via @hashae, Quba Michalski has a new free After Effects tutorial (+preset & project), SplatterType:
"that will allow you to create amazing ink and paint splatter animations with just a few clicks. Much like my Alphabet Soup tutorial, SplatterType relies only on After Effects text animators and does not require any additional plugins (3rd or even 1st party). Robust set of controls make it highly customizable, while the expressions work in the background to do all the hard work for you."
I had to do a double-take on Quba's post dated April 1st, but he's in Istanbul.
There was a question on the After Effects-List about how to go from liquid to your original image using the built-in CC Mr Mercury filter. Here are a few of the responses:
Either create a fully covering blast of particles and fade to original or use Blobbylize instead, with Particle Systems II or such and fade in a solid alpha [from Jens @ Cycore]
try precomposing your sequence and then just reverse your precomped animation.
if you animate the blob birth and death sizes from small to well past the slider range of 2 to something like 5.4 for death size, the blobs go to form the original image.
Motion Theory social media outreach mentioned their work on March Madness ad spots that feature digital head replacement (for John Wooden) and a nice touch of a tilt-shift like effect to create miniatures (below).
"an open, collaborative site aims at establishing standards of practice for employers and employees in the motion design industry, including freelance animators, designers, art directors, and visual effects artists.The site's goals include:
creating an organized repository of best practices for motion design employers and employees.
providing practical tips for freelancers and contract artists.
establishing and discussing ethical and professional standards for the motion design industry."
Lester Banks posted a cool technique from "The Great Zimm" on Vimeo. Untested here, it uses Pixel Motion on a short still sequence in After Effects, which yields some easy motion-estimated morphing time-remapping that was pretty smooth in the later examples that had very little motion. If things don't work the way you want, you may find more control using the Timewarp filter (Chris Meyer says you can check out additional details on this filter in The Foundry's Kronos documentation).
This recalls a recent method shown by Eran Stern that created a video with extreme slow motion using just a few still frames with Twixtor; see Extreme slow motion using still frames in AE. [update: Later in RE:Flex Still-to-Still Morphs in AE, Lori Freitag covers the basics of morphing between still images within After Effects using the RE:Flex Morph plug-in.]
Update: This technique might also be applied to smooth over jump cuts.
As noted in Morph to smooth a jump cut, Wes Plate uses RE:Flex (Motion Morph) to do this. Seamless smoothing over jump cuts can be quite complicated and may require animating and tracking masks of facial features (eyes as they blink, mouth, dimples, brow wrinkles, nostrils) as well as hair & clothing for the better part of a second on each side of an edit to guide the morph. There's actually a transition for this in Avid, Illusion FX> Fluid Morph, can work in some cases.
It's so over, making this post a bit repetitive, but hey...
Conditions can be tough for people working in advertising and visual effects as economic and technological pressures realign the industries. A flurry of stories last month (see FX industry troubles: Lee Stranahan, Scott Ross + editing), culminated in a VFX TownHall meeting last night.
Update: via @alba #vfxtownhall sprouting corridors in every direction [Wednesday] tonight 7:30pm PST @dorkmanscott doing panel @ http://downinfront.net/vfx/ via @neonmarg
Update 2: Scott Squires, with VFX experience ranging from Close Encounters to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, posted VFX TownHall Meeting thoughts [and later added more].
Video Copilot posted a new After Effects tutorial using CC Pixel Polly, (ships with AE), Shatterize:
"In this tutorial we will be creating a progressive shatter effect using the Pixel Poly plug-in and some simple expressions. This 20 minute tutorial is an expansion to the 3D Ball Dispersion technique for offsetting animated layers, to achieve a unique burn-away look."
We'll have to wait at least until after April 12 to see if some brave soul will test both the Apple and Adobe suites. Of course, stability and features are another matter.
AE Scripts has another script for text manipulation in After Effects, ArabicText, by Salahuddin Taha. Arabic, Hebrew, and other texts are written from right to left, but AE flows letters from left to right in the Composition panel (oddly, the Layer Name stays correct).
TextReverser, from LLoyd Alvarez fixes the flow when the letters are standalone, but broke the letter back into individuals. Arabic is cursive and has medial letterforms, and needed another approach.
Update: There's now an Animation Preset, Typewriter-RTL, that "only works with 2 keyframes that reveal the text from beginning to end."
