From Andrew Kramer – “Over 90% of elements are live action shots, like explosions and blood etc… 100% NEW Footage and Tutorials; NOT an upgrade or anything like that… Yes there is some high speed stuff… I’ll explain more later… the Box is 3D rendered and just meant to be cool.”  LINK HERE

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Play with Fire to Create a Fiery Logo Transition

Playing with fire will no longer get in trouble with your mother! High quality fluid dynamics has traditionally been reserved for high end 3D applications, but in this tutorial we learn to harness these simulations in After Effects to literally play with fire and create this fiery logo transition.

LINK HERE
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TheMographBlog.com – The render queue in After Effects is like a Blackberry.   On the surface, it has a very basic and direct intention.  Need to make a call?  Dial a number and go.   Need to render a composition?  Add it to the queue and hit render.    But just like a Blackberry, if you dig a little bit deeper the render queue in After Effects has a lot to offer the motion graphics artist.

LINK HERE

TheMographBlog.com -
Linking your particle simulation directly to a null also gives you the ability to link multiple simulations to the same null and gives you the flexibility to really create some killer simulations.

LINK HERE
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Digital Tutors – Using Brainstorm in After Effects

In this lesson we will learn how to use Brainstorm to create random looks.  Topics covered include Brainstorming an effect, and saving Brainstormed effects.

Uses After Effects CS3+    LINK HERE

In this episode of GSGcast – Intro to After Effects – 3D Layers and Cameras, Nick Camp aka “The Gorilla” goes through the steps to make layers 3D and animate cameras.  He also discusses Depth of Field in After Effects.

LINK HERE

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In this video tutorial, Creative Cow leader Michael Park shows you how to create a realistic 3D earth, complete with clouds and atmosphere, using only After Effects’ built in effects.  Special attention will be given to combining mulitple instances of the CC Sphere effect to create unique layers with different specular properties for the land and water masses, as well as creating lights from urban centers on the night side of the earth.   LINK HERE

In this Photoshop tutorial, Richard Harrington takes a look at balancing out exposure issues inside of Photoshop CS4. Mixed lighting on a photo can cause portions of the image to be too bright or too dark, fortunately Photoshop gives us some great tools to take care of these types of issues. Using a levels adjustment layer in combination with a color range selection, Richard is able to greatly control the lighting in a photo. The equalize command is also covered in this video tutorial.
LINK HERE
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The History of SmoothCam – Kevin P. McAuliffe
We as editors take things for granted, without appreciating where it came from.  As a Shake user, I loved SmoothCam, and when I found out they were bringing it to Final Cut Studio 2, I was really excited.  I decided, for this article, to look at SmoothCam, where it came from, and how it evolved from Shake.
LINK HERE

HYTA.TV – Creating Selection Sets Automagically

I’m sure that a lot of you are already aware that you can drag a material straight from the Material Manager onto an object and that material will be assigned to that object. Did you know, you can use a similar technique to actually restrict to Selection Sets.
LINK HERE

Ever worked with Adobe Kuler? Ever wanted to use it’s color schemes in After Effects? Now you can. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s simple, and it’s free!

LINK HERE

Chromatic aberration is the failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same point. To a cinematographer this can be an undesired effect, but in motion graphics it can be a very nice addition. While it would be great to capture chromatic aberration naturally with real lenses, most modern lenses aim to minimize this effect. This is why we are dedicating this tutorial to learning how to recreate this phenomenon using built-in after effects plugins.

LINK HERE

Digital Tutors – Using the Elasticity parameter to control Rigid Body interactions

In this lesson we will learn how to use the elasticity parameter to control how bouncy or stiff an object is.

Uses RealFlow 4.0+

LINK HERE

CG Sutra – Maya Velocity Pass

This and the next tutorial go hand in hand… this one teaches you about taking velocity pass in Maya.  LINK HERE

This next one deals with how to use that pass velocity from Maya to generate motion blur using velocity vector inside of Fusion.

