The Venti AE Tutorial Roundup from Around the Web

If you ever wondered why the large is called venti at a certain coffee shop, it’s because venti means 20 in Italian and a large coffee is 20 ounces. This week’s roundup comes in at an even 20 tutorials, hence the Venti Roundup! First on the list is a tutorial that answers a question you have either already had to ask or will soon: The new (corrected) Pixel Aspect Ratio’s introduced in CS4.

20 No Sugar or Milk Added Tutorials From Elsewhere

• 

  Lynda.com – New Pixel Aspect Ratios in AECS4

  Maybe you have noticed, and maybe you haven’t, but Adobe corrected the pixel aspect ratios in After Effects CS4. If you are having some trouble or are confused, this tutorial is for you. In a free tutorial at Lynda.com, Chris Meyer goes through the changes for you. If you aren’t liking the new changes too much, Rich Young at AEportal.blogspot.com has a great post with some useful resources on creating custom PARs, disabling the automatic interpretation of PARs and adding anti-aliasing to PAR corrected comps.

  Visit Tutorial AEportal.blogspot.com

• 

  Video Copilot – 3D City

  This new tutorial from Video Copilot got its inspiration from Andrew Kramer’s journey to New York for AENY. There, he took some pictures of the buildings, uses them as textures for the sides of buildings, and builds a complete 3D city within After Effects, using only still image layers, and a 3D camera.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Video Copilot – Procedural Disintegration

  Hot of the press… or the interwebz… or whatever. Andrew Kramer and the famous Sam Loya demonstrate how to create that awesome look of things disintegrating into bits. You could potentially be stabbing vampires or vanquishing demons in no time. This tutorial uses loads of luma mattes, alpha mattes, precomping, and in depth use of these techniques. This is not a beginner tutorial by any means, but it is a doozy.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Imagineer Systems – Mocha for AE v2

  Host Carl Larsen of Telescope Media Group has done a very cool introductory tutorial to Mocha for AE v2 using some stock fire footage from Artbeats.com and a slick Smith & Wesson handgun. The techniques track the gun’s kickback and parent a bunch of elements to the tracked layer. The fire layer then creates a distortion effect from the heat of the fire coming from the barrel of the gun, onto the elements within the comp.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Carl Larsen – Tracking a Child Part 1

  Part of a series over at CreativeCow.net, Carl Larsen teaches you how to track the position of a parented layer using expressions. This technique uses expressions found at Dan Ebberts’ Motionscript.com.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Eran Stern – Blowing Flowers

  Eran Stern and Creative Cow brings us a nice, Easter/Passover themed tutorial in which you create the effect of a girl blowing flowers out of her hand. The flowers, being emmitted via Trapcode Particular, then flow around the screen, and create a transition for the girl to vanish and titles to appear.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Eran Stern – Lights as Adjustment Layers

  Another via Eran Stern and the Creative Cow AE Podcast, Eran brings us a handy technique on using lights in After Effects as adjustment layers. In this tutorial he uses elements from Aharon Rabinowitz’s Crowd Control Library, and creates a fake show open with 3D Camera movement and a bunch of lights. Tweaking the settings of the lights helps get the perfect look.

  Visit Tutorial Aharon Rabinowitz’s Crowd Control

• 

  RGTV – Episode 15 Better Compositing with Particles

  Speaking of Aharon Rabinowitz, he is hosting Red Giant TV Episode 15, in which he explains in depth about the Visibility section in Trapcode Particular, covering the Far Vanish, Far Start Fade, Near Start Fade, and Near Vanish properties, and how to use them with keyed footage, and using them to your advantage in your compositing workflow. He also touches on the uses of Obscuration Layers and its drawbacks.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  RGTV – Episode 16 Better Compositing With Light Wraps

  Another one from Aharon Rabinowitz… this one deals with light wraps in Key Correct Pro. But Wait! Before you go to the next tutorial, you don’t have to HAVE Key Correct Pro to gain some good techniques from this episode. Aharon shows the importance of CC Composite, precomping before you lightwrap, and color correction techniques. Trust me, even if you don’t have the plugins it is worth the watch.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Precomposed.com – Texturize

