Monday, November 05, 2001

Making 3D Effects Behave Like 3D

Chris and Trish Meyer | 11/05- 04:10 PM

Making older 3D plug-ins follow 3D cameras in After Effects.

Expressions can make “fake” 3D plug-ins such as CC Sphere track After Effects’ 3D cameras.

After Effects is, at heart, a 2D program: All layers have no thickness. You can arrange them in 3D space, illuminate them with 3D lights, and fly around them with 3D cameras, but if you view the layers on-edge, you will still see that they have no thickness.

A number of clever plug-in effects work around this by taking an image and the camera, rendering what it would look like if it actually had depth (such as extruded text, or an image wrapped around a sphere), and then render the result back to a flat 2D layer. Although a great stride trick, there are some limitations.

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

Urban Legends of Video

Chris Meyer | 07/24- 10:09 AM

A trio of common myths and misconceptions that arise when working with video.

Like urban legends, there are a few pieces of “conventional wisdom” that float around the motion graphics and 3D communities about how to handle video. They are oft-repeated, but several are simply not true. Some are based on wishful thinking; some on a germ of truth; some from articles or manuals which are incorrect. Yes, you probably already know all of these – but they certainly have caught out colleagues of ours.

Not surprisingly, many of these legends are based around the subject of frame rates and interlaced fields. Fields in particular are an area where traditional video diverges perhaps the most from the computers we’re creating our video on, and for that reason are easiest to misunderstand.

Sunday, July 08, 2001

Expressive Animation

Chris and Trish Meyer | 07/08- 10:12 PM

One of the most significant features in After Effects is an easy-to-use scripting language called Expressions.

One common use of expressions is to set up automatic relationships between layers, such as having a minute hand rotate 60 times a fast as the hour hand, and the second hand rotate 60 times as fast as the minute hand. Rather than have to keyframe - and edit - three layers, you can keyframe just one layer and have the others follow automatically.

In a recent column we discussed the Parenting feature that was originally introduced in After Effects version 5. Parenting is an excellent way to group objects together, or to have one already-animating object also follow another.

Expressions offer a different approach to making one object do what another does, yielding even more control. Many right-brain artists are scared off by expressions, as they do involve math and programming (very left-brain activities), but learning just the most basic form of expressions will help alleviate a lot of tedium while working on a project - they’re like having a sharp, unpaid intern!

Monday, June 04, 2001

Parenting Skills

Chris and Trish Meyer | 06/04- 08:43 PM

An overview of using parenting in After Effects to group objects and create coordinate animations.

Parenting is the ability to link one object to another. Once this bond has been established between parent and child, if you move, scale, or rotate the parent, the child is affected in the same way, grouped together as one complex object. A child can still have its own animation; if the parent happens to be animating as well, the child follows it around while it also does its own thing.

In this way, parenting is similar to nesting compositions. Before parenting was introduced in After Effects version 5, the best way to group objects was to place them in their own composition, and then nest this entire comp into a master comp. We could then animate this nested comp as a group, with all of its objects dutifully following along and executing their own animations just as if they had already been pre-rendered as a movie.

Parenting is useful to people who have trouble getting the hang of nesting comps, or who like to keep everything in one comp to more easily coordinate keyframes. Unlike nesting comps, however, applying effects to or altering the opacity of the parent will not affect any of the children. Read on to learn how to set up these chains yourself.

Monday, March 26, 2001

Open Wide: Creating That Widescreen Look

Chris Meyer | 03/26- 07:48 PM

Widescreen can have different meanings, depending on how you have to deliver. Here’s some tips on creating that widescreen look.

For years, the widescreen look has held a certain allure. Most widescreen imagery originated as film that was reframed for television, implying “classy”, “expensive” and “not of video.” Now, with the arrival of high-definition television, widescreen also means “cutting edge” and “the future”, and more clients want that look. The question is, how can you achieve it without hi-def sources? As strongly as our hi-def future beckons, the reality is that many productions for some time will need to be created or repurposed to standard definition.

Tuesday, October 17, 2000

Enter a New Dimension: Moving Into 3D

Chris Meyer | 10/17- 07:58 PM

Learning a 3D program can be an important career move for an editor or graphic artist.

In this redesign of PAX TV’s on-air look, the primetime promotional end caps are filled with light and translucent shapes. Simple flat characters and shapes were exploded and hit from a number angles with different-colored lights. Multicolored light rays add dimension and energy. (creative director: John LePrevost of LePrevost Corporation; art director/designer: Wendy Vanguard of Manna-Design; realization: Chris Meyer of CyberMotion)

Because of either lack of time, or simple Fear of the Complex and the Unknown, many editors and 2D graphic artists resist learning how to use a 3D program. And that may be unwise. More graphic design is incorporating 3D elements - from the ubiquitous extruded flying logo, to cool lighting effects, to wireframes of simple geometric shapes added as visual spice. Your clients may not even know this is “3D”, but they know it’s a look they want...and if you can’t supply it, they’ll look for an artist who can. Don’t worry - you don’t have to create Toy Story 3 single-handedly - but some basic skills will more than pay back the moderate effort invested.

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