UPDATED: CS3 project file is now available

If you are trying to make sense of the words above… have at it!  Actually they are various layer styles in today’s free Project File.

Since they added Photoshop layer styles to After Effects, I pretty much never used it but I recently decided to spend a little time creating some clean titles to share with everyone here. I’ve even recorded a short tutorial to show you how to edit the project file along with some tips for customizing and adding textures. I’ll be on soon with more tutorial so until then… Enjoy!

Watch Tutorial

Download Project File for CS5
Download Project File for CS3

Looks like we are having another free stock footage day that includes 15 new HD (720p) particle clips and a quick tutorial with some compositing tips & ideas. For tips on creating your own footage check out Flour Fusion show. Sweet Deal!!

Example Footage

Watch Tutorial

FREE Particle Stock Footage:
Download Stock Footage (162 MBs)

Footage is in h.264 compressed MP4 files. Usage License. Enjoy!

I was experimenting with some interesting energy fields and I discovered a fun combination of effects. I used the standard fractal noise effect to create a basic turbulent map and then applied a Find Edges effect on top. I added some color correction and a glow to give it more punch and even animated the evolution settings. Feel free to play around with the fractal noise settings with the Find Edges effect applied and see what other interesting looks you can discover.

The project file is only cs5 because I don’t have CS4 on my laptop right now but I took a screen shot of the settings so that should help.

Download Project File CS5

Breakdown with Settings

Holy Monday batman! I decided to release the Tron-Pilot Project file created in After Effects with a short video walk-through. I talk about creating the 3D text and building a few expressions. It doesn’t demonstrate every little detail but it should be enough to help you through the project file. For the background blur, try using a photo of a city with the After Effects lens blur.

Watch Tutorial Overview

Watch Sample Video
Download Project CS4

In our recent tutorial we created glowing lights for a 3D title but I wanted to recreate the effect with particles instead. The idea is having bright glowing particles that emit light onto the surface as they hit without having to hand animate the interactions.

In the end, I used the shadow technique from our particle shadows tutorial using a copy of the particles from the top view to simulate the shadow, only here I used the copy as colored light.

Sample Video

Project File (CS4+ Particular 2)

I know it’s been quiet on the blog lately but we are working hard behind the scenes on many new things. A new website revision is launching soon along with a couple new tutorials and even a full-length blog show.

Until then, here is a cool project file using some elements from the Free stock package. Everything is put together in After Effects including the title and particles so you should be able to modify and customize. I may have used a couple of Optical Flares as well.

Sample Video

Download Project

I was playing around with the text animators in floating point color (32-bpc), and created some interesting results. With a high floating point color, the text creates a more vibrant result. Check out the 3D Sparks Tutorial for more information on the subject.

With a little more work, I could probably even make them suck a bit less. That’s called confidence!

Sample Video
Download Project File (CS4+)

One of the many uses for a particle system plug-in like Particular is the ability ‘visualize’ music through the formation of particles. I’ve seen some amazing examples over the last few months and this is one of my experiments called Red Smoke.

Watch Sample Video

Download Project (CS4 & Particular 2 required)

About this Project:

After I extracted the keyframes from the audio amplitude, with this technique, I linked the particle birth and the velocity to the sound intensity with expressions. This made the bursts of particles shoot out farther for the louder notes and tighter for quiet parts.

The original comp was actually black with colorful particles (See sample) but I wanted to create something a bit more unique so I inverted the luminance and colorized part of it so it would be more dramatic Red on Black.

To get away from the sandy look of small particles I used a vector blur set to “Perpendicular” to blend it more naturally.

There are about a 2 million particles per frame so the render took about 4 hours but I lowered the rate while working to speed things up. I also offset the final audio a few frames to match the visual since the birth causes a slight delay.

Side Note: Harry Frank did a pretty in-depth tutorial at RGTV.

If you have any questions, post them!