Here’s another summary of the last week or so of news on After Effects- AE 3D, denoise and glitches, a preview of a new Trapcode plug-in, expressions, and more.
Eran Stern posted 2 tutorials: Captain America Shield Tutorial, which recreates the 3D shield using After Effects only, and Glass Metal Logo, on using a free After Effects template based on ShapeShifter AE and other filters. You can download the project files from Eran’s website, including one for the 3D shield that uses the bundled FreeForm effect from recent versions of After Effects.
Victoria Nece has another tutorial in her series on Kinect MoCap Animation in After Effects, Part 4: Rigging a Digital Puppet, on using the free Processing app KinectToPin to capture Kinect skeletal tracking data for use with the After Effects puppet tool. She says, “This time, it’s the part you’ve all been waiting for: it’s finally time to set up your character layers!” Her website has additional details on expressions and so forth, but here’s a taste:
Sean Dowey notes his efforts to get After Effects on an iPad? (and AppleTV) on Motionworks. Until that’s practical, there are apps like Bear71: A New Type Of iPad Documentary Powered By Infographics:
Andrew Devis continued his series on text in AE with AE Basics 36: Pimping Your Text with Layer Styles and AE Basics 37: Animating Source Text. Here’s 36:
David Torno continues his video series on expressions with Expression Shorts – Auto Layer Offset 2D part 1 and Expression Shorts – Auto Layer Offset 3D part 2.
Evan Abrams posted a video (embedded below) on The Wiggle Expression, along with notes and a project file. This follows other recent videos on the subject by David Torno, Andrew Devis, John B. Hartley, Simonsaysfx, Ryan Boyle, and Chris Meyer. See also Meyer’s Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 9: Wiggly World, and Wiggle Visualizer and related topics on Motion Graphics Xchange.
Red Giant shipped the new Magic Bullet Denoiser II, which works really well. Noise reduction is important for many file formats now, so it would also be good to see a serious comparison between the leading alternatives in noise reduction. And it would be great if CUDA-accelerated versions worked inside Premiere’s Mercury Engine — developers can make CUDA-based plug-ins, but for now, they can’t be inserted in the same Adobe pipeline. Anyway, here’s Getting Started with Denoiser II by Simon Walker:
Red Giant also posted Red Giant TV Episode #72: Alien Attack II: They are Coming by Harry Frank:
In Red Giant QuickTip #61: Adding Digital Distortion to Your Footage, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to add some digital distortion/displacement to your footage using RG Holomatrix.
David Bode posted Simulate A Glitchy Corrupted Text on AETuts+ Premium. It uses only built-in plug-ins, but there’s a small gate fee:
New versions of Rowbyte Data Glitch and Bad TV were released, with Premiere compatbility and several other new features. Here’s a quick overview of the new features in Data Glitch v2.0:
Peder Norrby announced TRAPCODE MIR, a new After Effects plug-in under development scheduled for release in the summer of 2012. It’s polygon-based as you can tell from the mountainous mesh (in the linked video). Let’s hope Peder’s other recent experiment comes from the same plug-in:
Miscellaneous
If you’re wondering what all the variations mean, CNET posted What is OLED TV? by Geoffrey Morrison. [Update: also see GEEK OUT: The Non-Technical Technical Guide to Sony OLED Monitors by Art Adams.]
It seems there’s some uncertainty over another Adobe video acquisition: Courthouse News Service notes that Iridas Sues Adobe Over Movie Technology.
The Photoshop team continues peeks at CS Next with Sneak Peek #6:
Trimming to Beats and Words is an important skill, and part of skills explained by Chris and Trish Meyer in Creating Motion Graphics, Editing to Sound, and Timing Video to Audio. If you like this, Todd Kopriva noted many more free sample chapters and videos from An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro:
In case a Duplicate layer in Screen mode is inadequate, PetaPixel notes Overlay an Inverted Layer Onto a Photo to Brighten Underexposed Areas from Adam Dachis at Lifehacker:
Dylan Bennett continued to explain some things with the low-end Khan Academy-style in A Simple Guide to Depth of Field:
Here’s There is no pink light by Minute Physics, which Brain Pickings describes as Sesame Street: OK Go – Three Primary Colors (noted here Feb 15) meets mathemagician Vi Hart’s hand-drawn math lessons:
John Nack noted ‘The City of Samba: “Just when you think tilt shift may be overdone,” Todd Dominey writes, “this comes along. Glorious.” If nothing else make sure to see the Carnival section that starts around 2:20.’ It’s worth the HD load:
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.