40. Earth Zoom
• Create a cosmic Earth zoom in AE
• Use masking and parenting to link imagery
23:05
2,604,534 Views
Jul 02, 2007
Tutorial Notes:
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880 Responses to "Earth Zoom"
khalid
05/14/2013
Hi,

For the pictures, download google earth, and take snapshots of the screen.Redimension the picutres on photoshop afterwards (otherwise it's really hard to adjust them on Aftereffects)

Rado Dam
04/29/2013
Thanks you so much for your tutorials in AE, I am from Angkor.
Sony
03/04/2013
Hi thank you so much for this tutorial I did it and it worked out fine than I did it again with better resolution photo and I having a strange problem. The first image and the last one are the only one that shows when I have conect the images all together I have done it couple of times but it always happends again and again can anyone help me ?
Naude´
03/01/2013
Thank you so much!! Really appreciate the fact that people like you take the time to make these tutorials! They always have a bigger impact than you can imagine!!
Nawaf
02/28/2013
Thanks a lot, that was very helpful.
Bakhtiar93tiar Studio Malaysia
02/13/2013
WOW THANK
Sam
02/03/2013
Hey Andrew I know everyone is asking you this but where do I get high res pictures like these? If you could get back to me that would be great thanks
Syafiq
01/25/2013
There's nothing wrong with cs6, check your steps again. Turn on all the layers before you scale layer no 1 to 100
Will
02/07/2013
There must be ... having the same problem. Even when I open the project files the the same problem occurs... must be a setting.

Anyone got any ideas?
Alex
01/10/2013
how do u turn on the option when ur adjusting the layer to match the other layers, all i get is a bounding box thingy, i want to be able to see how much i am scaling
Luke Engel
11/30/2012
Hey Andrew, I'm planning on doing this same effect for a music video but I'm in Chicago. Where did you get the pictures used in this tutorial and is it possible for me to get some zooming out from there? Thanks so much.

-Luke
Joel Puello
11/29/2012
I followed your tutorial step by step but when parenting all layers to layer 1 and scaling layer 1 to 100%, only layer 1 zoomed in and out.

Finally I just left the layers parented to each one but last and increased the scale of last layer to bout 30k and it worked perfect for me.
Frank
01/04/2013
I'm having the same problems as Brad. Must be a different setting in CS6. Or I'm doing something very wrong. Also possible ;)
Brad
01/03/2013
I am having the same issue. I am working with CS6, and each layer once un-parented and re-paranted to layer 1 loses all scale and position info... I can't seem to get it to work.
fahim
11/27/2012
Please send me the fly.wav sound.
Naitian Zhou
11/06/2012
For some reason, I can't switch from rectangular masking to elliptical masking. I am using CS4. I know you click on the little triangle thing, but the selection panel won't pop out. Help?
Ashok
11/06/2012
Really awesome tutorial
Dhruv
10/26/2012
What did you use for the photos shots
alex
10/19/2012
he is a crazy guy how come im gonna be able to create the balloon that's doesn't make any sense well guess what Mr felix i quit learning after effects
Sebastian
10/09/2012
Wich Programm did you use to take this photos? Google Earth won´t let me take some without brandings on it. And FlashEarth images aren´t in 3D.
Andre
09/05/2012
Wow great, like on film! Maybe my computer must take a long-long time to make this....
just
09/03/2012
perfect tutorial
herbert taremwa
09/03/2012
you are the best Mr i give you a high five.
JakeTheDog
07/31/2012
Upgrade to win 7
Comando
07/17/2012
i am trying to finish this effect for a music video, I wanna give up, I just started using AE and it is taking me forever, I still think that I will not be able to finish it. Anyone interested in sharing their effect, will give you credits! We recorded on a roof top in SF, so it needs to be Zoom IN to SF. Thank you so much!
Need Help please
07/16/2012
At 7:54 , he types in the number: .0005 , or 0.0005. When I do this I just get 5. I can go smaller than 1. When I type in 0.0003 for example, I just get 3. Please someone help me!
Joshi
07/19/2012
you need to type a comma, not a point.
Caleb
07/03/2012
Thanks Andrew! I did this and made a moon out of a New Solid with Fractel Noise and made it come past the earth. I also achieved a pretty deacent sound effect by making it with the sound of a missle.
Tim lee
06/21/2012
AWSOMEEEEE I USED THIS METHOD ON A SHORT THAT WAS ENTERED IN FILM FIGHTS!!!
Cyborlite
06/01/2012
So how did yo get Google Map to show the real water surface of SF bay, etc?

