CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 15 - Lighting in 3D

As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.

Chapter 15 covers lighting 3D layers in After Effects. It 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 is the third chapter in Part 4 - Cameras! Lights! Action!. The next chapter in this series will cover tips for combining different types of “3D” layers.

CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 14 - Cameras

As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.

Chapter 14 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. We conclude by discussing the camera’s parameters in more detail, including how to fake focus and depth of field effects.

This is the second chapter in Part 4 – Cameras! Lights! Action!. The next chapter in this series will cover tips for working with lights.

After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Auto Bezier Keyframes

As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. The third course is based on the Advanced Animation section of the book, where we demonstrate a number of tools in After Effects to create more sophisticated animations - from mastering the Anchor Point and getting over your fear of the Graph Editor, to using Motion Sketch, Smoother, Auto-orientation, Roving keyframes, Motion Blur, and Hold keyframes.

CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 13 - 3D Space

As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.

Chapter 13 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. We also cover using the Composition’s 3D Views, View Layouts, and Axis Modes, along with the rendering order when mixing 2D and 3D layers. The article contains a few tips from that long chapter that you might have missed.

This is the first chapter in Part 4 – Cameras! Lights! Action!. The next three chapters will cover tips for working with Cameras, Lighting in 3D, and Parallel Worlds (more on mixing 2D and 3D layers, Photoshop Extended layers, and third-party 3D effects).

CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 9 – Blending Modes

As you are probably aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.

Chapter 9 of CMG5 contains an exhaustive discussion of Blending Modes, including numerous figures and examples plus explanations of the math behind the modes. Therefore, in this Hidden Gems installment we’re going to focus on some of the less obvious tips, plus throw in a video on an alternative approach to tinting or colorizing footage:

CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 8 – Motion Blur and More

As you are probably aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.

Chapter 8 of CMG5 covers motion blur as well as echo-style effects. Here’s a few tips on these subjects, including using a stock After Effects plug-in to fake motion blur in footage that doesn’t have enough:

After Effects Tips 5: Going for a Scroll

It seems such a simple idea: a banner scrolls across the top or bottom of your comp, repeating the same few words over and over, and doing so seamlessly for as long as you need.

Here’s how to create such an animated banner in After Effects, using either the Offset (or Motion Tile) effect or the Autoscroll animation preset. If you have After Effects CS4 and would like to follow along, download the CS4 project file: AE-Tips-5_scrolling_CS4.zip

After Effects Tips - Installment 4

Continuing our series of After Effects tips, including the itty bitty tilde key and other essential shortcuts for manipulating panels, layers and markers:

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