LINK HERE

Studio Daily -Reviving AE Lens Flares with Trapcode Shine

Motion designer Harry Frank shows how to breath new life or make a retro look with standard After Effects Lens Flare by using Shape Layers and Trapcode Shine.
LINK HERE

GREYSCALEGORILLA aka Nick Campbell has a couple of cool AE beginner tutorials on his site:
Intro to AE: Keyframes and Animation Basics
GSGcast: Intro To After Effects

Animating your After Effects design in 3D space is fun and, for the most part, easy to achieve. However, the camera and objects can have their own agendas in some instances, but a few tricks can change a seemingly uncontrollable camera animation into pure, cool cinematography…  LINK HERE

A short video tutorial that shows a quick and dirty way to create nice animated “glints” for your text.

Click to PLAY VIDEO »

Type is a critical part of most motion graphics projects. To make your project look truly unique, consider creating your own font. I always shied away from this task as it seemed quite complicated, but there’s a site that makes it unbelievably simple to make your own hand-drawn font – and it’s completely free!  MORE »

If you ever had to apply a Ramp effect to a Text Layer to make it look hip you know that it can be a nightmare. Not to mention when you have a couple of those Text Layers to handle. But have no fear – TextRamp is here!   LINK HERE

Genesis Project by Dennis Radeke has a nice Camera Shake tutorial for beginners.  Cameras, 3D and expressions are three things that I think the beginning AE user are afraid of.  In this simple tutorial, I tackle all three at once.  This project file is going to go up in a few weeks as an Adobe Beginner Classes “Bootleg” class but I thought I’d post the project file first in case some enterprising people want to pull it down and start noodling.  Kind of a simpler version of the Video Copilot one…
LINK HERE

Dean Valez of Motion Graphics Lab has a new tutorial out on creating a Flower Kaleidascope in After Effects.

After the jump there are examples of what this tutorial accomplishes as well as the actual tutorial.

LINK HERE

After Effects Apprentice – 3rd Video Tutorial

In this third video, we show the different ways to create and style type, including tips on areas such as kerning that will help your text look more professional. Click on the Play Video link below, and enjoy!  (Note: For those who are hearing-impaired, Lynda.com has added Closed Captioning to these tutorials. They are available here. If you do not have a Lynda.com subscription, click here for a free 7-day pass.)

Click to PLAY VIDEO

Seamlessly tileable images are an important part of motion graphics design. If you’re looking for a way to create your own using Adobe Photoshop, then this short video tutorial is for you. I cover two different methods for creating the tiles using two very different source images. I then show you how to quickly and easily use the images in Adobe After Effects. Click below to watch the tutorial (duration 9:12).

Click to PLAY VIDEO »

This tutorial by Conor O’Sullivan has been around for awhile, but in updating my site I noticed it was missing – so I’m rectifying that sorry situation. A great little tutorial on how to create a light saber effect in Motion.

Read More…

In this Photoshop for Video tutorial, Richard Harrington takes a look at making an alpha channel based upon the luminance in an image. Alpha channels allow you to store transparency in a graphic and transfer that transparency to another non-linear video editing program or compositing application and key or composite in real time.

LINK HERE

In this tutorial, Creative Cow Leader Aharon Rabinowitz examines how to be more creative by combining different effects with AE’s Fractal Noise.

Click here to download project files.

LINK HERE
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In this AE podcast tutorial, Creative COW contributing editor Carl Larsen shows you how to remove chromatic aberration from your footage using Adobe After Effects. If you are wondering what chromatic aberration is, don’t worry he explains that too…
Podcast Hosted by Carl Larsen LINK HERE

Using an adjustment layer is a great way to add color correction to all layers in a composition.
But, what if you could use ONE layer to rule control them all?
Here is a handy solution.   LINK HERE
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It’s easy to get excited over the latest plugin or technology, but that inevitably leads to stuff that all looks the same. So to get something new and original, sometimes you just need to go Old School! Before computers, the way to produce type animations was to get creative with some props and a camera. Lloyd shows us how to use some reflective paper and a camera to capture some very fresh type animation. Of course he will also show you how to use After Effects as a finishing tool to bring it all together; this is Aetuts+ after all!
Continue Reading

Create a Dreamy Logo in the Clouds Animation

at AEtuts.com by Markus Gustafsson

LINK HERE

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After Effects 7: Blue Screen part 1 View tutorial here. This tutorial shows you how to key out a blue (or green) screen background from video and export for use in Flash 8 or higher.

