Optical Flares 1.3.3 has been released along with a free bonus pack of presets. As some of you may know we are in development on Optical Flare 2.0 and we were able to fix some bugs and we wanted to make these fixes available now!

The bug fixes include OpenGL fixes, Quadro Crashses on OSX and speed improvements.

Download Optical Flares Update

Download Free Conspiracy Presets

View Screen Shots of new Presets

LIMITED TIME CYBER SALE:
Remember we are currently having a sale for 25% off all Video Copilot Products, don't miss it!
See Coupon information

Wow, this post is long! In this new tutorial we'll take a look at creating various simulated scenes such as a Camera POV, sniper scope and even night vision. The tutorial also includes a project with 13 templates ready to mix and match plus 9 REAL lens textures to build your own.

And yes some of the templates include chromatic aberration using the channel blur.

Watch Tutorial
See Sample FX

Download Project Files

After a little bit of work, I discovered an experimental technique for generating Image Based Lighting with Element 3D!

So what is image Based Lighting? Basically is when you use an environment map (or HDRI) to simulate the lighting in a 3D scene without adding any individual lights. The specular highlights and overall illumination is generated from the environment automatically. This is a common technique for dedicated 3D programs for high-end Visual Effects work so they can match the practical lighting as accurately as possible.

This technique uses 2 additional copies of the Element 3D plug-in stacked on top of each other to generate the lighting but you can also add additional lights to your scene as well.

Watch Tutorial on Vimeo
Watch Tutorial on Youtube

Watch on Video Copilot

Apologies for the raspy voice, getting over a lingering cold...

TIP: You can import the environment maps from Element too!
Documents\VideoCopilot\Materials\Environment

Who doesn't love a good VFX reel? I sure do. Being able to see what went into some of these amazing shots makes me appreciate the long hours of every vfx artist and gives some insight as to how the shots wereconceived.

And for those who aspire to do amazing shots like these just remember these shots were not created overnight. One layer at a time...

We may not be changing our name to Video Kill-Pilot but today we are releasing a free Halloween Model pack with 13 spook-tastic models! "Spook-tastic"? ... What am I talking about?

These models are ready to use with Element 3D inside of After Effects or import the OBJ files into your favorite 3D program, the texture files are universal too.

UPDATED: Fixed Skull model bug and UV's in C4D.

Download Halloween Pack and Experiment now!

Now... why are we doing a lot of 3D stuff? Is Video Copilot Changing? Should I investigate that strange sound outside near that trail of blood?

I would say that Video Copilot is evolving along with the industry to keep pace with the ambitious demands of modern advertising and film. More and more we see movies and commercials that use elaborate 3D animation that require a dedicated 3D application.

So we came up with a plug-in called Element 3D that bridges that gap between After Effects and a full 3D program. It offers many great capabilities of a traditional 3D program and majorly expands the capability of your favorite software After Effects. This way the skills that you have learned over the past few years can continue to grow with the plug-in's new capabilities.

YES we earn money by selling our Plug-ins and that is the main source for keeping the website running and our 10+ employees. But Element 3D truly offers capabilities that were simply not available before. Like realtime 3D models in After Effects with all of the advanced features like Depth of Field and Ambient Occlusion to name a few. I can't even count how many tutorials I've created in the past dedicated to making things LOOK 3D-ish...

We also get people telling us that we could have charged much more for the plug-in but we wanted to make it as affordable as possible. Of course, we will continue to do traditional compositing tutorials like before but we also want to add more 3D stuff to the candy bowl.

Stuff like the Airplane from the Mid-Air Emergency video is actually easy to do with Element 3D but might otherwise be difficult with a dedicated 3D program. I even used Element 3D to create the recent Fringe Intro for FOX and the animated vegetation in the REVOLUTION intro on NBC. So when you think about all the small things that are possible with Element 3D, it's actually kinda SCARY.

Happy Halloween and enjoy that Candy Corn!