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).

Light glow on 3D surface in AE + particles project

via @EdenExposito, Video Copilot has a new After Effects tutorial video, Light Glow:

"In this quick motion graphics tutorials we’ll create a natural light glow illuminating from your title onto a 3D surface. This tutorial also includes tips for generating a simple chromatic glow effect."

Update: Andrew added Light Particles Project to "recreate the effect with particles instead. The idea is having bright glowing particles that emit light onto the surface as they hit without having to hand animate the interactions. In the end, I used the shadow technique from our particle shadows tutorial using a copy of the particles from the top view to simulate the shadow, only here I used the copy as colored light."

iPad light painting

via @hummelstrand and @someofmywork is Making Future Magic: iPad light painting. The Vimeo summary says:

"This film explores playful uses for the increasingly ubiquitous ‘glowing rectangles’ that inhabit the world. We use photographic and animation techniques that were developed to draw moving 3-dimensional typography and objects with an iPad. In dark environments, we play movies on the surface of the iPad that extrude 3-d light forms as they move through the exposure. Multiple exposures with slightly different movies make up the stop-frame animation."

Read more about the work at the Dentsu London blog and the BERG blog.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Light Warfare + Behind the Scenes

Freddie Wong and crew are back from their recent Realistic Muzzle Flare Tutorial with the newish Light Warfare. Click on the tag AEP posts on graffiti-light graphics and After Effects tutorials.

Slight delay... looks like fun but hell no:

Light Graffiti: 10 Masters of Light Painting Photography

TheCoolist has collected "10 excellent light graffiti artists from around the world, dating back to the days of Picasso... So set your shutter speed slow, grab a flashlight" and visit Light Graffiti: 10 Masters of Light Painting Photography.

Check out also previous posts on light graffiti from TheCoolist. Click on the tag AEP posts on graffiti and light graphics. A few After Effects tutorials were noted in Light graffiti in AE.

Update: Christopher Hibbert has a several resources on his website including a light-painting tutorial on his site (also on Abuzeedo), and more on Tumblr.

Picasso's Light Graffiti from 1949 + Trek-Wars

Via the Wooster Collective is Picasso: Drawing With Light from LIFE magazine:

"LIFE photographer Gjon Mili visited Picasso in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark—and Picasso's mind began to race. The series of photographs that follows—Picasso’s light drawings—were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created."

You can find some background links for light painting or light graffiti in the previous AEP post Light graffiti in AE.

Also fun is Star Wars Vs. Star Trek (includes Light Painting) via a Twittered blog, Design You Trust:

Starwars V Startrek from LICHTFAKTOR on Vimeo.

Other recent Star Wars vs. Star Trek action was posted earlier in Favorite Movie: Star Trek vs. Star Wars and in Star Trek vs. Star Wars! The Great Lightsaber - Phaser Battle.

Atmospheric homes of elves and sprites revealed

Atmospheric homes of elves and sprites revealed says NewScientist, and they have video so it must be true. Glories, unlike the one at the left, are also visible behind and below if the Sun's angle is right in the front.

There's more in books like Seeing the Light: Optics in Nature, Photography, Color, Vision, and Holography, Color and Light in Nature, and Rainbows, Halos and Glories.

Clouds of Alien Judgment (slight return)

...a reprise from 1-1-07, also from John Nack: "In case you missed an earlier link posted in the comments, check out these rather amazing lenticular clouds." Be sure to scroll all the way down for the full effect!

There are more cloud and sky phenomena pictures at Valuca and The Cloud Appreciation Society. Below are mammatus clouds and a condensation cloud from a jet flying near the speed of sound.

Light graffiti in AE

Over at Creative Cow Aharon Rabinowitz has a video that gets you started in using "AE to simulate the popular light writing effect seen in recent Sprint commercials." "Light graffiti" got way more popular since PIPS:lab debuted in the late '90s or so -- especially with those Sprint commercials (more) which also seem to end with Trapcode Particular whisps of light. As Aharon says you don't need to use actual lights (like PIPS:lab or MAKE), you can just write-on, wiggle, and glow with or without something to track.

Andrew Kramer posted somewhat related tutorials, 33. Graffiti Writing and a light streaks technique with Trapcode Particular at Creative Cow some time ago.

Light graffiti was also featured in the book Urban Calligraphy and Beyond and in recent articles like MAKE: Blog: Light graffiti, Painting with Light, Interview with LICHTFAKTOR: Light Graffiti Artists, and Architectural Light Graffiti: Projection Bombing Images on Urban Surfaces.

Update: Light Writing - Part 2 is up at Creative Cow.

Update: Mathias Möhl noted Writing a Light Graffiti effect (in frei0r format) at Kdenlive.

More AE video tutorials

These AE video tutorials have been released around the web this week:
Painting and masking in After Effects by Chad Perkins
Creating an animated DVD menu transition with Encore and After Effects by Bob Donlon
Expressions 101 by Harry Franks
Magic Glass from Andrew Kramer

Many recent tutorials can be found at the Adobe Design Center, which features this picture that reminds me the various 3D and installation stuff in Urban Calligraphy and Beyond, which for me is 2nd only to Broken Windows in graffiti books.

By the way, "light graffiti," also featured in Urban Calligraphy and Beyond, got way more popular since PIPS:lab debuted in the late '90s or so. Recent articles include MAKE: Blog: Light graffiti, Painting with Light, Interview with LICHTFAKTOR: Light Graffiti Artists, Architectural Light Graffiti: Projection Bombing Images on Urban Surfaces.

Light graffiti in AE

I first saw "light graffiti" posted by PIPS:lab as a Shockwave site. After graf experiments flowered further Wired did an article, and now Apple has a cool iPod commercial.

Andrew Kramer shows you a similar technique in AE with Trapcode Particular at Creative Cow.

Update: newer posts on these topics can be found under the tags graffiti, and light.