Focusing can be challenging when using depth of field in AE. This tutorial shows you how you can focus between different layers easily and accurately.
Written version:
We begin by creating a text layer and turning it’s 3d switch on.
Then we duplicate it with control D and change the text to far.
Let’s also make the color less saturated.
Now let’s position this far layer further away on the z-axis by dragging on the blue arrow.
Next we’ll create our camera. It has to be a two-node camera for this to work. If you prefer a one node camera, you can switch to that after you have done the focusing.
Let’s make sure depth of field is turned on. We’ll also give the aperture a very large value in order to create a very visible blur.
To animate the focus between the near and far layers, we turn on the stopwatch for the focus distance parameter. Then we’ll move a bit further in time and select both the layer that we want to bring into focus and the camera.
Then simply go to layer –> camera –> set focus distance to layer.
We have now made a perfect focus pull between these two layers.
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