Aetuts+

LOTR Series: Eye of Sauron – Tuts+ Premium

James Whiffin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:00:05 +0000

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Lord of the Rings

Continuing the Lord of the Rings series, we will be creating the Eye of Sauron with fractal noise, vector blurs and CG fire. This will then be exported into Maya and composited back in after effects with the CG tower, lighting and background HDRI.

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Use Projected Plates To Clean Up Your Shot

Alexander Lehnert — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:00:28 +0000

In this tutorial we´re going to adopt a fairly common technique used in 3d compositing tools such as Nuke. We will start off by tracking the shot using the After Effects CameraTracker plug-in by The Foundry to get our 3d Camera properly solved. With this data we extend this shot and create a clean plate, which we´ll use to project onto our “proxy geometry” to clean up the shot. We´ll build a fairly simple “projector rig” with some expressions to make life easier.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mp4

File size: 480.7 MB

Simulate An Old School X-ray Vision Shot – Parts 4 & 5

James Whiffin — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:00:46 +0000

In the Aetuts+ section of this tutorial we’ll be compositing our render passes that were created in Maya. We will then use every tool in our arsenal to dirty up the image to make it look a hybrid of 50′s scifi and 80′s television. To view Parts 1, 2, and 3, head over to our sister site Cgtuts+ where James covers the Maya section.

Part 3.5

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File size: 53.9 MB

Part 4

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File size: 104.7 MB

Part 5

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File size: 112.8 MB

How to Create a Glitchy Interface Animation

Anthony Errisuriz — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:49 +0000

This tutorial will teach you how to recreate a stylized Glitch Interface Animation that resembles a high tech control system, with an analog monitor startup. Anthony Errisuriz provides his step by step process for creating this amazing effect with design from Illustrator and animating in After Effects.

August of 2009

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 316MB

A Simple Puzzle Animation With The Shatter Plug-in

Tibor Miklos — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:00:37 +0000

Hello everyone! In this tutorial we’re gonna show you how to create a really cool looking puzzle animation in After Effects.You don’t need any external plugins (The optical flares animation is just an extra visual improvement it’s not necessary to have.However I included the optical flares version project file to those of you who want to modify the flare for example). I think this effect is really versatile so this will be a really useful stuff for you. Let’s dive in.

Tutorial

Step 1

Create a new composition clicking by Menu->Composition->New Composition. Name it as Puzzle Animation, change the resolution to1280×720 and set the duration to 7 seconds.

Step 2

Create a new solid clicking by Menu->Layer->New->Solid. The color is doesn’t matter. Change the resolution to 1280×720 and name it as ‘BG’.

Step 3

With the BG layer selected go to Effect->Generate->Ramp and apply the Ramp effect to it. Let’s change the properties. First set the colors. Start Color: #43324A End Color:#110E13 and let’s change the ramp shape to radial ramp.

Step 4

I’m not sure that you can see clearly in the picture below bot most of the time when we’re dealing with the ramp effect, we can get a weird artifact error.It’s looks like a whole bunch of colorful rings which is not too good.To avoid or fix this problem we have to apply the following effect: Noise.

Step 5

Go to Effect->Noise&Grain->Noise and apply it and change the Amount of Noise value to 1%.

Step 6

The noise will reduce the opacity of the banding artifact error but it will be still noticeable so you have to increase the color depth as well by alt+left clicking on the 8 bpc "button". Change this value to 32 and it will fix a problem.

Step 7

Let’s import the Aetuts+ logo and put it over the BG layer and with the Aetuts+ logo layer selected go to Layer->Pre-Compose and select the Move all attributes into the new composition option.

Step 8

With the Logo composition selected, let’s turn the 3D switch on.

Step 9

With the LOGO composition selected go to Effect->Simulation->Shatter and let’s change the following properties. By the way, as you can see we have 2 error messages. The first triangle icon means that this effect doesn’t supports the 32 bit color depth and the second has appeared because we just turned on the 3D switch without a camera. It’s not a big deal everything will work fine don’t worry. Other important thing is you can change the thickness of the puzzle pieces by changing the extrusion depth property. If you want more pieces then increase the repetitions value.

