Dennis Radeke’s blog, The Genesis Project, has an interesting After Effects tutorial, The Power of the Sun. He creates a realistic sun with solar flares and coronal holes.
http://www.toolfarm.com
The Happenin’ Hotspot for After Effects Artists
Archive for July, 2007
Boris Continuum Complete 5 FxPlug demo
Would you like to take Boris Continuum Complete 5 FxPlug for a test drive? It’s now available in our demos section. It is, obviously, FxPlug, so it’s screamin’ fast and it runs in Apple Final Cut Pro and Motion.
Maxon Cinema4D Exchange Plugin for Adobe After Effects CS3
The plug-in for connecting Adobe After Effects CS3 to Maxon CINEMA 4D connection from MAXON is free. It lets you seamlessly work between the two programs. It’s available for Mac and Windows.
“DeMult” for CS3
I used to be a frequent user of UnMult from Red Giant, a free plug-in that used the Luminance of a layer to create an alpha channel. However, as a CS3 user, Unmult (and FanDev’s XMult) don’t work just yet.
Using “Shift Channels” and the new “Remove Color Matting”, however, seems to do the trick. Posted here is a quick preset that can be used as a replacement for these plug-ins.
Download the AE-CS3 “DeMult” preset
Rob Birnholz comments: FanDev’s Xmult is indeed available (free) as a Universal Binary for Intel Mac.
3D Beam
If you want a 3D line connected by two points in 3D space in AE, it’s a bit tricky. What you need to do is use the Beam Effect on a 2D solid, and connect the start and end points to some 3D Nulls. The Beam start and end points use the handy ‘toComp’ which make them appear 3D from the comp’s view.
This project uses AE CS3.
Download the AE 3D Beam Project – AE CS3
If you do not have AE CS3, simply create two Null obects (Null 1 & Null 2), place a Beam effect on a solid, and on the beam the start and end points, use these expressions:
//Start:
thisComp.layer("Null 1").toComp([0,0,0]);
//End:
thisComp.layer("Null 2").toComp([0,0,0]);
Vectors & PS Brushes Galore
BittBox has some awesome vectors and brushes of all sorts, as well as some great inspiration. Check them out!
Water Color Mask
This is a 1280×720 mask done with water color brushes. It’s handy to keep these things around for texture, video mattes, etc. I created this for a “lounge” that has a name that suggests vibrant color (can you tell I have an NDA on this job?) and had some vibrant ink colors spill on to the screen. I used Andrew Kramer’s awesome Riot Gear to create an ink bleed transition for it.
Download the Water Color Mask PSD
After Effects Expressions Loops
This is by Valerio who creates professional templates that Toolfarm will be selling by the week’s end. They are really gorgeous templates and inexpensive. I’ll post a link when they’re up.
