July is going to feature some exciting new content including a first-look at our new Plug-in Element and the launch of our Crystal Ball Promo!! But before we get to that, I want to start this month off with a massive 30% OFF all Video Copilot Products.
All the favorites such as Optical Flares, Pro Presets 2 and Action Essentials 2 are on sale. And remember you can take 30% off BUNDLE PRICES too! See our Bundles.
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After all the exciting announcement for our new Plug-in Element, I forgot to let everyone know, that the stock footage from our recent Set Extensions Tutorials is now online at no charge! Should be perfect to follow along with the tutorial and practice these techniques. The footage is half-hd at 960 x 540 with no watermark thanks to Artbeats.com so if you are looking for a new shot for a project you may working on, check out some of the clips they have, some are even in Stereo 3D.
In the download, I've also included, the matte painting PSD file, the smoke/cloud element, the BG sky image and the roto-matte for the front mountains, just in case you don't want to practice rotoscopting and work on the look.
Hey what's up! It may be Wednesday but I'm excited to share some details about a new Video Copilot plug-in called Element. Formally Code-named Atom, like a secret agent, the new plug-in Element is a 3D geometry-based particle style plug-in for After Effects with many powerful features. I'm working on a demonstration soon that should answer a lot of questions and explain how the plug-in works in detail. Be sure to check out the mini-poster for a list of features that will be available.
All four images were created with Element inside of After Effects.
In this exciting and detailed tutorial we will transform ordinary stock footage into an evil landscape with 3D fog and mountains. We will cover 3D match moving inside of After Effects using the new Camera Tracker plug-in as well as Particular to create the soft clouds. I know it has been a while since I've done a tutorial so I tried to make this one as detailed as possible including many gritty details.
I do my best not to use 3rd party tools as much as possible as you probably know from watching the last 100 tutorials but for this tutorial we needed to generate a 3D camera for the clouds so I used the most inexpensive full featured 3D tracking software around called Camera Tracker. As we get into some more advanced tutorials over the next couple of months we may have to use one or two third party tools but I'll do my best to keep it to a minimum and only when absolutely necessary! Until then.
This is going to be a fun week! I started playing around with an Aerial shot from Artbeats.com and decided it needed a castle on the coast along with a sky replacement and a moon.
If you watch the video, you can see that parts of the castle show up behind the cliffs and on the left side, there is a small part of the castle on the far mountain that parallaxes with the main castle to make it feel more three dimensional. This comp plays-off the same ideas of the 3D set extensions tutorial coming out this week. Stay tuned for shot breakdowns and more fun tips!
ALL DESIGN TOOLS
