Butterfly animation in After Effects

Aetuts+ has a sneak peek of a new video tutorial, Create An Astonishing Butterfly Animation, in their pay library, which you can take for a spin for a month for more.



Tutorials for creating and animating just one 3D butterfly in AE include the Animating a Butterfly text by Marek Doszla (with expressions and time remapping) and a 2-part video tutorial by J. Shuh at Layers magazine, Animated Butterfly in After Effects.

Michael Pollan on 'Food Rules'

On Monday, Democracy Now hosted Michael Pollan on Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,

'the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, discusses the link between healthcare and diet, the dangers of processed foods, the power of the meat industry lobby, the “nutritional-industrial complex,” the impact industrial agriculture has on global warming, and his sixty-four rules for eating. “The markets are full of what I call edible food-like substances that you have to avoid,” says Michael Pollan. “So a lot of the rules are to help you, you know, navigate that now very treacherous landscape of the American supermarket.” Today we air an excerpt of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. and then spend the rest of the show with Michael Pollan.'

The interview starts near 9:30.

Adding motion blur to video or 3D renders

In a way similar vein as creating slow motion with still frames using AE Time Warp or RE:Vision Effects Twixtor Pro (as shown by Eran Stern recently), you can add motion blur to video or 3D renders with AE's CC Force Motion Blur or Time Warp filters or with ReelSmart Motion Blur. Both of the latter 2 filters use motion estimation for better results, as noted in After Effects Help:

"To achieve a result similar to the result of ReelSmart Motion Blur, apply the Timewarp effect, set Speed to 100, enable motion blur within the effect, and use the manual shutter control features to adjust the motion blur."

Aharon Rabinowitz has posted a demo of this in the new Quick Tip: Adding Motion Blur Into Your Video; he previously showed a method using CC Force Motion Blur.



For another demo, Motionworks recently posted a video tutorial by Grischa Theissen on using ReelSmart Motion Blur on footage created in Cinema 4D. See AE Help for more info and resources on motion blur in general.

3D smoke trails with Particular and Optical Flares

In a new tutorial from Vieo Copilot, Smoke Trails, Andrew Kramer uses Trapcode Particular and a single smoke picture to create smoke trails with 3D turbulence in After Effects. Andrew also add bright lights with Video Copilot's hot new filter Optical Flares.

Create 3D coin & animate stacking in After Effects

MaxAfter has a tutorial and project that creates 3D coins in After Effects and animates stacking them on top of each other.

Loop AE layers with one click

The Loopmaker is a new script at AE Scripts that "loops any layers, footage or comps with one click. The script will loop any amount of selected layers from the furthest in-point and the last out-point by pre-composing and doing a dissolving loop. It will then apply an expression to the looped comp so that it can be stretched infinitely from either the in or the out-point. There is an option to use the Blend effect instead of using opacity to make the dissolve."

AE Help shows a few other ways to loop footage and other items; other resources include the script pt_AutoExpress and a tutorial from Motionworks: Looping a Precomp.

Create3DShapes: improved After Effects script

AE Scripts has a new version of Create3DShapes that allows you to distribute layers as a box, sphere, cylinder, pyramid, or ellipsoid (e.g. rugby ball, with controllable x,y,z-radius) -- as well as a MengerSponge (pictured) and 3DFallingDominoes. This version has a gain in speed using precomputed arrangements and can create a giant sphere with up to 1000 layers in seconds.

AE expressions and interpolation methods

Chris and Trish Meyer posted the 2nd of a 12-part series, Deeper Modes of Expression, based on an extra in their book, Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects. The second installment is Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 2: Interpolation Methods Chris Meyer (replacement for a calculator).

Sneak peek: Future Photoshop masking technology

John Nack has a Sneak peek: Future Photoshop masking technology, which shows off some new selection technology that offers better edge detection and masking results in less time--even with tricky images like hair.

Some related stuff was mentioned by Chris & Trish Meyer yesterday, and by various authors (including an AEP sampling) last year when SIGGRAPH 2009 papers & projects went online.

