Ted Talks - How Benjamin Button got his face

In this video from TED, Digital Domain effects guru Ed Ulbrich presents on the Oscar-winning technology they built for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Watch below…

After Effects Apprentice Video Tutorial #3

We’ve recently released After Effects Apprentice (2nd Edition). The DVD-ROM that comes with the book includes an hour and a half of video tutorials that provide gentle introductions to major features inside After Effects, such as text and expressions. In this third video, we show the different ways to create and style type, including tips on areas such as kerning that will help your text look more professional. Click on the Play Video link below, and enjoy!

(Note: For those who are hearing-impaired, lynda.com has added Closed Captioning to these tutorials. They are available here. We are also in the process of creating video training for all of the After Effects Apprentice lessons; they will also appear on lynda.com. If you do not have a lynda.com subscription, click here for a free 7-day pass.)

After Effects Apprentice was designed for students looking to learn After Effects from scratch, as well as those who do not use AE full time (such as editors or web designers). It starts gently with an introduction to keyframing, and progresses through the important features (such as masks, mattes, effects, text, audio, 3D space, shape layers, expressions, parenting, and building advanced hierarchies of compositions) until you end up keying, stabilizing, and compositing a shot in high def. The second edition has been fully revamped for After Effects CS4, and includes integration with Photoshop CS4 Extended and Flash Professional CS4.

The content contained in After Effects Apprentice - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

Animating Text in Apple’s Motion

If you’re familiar with animating text in After Effects, you might glance at Apple’s Motion and think that it offers many of the same features for flying text around. While that is true, if you look a little closer you’ll find that Motion can create some really great looks that you just can’t get with After Effects. In this article, I’ll review the text capabilites of both programs, and lead you through in detail how to typeset and animate text in Motion. At the end, I’ll discuss some additional details that separate the two programs. (Note: This article compares Motion 3 and After Effects CS4. Motion 4 has added some new text capabilities.)

FxFactory Pro and MOTYPE Review

Most people I know in this industry love new gear. And in the world of desktop video applications and editing, new gear is now less and less about the physical stuff with buttons and knobs and more about “the code.”

If you want access to a lot of new stuff, the easiest way to get high quality stuff to play with is to load FxFactory for Final Cut Pro, or FxFactory Pro with its 142 plug-ins already included. These plug-ins can be used in FCP, Motion, and After Effects. A similar product - Factory Tools - is available for Avid.

Editing in Motion Part 1

Introduction: Why Edit in Motion?

Many motion graphics projects are built around a video edit which is then enhanced with effects, titling, and graphical treatments. Think of a the structure of a typical car commercial: a series of wide and close-up beauty shots of a vehicle intercut with interior shots, a close up on the happy driver, and perhaps a closing wide shot of the car driving away. This series of cuts is then augmented with color treatments, speed changes, and graphical elements in combination with animated text layers.

Composite Modes in Final Cut Pro

The job of an editor is usually to spin straw into gold: Take hours of raw footage, edit it into a cohesive story, and - depending on the skill of the camera and lighting crews that were employed - color correct to enhance or unify the original footage. The biggest problem comes when you’re stuck with inherently boring footage: You need to come up with ways to add excitement or drama to grab and keep the viewer’s attention.

On Artbeats.com: Projecting Video

An interesting technique is to cause a piece of footage to appear to be projected onto other items, as if it was coming from a video or film projector. This can be done with the 3D capabilities of After Effects, but it requires knowledge of a little-known parameter: Light Transmission. In this tutorial on Artbeats.com, we show how to set up a 3D environment that takes advantage of Light Transmission to create this look, plus share some tips on how to improve the final image, including sharpening (or blurring) the projection, and using “negative light” to crop unwanted light from spilling around the edges of the image.

Click here to download the PDF of “Projecting Video” from Artbeats.com.

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

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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