AE Freemart

I have a student who is working on her final project. She has a photo of a hand and is making text rotate from behind the finger to the top of the hand. She asked for some help and this is the first method I showed her. I’ll post the second in subsequent posts, but for now, I give you, without further ado, “Making text rotate around an object”.

This project is very simple to create. I did this the simple way. You could apply a camera, some lights, cast shadows and jazz the whole thing up. And the solid? Well, replace that with a full size turkey with an alpha channel or even a pilgrim.

1. Create your text and move it along a path.
2. Mask off the area that you want to see in front of your obscuring object.
3. Duplicate your text layer.
4. Drag it behind your obscuring object.
5. Switch the mask mode to “subtract” on the layer of text that is behind your obscuring object.

To add a tich of realism I’ve blurred the bottom text layer slightly, to simulate depth of field. Remember, these are not 3D layers and you can not technically move your text into deeper areas in a path, so this is a compromise. I’ve also colored the text a slightly grayer shade of white to make it look a bit shadowier. Yes, I’m making up words now. It’s a talent that I picked up from my 3 year old.

Download circulartext.aep.zip (AE 7 Standard or Pro)

View sample movie

You probably noticed the lack of updates in the past week. I’ve been in New York City, first for NAB NY and then to a fabulous weekend with the folks at Maxon Computer, maker of Cinema 4D and BodyPaint.

At NAB NY I went to a training session with Marcus Geduld that explained some basic Expressions for After Effects, so I thought I’d share a bit of it with you. I learned a hell of a lot. I’m not the most math-oriented person (which I totally blame on two inept mathmatics teachers in high school who basically showed up too collect their paycheck and let student teachers teach their classes… no I’m not bitter! I did have a terrific math teacher in junior high. Thank you, Mrs. Simmons. Because of you, I can make my way through expressions.)

Alright, back on topic here… Let’s chat about Wiggle. Wiggle is fun to say and is one method of generating random movement without keyframes. Marcus gave a terrific example in the training session that showed how to use wiggle with the Write-on effect.

The values of wiggle are as follows.

wiggle(HOW OFTEN IN SECONDS,HOW MUCH FROM PRESENT POSITION)

Replace the words in all caps with numbers. For example, if you want it to wiggle once per second and move 250 from it’s current position, you’d do this:

wiggle(1,250)

So let’s apply this. First, create a screen-sized solid in black. Apply Write-on. To apply the expresson, hold down the option key and click on Brush Position parameter. It will add a default expression. Delete the default expression and type

wiggle(1,500)

You may need to adjust your Brush Size, Hardness and Brush Spacing.

For the Color setting of Write-on, set your color to 50% gray. Then apply this expression:

wiggle(1,0.5)

Watch it go! Wiggle will work with many parameters in After Effects.

Watch Movie Example

Download Project File (AE 7)

Thank you, Marcus, for a terrific class.

I know I’m a bit late. It’s the 15th of September according to Harry’s MySpace, so Harry, here’s your present. I can tell you’re really excited. Sorry, no, I don’t have the receipt. Haha.

This project uses Boris Continuum Complete extensively. I lurve BCC. The plug-ins are such high quality. It’s such a solid package. The balloons, the clouds and everything else was generated using BCC. Nothing was imported… just BCC and my surge of birthday cheer. Yeah, the balloons have some jerky movement, but I didn’t have time to perfect this. It’s just a quick shout out to Harry on his b-day and hopefully useful to someone out there.

This type of effect could be reused for a baby shower video, anniversary video or a big President’s Day Sale commercial.

If you don’t have Continuum Complete, you can get a free 14 day demo.

View movie

Download project files (AE 7)

Don’t ask what I had to do this for.

But, there are some cool ideas here for making an expression based “rollover” effect as well as a bar that follows along, all driven by a Null locator. Take a look and see what you can do with it.

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT HERE (AE6.5)

I see a lot of people asking how to make particles go in front/behind a layer in Particular. To do this, you need to use the “Obscuration Layer” setting in the Visibility section and arrange your layers just so. I posted this project for people to take it apart and figure out how to do it.

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT HERE (REQUIRES AE6.5 AND PARTICULAR)

Rock out with some way cool VU meters. This is produced with 4 Color Gradient and Mosaic for most of the effect. Then the meter is masked using the Grid effect. Then I put some crazy wiggle and random expressions in there to make things move in stereo.

Did you know that “VU” stands for Volume Unit? VU meters are calibrated in volume units that are numerically equal to the number of decibels (dbm) above the reference level of 1 mW of power looking into a 600 Ohm circuit. Hey, I gotta use my Audio Engineering degree in SOME way as a mograph artist.

The link is below. Download it, give it a try, let me know what you do with it.

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT HERE (AE6.5)

I drew out a bunch of lines like the in Illustrator, then decided that I’d like them to move. Then I decided that I want these to have a mind of their own. So, I put some expression wierdness on there.

All it is.. is the Beam effect and some Wingding type (the box) moving with a random motion expression.

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT HERE (AE6.5)

Apparently, I like circle segments.

Here’s another one using the circle effect, wipe effects and a neat use of the “Find Edges” effect.

GET IT HERE. (AE6.5)

Here’s a clock. What else can I say about it? It tells the time and looks fashionable in any project.

Move the hour hand for the time and the minute hand will magically follow. There are two files included, the bevel (a PSD) and the clock numbers/hash marks (an AI file).

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT HERE (AE6.5)

Bar-chart action, without plug-ins!

I obviously made this for a TV presentation, but it’s easy to change. The bars and numbers are driven by expression sliders. They are VERY easy to change.

It’s a little pokey on the render side of things, but it’s easy to use and will make the whole chart animation process much easier if you don’t have any way of making 3D charts on your own.
Click the picture to see a short animated example.

If you need a quicker more versatile method for charting things out, be sure to check out Data Animator from Digital Anarchy.

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT HERE (AE6.5)