Video Copilot releases Element 3D v2

Video Copilot released Element 3D v2 today. E3D v2 is $199 or a $99 upgrade, with more bundle upgrade discounts. The plug-in is compatible with After Effects CS5 + above.

There's more on PVC, but here's the 2nd intro movie:

Video Copilot Element 3D v2 unveiled

Andrew Kramer unveiled new features coming in the long-awaited Video Copilot Element 3D V2 (link to PVC article), which is compatible with AE CS5+ and promised for November release.

WebM in Premiere and After Effects

 

WebM in Premiere and After Effects (export through Adobe Media Encoder with fnord software plug-in) was posted at PVC.

3D from 2D images in AE + beyond

Faceripper4D is a new "custom effect" for After Effects that helps you create 3D from 2D images.

But wait, there's more -- other tools in and outside After Effects, and even with just built-in tools. See 3D from 2D images in AE + beyond at Pro Video Coalition.

3D printing in Photoshop CC

There's a nice update to Photoshop CC now available as part of Creative Cloud for Designers, with new features also for Illustrator and InDesign. Note that there are new free trials available, if you're not a subscriber.

Please check out the two new AEP resource summaries that were posted on Pro Video Coalition:

• Creative Cloud update: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more
• 3D printing in Photoshop CC

Here's demo video of enhancements to the Pencil tool and Path Segment reshape in Illustrator CC and Perspective Warp in Adobe Photoshop CC:

The Ray-traced 3D renderer in After Effects

A big addition to After Effects CS6 was the introduction of a Ray-traced 3D composition renderer that handles reflections, transparency, index of refraction, environment maps, in addition to the existing material options. Today in Creative Cloud CC, the chief limitation is still render time, but there's set-up advice for those willing to overcome the obstacles to get the lovely renders.

Element 3D: new AE plug-in [updated]

Video Copilot has released Element 3D, an After Effects plug-in (originally 'Atom') that lets you import and animate 3D models, even as a particle array, and extrude text and mask shapes in real time. It’s for all of us, for hi & low end, for straight 3D and more abstract experimentation alike, at least if you have a more recent OpenGL graphics card.

There are some additional details and reviews in Element 3D: new After Effects plug-in at PVC, which has been updated with new resources.

BS Compositing Bundle: free plug-ins

BS Compositing Bundle for After Effects is a free bundle of 3 Pixel Bender plug-ins for After Effects CS4+.

They're from Bartek Skorupa (no BS), who has a demo explaining the purpose and features of the new filters at AEtuts, Enhance Your Workflow: BS Compositing Bundle – Plug-ins Presentation. The filters are replacements for Set Matte, Compound Arithmetic (adding color correction), and Tint but with extra features and 32-bit processing oriented towards compositing passes from 3D apps.

Edit & update: the BS_CompositingBundle is now available at AE Scripts.

The Parallel Worlds of 3D in After Effects

Chris and Trish Meyer posted CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 16 - Parallel Worlds on PVC. It's an introduction to the "Parallel Worlds" of special cases and gotchas that crop up when you try to combine 3D layers in After Effects, live Photoshop 3D layers, plug-ins that render 3D images onto 2D layers, renders from 3D programs, Adobe Repoussé (Photoshop), and Digieffects FreeForm (included in CS5).

This "Hidden Gems" summary covers:

• Rendering Bins (3D layer groups) and Breaks (2D layer pipelines)
• Casting 3D Shadows Onto 2D Layers
• 3D Effects and 2D Layers
• Making Photoshop 3D Layers More Interactive
• Displacement Mapping with FreeForm

You can find more on these topics in 3D layer interactions, render order, and collapsed transformations in AE Help and of course in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (reviewed earlier on AEtuts+). There's also extras from CMG itself -- an excerpt from the Parallel Worlds chapter with some extra stuff not covered in the current summary, as well as an Integrating with 3D applications excerpt on importing 3D info from Maya, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, and other 3D apps.

The Rotation Problem explained

The Guerrilla CG Project website is down by restricted access but some of the video lives on Vimeo. In honor of Pi Day, below are a couple of videos on rotation by Andrew Silke, The Rotation Problem and Euler Rotations Explained:

Euler Rotations, the most common method for orienting objects in 3d. It's by-product "gimbal lock" can cause headaches for animators because the animated motion can move in strange ways. Here we learn how euler's "rotation order" is a bit like hierachies, and how changing this order can help us to avoid gimbal problems. This is demonstrated with a solution to a common camera problem, by finding the correct rotation order.

