If you ever struggled with your After Effects 3D camera than this tutorial is for you. Learn to rig your camera in seconds or buy a my script that will do it for you.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Get Simple Camera Rig Script 1.0 (CS3) for only 14.90 USD

I don’t know about you my friends, but each time I’m thinking about using After Effects camera I get the shivers. It’s good for panning and zooming, but once you start to make a more classy and smooth motion, or you want to sex it up a bit with some curves you get into trouble. You need to keep track of zoom, point of interest, position, orientation and rotation keyframes all at once. We should be very grateful for Separate Dimensions feature in After Effects CS4, but it does not solve all the problems.

In this tutorial I will show you a technique that is widely used in camera animation by many artists that work in 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D, or any other 3d application. I hope it will open your eyes on the subject of camera animation, and that you’ll start making your own more complex rigs. Good luck. Enjoy the tutorial.

And for those of you who don’t have time to build the rig each time you need to use it here’s a handy script that will set up the camera and the rig for you. Enjoy!

Get Simple Camera Rig 1.0 (CS3) for only 14.90 USD

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

Click here to watch the video tutorial

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)

Problems with overerexposed footage? Need to work in 32bpc for nice depth of field and motion blur? Now you can! Convert your footage from 8bpc to 32bpc with my new free plugin.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

We all deal with overexposed footage from time to time when doing postproduction, color correction, motiongraphics or visual effects. Usually theres not much we can do about it. In some cases we can replace the sky when it was a cloudy day and the clouds turned out looking like a white or gray solid. But what if the overexposed pixels are exactly what you need? Well… than you need to do nothing… until you start blurring the footage or adding color correction. In those cases you end up with areas that turn out gray while they should still be white. That causes a lot of additional work when compositing. At least that’s how thighs were until now.

Bitwiser is a concept I had in mind for quite some time that just came to life as Bitweiser Light Pixel Bender plugin. This “light” version is completely free, has no settings, and only works for overexposed areas converting them to superbright pixels in 32bpc mode. Let me know what you think of it, so I’d know if it’s worth spending more time on improving this solution. The Bitweiser Pro version (if it will ever be made) will have a bunch of settings for tweaking the looks, threshold, tinting colors, separate settings for highlights, midtones, shadows, and probably a lot of other features that did not yet came to my mind.

I’m always hungry for your comments, opinions and suggestions. Please enjoy this free release and let me know what you think.

Download: Bitweiser Light Pixel Bender plugin (After Effects CS4)

UV mapping finally available in After Effects. Check out this amazing tutorial to learn how to integrate your 3D artwork with After Effects to improve your workflow, save time and money. It’s a must-see!

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Dear Friends! This one is huge! From this day forward you are able to take your 3D render and replace textures or even add reflections and environment. Watch this tutorial to learn how to work with my new Youveelizer plugin.

In a nutshell all you need to do is to apply the Youveelizer to a layer with a UV render pass to apply a texture to a rendered 3d object, or to a Normal render pass to add reflections. All 3d objects should be rendered out from a 3d application such as 3d Studio Max, Maxon Cinema 4D, or any other 3d package capable of rendering UV and Normal render passes.However it’s sometimes difficult to render out a nice UV pass. A solution to that problem may be simply applying a texture that simulates a good UV map. That’s why I’ve included a nice 2000×2000 pixels “uvmap_texture.tif” in the product package. It’s a 32bpc texture representing UV coordinates. Please note that the UV pass needs to be rendered at least at 16bpc, and you should also work in 16bpc or 32bpc mode in After Effects.

Youveelizer is a great tool to help you with your 3D renders and composits, and if used wisely, it can in some cases completly elimitane 3D rendering process. It’s compatible with CS4 and above, and works on Mac’s and PC’s. Enjoy!

Further info
This is the post where it all started – UV Mapping with Pixel Bender. If you’re completely new to the concept of UV maps and Normal maps check out Lutz Albrecht’s article on Working with UV data

Get Youveelizer 1.1 (CS4) for only 29.90 USD

Add a classy film look to your footage by creating a Shutter Streak effect as seen in Red Giant Software’s amazing plugin – Magic Bullet Looks. Switch given features of the streak on and off for quick and easy adjustments.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Some time ago I wrote a note on my Facebook Fan Page about upcoming tutorials. I’m happy to announce that the day has come – the tutorials are recorded and all will be released soon. This is the forth and the last tutorial (at least from the ones I announced so far) that will be focused on recreating some of my favorite filters from a great color correction tool – Magic Bullet Looks.

It’s really hard to say how Shutter Streak works, so what I did is I applied it to a couple of different images in Magic Bullet Looks and tried to analyse it to really capture the essence. Then I did my best to recreate the effect using standard plugins that come with After Effects. I hope this tutorial will not only show you how to create a great looking light streak, but also that it will broaden your understanding of some very simple yet powerful filters. Enjoy!

Download: Shutter Streak preset (After Effects CS3)

Recreate the Edge Softness filter as seen in Red Giant Software’s amazing plugin – Magic Bullet Looks. Animate your focus area, change it’s width and softness, and save it as a preset for later use. Quick and easy.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Some time ago I wrote a note on my Facebook Fan Page about upcoming tutorials. I’m happy to announce that the day has come – the tutorials are recorded and all will be released soon. This is the third out of four tutorials that will be focused on recreating some of my favorite filters from a great color correction tool – Magic Bullet Looks.

