Create a Leaf Growing Network TV ID

Tutorial Details
  • Program: After Effects, Trapcode Particular Plugin
  • Difficulty: Intermediate

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Network TV ID’s are usually a 5 or 10 second piece that pleasantly announces the channel’s logo. In this tutorial you will learn how to create this real-world, network ID-style scene for your logo or type treatment using After Effects, Trapcode Particular, and stock images.


Some techniques covered will be:

  • using the layer emitter and custom particles in Particular to create growing leaves
  • using “wiggle” and “random” expressions to create wind movement in leaves
  • simple 3D AE camera use with Depth of Field (DOF) and wiggle for handheld feel.
  • using a “length” expression to tie the DOF Focus point to a NULL for easy animation
  • color grading with blend modes and overlay effects

Requirement: Trapcode Particular Plugin (download free trial here)

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 316MB

Add Comment

Discussion 147 Comments

Comment Page 2 of 3 1 2 3
  1. Mel says:

    I’m a little dizzy from all the details, but I really want to try this out! Great tut; keep it up! ^_^

  2. Blomat says:

    GREAT TUTORIAL!! A+

  3. rehmat hadi says:

    very nice. we present our cordial thank

  4. Jackkiller says:

    very nice :)

  5. Kestelia says:

    *Tips Waitress*

    Sir, I must congratulate you. That tutorial was sincerely EPIC.

    You’ve explained so much in so few words. Especially that trick with the Depth of Field expression. It is now my new best friend.

    *bows*

    I give my thanks.

  6. Raoul says:

    Just make my day better…

    (like your “Elijah” promo too ! )

    Best from north east Paris \o/
    R.

  7. kamal98 says:

    hmmmm very usable

  8. PIYUSH says:

    THIS IS GREAT AS BEFORE

  9. mike says:

    Very inspirational. Please keep making more.

  10. Darin says:

    Very nice, straight-forward tutorial, one of the better ones I have read on this site. If at all possible, could you include a download link for those pictures because I have tried searching for those same pictures and I am coming up short.

  11. fidget says:

    very cool, bryan. I enjoyed the focus distance/null expression tip very much. Thanks!

  12. edk says:

    Thank you so much, I found this tutorial brilliant.

    I’ve learned so much more in this last tut about ae than countless in the past!
    Congrats and please do make more!

    Ed

  13. Logi says:

    “I don’t tip.”

    Just kidding. Great tutorial. I liked that retro feel.

    Good job!

  14. Cool video, learnt a lot of good tips and tricks, thank you

  15. Gerberman says:

    Very Impressive, nice work

  16. Superb! First impression is the best impression. I am blown away and will try it tonight. :)

  17. Jurgen Corte says:

    hello my name is Jurgen

    Thank you for this tutorial it really helped me a lot to where i want to go with Motion grapgics.

    My question is. How can i get random leaves (2 different types) to do the same on 1 branche.

    Really hope you can help!

    Hope you post more of these helpfull AEtuts

    • Bryan Clark says:
      Author

      Hmm…

      You could…
      a) just use 3 different leaves instead of 3 of the same one
      b) set up two different emitters with about half the number of particles each, both using the branch as a layer emitter
      c) set the particle’s time sampling to “Split Clip” and split your “pre-leaf” comp into sections (a little more involved)

      hope that helps!

  18. eric Kristin says:

    OWWW!!!! parabéns magnifico!

  19. yo says:

    es de lo mejor…. soberbio.

  20. this is awesome,
    But why do I have some particals that are transparent.
    I have the opacity up 100%, the random opacity down to 000 and the opacity over life is up 100%
    ?

    • Bryan Clark says:
      Author

      You’ve probably got some semi-transparent areas in the image that’s being used as your layer emitter. Particular is using the image’s alpha channel as a map, so if it sees a pixel that is 50% transparent, it will create a particle at 50% transparency.

      If you touch that up, it should fix it.

      • JAI says:

        and even you can use levels effect’s alpha to improve the particles brightess/contrast…
        i saw a tutorial on it that’s why i am telling you…

      • villmannen says:

        is there a workaround for this? ignoring the alpha somehow?

