There are many different ways of creating 3D shapes in After Effects. The first think that comes to mind is simply duplicating layers. That is still a good technique on a fast enough machine, however (as with all semi solutions) it has it’s limitations, out of which no true depth is the most annoying one. Then there’s the old-school trick with the Shatter effect, and my very own CE Shape Extruder, not to mention many different plugins. You can learn about the mentioned techniques in the CE Shape Extruder tutorial. All of them are still valid and good solutions for different situations.

With the release of Creative Suite 6 we have now gained a new Ray-Traced rendering engine in After Effects, that allows us to truly extrude Shape and Text layers, which is awesome, however in order for it to be efficient enough not to slow down our workflow it requires a decent graphics card. It can of course run on the CPU, but that is just too slow no matter how fast your machine is. From “under the hood” point of view, the ray-traced rendering engine (codename: Optix) is basically Mental Ray ported to the GPU.

Many 3rd party plugins have been released over the years (like Zaxwerks ProAnimator) to address the need of creating 3D objects in After Effects, one of which is now gaining a lot of popularity, since it also is GPU Accelerated and it allows for importing 3D objects from other applications. I’m talking of course about Element 3D by Video Copilot. Even though all these plugins are fantastic, they too have their limitations.

The plugin I’d like to introduce you to in this tutorial is ShapeShifter by Mettle, and… you’ve guest it… it has it’s limitations as well, however it suits my needs 90% of the time. First of all it also is GPU accelerated, and I found that it runs way better even on lower-end cards than any other solution mentioned in this article. Not only that, but you can model your 3D shapes and even morph between them without any 3D modeling skills. You can just simply use your already existing 2D skills to create beautiful 3D graphics right inside of After Effects. As you know from my tutorials that is a BIG thing for me – being able to stay in one application as long as possible. That way if I need to make a change I don’t have to re-open, re-edit, re-save, re-import and replace my already existing files and layers. Even though it does not allow for importing 3D objects it has one very powerful feature that none of the mentioned solutions can give you – displacement maps, which are the core idea behind ShapeShifter. You may be familiar with this concept from plugins like Trapcode Form, Particular or Mir. Basically they allow you to displace pixels in Z-Space using pixel values from another layer or composition. This means you can use any footage, or easily create your shapes inside After Effects and even animate them to create cool looking 3D graphics with smooth surfaces.

If I would have to make just one pick, just one solution that would allow me to quickly create 3D text and logo design, would be editable inside After Effects, had GPU acceleration for fast rendering and worked with After Effects lights and cameras – ShapeShifter would be it, because that’s what I mostly do. If it would only allow for importing 3D objects I would probably never need anything else. Who knows… Maybe in the next release.

Download: Tutorial project file (After Effects CS6)

I’ve tried many match-moving applications over the years, and nothing beats the build-in 3D Camera Tracker in After Effects CS6, eventhough it’s fully automatic with no manual control over the tracking process. Simply amazing.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Some time ago I’ve posted a short introduction video on YouTube about the new 3D Camera Tracker available in After Effects CS6. I’ve got a lot of comments and questions since then, so I decided to make a more in-depth video on the various aspects of match-moving. If you tried solving a 3D camera on your own either using After Effects CS6 or any other software and failed – this tutorial is for you.

Among general software specific tips you’ll learn some rules of thumb regarding shooting and processing footage for match-moving. There’s a lot more to it that I show in this tutorial, however I’m sure it will get you started if you’ve never done it or experienced difficulties.

You will see three different examples in this tutorial, one of which is pretty much the same as in the original YouTube tutorial, however with a little more detail on how things work and how to deal with tracking. The second example is perfect for showing how match-moving can be used and how to properly shoot the footage, so the tracking software can solve it. The third one is most impressive of all. The footage used was never intended to me match-moved and you will see how 3D Camera Tracker deals with it opening a new dimension of creative freedom.

Enjoy.

Some time ago when I was working on a project I had to manage a huge amount of different render passes that came out of 3D Studio Max VRay renderer. Since they were all rendering to the same folder and for some reason there was no way to make each render pass go to it’s own folder. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was really annoying to work with all those files in one folder. When importing those sequences to After Effects I had to dig through thousands of files just to find the right sequence. So I made a tool that sorted the files for me and putted them in proper folders, but at that time it could only deal with certain cases.

Now the time has come to improve on my solution. Today I give you: File Sequence Detector 1.0.

You can download the file using the download button below. In the ZIP package you will find an executable file (no installation required), and the source code (au3). I developed this script using a free automation tool, AutoIt v3, which I like very much and use quite often. Make sure to check the readme.txt for instructions. Enjoy.

