Motion Graphics

Free After Effects Plugin from Boris and Creative COW

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This one is too good to pass up... Free texture generating plug-in from Creative COW and Boris



COW Exclusive: Giving Away Boris Continuum Materials Unit - $199 Value!

Generate realistic textures such as Steel Plates, Bricks, Clouds, Granite, Wooden Planks, and Rock using the Boris Continuum Materials Unit! The textures are procedurally-generated to ensure smooth render at any scale. Each filter provides a variety of animation parameters including controls for the color, width, height, and other aspects of the material. Many of the Materials Unit filters let you add 3D detail to the material surface and include lighting controls. Apply the materials as realistic surfaces or use them as animated organic backgrounds. Each filter includes presets that make using the materials a point and click operation - even for complex animations.


Get the Boris Continuum Materials Unit - First 500 Downloads Only!

Creating 3D with Photoshop’s Repoussé Command

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A new addition to Photoshop CS5 Extended is the Repoussé command. The command can be used to create a 3D model from a 2D object (like shape layers or text).

Making a selection first can also isolate the effect. The target pixels can be extruded, inflated, and repositioned in 3D space. The resulting 3D model can be easily imported into After Effects for animation or compositing.

See the whole tutorial over at TipSquirrel.com.

Why You Need to Update After Effects

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There were a lot of updates in After Effects 10.0.1. Here are a few you may have missed. Thanks to Todd Kopriva for taking the time to point these out.

new and changed features

  • There were several fixes and improvements for RED (R3D) import and workflow. .
  • The Apply Color LUT effect can now use .3dl files with floating point values or 3DMESH/Mesh keywords, or those saved from an ASSIMILATE SCRATCH system (i.e., that have SCRATCH in the comments at the top of the file).
  • QuickTime (.mov) files from JVC solid-state cameras can be imported.
  • The standalone Adobe Media Encoder (AME) application can export MXF files containing MPEG-2 essence items that comply with the XDCAM HD format used by such systems as Avid Unity. Because you can use the standalone AME application to render and export After Effects compositions, this feature extends to After Effects.


notable bug fixes

  • Crash importing Sony XDCAM HD footage from Sony XDCAM Transfer application.
  • Slow playback of compositions containing several layers based on video footage items, especially for long-GOP footage from DSLR cameras.
  • Crash when using a PNG file with path name longer than 256 characters.
  • Colors rendered incorrectly with Avid DNxHD and AJA2vuy codecs in 16bpc and 32bpc projects.
  • QuickTime movies using Blackmagic RGB 10bit codec rendered with color shift or gamma shift.
  • Standard-definition-sized H.264 movies were imported with color space interpreted as HDTV (Rec. 709) instead of SDTV (Rec. 601 NTSC).


If you use After Effects on Mac OSX v10.6.4, be sure to apply the graphics update from Apple.

Free After Effects FAQ Videos

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Master Transparency in Photoshop

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Peachpit has just posted a free sample from my new book Photoshop for Video called What About Transparency?

One of Photoshop’s greatest powers lies in its ability to preserve complex transparency. It’s possible to have several different levels of transparency within a Photoshop document, which leads to greater flexibility in compositing multiple layers together. For example, in an image set to 8-bit mode, Photoshop supports 256 levels of transparency. Switch to 16-bit mode, and that number jumps dramatically to 65,536 levels. By employing masks, both in layers and embedded into the saved files as alpha channels, this transparency data can travel seamlessly into the nonlinear editing (NLE) or motion-graphics environment.

Read the whole article here for free.