Weta and ILM Got It… Wanna Learn Nuke?

There are a lot of compositing applications out there, but one that seems to be taking the lead lately is The Foundry’s Nuke. If you are an After Effects user, you have probably heard The Foundry’s name from the keying plug-in Keylight or their other Tinderbox plug-in packages, but that isn’t the only thing they are famous for. Industrial Light & Magic a couple weeks ago purchased a site license for the popular compositing platform, along with Weta Digital just the other day. Two of the big dogs in to post world have converted, and many small shops are already on the bandwagon, and this could possibly be the next big app to know since Shake. With the news of Nuke gaining so much steam I thought it would be worth a post to let you guys in on where you can learn you some Nuke skills and possibly prep yourself for a career aboard this killer compositing application.

The Foundry’s Official Site
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Tuesday 7th July 2009 | 3 Comments

Topher Welsh

The Hive’s AE Quicktips #2 Fixing Gamma Issues in QT

A lot of people ask questions on the forum, as to why their H.264 Quicktime videos look washed out and not as vibrant as they are with their source footage. Some people don’t really recognize the difference, and just take it as an problem that comes along with the compression codec, but that isn’t the issue. The issue is that Quicktime has a buggy little issue that stems from over/under compensating for different vibrancy on different displays. This has caused the problem, and now we have the answer. Sadly, you have to have Quicktime Pro to go through this fix with me, but hey maybe Quicktime will fix it in the next version… you never know!

Thanks to Andrew Kramer for addressing this issue over a year back. Remember to always get the most out of your videos, especially if you are outputting for a demo reel or proofs to a client.

Monday 6th July 2009 | 2 Comments

Topher Welsh

Toolfarm’s Top 10 Plugin List Explained

Plugins can be expensive, especially for students and people who just like to make Youtube videos, but just like if you were to be fixing a car instead of making motion graphics, you need the right tools to get the job done. A little bit ago, Toolfarm had a poll on their website and AEFreemart.com as to what your favorite plugins were for After Effects. Over 1500 voted and the list is out… and I got the explanations for those of you who don’t have a clue what some of these are.