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TAKEN FROM VIDEOCOPILOT.NET – For anyone using CC Particle World instead of Particular, you may know that Particular’s Turbulent Field is not available.  This feature allows random 3D displacement of a particles position.  A similar effect can be achieved with Particle World by adding a TURBULENT DISPLACE effect. It works best with smaller particle and it has some limitations because it is only 2D but it is a nice way to get away from “perfect” particle movement.  Download Project Comparison
Related Topics:
Fire Title Project — Uses Turbulent displacement
Dark Energy & Electric Energy — Uses Turbulent displacement
Fire Burning Project — Complex Fire Project

There was also a post yesterday revisiting the 3D water reflections tutorial… you should check it out HERE

Hypa.TV is back in action with thier blog now hosted on WordPress… so it is a lot snazzier (sp?).  The delay effector in Cinema4D allows a lot of fun.  You can set it to Spring mode and then bounce things around.

Here is a video as well as a script on creating a gizmo in Nuke 5.0

Video – Script

Credit goes to http://www.viperfs.com

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http://www.viperfs.com shows you 3D and 2D integration, they am creating multipass render setup and 3d scene setup in nuke, hope you like it ..

Download Video – Download Project

username: vfxtalk01 pass: vfxtalk01

Hi all, in this tutorial,  http://www.viperfs.com shows how can you use your matte painting in Nuke, hope you like it..

Download Video Username : vfxtalk01 Pass: vfxtalk01

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http://www.viperfs.com has created a tutorial for basics of keying in Nuke. He used Primatte, IBK and Keylight for keying, he says “sorry for my english, it’s hard to understand what he said but you can undertand what he is doing. ”

Total runtime : 17 min

Download Video – Project File Username : vfxtalk01 Pass : vfxtalk01

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Here’s a nifty tutorial that shows how to use the optical flow node in nuke to calculate the motion vectors for you, then apply motion blur to the object without having to render out a separate motion vector pass.

Optical Flow Node for Motion Blur
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Motionworks’ Dancing Can Part 4 – John Dickinson

In the final part of this series learn how to use After Effects’ Color Link effect to integrate the can into the background, work with various Layer Styles, create a 3D text animation and add other finishing touches.

Watch tutorial

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This 1 hour on-demand e-seminar covers some basic techniques, some little-known techniques and plenty of handy workflow tips for using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator with Adobe After Effects. Click the thumbnail to view full size images.   Watch e-seminar Download project.  ALSO: This After Effects CS4 background is based on a 3×3 Grid created in Adobe Illustrator.  Download project.

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BCC Smooth Tone is an image restoration filter that smoothes out skin imperfections while maintaining image detail and contrast areas such as hair and eyes.  This tutorial from Paul ezzy goes over the basics fo applying the filter to a clip in AE and provides a brief lesson on how to use PixelChooser to increase the filter’s effectiveness.

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Create Your Own Private Ryan Scene – DAY 2

On day 2 of this charged tutorial, Michal will try to give you some insights and hints about gun firings, ricochets and keying out soldiers to clone and paste them in to moving footage.
So, needless to say… just LOCK n’ LOAD!

Continue Reading

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In this Photoshop tutorial, Richard Harrington takes a closer look at smart objects in Adobe Photoshop CS4. A smart object is an embedded copy of the original object in your document, this allows you to place large images or vector graphics into your Photoshop project and then scale it up or scale it down without worring about losing the original file resolution.
LINK HERE

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In this tutorial MaxAfter.com teaches you how to create liquid interaction with 3d objects in RealFlow and 3ds Max.  Also we will explore how to export objects from 3ds Max into Realflow to create liquid simulation.

LINK HERE

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Jonas Hummelstrand over at General Specialist has a list of updates and fixes for After Effects and Premiere Pro CS4

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Scott Frizzle has a bunch of cool presets/projects for Trapcode Particular that include impacts, splatters, novas, and sperm… yes sperm.  There is also an FFX preset called Quaker, which has nothing to do with pilgrims or thanksgiving… because that would lamesauce.

LINK HERE

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Nick Campbell is a guy that I have just recently started watching his daily podcast over at greyscalegorilla.com.  He is a designer at Digital Kitchen in Chicago, and is VERY talented.  This is a link to his really informative video entitled “How To Be Creative… And Get Paid”.

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Nahuel has a new preset called AutoTitles.  You can use the prest to acheive advanced trailer titles and create cool design and manipulate the powerful preset.  LINK HERE.  Also there is this link that goes to a page about exploring the features of this new preset… LINK HERE

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Dean Valez at Motion Graphics Lab has a tutorial on making a faux-3D stroke effect in AECS3.

CHECK OUT LINK HERE

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This tutorial from Maltaannon show you how to create the growing 3D vines effect using ONLY After Effects, from the promo for Video Copilot’s TWITCH plugin for After effects

Another from Maltaannon he shows you how to create a CG snake with dynamic movement.  Project Files are available as well.

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Type animation is one of the most wonderful functions to play with in After Effects, especially since version 6 introduced actual text character animation control. With CS3 adding per-character 3D control, typographic motion design has never been more fun. Let’s create some cool smoky type.
LINK HERE

One of the toughest things to achieve in After Effects is a true feeling of space, environment, and temperature even. One way to infuse your scene with reality is to add light—and not simply a spotlight with a feathered edge and a few shadows here and there, but a realistic light cast from the very essential form of illumination: fire!

[If you’d like to preview the final effect, click here to download. All files are for personal use only.]
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So in this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create a spray paint effect using After Effects. It’s a fairly simple process but I’ve got a few tricks that you may not have thought of. Here is a sample video of what you’ll be creating.  Here are the AE project files.

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Create a shiny, Web 2.0 style text effect within After Effects including a glossy finish and a professional looking background. (..more)

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Without lights in a scene, After Effects will automatically illuminate all 3D layers equally. It makes sure the lighting stays consistent and you can focus on your project, however, adding a 3D light can considerable enhance the mood of a scene.  This tutorial runs you through the basics of lighting a 3D scene in After Effects

LINK HERE

In this tutorial we learn how to harness the shatter plugin along with some expressions and color correction to simulate a dramatic underground explosion that ripples and dislodges the ground.

LINK HERE

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Forging Fire Title Plate

Our first written tutorial. Learn how to create this wow factor title plate in AE with no additional plug-ins. We’re going to be creating this effect with CC Particle Systems, hue/saturation, CC Vector Blur, Glow and a few other standard effects.
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Animated Butterfly in After Effects In this two-part tutorial, J. Schuh demonstrates how to animate a layered image of a butterfly using After Effects CS4. Continue Reading

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In this new tutorial we will build a chrome ring in After Effects with an elaborate particle wipe.  You’ll learn a new expression and build an anamorphic lens flare. The tutorial uses Trapcode Particular but I also show you how to set it up with CC particle world as well.  Watch Tutorial Watch Sample Video Also some other stuff from VCP this week…  Download Free Rain Sounds Download Free Hearts V-Day Project (CS3+)

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The most expressions are written in english…  If you’re running your After Effects in a different language these expressions will cause a bunch of errors.  With this .jsx you can translate it to your language.  This script supports English, French, German, Italian and Spanish versions only.  DOWNLOAD

You’ve probably seen other old TV effect tutorials before but in this tutorial Greg pays attention to minute details like the RGB pixel separation and teaches us how to achieve this look using all built-in After Effects tools.

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AAEuser on Youtube has a 2 part tutorial for creating an IceMan effect in… you guessed it… After Effects.  Part 1 is on youtube, while the second part is hosted on Vimeo… don’t ask why… I have no idea.

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In part 3 of this series learn how to use After Effects Shape Layers to add dynamic and organic, self-animating elements to the background.

Watch tutorial

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In this tutorial we’ll use the Spacing Tool to distribute objects based on the current selection (domino object) along a path defined by a spline and use reactor to make the falling domino FX. LINK HERE
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Text to Smoke Using Trapcode Form

In this After Effects free video tutorial, we’re going to show you how to make text disappear into thin air. Using Trapcode Form we’ll go from a solid shape to little puffs of smoke that whisp off into the air…much like money these days, OMG!

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Welcome to the first tutorial in our “the basics” series. This series of tutorials is designed to teach you the extreme basics of Cinema 4D and is a great way to learn Cinema 4D for everyone that has never used Cinema 4D before.

In this tutorial we will cover the Cinema 4D interface, we will go through all basic menu’s and button explaining what they are and how to use them.
Continue reading

In this Photoshop tutorial, Richard Harrington gives some tips on how to fix an underexposed or overexposed image using the shadow / highlights command in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and goes through each of the advanced settings to give great understand of how you can harness the power of this adjustment tool. The shadow / highlights filter can also be used on Smart Objects in recent versions of PS, expanding the way you can dynamically utilize this tool. LINK HERE

In this episode, Aharon shows you how to turn your video into an animated watercolor painting, and shares some techniques in varying the look and color.

View Tutorial |  Project Files |  Example Video

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In part 2 Lloyd shows us how to use 32-bit compositing with custom particle shapes to create the “light-tastical” light streaking logo reveal animation.

LINK HERE
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In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create domino’s textures in After Effects and use Flip Horizontal and Vertical. 

Requirements: After Effects CS4 (Flip Horizontal and vertical)

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AEPortal.blogspot.com is reporting on the new version of Ease and Wizz 2.0 Now with Curvaceous.  If you’re not familiar with this script, it’s an adaptation of Robert Penner’s easing equations for Flash, and gives you more options when you’re tweening values such as position, rotation, or scale.  LINK HERE

In this video tutorial we will learn how to make an insect swarm animation without using any particle engine. We will be using type tool and a font to create insects. After Effects have a very strong type engine and using this you can create some cool looking animations.

LINK HERE

Stabilizing and Reverse Stabilizing Footage in After Effects

Tracking and stabilizing footage plays important role in composition. This tutorial covers stabilization of the footage and reverse stabilization of the footage to eliminate the black areas that caused due to stabilization operation. Lets get started… LINK HERE

How to Create Fog in Fusion using the Fog Tool

In this tutorial we will go thru the process of creating fog using fog tool of deep pixel category of eyeon Fusion tools. We will use luminance depth pass and channel boolean tool to achieve this effect.

LINK HERE

Artbeats.com – “Eight” Movie Title Effects by Steve Holmes of Energi Design (www.clickenergi.com)
Join the power of Adobe After Effects with the quality, variety and flexibility of Artbeats stock footage to create an amazingly detailed and textured movie title sequence!
Watch Tutorial (right click to download)
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Artbeats.com – “Inside the Machines” DVD Menus
by Steve Holmes of Energi Design (www.clickenergi.com)
Discover how to create cool, unique and highly flexible motion menu graphics for DVDs, with just a minimal investment in an Artbeats high-definition clip!
Watch Tutorial (right click to download)
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Artbeats.com – “Earthfire” Television Intro

by Steve Holmes of Energi Design (www.clickenergi.com)

Learn cool real-world techniques to mask, color and control Artbeats stock footage to add depth and detail to this incredible TV intro.

Watch Tutorial (right click to download)

Artbeats.com – Organic Fruit & Textables by Steve Holmes of Energi Design (www.clickenergi.com) In this scenario of creating a commercial for the British Organic Health Agency, Artbeats royalty-free stock clips form the perfect background and motion for a truly memorable advertisement. Combine beautiful video with incredible 3D motion tracked text and playful animation techniques.Watch Tutorial (right click to download)
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Artbeats.com – Come Rain or Shine by Steve Holmes of Energi Design (www.clickenergi.com) In this scenario of motion graphics design for a television channel’s weather program, finding the right sky, clouds, or rainy background is quick and easy when presented with the wide selection of stock footage clips from Artbeats. But what about “adding” weather? Making it snow or rain over the top of 3D composited footage? See just how this seemingly impossible task becomes reality, and learn some new tricks in After Effects along the way!
Watch Tutorial (right click to download)

I got an email with a bunch of tutorials on using Boris’ BCC filters.  If you have never used Boris or heard of their products I would recommend downloading their 14 trail verison below.
Applying a BCC 3D Object Filter in After Effects
• Duration: 1 minute and 45 seconds
• Description: Quick demonstration of how to apply a BCC 3D Object filter in After Effects.

Using After Effects Comp Lights with BCC 3D Objects Filters
• Duration: 4 minutes and 8 seconds
• Description: Demonstration of how to use After Effects lights to light a BCC 3D Object and how to use AE expressions to link BCC 3D Object Rotations to an AE Null object – to enable use of on-screen 3D interactors.
Using After Effects’ Comp Camera with BCC 3D Object Filters
• Duration: 2 minutes and 34 seconds
• Description: Demonstration of how to use the After Effects camera to view a BCC 3D Object. Also includes tips for integrating BCC 3D Objects filters into AE comps including AE 3D layers.
Download a Free 14-day Trial Version

Download Project File
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The mobile version of Video Copilot is now online! It’s not going to change the world but it may give you something to do while you’re waiting around town.

Just type http://m.videocopilot.net from a mobile device and your in!

Harry Frank’s website Graymachine.com has a ton of quick tips, on things like easy ways to scroll through presets, using really simple expressions you would never think of and things like that.

LINK HERE

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In this 2 part tutorial AETUTS editor Lloyd Alvarez gets his hands dirty with a little expression math to create some beautifully organic light streaks that are used to reveal the AETUTS logo. In part 1 Lloyd breaks down the science behind creating a simple expression that drives the light streak emitter and shows you how easy it is to create infinite variations with ease.

LINK HERE

CreativeCow.net has another podcast now with its 114th episode out.  The podcast is the Photoshop For Video Podcast.  The lastest episode deals with shadow and highlight adjustments.  In this tutorial, Richard Harrington takes a look at the shadow / highlights command in Photoshop CS4 to control the underexposed or overexposed areas of a graphic.

Instructor – Pradeep Mamgain
In this video tutorial we will generate lava from a dry lava field image. We will also use particular to generate heat effect.
LINK HERE

In this tutorial we will take CG passes from 3D Application, Maya in this case and composite them inside of eyeon fusion. Composting is the art of combining multiple images into a unified final scene. All professional productions are rendered in multiple layers or passes and finished though compositing.When you render in passes, you render different attribute of an image separately such as color, shadow, specularity, reflection, contact shadows and depth. It gives you precise control over the different aspects of your scene. Once you render the passes in given 3D application, you can bring them into the composting software like Fusion, Shake or After Effects and generate a quite nice result after fine tuning the passes.  LINK HERE

Poly Loop - NEW
A way to create a row of looping polys using Modo.
WATCH NOW

Arc
Cutting out an arc shape from a single poly. A technique used for adding in that extra detail.
WATCH NOW

Bevel Out Geometry/ Edge Loop
A subdivion technique used to add extra detail into your model. Creating edge loops and avoid triangles.
WATCH NOW

Spin Edges Manually
If you work with C4D 10 and below you know that there is no spin edge tool or command. In this video we’ll do it the old fashion way.
WATCH NOW