Kronos is for "hard core retiming" -- leveraging GPU and built on a newer foundation than the Timewarp version in AE CS4 -- and CameraTracker for 3D matchmoving (from ? Nuke X) directly inside After Effects.
Update: commenter Jason Lee Peacock posted modified code of Dan Ebberts and Sine Sphere by Quba Michalski, which recalls past things done by Brian Maffitt with CC Sphere or now with CFX Sphere Utilities.
Another Photoshop CS5 sneak peek was given at Photoshop World 2010 in Orlando last week, including examples of Content Aware Fill and Auto Lens Correction. A Youtube was posted by Photography Bay (via), plus an older one by Russell Brown:
"Michael Coleman is the product manager for Adobe After Effects. In this interview, Michael discusses his background and how he juggled a university major in economics and a career in graphic and motion design. We also discuss the evolution of Adobe After Effects, and with the soon-to-be-released CS5 version of After Effects being 64-bit, Michael explains in detail, exactly what that means, and why it’s important."
Andrew Murchie of Enhanced Dimensions has added another section aimed at After Effects users to the Stereoscopic 3D downloads section of the site, including support files for various S3D tutorials plus AE 3D scenes or objects free for use in non-commercial videos.
Update: 5tu tweeted about a more reasonably-priced iPhone stereo 3D calculator app than RealD Pro Stereo 3D Calc -- IOD calc, which calculates the inter-ocular distance needed for each camera setup based on measurements from set.
Also, Toolfarm noted a Cineform tutorial on Muxing 2D CineForm clips for 3D "for those getting started with 3D. This explains how to take separate Left and Right eye CineForm AVI or MOVs and multiplex them into a single CineForm 3D clip."
Here are some other bits not mentioned earlier, topped by a few posts from Todd Kopriva. Todd reminds us that if "you're thinking about making the move from After Effects CS3 to After Effects CS5, don't forget about this other great stuff that comes along" from CS4. He also said that on April 12 that he'd "be publishing the entire After Effects CS5 Help document, which will include detailed information about all of the new and changed features. I'll also be accumulating links to other people's feature summaries, reviews, and such on this blog."
Todd also says that "64-bit Windows 7, 64-bit Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.5 or higher are the operating systems that After Effects CS5 will run on. ...The design of Mac OS separated the kernel address space from the client (application) address space, which is why Apple can fully support running a 64-bit program on a 32-bit kernel. On Leopard, this is the only option; and it's the default on Snow Leopard." If you're getting a new computer, it might be good to invest in an approved CUDA graphics card that works with the Mercury Engine in Premiere (GeForce GTX 285 is the cheapest), especially if you use DSLR or RED video sources according to Karl Soule.
There's more:
The Sneak peek of Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop on John Nack's blog made a big splash this week, and if this is in CS5 it'll be a big upgrade. This technology seems similar to Patchmatch and Multi-operator Media Retargeting videos that circulated earlier.
from PVC: "The Adobe User Research team is conducting a series of usability studies at NAB in Las Vegas from April 12 to 14. If you plan to go to Las Vegas for the 2010 NAB show and are interested in participating in our usability study, please take a few minutes to respond to the online survey. In order to participate in this usability study, it is not necessary for you to be currently using Adobe’s creative software."
motion graphics eXchange noted an After Effects tutorial on how to create a believable sunrise matte painting by CGSwat, the Switch Accepts Lights/Shadows Script, and an expression for random rotation in specific angles.
Spacescape is an Open Source tool for Windows that creates space skyboxes with stars and nebulas (via Lester Banks again). It seems like a decent idea for an After Effects filter.
The Red Giant QuickTip series continues with video #4- Adjustment Lights, in which Harry Frank shows you how to manage lights for Trapcode Particular and Lux, lighting other 3D layers and preventing emitter lights from effecting them.
The Foundry’s plug-in team is planning to demonstrate two brand new plug-ins for After Effects at NAB. Jim Geduldick (@Filmbot) of AENY will demonstrating them at the Foundry stand. There will also be FurnaceCore on Avid DS demonstrations at the Avid booth.
Update: Todd Kopriva reminds us that if "you're thinking about making the move from After Effects CS3 to After Effects CS5, don't forget about this other great stuff that comes along" from CS4.
