I love that your site and videos are informative for both beginners and experts. I'm definitely not an expert with Adobe, and your site has helped me out tremendously with questions I had.

I try not to use Photoshop with my motion graphics. I tend to stick with Illustrator.

Lol Dustin U get Pwnd ^^

I think Andrew and Steve are just awesome. Some creativity ans talent. Everybody around me say that I'm gifted in design, well ... compared to you i'm nothing ^^

Keep it up !

I dodged the bullet on that one :)

He he - thanks Dustin! :-)

hey man u r name is there .. its rocks .. u really rocks ....

so cliche.. lol

the guy presenting was not at all as good as you or Andrew or Aharon.

Ah, fair enough - was just wondering. Those are the canned demo files they're still using a year later since last NAB ;-)

@ Steve

It was actually a picture of a building from a corner and the Aquo logos was 'painted' on the side of the building.

Thank you Aharon and Steve.

Hey all! Back online in the new Energi studios - whew! Wanted to quickly log in and answer a few questions from folks. Thanks for your patience :-)

1. Dustin James - the camera control is mostly via expressions. It all comes down to one thing, as I said to a British lass a long time ago: It's all about the wiggle, baby. Anyway, that's another story... Using the wiggle expression on your camera position and/or orientation adds a whole dimension to your work. Animate the camera moves using keyframes as per normal, easing and such (I also 99% of the time, turn Auto Orientation to OFF, to enable easier rotation animation and to stop AE looking at the center of my 3D world), but then ADD an expression to the position and use wiggle to randomize the values between the keyframes. That's how the handheld look is created. You can also do the same with the Focus Distance for depth of field, but I would recommend applying a Slider expression control to a blank layer and tying the expression to that slider, so you can ease the wiggle up and down with keyframes easily.

Hopefully that gives you a couple of hints? :-)

2. Aharon Rabinowitz - you are always the gentleman, my friend. Although daisies and cinnamon had me rolling on the floor in laughter!

3. Filipe Montero - the VPE export to AE is ONLY available in Photoshop CS3 EXTENDED. The regular Photoshop CS3 doesn't have the export feature, sadly...

4. Shaun - you can turn the shadows for the lights on, and the layers to accept shadows... but nothing will work unless you tell the black-holed solid to Cast Shadows... Twirl down the Material Options for the solid layer, and set Cast Shadows to On or Only (if you want the layer to be invisible). Be sure Cast Shadows is also turned on IN the light settings. This should fix it for you :-)

5. Filipe - I learned After Effects over many years of knee-deep work... Had some great guidance from my old friend Brian Maffitt along the way too with expressions and such, but I've been using AE for 11 years now and there are still a few things that baffle me. Aharon's tutorials are a great way to learn, as of course are Andrew Kramer's, so there are so many new ways to learn now than when I started out. The Adobe Classroom in a Book only showed me about 10 things, and the rest was trial-by-fire ;-)

6. Dustin - when you went to the NRB conference, and saw Adobe showing the Vanishing Point demo, did they use a long red corridor with wooden walls, and either Hiball or Aquo logos flying down the hallway? If so, that was actually another one of my project pieces which I gave them permission to use for their demos, as their content was seriously lacking (for such an important feature)...

Alright, got to go and set up another Mac and unpack some more boxes. Hope some of this helps, glad I can be part of this community.

Cheers all,

Steve

Hi guys, i've tried what steve did with the corridor. Everything looked great but I can't get my light to cast the shadow. I placed a black solid infront of the 3d tunnel. I then cut the middle out put a light behind it. I made sure all the layers were set right, making sure the layer recieve light option was turned off on each. I then checked the recieve shadows and went into the tunnel to find nothing had happened. I just can't understand why.

Any help would be appreciated. thanks guys

Can someone tell me how to make copy the video.. like in flv plzz,,

Filipe - to my knowledge export to AE is not available in CS2 - it's a new feature of CS3.

I got a question for Steve: How did you learn After Effects?
VPE is available in PS CS2 but I don't see a way to
export it. Is it possible?

