It was a long day but I rebuilt the SureTarget preset with the help of our developer Patrick and the code is now simple and elegant. More importantly however, it allowed me to add some cool new features.

The Sure Target preset now has a built in Auto-Rotation feature that captures the rotation of the targets and adjusts the Null accordingly, just as it moves from one to the other. This should save a lot of time animating the rotation for each target. We also included a build in Ease checkbox for automatically making smooth movement between targets.

The 3D Falloff Preset has also been updated to work with the Sure Target tool.

Finally, I converted ALL of the presets on Video Copilot to work with the English, Spanish, Italian, German, & French versions of After Effects! It wasn't easy but I did it.

A demo tutorial will be out later to show you all of this in detail. Please discuss bugs and problems on the forum so we can fix em. For those who want to test out before then, the auto-rotate is based on the rotation of the 3D layers not the orientation. Be sure to change the rotation manually and not with the rotation tool.

Promotion
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The new animation preset Sure Target has 10 built-in targets but what if you need more? Like eleven or even twelve? Well actually you can have as many as you want with this simple solution.

The Solution:
Here's how it works, just setup your scene as described in the tutorial with a 3D NULL object, a camera and the Sure Target Preset. With this setup, you have 10 targets ready to go.

To add 10 more, simply add another 3D NULL object and apply the Sure Target tool. Now, to link these to the first NULL (so the movement isn't interrupted), set the 10th Target of the first NULL to use second NULL as it's target. So whatever is designated in the second NULL will be used once the first NULL is keyframed to 10. Just be sure to start animating the second NULL after the first one reaches 10.

With this method you can add as many as you want by setting the last target of each Sure Target NULL to a new NULL containing yet another set of Sure Targets.

Another Idea:
One thing to note is that "Targets" do not have to be still, you can have 3D layers that actually animate and the preset will follow the layers movement when it is reached. You could even use an additional Sure Target NULLs in the middle of the animation like for target 3 which might be helpful for organizing complicated projects. For example, the master NULL could work as chapters 1-10 and added copies of Sure Target would be used to animated the titles for the individual chapters. This one can hurt your mind unless you have worked on a massive project like this which is never fun.

Finally, some people have experimented with the 3D Falloff preset and found that it doesn't work with Sure Target. The reason is because the Falloff preset references the Camera and the Sure Target uses a NULL. I love the experimenting, it is really a great part of the community. I'm working on an update that should allow this feature to work. Until then.

In this EXTRA LONG tutorial you'll learn to animate the camera using the new Sure Target preset as well as create an impressive 3D title design.

The Sure Target preset is available inside the project file and includes versions for English, French & German. If you know how translate expressions and save presets in another language, please send us the file; we'd love to share it with the community.

Tutorial based on sample video seen here:
View Sample Video

Watch Tutorial

Here is a promo video for Sure TARGET! More of a demonstration...

View Sample Video

As you can see the camera performs dynamic movements with pixel-perfect-precision! Sure TARGET makes animating the camera from place to place simple and effective so that you can focus on getting the look right and not fiddling around with keys.

You may also be interested to know that this entire promo was created inside of After Effects, including the "3D" text which I'll be sure to demonstrate in the upcoming tutorial.

Although this preset will help you animate the camera, you still have to come up with good ideas and designs... If I could make a plug-in for that... I could finally afford to get a NEW tooth brush and maybe some toothpaste.

For best video quality, we recommend VLC media player to avoid washed out colors.

Video Copilot Products Make it Happen!

Of course projects like this, especially the more complicated presets, are possible by the support of this energetic community. So be sure to check out some of our great DVDs and keep this site strong.

The new animation preset will now include a built in wiggle function for adding smooth random movement to the camera in addition to precise camera control. I've also added more locations for each target for a total of 10 (instead of 7). The name of the preset is SureTARGET and a video sample will be online Tuesday afternoon with the tutorial coming out this week. There is more happening but I'll let that unfold as the week goes on. Talk soon.