Effects A to Z weekly: Advanced Lightning

Motionworks' weekly tour of built-in AE filters continues to Advanced Lightning; see Effects A to Z – Advanced Lightning with guest Eran Stern.

Creating a Tracked Head Wound

Mathias Mohl has a new video tutorial on AETuts, Creating a Tracked Head Wound:

"In this tutorial Mathias shows that corner pin tracking can do much more than just replacing some pictures on a wall. We are going to compose a wound on a moving head and use the Mocha tracker in combination with his script MochaImport. Trust me, this is so much easier then creating a real head wound!"

Creating a wound with make-up might be easier for some -- see Indy Mogul for techniques. Mathis' scripts MochaImport, KeyTweak, and Tracker2Mask were mentioned previously in AEP posts Mocha Tutorials by Mathias Möhl and AE scripts MochaImport & Final Cut 2 After Effects.

Youveelizer filter for UV mapping in After Effects

Maltaannon released his Youveelizer plug-in for UV mapping in After Effects. It sells for about $30. In addition, there's a tutorial to learn how to improve your your 3D workflow in AE:

'From this day forward you are able to take your 3D render and replace textures or even add reflections and environment. In a nutshell all you need to do is to apply the Youveelizer to a layer with a UV render pass to apply a texture to a rendered 3d object, or to a Normal render pass to add reflections. All 3d objects should be rendered out from a 3d application such as 3d Studio Max, Maxon Cinema 4D, or any other 3d package capable of rendering UV and Normal render passes. However it’s sometimes difficult to render out a nice UV pass. A solution to that problem may be simply applying a texture that simulates a good UV map. That’s why I’ve included a nice 2000×2000 pixels “uvmap_texture.tif” in the product package.'

See also the article by Lutz Albrecht on Adobe Developer Connection, Integrating 3D applications with After Effects – Part 1: Working with UV data. More background and links are in the AE Help doc Importing and using 3D files from other application. Other options for re-lighting were discussed in the AEP post Normality 3 video tutorial.

Update: Among comments on ambient occlusion, mackdadd noted...
"RE:Vision's Re:Map also does this sort of thing [UV mapping & more], although I haven't watched Maltannon's tutorial yet to see if they work the same way. Always good to have more (and cheaper!) options!"

Update 2: Creative Workflow Hacks notes Pixel Bender UV mapping projects AE: Projecting a Movie Onto a Complex Surface and 3D Normal Mapping with Pixel Bender. See also Smart Normal goes Pixel Bender, "a lightweight normalmapper supporting condensed and sobel-filters."

Update 3: Motionworks' Unplugged 4 is an interview with "Jerzy Drozda Jr, the quirky host of Maltaannon.com."

Update 4: see also How to use UV Passes in 2D by Kert Gartner.

How to use UV Passes in 2D from Kert Gartner on Vimeo.

Unplugged 3: Zax Dow

Motionworks posted another in a series of informal chats with various plug-in developers, designers, and others. Unplugged 3: Zaxwerks is an interview with veteran developers Zax Dow on the origins of Zaxwerks and the 3D Invigorator, ProAnimator, and new 3D Serpentine plug-ins. As an Electric Image evangelist, Zax was a frequent visitor to Macworld and user group meetings at Entasis (old parent of Toolfarm) in San Francisco.

Two tutorials for changing Source Text and numbers

VideoHive has a new video tutorial by Topher Welsh , AE Quicktips #5 Changing Source Text. Topher discusses using a single layer to animate a variety of Text Layer messages by changing the Source Text parameter, and hiding the Hold keyframe changes in motion blur.



Meanwhile over at Red Giant in Look Ma! No 3rd-party plug-ins!, Aharon Rabinowitz skips the Hold keyframes to share workarounds for using numeric Text (for game scores and other digital readouts). You can do what he's doing with just the Numbers filter, but a door is opened to other purposes as the tutorial uses a Null, a Slider Control, and 2 expressions by Dan Ebberts:

1. (Not sure why it was needed) Round to the nearest whole number:
s = thisComp.layer(”Null 1″).effect(”Slider Control”)(”Slider”);
Math.round(s)

2. Layer marker triggers addition to current value:
s = effect(”Slider Control”)(”Slider”);
n = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n–;
}
}
s + n

Update: in another approach Colin Brady helps you in Overcoming limitations of the Numbers effect in After Effects.

Steve Holmes' Artbeats podcasts summarized

Todd Kopriva analyzed 15 Steve Holmes Artbeats podcasts and made a list of the episodes with notes about what skill each episode shows well. It's a good idea that reinforces the message.

RollingShutter AE filter released

RollingShutter is the new plug-in for After Effects and Nuke from The Foundry that tackles image-distortion problems experienced by users of CMOS cameras. It's even on the VPN for Fxphd members. Here's the video introduction:



The Foundry adds:

"As parts of the image are recorded at different times, fast-moving objects, or objects that pass quickly through frame during camera whip-pans, become distorted with diagonal skews. Other typical distortions include image wobbles created when cameras are held-held, and exposure problems with flashing or strobing lights.

Along with being ungainly and unwanted, these image distortions also increase the difficulty of 3D tracking during VFX post production, as the tracking points themselves can be equally affected or not deliver accurate results. Using Local Motion Estimation technology, we can individually correct parts of the image that are moving relative to the camera, even if they are moving in different directions or at different speeds."

Update: Prolost looks at the Rolling Shutter plug-in, and gives the Maschwitz opinion on 30p to 24p conversions.