Zombies. That's the first thing that comes to mind when I see footage of a once heavily populated area turned completely desolate. Either that or you stumbled across a Ke$ha concert...BURN.
The Trapcode suite is a set of plug-ins for After Effects that allow video artists to create a variety of effects for inclusion in video and film productions. This particular guide demonstrates the power of Trapcode Particular and Trapcode 3D Stroke. Specifically, Wes Ball from OddBall Animation reveals how Trapcode was used in the creation of 'Eye of the Storm' - a music video by Lovett which can be seen here.
This is your video guide to the Magic Bullet Looks plugin in for Adobe After Effects. If you are looking for a color correction tool, check out this video to see what Magic Bullet Looks has to offer. Learn how to use this color correction tool.
Into special FX? Check out this video for a lesson in green screen. Watch and learn how to use green screen in After Effects. You can use green screen to make incredible visual effects for your videos and short films.
Make your job a little easier by setting presets in After Effects. This will allow you to save time while you add visual effects to your film. Having custom presets makes it much simpler to achieve consistency is your VFX.
Have you got a copy of After Effects installed with the language set to another language? Check out this helpful video to learn how to set the language English, whatever the current language is. Maybe your film is in French, but that doesn't mean your visual effects software has to be.
Largely self-taught, Ryan John Kothe is an animator working out of Auckland, New Zealand. After picking up some rudimentary After Effects skills, he went on to create an impressive portfolio of beautifully rendered stop-motion animations with a distinctly tactile feel. Curious about the process behind Worn Out—Ryan's depiction of objects disintegrating in fast-forward (shown below)—we contacted him for a brief Q&A on the techniques behind his work.
You can create the magical world of Harry Potter yourself, using After Effects software. Watch these videos and learn how to make the "Death Eater" effect from the Harry Potter movies. Using After Effects, you can have the same incredible SFX as these Hollywood blockbusters.
This tutorial demonstrates how Twixtor Pro can be used to create slow motion special effects when editing video in After Effects. Learn beginner to intermediate VFX, specifically slowing down footage shot at a very high shutter speed. Twixtor allows the user to manage blur and warping when creating a slow motion effect.
A lot of people use Flash for 2D cartoon animation, but Adobe After Effects is another great tool to create some very cool cartoon animation. This how to gives you a clear idea of the steps to take to use AE as a cartoon creation device. This short video tutorial will demonstrate how to properly export character animation from Flash and import it into After Effects to combine with background and foreground elements. It also gives a handy trick of how to duplicate a character animation clip to...
Learn how to create a video of holographic images appearing from an iPhone, using video footage and After Effects software. The basic elements used here are the built-in motion tracker (although you can also use the Mocha tracker bundled with CS4) and creating icons within After Effects with simple partially-transparent solids.
In this tutorial, After Effects is used in actual realtime to create a video comp that simulates a forward three-dimensional movement. Several images are arranged into a layered, three-dimensional composition, and a single image is tiled into a surface pattern that is offset tilted and scrolled forward indefinitely. Several additional elements are also mentioned to add realism and depth to the forward scrolling movement, including foreground elements, background images, camera shake, camera...
Pulp heroism rules! And everyone's favorite masked vigilante hits the big screen tomorrow night, thanks to fantastical filmmaker Michel Gondry and his new superhero movie, The Green Hornet.
This tutorial uses a title screen from the Kick Ass trailer as its inspiration. Learn how many of the tools, functions and processes work within Adobe After Effects by completing this tutorial. You'll be an AE master by the time you're done.
This tutorial covers one of the basic attributes of Adobe After Effects - displacement mapping. You can use a displacement map to create a stereoscopic effect for your next animation. It's quite easy, and only requires a basic familiarity with the program.
This tutorial shows you a great rigging tutorial you can use with Adobe After Effects. Create an animation or clip that looks like you've got stereoscoping rigging. This is an easy tutorial anyone familiar with the basics of Adobe After Effects will be able to do.
This is an easy technique that even beginners can master. Start with some basic text, like a logo or a title, and then use a few simple techniques in Adobe After Effects to give it the look of 3-D animated text.
