Cinematic Opening Title Redux – Day 1

on Jan 26th 2009 with 177 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: After Effects, Various scripts & plugins
  • Difficulty: Advanced
  • Run Time: 45:58 min

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 25 of 33 in the Logo Reveals Session
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In this 2 part tutorial we revisit the Cinematic Opening concept with an homage to all of you, our readers, by enshrining all of the comments left on the site in a “ready for Hollywood” delivery. It features a clever use of freely available scripts and expressions to create what would normally be a very complicated and time-consuming animation. The tutorial will be split into 2 days with a total of over 80 minutes of training.

In day 1 we cover cunning techniques to harness a large amount of text and quickly format and animate it in a cinematic style. This tutorial has tricks and techniques that should appeal to all users from beginners all the way to the most seasoned and advanced users of After Effects.

And best of all, it is all created by only using built it After Effects tools!

You can watch Day 2 of this tutorial here

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size MB

Scripts used in this tutorial


First watch this tutorial on how to install and run scripts in After Effects

Then download and install these scripts:
1. 3D Text Creator Script (download 3D_text_creator_from_file.jsx)
2. 3D Layer Distributor Script (download 3D_text_creator_from_file.jsx)
3. Random Layer Shifter Script (download LayerRandomShifter 1.1)
4. Shift Selected Layers Script (download pt_ShiftLayers_v2.0.zip)
5. rd_KindaSorta Script (download rd_KindaSorta_v1.2.zip)
6. rd_Slicer Script (download rd_Slicer_v2.0.zip)

Music and Images used in the final piece


Extraterrestrial from AUDIO JUNGLE
Reflection Nebulas in Orion from NASA
In the Center of Reflection Nebula NGC 1333 from NASA

 
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I run AESCRIPTS.com which provides useful scripts for Adobe After Effects. You can follow me on Twitter @aescripts  

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Newer Comments →
  • http://newelementdesigns.com Don

    I will be trying this out shortly. My AE skills are getting better thanks to AETUTS!

  • morellothegreat

    AHH Yeah! You’ve done it again. Cheers!

  • Tim

    wow… that looks sooooooo COOL!!! Can’t wait to try it..

  • http://www.instantshift.com DKumar M.

    Another fresh edition for my tryouts !! Thanks for sharing !!

  • http://markus-n.dk/ Markus Jonasson Nielsen

    Impressive! :D

  • Sven

    Very well done. A lot of great resources to use in future projects. Thanks!

  • http://teachingtv.wordpress.com Jim

    I REALLY like the look of this one. The possibilities are endless and I can’t wait to give it a try. I use AE almost everyday but have never bothered to learn how to effectively use scripts. Thank-you!

  • http://www.thijsvaniersel.nl Thijs

    These ara some VERY VERY VERY handy tips&tricks. Using scripts can make a life much easier.

    Thanks

  • zivenchild

    Oh! I love it!

  • http://www.kibesteira.com.br Leonardo

    Oh my good !!!

    Cute !! :´)

    http://www.kibesteira.com.br

  • Marcello

    Thanks a lot! Why don’t translate it in other languages?

    I can help with the Italian! ,-D

  • Rik

    this is to cool! great great great

  • Billy

    Lloyd!!!! YES!!!! I haven’t had a chance to do this one yet….but all I have to say is HE** YES! THIS is what I’ve been talking about! Expressions, complication……ADVANCED AE! Thank you…thank you….thank you! I can’t wait to dig into this one! I’ll post a comment after I’m done!

  • http://flickr.com/heavenideas Heaven Ideas

    I like that you include tutorials with expressions and scripts it makes it alot easier to do complicated things, especially if you used to programming!

    Really cool guys! Keep up the level!

    I Love this Site!

  • bored

    /me dies of boredom

  • http://www.hazystudio.com Patrick RIley

    Hey me and my friends are working on a tutorial site check it out at http://www.hazystudio.com

    Also man this must take a beast of a computer to render.

  • http://maorhazan.co.cc/ Maor Hazan

    Thanks for the great tutorial. I really love the Cinematic titles here! :)

    Cool stuff!

  • illd

    Crazy idea and a perfect realization. I got goosebumps watching it!

