I was playing around with Particular 2 and came up with this particle swirl using a couple of smoke images as particles. I love that Particular 2 reacts to the lighting as well as fake shading to make the particle seem more volumetric.

Here is what I did, in Particular 2 custom particles are called Sprites, so once you select this as your particle type, the texture slot becomes available to use my smoke video that is included with the project download. I stretched the particle area and rotated the world transform to make it look like a twister. I added a couple of lights to give it coloring and a BG gradient.

Check out the screen shot for particle settings and my timeline. You may want to see this tutorial using Particular 1.5 to get started with the smoke element.

Download Project CS4
(Sorry but I sometimes forget to use CS3 so more people can open it but the smoke element is inside the Footage folder for you to experiment. )

I recently worked on a graphic card for a Star Trek DVD commercial and I thought it would be boring fun to talk about the Action Safe Area! Many graphics are broadcast in HD but there must also be an alternate version for people watching in standard definition.

One solution is to design for the 4:3 Center Cut. This is where you use the title and action safe area is based on a 4:3 frame in your HD 16:9 comp. You'll notice that After Effects CS4 has 2 extra lines for the interior Center Cut to help you practice safe action (for your designs).

Some people have a tighter recommendation for the safe area so please check with your format specialist.

UPDATE: This also applies to widescreen DVD menus as well...

Happy New Year to everyone! Let's kick this year off with some exciting news about Optical Flares. Our new lens flare plug-in will be available January 25 2010. That's going to be one bright Monday and you can be sure to see some in-depth demonstration of the amazing features very soon.

This going to be a big Year at Video Copilot!

In this tutorial we will create a reflective orb using only built-in After Effects plug-ins. The key to this tutorials is building a proper spherical map and utilizing the raytrace capabilities of the CC Sphere effect.

Watch Tutorial

Sample Video

I couldn't find the exact video I saw on TV but here is one of the promos for a show called Human Target on FOX. The design has a slick scope effect with some well-composited explosions and smokey hits that melt right into the design. This graphics package is a great example of using stock elements transparently within the design. In fact I didn't even recognize it until I combined curiosity with my DVR recorder and played it back in slow motion :) There was a more elaborate 3D fly-through in the version I saw but I thought I would share this one anyways.

Action Essentials 2 is our HD stock footage collection with over 500 elements that is great for compositing AND motion graphics!
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