After Effects Roundup (June 2021) is at PVC

Recently in the world of After Effects, there’s news on animated maps, travel video effects, multi-frame rendering, top tutorials, support issues, Premiere Pro color and rendering, and more. 

A snapshot of the action is After Effects Roundup (June 2021) at PVC.

After Effects Roundup (April 2021) is at PVC

Welcome back to some recent news on After Effects -- at Pro Video Coalition!

After Effects Roundup (April 2021)

The media landscape for AE hasn’t changed much too much... See new on releases, performance, HDR, NFTs, MGRTs, free plug-ins, and more here:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Flashback: 'Almost Human' Circuitry

Last year, Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot visited Japan to speak at a Video Copilot Seminar 2014 hosted by Flashback Japan.

...see their video (only 11 months later) at ProVideo Coalition in Flashback: 'Almost Human' Circuitry from Video Copilot.

70+ After Effects roundups

Here's a list of AE Portal topic roundups on PVC through 2014. Many of them have been updated since their initial release.

Alt link: http://www.provideocoalition.com/ryoung/a-roundup-of-after-effects-roundups

After Effects and Premiere Pro in 2014

It was a slightly slower year in feature releases, with After Effects development underway that one might assume will help speed work within the app in 2015. In January 2014, the AE team hinted that performance, workflow, and improved creative capability was the main focus behind the scenes. Performance in Premiere Pro was addressed several years ago and the emphasis now is more on usability and workflow.

... read the rest at PVC in After Effects and Premiere Pro in 2014: A few highlights. 

Holiday gift lists for digital video creators, including AE in 2014

It seems that, so far, most of the 2014 gift lists for digital video creators are on PVC.

We'll link in a few extra lists, and look back the year in After Effects for more ideas in Holiday gift lists for digital video creators.

Adobe ‘Gone Girl’ panel: Premiere & After Effects

On October 23, you can join Adobe for a panel discussion with the editorial and post-production team behind the movie Gone Girl from director David Fincher. As you may have heard, the Fincher team leveraged Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects in a workflow based on RED Dragon 6K raw footage files framed in 5K.

There background and related resources at PVC in Adobe ‘Gone Girl’ panel: Premiere & After Effects.

Always-on auto-kerning in After Effects

There's a bug that sometimes pops up that prevents the Kern method preference from sticking, so you have to constantly change the setting each time you open After Effects, and in each version you have installed.

There an easy fix: edit the preference file. For details, see Quicktip: Optical Kerning preference in After Effects.

Image from hildgrim

MaskTracker+ extends features of Mask Tracker

MaskTracker+ is a new AE script from Mamoworld that expands features of the Mask Tracker in After Effects, opening up planar tracking capabilities that allow you to do much more than just moving masks.

Read more at Pro Video Coalition...

Making GAEA: After Effects for print projects

A couple of years ago, Jesse Michael Newman released a layer-by-layer video deconstruction of an After Effects project, 'DECONSTRUCTING GAEA I - Flowing Meditation' — though the end result was a print piece — as part of a Kickstarter campaign. He has a new piece, 'DECONSTRUCTING GAEA II,' to support a short sale on art prints.
Read about Making GAEA and After Effects for print (+ ETLAT) at Pro Video Coalition. Here's some of Newman's work:

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Making It Look Great 5

AE Easter eggs + hunt for a plabt egg

People are sometimes surprised discovering Easter Eggs in After Effects -- apparent oddities in the interface. Some of these have been around for a very long time... 

Take part in a new hunt at PVC in Easter eggs in After Effects: a new hunt.

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Halftone techniques for After Effects at PVC

There's something new and some things old in Halftone techniques for After Effects at Pro Video Coalition.

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A halftone is an image or printing technique that "simulates continuous tone through the use of dots varying either in size, in shape or in spacing." In the Illustrator and Photoshop worlds, there's long lists of halftone filters, swatches, and compositing techniques used for printing and newsprint, comic, retro, and other effects. But the fun of After Effects is animation, and some techniques may not be immediately apparent without built-in filters.

If you've never used the Color Halftone effect in Photoshop, check out how a gradient is effected by the filter in Creating Synthetic Backgrounds in Photoshop:

Optimizing Premiere & After Effects

Adobe is offering a free webinar on Optimizing Premiere & After Effects this Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 10:00 AM PT. Links and background on the topic is at PVC.

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.

trackFinger AE: tracking gestures on iOS

trackFinger AE is new iOS app (on App Store) that allows you to record the movements of up to 10 fingers on an iPad, and then send tracking data as keyframes in e-mail text to paste into Adobe After Effects.

There's more on Pro Video Coalition.