In this very short tutorial you will see how to take the technique from the previous tutorial and modify it to create a circular spot focus instead of a linear swing tilt. Make sure to check out the Uses of the Circle tutorial. This technique comes directly from there. Enjoy!

Download: Spot Focus Preset (After Effects CS3)

Create an awesome Tilt Shift effect as seen in Red Giant Software’s amazing plugin – Magic Bullet Looks. Change the look on the fly and save it as a preset for later use. Quick and easy.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Some time ago I wrote a note on my Facebook Fan Page about upcoming tutorials. I’m happy to announce that the day has come – the tutorials are recorded and all will be released soon. This is the second out of four tutorials that will be focused on recreating some of my favorite filters from a great color correction tool – Magic Bullet Looks.

In this video I will show you how to recreate one of the filters found in Magic Bullet Looks called Swing Tilt. It allows you to easily add Depth of field (DOF) to you footage. The technique I’m showing uses only one layer so it can be saved as a preset for later use. Theres also something extra. You can also animate the your focus area unlike in Magic Bullet Looks. You can even add additional effects to the blurred area to make your subject really pop – simple color correction for example. I forgot to mention that in the tutorial however, so if you want to do that you need to add your additional effects instead or along with the Fast Blur effect before applying the second copy of CC Composite. Enjoy!

Download: Tilt Shift preset (After Effects CS3)

Learn to create the effects seen in Magic Bullet Looks. Split RGB channels, simulate chromatic aberration, animate the chaos. All in one tutorial.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Some time ago I wrote a note on my Facebook Fan Page about upcoming tutorials. I’m happy to announce that the day has come – the tutorials are recorded and all will be released soon. This is the first out of four tutorials that will be focused on recreating some of my favorite filters from a great color correction tool – Magic Bullet Looks.

Back in February 2009 I wrote a blog post about Separating RGB Channels. I thought that it would be a great example of what Adobe Pixel Bender technology can to – it’s simple and quite useful. Useful plugins don’t have to be very complex – it’s quite the opposite  - it’s  mostly simple and small things that make our everyday tasks easier.

With this tutorial I give you RGB Splitter plugin (CS4) totally for free, but I’ve got something extra for those of you who would like to support me and help me keep this site running.

Download: Maltaannon's RGB Splitter PBK (After Effects CS4)

RGB Channels Bundle that consists off ChromAberration – a Pixel Bender plugin for creating real chromatic abberation, and a nice CE RGB Playground that utilizes the free RGB Splitter in a way that makes it extra easy and fun to play with RGB channels of your footage.

Get RGB Channels Bundle (CS4) for only 14.90 USD

It’s finally here. Trapcode Particular 2. Check out this video tutorial to learn more about my favorite new features.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

We’ve all been waiting for this moment. Trapcode has finally released the second version of the most popular plugin in the After Effects world – Particular. In this tutorial I’ll present some of the new features of this amazing plugin creating four small projects. We’ll start off slowly and then move to some more advanced things, but as always – Peder Norby (who is the founder of Trapcode and the plugin developer) had made all the new features super easy, and the Particular itself is now even more accessible and robust.

Below is the list of those four mini projects we’ll be creating in this tutorial along with the features they explain. If you want to see the results there’s a video on my YouTube channel.

1. Light Streaks [Streaklet, Shading, Position Subframe, Light Emitters]
2. Dark Alley [Shading, Trapcode Lux, Light Falloff]
3. Micro Particles [Textured Polygon, 3d Rotation, Spherical Field, Emission Extras]
4. School of salmon [Textured Polygon, Orient To Motion, Motion Paths, Turbulence Field]

This tutorial is very brief on all the subjects, but it will surely fill your head with some ideas and hopefully make you create something that you’ve always wanted to do, but never had the tool to do it. Well… now you have it – Trapcode Particular 2. I will be making more tutorials on this amazing plugin, so stay tuned.

As a side note: you can support this site by buying Trapcode Particular at Toolfarm, or if you already own it you can simply get Trapcode Particular Upgrade. Trapcode plugins are one of the few that I recommend for any After Effects user to have in his toolbox – whatever you do, at some point you will need it, so get it now.

Download: Tutorial project file (After Effects CS3)

While rebuilding the DNA Chain project file from CS4 to CS3 I discovered that there are some things that make it easier. Interested?

Click here to watch the video tutorial

I was asked to convert the DNA Chain tutorial from CS4 to CS3 and I decided to do it since I had a few minutes. While doing so I started to try out a few things that I hoped would make it easier. Some of them did work, some of them didn’t.

As a side note I am working on a ready-to-use solution for this problem that will allow you to simply import your CS4 projects to CS3 or even earlier versions of After Effects. But until that day comes all you can do is follow the tips in this tutorial.

The trick is that you can copy-and-paste some elements from CS4 to CS3. It’s easier with After Effects’ native plugins like Fast Blur or Ramp, but it also works with 3rd party plugins as well to some extent. The main limitation I’ve stumbled upon is that you have to copy each section (or Group) of parameters separately. The easiest way to do this is to select a layer, press UU to reveal all modified properties and then copy paste them in groups. For example: Trapcode Form has several groups like Particles, Layer Maps, Visibility and so on and so on. You have to copy each group on it’s own. That also goes for the sub-groups.

It’s not perfect, but it sure speeds up the whole process quite a bit. I hope you’ll find this useful. If you have any other tips on converting projects from CS4 to CS3 or if you discover any “rules” about copy-pasting feel free to leave a comment.
Happy AfterEffecting.