Step 10

Let’s change the following properties: Under the Force 1 section, the Radius value is important because if your logo is bigger than the default Aetuts+ logo which I used in this tutorial then you have to increase this value to make a bigger puzzle surface. Also keep that in mind under the Physics properties you will find a Randomness property. This will randomize the puzzle pieces, however at the end of the animation this values must be 0 because if it’s higher than 0 you will see a weird puzzle piece with huge gaps. Let me just show you what I mean.

Step 11

If the randomness value is not 0 then at the end of the animation you can see the pieces doesn’t match perfectly with each other. Currently this is not a huge problem because we will fix it later.

Step 12

Under the Textures tab you can add a color or a texture to your puzzle piece. Keep that in mind if you are trying to use a texture (like a real photo texture) then you have to Pre-compose it first otherwise this won’t work. In this example I just used a simple color #616063 and I set this color to the Side and Back mode. Under the lightning option let’s change the Light Type to First Comp Light.

Step 13

Go to Effect->Perspective->Bevel Alpha and apply it with the following properties. It just gives a little extra highlight on the edge of the puzzle pieces.

Step 14

Let’s add a new light. Go to Layer->New->Light. You can play around with the light distance or you can use my settings below. This will make a more believable 3D looking scene with a little shadow falloff.

Step 15

Let’s set the following position properties of the light.

Step 16

We have to reverse the puzzle animation so select the LOGO composition and right click on it and select Time-Reverse Layer.

Step 17

We have a little problem. The animation is works fine, but at the end the whole animated logo piece disappears. The time remapping and the freeze frame solution is doesn’t work. I don’t know why, but we need an other solution. We can do two things. The first is really simple and primitive. With this logo layer selected, go to the last frame on the timeline (You can see the picture below) and hit the n and b keys on the keyboard. After that let’s render out this frame as a .jpg file. When the render is done, import this .jpg into after effects and put it over the LOGO composition layer. Let’s offset it to the end of the Logo composition layer. So basically the logo won’t disappear anymore, but what if the Background is animated? Here’s a better solution.

Step 18

The second idea is a little bit different. You have to duplicate the LOGO layer. I rename the duplicated version to Freeze logo. You have to go to the last frame and you have to trim it. After that open the Shatter plug-in properties and under the physics tab let’s change the randomness to 0.

Step 19

Let’s open the Shatter effect properties on the new duplicated freeze logo layer and the original logo layer as well. I just used the pickwhip tool to make a simple expression to connect the radius properties with the original logo composition. It’s important because if we use a different logo which is bigger than the current logo then we have to change the radius properties on every duplicate, but because of the expression everything will work fine.

Step 20

The expression part is done so we have to duplicate and offset the freeze logo composition.

Step 21

I made a lot of duplicates so I just turned on the shy button to hide all of these layers.

Step 22

Go to Layer->New->Camera and add a new camera.

Step 23

I just made a really simple camera animation. Go to the first frame and change the z property to -991, after that, go 4 seconds and change this value to -1789 and that’s it.

Conclusion

So this is it! I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and learned some new things. Try your own variations or customize the free project file that you can download at the top. My name is Tibor Miklos, thanks a lot for your attention and I’ll see ya next time! Oh and if you have any questions or you just get stuck then just write me an e-mail. sir.tibor.miklos@gmail.com.

Final Image

Which Tuts+ Site Should We Launch Next?

David Appleyard — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:59:24 +0000

We’re planning our next few Tuts+ sites, and would love your opinion and advice on which topics you think we should cover next! We’d be really grateful if you could take a minute to answer our quick poll and share your thoughts…

Have Your Say

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The important thing to note is that these are just ideas. Some of these are close to making our final cut, and others aren’t… We’d love to hear what you think, to help guide our decision.

