Introduction to Pixel Bender

Posted on 25. Aug, 2009 by Jerzy Drozda Jr in After Effects

Check this tutorial out and learn more about Adobe Pixel Bender technology and start making your own plugins.

This tutorial is a bit different from all the others here, however I’m placing it in the After Effects category, because it’s very closely related to After Effects. In this tutorial I’ll show you what a Pixel Bender plugin is, how it works, and we’ll finish off by creating our own, very simple cropping plugin for After Effects CS4.

Sure we can crop any layer with a Mask tool, but on the other hand animating mask points might be painful sometimes, especially when you try to animate it using expressions or some tracking data for example, so having a nice and simple cropping plugin in After Effects is not a bad idea after all.

If you’ll find this tutorial interesting make sure to visit Adobe Labs for the latest version of Pixel Bender Toolkit. You’ll get a full documentation and a few examples with your download to get you started. Good luck!

Side note
If you like the article graphics (click on the thumbnail to view full size) then know that it was created with my CE Screenify and ChromAberration plugins. Make sure to check them out.

Update
If you got interested with Pixel Bender then you probably would like to read Pixel Bender and aeUIControls post.

Download: Simple cropping Pixel Bender plugin (After Effects CS4)

Tags: pixelbender, programming, Tutorials

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

26 Responses to “Introduction to Pixel Bender”

Tom Hauville

25. Aug, 2009

(can’t watch atm as my audio isn’t working for some reason)

just wanted to point out that it would be easy enough to make a cropping preset using 4 linear wipes and some fairly simple expressions… but of course, that’s not the point of the tutorial :)

will watch and give a real comment after render is completed and I can reset the machine!

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Tom Hauville

25. Aug, 2009

awesome stuff! I’ve always been interested in what PB can do, just needed a simple introduction as to how it functions…

my first thought was that a ‘crop’ preset would be easy to do using linear wipe (although, of course, the goal of the tutorial is to use PB, not perform a simple crop), but there it is, first thing you say in the video :)

once again, very cool stuff!

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Map

25. Aug, 2009

Really cool and detailed tutorial! Thanks a lot!

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peter

25. Aug, 2009

great stuff man ! thnx for sharing your knowledge

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Ashley maman

25. Aug, 2009

thanks for this it really helped =)…just one thing thou how would you change the control to make it as a slider? would you put in –aeUIControl: “aeSlider”; because it doesnt seem to work. cheers anyway

Reply to this comment
- AndrewYY
  
  25. Aug, 2009
  
  Sliders don’t need an aeUIControl because they are the default.
  
  The rest of them are covered in the developer guide (included with pixel bender) in the After Effects section
  
  Reply to this comment
- Ashley maman
  
  26. Aug, 2009
  
  oh ok cheers for that =)
  
  Reply to this comment
AndrewYY

25. Aug, 2009

Hey maltaannon, why would you advocated using graphs even for very simple plugins? Is there a benefit in doing so?

Reply to this comment
- Jerzy Drozda Jr
  
  26. Aug, 2009
  
  Simply because, if your kernel evolves into something more complex (requireing multiple kernesl) you’ll already have it set up.
  
  Reply to this comment
WuzzysBrand

27. Aug, 2009

Wow you did it again! :)
Awesome tutorial.
You should make a “Programming” category for this kind of tutorials :)

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brian

30. Aug, 2009

awesome i never knew about this, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities thanks, what is the licensing like can you make plugins to sell in this?

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Miki

01. Sep, 2009

Hey Maltaannon!
Good to have you back.
This is great video tutorial and you can be sure it’s helped me a lot.
Please make more of those tuts!
Ho! one more thing, this cropping don’t works on Adjustment layer. way is that? (I mean it’s cropping the whole composition..)
Miki.

Reply to this comment
- Jerzy Drozda Jr
  
  02. Sep, 2009
  
  I haven’t tried it on the adjistment layer, but thats exactly how I’d expect it to behave. After all… applying something to the adjustment layer changes all the layers below.
  
  Reply to this comment
Miki

03. Sep, 2009

Hey Maltaannon, thank you for the quick replay :)
I have some other questionsnow and I’m hope that you could replay them too:

How can I create a simple Slider Control with just one field and not two (float2) because float(1.0) didn’t work :)
maybe it’s something with the parameter? because it’s set too to float2.

How can I create CheckBox? I’ve tried to write something like this:
aeUIControl: “aeCheckBox”;
But it didn’t work. Acually I would like, if you can, that you’ll write the whole list of controllers.

And of course, it will be really awsome if you’ll continue creating Pixel Bender’s tuts.

Thank you very much,
Miki.

Reply to this comment
Tony

08. Sep, 2009

Jerzy, you’ve made it again!

don’t know how many feature request i’ve sent to adobe since years just to have a litle crop plugin implemented, and you explained/made it within a few minutes!?

weird an beautiful at the same time…

Thank you.

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John Stanowski

12. Sep, 2009

Amazing! I hope we see even more Pixel Bender stuff from you. This is great stuff!

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PIOTR K

17. Sep, 2009

Hej, milo widziec ze Polak potrafi;) dzieki za fajne tuoriale, bardzo pomagaja mi w pracy. Pozdrowienia i oby tak dalej
ekipa SWF

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brian

30. Sep, 2009

very nice, thanks for sharing tutorial and cool plugin

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dunflee

17. Oct, 2009

hey !

this is not on relation with the product, buy I’m gonna ask anyway, what plugin do you use for the FLV player?
looks really cool , I couldn’t help asking =D

Reply to this comment
Богдан

01. Jan, 2010

Я вот думаю, а где Вы материал взяли для этой статьи? Неужели из Вашей головы? :)

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[CommentFaire?] Uniformisation de couleur primaire - Forums du Repaire

06. Jan, 2010

[...] sur ta machine. Pour voir rapidement de quoi il est question regarde chez notre ami polonais : Introduction to Pixel Bender|maltaannon.com Previous left arrow key Next right arrow key Close [...]

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Rozczarowany

23. Mar, 2010

Szkoda, wielka szkoda – nie dosc ze najwiecej tutoriali jest po angielsku to jeszcze Polacy zamiast ułatwiać Polakom i robic tutki w rodzimym jezyku, robią po angielsku :/

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- Jerzy Drozda Jr
  
  24. Mar, 2010
  
  Robia po polsku, robia. Zapraszam na http://www.eduweb.pl/
  
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Rik de Vos

24. Jun, 2010

Hey. This was a very helpful tutorial. Thanks!!!

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