There are big changes happening at Video Copilot...

As we approach the release of our new Power Plug-in Optical Flares, we realized that it's time we expand our team and hire a full-time lead programmer to help with future development and maintenence. This is an important move that is an essential step towards creating next-generation software & plug-ins at Video Copilot. Optical Flares is not only our most advanced plug-in but now we have the staff to develop and maintain it with features and compatibility.

So please Welcome Sergio to the Video Copilot community.

My goal is to focus on ideas and features and then work with Sergio to bring them to life. In the case of Sure Target 2, I had a few crazy ideas that I never would have attempted but with an actual programmer, we made it happen. It also helps that he is a genius :)

As you know, Video Copilot is a business and I believe our success is an opportunity to develop new tools and amazing technologies that will benefit the visual effects community and lead to greater possibilities.

Today is an important day...

Well I started making a snow globe with CC sphere inside of After Effects... then I started playing around with reflections and then I ended up with this video. There are some interesting techniques for creating the glass reflections so I may release a project file or even do a tutorial. You can never have too many Orb-based tutorials :)

Everything was created with default plug-ins too!

Watch Test Video HD

In this new tutorial we will isolate bar elements from a 3D render to build a customizable bar graph in After Effects. We will use expressions to control time-remapping and link values for the displays.

The tutorial is a cool 20 minutes for quick viewing and easy reference for when you get the call... the telegraph call... That's a telephone call about making graphs. Be ready!

Watch Tutorial

Here is a quick test utilizing some new features of Sure Target 2. Notice the bouncy movement and the subtle roll and pitch of the camera as it moves.

Think about being in a car with very soft suspension...

Watch Test Video (looping)

The camera Roll is also velocity based so that it will inherit the speed of your camera movements and the amount is controllable as with the inertia.

You might also notice the variable target distance from the first title to the second... Each Target has a slider to control the (dolly/truck) distance from the camera so some targets can be close and others far without having to move your layers or animate the camera manually.

UPDATE: Just doing some more testing and should have a tutorial and download ready next week. See you then.

Our soon to be released plug-in Sure Target 2 is near...

Sure Target 2
Precision 3D Camera Control for After Effects 7, CS3, CS4

Price: $0 (Free)
Value: $5,000,000 + a Turkey Sandwich

FEATURES:

Real Plug-in Form: As an actual plug-in, Sure Target 2 has better organized parameters and will run on any language of After Effects and provide advanced feature support.

Auto-Camera Rigging: When you add Sure Target to a NULL, a 3D camera is created and parented instantly, plus the NULL is changed to 3D and necessary expressions are added and activated.

Auto-Populate: Select Target Layers one by one and Sure Target will add them to the target list in order with one click. This will save setup time if adding or rearranging your targets.

Ease Target Modes: Sure Target 2 will automatically ease the animation keyframes as requested with 4 modes. Ease, ease in, ease out and linear.

Auto-Focus: Sure Target 2 will calculate the focal distance to the camera so that your target layers are in focus.

Inertia Inheritance: Incorporate natural springy movement at each stop with control over amount and decay.

Camera Roll: This feature is awesome... Sure Target will pitch and roll along the animation direction like an airplane turns down-ward in the direction it is moving.

Dolly Control: Sure Target 2 allows you to control the camera distance to each target individually. Target 1 can be the default distance and Target 2 can be 50% closer... etc.

Create a Baked Camera: I'll be honest... expressions can be slow to calculate some times, especially for motions blur. Sure Target 2 can create a baked camera to include all of the settings with one click. If you need to make a change, just delete the baked camera, adjust the settings and bake a new one.

Condition Protection: Sure Target 2 will make sure your NULL and target layers are 3D before adding them to avoid errors.

Refresh Expressions: We haven't been able to break the expressions by deleting targets or changing them to 2D by accident but if you should find a way to disconnect the expression, simply refresh all of the expressions with 1 click.

Probably some other stuff too but we'll talk about them on launch day!