Animating Astro images in After Effects

[Iem1]

Hey guys,

I am looking at trying my hand at animating some of my astro images for a bit of fun, I am just looking at creating a simple 15 - 20 second animation of both the stars/galaxy slowly moving in frame, but I have absouletly no idea what I am doing in After Effects.

I have watched a video 

 

But its more of a quick demonstration as opposed to a step by step tutorial for a clueless beginner like myself.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any step by step guides to achieve this?

The images I am planning on using having removed the stars in PS

And the stars

 

 

Cheers guys

 

 

[Elp]

What are you trying to do?

[saac]

lem 1 , this is interesting. I think, and I have no experience of this  save from the video, he applies a scaling effect to the starfield only (makes the starfield expand almost like a vanishing point perspective in art) . This then gives the effect that the stars are moving relative to the static background nebula.  There also appears to be a translation (linear movement) of the background (he moves it left to right I think) .  Do you have photoshop after effects?  I think it's a worthwhile investigation and another direction to experiment with in astro photography/art.  If it is good enough for NASA/Hubble why not us?

Jim 

[Elp]

Just saw the video. Looks like one layer on top of another and both are translating, the top one more than the other. You set a start keyframe, move the time slider to a later point in time, and move the picture as much as you want it to move and set another keyframe. Quite simple. After Effects is capable of so much more.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Elp

[Iem1]

31 minutes ago, saac said:

lem 1 , this is interesting. I think, and I have no experience of this  save from the video, he applies a scaling effect to the starfield only (makes the starfield expand almost like a vanishing point perspective in art) . This then gives the effect that the stars are moving relative to the static background nebula.  There also appears to be a translation (linear movement) of the background (he moves it left to right I think) .  Do you have photoshop after effects?  I think it's a worthwhile investigation and another direction to experiment with in astro photography/art.  If it is good enough for NASA/Hubble why not us?

Jim 

Yeah, I thought it would be a bit of fun to build upon our images a bit more. I have photoshop, After Effects and pretty much all other adobe creative software I think, perks of being a student, all of it only costs like £15 a month I think

19 minutes ago, Elp said:

Just saw the video. Looks like one layer on top of another and both are translating, the top one more than the other. You set a start keyframe, move the time slider to a later point in time, and move the picture as much as you want it to move and set another keyframe. Quite simple. After Effects is capable of so much more.

Thanl you for the run down, and yeah it does look simple, it's just getting to grips with all the options/buttons/layout etc. Installed After Effects a couple hours ago, and that was my first ever introduction to something that isn't PS or Siril

Il have another go tomorrow, would love to learn to do it as I think it's a pretty cool tool to have on the tool belt of astro software!

Gives me something fun & astro related to do on cloudy nights.

[Elp]

Haven't used it for years but if it's still using the layer based system like premier or a video editing program, set your timeline duration, frame rate, open/import your images, drag one to the bottom (your background layer), drag the other above it, make sure they start and end at the same time, set your blend mode for the top layer (it's much easier if it has an alpha channel included and saved as a tif file (white is visible, black is transparent), blend mode overlay should be okay if you have an alpha channel in the top layer, scale and translate is in another panel I think, you can drag the image anywhere and set a keyframe, there is also an auto keyframe button which sets a key automatically if you move the image but your keys can get messy if you don't know what you're doing, advance the timeline, move the image, set another key. Theres more to it but that's the jist of it. You can then export into an MP4 or gif.

[SmokeyJoe]

I used after effects extesivly about 10 years ago, can't remember a thing I'm afraid.  It is (was) widely used in the vfx industry and taught at degree level so there should be loads of tutorials on line (if you wanted to spend some money there are loads of books out there).  It is layer based and most of the layer techniques from Photoshop are transferable.  Good luck! 

[alacant]

On 10/05/2022 at 21:56, Iem1 said:

absouletly no idea what I am doing

Is this the sort of thing you're after? Sorry, not a very imaginative rendering. Oh, and even managed to get the stars behind the galaxies. DUH!

1-106 (1)_01_stereo.html

Edited May 14, 2022 by alacant

[AcapulcoRolf]

Nico Carver describes a workflow for this

Look up his post on astrobin for details ("3D Fly-in -- Simeis 147 / sh2-240 / Spaghetti Nebula (HaO3RGB)")