    Loyd is the King in here!:)

  • http://www.mamjed.com mamjed

    This was nice! Great job Loyd, please keep it up!

  • keys

    Nice job but why don’t you give us the AE project as well. That would be Super nice as well. Thanks

  • JohnM.

    Propz! I recently got AE and this site is my go to source for Tuts! I was getting bored with the basic stuff. Great tutorial! Keep ‘em coming.

  • JohnM.

    Lmao I saw my comment in the video!

  • Billy

    @Patrick Riley….I’m looking forward to your site. Tried to check it out but still under construction. Keep us informed!

    Lloyd….one other thing. These are the types of tutorials that people working in the field can put to use in their own projects. I just used your flower fireworks tutorial in a video presentation my wife is making today to a real estate company. Their logo is a leaf…and Particular did a fantastic job turning that logo into a cool firework effect. This tutorial can be adapted to….I can’t adapt a simulated sea battle into anything useful. LOL!

    Thanks again….as someone else said…you are the AE KING!

  • illd

    Loyd you seem to be a multigenious. Really smart solutions. You are great at maths an creative to, a rare combination. I hope you suck at least at Basketball:)

  • http://www.quickurl.biz halli

    nice and simple ;) will try that one soon..

    http://www.quickurl.biz

  • http://erdesigns.org Evan Riley

    Absolutely Amazing

  • http://www.inspire-dz.com gryder213

    what the f… it’s awesome

  • punshdrunklove

    realy realy nice

  • kevinsturf

    that was pretty tight. like OMG, best opening preview I’ve ever seen.

  • giovanni

    I wana see how you make the block build up for the logo, you should also let give us the project file to see some more stuff.

  • http://www.lucasrip.com.ar Lucas

    EPIC TUTORIAL

  • http://www.burningvision.net VertigoSFX

    Wow how awesome is that…and I saw my name…TWICE! Very cool effect…definitely going to add that to my list of stuff.

  • reader

    absolutely beautiful!

  • Dante

    Impressive! I was really amazed when I saw that my comment was the second one to appear.

  • http://dominicks-art.blogspot.com/ Nick

    I’m speechless, that was amazing. I can’t wait to try this tutorial!

  • http://butai8.net Ben Carroll

    Great idea of using the comments at the beginning it looks really cool.
    Now for some constructive criticism!
    The ending was a little bit slow, it could be sped up just a little bit.

    Other than that great!
    Ben

  • Brandon

    Wow this is really useful, thanks.

    PS: I saw my comment in there

  • Branden

    Haha I totally dig this :)

  • http://nobsgamers.com Jen

    Love this site. Working on my videos now…

    • http://a atif

      wear are you live

  • http://www.eatmydesign.nl Marek

    Nice one :D
    Love how you quoted me ;)

  • Doru

    The Trapcode one and this are two of the best tutorials I’ve ever seen.
    Really really nice.

    Thank You!

  • Pingback: Quick Tip #1 « Ghost Digital

  • http://gh0stdigital.wordpress.com/ Unreal

    I suggest you use this preset by Andrew Kramer inconjunctio with this scene. Will save a lot of time and give a nicer result.

    http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_falloff/

  • http://www.residentclubber.co.uk Andy

    Cool. One for my projects to try out on a Sunday!

  • http://www.1pixelbrush.com Dan

    Things are starting to pick up here.

  • Billy

    OK…..I’m done with Day 1! Simply amazing so far…..Come on Lloyd….where is Day 2????? I’m dying here!!! Seriously, though….great tutorial so far. Probably the best one since the Trapcode Form one! AMAZING!

  • BogDinamita

    WoW

  • Kyle C

    Hi there,
    I seem to be having the problem of the text documents reading from right to left. All of my text comes in backwards, even though the layer names in the timeline do display the text in the proper direction.

    I tried putting a camera in and rotating it 180 degrees around to the back, but the layers are not just flipped in a 3d space, they are reading in reverse. I don’t see a control in the script for text direction, so hopefully there’s some obvious explanation for this.

    Thanks,
    Kyle

  • Frank

    What is the title of the music?

  • Kyle C

    Figured out my problem.. take a look at your character panel before you run this script because that’s how AE will interpret your text. I had my tracking set to -700, thus it was backwards.

    -K

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