AE: Compositing tutorial

Learn how to create a jet fighter flyover shot using only 2D elements. The result is a very realistic yet easy (if you know what you're doing) way of doing these types of shots. We will also cover some good compositing techniques and tips for color matching.

After having had some time off I decided to put up a tutorial on actual compositing, a subject skipped by most tutorial web site about After effects. You find a good amount of Nuke and Shake compositing tutorials but not many AE ones. Well I plan to change that. You can bet there are going to be more compositing tutorials for AE coming up soon. So stay tuned for those.

The footage is a free clip courtesy of Umesh off his website here:

http://umesh3d.blogspot.com/

Download the Project file and PDF here:

Project File

Free Project file download

Here is a free project made in After Effects CS4. Its a countdown on a spinning box. Download it, use it tweak it, learn from it. Makes use of some cool After Effects tricks so if you have been looking to do some motion graphics here is a good project file to help you out.

Download AE project

The Film Makers Guide

Hi sorry for the lack of posts but I have been busy with tons of projects. However since now I write for VFXschool along with my buddy here Jason. We thought it would be cool to put out a short guide on getting started with film making. It's a real quick over view of basic things you should know heading out to a shoot. I cover lighting, audio, and cameras as well as a cool post strategy to keep things organized and I finish it off with a quick guide on color correcting and grading.

Hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

Tony

Download Guide

*Edit:

I wanted to make something clear about lighting. In the guide I stated that most of the lighting is done in post. After reading it again today i thought some people might get confused. I had implied is that the final polishing is done in post.So you always want to light on set how the image should come out. However, you want to have minimal contrast. To do that shoot with a flat gamma and always lighten up your shadows with a bounce card. If you are doing a three point lighting, your fill light should lighten your shadows. When u have a custom set up or you shoot out doors, add a bounce card on the shadow side so that you shadows aren't completely dark. That way you always have that extra bit of data to work with. Use this tip especially when you shoot DV.

Most useful tutorials

Now a days you have your pick from tons of people making tutorials. But the problem is that almost none of them are good. Its hard to get some one to nail down the basics and even more importantly teach them in a manner that is easy to understand. Creative cow is one of the very very few places that makes tutorials that are so well made they have become a staple in the online Mograph and VFX community. They host some of the best and most useful tutorial you can ever hope to find on the web. If you are a AE user your owe it to your self to watch all of these tutorials.

Go learn something.

The best Creative cow tuts so far:

Removing Chromatic aberrations

2.5D Rig removal

Calculating rotation

The famous droste effect

multi Freeze-frame effect

Simulating whip-pans

Sci-Fi Classics

(Audio) ADR basics and how it works

Looping particle systems

Making a water color effect on videos

Better Compositing

Reverse Earth Zoom

Jumbotron look

Vanishing point in AE

Invisible cape

Shoot like Film

Gatorade Effect

Light Writting

Cinematic compositing

Building a 3D world in AE

Creating a automated Odometer

Smart volume meter

Simple object removal

Smoking letters

Destroy AE CS4

DESTROY AE distortion generator for After Effects CS4

Ladies and gentlemen what i present to you know is the all new-fully re-vamped preset for creating digital and analog artifacts and distortion. I had a small job a few weeks ago that called for me working on a short 10 sec. shot of a handheld camera falling down, obviously the they wanted the camera to distort freeze up an snap to black. So I did some searching and found Digieffects distort plug-in. Once i saw what it did, i realized that instead of spending money i could just create the effects my self. Glad to say that after some tinkering i came up with some presets that allowed be to create the effects. However to get a very custom preset i used keyframes. Obviously those can't be saved as presets. So instead using my little knowledge of expressions I added some controls and. Also since my footage was rendering very slowly i managed for this release to do away with tons of effects and tons of layers thanks to some friends, google and my good friend CC composite. Now you can enjoy dropping in the preset on any footage and voila. In fact i would go as far as to say that its a perfect substitute for Digieffect's plug-in. The one thing lacking is a time effect. Which I worked around by using TIMESHUFFLER by polygonstudio (maltannon.com). Enjoy.

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=f1a082d8ed39bc127432d3c9683f450ae04e75f6e8ebb871

Music video preset.

Need to make a handheld shakey "tryn" to focus effect? but don't want the sharp jitters of a real handheld? Shoot your actor or artist with your cam on a tripod. Bring it into after effects and use Shaker to give some life to your footage. I made it with the intention of using it o music videos, which is what i will be working on, however after playing around with it i discoverde that its useful for a dreamy confused feel if you duplicate the footage and ofset it 5-10 pixels off, so IDK it's useful for many other things experiment with it, im sure you guys will finde it useful for other things. And its all free, just give me or this blog a small bit of credit, we appreciate it.

About me: Im a local LA music producer, mixer and sound engineer, graphic designer both in art and commercial applications, Filmmaker, visual effects artist, digital composer, motionographer, photographer and cinematographer, director, screenwriter. I have a background in Art and digital media as well as science, phiosophy and math. Im an avid boxer and i Love art music and movies.

Aight so thats me expect more post to come.

-TOny

Download Shaker: http://www.mediafire.com/?nzzeyq2mnjw

New Streak and film burn pack!

Wuts up. This is a small pack i put together of streaks, flares and film burns i made for certaint projects.. They have come in very helpful hope you enjoy them...  If you are having trouble, or don't know how to usethem. There is a PDF along with the pack. Basically you set them to a transfer mode: either "add", "screen" or "color dodge." Now if you want more control. You can use Knoll Unmult to remove the black matte. I also created the MotionPRO pack but unlike that i didn't make an alpha channel since i never realy intended to use them withone. Ok have fun with them. And let me know what you think right in the comment section. Peace!

-TOny

Get it at: http://www.mediafire.com/?zdkzqdjw0ez

Get Ready!

Been busy working on lots of cool projects.. But don't think i forgot about the blog.. I will soon be posting a LOT of useful tips and get ready for a back to back to back post of nothing but pure awesome downloads should all be up today... My friend Tony who is a compositor and visual effects artist is a student in the LA area. We met in a GD class a while back and he has been helping ever since. So i thought it would only be appropriate to share with you some awesome stuff he has helped me make. I would like to thank him for all of the product designs and logos he has made. and his presets he has over at http://tonyfbaby.deviantart.com. Lately he has been producing music, but has kindly granted me the right to distribute his presets and design elemenets and templates accross my various sites. I will be in NY for some time. So i wont have to much to post about. But Tony said he would be more than happy to share his knowledge with us all so expect post by him in the very near future. Also If you havent already check out Tophers site right there on the right (visualfxtuts.com) He has futured our free products and is Good friends with Tony, and has even featured his Presets on his site. So make sure you check it out.