3D displacement and flag waving in CS5

There are several approaches to building a waving flag in After Effects, including old 2D tutorials by Brian Maffitt and Zaxwerks 3D Flag (not yet available for CS5). Now that Freeform is free in CS5, anyone can leverage existing flag tutorials, starting points really, by Ayato and the Creative Cow. An updated more modern tutorial should have a wide audience.

There's many more examples and tutorials on 3D displacement on the Digieffects and Mettle websites. The only other plug-in in memory that could do this was Cognicon TILT, built to use the defunct Quickdraw 3D from Apple (Red Giant's Sean Safreed was the Apple product manager). Here's an intro to Freeform displacement:


Freeform 3D Displacer - Overview from digieffects on Vimeo.
By the way, special pricing ends tomorrow Friday the 14th 12:00 pm E.S.T. on the FreeForm Enhancement Packs - Mylenium Edition. That's 10 HD Project Files for $79 ; regular price is $179.

Update: Chris Bobitis added a free flag project using Freeform -- just add some texture or pre-displacement to the flag if you think it has too much starch.

FreeForm preset - Billowing Flags from digieffects on Vimeo.