After Effects Portal › 2019 April 2

After Effects Portal › 2019 April 2 was posted at Pro Video Coalition, with After Effects news on UI training and tutorials, several particle plug-ins, 3D text, mattes, Macintosh testing, and more.

Yanobox Nodes

After Effects News 2018 September #2

Last week in After Effects (Sept#2) brought news on the 2018 release of Creative Cloud 2019, a FREE sphere/planet filter from Andrew Kramer, an After Effects 3D book, various patterns including 2018 AE branding, external data, and more.

After Effects News summaries reboot

Back to the ABC's -- the After Effects news summary series is rebooted at ProVideo Coalition. The lastest is After Effects News 2018 August #2.

Yes, it's last week’s news, yesterday. And here's AE news summaries for the last 6 weeks or so.

After Effects News 2018 August #1

After Effects News 2018 July #2

After Effects News 2018 July #1

After Effects News 2018 June #1

Squash & Stretch, a smart Keyframe Assistant, has a free version too

Squash & Stretch is a smart keyframe assistant tool for Adobe After Effects from Mamoworld that comes in a Free version and a $99 Pro version. It'll save you save time animating with its many ready-to-use behaviors. Squash & Stretch creates simple keyframes not expressions, so it's fast and easy to modify animations once you understand the toolset.

Read the rest at Pro Video Coalition.

How Far You Can Lean On Stock Footage?

"Depth of Field” is a three-part web video series made entirely with Adobe Stock Film Series assets to showcase the breadth of the Adobe Stock Film Series collection. It demonstrates just how far you can lean on stock footage, even if just used as placeholders for custom shots.

See the PVC article for more, but here's a sample:

Become a contributor to Adobe Stock

Yesterday Adobe announced the public beta of the Adobe Stock Contributor website, a new platform where you can sell photos, illustrations, videos, and vector graphics directly to the world’s largest creative community. By contributing to Adobe Stock, you can showcase your work to millions of creatives right inside Creative Cloud apps. The platform is fully functional but still in beta, so feedback is welcome through the Adobe Stock Contributor forum.

One major new feature is auto-keywording, a time-saving feature that uses machine learning to automatically generate the first five keywords of each image you submit. It’ll be interesting to see if this technology can generate emotional keywords like “joy” that could help worthy content to stand out from the crowd.




Adobe has integrated Stock contributor submission directly within Creative Cloud applications, though it’s not required. During the beta phase, you’ll have the ability to upload images to Adobe Stock directly from Lightroom CC and Bridge CC, which were also just updated and released. Adobe plans to open submissions to more content types in additional CC applications soon.

There’s a 33% commission for photos and vector art, and a 35% commission for videos, “based on the price of the image.” A payout request via Paypal or Skrill is available when you have reach $50 (or Euros) in royalties (allow 7 days for payment). Check out Adobe Stock itself for info on the range of pricing.

You can visit the Adobe Stock HelpX page for general information. See also a tutorial on how to search, download, and license royalty-free video footage from Adobe Stock via the Creative Cloud Libraries panel inside Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC.

Here's an Adobe Stock Contributor Spotlight sharing one contributor's experience:

Red Giant Universe 2.0 - no more free lunch

You probably already heard, but...

Red Giant Universe had been a consistently-updated mix of free and subscription effects for Adobe After Effect, Premiere Pro, and related apps like Hitfilm Pro, Final Cut Pro X, and DaVinci Resolve. With the new Universe 2.0, Red Giant removed the less popular plug-ins -- and will no longer offer free tools! 

There more at PVC in Red Giant Universe 2.0: Hud, Mograph, Stylized Damage & Looks, Transitions

Creative Cloud video June 2016 aka 2015.3

Adobe has released a new version of its Creative Cloud video and audio tools, dubbed Creative Cloud 2015.3 (not Creative Cloud 2016).  Here’s a handy roundup of summary info, links to more, and videos from Adobe and 3rd party reviewers & trainers.

You probably should choose to deselect “Remove Old Versions” in the Creative Cloud app (in Advanced Options when you click Install), in case you run into an unworkable bug situation.

And migrating plug-ins between versions can be a problem too, depending on plug-in tech used, but copying the old folder over to the new version plug-in folder often works fine. Just be sure to copy the folder before you uninstall the old version, or check leave preferences.

Arabic text in Premiere Pro and After Effects

UPDATE: Creative Cloud incorporates RTL text in the release of June 2016 (Arabic video; Hebrew demo).



 
UPDATE:  Typewriter effects in After Effects at PVC (August 2013) updates the status of Right-to-Left writing systems like Arabic and Hebrew.

____________________________________

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.

Later: There's now an Animation Preset, Typewriter-RTL, that "only works with 2 keyframes that reveal the text from beginning to end."

Hitfilm 4 Express: Free Editing and 3D Compositing

FXHOME released its free all-in-one video editing and visual effects software HitFilm 4 Express, a product based on Hitfilm Pro 4. Aimed mainly at YouTube creators, this free software seems capable and feature rich and a useful resource for anyone.

Read the rest at Pro Video Coalition...