Motion graphics created with programming

Smashing Magazine has a nice feature on Beautiful Motion Graphics Created With Programming : Showcase, Tools and Tutorials.

Video of San Francisco Final Cut SuperMeet

Via The Editblog, there's Live feed of San Francisco Final Cut SuperMeet mentioned here last week. Update: the recording is available too.

Live TV : Ustream

Adobe Repoussé & more from Adobe Community Summit

Noted previously only from rumors, Chris and Trish Meyer report from inside Adobe’s head, at least the kosher parts, from the recent Adobe Community Leaders Summit.

The overview discusses several things known about After Effects and video in CS5: 64-bit OS and 64-bit plug-ins required, Adobe Mercury Playback Engine, Adobe Story and metadata, Flash Catalyst, but also something new -- Adobe Repoussé and maybe other already sneak-peeked technologies that seem destined for Photoshop.

Visual Language for Designers

Vizworld noted a review by Jessica Palmer at Bioephemera of the book Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand by Connie Malamed.

See also Malamud's blog, an extension of the book, Understanding Graphics — Design For The Human Mind.

Better control of Particle World

Adam Everett Miller from AE Tuts shows how to attach the particle emitter (producer) in AE's built-in CC Particle World filter to a null for additional control, if you don't have the Trapcode Particular plug-in.

You also may want to look at various tutorials by Video Copilot (here's a free After Effects project) since information on PW is a bit thin at Adobe and Cycore.

To see more of what Particle World can do, download the CycoreFX Particle World Demo. It's a poor man's version of Brian Maffitt's old demo in that you have to render each comp separately and read along with the PDF. Cycore also offers a project that shows how to link After Effects 3D coordinates to Particle World 3D coordinates using expressions.

Imagineer mocha workflow tips for newer users

Martin Brennand of Imagineer Systems covers "the top 5 most useful workflow tips for products: mocha, mocha for After Effects and mocha for Final Cut. Recommended for new users! Feel free to ask further questions in the comments!"

mocha - Top 5 workflow tips from Ross Shain on Vimeo.

Add Lux to AE Lights (without Lux)

Satya Meka has a new quick tip at AE Tuts, Add Lux To Your Lights (Without Lux):

Here is another QuickTip for those of you who still haven't procured the amazing Trapcode Suite. Though we advise you get the plug-in yourself, here is a handy little tip to to help generate the look of Trapcode Lux.

Both of the fancy AE Lens Flare filters, Optical Flare and Light Factory, have similar control built-in now. Satya also wrote up some background: Pseudo-Volumetric Point Lights; Magic Behind Trapcode Lux.



In addition see a 2007 AEP post, Volumetric lighting with expressions, on a tutorial and the finished script from Peter Torpey on how to create volumetric lighting using expressions (it even responds to camera movement). Chris Meyer had some related general After Effects advice in 'Light Transmission' and 'Natural Light Effects'.

Free BCC Comet plug-in

Boris FX is offering a free plug-in from Boris Continuum Complete 6, BCC Comet, which auto-animates the BCC Particle System filter to create streaking comets that move in 3D space. For a peek at the filter at work, see the Boris video tutorial, Using the BCC Comet Filter in Adobe After Effects.

Note: the free Comet filter is available for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Final Cut Express.

After Effects Exporter for Blender

Paolo Ciccone has released a Blender Python program After Effects Exporter for Blender (AEE). Blender is a free open source 3D content creation suite available for all major operating systems. AEE "integrates in the File/Export menu of Blender and it allows you to export an entire animation from Blender to After Effects. You can export the camera, lights, 3D meshes, planes, which will create corresponding After Effects 3D solids, and footage. The Exporter even supports multiple passes."

He also has a 20-minute video tutorial on how to use AEE at Creative Cow, along with the projects files and other docs.

Unplugged 20: FXGuide's John Montgomery

Motionworks' Unplugged 20 features an interview with FXGuide co-founder John Montgomery:

"John Montgomery dreamt of working in film and television from a very early age. For the past 3 decades John has lived that dream, honing his craft as a visual effects artist on high-end systems such as Flame and Smoke. In this candid interview John reveals how he got started in the industry, and came to be co-founder of FXGuide and FXPhd. We discuss the relevance of high-end systems compared with desktop software such as Adobe After Effects, and talk in detail about FXPhd and what makes it different from other web-based visual effects training."