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Aetuts+ Hollywood Movie Title Series – Real Steel

Antonio Cerri — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:00:41 +0000

Today we’ll continue the “Hollywood Movie Title” series. We’re going to be looking at the animation style of movie “Real Steel”. At the end of this tutorial, you can learn how to draw and animate your own title with this fabulous style.The first part will be in Cinema 4D R13. We will make the letters logo, with this incredible bevel. We will then continue in After Effects with the styling of the incandescent reveal and the heat haze effect. The actual example of the real movie title is just for training purposes and is not to be used in a final project without permission from the original creators.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mov

File size: 264.6 MB

LOTR Series: Mount Doom Lava – Tuts+ Premium

James Whiffin — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:00:27 +0000

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Lord of the Rings

This tutorial will cover the process of creating a lava texture from fractal noise, utilizing luma mattes to give it depth. Using Trapcode Particular we will create blazing embers in 3D space and heat haze. In Maya we will use simple geometry to create gaps in the ground for the lava to appear below.

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Muted Color Grading And A Vintage Film Burn Using Fractal Noise

Bran Dougherty-Johnson — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:00:59 +0000

In today’s tutorial I’ll be showing how to take DSLR footage and give it the popular “Muted” color grade. After we cover the color grading, I’m gonna show you how to create a film burn effect from scratch using “Fractal Noise.”

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mov

File size: 69.6 MB

Aetuts+ Weekend Workshop #11 -《K-1945》aka “Kazumikaze”

Adam Everett Miller — Sat, 05 May 2012 13:00:08 +0000

We’ve recently started a new weekly community project where we’ll be posting a video created by one of our wonderful readers, then ask you all to offer constructive feedback on the work. It’s a great way to learn more about video, express your viewpoint, and have your own content critiqued! Submit your own videos at the bottom.

Quick Ground Rules

Play nice! We’ve deliberately chosen videos that aren’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
Feel free to offer any type of advice – movement, lighting, color, pacing, etc.
You can also link to videos that you feel offer a great example of this type of content done exceptionally well.

Without further ado, here is this week’s candidate for critique!

《K-1945》aka “Kazumikaze”

Story Behind the Project

We really didn’t know if we’d do anything with it or how it would turn out in the end…

“K-1945″ is a short video shot in one hour at the China Army Museum in Beijing. When we went there we didn’t have any plans to shoot something… we really just went there see this amazing and crazy war plane we had seen before. It worked out well because there was nobody around so we could do whatever we wanted. I used my Canon T2i and we shot a very simple action sequence with my friend Kazu Tang. We really didn’t know if we’d do anything with it or how it would turn out in the end…

We had a fun time trying to make it feel as though the plane was actually flying. We relied heavily on sounds to convey the setting.

I spent about two days editing and compositing and I used Trapcode Particular for the clouds and view of the land from the air was just a stock image. I just did some basic rotoscoping (because the camera doesn’t move a lot and the shape of the plane was easy to roto) and some motion tracking for adding the propeller.

I’d say my biggest regret was that we didn’t have anything to blow his hair to help sell that he was in a moving plane.

Hope you guys like it!

Check out a side by side comparison to see what I added to the original footage:

“Before/After”

Please let us know what you think in the comments – how would you have approached this project or done things differently?

Aetuts+

LOTR Series: Eye of Sauron – Tuts+ Premium

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What Do You Want to See on Premium?

Use Projected Plates To Clean Up Your Shot

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mp4

Simulate An Old School X-ray Vision Shot – Parts 4 & 5

Part 3.5

Download Tutorial .mp4

Part 4

Download Tutorial .mp4

Part 5

Download Tutorial .mp4

How to Create a Glitchy Interface Animation

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

A Simple Puzzle Animation With The Shatter Plug-in

Tutorial

Step 1

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Step 4

Step 5

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Step 9

Step 10

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Step 12

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Step 17

Step 18

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Step 21

Step 22

Step 23

Conclusion

Final Image

Which Tuts+ Site Should We Launch Next?

Have Your Say

Win a 6-Month Tuts+ Premium Membership

Aetuts+ Hollywood Movie Title Series – Real Steel

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mov

LOTR Series: Mount Doom Lava – Tuts+ Premium

Get the Full Tutorial!

Join Premium and Expand Your After Effects Knowledge!

What Do You Want to See on Premium?

Muted Color Grading And A Vintage Film Burn Using Fractal Noise

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mov

Other Related Tutorials

Aetuts+ Weekend Workshop #11 -《K-1945》aka “Kazumikaze”

Quick Ground Rules

《K-1945》aka “Kazumikaze”

Story Behind the Project

“Before/After”

Interested in submitting your own video? You can do so here!