Resources for multimedia journalists

A couple of weeks ago Advancing the Story summarized resources for multimedia journalists in What journalists wanted to know in 2009. They've got many more tidbits of good advice too; here's photojournalist John Gross of KSTP-TV from Visual storytelling secrets:



See also Looking back at the state of newspaper multimedia in 2009 from Mastering Multimedia.

Trajectory: AE script to align layers in 3D

AEScripts has a new After Effects script from Mike Cardeiro, Trajectory, which lets you align layers in a comp evenly in 3D between 2 nulls, with delay controls for animation. Here's Trajectory in action:



Check out another recent script from AE Scripts, Multiplane, which automatically turns 2d layered files into 3D multiplanes, letting you experiment with depth but keep the original perspective.

Video Copilot Particular 2 smoke project

Video Copilot has a free Particular 2 project for download in Illuminating Particles. The sole element is a smoke movie (seen in the inset) that was used as a custom sprite.

Update: You can do similar custom particles with built-in particle systems. There's also a couple of more stylized examples in Creating Smoke with CC Particle Effects at AEtuts.

fxphd's January 10 term video overview

The FxPhd.com January 2010 Term Overview is out in a QuickTime video. Here's one on Vimeo:

fxPHD Jan '10 from Scott Fedor on Vimeo.

Cameron's stereo 3D camera

from Francois Tarlier: "I was pretty happy when I learned that James Cameron ask for developing a new kind of 3d camera where both ocular are looking to the focal point and not to the infinite [parallel]. So far I couldn’t explain better my self than this video..."

There's also more recent stuff at the website of the show Science of the Movies.



Update: for more on Avatar, see CG Society's Perfection in Blue (via Topher Welsh), fxguide podcast Avatar: Weta Digital Jan 09, 2010, and the current Cinefex #120.

Serial 3D flip effect in AE

MaxAfter has posted an After Effects tutorial and project in Flip Effect, which shows you how to manually create a pattern of shapes and flip them.

An alternative might be the built-in filter Card Dance (covered by MaxAfter earlier), which only works in 8-bit/pixel mode, but is able to use AE camera and lights in the same composition. Using a Repeater operation on a Shape layer doesn't seem to offer much of an advantage here either, but for examples check out Eran Stern's More of the Same series of tutorials. For more on Card Dance see other AEP posts tagged Card Dance and Chris Zwar's Halftone effect – using Card Dance, which uses the Card Dance filter and a Shape layer with the Repeater operation.

Wondertouch intro of particleIllusion AE

Wondertouch put up an Introduction to particleIllusion for After Effects. Currently, particleIllusion for After Effects is available on Windows; the Mac version will ship in February 2010 and the beta program is still open.