Edit & style AE text layers all at once

There's another new After Effects script on AEScripts.com for manipulating text layers, pt_TextEdit by Paul Tuersley, which lets you search for and edit text layers in an AE project and create & apply text style presets on multiple layers with the click of a few buttons. Paul has provided a nice video walkthrough for this script that's embedded below.

Also, check out the other recent AE text scripts, DecomposeText (to separate words and lines) and Generate AE text layers and distribute in 3D on 3D Text Creator.

Update: also added is TextReverser, which "reverses the direction of selected text layer... a common task required when entering RightToLeft languages." In one demo it seemed to work on Arabic text pasted in from a web page!

CS Next: "PS and AI will be great"

It looks like Adobe should give Apple's reality distortion field a closer look after some of the Twitters coming out of a recent secret Adobe video powwow. After being treated with "news" of 64-bit apps and the Mercury Playback Engine for 3rd party graphics, one Twitter, via ReTweets by oddernod and toe_fur, added, "Back from Adobe. Finally can tell you that the next version of AE is a WEAK upgrade. But PS and AI will be GREAT :("

Only time will tell, but this sorta makes sense and at least one other agrees. If new features for CS4 were meager in that porting effort for Intel Mac, then we might expect not much different for a 64-bit port to both platforms during a very down economy.

There was also a nice long thread on various related matters on FinalCutPro-L, What's Adobe up to.... . It's good for Adobe that Autodesk, The Foundry, and others don't have the interest or channel muscle to mount a challenge like ones that seem to be brewing for Flash that will hopefully restart CS refinement & innovation once the platform adjustments are finished.

Update: it's not just a marketing message problem, as even friendly comments to posts by John Nack and Kevin Lynch clearly show.

Update 2: Adobe is better than Apple at conversation though; see Lynch's response to comments on Flash performance at Adobe CTO talks Flash performance on Macs, more.

Update 3: there's a more sober report of the summit noted in Adobe Repoussé & more from Adobe Community Summit.

Update 4: Adobe has a few Notes on Flash Player stability & the future and some related posts by John Dowdell.

The basics of web video quality

Jan Ozer posted a video of his basic session on improving web video quality from Streaming Media West:

Separate RGB: now PB & native AE plug-in

Separate RGB by Satya Meka is now a 'package of a native After Effects plug-in as well as a Flash compatible Pixel Bender plug-in that allows you to move, rotate, scale, blur, blend, and fade the RGB channels independently. You can use this plug-in to create the popular “Chromatic Aberration” effect seen in this tutorial.'

See also previous AE Portal posts on this effect for background and other options and tutorials -- New Pixel Bender plug-in: Separate RGB and AE Scripts adds plug-ins to the mix.

Volumetric Clouds in After Effects?

Quba HQ saya he's working on a project but can't explain the details yet in Volumetric Clouds in After Effects? Yes We Can!

One way to do that in After Effects was mentioned by Brian Maffitt on an old Total Training tape. He demoed making a 3D volume of a human from scanned slices of some poor guy and said one might do the same with renders some Fractal Noise or similar as offset 3D layers.

There's probably a variety of additional techniques found through some searching; one option might be to use the AE filter Aurora Sky: "Taking advantage of the new 3D capabilities of After Effects, Aurora Sky lets you use texture and cloud shaping maps to create an infinite variety of skyscapes... [it]... works in 3D space, both its own and After Effect’s. The built-in camera can fly throughout the vast world within the plug-in, using all the standard axis controls."

Greyscale Gorilla interviews Peder Norrby of Trapcode

"Nick Vegas" aka Greyscale Gorilla interviews Peder Norrby of Trapcode. See also his talk Nick Campbell of Greyscale Speaks at Hyper Island, Sweden:

PederInterview from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

Photoshop text as 3D volume in AE

Corey Barker has an interesting Photoshop Extended example of 3D text as a volumetric solid ala Superman titles at Planet Photoshop. In a square file, he duplicates a text layer and turns them into a 3D volume using 3D > New Volume from Layers. The chunk of light imports into After Effects fine but you have to make the layer 3D (not just the Controller) for it to accept Lights. You also might animate the Camera and the Z-scale of the Controller layer.