Thank you very much. I loved you on NAB ;)

I would really enjoy it if Steve good give some handy tips about my question about the camera movements in his reel.. and the focus and all the stuff that makes it look so convincingly like a real life camera..

Thanks

Hello everyone, Chris here again. Energi Design is in the middle of moving the entire studio to a new location. Steve wanted me to let you know he'll be back online Wednesday and will check in here to follow up with any other questions.

Viva la Copilot! Hey, I just gave away a great T-shirt idea :-(

Very very interesting and thanks for sharing with us : ) I enjoyed every second of that training on NAB.

Sticking to evolution - great DVD and In my country ( Poland ) it has been used several times on TV :) ( advertising products etc ) .

Great job on that Andrew ! One of the best DVD out there.

Wow, Steve. You did a really great job with VPE. I loved your presence and attitude on "stage
"

Just want to say, I've worked with Steve on a bunch of projects, and he is easily one of the most talented if not THE most talented designer I've ever worked with. He's also a really great guy, and smells a bit like daisies and cinnamon. (OK, I made that very last part up).

Steve thanks for the tips and your contributions to knowledge base of the AE and design community. I am constantly floored by the stuff you produce.

It's hard to believe you do it all while on a bicycle...

I really would like to watch the presentation but the only way I can watch it is if it were up for download and I don't any way to download it so I'm just hoping this presentation will still be up for viewing by the time I return home from Iraq which is really getting on my nerves now. Just hearing all you talk about this is making me want to see it even more but with this Iraqi net over here, its near impossible to view the video so if anyone finds a download or something for this video please give a shout out or something so that I can view it as well. Thanks Andrew for posting the link and all even tho I can't view it atm I'm still excited just reading everyone's response to it.

Really amazing stuff, and all that from just at still photo i'm impressed... i'll def. start using some of my own pictures in my AF animations from now on :)

Thank alot to VC for all the help and tutorials and your great products.

Thank you soo much, Andrew for this site!! I'm 17 and watch all your tuts like 50 times!
I discovered you last spring, just at random, and this site opened me up to the world of AE. As I kept getting interested in this, I became more aware of video production in general. Now I have bought all your products, bought proffessional video equipment, and am going into a career in video/motion graphics!! Dude, you virtually changed my life!

-Thanks, and keep it up, people WILL watch... BTW I saw Evolution used in an internationally broadcast (Satellite Dish) commercial/promo for an upcoming Rugby match!

Wow Adobe recommended VideoCopilot stuffs?...
It's Andrew's Law! hell yeah!

I had the pleasure of watching that presentation live at NAB. It's one of the few videos that i've gone back and watched a half dozen times...i love it..it's good stuff..and i'm glad to hear he used your stuff Andrew.

@ Steve

I really enjoyed your tricks you shared in that tutorial. I enjoyed your promo reel. I have been wondering for a while how to control the camera the way you do in some of those shots. I'm talking about the zooming/focus/movement. The way you do it makes the camera look like it is real.. in such that a person is controlling it. I would appreciate some tips on how you do this.. like weather you keyframe it, or if its expressions, etc... Thanks, djames04@gmail.com

@ Andrew

I went to the NRB (Nation Religious Broadcasting Convention) and in an After Effects session by Adobe, I shared with everyone videocopilot.net. Twice a Day for 3 days... so much love! They two showed the Vanishing technique..

Hi guys, I really injoyed watching the presentation, It got my juices flowing. Ever since I saw the presentation I've been looking all over for a really cool looking concrete hallway but with no luck, I know I could build one from scratch in AE's but I really want to try it with a good photo, the hi res ones at iphotostock are too expensive. anyone by chance happen to have one. I'm a media student at college and I would love to a nice VP animation for my final project. any help would be appreciated. thanks guys, andrew thank god people like you exist to help us peeps become better at what we do. Maybe oneday i'll be teaching people AE. hah maybe in 15 years.:)

There is a guy called Andrew Kramer from Video Copilot com there are some pretty cool stuff there..... OH, that’s for sure

Who’s the daddy LOL
Keep it Up Andrew

Also Adobe TV & NAB rooks, plz do more of those

Great booth tutorials... Thanks Steve and Andrew for making this available for us.

-Leo

It's fair, I'd do it :) Thanks for answering so many questions, we appreciate it.

Oh, and if you visit Federico's site link above, you'll see he's also responsible for the wonderful music we had for our "Possibilities+Productivity" animation, as well as the interface and all five movies in the "Adobe Type+Motion" microsite, which has been nominated for a Webby...

If anyone feels like casting their votes for the People's Choice Award, we would love that! I'm not going to use VCP as a launch pad for that though, that's not fair or proper. All relevant links can be found on our minimal and so-in-need-of-completion Energi home page :-)

Thanks again,

Steve

Hey all, thought I would pop back in and answer a couple of questions. So cool to see so many people enjoying the tutorial, this blog is very cool.

1. Beautiful design elements on ugly walls and only one mention: To be fair, this was our title project which used the flourishes for one specific purpose, and one mention of VCP is now all over AdobeTV...

But in addition to mentioning VCP once in each Adobe demo per day, I did also mention it twice per day over at the Artbeats booth where I was also presenting - and then after all three of those demos, I would probably have 8-10 people come over and ask me to say again where the flourishes came from... I think that was fair advertising :-) Plus no one came up and asked which software I used, so I wasn't promoting Adobe ;-P
Hopefully that returns the love, Anton :-)

2. Our demo reel is only available online right now, just for updating purposes. We don't make a reel available for download for many reasons - one being that someone sent US a demo reel last year asking for a job, and in their demo reel they had used some of OUR work from our demo reel... Yikes ;-)

3. The music. Well, our 2007 reel had music from a great colleague in New York called Federico Chieli http://h20music.com - but for 2008 we wanted something that didn't "hide" the work underneath heavy beats and such. The Amelie soundtrack was really beautiful, as is the film, and worked well for this demo. I am not happy that we have used someone else's music in this way, and we'll probably replace it soon, but for now it was perfect for NAB.

4. The accent. That was funny ;-) I'm thinking on my next NAB (it'll be my 10th anniversary of presenting there), I'll do one entire presentation in Sean Connery style, you know - Scottish accent with sh's for the s's and such. I think that would be fun! I could even work in some Indiana Jones segments:

"I'm as human as the next man."
"I wash the nexsht man..."

:-)

Thanks again Andrew for hosting the blog and making the products so cool and fun to use, and glad people are enjoying them and where they are used.

Ciao for now,

Steve

Hi, Andrew could you do a deeper vanishing point tutorial?.Thanks a lot

but on the other hand it's kind of unfair! Steve took your beautiful design elements, put them on those ugly walls and only mentioned you once!

c'mon!

love both of you.

Congrats AK, you deserve it.

Wow!

He even mentioned Indiana Jones. He must spend time at this site too!

Congrats Andrew and Steve....

AE is an incredibly useful tool!

*listens as Evolution flies off the shelf now*

this is gr8 for us mear mortals that can travel to the NAB, big thx to steve for a gr8 presentation, some cool technques i never thought of with VP

VpeaceV

thanks Andrew, thanks Steve Holmes.....

I mean T-shirt Design contest news?

Anybody

T-shirt Design contest new

thanks AK And Steve...

you are the masters... yes, i can remember steve in Total Training for AE 6.

yea good days. and good people with good moments continue.

Happy Motion Graphics and visual Fx

thanks

Congrats! I knew the work of VideoCopilot is unoticeable, who wouldn't spot the hard work of the team. Nice tehniques with the VPN. Keep up the good work!

If only my Vanishing Point imports nested that well inside After Effects. Mine come in all over the place! Loads to learn in Adobe TV. Check out Jason Levine on CS3 Production Premium. Near the end of the clip he demonstrates the power of the puppet tool. Worth a watch.

@ Steve Holmes

Hello sir, just finished checking out clickenergi.com
very simple and neat, very pleasing to the eye, I working my way up to achieve that level of design where very little is used in a highly creative way. I love the way you guys used the VCP products too

I wanted to ask you about the background music in your demo-reel, is it something you guys create in-house or commision a music studio to do it or you got it from some where else.

Hope I'm not asking for too much

Wow! I new VPE was cool! But this just bumped it up to amazing! I was dreaming up a project and this just pushed it to almost becoming a reality.

that firefly trick was pretty slick. also cast shadow - nice.

very great i love it :D

cool stuff! thanks steve and andrew!
is there a way to download this tutorial?

Hey nice andrew..... ur good...but this guy, make this project looking your evolution video .... you are more creative :) ..... keep going! to the next level!

DigitalTutors actually uses one of the tracks from the Designer Sound Effects for their lesson intros

Hey Andrew, thanks for posting this, I enjoyed Steve's tutorial. But I must say he has a much sexier accent than you. Would you be so kind as to imitate that accent in your next tutorial! :)

Wow, I had no idé that photoshop's vanishing point was that good!

...and to Steve Holmes; brilliant!

Incredible work Andrew, keep it up and props like this will be well deserved.

Thats awesome! Some great techniques! You even got a comment from Steve!

So anyone of you used vanishing point before?

*raises his hand and screams VIDEO COPILOT!*

back on the subject, when i used Vanishing Point with HD photo's the numbers inside AE get huge. Bit of a problem when you use Particular. Or other effects/plugins that have some kind of max number. Anyone have a good workaround?

GREAT GREAT GREAT!

thanks for sharing!!! Everything on this site is great!!!! love it... AFTER EFFECTS!!

thanks for sharing!

Hi Andrew. Thanks for that presentation, okay? Sterve did quite a good job, okay? But you are my favorite tutor ever, OKAY? Love ya :-) Peace out.

All VCP products are amazing! AK's tut's are great! This website could make you a pro! I cant wait for the new tutorial products!

Also check out the amazingly skilled Digital Kitchen video

Those guys are pushing things!

really good presentation, and nice usage of Evolution,
i really augh'to check more from AdobeTV :)

Hey Andrew,
is there a video with you on this site?

Nice nice. I've now been into this for 6 month, and fortunately I found this page, as one of the first pages when i searched for AE tutorials. It has really helped me a lot, and made me even more interrested in video and FX editing. I'm only 17 so I've got a lot of time still to learn :D

Thanks you AK and the rest of VPC.

Hey, awsome that he mentiond you:)
anyway.. big respect for you.. if i'm in the usa i must go visit you^^
keep up the goodwork!
Greetings from the netherlands


"Point the camera upwords, it's easier to key..."

Coooll dude.....???


@ Steve...


could please tell us how we can download your demo reel... its running online is there any mov file of your demoreel or any other alternate way by which i can download reel????


welll amazing work dude nice ideas....


Riot Gear and Evolution....!!!!


waiting ;)

Cool presentation wish i went.

Thx for sharing Andrew! I love your vanashing point tutorial but this one seems to be more advanced. maybe you can show us more like this, especially using vanashing point in photoshop, to use it in AE later. i can watch this presentation again but i think you would put more detail in to it. When i watch your tutorials, everything works from alone...;) Your the Master!!! It´s a littlebit like jedi knights: One Master, One Student, but in your case: One Master, a Thousand Students!
So keep up the good Work!
PS: Can´t wait for the new Training DVD!
Greetings from Berlin Germany

Vers

its awesome that so many people know about Video Copilot

Hi Andrew
Congratulations for your interesting product > EVOLUTION
In our country TV we see lots of usages of your products.
So i think EVOLUTION is going to be one of the best products that will use all over the world.

Thanks Again ;)
http://www.After-Effects.Blogfa.Com

Hey Steve! Thanks for dropping by.

Andrew keep it up! Steve Rocks!

@ Adrian - you should have seen AENY crowd during Andrew's last visit ;)

The shortcut for replacing the layer is when your dragging a layer to the time line I believe you hold down the option key while dragging and what ever layer you drag it onto will be replaced with the new one. The new layer will then take on the replaced layers position attributes.

Thats why he made duplicates of the layers so he wouldn't loose the original.

Hope this helps.

Mazal tov Andrew what a great shout out. I feel bad for Steve Holmes though, holy hell that crowd didn't seem into it at all. You can hear people talking in the background throughout his entire amazing presentation.

Hey all, thanks for the nice comments about our work and also the presentation I gave at NAB last week. It was my pleasure to push Evolution (and Riot Gear, featured in our reel opening) in every single session, as the collections are beautiful and help us out no end. Thanks again Andrew!

Congratulations for you Andrew! This video means for me an inspiration in wanting to learn more about FX, design and video composin.

Hey Andrew, I work with Steve on occasion. Much like you he's an awesome guy and crazy talented! I hope this fusion of your two talents brings both of you increased success!

Cheers!

hmm seems gud, thnkyou Andrew!

Good stuff. yep.

Great to know Andrew, thanks very much.

Sweet! I dig Energi Design's motion graphics: first found out about Steve's work from an ArtBeats demo DVD. The music for his demo reel is SO AWESOME... done by Federico Chieli.

Very very cool.. thanks for passing this along Andrew. It's cool to see Steve Holmes using Evolution.

Although you may not always be to first to come out with these techniques, you are certainly doing it the best (in my opinion) and raising the bar for everyone.

I have to also telll you that I'm also impressed on how you are running your business. It's amazing how much impact a guy talking to himself sipping root beer can have on an industry. haha

Congrats! Your hard work is paying off.

I was watching the Champions Lauge (Soccer) last night on ITV1 (UK) and the promo for both teams had so much stuff from "Riot Gear" in them it was like watching a promo video for Riot Gear!

Holy carp!
If ever I needed a reason to upgrade from CS2 to CS3, this was it!!!
I am currently working on a feature film, shot entirely on bluescreen, I have been using 2d images and cutting and layering them to do what vanishing point is doing soooo much better!!! Thanx so much!!!!

cool tutorial, the gel effect was really cool tip to pick up, well done also on the evolution plug

@Pratik
There are two ways. ALT-drag the new layer from the project panel and drop it onto the layer you want to replace, or select the footage in the project panel and the layer in the timeline and press ALT+CTRL+/ (ALT+CMD+/ on mac)

This can also be used to replace multiple layers at the same time.

intresting ,thanks for sharing it with us.

Nice. I wish Adobe would put out more of this kind of thing.
Thanks for the pointer AK.
c

@ Pratik,
I think that AK covers it in the AE Bootcamp (The Great Free resource that VC provided), but have the layer selected that you want to replace, ALT Click on the replacement in the project panel and drag it on to the layer you are replacing.

What an outstanding plug - I noticed a whole bunch of shots in their reel that they couldn't have pulled off without VC products! Way to go guys!!!

Keep up the great work!
(BTW - really looking forward to the next training DVD!!)

Anyone know the keyboard shortcut for that replace feature?

To be fair, there was actually a tutorial floating around on the VPE subject before I tackled it, I was just contrasting it with the 3D projection technique. Steve definitely took it to the next level with multiple room faces so that was interesting to see so many wall contours.

Great tut from Steve. Funny how you've already covered that VPE technique here at VCP, plus the fact that Evolution is all over the place... Wow! Major league kudos to you AK. Hopefully the exposure will translate into $$$ for you guys as well! Peace!

I was there (at NAB) when Steve mentioned Evolution, and I looked around thinking that you'd be there to take credit Andrew. The collection is definitely worth the mention. You must be proud!

Very cool presentation, worth watching..

Thanks Kramer

Clone # 3327

Very cool Andrew. You guys deserve to get more props like this. You are at the forefront of AE training, and really have the pulse of the design crowd.

Congrats. Hope to see more of this.

BTW I already have 5 T-shirt designs

Thanks For sharing

VIDEOCOPILOT ROCKS!
=)