For those of you hungry for my ProAnimator training DVD, coming real soon now I promise, here’s a quick video tip on how to select all segments on a layer and reverse an object animation in ProAnimator. Have fun.
Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category
Zaxwerks ProAnimator Tip #1: Reversing an Object Animation
Thursday, September 27th, 2007eSeminar With John Dickinson
Monday, September 24th, 2007A little while back we hosted an eSeminar. If you haven’t heard, an eSeminar is a live class taught by an instructor, which you watch in the web browser of your computer. It’s a great way to link people together from all over the world, without ever having to leave home. John Dickinson was the instructor and did an outstanding job of showing how he created a promotional spot for the television network he works at.
John took us right from the beginning, showing how every element was built and why he made the decisions he did. As he was building the layers he showed alternate ideas and effects. Many of these alternates happened due to a slight change in one of the parameters. It was really interesting to see how many variations could be done to make the work your own.
John worked in both After Effects and the ProAnimator, showing how to use them together and how to get the best work flow. He showed how to build backgrounds, how to make Mars, how to do the main title and the accompanying text. He showed how to alter the mood and color of a piece. He showed how to set up a logo in Illustrator and how to reuse elements with ProAnimator’s text engine. Of course none of this was done in the usual ways you might think. Everything had a Master’s flair for design and attention to detail, with useful tips flying off John’s silver tounge.
The whole class, which was originally scheduled for 1.5 hours ended up being over 3. At the end the floor was opened to a Q & A session where Zax joined in too, answering questions and revealing secrets about upcoming products. Everyone had a great time and learned a lot.
John promises that he’ll be having another class soon. He’s also promised to create a DVD version of the class so that anyone who wasn’t able to attend would still be able to learn his valuable information. We’ll be looking forward to that DVD.
Thanks John for a great class!
Festive Streamers
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
With the holidays right around the corner, here are a set of streamer presets to use with the 3D Grid Warp plug-in. These streamers can all be customized and animated in a variety of ways. You can change how tight or loose the ribbon is wrapped; the length and width of the ribbon; how twisty it is; and of course the colors and transparencies in the ribbon.
Most of these streamers use a single warp. One of them uses two warps so you can see how to take a fairly simple streamer and make it deliciously irregular. Also notice how these streamers make use of the Highlight feature which gives the ribbons beautiful shiny highlights when the curves of the ribbon catch the light.
This download contains a set of preset files for 3D Grid Warp. (Click here to download) Once you download and unzip, place the preset files into the Grid Warp Presets folder and restart After Effects. Then in any AE project, add a layer, apply the Grid Warp effect to it, and choose one of the Streamer presets from the Effect Presets menu.
Gettin’ Sporty with Invigomany
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007
If you do sports graphics Invigomany is worth its weight in gold. Serge Hamad, Zaxwerks power user and forum co-leader, has created a companion CD full of project files and texture maps. These project files enable you to create custom graphics of various sports equiptment. The maps are customizable right down to the stitching on the baseballs and the lacing on the footballs. You can even apply your own logos.
For more information see Serge’s site.
Using Invigorator and Layer Warp to create 3d pie charts
Monday, May 7th, 2007
Every middle manager worth his/her mettle needs a nifty, extruded, animating pie chart every now and again. Check out the Quicktime tutorial and AE Project File here and see how Zaxwerks can help make your data look great.
How are the 3D Warps and the 3D Flag plug-ins different?
Monday, May 7th, 2007We’ve received many questions from folks wondering how the Warps and Flag plug-ins are different. Perhaps I can shed a little light on what these plug-ins do.
First, let’s start with the simple answer: 3D Flag creates cloth animations that are completely real-looking. The cloth responds to wind and gravity in ways that are beautiful to watch and would be impossible to animate by hand. 3D Warps creates bends, twists, tapers and ripples that are very controllable. 3D Warps does not attempt to replicate natural phenomena, it is made to do graphic-style distortions to a 3D surface. For instance if you want to add a curve to a background image you’d use 3D Warps. There’s no way you could do it with 3D Flag, just as there would be no way to simulate real cloth by stacking a few warps.
The longer answer:
The 3D Flag plug-in creates its motion using calculations pulled from physics. You control the input parameters such as wind speed, gravity, weight and stiffness of the cloth, but when it comes to the final shape of the cloth, that’s all done for you. In a way a 3D Flag animation is a lot like the domino effect. You set up a lot of dominoes, knock one over and see what happens to the rest.
The 3D Warps plug-ins are a completely different beast. 3D Warps are all about “control”. There are a variety of warp styles built in which will do specific things such as create a bend, or a twist, or pond ripples. You get very detailed controls over things like the diameter and position of the bend curve, the exact amount of twist, or the height and wave length of the ripples. Up to three warps can be combined. This can create distortions that are hard to image before you see them.
Can you use the Warps plug-ins to do the flag effect? No. You can stack several warps and get a shape that looks flag-ish, but when moving, it doesn’t have the natural, organic flow that real cloth has. It would also be just plain impossible to animate the effects of wind as the flag drops and raises and folds over on itself.
So there you go. When you need something to look like real cloth use the 3D Flag plug-in. When you need to do other types of shape-changing distortions to your images, use the 3D Warps plug-ins.
Best,
Zax