Here’s another summary of the last week or so of some news on After Effects tutorials, plug-ins, and scripts — including new plug-ins, scribble & write-on, Motion 5, a few “Best of” roundups, 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.
TVPixel is a new plug-in for After Effects and Premiere Pro that pixelates your image into R,G,B Pixels like a real TV/LCD Screen. It can be used to achieve a realistic effect of simulating the image on an LCD screen or tube TV, or can be used for artistic effect. Here’s the demo from Satya Meka at AE Scripts:
Screen Mask from Mylenium might give you similar results as TVPixel, and even correct Moir© patterns when modifying the angle of view on a 3D layer. There are some additional options in LCD + video game looks, Screenify: Jumbotron screen Maltaannon-style, and the newer roundup LED and Casino light text effects in After Effects here at PVC.
iExpressions: New Pricing, New Bundle and Free Upgrade explains that you can now purchase either the full iExpressions tool or individual bundles separately; individual bundles range from $4.99 to $44.99. Plus there’s a new bundle in the free upgrade, Layer Placement iExpressions, which contains 21 iExpressions that allow to arrange layers in 2D or 3D space. Here’s one of the 13 Layer Placement quick tip tutorials:
FilmmakerIQ has their own video tutorials, like Create Intricate Wipes with Track Mattes, a basic tutorial demonstrating how to create intricate wipes in After Effects and apply them to footage in Premiere Pro.
Andrew Devis posted Using the Scribble & Stroke Effects, an in-depth looks at 2 overlooked effects, and AE Basics 30: The Write-on Effect:
AE I Owe U: pt. 2. – 10 Advanced Ways After Effects Saves Editor’s Lives outlines more AE bread and butter that editors can leverage.
Motion 5 and AE CS5 is compared by Kevin P. McAuliffe in his write-up, The Power of Many or No Waiting Required: Adobe After Effects vs. Apple’s Motion. Some of the best tutorials for Motion 5 can be found here on PVC from Mark Spencer in his blog Final Cut Pro & Motion. Here’s an older one, but be sure to check out the latest, Particle Tricks in Motion:
Adobe TV posted Advanced Roto Brush in After Effects by Colin Smith, embedded below. For more on the Roto Brush tool, see links in Help and in Roto Brush explained, and in Isolating a Subject with Roto Brush from Adobe After Effects CS5: Learn by Video by Todd Kopriva, embedded below:
S©bastien P©rier explained aspects of Exporting 2 Separate Stereo Views in AE CS5.5. For more, see stereoscopic 3D in After Effects CS5.5 by Todd Kopriva and AE Help.
AE Scripts released ft-PPass2Matte by Francois Tarlier, which create mattes that are attached to objects in 3D renders by using a PPass (also called point pass, position pass or position point pass). Here’s the demo:
Evan Abrams posted How to Sync Motion Typography to Audio:
Lynda.com posted Using After Effects’ render queue to be more efficient from their Design In Motion series (there’s more on rendering at AE Portal archive):
ShortformVideo posted a tutorial to make a game-style HUD, Satellite Tracking Display. You can find the project at the website; here’s a peak at the tutorial. BTW, there’s more on HUD and their making at AE Portal archive…
Angie Taylor shared some Happy Holidays After Effects Presets and noted that video2brain is offering a special code to share training with a friend for free. She’s also offering discounts on some of her video2brain classes.
In Quick Tip #56: Sketchy Stop-Motion Text Look A. Rabinowitz takes inspiration from Vimeo to explore text preset and animation selectors in AE. In RGTV Episode 67: Swarm of Flies, Seth Worley shows how to have a swarm of flies attack actors and tips to sell the effect, including particle work, compositing, and color correction techniques. Yet another is Red Giant TV Live – Episode 8: Motion Graphics with Trapcode Echospace by Harry Frank. Here’s the swarm:
Miscellaneous
If you want to see how 3-Point Edits work in Premiere, see this from Maxim Jago and Jan Ozer from Adobe Premiere Pro CS5: Learn by Video:
In The Best of Filmmaker IQ, 2011 (the Wrap), John Hess covers his top 14 featured articles, and each one themselves may take hours to explore. Here’s the wrap, if you need convincing to look at that uber-roundup, but please skip the chip implant because the bugs are hell:
CreativeApplications.Netork by Filip Visnjic is a digital art blog that has put together their list of 10 Best and Most Memorable Projects of 2011. Here’s one, the Solar Sinter Project from Markus Kayser:
Flowing Data put together a list of The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2011. Here’s a 10-year sequence of global fires from the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio:
