Here’s another summary of the last week or so of news on After Effects — with assorted tutorials, scripts, demos, documentaries, and more.

Grenade Throw! by Video Copilot builds a super-slow motion grenade-throw entirely inside of AE with green screen footage. Andrew Kramer use 2D tracking on a camera to match a nodal pan and simulate camera depth of field, and presents additional ideas on capturing moments in super-slow motion. Here’s a variation of the finished product by ieatsushieveryday:

David Torno posted 3 new video tutorials on PVC, including ExpressionShorts Ep.1- Read External txt Document and ExpressionShorts Ep.2- Auto Fade Layer. Here’s Null Swapper – A Plexus/Particular freebie utility script with video tutorial:

Framecurve has launched an effort to develop a standard interchange format for speedramps or timewarp effects, and they’re offering AE scripts if you’re trying to exchange speed ramp between top apps.

Angie Taylor offered Word Spacing, a sample from Creative Graphic Design: Essential Typography:

How to Control Motion Blur in After Effects is the latest edition of No Stupid Questions with Colin Smith. There are a good number of other intro tutorials covering the same ground, rounded up recently in Adding motion blur in After Effects. Here’s the latest:

Trent Armstrong posted 3D Star: Shape Layer Preset on the Dallas After Effects User Group.

Mamoworld demoed more iExpressions, including Distribute 3D Random. Here’s a sample of what layer placement iExpressions can do:

On AE-List @ media-motion.tv, Jack Tunnicliffe posted an example of frame rate smoothing and frames restoration/interpolation of missing frames using pt_FrameRestorer from Paul Tuersley and AE Scripts. It’s a good example; here’s the offical demo:

Grayscale Gorilla posted Basics of Seamless Looping Animation Part 1 (part 2 is on Cinema 4D). Earlier, MotionRevolver posted Creating a Seamlessly Looping Animation with After Effects, and Evan Abrams posted Get Loopy with LoopOut. Also, In The Loop – A Killer Expression by Matthew Tompkins demonstrated the uses of the loop expression in After Effects, examining the loopOut(), loopIn(), loopInDuration(), loopOutDuration() commands and their “ping pong”, “cycle” and “continue” modes. See also Chris and Trish Meyer’s Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 8: Going for a Loop and a gaggle of resources in Adobe Community Help. For ease of use there’s also pt_AutoExpress by Paul Tuersley and The LoopMaker is an AE script by Lloyd Alvarez, which loops any layers, footage or comps with one click, added “cycle” and “Ping-Pong” loop types. For even more, see looping tutorials on Trent Armstrong‘s site, Looping a Particle System from Aharon Rabinowitz, and looping backgrounds from Church Media Design in Some Backgrounds in After Effects. Here’s Nick:

Station Tutorials introduced Stereoscopic 3D in Cineform and After Effects on YouTube. Earlier, Todd Kopriva rounded up resources for stereoscopic 3D in After Effects CS5.5; here’s a sample of the overview series on Stereo 3D by Chris and Trish Meyer:

VinhSon Nguyen posted Quickly Center Stuff Horizontally & Vertically:

Adam Everett Miller showed How To Make A Wiggling Cord From Particles using a wiggling emitter to create the illusion of a single cord moving, & add shading, motion blur, and shadow to add realism:

Andrew Devis posted 2 new tutorials, Lite Bite for After Effects: How do I use 8 or 16 bpc effects on 16 or 32 pbc projects? and Lite Bite for After Effects: How do I animate Text on a Path?

In “So What Is Going On With Your Cookbook?” And Other Life Changing News, longtime engineer Michael Natkin announced that he’s leaving the After Effects team for the world of food. Check out his blog Herbivoracious and the new book.
 

Miscellaneous

Business Insider and others noted Why Apple Makes iPhones In China And Why The US Is Screwed, based a new article in the New York Times explains that it’s not just niches but whole ecosystems that were offshored.

There’s more on the Adobe Post Workflow on Mobius from the team of Vincent Laforet, especially on Dynamic Link and rotoscoping and tracking tools:

In Tech Demo: Windows 7 64 bit, MacBook Air,Thunderbolt, and Premiere Pro, Dave Helmly took a quick look at some Thunderbolt solutions, an Apple MacBook Air 13″ running Windows 7 64-bit via Boot Camp, with an active Thunderbolt port connected to Sonnet Chassis, and a RED Rocket installed delivering full 4K playback on ultra lightweight notebook. One wag claims this “concept proves with enough RAM and a powerful processor, Thunderbolt could enable even the current-generation MacBooks to soon replace the Mac Pro altogether.” An earlier take on Thunderbolt by Helmly is also below. Can’t wait for his comparison testing to CUDA.

Adobe’s Tom Hogarty talks about the extra features in the Lightroom 4 beta appeared on Digital Photography Review. Sneak Peek #1 from Bryan Hughes looks at a new version of Camera Raw, and a glimpse of the new dark UI and HUDs in Photoshop CS Next. Some of the same stuff is in the free beta of Lightroom 4.

Hurlblog posted 7 Tips for HD Color Correction and DSLR Color Correction. Patrick Inhofer prefers other orders of operation; for that and more see The Tao Colorist Newsletter.

Does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is one question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

Also via PetaPixel is Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film from PBS. Here’s some of what Adams saw in the range of light in 1923:
It was one of those mornings where the sunlight is burnished with the keen wind and long feathers of cloud moved in a lofty sky.  The silver light turned every blade of grass and every particle of sand into a luminous, metallic splendor.  There was nothing, however small, that did not clash in the bright wind, that did not send arrows of light through the glassy air.  I was suddenly arrested in the long, crunching path of the ridge by an exceedingly pointed awareness of the light.  The moment I paused, the full impact of the mood was upon me.  I saw more clearly than I’ve ever seen before or since the minute detail of  the grasses, the small flotsam of the forest, the motion of the high clouds, streaming above the peaks.  I dreamed that for a moment time stood quietly and the vision became but the shadow of an infinitely greater world.  And I had within the grasp of consciousness a transcendental experience. (after 24:00)

Infothestics notes TEDx Talk on Molecular Animation: Combining Cinema and Biology, which embeds several visualizations generated by x-ray crystallography and other data sets. Here’s the main talk: