Earlier this year I had the opportunity to work on the Main Titles for the FilmStar Trek Into Darkness with J.J. Abrams. It was a massive project with tight deadlines but we worked hard to create this exciting journey for the End Titles. And since the film was presented in 2D and 3D, we had to come up with a workflow that was fast & flexible without sacrificing creativity.

So we decided to render everything using our very own plug-in Element 3D! Yes, a $150 plug-in!

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And trust me, we pushed Element 3D to the limit! Being able to stay inside of After Effects while working directly with 3D objects gave us incredible freedom to build complex scenes with thousands of objects and hundreds of layers in a single comp. Plus everything was created for stereo so all the layers and objects had to be in true 3D space.

We had access to handful of workstations with some high end graphics cards to do all the rendering for both the Left and Right views of the stereo film which was mastered at IMAX resolution.

Here is another weekend experiment using various radial effects inside of After Effects. It's actually a combination of many simple techniques with masks but I playing with it, I think there are some interesting tips that I encountered that just might require a short tutorial. It's like the green Iron Man!

After some slight delays, we are now accepting submissions for the communityFuture City Pack. We've already created a few buildings to include in the pack and we will collecting the best ones for this FREE model pack!

Submissions will END in 2 weeks on Sept 15Th at which point we will organize and optimize the collection assuming we get enough good submissions.

Please give us a few weeks to go through the various file formats and texture to make the pack easy to use.We promise to release it as soon as we can!

Submission NOTE:
Be sure to read the specifications section before creating your zip file for uploading and below legal business below:

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Legal Stuff: When you submit your work, you are agreeing to let Video Copilot alter, modify, publish and promote all submitted materials. The Future City Pack will be a Free download on Video Copilot.

Sometimes I like to play around inside of After Effects to create the look of a design even if it is a still image.

In this design I used some techniques from a couple of previous tutorials to build a complicated looking badge that is actually pretty simple. Then once I'm happy with the "look" of the design, I try to figure out how to animate it on. I find that After Effects is more flexible and non-destructive than Photoshop so I can design freely. This is also why it is better to start by designing the look first, instead of worrying about how the effects are going to animate on. In this case, because of the shatter effects the flying pieces only look right on frame 3 but I'll worry about that problem later!

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I made the logo with some simple shapes and added a track matte to give it some grunge. I used different parts of the texture for each ring to give it variation. Then finally I added some Color Correction to the top. Go Curves!

For the debris I used the Pixel Poly effect, then added some Action Essentials 2 smoke and debris bits.
Particle Explosion: Pixel Poly Tutorial

Our new model pack is touching down next month in September and here is a little poster to show you what we've been up to. The model pack has evolved during development to include detailed cockpits and fully functioning landing gear as well as a few surprises yet to come! We've really pushed the limits to make these crafts to feature quality with dual 4K textures!

There will be many tutorials for this pack as well, this is a big one!