COOL! where can i find these particle plugins?

AWESOME to put it lightly. I love you Andrew Kramer. In a non gay way. According to the court.

Those hollow balls look great!

:O awesome! is it a tutorial about this coming soon?

Great examples, Andrew. The smoke looks great, are the same particles from your previous Smoke Trails tutorial?

Awesome!!! I cant w8 for the tutorial

Hey hey andrew hey hey andrew could you upload the hollow balls project please??????????

great!! Is this a coming tutorial?

stop teasing and lets make somthing.

where did you get the street footage?

I’m guessing New York?

How do we do the smoke in the top pic of new york. That would be an awesome tut

ohBeone — Theres already a tutorial of that XD

Yep the tutorial for the smoke is called smoke trails and I used the same smoke element. I did turn on self shading in Particular 2 for better results.

can you upload these amaizing pics from newyork, everytime i look at it i feel itchy to make something ,please.

Some really interesting R&D work there Andrew. Nice work!

On the hollow balls picture / render… wouldn’t there be a reflection of the balls on the 3 cars in the front (darker cars on the left and right, as well as red one in center )? I think it is a really great render, but as much detail as you pay to things… odd that it may have slipped by. Have a blessed day, -kmkenpo

cant wait to watch the tutorial…
well done andrew.

Andrew! your awesome, thanks for showing us that you dont know everything, that you learn it just like the rest of us! (your human! for a second there I thought you might be the AE God..I still think you may be, and are just trying to trick us into thinking you dont know everything..hmmmmmm I will have to run some tests)

/signed

Andrew Kramer Revolution

Oh No the smoke monster from Lost!!!!!!! It’s Real!

Hi Andrew,
I hear what you are saying regarding the technique which you have employed to achieve this result. Thank you for exploring and sharing.

Awesome…!
i need a tut 4 the smoke trails..i know that there is already a tut. but this one looks so much different and aesome…plz Andrew,post a tutorial 4 this,or just a quick tip…!

plz!!

Hey, looking forward to the smoke technique!

…but shadows is great! Can’t wait! =)

hey Andrew… is there any way you can get a better price for the Particular plug-in trough ur website??

Thanx for ur great tutorials…

@kmkenpo My god! This argument is in every vfx tutorial Andrew posts. This is a post that basically just says that this is an example of the dynamic shadows and not anything else, and now people don’t even bother to read.

Gorgeous shots!! Incredibly effective teq and will likely save loads of time for all of us interested in learning. Keepn my eye peeled for the tut release
post script: I wonder if those spheres are capable of reaching zero pt gravity! Happy Indy Day!

Hey , what’s up Andrew and hi for everybody who follows videocopilot.net . you said that “how the shadow is darker when the stream is closer to the ground ” But at the same time the cloud also be darker when the stream is closer to the ground. I think it’s not seems like real. Can we make same cloud light or homogeneous cloud and darker shadow for closer stream. I think seems more real that way.
May be my feelings wrong but near the center,mid of stream , the streem seems to stay under shadow. Doesn’t it.

Hi Andrew it’s awesome you are a realy genius person.

Particle shadows are great, but they are so much better in New York!!! LMAO!

This effect is so amazing Andrew! I cant wait until you make a tutorial about this. I will never understand how one person breaks so much ground in After Effects!

The smoke in the second pic looks like smokey from LOST lol =D Nice job atlhough…

A M A Z I N G, you don’t stop amazing me =)

as it has been said above, the smoke monster from Lost…only now i NYC…it’s the new spin off series from ABC! Smokie solving crime in the streets of NYC:P

NOW DO THE TUTORIAL AND LET US KNOW!
THIS IS TOO COOL

Hahah I don’t want to be mean, but I have impression that at least 1/3 of people are not reading the articles at all before commenting That’s how we have comments like “Wow, what a shiny car you have on this shot” )

Very good and useful technique Andrew. I can’t wait to see the tutorial!

Andrew, i was wondering, when you upload the Particle Shadows tutorial, will you use the blue or the hollow particles? Or something way different? I’d like the hollow, or maybe both types?
what are you exspecting to use?