Chris and Trish Meyer explain this (Euler XYZ vs. the quaternion Orientation) and related issues for After Effects in Creating Motion Graphics. There's more of course in AE Help. Here's Andrew Silke:


The Rotation Problem from The Guerrilla CG Project on Vimeo.

Euler Rotations Explained from The Guerrilla CG Project on Vimeo.

Hidden Gems: 3D, Cameras, Lights, Photo Filter

Chris and Trish Meyer recently posted some tips on orienting yourself in After Effects 3D. Advanced users (aren't we all) be warned, you're entering known space on 3D Space, Cameras, and Lighting in 3D (and the Photo Filter effect).

CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 13 - 3D Space covers the basics of working with 3D layers in After Effects and includes moving, rotating and animating layers in 3D space, offsetting their anchor point in Z, as well as auto-orientating layers along a 3D path. Also covered is using the Composition’s 3D Views, View Layouts, and Axis Modes, along with the rendering order when mixing 2D and 3D layers.

CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 14 - Camera covers creating and animating a camera, including creating camera rigs and taking advantage of auto orientation, as well as showing how to cut between multiple cameras. They conclude by discussing the camera’s parameters in more detail, including how to fake focus and depth of field effects.

CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 15 - Lighting in 3D discusses the different types of lights and their parameters, how lights interact with layers and their Material Options, the many secrets of shadows, creating gels and gobos, faking reflections, adjustment lights, projection lights, and using 3D lights to re-illuminate already-shot 2D footage.

This last article has a bonus movie on the Photo Filter effect (more in AE Help).

Hidden Gems: 3D Space

Chris & Trish Meyer’s series of tips, tricks, gotchas, factoids, and shortcuts continues with CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 13 - 3D Space.

This article, 1st of a group of 4 on 3D in After Effects, covers Rotation versus Orientation, 3D Views & Shortcuts, View Options, Axis Modes, and Mixing 2D and 3D Layers. That last section is good to review because of the gotchas with Layer Styles and Adjustment Layers with AE 3D. Chris explains:

Groups of 3D layers that are stacked between 2D layers in the Timeline panel are internally flattened down to a 2D result, as if they were in a precomp by themselves. The entire composition is then rendered as if it consisted only of 2D layers, with each group of 3D layers being treated as a single 2D layer in the middle of the stack.

AE Help explains it this way:

You can apply a layer style to a 3D layer, but a layer with a layer style can’t intersect with other 3D layers or interact with other 3D layers for casting and receiving shadows. 3D layers on either side of a layer with a layer style can’t intersect one another or cast shadows on one another.

If you remember that it's an odd man out in render order, Layer Styles are useful beyond the obvious for light wraps (see AE Portal) and Track Matte shadows (explained by Chris Meyer in an earlier Hidden Gem; other wrinkles at PVC). Keeping track of render order is tricky, for more see Creating Motion Graphics (AEtuts+ book review), Standard render order and the Transform effect (video by Todd Kopriva), 3D layer interactions, render order, and collapsed transformations in AE Help, and Understanding The Render Order In After Effects at AEtuts+.

3D Bevel: script responds to AE light

Ben Rollason posted another 3D script for After Effects, 3D Bevel. Ben has 2 other 3D scripts, 3D Widgets and SkyDome, on AE Scripts and some tutorials on premultiplication and blending modes at Creative Cow.

3D Bevel combines the best of the built-in Bevel Alpha effect and the Bevel and Emboss layer style, and adds reaction to an an After Effects 3D light.

Cinema 4D Dynamics + Depth of Field

The influence of Cinema 4D in motion graphics continued to grow in 2010, and not just in making shiny balls. It's enough to spark interest in someone burned out on 3D from time in the Electric Image world.

Some Cinema 4D training resources were mentioned awhile back on AE Portal, and an attractive library of training is available from Tim Clapham. Tim's training can be found at Fxphd, Motionworks, and now HelloLuxx, where he recently released Cinema4D Dynamics Training.