Start a complex animation that only has a few keyframes by using precomping! This is a simple yet powerful technique that can really open up your ability to get the most out of creating fun animations using Adobe After Effects.
This is a quick and easy tutorial that shows you how to add better looking shadows to your projects in After Effects. The video takes two basic spheres and shows you how to alter Drop Shadow to make it look exactly how you want it.
This is a quick little tutorial for someone who wants to learn how to do better puppetry or puppet effects in Adobe After Effects. Use the Puppet Tool and the DuIK Tools on your next animation project using inverse kinematics.
So you've mastered the basics of using the Falloff Lighting plugin for Adobe After Effects, and now you're ready for some of the more advanced concepts. This tutorial shows you how to illuminate an object in a corner using this plugin.
Camera mapper is a function in Adobe After Effects that lets you take a static, 2-D image and turn into a dynamic 3-D shot. Create a zoom feature and make it look like you have a camera panning through the picture!
You can take a piece of completely modern digital footage and give it an aged, antique feel! You will need the Aged Film plugin for Adobe After Effects, which lets you create the sepia tone and flickering, variable speed look of antique film clips.
Upload your footage to Adobe After Effects (make sure it has been set to 3-D), and then apply the effects you want, such as fog. Then, you can use the Depth Cue setting to change the depth of your picture to really make it look 3-D.
Take a thoroughly modern clip of digital film, and then send it back in time! This tutorial shows you how to use the Aged Film plugin for Adobe After Effects to make your clip look like it comes stright from the 1970s.
Love the look of animated 35mm film? It can be tricky to really replicate this effect, but it's nevertheless possible. This tutorial shows you how to use Adobe After Effects to create your own clip of 3-D animated film footage.
You can use the FreeForm plugin to create the look of cloth blowing in the wind - like an animated ribbon, or a banner waving in the wind. The key is in designing the displacement map to get a truly realistic effect.
You can simulate the look of fluids using the FreeForm plugin for Adobe After Effects. Play around with the color, viscosity and opacity of your liquid, and animate a container filling up as well. This tutorial covers everything you'll need to know!
This tutorial shows you how to take a 2-D image of a Persian rug and turn it into a fully 3-D staircase using the displacement mapper in Adobe After Effects. Displacement mapping is a versatile, helpful tool for any 3-D animator.
This tutorial shows you first how to create some basic outdoor terrain in Adobe After Effects. Then, create a camera effect which makes it look like your camera is slowly flying over the terrain using the FreeForm plugin for After Effects.
Yeah baby! That's right, 1960's, retro style motion graphics. You want em, you need em and this tutorial with Angie Taylor of Red Giant TV shows YOU how to get them by using PlaneSpace, Text Anarchy, Trapcode Echospace and Warp! Shagadelic baby!
Learn to animate text in Adobe After Effects CS3 with this video tutorial so that it looks like it is being handwritten. This video tutorial from Matthew Butler shows three different methods of animating in After Effects CS3, the techniques can also be used in CS4 and CS5.
Learn the fundamentals of position tracking in After Effects in this informative 5 minute tutorial from Patrick Carter. This video lesson involves attaching a text object to a moving cowboy on screen to demonstrate the basic transform tracking function.
Create an effect in your video where the video footage is converted to black & white, pauses, and resumes playback in regular color. This effect is demonstrated by Aharon Rabinowitz with Spy Photo, a brand new set of free presets for Adobe After Effects.
Simulate the look of snapshots in your After Effects video footage with Spy Photo, a free set of presets that dynamically automate and generate the effect. This 17-minute tutorial from Aharon Rabinowitz of All Bets Are Off demonstrates the features of this cool new addition, which includes camera sound effects and viewfinder overlays.
Create simple reflections in Adobe After Effects with keyed footage. In this video tutorial, Aharon Rabinowitz of All Bets Are Off demonstrates its use with video footage of both crowd and individuals. In addition, some potential issues with Collapse Transformations are also addressed.
Use a 2D image of clouds to generate realistic video footage of 3D cloud motion. In this tutorial from All Bets Are Off, Aharon Rabinowitz demonstrates how to create this effect using a single 2D image of clouds and a few simple clicks.