Outstanding!! I can’t wait for the tutorial!

HEY ANDREW ITS REALLY A NICE ONE HERE. the colour correction is cool. thanks hope a tutotial come out of this. Oras from….NIGERIA

@AK and folks:
Also, you like that kind of people, who don’t even bothering to read AK’s posts or other comments, have so many annoying questions, like: “Is this a coming tutorial?”, “where did you get the street footage?” and the worst “How do we do the smoke in the top pic of new york.”. It’s a website people! With pictures, videos and great tutorials for those who can’t read, or are just dull. Measure twice, cut once…It’s a wise saw in my country(Czech Rep.)

P.s.: @AK u r great just stay in this way. Thank’s for feeding us with this stuff. Looking forward for upcomming tut. And…get some rest man (after posting new tut naturally)!

U r fan

I had to give it a go too

I even applied some directional shadows for good measure. I am not sure if this is anywhere close to how Andrew made his shadows, but seems to work ok.

http://www.jkemppainen.com/up/particleshadows4.mov

(If you look at the right side of the frame, you can see the shadows clipping off. That’s the edge of the shadow map and should give you a clue how these shadows are made.)

I like how barely anyone in these comments can actually do any work themselves, all they use is tutorials. I hope they’re hobbyists and are not actually on the payroll somewhere.

hey Andrew. looks amazing and totally real. when comes the tutorial for it? i can’t wait to learn it and thousands of other people too

Is there a chamce for a Plug In / Preset?
Best Regards!

Yep, I’m (still) a hobbyist. Got to start somewhere, and this seems like a gooood place

Thank you mr. Kramer for all the work you have done for us. You, and videocopilot.net, are an amazing example of knowledge-sharing by internet. Wish more people like you would stand up.

Andrew, its awesome plz upload the tutorial asap

Great stuff! Really looking forward to this.

Ohh and when is the glass shatter from Payment Plan tutorial being released?

i love the color of your street !!

I’m thinking about the use of the 3d features in Photoshop with this technique and thinking there are some rather exciting ways to use this.

Really Andrew, this is really interesting. I remember in one of the posts you made last week, you made it quite clear the difficulty of rendering a 3D image, in programs like 3D Max, and personally I agree with you because even for those who don’t have a VGA good enough that process becomes terribly boring . Without doubt apply the shadow effect dynamics give a very realistic tone to the footage, and with the ease of rendering in AE some projects may be conducted with much more harmony, and of course for those who have more affinity with After going to leave happy with this new technique. Congratulations for the post Andrew!

if i have lots of flying sheep can it still make shadows for them?

looks sick man! the reflection on the car sort of gives it away tho, see if you can incorporate that in some way, but lookin great good job mate!

I can’t wait for the TUT, because this technique will be a REAL alternative to a 3D rendering. Of course it won’t be as accurate as a 3D render setup, but so often neither the production time nor the budget allow us to do it in the most accurate way.
Andrew, you are simply awsome!!! Best greetings from Germany

Wow … thats breathtaking ….

so how did you create these amazing shadows? is it a big secret for the next tutorial?

Looks fantastic. Great idea to use AE and Particular for this kind of work… Looking forward for the tutorial

And hey, your next AE Plug-In will be a particle system á la Video Copilot? I would love to see it!

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!
Can’t wait for the tutorial

Thanks again! thats awesome Andrew! cool cool stuff.

Thank you Andrew. I did understand what you meant from the last post but do enjoy seeing more examples

hey, im seeing all these shadow casting posts here andrew and im wondering … after effects isnt a full 3d program but it does hand sum basic amount … is there any way we can use a light to cast a shadow but take off the light and leave the casted shadow? also … cant we use the plug in from video copilot VC Reflect and play around with that using sum curves adjustments and so forth and make a dynamic shadow based on movement? wouldnt that be easier to do and faster to render with maybe even nicer results based on the customization?

——> too hard to do http://vimeo.com/12374986?hd=1

by the way i think that you should use after effects for 3d things 3d max takes time but it is better resolution don’t you agree??

