22 Killer After Effects Tutorials from Elsewhere

Jul 10th in Roundup by Topher Welsh

Friday is roundup day here at Aetuts+ and this week we bring you some good 'ol, but totally killer After Effects tutorials from around the web.

Author: Topher Welsh

Topher Welsh is a post production artist working mainly in the fields of motion graphics and visual effects. He is a freelancer out of Tacoma, Washington, and also runs www.VisualFXtuts.com, which provides a daily fix of tutorials from any and all applications in the visual effects industry. His personal website is found here: www.Toe-Fur.com.

22 Killer AE Tutorials

• 

  VideoHive - Faking Tilt Shift

  Yes, I finally started to make tutorials. I figure I am posting them so much, it just makes sense to develop some of my own in the meantime. Anyway, everyone loves that Tilt Shift photography effect with the toy-ish stop motion feel to it, this tutorial is going to show you how to create that from regular footage and some handy built in effects.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  VideoHive - Exporting HD H.264

  You have probably had some issues with exporting H.264 high definition video if you are using the H.264 Output Module. In this tutorial I will walk you all through the steps to get an HD H.264 compressed video without using Quicktime Pro or a third party compression program.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  VideoHive - Fixing Gamma Issues

  Andrew Kramer and a few other have addressed the issue of H.264 compression "washing out" their video a little bit after being rendered, although there are a lot of those people that need to be walked through the steps instead of just reading an article. I got the tutorial for you all, although it does require Quicktime Pro.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  VideoCopilot - Blueprints

  The first tutorial after the launch of Action Essentials 2, Andrew is back with a cool title reveal that resembles blueprints being written on, kind of like you used to see on MTV Cribs back in the day.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Thomas Hullin - OSX Tiger Opening

  I featured Thomas' website in the Foreign Tutorial Sites article a few weeks back, and since then he has started recording English tutorials, and his first is to recreate the opening titles for Mac OSX Tiger operating system using some text, lights and casting shadows along with camera movement.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  LFP Industries - Teleportation

  Levi Borland is back with the last three tutorials in his Heroes effects mini-tut series. The Teleportation tutorial is a pretty easy effect to achieve with some good camera shots, fractal noise track mattes and roto.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  LFP Industries - Telekinesis

  Mixing some 3ds Max in with After Effects compositing and color grading, Levi models some glass shards and recreates the effect of Sylar telekinetically controlling a room full of broken glass in his mini fight against Peter Petrelli.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  LFP Industries - Electric Arcs

  Alright, last Heroes tutorial! This one is recreating Elle and Peter's power of generating and controlling electrical arcs. The final effect looks a little 2d-ish, but it works. Harry Frank has a tip on using 3d nulls, and 2d solids, such as the one in this tutorial and connecting the start and end positions with some expressions, and faking some 3d depth.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  RGTV - Aharon Rabinowitz - Peel Away Vortex Transition

  Building upon the RGTV Text to Sand episode, Aharon uses Trapcode Form's Base Form - Strings setting to make a radical looking title reveal with some glows and Knoll Light Factory.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  RGTV - Stu Maschwitz - Color Grading

  Kicking off Stu's new job as Creative Director over at Red Giant Software, he has a tutorial out for RGTV on color correction based on the popular movies out this summer like Transformers 2 or The Taking of Pelham 123 using Magic Bullet Looks and Magic Bullet Colorista.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Aharon Rabinowitz - Ocean Scene

  After his presentation at AENY last month, Aharon's screen recording got jacked up, so this is actually a less rehearsed Aharon than you usually hear. He is going to be showing us a cool way to make an ocean water scene with some minor camera movement, as well as introducing you to Red Giant Psunami.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Maltaannon - CS4 to CS3

  A huge limitation with AE users is when new versions come out, some of us aren't able to upgrade to CS4 from CS3, and that poses problems when we want to share our project files with each other. Maltannon has figured out a workaround for copying effects over between versions, without using scripts or things like that... just good old copy and paste.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Maltaannon - Particular 2 New Features

  The first one on the scene with a new tutorial literally minutes after its launch on Wednesday, Maltaannon has an awesome tutorial making some very cool effects, all of which utilize Particular 2's new features.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Creative Cow - Eran Stern - Promo Breakdown

  Along with promoting his new training DVD being released at Creative Cow, A New Solid, Eran shows you how to create the promo video he made for it using an array of different Boris Continuum Complete filters and exploring the 3d tools it comes with.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Chad Smashley - VRay EXRs Into After Effects

  Chad takes you through rendering out of 3ds Max with VRay as an .EXR format, and shows you how to take advantage of After Effects' ability to import .EXR files and utilize the different channels that come in with it. You have to have the ProEXR plugin that you can find for free online.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Jeff Foster - Believable Hand Held Motion Tracking

  One of the best additions in After Effects CS4 is Mocha for AE, which is a killer planar tracker that greatly surpasses AE's built in tracker. Jeff decided to throw Mocha some of the crappiest footage he could find of some random truck rolling down the road, and Mocha flawlessly replaces the side of the truck, changing it to a brilliant NAB sign.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Motionworks - Creating a Boxing Promo

  John Dickinson is back with another recorded e-seminar for Adobe, creating a grungy moody looking promo for an upcoming boxing fight. You'll be using the video and a bunch of textures along with some cool color grading techniques to make it look like a poster on the wall.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  ProVideoCoalition - AE Apprentice Camera Tips

  The After Effects Apprentice By Trish and Chris Meyer is one of the premiere resources for new AE users. They have been giving away one tutorial from the book every month, so that is why you have been seeing them in every one of my roundups. This month's is learning about AE's 3d world and camera techniques.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  CGSwot - Flying Gallery

  Dave Scotland has a couple of new tutorials this month, the first of which uses Trapcode Particular's wind and vanishing settings to create a cool floating image gallery effect. There are a couple tutorials I mentioned last month that do this same effect, but in very different ways over at RGTV and Layers Magazine.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  CGSwot - Power of RPF

  RPFs can be very useful when you are working with 3d renders coming out of programs like 3ds Max or Maya, and assigning object IDs or depth passes. Dave shows us how to utilize the different 3d plugins within After Effects to assign objects IDs, assigning what objects to have in focus with depth of field effects, 3d fog and the other 3d effects in AE.

  Part 1 Part 2

• 

  Dynamic Sparkles

  The last one from Dave in this roundup, he will be showing us how to create a dynamic sparkles effect, which adhere to the highlight features of the element, and you will be using fractal noise to control the dynamics of the sparkle element.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Big Mike Design - Fractal Noise Galaxy

  It's been quite a while since Mike had a tutorial up, and an After Effects one at that. He usually focuses on more Cinema 4D, but this tutorial uses one of the most versatile effects in the stock AE arsenal, Fractal Noise. Using that effect as the basis for creating an entire galaxy of elements, from stars to galaxy clouds (is that even a real thing?) and then as the texture for a planet, Mike shows you how to generate an awesome looking space scene.

  Visit Tutorial