When I captured my images they only showed the contours of the ocean's floor. I did a Google search on how to show the water surface and found this: Google in general only acquires imagery of land masses.
Silex
05/22/2012
Because we all have 10,000 miles of fishing string....
bob
05/22/2012
whats the shortcut for the opasity
AZPROVIDEO
06/18/2012
just hit "t" and the opacity settings will open
AZPROVIDEO
06/18/2012
ctrl t
MES99
05/22/2012
AMAZING TUTORIAL!
THX A LOT!
Duke
05/15/2012
i'm have no idea if i want to inverse this method to zoom in from the earth to the specific building.. the last layer turned extremely small.. anyone?
AE_Guy_01556
05/10/2012
One of the best tuts out there. I liked everyone else's try at this, especially the one with the "help" guy but my fav was:

http://vimeo.com/35240205

GREAT work FarmataFilms!
Julien
05/08/2012
Just awesome, I tested it here :

https://vimeo.com/41798021

Really great tutorials! Nice work
Thank you
Bryan Massa
05/05/2012
Huge fan of your instructional videos. You make learning AE fun and interesting. I was wanting to know about where you got these images. I would like o use this for a video that I am working on but I don't want to infringe on anybody's rights or steal anybodies work. Where would I get images like the one you are using?
Abbs
03/30/2012
For those of you, like me, that don't have the exponential option for interpreting key frames to sort the camera zoom out I made an expression that will achieve the same thing.

Cut and paste this into the camera position expression field. You can create a null object and add some sliders for easy control or just set the values of zMin, zMax etc manually.

------------------------------------------------------

// Slider to control the following variables are controlled by sliders placed in a null object.
// Sliders are not required. The variables can be set within the expression.

// zMin is the minimum z value of the camera (closest to the subject).
zMin = thisComp.layer("ZoomControl").effect("Zmin")("Slider")

// This is the maximum extent of the zoom (furthest from the subject).
zMax = 100*thisComp.layer("ZoomControl").effect("Zmax")("Slider");

// The time in the comp at which the zoom starts.
tStart = thisComp.layer("ZoomControl").effect("Zstart")("Slider");

// The duration of the zoom from zMin to zMax,
tEnd = thisComp.layer("ZoomControl").effect("Zoom Duration")("Slider");

// tRel represents the point of time within the zoom
t = time;
tRel = t-tStart;

e = 2.718281;
a = (zMin*Math.pow(e,tEnd) - zMax)/(1-Math.pow(e,tEnd));
b = -1*(zMin+a);

x = value[0];
y = value[1];

if(t<tStart)
{z = -zMin} else

{if(tEnd>tRel)
{z = b*Math.pow(e,tRel)+a} else
{z = -zMax
};
};

[x,y,z];

------------------------------------------------------

Hope this works... it's my first crack at anything like this.
Luxx
06/06/2012
How do I get that camera?
James
03/20/2012
Thanks for the tutorial. Great Job, very easy to follow. One problem I'm having is, I follow your instructions but when I turn all the layers back on the first layer is completely gone. If I see it right as I go back down the layers they seem to get smaller and smaller with black around them. Any suggestions?
Adam
09/17/2012
Same problem here, done it 10 times same every time :(
I know my mate pulled this off from this tut wish makes me suck even harder...
Baufritz
03/11/2012
Can I use footage form Google Earth ?
John
03/15/2012
Use flashearth(dot)com
John
03/15/2012
Use flashearth.com
Jack
03/06/2012
I'm going to do the hot air balloon thing...
Gilberto Balderas
02/06/2012
Wonder if one of the best night clubs in cancun was suppost to use your project files for their 8th anniversary letme know and I share the link
Xorok
01/29/2012
How you can overlap of exposures in the new Version Cs5.5 ?
Paul
01/29/2012
It s so interesting guy I ma so happy for that. I ll try to do it soon
Wilson Dlc
01/20/2012
I think I saw this effect in big bang theory.
Claudio
01/19/2012
I have always wanted to thank you for your tutorials, but I have never dared enroll me and to do it... THANKS!

FermataFilms
01/17/2012
Great Tut

If anyone is interested, you can see my try at this. Please feel free to leave comments.

http://vimeo.com/35240205
FermataFilms
05/10/2012
Thanks, Jackson!

Ah_s, I think it's in the tut, but the images I found had some controls from the site I used. (I forgot which one, but it's like Google Earth), so I just removed those controls from the image.
Jackson
03/10/2012
wow thats good!
Ah_S
02/04/2012
Nice man,but u r sayin that u "cleaned it up in photoshop"
what does that exactly mean?cuz I havent watched the tut yet.It the anser is in the tut ,,then u dont have to answer (u dont have to answer anyway):)))
Sean Vikingsson
01/13/2012
How did you get such a high resolution photo resolution of my country (Ireland).?
valerio
01/05/2012
FLY.WAV

where i can find it ?

Jhabril Harris
12/21/2011
At first with the weather balloon thing I was like "forget get it" then 15 seconds realized you were joking and was like "oh"
Tonc91
12/16/2011
my earthStill.png has a white /grey box around it why is this so?
i did open it in photoshop and removed the background and it still has a grey box around it? can anyone help?
thnx
Gregory Tipton
12/28/2011
I added a elliptical mask, feathered and expanded the edges a bit and voila... an atmosphere!
sally
12/14/2011
that is bnot coo, i
Doo
12/11/2011
-To every person having problems with all the layer disappearing when parenting-

Parent all the layers to the second layer, instead of the first. after effects seems to be bugged and doesn't like how small and insignificant the first layer becomes after all the scaling down. So parent 3-8 to 2 and your problem should be solved. If not, try 4-8 to 3 and so on and so forth. Hope this helps
bluezaza
05/10/2012
awesome! thanks, i was stuck for the longest time
FM
12/08/2011
Hi Andrew,

Thank you for spending your time to offer those awesome tutorials up to the community. Really appreciate listening to you and your detailed instructions – its helping me learn super-fast and I have a giggle along the way listening to you.

Here are some further tips to help folks who have experienced a few problems with scaling and alignment issues. SCALE and PARENTING being the key words here…

I have read almost every post here and find some people experience the same problems I ran into… If you follow the tutorial exactly using Andrews files you won’t experience any difficulties however if you try to use your own high resolution satellite images you may run into alignment and spacing problems if you are not accurate or centrally aligned all the way… so this is what I have done to keep everything in time and as accurate as possible…

1/ Sample your satellite images keeping the target centre aligned in every image – your point of focus eg building, tree, car, house etc (MAKE SURE AS MOVING THE CENTRE 1mm CAN EFFECT THE SCALING DRASTICALLY WHEN YOU SCALE UP LATER ON) – this is crucial otherwise when you sale up your assets will be all over


2/ I sampled images from Google earth using the following guides – You can use Google Earths Earth ALT (Altitude) feature in the lower right hand of the screen:

Photo 1: 200m
Photo 2: 1, 52 km
Photo 3: 7, 47km
Photo 4: 30, 93km
Photo 5: 117, 63km
Photo 6: 856, 81km
Photo 7: 4700,00km
Photo 8: Large earth photo

I made my composition 1920 * 1080 and took several images at the ‘above’ Earth Altitudes in Google Earth to create 7 images 5000 * 3000 pixels as I wanted the best resolution possible and room to move the still images around a little. This was most time consuming as Google Earth uses a mapping system that distorts the images to try to render the altitudes however once you move from one point to another most of the time it is distorted… so lots of tweaking. Once you have these images in the bag following Andrews instructions is very simple… in fact to save time you can swap the images over and make the comp size larger and then just manually adjust the rotation and other layers – keep in mind that you may have to un parent layers while adjusting them.

Hope this helps.