I hope nobody got hurt, those balls look kind of dangerous…

Hi andrew and guys!
interesting discussion. but my visit is for another reason.
I just want to show you this comp I made for my job.
I wasn´t aware of what puppet tool was capable of, but I started testing and here is the result… every animal of this comp was animated using that tool.

Greetings from argentina!!!!
Vamooooooo la albicelesteeee a pesar de que nos quedamos afuera del mundial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR79qZSLM6w

this is juste Amazin Again Andrew your simpli the best

i think i know that trick now. not as perfect and pretty as andrews but…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0LYGiRYw2A

Wow! is there gonna be a tutorial?

@JIK… Where do you get off ripping me a new one?!?! If you bothered to read MY post, you would have seen that I was politely pointing something out, NOT trying to rip on something. Please, get over yourself and take another Valium. What part of “I think it is a really great render, but as much detail as you pay to things…” confuses you? Goodness, way to ruin a picnic there JIK. Amazing that in this day and age you can’t say a crit about something, without someone feeling like their Cheerios were peed in… stinking politically correct garbage of a society. Grumble, mumble… grrrrrrr.

this is awesome
check out this video my friends made
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7lEAnQQSzc

thats a new level!

Hey andrew can you please release that awesome ball object, as a .obj file for us cause that looks awesome!

wow, awesome, thrilling never seen something like that before….! *sighs* Andrews work ist really good (bows head) but not every piece of it is always “awesome”.
do me a favour guys lower your absolute superlatives just a little bit. otherwise you people will run out of words sooner or later.

Nice technique.. just hope its not a complicated technique

@everyone who keeps asking for tutorials on everything.
Look through Andrew’s previous tutorials, there’s a lot of information there. If he hasn’t already posted it, take the time to figure it out yourself. Andrew has already done a ton for us, appreciate him a little more.

@Andrew
This is really interesting work you’ve done here. It’s great to see that this can be done inside of AE, though it’s still probably best to be done in a real 3D app. Thanks for posting your discoveries!

how come that dude walking on the sidewalk isn’t even phased by the trail of smoke rushing down the street? that guy is hard core

Hey! The car is not reflecting the elements!
Just kidding. Awesome job.

whass up?? by the way i am destroing a house with after effects (action essential 2) and i will show you the results

The particles don’t reflect each other!

Nice. the lighting on the smoke looks good…you should use that example in the tutorial. Looking forward to it!

Um, no. Sorry. I’ve lived in NY all my life and I’ve never seen balls fall from the sky that looked like those. Except back in ‘67, as those of us who were there can tell you.

@Mystic7
hahaha didnt know they had cameras that good in 1967.

hey everyone this might not be the best place to ask this, but here goes; how do i set up scene like the particles with no background, as in, have a floor to cast shadows on, and still have “walls” the same color? i know theres the set up andrew uses for the text in 3ds max and cinema4d but what if i want to do a 360 turn, that wont, work.. i basically need half a sphere with a flat bottom?

So, from looking at the balls, it now seems like you can use a 3D particle, and Particular will actually rotate it? I didn’t know that. What form does the particle have to take then?

Or, have you got a number of the ball images at different rotations and used those in a staggered-layer pre-comp?

And nice job. It’s good to see that you also think of something you want to be able to do, and then work at it until you find how to do it. Pity there’s no site like Video CoPilot for Andrew Kramer to get most of his answers from like the rest of us!

Hey R U Posting a tutorial on this post…… and what about advace time freez tutorial…..

@kmkenpo Well, I just like to follow the discussion on these blogs, and as I said, I just pointed out that this post was about ‘dynamic shadows’ and Andrew specifically made this post because people started arguing over reflections in his last blog post. I remember a while back when he posted his light casting tutorial, everybody started pointing out unnecessary things. And sorry for ‘ripping you a new one’, if you got the impression of me being a 14 year old punching the keyboard and yelling at the screen, that wasn’t my intention :p

Great work, please upload this tute. thanks Andrew

Those spheres look like the personality spheres from the Portal/Portal 2.

but I dont see eny reflection on the Car.
so what’s up to this solution ???

Not exactly sure what approach AK took…will be interested to find out. Here is a clip of the result of my approach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVYlggRiHv0
I was interested in the concept and had to give it a go.