Recreate the scary effect in Poltergeist when the girl gets trapped inside the television using Adobe Audition, Adobe After Effects or any similar editing software. Harry Frank and Aharon Rabinowitz take you through the detailed tutorials step by step using a couple of different software methods.
Use After Effects to simulate a 3D stereoscopic effect, and remap time to speed up and slow down footage (a popular video effect used throughout the 2007 movie '300'). This tutorial from motion graphics designer James Zanoni shows you how.
Using a layered photograph, chroma key footage and depth of field, prolific Italian designer Juri Ciana demonstrates precisely how to create a stunningly beautiful 3D composition with After Effects. In this informative video-only tutorial, depth of field and focus is utlized as critical elements that provide the various components of this video composition with a living vibrancy and dynamism.
Learn to animate a logo in this rather casual (and occasionally cryptic) video demonstration that combines After Effects with audio portions in Sony Vegas. Much of the final product has already been rendered so this tutorial is essentially a walkthrough of the various parts of the project.
Increase the realism of your video footage with camera movement and color correction. In this video tutorial, Adobe After Effects is used to add realistic camera wiggle and shake to video footage from Call of Duty: Black Ops, simulating a handheld camera. In addition, the video tutorial also goes over some basic curve adjustment for color correction to give the video footage a unique look.
Evoke a dramatic effect in your 720p60 video by upsampling and converting to 24p and 24p slow motion, and adding a little bit of color grading with Adobe After Effects. This informative video shows the footage before, during and after treatment, showing the difference that this editing process can make in ordinary footage.
Replicate the Predator-style video camouflage in After Effects by using displacement maps. This uniquely stunning and groundbreaking visual effect has been seen countless times in film and television to show video camouflage, invisibility, heat distortion, holograms, and static interference, among others. This video shows how to replicate this effect by using green screen footage, Fractal Noise and Displacement Maps, all within Adobe After Effects.
Compositing and color correction are important and integral steps in processing a 3D render after it is generated in Cinema 4D, 3D Studio Max or any other 3D package. Compositing transforms simple renders and provides them with life, vibrancy and atmosphere. In this demonstration, Greyscale Gorilla breaks down a 5 second project from Rich Hinchcliffe and demonstrates how Rich uses Adobe After Effects, color correction, blurs, ReelSmart Motion BLur, Frischluft Lens Care and Lens Flares to...
You can construct a 3-D photo gallery of rotating photographs quite easily in Adobe After Effects. The trick is to use parenting and anchor points to pull it off, and this tutorial shows you how to avoid using the cylinder effect.
Time Remapping is a feature of Adobe After Effects used for rigging your animated characters, which can be most useful when trying to make your lip syncing look realistic. This is a quick tutorial on how to use this feature for your next project.
This tutorial shows you how to take your architectural renderings in Adobe After Effects and give them a 35mm film look. Even better, this tutorial uses only the basic program - no plugins or extra add ons to worry about.
Here's a useful technique for any animator to be able to pick up - give your anaglyph animations a 3-D look. To replicate this, you will need Flash, After Effects and Photoshop, or programs that can accomplish similar animation tasks.
Want to create your own time lapse video, but you don't have the right equipment? You can use Adobe After Effects to fill in the gaps. This is a quick and easy tutorial showing you how to use this program to create your own time lapse video.
Having a clip filmed at 25p can sometimes make the footage look jerky, which can distract the viewer from the content of your film. This tutorial shows you how to convert a 25p clip to 50p or 25i using Adobe After Effects.
Want to add a lens flare to your current animation or film? You can manipulate the picture using Adobe After Effects, and this tutorial shows you precisely how. Play around with the light, brightness settings and other tools to get a lens flare effect.
Create an image using Adobe After Effects in which 3-D words and numbers roll across the screen, as if they were on a giant wheel. This is not a difficult tutorial, and makes for a great intro clip for any video project.
Start with Adobe After Effects. Decide what you want your intro to look like. Then follow along with this tutorial, which shows you how to use the various tools in After Effects to create a short yet effective intro clip.