With Magic Bullet PhotoLooks you get the same easy-to-use interface with the Quick Drawer preset library and the editable graphic image-processing chain as you do with Magic Bullet Looks in After Effects.
[Later, Jack Tunnicliffe added "More importantly you can load a huge image into PS that will fail in AE" and then designer Stu Maschwitz explained why.]
Beside the advanced UI, which is like a the parent to the Video Copilot Optical Flares interface, you can work in the standalone version and also share work with the other products. Here's Red Giant Quick Tip #2 - Sharing Looks Between Apps with Aharon Rabinowitz showing you how to share your Look presets among Photoshop, After Effects, and Final Cut Pro.
Olivers Peters has results of his casual testing of Grading with Color Wheels in a variety of apps including Avid, Apple Color, Aperture, Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Color Finesse. There's plenty in this article which may pique your curiosity to compare further. Oliver was interested in:
"how each treated the image when you used the color wheels. After I did a quick test, it was obvious that FCP and Avid don’t process the image in quite the same way, even when you push what appears to be the equivalent control in the same direction. So I decided to dig a bit deeper. [snip]
In my opinion, Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse produced the most pleasing results out of all of these video images. A version of Color Finesse is also available as a standalone grading application, which uses a similar workflow to Apple Color. In any case, it’s right inside Adobe After Effects [it ships on the install disc], though many editors aren’t even aware of the power they already own if they have the CS3 or CS4 bundle!"
"A second beta of Lightroom 3 due Monday will get the ability to import and manage videos, according to what looks like a legitimate if prematurely posted Adobe news release at Digital Photography Now.
Adobe didn't respond to requests for comment. But according to the release, these features also look to be in the new version [of the publicthe beta]:
• Tethered shooting, a feature professionals like that lets photos be sent directly from the camera to a computer as they're shot. It works with Canon and Nikon cameras. • A second crack at a reworked import process--a change from Lightroom 2 that forum commenters seemed either to loathe or like. Images also import and load faster. • Fleshed-out noise reduction that's central to the Lightroom 3 promise of better image quality: instead of just offering chrominance noise reduction that deals with color variation, the new beta adds luminance noise reduction that deals with brightness variation."
In an almost eerie quiet in the weeks before NAB and an anticipated announcement by Adobe (org + brand + buzz), there were still noteworthy blips on the radar not mentioned here recently. Here's a few:
Motion Graphics Exchange has several entries from time remapping and animation projects to an After Effects tutorial on creating a cloudy, moonlit night scene
AETuts has tracking + Sinedots tutorials, sites for royalty-free music and sound effects (see also the list by Blake Whitman from 2 months ago), and more.
Via @daleBradshaw is Four Ways to Mix Fonts from Ask H&FJ, which at base says "keep one thing consistent, and let one thing vary" before explaining their 4 approaches:
Use a palette with wit -- use typefaces with complimentary moods to evoke an energetic air
Use a palette with energy -- mix typefaces from the same historical period whose families have different features
Use a palette with poise -- mix typefaces with similar line quality if they offer different textures
Use a palette with dignity -- mix typefaces with similar proportions and give each a different role
AEScripts tweeted about a "cool generative graphics spot for IBM by Motion Theory." There more on these spots at Motion Theory and Motionographer, who links to a behind-the-scenes look Data Baby.
Update: Datavisualization.ch took a quick look at IBM Data Anthem,
'James Frost, director of the popular music video clip “House of Cards” by Radiohead among others was approached by Ogilvy & Mather NY to direct the new spot...'
Open source video platform provider Kaltura launched a new site called HTML5Video.org today that is meant to be an industry resource for HTML5 video-related issues. The site is supported by Mozilla, the Open Video Alliance and the Wikimedia Foundation. The launch coincides with the release of Kaltura’s HTML5 Media Library, which enables web site owners to embed videos in their sites through HTML5 without locking out users of older browsers that don’t support Flash-free web video just yet. [...] The unveiling of HTML5Video.org comes only one day after the launch of another site promoting HTML5 video to end users. Videoonwikipedia.org, which was launched yesterday by the Participatory Culture Foundation with support from Kaltura and others also involved with HTML5Video.org, wants to get users to contribute more video to Wikipedia. HTML5Video.org, on the other hand, seems much more geared toward professionals, offering business headlines as well as a link to a forum hosted by Kaltura’s open source video developer community at Kaltura.org.