Hi Andrew, thanks for your fabulous tutorials! Can you show us, how to make this hollow balls please ? On 3D studio max i think ?

Quite cool! I really like that smoke! Tutorial please…

@JIK Thank you for the clarification of your post and how it applied to me.
Have a blessed day,
-kmkenpo

Thank you Andrew… I hope that this is coz of my comments =D (I reaaally hope) ;D

Still, I believe that this would be a better example of what the tutorial can be used for. That other example… wasn’t good, well by the standards around here, it wasn’t… if you took it to a completely new site like… http://www.finecg.com (not advertising, it’s a lame site) it would be good =D

One has to be a total genius to figure out stuff in After Effects like you do Kramer. You manage to surprise your fans every time. Totally amazing!

Can you do a tut on this plzzzzzzzz this is EPIC!!!!!!

This is going to be an awesome Tut!

kmkenpo has a point although it would all depend on the material the “balls” were made out of. if they’re some sort of plastic then its all good =)

oh and ppl stop asking him to put this up there. he has the smoke trails tutorial. take what you make move it on a different background and replace the particles. there is your tutorial. =)

Hi Andrew Kramer. U r work is superb

U know i am a big fan of u and u r work

when i have visited u r website that day on words i don`t have single day without VIDEO COPILOT.net

thq sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much for tutorials and u r support thq thq

Hi, Andrew! That about Final Gather, Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion in AE? )

hey hey….Thank you Andrew…Awesome

Mike Park,
Your falling Matzah Balls look terrific!
Wonder how the shadows would look falling into a bowl of chicken broth!?!!

the broken glass tutorial should….never come…

Hi Andrew,

I would like to thank you for your comments and tutorials, they are very helpful and turn us more passionate with After Effects.

Question for you:
When you do your tutorial most of the videos has 15 seconds or less, so I would like to know if you create a motion graphic presentation with 2 minutes do you split the video in small parts and put them together with some software or you just do one video with the hole thing ?

English is my second language, so sorry about any mistake!

tutorial on how to make those hollow balls? i think its necessary

@Gio

You can find them on http://www.redgiantsofware.com

@ Andrew Kramer

Cool stuff man! Can’t wait for the tut

Hmm…I think that some people should read first and than ask..but we’re not living in perfect world do we?

Will be there a tut…just joking;p

Can’t wait for the tutorial!

@OlympiaLogger

Thanks. Not sure I was going for Matzah Balls, but thanks.

Hey Andrew I was looking on YouTube and I found this dude that I guess made this stuff, can you give a more in-depth tutorial on how to do this type stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdI1f81hFqE&feature=related

@Vin
Not sure if you can do this only within AE buddy…looks like FumeFX plugin for Autodesk 3ds Max…maybe with the same technique used in green smoke tut but with lots of particular layers…and spending much time with “unnecessary” adjustment..if you really want it to look hyper-realistic and and want to avoid the 3d…burn your house or barn and take a camshot…in this case share it after..thx:)

heyyy Niceee imageee

@Ravens666 I did that and I uploading the footage it right now to YouTube thanks for the help! jk!

On which camera did you make the shot?

Hey wait a minute….did anyone else notice that the tutorial was online for about 5 minutes and then both the blog post announcing it’s arrival and the actual tutorial are removed? Was there an uploading problem?

I watched the complete tutorial and need to see it again, but it dissapeared!

We had some technical difficulties, the tutorial will be online shortly.

Oh ok. Thanks Andrew. Can’t wait to see it!

@_@ I can’t wait anymore!

Do be do be do…….Hmm. Must be some serious technical difficulties, then?

NEW TUTORIAL: Particle Shadows, 1 hour ago? 404 error

Would this particular technique work with Particular 1.5? (see what I did there?)

In the smoke trail example, what was done to create the optical flare of the trail?

is Awesome , maybbe you can get more quality using Vray as render in 3ds max

Really Man !!! You’re Awesome……….

@Vin
yeah man…but you didn’t post the link…I can’t find that on youtube…U SOB (…just joking;p)