Dhruv
10/26/2012
Which program/website did you use ?
Everyone suggests flash earth which has bad picture quality !
Jarred
12/02/2011
Now I parented all of my footage. But now everything up to the Earth isn't there. What happened?
Josiah Joned
12/01/2011
How do I get the High res pictures of, say, San Antonio, Texas?
nicklas
11/30/2011
please let me know where i can got those high-res pictures?! wanna try it out, but i dont know where to get pictures like that :( another thing , if i dont have the proffesional after effekts, is there any other ways to get the " Exponential look" on the zoom?
Faris Hallaq
11/28/2011
Hey dude how do you get your own images that high res
Usman
11/16/2011
ohh thank GOd he is joking :D
Joel
11/03/2011
I have done everything perfectly up the point where you unparent all the layers, then when I reparent them back to layer 1 and set layer 1 scale to 100%, layer 1 shows up zoomed in, but when I adjust the scale down from 100% the other layers are gone and it's just black? Help! Does this work with .png files? That's the only thing I can think of?
hankshark
02/23/2012
had the same issue. Converted my files to psd and then it worked flawless.
Karre
10/16/2011
Thought that he was serius with the bloon this at first.
Phirana
11/10/2011
LOL ! , thats exactly what I also thought heh
komp master
10/13/2011
Hi Andrew I am your fan and I follow every video that comes out this tutorial on the site we particularly liked and then I decided to do that it looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmykSH0dPLg I hope that you will like and that you leave a comment ....
Drew Palko
10/11/2011
or you could just do it like this: http://vimeo.com/30067977
blesson joy
10/07/2011
very interest in after effcts
alexandru
10/05/2011
Awsome work Andrew, thanks for teaching me AE!!

Does anyone know where I can find HD satelite images as the one in google maps, couse I need to do something like this for a tv station, but need to do it in HD, the thing is that goggle has a quite bad quality. I just took snapshots of the page and edited in photoshop, cause I don't know if you can download from google maps... But if anyone knows other website where I could download HD satelite images to do a shot like this I would most appreciated.

Thank you very much!!
jude
09/29/2011
actually very nice
thanks!!
Fabian
09/24/2011
Hey canyou tell me where you get the sound effects from pls?
Akram
09/28/2011
There's a button above where you can watch the video, and there is another button called: PROJECT FILES. Click on that and it will download everything what Andrew used in his tutorial.
Sam
09/27/2011
You need to buy the designer sound fx from Video Pilot
Andy G
09/21/2011
Wow... thanks for the tutorial. This will work great for a segment of my logo. You are definitely the king of of explaining stuff with this stuff.
Good work!
solomno cletus
09/13/2011
pls, i'm findin it difficult to buy stuff in videocopilot.i don't wats going on.....code isn't working.
ridampowar
09/03/2011
to good
Simsima
09/01/2011
That's exactly what I want !! Thnx Tooo Much ^.^
Space Ace
08/31/2011
Just wanted to say HUGE THANK YOU to you Andrew! You are a After Effects god and the reason I've learned (and continue to learn) to use this wonderful program. Please keep doing what you do and all the success for you man, you deserve it!! Thanks again for all the great work!
chandu
08/21/2011
hi.,its too very advance tutorial, this video for freshers & experts use for create new project
Rapha Taylor
08/20/2011
wow. That was incredible to watch, Andrew is VERY talented.
charlie
08/18/2011
i did this ages ago and worked fine but im now onto another video with the same effect, but this time when i use the elipse tool and feather them all to 250 and expansion to -250 the whole thing just gets completly blured during the zoom out effect
anyone know why this could be?
Jahim jean-noel
08/17/2011
i can't seem to find a place where i can download some high res picture....this effect is just to cool there are so many things that could be done with it....please help
Tyson
10/04/2011
I'm tryin to find the same thing. Anyone know?
Kati Anguelov
08/16/2011
Andrew, you are the God of After Effects!!! Thank you so much!
Kati
Sphere911
08/16/2011
When i parent alle layers to the first one and go to scale 1% it wont go back to the last one.... why not?
waledsharqawi
08/15/2011
You are crazy and I want to not know you
Password
08/05/2011
who owns a wheather ballon and who would send it to space.
Pirhana
08/01/2011
If we didn't have AE pro version it's over . . .
mabrad
07/12/2011
thanx
dood AL KHAL
chaitanya
07/04/2011
Your tutorial was awesome it was like a treasure for noobies like me...one problem with me is that that images u placed how to get them
SedComet(GdsProductions,sub if you like)
07/02/2011
Haha...I love the tottaly stupid ways to do the effect alternate in almost every tutorial start...very creative :P
Riley
06/30/2011
Can anyone help me? I have followed this tutorial exactly, and when I add new layers to the closest one, they get blurry. Do I have to use Photoshop files or can I use JPGs?
Brock
07/04/2011
Would tht be Mask Layers?
TURGUT
06/29/2011
wow. very good tutorial. Thanks
ZioBilly
06/28/2011
where can i find high quality satellite images?
Gustavo
07/01/2011
try bing maps!!! they are awesome!!!
paquiton96
06/25/2011
when i try to buffer it, ae shows me an error and then it says me to save changes the program closes.
vockica
06/23/2011
i am sure that is After Effects 7.0 i recognised it by icon in tab
macfreez
06/21/2011
I tried the weather ballon merhod 2, if NASA would be so kind to bring my camera back... pleas... n.n
Ed
06/20/2011
way too complicated for me. can you just make the video open source? lol
NOOB_TO_PRO
06/20/2011
I tried the weather ballon method and....
it failed :(
McKenzie Warren
06/23/2011
HAHA!!! :) That's awesome.
Esther
06/20/2011
I don't know why, but I can't seee
Austin
06/18/2011
at 4:50
There isn't "Layer 7" D:.
chun
06/18/2011
i am also experiencing the same issue. I'm no stranger to After Effects, but I'm completely stuck here. When I get to the step around 6:25 when all of the layers are parented to Layer 1, everything disappears.
Jason
09/01/2011
damn!it is not working,
I've been working on it for almost two hours,
but the problem's still here!!
fiesta
08/17/2011
I got it,
instead of parent everything to the first layer, leave them as they are one to next. turn of visibility of all layers then scale up last one (use numbers or the square) and fix center manually,
is not as fast an confortable as andrews way,... but it works
Joe
07/20/2011
This is happening to me too. I ran through this tutorial before and it worked fine but I wasn't running CS5. I really think something may have changed in CS5. Any thoughts?
Morgan
06/21/2011
Probably the size of your images is to low. So if you set your highest zoomlevel in relation to your lowest it ends up that the highest zoomlevel is <1px which can't be operated by After Effects
Tom
06/13/2011
Can you please tell me what version of After Effects is this?
Chris
02/04/2012
It's impossible for this to be CS5 since it was made in 2007. CS3 was just released so it could be that but my bet is on AE7 since that's what he uses in most other videos around this time.
Johan
06/22/2011
I think it's version cs3 on Windows XP (with window header color set to silver)
Devin
06/17/2011
actually its cs5, i'm pretty sure, dont let it fool you though, it only looks like that because he is using windows 2000/some older version of windows
Alex
06/16/2011
I believe he is using after effects cs3 or cs4
Brad
06/10/2011
Works like a charm! Thanks for the walkthrough.
Rob Cartwright
06/01/2011
Hi Andrew!

