Screenfonts: movie typography + Making of a 'Hello Brooklyn' video

Motionworks tweeted about Screenfonts (from The Font Feed), a monthly commentary on the use of fonts in movie poster design, music video and more.

It's a welcome addition to other observed efforts, including various Topher Welsh roundups of motion type on AETuts, the Motion Design Love series Nice Type Tuesday, the Typography Gallery at Motionspire, and Type Tuesday by Brad Chmielewski. See also Four techniques for combining fonts + type videos.

In a recent post on a video made to a remix of Jay-Z’s Hello Brooklyn, Screenfonts author Yves Peters noted that beyond the background on the precursor to Helvetica:

"What’s really interesting is that the author of the music promo also posted a Making Of… video, showing how still images were treated with the Vanishing Point feature in Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe After Effects, to create the illusion of motion and depth. The end result is very impressive."


Making of "Hello Brooklyn" Video from Gregory Solenström on Vimeo.

How to suck less in Vanishing Point

Lester Banks has a tutorial, in depth with vanishing point exchange:

'In starting a new series jokingly entitled “how to suck less”, this represents the first tutorial which explores photoshop’s vanishing point for export and its strength and weaknesses in the animation production pipeline. There are also some handy tips on how to get some control on a vanishing point export so that it remains effective in after effects, as well as some tips on using vanishing point to generate a quick camera with scene-correct settings that can be used as the start of camera mapping projections in after effects, maya or your 3D program of choice.'

To see previous AEP posts on Vanishing Point or the click on the tags; the ones by Ko Maruyama are fondly remembered.

Submerged: VCP camera mapping techniques

Videocopilot has a new tutorial, Submerged, in which you animate a camera through one set of 3D surfaces to more below and combine camera mapping techniques with real textures.

Let's hope some pundit -- or pandit -- compares the recent AE filter from Digieffects Camera Mapper (replacing DepthCue; here's 2 tutorials) and various techniques from Mark Christiansen (scripts are in his book), another (actually tuts #37, 38, 39) from Andrew Kramer, Light Transmission video tutorials by Trish and Chris Meyer (PDF excerpt on Artbeats), and the use of Photoshop's Vanishing Point in AE. And maybe include talk of Panoramas in After Effects too.

Tutorials for Digieffects AE filter Camera Mapper

Digieffects has video tutorials for its new Camera Mapper AE filter, mentioned earlier in New AE filters Camera Mapper and Mojo. There's an intro, plus tutorials by Matt Silverman and Mark Christiansen. They also posted a short comparison with the Photoshop Extended to After Effects format Vanishing Point Exchange (AE Help has more).

Toolfarm later posted the latest one by Mark Christiansen:



By the way, Motionworks has a video explaining Photoshop Extended: A workflow with After Effects.

Basic 2.5D rig removal with Mocha

Carl Larsen posted CreativeCow a video tutorial for basic 2.5D rig removal in After Effects which was recommended by Shain Ross of Imagineer Systems and Little Frog in High Def.

Larsen likes using Mocha (bundled with CS4) for jobs involving scaling, rotation, and perspective movements. In this instance he also uses Vanishing Point to Clone Stamp in perspective in Photoshop to help paint out the lighting rig. Then he shows you the steps in Mocha, then in AE. You can download the tutorial in iTunes if you want to avoid the Cow website.

For background he also mentions a Cow article The Importance of Invisible Effects, where Steve Wright runs down a basic overview:
"One category is removing things that were needed during the principle photography, but must be taken out for the finished shot. This would include wire removal and rig removal.

The entire category of scene salvaging is dedicated to removing things that were put into the images by accident, such as scratches, hairs in the gate, light leaks, and reflections of the film crew.

Then there are invisible effects designed to dramatically change how the shot looks, but still appear perfectly unaltered, such as monitor replacement, speed changes and shot stabilization. In this article we will explore the technology and techniques that go into these common invisible effects."

Vanishing Point to map a 3D environment

Adobe Design Center announced some new video tutorials including these by Ko Maruyama:

Working with Vanishing Point in Photoshop and After Effects and the cool Using Vanishing Point to map a 3D environment.

Update: Aharon Rabinowitz has a current tutorial too; see After Effects CS3: Vanishing Point. More can be found on Adobe Video Workshop, or in other AEP posts for Vanishing Point.

Fxguidetv episode 2

Fxguidetv episode 2 features interviews with top people on shrinking deadlines in film effects as discussed in an earlier posted story. The fxphd tip of the week takes a look at Vanishing Point in AE CS3.

The production is explained at the Fxphd blog and looks good (except for a noisy spot). Fxguidetv #001 (QT) featured a nice succinct look at Shape Layers in AE CS3.

PS CS3 Extended tutorials

Russell Brown posted tutorials on Photoshop CS3 Extended, including tips and techniques for blending and compositing 3D objects with photographs (the sea monster is downloadable), exporting 3D objects from Vanishing Point, and Adobe Illustrator Smart Object Animation. But wait there's more -- like 20 tutorials on CS3 that are also available as iTunes podcasts.

Vanishing Point in AE

In Instant Dimentionality Bob Donlon explains a great new feature in AE8 which uses the .vpe file from Photoshop's Vanishing Point tool to define the perspective of a scene or object.