  This is an interesting tutorial by Jon Geddes. He shows you how to texturize within After Effects as well as Photoshop to be able to give your designs a little more flair and make them a little more aesthetically pleasing. Project Files are included at the bottom of the page on this tutorial.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  After Effects Apprentice – Mastering Text Animators

  This tutorial, hosted by Chris Meyer, one of the Authors of “After Effects Apprentice”, shows you how to Master the Text Animators in After Effects CS4. This tutorial is part of the collection of tutorials from the DVD that the book comes with. Chris goes into applying the text animators, animating using the range selector, and the various other parameters that go along with this technique.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Digital Tutors – Animated Water With Turbulent Displace

  Digital Tutors has a Daily Dose where they release free tutorials daily, on various programs. Sometimes we get lucky and they release a tutorial on After Effects. In this tutorial they take a still image, duplicate it, apply some masks and turbulent displace, and you got rippling water!

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Digital Tutors – Creating and Modifying Shape Layers

  Wow, I had no idea that you could do so much with Shape Layers until I watched this video. The tutorial goes through creating a shape layer, modifying it initially, and then adding further animators and modifiers to customize the look. This is a must watch tutorial… it really shows you how much you can miss out on when you don’t explore all the reaches of After Effects.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Dillon Pearce – Self Filling Cup

  This is a cool effect seen in beer or soda commercials sometimes. Using background plates, still frames and some clever masking, you can create the illusion of a cup self filling itself full of a tasty liquid. Since the dillonp23.net version is down at the moment we are going to direct you to the youtube version instead.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  ProJuice.org – Tracking Screens

  This tutorial hosted by Nick Calpakdjian, uses the Corner Pin effect along with masking techniques to replace a billboard on the street with video, or whatever else you may want. This effect is pretty easy to do, but the techniques explained in the tutorial can be used in an array of different scenarios.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Projuice.org – Day For Night

  Yes, yes… another day for night tutorial. This tutorial is going to show you how to take a photo or video taken in the middle of the day in the sunlight and turn it to the dead of night. Techniques explored in this tutorial include darkening the comp, color grading, and creating a fake light source on a streetlamp and have that project onto the ground below.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  MaxAfter.com – Knowing Earth

  If you remember my article on particle based tutorials, you might have saw me hint about MaxAfter’s Knowing Earth tutorial. Well, it’s here, and it is awesome. Shoaib Khan shows you how to use Trapcode Particular’s layer emitters and custom particles to create the letters and numbers falling off the earth. This tutorial has a ton of information and great techniques using Particular.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  MaxAfter.com – The Tunnel

  Another from Shaoib Khan and MaxAfter.com, this tutorial uses CC Cylinder, CC Vector Blur, Fractal Noise and a bunch of ther effects to make that Sci-Fi time travel wormhole-ish look seen in movies.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Harry Frank – Particle Orientation in Particular

  This isn’t one of those sweet techniques that you can impress your friends with or stick in your demo reel, but if you mess around with Particular, it is a great technique to keep in your arsenal. Limited by how the particles always face the camera in Particular, Harry Frank goes through the steps and expressions to make the particles orientation change as you move the camera around.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  Alan Shisko – Articuling Robot Arm

  This is a great tutorial for learning how to parent layers to each other. The tut also uses some cool expressions to make the arms connect with each other and make them seem a little more smooth moving, as if they were robotic. The look can be adapted for all kinds of different elements such as lower thirds, title sequences, and slideshows.

  Visit Tutorial

• 

  GreyScaleGorilla.com – Build a Car Racing Scene From Photos

  In the first part of this huge, awesome tutorial, fellow AEtuts+ tutorial author Nick Campbell shows us how to take head on photograph of a car, cut it up in Photoshop, and scale and orient the layers in 3D to create the look of a fake 3D car. He thens shows how to wiggle the camera movement to create a handheld look, and create headlights. Remember to check GreyScaleGorilla.com every day for new tutorials and GSGcasts from Nick!

  Visit Part 1 Visit Part 2

preview photo by powerbooktrance used under Creative Commons License