As GoogleTV tries to get off the ground, YouTube has some interesting comments about a Viacom lawsuit:
'For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.'
In Red Giant QuickTip #1 - Chromatic Aberration, "Aharon Rabinowitz discusses the Chromatic Aberration tool in Magic Bullet Looks, and shows you how to quickly create a dreamy distorted look for your footage."
"With AE AE app from Andrew Hake, you can run multiple instances of After Effects on Mac OS X. The application simply automates the process Todd Kopriva noted which is to start After Effects from the command line with the -m switch, this command line trick will work on both mac and windows os’s."
AE Help covers the same ground and has a large number of additional tips to Improve performance. Andrew made a quick demo of AERender & AEae (both available in his labs section):
"...check for a script that contains a subfolder of support script files. the older version of the script lloyd referenced had something like 1000 files in a subfolder, but an updated version seems to have fixed it (by enclosing the folder in parentheses). also follow aliases/shortcuts to other folders."
Update: in a comment below, Jeff provides a hard limit for AE CS4 9.0.2 -- 898 on Windows and 897 on Mac. Jeff is also the author of Additional Scripts for After Effects CS4 which includes Launch Pad, which creates a docking panel to run other installed scripts.
Skydome is a new script for After Effects by Ben Rollason that "creates a 3D environment for your After Effects compositions at the touch of a button. The environment then responds to your camera’s position, orientation, rotation and lens properties."
"Note: This is not legal advice - for that, see your lawyer. However, this is our understanding of the problem, with a link to learn more. A license fee for H.264 use is probably required for professional use if ALL the following conditions are all met:
1. The video program must be encoded using the H.264 codec. (Other codecs are not covered by this license agreement.) 2. You sell the program. (If no money changes hands, no license fee is required.) 3. The program is sold to the ultimate end user. (If you are compressing files for use by someone else, say, digital dailies, no license fee is due.) 4. These programs must be in excess of 12 minutes. (Shorter programs do not require a license fee.)
If required, the license fee is very small: $0.02 per disc sold or about 2% of gross revenue, whichever is smaller."
"Rather than using Trapcode Particular (which many of you may not have installed) or CC Particle World (which really could use an update to its coordinate system) the project fakes particle simulation through use of text animators. This quite lengthy tutorial is derived from another Video Bits project I created a while ago."
SF Cutters -- brought to you originally by the Option key in Final Cut -- is having their 10th Anniversary meeting is this week on Thursday March 11th. The meeting is at Adobe is at 601 Townsend at 7th in San Francisco.
This meeting is free but please sign up for access and for better food planning. Here's the current agenda:
STUMP THE GURUS With Kevin Monahan, Jesse Spencer, Karl Soule, Sean Safreed
Karl Soule: Adobe Evangelist on The Making of AVATAR and Adobe Production Premium & a sneak peak of the new Mercury Playback Engine
Sean Safreed: Redgiant Software - More Grinder & Sneak Peaks of New Releases
Chris Fenwick: Slice Editorial - Organize your FCP Project - Save your sanity and Improve your Business
Raffle, which includes CS4 Adobe Production Premium, DigiEffects Mega Suite, NAB Post Production World Pass, and more!
Andrew Kramer has a new After Effects tutorial on Video Copilot, 3D Ball Dispersion:
"In this tutorial we will learn a technique to offset the animation of the CC Ball Action effect to create a cool transition. This effect uses only built-in plug-in and offers creative flexibility for a variety of looks. The project file also includes a script for offsetting the layers by 1 frame to make the process easier. The tutorial is about 25 minutes but the time will fly by!"
The built-in CC Ball Action filter "transforms the source layer into an array of balls. You can rotate and twist the array around a specified axis and scatter the array in all directions." Ball Action is a very old filter that hasn't been upgraded beyond support for the AE comp camera, but using the Brighten Twist control makes things interesting beyond the basics described by the intro by Brian Maffitt from an old Total Training video at Toolfarm.
"In this episode of Red Giant TV, Harry Frank shows you how to re-create the Music-to-Light effect (seen last season on Heroes), using Trapcode Particular 2. He'll also use Mojo to alter the color, and Knoll 3D Flare to add to the effect."
AE Tuts Premium ($9 /month or less) is featuring an After Effects tutorial series by Bryan Clark on applying the Disney system of 12 Basic Principles of Animation. Here's a sample:
