Here’s a little roundup of recent news on After Effects tutorials, plug-ins, scripts and more, with only a little on the brouhaha of FCP X.
Capture A Digital Satellite Government Surveillance Shot by Adam Everett Miller leverages zooms, bad TV, and reticles. See also Faking a CCTV security video and De-rezzing your video from Shortformvideo and Designing & Compositing a HUD.
Cosmo and Magic Bullet Looks 2 are new plug-ins from Red Giant. Before you check out Getting Started with Eric Escobar’s Indie Film II for Looks, here’s what’s new in MBL2:
Before Magic Bullet Looks 2, Red Giant posted Quicktip #45: Compositing & Visual Effects While Color Correcting from Aharon Rabinowitz, which talks about the process of color correction/grading when compositing or adding effects.
Chris and Trish Meyer have several new tips and tutorials: CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 29 – Motion Stabilization & CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 30 – Motion Tracking and After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Building a Composition Hierarchy Designed to Accomodate Changes & After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Non-Uniform Scale Issues with Parenting.
Laurie Knapp continues a run of AE tutorials with 5 new ones on Vimeo: After Effects Tutorial 3: “Self-Execution” Part 1: Cloning Actor with Split Screen, After Effects Tutorial 3: “Self-Execution” Part 2 – Tips For Muzzle Flare and Blood Hits, After Effects Tutorial 4: Simple Eye Color Replacement, and After Effects Tutorial 5: Nulls 101 – Create More Flexible Motion Paths & After Effects Tutorial 5 Addendum – Animating CC Particle World Producer With Nulls. Here the addendum on nulls and Particle World; for more & beyond see CC Particle World project(s) from the usual suspect (a collection of resources on the AE Portal archive):
Remove Orange Tips from Airsoft Guns- After Effects from finalcutqueen on YouTube is a basic but effective demo (though it lacks clarity on Mask Expansion).
Check out the Elemental Combat Series on AEtuts+ if you’re into fire, lightning, and explosions.
SqueezeMe.tv, the motion graphics newsfeed aggregator from Justin McClure (with assists from Dominic Flask), happily continues with updates.
These are new products and tutorials mentioned at AE Portal:
Reflections in After Effects (a mini-roundup)
Plug-in sneak peaks: Shapeshifter & Element 3D (video tours)
After Effects A-Z: CC Bender & CC Bend It from Motionworks
Monster Face from Mamoworld + deform & replacement references
After Effects titles using Motype & Nodes, a free webinar
Free Lower Thirds plus Additional Resources (a mini-roundup)
Spreadsheets to Lower Thirds in Premiere
After Effects A-Z: Card Wipe transition from Motionworks
Pseudo 3D Set Extensions from Andrew Kramer
3D Extruder for After Effects (new from AE Scripts, with 13 video tutorials!)
FeltTips follows up quickly with 3D Extruder Quick Tip… light spill. on Vimeo:
FeltTips also returned with a few tutorials on exprerssions, After Effects Random Expression Shenanigans and Quick After Effects Expressions #1 – Camera Targetter.
Tim Clapham (@helloluxx) is collecting recommendations for useful #aescripts and plans to compile the results.
Mark Christiansen introduced a series on PVC, After Effects Script of the Week. The new series aims to boost your After Effects workflow, leveraging scripts mainly from AE Scripts, the most useful new AE resource of the last several years. Notes on some of most interesting scripts may be found at AE Portal archive.
Other News
After the tempest-in-a-teacup following the release of FCP 10.0, Adobe and Avid offered various big switch-to-us incentives. Part of the aftermath of the disappointing release and other PR adventures: the NY Times has curbed David Pogue.
How to Encode Video for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch by Jan Ozer:
Jonas Hummelstrand notes the release of CasparCG Server 2.0a, a free media server, mixer, and DVE that can be used for “broadcast, podcast, events, stage shows, digital signage or anywhere you want to have a playback server that can be controlled via a network (or by itself; collecting data from databases, XML files, RSS feeds or external devices such as sensors and buttons). … Displaying stories from web feeds or showing real-time generated graphics based on dynamic data such as audio levels, time of day or values from a database? No problems; CasparCG lets you use the full scripting capabilities of Flash, but with the added features of direct-from-disk video and audio playback, plus the possibility of stacking several layers of Flash with alpha channels. … CasparCG is being used in national TV broadcasts, and is currently displaying everything from lower-third name signs, election results, game show scores and channel idents in six nationally broadcast channels.” Here’s Jonas on how to ‘Create a Dynamic CasparCG Template with Video and Audio”:
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