Get all of the information about the update and what it all means at Toolfarm’s forum in a post by Chris Smith, the creator of CSTools.
http://www.toolfarm.com
The Happenin’ Hotspot for After Effects Artists
Archive for August, 2007
Falling From Heaven tutorial
Or how to simulate a free fall from the sky to the ground using Google Earth and After Effects.
Henry Grey has a really cool tutorial that shows you how to use images from Google Earth to do the infinite zoom effect.
Trapcode: 3D Stars
Ko Maruyama has a nice tutorial movie on extruding shapes into Trapcode Particular at Digital Producer.
App Delete
Michael Smith posted this freeware application to Ko’s Ninja Crayon, App Delete for Macs that
will delete the application you choose and any associated items (files and folders) that belong to that application. Now you will no longer have to hunt through your system to find these items and delete them manually. Or worse, just let them sit on your Mac forever even though the application is long gone!
This sounds so useful for removing demo versions and older versions of software with all those little files strewn about your hard drive.
Free Final Cut Pro Plug-ins from CHV
CHV puts out amazing, quality plug-ins for Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express and Motion.
- Towers of Film 3D – A free FxPlug plugin by CHV-electronics
Towers of Film 3D builds a virtual 3D city. While you have full control over the camera you can fly through and over the city like in a 3D game. Up to 10 different video clips can be mapped at the buildings in various ways. Because it’s FxPlug, it works in both FCP and Motion. - Silk and Fog V4.0 – A free plugin for Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express! Silk and Fog V4.0 applies five different effects to your video. The most prominent effect is the Silk-effect. This filter is most useful for your wedding-video! It’s FxScript, so it doesn’t run in Motion.
- iSilhouetteiSilhouette is a video filter that colorizes the silhouette of an object. You can define up to 4 colors that iSilhouette will add up and use for the creation of a shape. The shape and the surrounding areas will be colorized by two defineable colors. Additionally the borders of the shape can be colorized. Again, FxScript, so it works in FCP/FCE
Copy Image for AE
This is a neat plug-in courtesy of ObviousFX that brings a long needed functionality to After Effects. When installed, Copy Image will allow you to copy the current frame in the timeline to the clipboard for use in Photoshop, or whatever.
Visit the ObviousFX Copy Image page here
8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad
My friend Alicia sent me this. I used to work at a post house and you don’t know how many times I had low res graphics embedded in Microsoft Word docs that were over some crazy-ass background and they forgot to attach it the first time. This is so hillarious because it’s entirely true!
8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad
Color management workflow in After Effects
Color management workflow in After Effects, a new white paper from Adobe.
Don’t Go to BP Amoco
Okay, not the type of thing that we normally post here, but this is something important to me.
BP Amoco has gotten permission from the EPA to dump toxic sludge into Lake Michigan because it’s too expensive for them to take care of properly.
Please sign the petition to stop them. I live about an hour from the lake and I take my daughter swimming in it. Much of the fresh water of the Great Lakes region comes from Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes, which are all connected. Also, the fish have enough toxins in them.
I was at Lollapalooza last weekend in Chicago (Read my review at Ninja Crayon, Ko Maruyama’s Blog.) At Lolla, there were people walking around with petitions in bright green t-shirts with "Save Our Lake". Eddie Vedder (his band Pearl Jam headlined) sang a song called Don’t Go to BP Amoco. Yeah, nice cell phone video, but the audio isn’t too bad.
Light Streak around Mask
I have no idea what to call this project, but it uses a star-shaped mask and a streak of light draws around the star, sort of like a comet. I used Vegas to create the line, with one segment. I duplicated that layer and made it a very short segment on the top layer. I boosted the light and added a blur. I also added an adjustment layer with Trapcode Starglow and Colorama to give it some pizazz, not to mention a camera for a bit of movement.
View Quicktime Sample (pops)
Download project file – AE 7 Pro
Download a demo of Trapcode Starglow
