Hey guys, this is Eric from finalcutstudioschool.com and I’m here to show you a quick text trick with Shake. This is what we’re going to end up with, if you can see. It’s just my name with some smoke, it’s fairly simple, nothing big. And I want to show you how to do this in Shake because this is not used, this is not done with particles. I learned this from CMI visual effects and I’m going to share it with you.

So, let me branch over here and start a whole new tree. So, I’m going to go to my image tab. I wan to start with a text node. This will throw up a text node and I’m going to go down here and I’m going to change it to my name. Go back up here, click on the node, hit the R key to refresh it and now as you can see, it has emeek77 inside the text node there.

So now, what we’re going to want to do is, I’m going to add a gradient, you’re going to end up using the gradient node a whole lot. So, let me go in here and add a gradient; this is just a common gradient like anything else would be.

So now, what I want to do is I want to make these things interact. So, I’m going to make add a quick paint to my gradient. So, I’m going to my image tab, add a quick paint. Now, this will bring up my quick paint controls. I’m going to leave my interpolation and precise control set to frame. I want to select my–make sure I’m parked on frame one, I’m going to select my smudge tool, let me expand the size and I’m going to go through here and make some random marks smudges like this right here.

Let’s go up and down just to be able get a little bit of effect here like that, okay. Now, let me go to my last frame and I’m going to do the same thing. Then, we’re going to tell Shake to animate in between these shapes and I’ll show you what I’m talking about right now in a minute as soon as I get done with the right here.

Now, this ain’t going to be perfect guys, you all want to take more time in this. Any of these tutorials that I’m showing you, if you get down with them in less than two hours, they’re going to look at you like you’re crazy. So, please take your time on your work and don’t sell yourself short; very time consuming process.

Okay, now we have this painting on frame one and frame two. So now, I’m going to go into my paint edit controls and when I click the edit button, it will show my path with my paint. Then, I can come over to my parameters and it shows I have two strokes; the stroke I laid on frame 1 and the stroke I laid on frame 11. So, I’m going to go to my convert stroke tab and click it. This little box will come up. Now, you can set your strokes to persistent or interpolate. Now, I don’t want it to stay persistent that means it stays the same throughout the whole scene. I wan it to interpolate which means it will animate itself. And the stroke range that I want to interpolate, I only have two strokes. So, I’m going to put 1, 2. If I had four strokes, I’d put 1, 2, 3, 4 like that. So now, I’m going to hit Okay and what this is going to do is this is going to animate my strokes in between frame 1 and frame 2. Now, when I scroll through the scene, you can see these strokes are animating between the frame 1 and frame 100.

Okay, so now that we have that set up, I’m going to add a Contrast Luma to my quick paint. So, I’m going to my color tab, select Contrast Luma and I want to bring this sucker up to where it’s –also, if you go to the opposite direction, you can see we have a cool flame, like fire starting to happen here. If you want to change the color of the gradient to all red and it’s just another option you have, but that’s not the way I’m going with this. I want to bring this up to where it’s really bright. Let me say like that right there. Now, that’s looking pretty good. It kind of looks like a reflection of some kind of, keep this in mind if you want to do a reflection or something you know.

So now, I’m going to take my text and plug it into my mask of my gradient and I’m also going to take it, my text and plug it in to the mask with my Contrast Luma, I can get it over that right there. Now as you can see, we have the smoke it kind of look s like it’s coming out text. Not too bad huh.

So now, I want to soften this up a little bit. So, I want to go into my Contrast Luma, I’m going to find a dream soft tab. You could to this with brightness and other nodes, this is just a Mac row that I have; third party Mac row and it’s right here, dreamy soft. Now, I add it and will bring this little node in and I’m going to connect my Contrast Luma with it. And I’m going to bring it up to where it’s kind of bright, but not too bright. And then, in between Contast Luma and the dreamy soft, I’m going to add a brightness node and I’m going to bring the brightness up a little bit, so we can brighten up our smoke.

Now, what you can see what we have and we’re animating, we’re animating along through here. Now, I want to give it a background, so to my dreamy soft node, I’m going to go to my layer tab and insert an over node. Now, this is going to make it ready for whatever background we’re going to use. I’m going to use a gradient. So, I’m going to go to my color tab or my image tab, select gradient, we’ll throw in on gradient. I want to go down here to my parameters and I want to change my colors. I’m going to change this to black, change this to blue, change this to black and I’m going to change this one to blue like that right there and I’m going to go in and make it a little darker, control my luminance a little bit, like that; I’ll do the same thing with this. There now, you have a nice bluish background. Let me refresh my nodes, so I can see what it looks like.

Now I want to bring my gradient that I just made out into my over node. When I double click, you can see what we have here. Well, I want to make a mask to kind of clean it up a little bit. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to go to my dreamy soft node, we’ll go to my color tab and I’m going to shift click, reorder so to branch off from my dreamy soft tab.

Now, in my reorder parameters, I’m going to change my channels. I want to use this as a mask. So, I’m going to change it to, from rgba to llll, this will change it and black it to my luminance channel. It will make it to be able to use it as a mask. Now, I’m going to add an invert node like that and then I’m going to plug it in to the side of my over node for the mask input and what we have here is our finished product.

Let me go into my globals 1-100, let me render a flip book for you real fast. Now, you can experiment with this, you can do whatever you want with it, your possibilities are unlimited. Like I said, I’m going to go in here and remove this red French that’s going along around my letters where the smoke is contacting. And I can do that, not a problem. I just wanted to basically show you an idea of some of the things you can do in Shake.

So, let me go ahead and hit the period key, so I can play what you got rendered back, it’s a 100 frames and I’ve got 35 frames rendered. As you can see when I play it back, it’s just a smoky text.

So, I hope you guys have learned something. If you have any questions, get a hold of me at finalcutstudioschool.com and we’ll see you next time.