The Genesis Project's Adobe Beginner Classes Episode #26 is available. It shows you how to create semi-realistic fog inside of After Effects. The clouds are created on 4 layers in Photoshop then animated in After Effects.
There are several essential techniques shown, and the final effect is easy to replicate. As usual there are several additional ways to do this effect. You can adjust the method by using a square image size in powers of 2 (512 or 1024 for example), so that the image is seamless when the Clouds filter creates the fill. Layers can then be used as a seamless tile for animation with the Offset filter in AE. Though spare, you can get away with only 3 layers (as seen in at least one 3rd party fog filter). Other additions should include a light touch of a favored distortion filter and/or 3D moves. Sebastian Sulinski showed how to create a seamless animation loop in another tutorial, Animated clouds effect with Photoshop and After Effects. Here's ABC Episode #26 (mentioned above) from AdobeTV:
A less archaic approach that may require more experimentation is just using the Fractal Noise filter in After Effects; for background, check out the resources in the AEP post Spare time for Fractal Noise.
Dean Velez also showed how to use Fractal Noise in the Total Training course Advanced Adobe After Effects 7 Pro. Here's a video excerpt if you want to sit through a commercial:
See also a few related implementations in tutorials by Video Colpilot, for example Smoke Screen (using puffs of smoke as particles) and Stabilize Shaky Footage.
A comment on John Nack's blog post Why your Web content will look darker on Snow Leopard explains the origin of the old Mac gamma. While the gamma change is hardly news to After Effects users, there's more in the post, like a quote by Adobe Principal Scientist Lars Borg, "the movie studios' Digital Cinema Initiative selected a gamma of 2.6 as providing the best perceptual quality for 12-bit cinema projection" now in home theater.
Ted Dillard (11:19 AM on September 4, 2009; trimmed here): '... I think I got it from as near the "horse's mouth" as you can- Bill Atkinson, who not only pioneered ColorSync, but built QuickDraw and helped develop the first laser printer for Apple.
The story he tells is that they were trying to get the Laserwriter to print close to what the screen was showing- in monochrome, mind you, and the only way they could get it to work was to jack the gamma to 1.8. In his words... "it was the silliest thing."
Color Management wasn't even a thought at the time, and it set the stage for decades of Color Management mismatch and confusion. I asked him about it because I read a story about gamma, and that, back in the mid-90s this team took a bunch of cards and tested them- Mac and PC, and they all tested out to around 2.1 - 2.2.'Fun maybe just for me, I resold a copy of Bill Atkinson's photography book Within the Stone to Aardvaark Books in San Francisco last year; it was inscribed by a Bill Atkinson to the Dalai Lama.
In the video below, Harry Frank and Aharon Rabinowitz go tag team for a tutorial in sound design, creating scary audio (backwards reverb) as heard in Poltergeist. Aharon covers how to create the effect using audio software, while Harry shows you how to recreate that effect in After Effects.
Whoops, no previews even low res, but there's links all around.
Motionworks interview Unplugged 6 features Andrew Kramer [later: part 2]:
"In just a few short years Video Copilot has skyrocketed to become the dominant force in visual fx and motion graphics training online, with it’s founder, Andrew Kramer, becoming an industry icon. In part 1 of this riveting interview Andrew discusses his fascinating journey from high school student to industry leader and what that has meant to Video Copilot and him personally."
Who da thunk there were 222 Apple Motion Tutorials?
It turns out that Snow Leopard requires After Effects 9.0.2, and you do lose an activation credit so deactivating is advised.
A comment on John Nack's blog post Why your Web content will look darker on Snow Leopard explains the origin of the old Mac gamma. While the gamma change is hardly news to After Effects users, there's more in the post, like a quote by Adobe Principal Scientist Lars Borg, "the movie studios' Digital Cinema Initiative selected a gamma of 2.6 as providing the best perceptual quality for 12-bit cinema projection" now in home theater.
Motionworks interview Unplugged 6 features Andrew Kramer [later: part 2]: