Making a Matte Painting with Elements in Motion in After Effects

In the days of early motion picture making the art of “matte painting” was a process of actually painting with oils on a plate glass that was then shot in position in front of a scene on location or in the studio where the film would be exposed by the combined images through the camera’s lens, creating an illusion that the actors int eh scene were in a totally different location or that the surrounding set or location was enhanced greatly. This process has evolved over the years and with modern day digital compositing and illustration/animation techniques, there’s little that can’t be created or replicated with computer graphics or manipulation. In this video tutorial, I show you how I used simple photographic components, combined with masked elements extracted from the original footage and re-timed - all using After Effects & Photoshop, along with some CG elements from a simple plug-in call Psunami from Red Giant.

A More Intuitive 3-Way Color Corrector for Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

The 3-way color corrector gets a lot more powerful and easier to use in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

After Effects CS6 Tutorial: Exporting 3D Camera Tracker Data to Cinema 4D

One of the major new features in After Effect CS6 (which we previously previewed here) is a built-in 3D Camera Tracker. Rather than track a specific object or point, the 3DCT automatically tracks hundreds of points in a clip, and uses that information to reverse engineer where the camera was during the scene. This opens up all sorts of interesting workflows.

After Effects CS6 Tutorial: Targeting Properties in the new Ray-Traced 3D Engine

In our preview of After Effects CS6, we spent a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of the new ray-traced 3D rendering engine, which includes the ability to extrude and bevel text and shape layers. When you start playing around with it, initially it may seem that you have only one color and set of Material Options for the entire layer. In truth, Adobe has provided a back door to go in and change the color and every material option - including amount of transparency and strength of reflections - for the front, sides, back, and bevels individually.

Cutting a Multicamera Sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

Speed up the multi camera editing process in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

Master New Keyboard Shortcuts in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

Learn about new keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

GEEK-OUT: The Matrix, Reloaded

After years of wondering what exactly the user matrix does I think I’ve figured it out. I’m not sure I can explain it, but I’m going to try. Put on your propellor hat and rub your brain with soothing salves, ‘cause it’s gonna hurt…

Lighting Fire and Liquids: Playtime with the Sony FS700

Adam Wilt gets to play with the best toys, in this case a prototype Sony FS700 slow motion camera. He invited me over to play, and the results were really, really interesting. Adam’s article talks about some of the technical issues he ran across, so in this article I’m going to focus on the lighting side of what we did.

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