Chad Perkins showed various CS4 methods of Converting from 2D to 3D and did something similar with DICOM images.



PS 3D in AE can be a bit wonky, and options include mass Z-space manipulations or the use of Trapcode 3D Stroke (see lightcycle.mov), or the 2d Echo filter built into AE as sketched by Chad Castleberry on YouTube (drawn out in a Vimeo revision):

The Apple iPad, filmmakers, & other creatives

While the Apple iPad is disappointing to many (on DRM, Flash, etc.), potential uses are also imagined. Here's a few articles looking at possible impacts:

• Make Movies With Apple iPad at Prolost
  
• FreshDV's 7 Ways the Apple iPad will affect Filmmakers and Creatives by Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo of The DSLR Cinematography Guide.
• Videoguys' iPad Wish List for Videographers
• What does iPad mean for designers? at creativebits.org
• Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations by DaringFireBall
  
• Apple’s iPad - All the Details, What It Means For Us at PVC
  
• What the Apple iPad Will Mean for Movies at Making the Movie

Update: Video examples of publishing models were collected in a previous AEP post, Video in magazines of the future + Apple's Tabula Rasa.

And it had to happen (for more on the phenomena see AEP's There there. I hear he only shoots JPEG.)...

Extreme slow motion using still frames in AE

In Slow Motion Stills, Eran Stern shows you an ingenious technique to create a video with extreme slow motion using just a few still frames (eek) with Twixtor Pro from RE:Vision Effects.

You should be able to do the same thing with built-in tools in After Effects, although in some cases Twixtor's Object Separation and Spline Guidance controls may be missed.

Mobile video of the Apple iPad

Leo Laporte's mobile video of the Flash-less Apple iPad is up already, and coming live and/or in pieces at Qik, http://qik.com/twit. For more on Qik and related info, see Live video from iPhone... There’s now apps for that.

Update: Everyone is broadcasting pieces. CNN Live -- in delay! -- is working big and has good quality. Also, Twit.tv is up and down but big, but there's also nickarodriguez mobile on Qik.

Finally, Apple has the event recording posted.

But wait, there's more:

Jim Feeley adds "engadget's coverage of the iPad announcement is much much better than that of either the New York Times or Macworld. It's a new era... jasondiamond: MCGrawHill CEO must be at the bottom of a lake in cement iShoes by now. #iPad #Leak

5tu: If nothing else, I think the #iPad would make a terrific control surface for Magic Bullet Looks. Videoguys: iPad - can we attach it to a 5D as field monitor? Or use 3G/wifi to enter metadata and clip info as we record?

Reactions to HTML 5 implementations

There was a flourish of stories on the unfinished spec HTML5 or HTTP video last summer that were noted here: HTTP video: reports on Firefox and Apple and Codec Wars 2009. Now that YouTube and Vimeo have started to implement, there's been some reaction from the Flash camp and from Open Source advocates.

Check out Adobe Photoshopper John Nack's Sympathy for the Devil (via John Dowdell) and Mozilla's Chris Blizzard Blasts HTML5 Efforts at YouTube and Vimeo from Beet.TV, which notes that the new HTML5 experiments do not work in the Firefox 3.6. Beet also notes Blizzard's observation that the initiatives are not really open source or free ($5 million/yr) since they use the proprietary H.264 codec, as well essential context provided by Stephen Shankland at CNET.

See also Google talks Chrome OS, HTML5, and the future of software at ArsTechnica and Apple Event to Focus on Reinventing Content, Not Tablets at Wired. Here's Beet with Chris Blizzard from last summer on open source video at Mozilla and the implementation of HTML5 in Firefox:


Update: CDM looks at some of the wrinkles in HTML5 and a Brave, Flash-Free, Open World? Uh… Not So Fast.

