Here’s another summary of the last week or so of news on After Effects-assorted tutorials and tools, animation aids, CC Hair, son of Ken Burns, expressions, and more.
Create Your Own Little Fuzzy Friends by Ran Ben Avraham leverages the rarely used CC Hair plug-in, as well as iExpressions by Mamoworld for animation. Harry Frank used CC Hair for some nice looking grass in Making It Look Great 3, while Andrew Kramer had another good take on CC Hair in FREE PROJECT: Fiber Particles. [Update: see also Andrew Kramer’s bonus jungle scene that used CC Hair effects to create some overgrown bits of grass on 3D text. Earlier Harry Frank posted Particular Grass, a free AE project file. On another tangent, Mattrunks used CC Hair in Hair Morphing – hairy typography.]
While we’re waiting for the Attack the Block version, here’s Ran Ben Avraham on monster hair:
Victoria Nece has another tutorial on Kinect MoCap Animation in After Effects – Part 3: Building the Puppet Rigging Template:
Motion Boutique released an update to their physics package for After Effects, Newton:
Angie Taylor has some free new presets, “Wacky Backy,” now available from FX Central for Sapphire plug-ins.
GenArts followed other plug-in vendors in offering small bites of their plug-ins, in this case offering 12 new effects packs from Monsters GT, available for After Effects, Nuke, Fusion, and Vegas. Try all 59 effects in Monsters GT and sign up to get the Pools mini-pack for free. Here’s an older demo:
AEtuts posted 12 HD Smoke Plume Simulations and Compositing Tutorial – Tutsplus Premium and Download 10 More Stock Smoke Clips For Free:
If you try Breakout Coffee by Eran Stern at Artbeats, the additives may have you bouncing between Photoshop’s clone tools, Mocha’s tracking, and After Effects.
Todd Kopriva returns with a look at the library of After Effects basics tutorials by Andrew Devis. Welcome back Todd!
Todd reminds us about the MaskVertexExpression script from AE Scripts, which enables animation of masks with control over individual points:
Curtain Closing Tutorial (After Effects) by Dan Stevers shows you how to create a swaying curtain using the Puppet Pin tool:
Clay Asbury has been continuing his AE and Premiere tips, for example with After Effects QuickTip- Saving Layer Styles as Animation Presets.
reTooled.net is a new effort from Josh Weiss with several tutorials launched; see for example, Photo Multi-Plane in After Effects. Similar work and tools are mentioned in AEP archive posts tagged multiplane animation:
Jan Míka of Filmofon posted a Camera Mapping Tutorial for AE. Similar work and tools (Vanishing Point, camera mapping, scripts for AE 3D, etc.) are mentioned in AEP archive posts tagged camera mapping and AE camera:
Here’s a small info cluster on expressions in AE:
* Paul Conigliaro shared a quicktip on Global & Local Variables in AE Expressions
* Expression Shorts – Trigger Event Based On Layer’s Speed by David Torno.
* The late Richard Lainhart showed how to create a VU meter in After Effects: More About Expressions (Part 2). BTW, Vee You has 8 Free Mac Plug-ins for FCP, AE and Motion.
Maltaannon posted a free AE script, File Sequence Detector:
“Did you ever had to deal with huge amount of files from different sequences stuck in one single folder? I know I have. And it’s a pain. But not anymore. Using a simple scripting tool I have build a piece of software that sorts your files and puts them in proper folders.”
Over on Indy Mogul, Tom Antos uses a DIY dolly and the Warp Stabilizer in AE CS5.5 to attempt cinematic camera movements:
Wren posted EPICTORIAL – Wall Splat effect – After Effects:
Production Premium and beyond
@bldgblog tweets about an article by one Tyler Durden, ‘Welcome to a market where “stock-trading robots react to stories written by robots“: http://is.gd/rG0WRc | via @harikunzru‘
Over the past several months, Adobe has put on a number of online seminars about After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, and other applications in Creative Suite Production Premium. For folks who couldn’t attend the live seminars, Todd Kopriva has listed the recorded sessions now available in recordings and notes for “Ask a DV Pro” and “Ask a CS Pro” webinars.
Debra Kaufman interviewed Bill Roberts, Director of Video Product Management, Adobe Systems & Adobe’s Past, Present & Future. We’ll know more at NAB.
Steve Oakley and Carey Dissmore discuss tools and topics related to the video production business in their new In Production webisode series. They’ve started with color correction and DaVinci:
Jan Ozer posted Adjusting Color and Brightness in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 on StreamingMedia Producer, the replacement effort for EventDV. As with many ASP websites, pages can be get jumbled, but it’s worth exploring.
Andy Zax says that ‘It finally hit me that both the “Spider-Man” and “Batman” TV themes are totally stolen from’ Charles Mingus:
Data Stories is a new podcast on data visualization with Enrico Bertini and Moritz Stefaner that starts with the goods and bads of animated visualization. Here are some related videos — animated data from GE, Francesco Franchi from Why “Infographic Thinking” Is The Future, Not A Fad, and O’Reilly Radar 2/10/12: The 5 big data trends you need to watch:
Please note that these roundups are for quick review and comparison, and that there is almost always vital information from the originating authors at the links provided-and often free presets, projects, or stock footage too.