AE Freemart

filmBurn.ffx is an After Effects 7.0 Animation Preset that automatically creates the overexposed “roll-out” effect, where the tail (and the head if you want) of a clip flickers into overexposure. It’s aware of the in- and out-points of your footage layers in the After Effects timeline, so you can experiment with different effects just by trimming your layers differently.

Stu also says "This effect works really well with Magic Bullet. Just apply Look Suite to an Adjustment Layer over top of all your trimmed layers, and select the preset of your choice!"

He also has a link to his podcast.

Download and read more: filmBurn.ffx

If you dig the Trapcode plug-ins (and who doesn’t?), you should definitely check out trapcode-people.net. It’s a bajillion free presets and projects utilizing Trapcode plug-ins of various flavors….

Like this really cool one here, done by yours truly. This file requires Trapcode Particular and CC Hair. CC Hair is used to create the grass particle. There is a looping fractal noise texure acting as a “Hairfall Map” which provides some sway in the ‘grass’. The speed of the loop of the fractal noise is controlled by a slider in the main comp, called ‘Turbulence’, giving you control of the speed of the grass sway. There is also a slider for Grass Length. On top of the grass is another particle generator that creates some small ‘bugs’.

Sound complicated? Not really. It just makes some semi-photorealistic grass. The new DOF capabilities of Particular 1.5 really help with the realism. Kind of a bugger to render, but well worth it if you need some grass.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Using the Grid effect in AE can pretty useful for creating a “scanline” kind of effect like you see here.

Using Grid, if the Width sliders are the size of the composition, the vertical lines will be out of sight. I’ve done this with the expression:

thisComp.width

… for the slider width, so this work for everyone regardless of your comp size.

Make sure to preview this on a video monitor, though. The lines can flicker a bit. The Grid plug-in has a “Feather” setting that will fix this.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESET (AE7)

Toolfarm and Ko Maruyama and team, are partnering to bring you a series of presets for Red Giant’s Knoll Light Factory.

Check out the tutorial by Steve Tomaya, Using Knoll Light Factory as particles in Trapcode Particular. It’s magical, and great to know just as the glut of the holiday commercials you’re working on come through your shop.

Learn more about Knoll Light Factory and Trapcode Particular.

Yeah, you know this one, so I’m not going to bother with a movie. I had this one freebie up in the Toolfarm Free Presets section a while back and never copied it over when the AE Freemart was relaunched. You’ve been waiting a long time, haven’t you. A long, long time…

I’ll tell you that it matches the color, speed and everything about the original open of one of the films. I got this info from some Star Wars site that I don’t remember, a long, long time ago. Just Google it if you want to know the name of the font used in the original films. The color did slightly change for the first three Star Wars movies, so I believe I matched it to The Empire Strikes Back open (the best Star Wars flick, in my opinion).

Download AE Comp AE 7.0

I used Trapcode Particular to generate the star background. You do not necessarily need it to open the file, but I heart Particular and every AE user should own it. Our demo form is currently down, but you can download it from Trapcode.com.

One of my students saw this type of effect on a website and asked me how to do it. I put this together for her and I thought I’d share it with you.

This project has a precomped gradient with a mosaic effect applied. The main comp has the text and the genuine faux-punker and the precomped gradient comp. The gradient comp’s visibility is turned off. A gradient wipe is applied to both the punk rock girl and the text, using the gradient comp as the gradient source. The transition is, of course, keyframed.

The project file contains the effect on the text but not the image. The image is courtesy of iStockPhoto.

Download Project file (AE 7)

View QuickTime Movie

A spooky Halloweeny picture for your viewing pleasure. There are two cloudy sky presets and one ominous fog preset.

These clouds were generated using the Boris Continuum Complete Clouds plug-in in After Effects, but these presets maywork in other host apps as well. If they do, please post a comment. I’m very curious! Also, the preset may work in older versions of AE, even though it was created in AE 7. It’s a BCC preset, not your usual AE preset.

To install on the Mac, unzip the file. Drop the .bcp files into your hard drive > Library > Applications Support > BCC Presets 4.0 AE. If you’re on Windows, you’re on your own.

You can try a free demo of Boris Continnum Complete for AE, FCP and lots of other flavors.

View Quicktime Sample.

Download Preset (BCC 4.0)

This effect uses the Radio Waves effect, CC Radial Blur and Ramp. Change the colors to whatever you like by changing the Ramp colors and position and the background color.

View movie (pops)

Download Preset (AE 6.5 Pro)

It wasn’t until I was teaching a seminar on After Effects (just a couple weeks ago) that I noticed AE7 now includes ‘blur’ as a animatable type property. After scanning the “useful” AE type presets, I only found one that animates in by blur, word by word. And it wasn’t very interesting. I’ve always been a fan of the Motion presets that do this, so I thought I’d come with a simple one for AE.

So, I played with it, and came up with a simple letter blur on effect. I found that higher color resolution really helps, especially 32bpc.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESET HERE

Here’s a swirling confetti effect made with Trapcode Particular.

This effect would be a good one for birthdays, Christmas videos, and change the colors for some Halloween magic.

As you probably know, Harry and I are both big fans of Particular. It’s an easy to use and an inexpensive tool! Don’t have Trapcode Particular? Download a free Trapcode Particlar demo.

Download Preset (AE 7)

Watch the movie (pops)