset.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if I zoomed out we would have · if you don't have it you would need · if I open it up, we wouldn't have
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	be set · is just spread · is just set
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	blues, which is · plugin which is · here which is

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

Grammar in this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?