San Francisco FCP SuperMeet: 100 tickets left

The Final Cut Pro user groups are holding their annual party a a few days earlier than Macworld this year. The 9th Annual San Francisco SuperMeet is only 11 days away and will once again be held at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center on Friday, February 5, 2010.

There are less than 100 tickets left according to the organizers.

Here are the highlights so far:

• Free workshops sponsored by Adobe, Autodesk, Canon, and Red Giant.
• A vendor area, SuperMeet Digital Showcase opening 3:30 pm, with 35 software and hardware developers including AJA, Autodesk, Canon, Avid, Blackmagic Design Footagehead, G-Tech, Matrox, Maxon, Noise Industries, Red Giant, and others.
• Free food beginning at 5 pm and cash bars available.
• The spectacle of the World Famous Raffle -- prizes include a Canon EOS 5D Mark II HDSLR, AJA KiPro, NLE software, plug-ins, and more valued over $40,000.
• Smoke on Mac OS X
• AJA KiPro
• Music video "Destroy Me" - Jordan Livingston
• The New Speed Tools in FCP - Kevin Monahan
• Best Workflow for Canon File-Based Cameras - Joe Bogacz
• Motion 4 Does 3D - Mark Spencer
• Hand Held Hollywood - Taz Goldstein
• The Idea behind IDEO's LivingClimateChange - Matt Silverman

Our Invitation To You from IDEO on Vimeo.

Movie Maker magazine's 50 Best Blogs

Movie Maker magazine posted their list of 50 Best Blogs for Moviemakers. You'll have to be a subscriber or go to a newsstand for the full article:


• Adventures in Self-Releasing
• All About Indie Filmmaking
• All These Wonderful Things
• The Anonymous Production Assistant’s Blog
• The Art of the Title Sequence
• Ben’s Blog
• The Big Picture
• Blog Stage
• Bright Lights After Dark
• Cinema Tech
• Cinematical
• The Documentary Blog
• The Edit Foundry
• The Editblog
• Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts
• Film Dailies
• Film School Rejects
• The Film Sensei
• Filmmaker Blog
• Filmmaking Stuff
• FilmSound.org
• FreshDV
• GreenCine Daily
• Hammer to Nail
• HD for Indies
• Hollywood Elsewhere
• The House Next Door
• In Contention
• The Independent Eye
• JohnAugust.com
• The Joy of Film Editing
• Just F*ing Entertain Me
• Living Your Dream: An Acting & Film School Blog
• Making the Movie
• A Moon Brothers Film
• The Movie Blog
• MovingPictureBlog
• OnSuper8.org
• Persistence of Vision
• Projector Films
• /Film
• Some Came Running
• StudioDaily
• Thompson on Hollywood
• Totally Unauthorized
• Travel Day
• Truly Free Film
• Twitch
• The Unknown Screenwriter
• Workbook Project

Optical Flares: a new After Effects filter

Video Copilot's new After Effects filter Optical Flares is now available.

It's a deep filter with a low price, and includes a good number of demos and advanced tutorials, plus access to the Video Copilot Preset Network for sharing lens flare presets. There should be more on this filter here later. Here's the overview; there's 14 more at Video Copilot:

Create a turbo-charged slideshow in After Effects

Lloyd Alvarez is back with a tutorial at AE Tuts, Create A Rockin’ Automated Slideshow, made easy with Lloyd's After Effects scripts Audio2Markers, PhotoOrientationFixer, and Fit2Frame. Be sure to watch the entire clip:

"We've all been faced with this dilemma... You return from vacation with 2000 photos and dread having to edit them, especially since every photo is a prized capture that the world HAS to see. This is where the Turbo Slideshow comes in. With the aid of a couple of scripts, you can have all 2000 synced to music in a matter of minutes... and speaking of a matter of minutes... that is all it will take to see all the photos! It's a win win situation for everyone."

Animated Cartoon Arrows

In a new After Effects tutorial, Animated Cartoon Arrows, Brad Chmielewski shows you how to use Trapcode 3D Stroke to create the arrows and lines he did in the Animate Objects music video ''El Dorado."

Animated Cartoon Arrows from Brad Chmielewski on Vimeo.