I've been experimenting with a technique that uses a series of AE expressions that allow me to create sort of a 3D fractal.

It took about a minute to render this at this resolution.
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The basic gist:

1. Create a layer with a fractal noise and set the layer to SCREEN

2. Offset the multiple copies of that layer in Z space

3. Offset the evolution for each layer based on the Z position

In other words, make the first layer have an evolution of 0 degrees, the second 5, the third 10, the fourth 15...

By offsetting the fractal evolution slightly, you create instances that appear to be "connected" in Z space, thus allowing the illusion. One drawback is that you can only move around it about 120 degrees or so. Once you get to the side they either disappear or you can tell they are not connected. Certainly this effect is limited and takes a fair amount of time to render, but a fun project. Someone here suggested I do something challenging for a tutorial, perhaps I could get into this one.

Peder over at www.trapcode.com is working on a plugin for After Effects that allows you to create even more amazing 3d effects like this but with much more control, speed and fully 3 Dimensional. I was lucky enough to see a demo of it at NAB 2007. I'm looking forward to it.

EDIT: I made it in AE 7 Professional without any special plug-ins

Apparently the site has been going up and down today. Sounds like people are really having fun.

It seems accessing the page through https://videocopilot.net works over using the www. I'm thinking it is temporary and I'm working on a solution. Please be patient it will be solved soon.
Other than that, I cut my face shaving today. Dog Gone-it!

When a new tutorial is available we will post it in the blog as well as on the tutorial page. Hopefully by the time you are reading this we will have the RSS feed fully integrated and you can subscribe to it and always know when there is something new.
We will be launching some new tutorials soon, we just had some development to get done and we will be back on track.

I get a few emails about this from time to time. Apparently in one of my tutorials I made this claim about using a playstation 3 with an After Effects render farm. Well I was joking. Sorry.

With that aside, if anyone has an old Sega Genesis systems you can hook that up to your computer and Sonic the Hedgehog will run through all your files and make your computer faster.

We had this great idea to demonstrate our die hard attitude towards creating these sounds. The idea was that we would do whatever it takes to get the sounds we need.
Sam Loya finds out how hard it is to be a field recording operator.

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