The Utility and Ease of Use for GenArts’ Sapphire Edge

GenArts’ Sapphire Edge is not a color grading plug-in in the traditional sense. If you’re looking for endless numbers of sliders, dials and switches that adjust an image using terms like lift, curves or channel mixer, then Edge is not your tool. But if you are looking for a large set of high-quality looks that can be applied with ease and quickly customized with only a minimal learning curve, then Sapphire Edge is just such a tool.

After Effects Leftovers - Part 5

This 5-part series looks at a selection of features that were in After Effects before CS5 but have been often overlooked.  A total of 40 tips, tricks, workflow suggestions and general reminders are given covering topics including layout, masking, rendering and even using the interface. Part 5 wraps up the series by looking at presets and rendering.

Adobe’s Todd Kopriva has kindly pointed out another bonus feature -  a bunch of additional animation presets on the Adobe Exchange that is a great way to conclude the series.  Thanks Todd!

After Effects Leftovers - Part 4

This 5-part series looks at a selection of features that were in After Effects before CS5 but have been often overlooked.  A total of 40 tips, tricks, workflow suggestions and general reminders are given covering topics including layout, masking, rendering and even using the interface. Part 4 is a mixed bag of tricks including cropping compositions, advanced gradients and some text tips.

After Effects Leftovers - Part 3

This 5-part series looks at a selection of features that were in After Effects before CS5 but have been often overlooked.  A total of 40 tips, tricks, workflow suggestions and general reminders are given covering topics including layout, masking, rendering and even using the interface. Part 3 looks at using the After Effects interface.

Adobe’s Todd Kopriva has pointed out that my description of the grave key is slightly inaccurate.  In the video I say that the grave key maximises the currently selected panel, when in fact it maximises the panel underneath the mouse pointer.  This is something I never noticed until he pointed it out!  Thanks Todd…

I’ll add here an anecdote that I edited out of the video to keep it shorter.  A few months ago I was working with someone who kept bumping the grave key by accident - I don’t think she was used to a Mac keyboard where the grave key is next to the z.  Bumping the grave key would make one of the panels fullscreen, but not knowing what she’d down and how to fix it, she’d just quit After Effects and restart.  When I realised she was re-starting After Effects for the 4th time in an hour I asked what was wrong and she explained that there seemed to be a ‘bug’, and I’m like ‘um that’s not a bug, it’s a feature’... hence the reason I included the grave key in this series!

After Effects Leftovers - Part 2

This 5-part series looks at a selection of features that were in After Effects before CS5 but have been often overlooked.  A total of 40 tips, tricks, workflow suggestions and general reminders are given covering topics including layout, masking, rendering and even using the interface. Part 2 looks at masking and painting.

After Effects Leftovers - Part 1

After Effects has been around for over 17 years and with the recent release of CS5 it’s now up to version 10.  Every new release brings new features and some have received more attention than others.  This 5-part series looks at a selection of features that were in After Effects before CS5 but have been often overlooked.  A total of 40 tips, tricks, workflow suggestions and general reminders are given covering topics including layout, masking, painting, rendering and even using the interface.

Cinema 4D Finally Brings 3D to Motion

Cinema 4D’s friendly interface and robust motion graphics toolset have made it the tool of choice for creating 3D motion graphic elements for title sequences, bumpers, interstitials, and the like. And it’s ability to export multipass renders as well as 3D data to After Effects have made it easy for After Effects users to integrate 3D into their projects. Well, with release 11.5, Final Cut Studio users can finally do the same, because Cinema can now export 3D data directly to a Motion project. By taking advantage of Motion’s real time render engine and Final Cut Pro integration, you can now create professional 3D projects or even Master Templates for your projects.

There are a few tricks to getting Cinema 4D to play nicely with Motion. In the video, I step through the workflow for preparing a Cinema 4D project for Motion, and then preparing the Motion project, swapping in video elements, adding text, and finally creating a Motion template that you can use in Final Cut Pro.

Believable Hand-Held Motion Tracking with Mocha & After Effects CS4

One of the best additions to After Effects CS4 is the inclusion of a stand-alone application called Mocha for AE from Imagineer Systems. This is a powerful planar motion tracker and stabilizer that does an amazing job of tracking all kinds of elements in motion or to stabilize a character or a scene with shaky footage. Many of the example movies you may have seen demonstrating Mocha with After Effects CS4 (including some of my own) have been inserting something into the screen of a portable device or a TV. But what if the object you are tracking goes off the screen? What if you want to track something in motion but want to retain the realism of the hand-held camera shake? Even though Mocha does a remarkable job of stabilizing footage I thought I’d put Mocha to the test with some hand-held footage from a compact DV cam and track the footage, shaking and all!

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