Trapcode Particular – Trapcode Particular is one of the most widely used plugins in the business. If you haven’t heard of it, get out from underneath that rock you’ve been living under and smell the particles. Particular is the one of the most versatile particle generators on the market, and gives you more control, precision, and options than After Effects’ built in CC Particle effects. Particular has been the subject of many tutorials here on AEtuts as well as around the web, and if you are serious about becoming a skilled motion graphics artist, this is an absolute must have.
Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks – Developed by Stu Maschwitz of the late post house The Orphanage, and now the Creative Director for Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet division. This plugin creates pre-graded looks to your shots, as well as gives you the creative freedom to create your own looks, while still giving you all the features of a high-end color grading application. Also available is Magic Bullet LooksPack: Indie Film, which gives you more pre-made looks based on popular looks on on some favorite indie films.
Trapcode Shine - Shine is another must-have from Trapcode for its ease in creating light ray shines fast and easy. There are ways to create the effects that this plugin generates natively, but it takes a lot of time, workarounds and effects on top of effects. From title design to logo reveal, visual effects to suns in the skies, this plugin can really streamline your productivity, and help you unleash the light! Haha… lame… I know.
The Foundry Keylight – Keylight is an effect that comes shipped with After Effects 7+, but is probably one of the best keying effects out there. Keylight is very versatile offering lots of different ways to control your keys, mattes, lightwrap, and spill. The best thing about Keylight though is that it is free, and it is a very powerful effect. Toolfarm actaully has Keylight training available from Angie Mistretta.
Red Giant Knoll Light Factory – Developed by John Knoll of Industrial Light & Magic, Knoll Light Factory is a lens flare and lighting effect generator. There are many different pieces to choose from to build your own custom flares as well such as spikeballs, glowing cores and so on. Also worth noting is this package actually has a free extra little filter called Unmult, which you can find online for free, and basically knocks the black out of your image, leaving only light.
Trapcode Form – One of Trapcode’s latest creations is quite the effect in itself. Working the same way as Particular, Form actually creates layers of particles, sheets if you will, in which you can animate, affect, distort, set custom particle size, opacity and anything else you might want. Form has been spawning some amazing videos lately found on Motionographer and the Trapcode official site.
Video Copilot Twitch – Andrew Kramer’s only actual plugin to date, Twitch is an awesome distortion generator, that gives you control on “twitching” light, position, RGB channels, scale, time, and even color. The package actually comes with a bunch of sound effects and training from Andrew himself on how to use the plugin effectively, and ways to use it in your productions.
GenArts Sapphire – The Sapphire collection is pricy, but is a huge batch of over 200 plugins to increase your films and capability of doing things within After Effects, Shake, Avid, Final Cut, or Combustion. Windows and Mac compatable, this collection of killer visual effects based plugins have been used on movies such as X-Men, commercials for Budweiser, Coke, GMC, and tons more. The package includes effects such as glows, lens flares, glints and glares, film effects, compositing and distortion, and more advanced lightning, and time effects as well. If you are looking to enhance your visual effects workstation, this might be a package you have to get.
Boris Continuum Complete – The greatest thing in my opinion about BCC is the 3D OpenGL extruded text generators and deformers. You can warp, twist, and materialize your 3D text right inside of After Effects, and that’s not all it comes with. There are generators like sparks and comets, keying and compositing tools such as Motion Key and Wire Remover, as well as basic, yet more advanced than stock AE effects such as Drop Shadow, Film Grain and Deinterlacing. This is another huge collection like Sapphire’s, except a little cheaper. You could always try checking out the other items in the Boris product line as well.
Trapcode Starglow – Our last one… Trapcode Starglow. Although I don’t use this effect too much, it is really handy when you are trying to make something really stand out in your motion graphics peice, such as water, dust particles in the air or just some good old titling. Starglow works on Mac as well as Windows, as do all of the Trapcode product line, and is a great little tool to have by your side, because you never know when you might need it.

Saturday 4th July 2009 | 1 Comment

Topher Welsh

Faking Tilt Shift Tutorial

I have seen a lot of written articles on this subject, and it seems to be a hugely popular effect. I mean some guy even did a roundup on the subject last week or so… anyways, I am going to be putting out the first of its kind, yes, the acclaimed Tilt Shift photography technique is possible with After Effects, and there is now a video tutorial for it. What is different about this tutorial from all the others, is they are usually trying out this effect on still images, when that really doesn’t do it justice when applying it to video. We will be using the Posterize Time effect along with Lens Blur and some handy adjustment layer masking to create the toy, stop-motionish feel to the footage. This kind of effect is always better when created with an actual tilt shift lens, and a DSLR camera such as the Canon 5D MK II or Panasonic GH1, but hey some of us just have a cheap Canon Vixia HV30 and a parking garage nearby… and sometimes, if you are handy with your techniques, you can very well pull it off, just as well as the pros do.

Tuesday 30th June 2009 | 6 Comments

Topher Welsh

The Hive’s AE Quicktips #1

Hey everybody… have you ever gotten failed renders and error messages when you try to render out your high definition H.264 video in After Effects? I do all the time, and it is in part because the H.264 Output Module is not designed to render HD video. There is a separate workaround, that I get asked to explain all the time on forums. This is a great technique to know when you have to submit proofs to a client many times within a day, and maybe are uploading via FTP, have to burn to disc, or otherwise have limited space. You obviously can’t give them full resolution Quicktime Animation mov’s… that would be preposterous! Instead of outputting gigabytes of information and running them through a compression program, you can output to H.264 no problem with my handy little workaround. This tutorial uses After Effects CS4 and runs on Windows Vista.