First of all, fantastic work! I've seen this comment a few times on this thread and I am also experiencing the same issue. I'm no stranger to After Effects, but I'm completely stuck here. When I get to the step around 6:25 when all of the layers are parented to Layer 1, everything disappears.

I can scale Layer 1 to 100% to see it; but when I zoom out, all the other layers are missing.

I would really appreciate your insight if you can think of what's going on. I'm working on something for a company and broadly using this tutorial.

Thanks.
John
06/18/2011
This exact thing is happening to me right now. I followed the steps exactly.
chunqin
06/18/2011
i have the same issue too
could you help me out?
chunqin
06/18/2011
i have the same issue too
could you help me out?
Felix
06/01/2011
Hi!
I'm just wondering what the the name of the sound from the designer sound FX that you are using?
Thanks for a great tutorial!
S.mahmood
05/31/2011
hi dear Andrew Kramer i always follow you're tutorials and i thank you for tutorials
i am very interested with your tutorials specially
for VFX thanks...................................!
carlos
05/23/2011
where do you get footage or images to practice on and eventually use for videos that you can show or use for school projects? I'm a new video student and have not used after effect before, what do you recomend?
Phaniraj
05/18/2011
HI, My name is Phaniraj, I've made my own pictures of the world, Starting from My place which was located in INDIA, I Did every step that you have told in your tutorial,but when i unlink them all from each other and then link them to the first picture all of them disappear except for the first one. What did I do wrong?
CamMcP
05/18/2011
If your wondering how to reverse the zoom out so that it zooms in all you have to do is select all the layers then go to Layer> Time> Time-Reverse Layer. Do this at the end.
Ant
05/05/2011
How can i do this in reverse (i.e zoom in). Also where can i get this kind of high res picture other than google earth?
Lights
05/11/2011
Invert the footage maybe?
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