News on the intersect between 3D and Affects Effects and compositing is often covered by Lester Banks, but there's a few new resources on Cinema 4D depth of field. As Quba Michalski notes, "Cinema 4D has a rather counter-intuitive method of producing depth of field. Both the camera controls and the way in which C4D handles depth maps can be a cause of major headache, especially for the newcomers to this program."

John Dickinson has created a new Cinema 4D DOF Quick Reference Guide, which "shows a top view of an actual Cinema 4D camera with extra visuals to help explain what the numbers in the Camera Depth Of Field dialog box are actually doing."

To simplify set-ups Quba has posted Cinema 4D Depth of Field Camera Rig, a 46-minute tutorial and preset, which also aims to help with "exporting both the 3D camera data and depth maps to After Effects (and potentially other compositing packages)." [Update: there's already an upgrade to Quba's C4D rig; see iDoF Camera Rig: Community Update 1.1.]

Here's the preview video, which seems similar to what Andrew Kramer showed using just Affects Effects in a tutorial that came with Optical Flares:

AE scripts to distribute layers in 3D space

Lost in the excitement over version 2 of BDRenderer was an update to DistributeLayers by nab Scripts (Charles Bordenave):

This script allows you to distribute the selected layers in 3D space. In addition to offset position, you can offset rotation/scale/opacity and adds some randomness. The “Factor” parameter allows non-linear offset between layers.

Some similar and not so similar 3D scripts from AE Scripts have been noted (eg, Trajectory, Multiplane, Matrix, 3D Layer Distributor, Create3DShapes), but DistributeLayers has not been mentioned here previously. Here's the demo:

Plexus plug-in: testing & tutorials

The Plexus plug-in for After Effects from Satya Meka (@gutsblow) is feature complete and in testing, if you're interested. A plexus is a tangled network structure in biology (eg, solar plexus), and the plug-in creates something similar in 2D or 3D in After Effects. Plexus works with AE lights and paths with custom and shaded sprites, and OBJ 3D objects can be imported and render as plexus wireframes.

Satya has already posted some demo tutorials on Vimeo:

Procedural Disintegration: 3D layer to particles

Similar to effects discussed earlier in Shatter and disintegration: techniques for our time, Quba Michalski has a new After Effects tutorial video, Procedural Disintegration, that shares a "method for disintegrating/dispersing a 3D layer into particles. The method shown here has been optimized to produce maximum amount of particles at lowest computing cost (more stuff flying around, faster renders)."

Other Quba tutorials with context can be found in previous AEP posts.
This 70-minute tutorial requires Trapcode Particular and VC Optical Flares or similar. Project and MP4 downloads are available on Quba HQ, plus there's Vimeo versions for mobile viewing. Here's a preview the current tutorial:

Update: see also the "layer removal" tutorial for Particular, Dealing With Spontaneous Particle Combustion by Ben Watts at AEtuts.

Trimensional: 3-D Object scanning for iPhone

For someone who spent too much time with John Knoll's Photoshop plug-in Cybermesh to avoid modeling (pictured left, it created 3D models from grayscale images), this report is intriguing.

Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) notes Trimensional Brings 3-D Object Scanning to iPhone at Fast Company. Here's the demo:

A cityscape from scratch in After Effects

Angie Taylor is featuring one free tutorial per week for the next five weeks on her blog. The first is Creating a Cityscape in 3D, which shows how easy it is to create graphics from scratch directly within After Effects, as well as how to create 3D environments and build scenes.

Angie says:

The tutorial was developed co-written with myself and my good friend, Paul Tuersley, visual effects artist and After Effects guru of the highest order. Paul has worked on various feature films including Kick Ass, Angels and Demons, and 10,000 BC. Paul came up with the initial idea to build a real 3D environment from basic flat layers within After Effects. This technique has now been used widely in a variety of different ways both in Motion Graphic designs and animation projects. Paul is also the moderator at AE Enhancers, a fabulous resource for After Effects artists that you should also check out.

You can find many of Paul's scripts at AE Scripts.

AfterFxIO: interchange between AE & Modo

Fredrik Stenson posted a free script for data interchange between After Effects and Modo, AfterFxIO:

"This is a script for importing and exporting After Effects key frame data, designed for Luxology modo 501 and above. You can export your 3D camera to After Effects as well as any other 3D item. It will also import any position and rotation data from After Effects. It's Designed to work with After Effects CS3, CS4, CS5 and above."