Saber: a FREE After Effects plug-in

Saber is a new FREE After Effects plug-in from Andrew Kramer and friends at Video Copilot.

After a few hiccups, the free filter is now available.  VCP Saber can be used to create energy beams, lightsabers, lasers, portals, neon lights, electric, haze, etc. -- using the built-in beam, or using text or custom masks.

Saber is dense with features far beyond AE's ancient built-in Beam effect. There more info at Video Copilot or in Saber: a new FREE After Effects plug-in from Video Copilot.

25 great movies in black & white

Younger friends and family members routinely say they won't watch black & white movies. Contrary to what they may think, old films can be relevant and enjoyable today.

A list of only 25 American movies like this must be general, even if personal favorites. There are no films listed from Chaplin or Keaton, no classic horror, no silent films, no Japanese, Indian, Swedish, Russian, German, French, Italian (ok: one), or British (pretty much). There's not even too much in the way of film noir, Westerns, or gangsters. But these and similar films are well worth seeking out, or keeping an eye out for, even if you somehow feel repulsed by black and white. See the list at:

Black & white movies are good (really): 25 great movies in black & white

HitFilm 3 Express Special Edition - free 'Star Wars'-style effects

Among fun news this week is the latest FREE version of the effects/editor Hitfilm Pro, HitFilm 3 Express Special Edition, which will be available for a limited time only. The Hitfilm crew is celebrating the release of the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens.

Read the rest at PVC...

Glitches, damage, & distortions in After Effects

Glitchify for After Effects + Glitchify sounds, from Mikey Borup and Cinema Spice, joins a growing number of tools and tutorials that help Adobe After Effects users create digital glitches, damage, flickers, TV distortions and the like.

Glitches, damage, & distortions in After Effects at PVC collects a sample of tools and tutorials that may help create them.

For an unspecified time, the Glitchify bundle is available for 50% off through School of Motion and the plug-ins only for 20% off through Mikey Borup.

The Surface Book: is it really twice as fast as a MacBook Pro?

Microsoft has released their Surface Book laptop, dubbed the "MacBook Pro Killer" by some in the press. Apparently, Microsoft claimed that the Surface Book is twice as fast as a MacBook Pro, but now that we're past the feel-good atmosphere of the announcement, we might look closer at what's actually being offered.

BTW, the answer is no, though it is more interesting than the new MacBook & iPad Pro combined! Read the rest at PVC in Microsoft Surface Book: is it really twice as fast?

The Future of After Effects

Adobe is near releasing the "IBC" update to video apps in Creative Cloud 2015, which itself was just released in June, so community attention is turning towards future features for After Effects.

See The Future of After Effects: feature requests, nodes, GPU at PVC for comments by After Effects product manager Todd Kopriva on the general direction of AE, including interesting hints on the future of nodes and GPU rendering, as well as info on a new initiative by Sander van Dijk to open discussion of feature requests for AE.

Creative Cloud video updates at IBC 2015: a summary

Adobe has revealed updates to its pro video apps in Creative Cloud, though a specific release date was not shared. Adobe will also be showing the new features at IBC 2015 in Amsterdam for the next week. By the way, a separate bug fix update for Premiere Pro CC was released, which may have its own issues for some.

Creative Cloud video updates at IBC 2015 at PVC collects the overviews, video, and details links. This is just the announcement stage though, so 3rd-party perspectives aren't available yet.

After Effect’s puppet tool meshes and "digital beauty" treatments

Imagineer Systems posted a new tutorial, mocha and After Effects Puppet Tool. It uses the mesh warping capabilities of After Effect’s puppet tool along with captures of secondary soft tissue motion in a set of multi-planar tracks, to place a complex animation onto a moving person.

The new Face Tracker in AE should make some of this easier. See intros by Evan Abrams and Chris Meyer on the Face Tracker, as well as Adobe AE CC 2015: Face Tracker and mocha AE: An Overview from Imagineer systems.

These and additional "digital beauty treatments" and cosmetic fixes in post-production – basic and advanced – can be found in Cosmetic fixes, blemish removal, and skin retouching in post-production at PVC. 

Zoom while dragging in Adobe Premiere

While direct manipulation of UI elements may not be favored by NLE power users, sometimes it is faster. One example is moving a short clip or still using the =/- keys to zoom the timeline during the move.

For specifics, see Adobe Premiere Quicktip: Zoom while dragging at Pro Video Coalition.

Getting started: beginning After Effects

The beauty of Adobe After Effects is that it's approachable for simple tasks and at the same time has a feature set capable of producing complex film quality effects. In the olden days we had to walk miles through snow to pay for After Effects tutorials, if there were any, but now there's tons of worthy free stuff. The biggest gotcha with this material for beginners might be the new previewing features expected in the 2015 version of After Effects CC.

General sage advice is to start at the beginning, but knowing Photoshop and Premiere or Final Cut gives you a big head start. And remembering to "divide & conquer," that is subdividing tasks into doable chunks, will keep progress moving.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Read the article at Pro Video Coalition, Start At The Beginning In After Effects.