Download: File Sequence Detector 1.0 (Windows)

Have you ever felt that theres something wrong with this world? Have you ever felt you know something, and that what you know you can’t explain? Now you can. Sort off…

Click here to watch the video tutorial

Some time ago I needed to create the raining code look as seen in “The Matrix” movie, so I started to google for ready to use projects, but found nothing of value that I could use in my work… So I had to create my own. Watch this tutorial to learn all about it.

My first instinct was to use Trapcode Particular along with some custom particles to create the look I was after, but I quickly found out, that it’s just not going to cut it. The raining code has some very distinct look to it and the key to making it look good was to really pinpoint what was happening with the falling letters. Here’s what I found out after watching the original design as seen in the movie:

• There are two types of letters: leading, and following (after vision letters)
• The leading letters are brighter than the others
• The letters fall down in columns at different speeds
• One column can have multiple leading letters falling at different speeds
• Both leading and following letters change chars at random points in time (out of sync)
• The amount of the following letters is random (tail length)
• The letters always move a given amount of pixels (letter height)

As far as everything on the list above could probably be achieved using Particular to create the look, the last point would be really hard to do. In theory all of the points above could be done, however it would take a lot of calculation to get the parameters of Particular just right, so I figured to change the approach a bit, and instead of having a “leading letter particle” spawn “after vision particles”, I decided to build a grid of letters, and then use Particular and Mosaic effect to reveal them. That way I could focus on the look, speed, timing and other “artistic” aspects of the work, and not think about how to set up Particular.

At the end of the tutorial you will also see how to change the color of the leading letters using the Threshold effect. What I forgot to mention is that you can of course play with the Threshold parameter changing the range of letters that are being treated as “leading letters”. Give it a try. It can create some really awesome looks.

Download: Tutorial project file (After Effects CS4)

Since more and more people were asking me how I was putting my face onto my desktop and broadcast that I thought it would be really cool, if I had a webcam panel for my After Effects. I used a different technique for my LIVE broadcasts, however I finally got around to do a proper panel, so now I can even do regular tutorials with my lovely face in them.
I provide the Webcam Panel as a free download for all you tutorial guys out there. If you want to use it please remember to shut down all other webcam applications that might be “linked” to your default camera. Also – you will need to go into the Flash Player Settings (accessible by right clicking on any flash content and choosing “Settings”) and set the Global Settings for the “local” website to “always allow”. Once that is done simply extract the contents of the ZIP file into the “Scripts/ScriptUI Panels” directory. Enjoy.

Download: malty_Webcam (After Effects CS4)

I’m editing a DSLR green screen footage in Premiere Pro CS5, and once everything is in place, I use Dynamic Link to key out the footage. Why not use Ultra Key? Well… Ultra Key is fantastic, fast, and GPU accelerated, however the footage needs to be close to perfect in order for it to work – which is not the case here. I had a lot of wrinkles, bad lighting that I couldn’t make any better due to space limitations in the room I was shooting in, and, as I mentioned before, I used a DSLR to record the footage so I had no control over the compression settings. All of this caused the footage to be a wee bit too difficult for Ultra Key to pull a decent key. Not to mention garbage mattes and adding Lightwrap to create the final look.

I’ve set up a nice workflow using Dynamic Link and a keying template I made for the project for quickly and efficiently replacing source footage to be keyed out, so now everything works smoothly, however it takes some time to render. I should mention this is 1080p @ 23,976fps. Eventhough the workflow is flawless, the footage was very demanding and required adjustments on every shot, digging through precomps, resampling colors, and doing a long RAM Preview to make sure nothing was missed.

Still… I couldn’t stand the fact, that having Premiere Pro CS5 with GPU accelerated keyer I was forced to use After Effects to do something that goes around as a “simple key” – as you see on the attached images, it’s just me sitting in front of a Mac (and yes – this is just a prop – I use PC’s for work).

So I thought to myself – would it be possible to use the same techniques I use in After Effects to pull a decent key out of “nothing” in Premiere Pro? As I learned about half an hour later – yes!

I created a super tight garbage matte, that I then applied to the original footage treated with Ultra Key, I’ve nested that in it’s own Sequence, which I’ve then put in a new Sequence along with the background, and even created a Lightwrap effect… in Premiere! Sweet!

I ended up having three Sequences for my final composite: one for background, one for the key, and one for putting them together and adding a lightwrap. I grabbed a piece of paper and started counting layers and effects applied.

This is where you should make sure you’re sitting down – I ended up with 9 video layers (1080p @ 23,976fps) with a total amount of 26 effects (including multiple copies of Guassian Blur and Ultra Key).

Guess what… it works in realtime. Thank you Mercury Engine.

In the second part (which did not get recorded) we’ve created a Christmas tree using Trapcode Particular and 3D Serpentine. Also – I gave away a copy of Zaxwerks Serpentine, Toolfarms AE Camera Training, and my very own Youveelizer plugin.

It was much fun. See you next year.