      • villmannen says:

        ah, guess I’m answering this myself. Found out from one of the comments below that if you apply the levels effect to the particular layer, you can play with the alpha channel to either to make the semi-transparent particles disappear or become 100% opaque. this worked great for my use, but if anyone has a better solution..?

  21. - GuiX - says:

    Maybe said already (I haven’t read all the posts) but with particular #2 the problem with the random orientation of the leaves is fixed! This parameter is included.

    And, well, very good tutorial!

  22. LD says:

    Very helpful. Awesome tutorial. Thank you!!!

  23. Nicolae says:

    What a fantastic tutorial. Very well presented, great tips and shortcuts. The color part was awesome.
    One question Tim? What image have you used for the branches? I cant find one to match. :( Many thanks
    Nicolae

  24. Nicolae says:

    Sorry Bryan not TIm… :P

  25. Muhammad Asghar Qureshi says:

    Thank Fo Ar Nice Tutorial

  26. erplav says:

    How can i get the raw file for this? tuts+ ?????

  27. Vishal Gupta says:

    pheww!! That is cool. Thanks for this awesome tutorial

  28. Nicolae says:

    Hi

    One of the leafs disappear like each two frames on and two frames off. Have I done something wrong?
    Fantastic tutorial by the way. The shortcut and color tips were awesome.
    Any more? :P
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFbwnFNN5pY

  29. kareem karawia says:

    nice work man

  30. Leoul says:

    can you please upload or give the link of the pics u used? That would be nice

  31. Bryan Clark says:
    Author

    Hey everyone.
    Here are the links to the images I used:

    landscape: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1151976
    tree1: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1195970
    tree2: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1186400
    leaf: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1195849
    clouds: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1173256
    clouds: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1180756

    And, like most of you, I was no longer to find the branch that I used. Sorry about that. Here’s one that’s similar…

    branch: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/349438

  32. Joe says:

    Hi could we get the resources for this tut please :-) absolutely great tut but whats th use if we don have the resources :-(

  33. Alex says:

    Good job Mate!

    Thx!

  34. Max says:

    GREAT TUTORIAL

    I have been playing with it and all works fine.
    I have a question though: i noticed that some of the leaves are always semi or more transparent. I had a look at every setting in Particular and nothing seemed to affect this random opacity. Can anyone help?

    Thanks a lot in advance.

  35. Matt Rogers says:

    Thanks for this great tutorial. There are many techniques in here that are of great use. Thanks again for a stand up job!

  36. Wow, that was incredible! My first real dip into AE and I feel like you’ve saved me hours of wading through boring intro tutorials to get some of workflow techniques and shortcuts you use.

    And the last 5 minutes with the adjustment layers was awesome… You obviously know how to add the professional touch.

    When’s the next tutorial??

  37. Jal says:

    Aesthetically awesome!

  38. coolyh says:

    Thanks for this great tutorial

  39. Harry says:

    this video is very cool. prod the best tut I have seen on site .very nice one thank you

  40. Tomm says:

    Reminds me of Eureka opening credits

  41. adv says:

    cool and simply tehnique with particular:) thx

  42. Amp says:

    Thanks for awesome tutorial.

  43. Foxoo7 says:

    very good. thanks.

  44. marrietcara says:

    I want to thanks for the great tutorial for the above person those like his product of the resveratrol.

  45. Lukus says:

    Hey I was going through the tutorial and realized that Particular 2 is much different than 1.5. I was able to figure out that they changed custom particle to sprite… but can’t figure out how to attach the particles to the branch. any ideas?

  46. Gerberman says:

    i have a problem with expression aperture!!

    appears me an error masage, when i try to put ….lenght(position,)

    what can i do to fix it?

  47. Frederik says:

    You’re not a big scripting fan, are you? Makes copy paste a lot more effective if you just alt click the stopwatch of your wiggled effects and type wiggle(.5,14) copy paste that to every attribute and change the values .5 and 14

  48. Alex says:

    Great tut man! :)

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