3D Serpentine « Zaxwerks Blog

Archive for the ‘3D Serpentine’ Category

Working with Shadows Tutorial

Friday, April 9th, 2010

In this tutorial, we’re going to go over all the details of working with shadows. If you ever wondered about how to get shadows to work with your 3D objects, what settings to use, or how to speed up your projects, you’ll want to watch this video tutorial and find out!

Topics discussed:

• Creating a floor to set up the shadows in 3D Serpentine, 3D Warps, and 3D Invigorator.

• Creating a Light, and positioning it correctly.

• Working with Light Intensity, Shadow Darkness, and Shadow Diffusion.

• Setting up the Shadow Quality and Shadow Catcher.

• Optimizing the setup in After Effects for faster previews.

• Setting up lights in 3D Invigorator and working with Shadow Catcher materials.

Click on the image above, or the link below to watch the video tutorial.

Click to watch the Working with Shadows Tutorial

Posted in 3D Flag, 3D Invigorator Pro, 3D Serpentine, 3D Warps, General, ProAnimator, Tips, Tutorials | No Comments »

Zaxwerks Plugins vs. 3D applications

Monday, December 7th, 2009

In the recording of Maltaannon’s live video broadcast, he discusses the topic of Zaxwerks Plug-ins versus 3D applications. If you are wondering about the advantages of why you would want to use Zaxwerks plug-ins in After Effects, take a look at the discussion.

Topics discussed:

• ProAnimator’s setup vs. using a 3D application.

• Creating an animated Layer Map.

• Importing 3D Objects into ProAnimator.

• Working with UV mapping.

• Using 3D Serpentine to create fast noodle effects.

• Working with custom cross section shapes as the serpentine body.

Click on the image above, or the link below to watch the video discussions.

Click to watch the recording of Maltaannon’s Live video session

Posted in 3D Serpentine, General, ProAnimator, Tips | No Comments »

3D Serpentine Tutorial by Eran Stern

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Join Eran Stern as he guides you through the 3D Serpentine controls, and how to create his cool Autumn 2009 Blockbuster Movies intro!

Learn the following:

• Path Creation – drawing one individual path, and having all the elements of 3D Serpentine tie to that path.

• Assigning multiple text elements to one instance of 3D Serpentine.

• Changing different head and body serpent colors.

• Creating the cascading animation for all the extruded text.

• Offset the circle design.

• Applying a reflection map to all the 3D Serpentine elements.

• Adding additional camera animations and particle effects.

Click on the image above, or the link below to check out the tutorial!

Eran Stern’s 3D Serpentine Tutorial

Posted in 3D Serpentine, General, Tips, Tutorials | 11 Comments »

3D Serpentine Demo Movie Tutorial

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

The long awaited 3D Serpentine demo movie is available! This is a quick movie that goes over what you can do to set up 3D Serpentine. The movie goes over how to set up custom layer masks, rotations, and setting up multiple serpents.

Look for more tutorial movies that will go over installation, and path setups in the near future.

Check out the new video tutorial below:

Zaxwerks Video Tutorials

Posted in 3D Serpentine, General, Tutorials | 2 Comments »

3D Serpentine Example Movies

Friday, June 12th, 2009

We’ve added a new page on the 3D Serpentine web page that contains all the example movies. In the Examples page, now you can view all the 3D Serpentine animations to see all the exciting capabilities.

Click on the picture above to go to our Examples page.

Posted in 3D Serpentine, General | No Comments »

Update: 3D Serpentine 1.0.1

Monday, June 8th, 2009

3D Serpentine 1.0.1 contains many new example projects as well as new features to make smoother animated ribbons, banners, and more!

Version 1.0.1 Update:

- New Feature – By creating an animated mask, the 3D Serpentine body will transition from one shape to the next (Mac & Windows).

- Improved Auto-Orientation tool. The “Based on Curvature” Auto-Orientation has been improved to handle advanced curves better. This takes care of issues where the path may twist when the extrusion offset is animated to go through multiple loops (Mac & Windows).

- Improved texture mapping. Map coordinates using Lock Map to Path and Not Locked to Path react better to complex curves (Mac & Windows).

- Fixes an issue where increasing the Path Smoothness values may introduce new twists to the path (Mac & Windows).

- Fixes an issue where if you start a curve with the handle bar pointing vertically, you may see a twist in the beginning of the path (Mac & Windows).

- Fixes an issue where the texture map isn’t mapped completely, and also calculates shading better when using the “Line” Custom Section Shape (Mac & Windows).

- Fixes an issue where the texture map tiling could be reversed if there is scaling applied on the path (Mac & Windows).

- Fixes an issue where multiple custom shape masks in the same layer could cause a missing seam in the serpent body (Mac & Windows).

Visit our download page: HERE

Posted in 3D Serpentine, General | No Comments »

3D Serpentine Demo Movie

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Join Jerzy Drozda Jr. (aka. Maltaannon) as he does a quick demonstration on the capabilities of 3D Serpentine!

Posted in 3D Serpentine, General, Tutorials | 4 Comments »

NAB 2009 and 3D Serpentine are here!

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Meet John Dickinson, and the rest of the Zaxwerks crew as we demonstrate Motion Graphic techniques and products to make videos look great.

Join Zax as he is demonstrating features for the TV crew.

If you are attending NAB, be sure to visit our booth at SL 2529G where we have all our products at NAB special pricing, and watch as we unveil our newest product, “3D Serpentine”.

3D Serpentine brings big-time 3D effects
to Motion Graphics and Video artists. Creating 3D noodles, also called path extrusions, is no longer difficult nor time consuming. Now you can do them live, right inside of Adobe After Effect

If you know how to make a 3D path in After Effects you can create fanciful 3D noodles with the 3D Serpentine plug-in.

Create cool 3D effects like moving film strips, shooting stars, animated marquee signs, swirling tubes, winding helixes, twisting extruded text, arrow pointers and self-tying ribbons.

Early reviews of 3D Serpentine have already started coming in:

“3D Serpentine will completely redefine how After Effects artists approach 3D motion graphics design. Dynamic 3D lines, extruded sweeping 3D text, and action-intensive 3D graphics no longer require animators to leave the After Effects environment that they already know so well … A MUST HAVE.”

- Ko Maruyama CREATIVEMAC.COM

For more information, check out:

3D Serpentine

Posted in 3D Serpentine, General, Tips, Training, Tutorials | No Comments »