Friday 26th June 2009 | 5 Comments

Topher Welsh

The Difference Between Special FX and Visual FX

Whenever I am explaining what I do to a client, or trying to pitch an idea to someone who knows nothing of the video production field, they always say the same kinds of things: “Oh, so you’re the one that does those special effects when you’re, like, editing and stuff…?” or “We can add the special effects, like explosions and ray guns later right?” or one of my favorite, “that lighting doesn’t look right, oh well you can fix that with some visual effects anyways, you seem like you know what you are doing”. Fact is, special effects and visual effects are two completely different realms of the production process. I have had to explain this so many times, I usually just nod my head and say yeah, and continue on with my day, because its almost an everyday occurrence. Perhaps you are new to the video production/post production world, so this could inform you a bit, and help in your quest to not look like an idiot if you were to let something slip.

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Friday 12th June 2009 | 3 Comments

Topher Welsh

15 Killer Tilt-Shift Videos

Tilt shift photography is a huge trend lately it seems, and it is not slowing down. What I find so captivating about it, is the fact that the video and the picture is almost manipulating your mind, and forcing you to think that the subjects you are looking at are in fact miniatures. While there are specific lenses made to create a very narrow depth of field, you can produce this effect in programs like After Effects, Photoshop, and even iMovie if you wanted to. This is probably the reason tilt shift videos have gained so much steam in the last few months.

Creating the effect on a still photograph is actually pretty simple, just blur the top and bottom of your photograph, and keep your subject framed in the middle and very sharp focus. Of course, that is a very rough way of going about it, but it gets even harder when you implement this technique into video. There are a few ways to go about it, but the way to really nail it is to get the timing of your timelapse just perfect, so that your video actually looks like stop motion instead of just a really fast timelapse. Usually the video isn’t actually video at all, but full framed photographs taken every four to eight frames, then brought into an application as an image sequence. Then you can make your colors more vibrant, adjust your timing, add pans and tilts, and your blurs to create the polished look. Below are some of the best and my favorite tilt-shift videos I have found on the net.
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Friday 12th June 2009 | 0 Comments

Topher Welsh

How To Make Money on VideoHive with Little or No Effort

We all kind of dream about selling hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars in stock elements on sites like VideoHive. That’s all well and great, but when you sit down, sometimes if you force yourself to pump out project after project, graphic after graphic, it gets kind of tiresome, and you lose that spark that you had when you first started. Well I am going to show you a few ways to work uploading files to VideoHive into your daily routine, to make you money with little or no effort on your part. (more…)

Monday 25th May 2009 | 2 Comments

Topher Welsh

How To Submit The Perfect Project File

When you upload any file to VideoHive, its very important you know the rules. Of course each section can have different variations dependent on the file. In this article I am going to touch on Project Files because they are the most involved out of all the sections, and its also the section I see the most mistakes. I am going to walk you through uploading the perfect project file. If you follow this correctly, and your project is quality it will be approved the first time, every time.

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Thursday 9th April 2009 | 0 Comments

Mark Brodhuber

Market Your Files Using Adobe Exchange

Having your file up for sale is just one part to a successful stock video side business. Like any other business, stock files benefit from marketing and exposure. A good rule of thumb, the more people that see your files, the better chances you have at generating sales.

Adobe has a system in place on their site they call the Adobe Exchange. It’s basically a marketplace where authors using Adobe software can go and share or sell their work. This includes templates, stock video, components, extensions, add-ons, plug-ins, etc. The great thing about the Exchange is you don’t have to sell directly through their site. You can link from their site to your VideoHive portfolio & VideoHive files. Essentially you are providing the Exchange with all of your file’s information, and they list it for everyone to see. If interested, a person can click to buy, and they are re-directed to VideoHive.

The kicker here, is that you will not only benefit from the additional exposure and potentially higher sales. But you can also take advantage of the referral program that VideoHive offers.

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Thursday 9th April 2009 | 1 Comment