Here’s another summary of the last week or so of news on After Effects — with assorted tutorials, scripts, demos, documentaries, and more. 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.
Motionworks posted After Effects A-Z: CC Flo Motion by guest host Florian Füger, who also recently posted tutorials like fireworks tutorial and tutorial “the swing”:
Chris and Trish Meyer released After Effects Apprentice 14: Shape Layers on Lynda.com, with a preview on PVC. After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Exploring Shape Effects shows how to create and animate vector-based artwork directly inside After Effects, creating shape layers and paths, applying shape effects, and reordering shape operators.
CS Swot released a new tutorial series, Compositing an Advanced HUD – Complete Video Workshop, available as DVD or download. For more on HUDs, see the collection in the AE Portal archive.
David Torno’s latest is Expression Shorts – Numerical Readout on how to create numerical readouts for use in HUD style graphics. You can preview the tutorial here, but it’s better to go straight away to the discussion for the whole story that includes a sourcecode breakdown:
Imagination Creations posted After Effects Handwriting Tutorial, with one of the many ways to animate handwriting:
Awhile back Elliott.G.Montello released tutorials explaining how he used RE:Vision Effects Twixtor to create the interpolated slow motion, Twixtor Tutorial Part One : Incendium and Twixtor Tutorial Part Two : Darrienia:
Andrew Hake released projector_v2.4, “quite possibly the laziest of all the lazy apps. projector is a simple workflow droplet app that allows you to easily create and change project folders and icons to keep your film/animation/design projects nicely organized at a glance.” There’s also Automated Folder Structures for PC and Automated Folder Structures for OS X by Jake & Dan, which might be the right thing for some. In addition, Post Haste, a Mac application from Digital Rebellion, helps you keep things organized, especially in shared environments, and MotionRevolve covers how to organize your projects on your computer and within AE in Maintaining Good After Effects Project Organization and Workflow. Project considerations were discussed by Mark Christiansen in How to Optimize Projects in After Effects CS5. Here’s demo of projector:
Kevin Monahan noted a New After Effects Compositing Course from Jeff Foster and video2brain. Here’s a sample:
Harry Frank hosted Red Giant TV Live – Episode 10: Let it Flow, which looked at Trapcode Particular and Form and how to generate the organic look of Form with the 3D position control of Particular:
In Red Giant QuickTip #60: Old VHS Look, Seth Worley shows you how to give your footage an old VCR/VHS look in After Effects:
Tibor Miklos posted Funky Animations With CC Circle And Radio Waves. For more on the Circle effect see Maltaannon’s video tutorials on the 8-bit Circle effect, Uses of the Circle and Soft Focus (Circle tutorial Follow-up), which also showed making a vignette. For more on the Radio Waves plug-in, Satya Meka shared thoughts in The Secret Menu of Radio Waves in After Effects at his blog Gutsblow.
Richard Bird posted Living in “Toytown” – Recreating The Tilt-Shift Effect in AE. The week before Martin Ainsworth posted Lite Bite for After Effects: The Tilt Shift Effect. For more on that effect, see Tilt-shift photography meme and others at AE Portal archive. Here’s the Bird preview:
Premiere Pro and more
EC Room is giving way free TV Static Stock Video and Green Screen Stock Effects: Fire, Water and Ink. Frame Forest is offering 7 free looping backgrounds. See also their Making Giraffe Pattern in AE (see also After Effects A-Z: Cell Pattern from Motionworks and Andrew Yang’s YY_Voronoi, a 32-bit Pixel Bender).
FilmImpact.net is offering a few free plug-ins for Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro.
Final Cut Pro X got a healthy update, arriving with multi-cam, manual relinking, broadcast monitoring (and AJA and Blackmagic Design drivers), a utility by Intelligent Assistance to convert FCP 7 projects, a free Motion Template Tool from Andreas Kiel, and plug-ins from Red Giant, GenArts, Noise Industries, and others. Scott Simmons surveyed the update in Update Alert: Final Cut Pro X goes to 10.0.3 here on PVC.
Just before that update The Motley Fool retold the saga of FCP X from a business angle in a three-part series, Last Call for Final Cut? Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Author Dan Radovsky actually covers Avid and Adobe just as much though, which gives this unfortunately-timed series some legs.
Someone re#hashed free sample chapters and videos from An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro outline by Todd Kopriva.
At CNET, Stephen Shankland talks about the addition to the ownership model in Here’s why Creative Cloud is worth $600 a year, and Adobe’s Colin Smith presented the latest upgrades and tools for CS5.5:
Brendan Bolles released a “beta version of an OpenEXR plug-in for Premiere. It will be part of the next rev of the ProEXR package. This beta runs for 90 days in trial mode.”
NLE Ninja Effects has several tutorials on Premiere Pro; Working Faster in Premiere Pro is the latest:
The Photoshop team offered Sneak Peek #2 of CS6:
Tom Guilmette posted Using GoPro Cameras on Live Multi-Camera Remote Broadcasts. For more, see The GoPro HD Hero2: A Real-World Wide-Angle View, an In-Depth Look at GoPro’s Latest Little Dynamo! by Jeff Foster. Jeff has more articles looking at specific uses for this camera; here’s one of his samples:
James Miller discussed The art of “lens whacking”, real lights leaks and ones done in post on Philip Bloom’s website. The topic has been well-covered lately. TimotsproductionBTS put together 40 Film Burns and Light Leaks. For more on light leaks, see Lens Wacking – detaching your lens for interesting video flare from Planet5D, , “Lens Wacking” to Create Video Flares by Chris Meyer, Lester Banks on some from VFX Footage, and Matthew Jeppsen on some leaks from Jesse Rosten. There’s also Light Leaks from Luca Visual Fx, a Mac Fx Plug that generates them (it works in apps like After Effects through FxFactory 3.0, which was just released). Also, FreshDV notes light leaks from 5Dleaks and by Artbeats, as well as how to composite them, in 5 Simple Steps to Make your Own Light Leaks. Related info can be found in Lens Flares in After Effects: A mini-roundup by Rich Young. Here’s an example from the new article:
