Comments on: Create a Peaceful Sunset

By: matthew

matthew — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:19:58 +0000

yes,

you are hardly the only voice, but you are the most annoying one. You act like a little girl with a skinned knee on every tut that gets put up. I hope I get to meet you one day Billy, so I can find out that you are a teenager, wish you the best of luck and move on with my life

your #1 fan
-matthew

By: rod

rod — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:31:35 +0000

nice tut men!!!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:50:37 +0000

I already emailed some of them asking if they can make a tut on some of the effects in the video AKA nice looking 3d titleplate. But he said the effect was made in maya =(

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:48:11 +0000

I Learned a few nuggets from the photoshop part, If you don’t like it. Dont click on it.

By: Turias

Turias — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:31:30 +0000

i have a problem with the tut: ive got ae 9.0. when i create the solid layer in black and lay the light effect over it for creating the sun.. the black background wont go away.. it stays there an the flare is over the black layer.. can someone help?

By: Horsechicken

Horsechicken — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:38:17 +0000

Nice tutorial…i think a bet is also to do something cool with basic tools (as my favourite designer does http://www.g30.net )…so brandon, there’s no need to forcely learn incredible stuff…all that you need is a good idea and design and nobody can teach you that.
and if you are searching for big learning, don’t rap in websites…pay you a good training course in a professional school…this is only my opinion, no need to flame…:)
and sorry for my english…:P

By: James Grochowalski

James Grochowalski — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:08:14 +0000

Thanks so much. I hope to create better content and teach people tidbits on the way. This was my first, and hopefully not the last.

By: jerry

jerry — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:09:19 +0000

Hey! I would love to see Elvis Preley in one of your tut.

By: Robert Morris

Robert Morris — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:41:59 +0000

One other small note… when you did the skew effect on the clouds from Aharon Rabinowitz’s tutorial (based on Noel Powell’s tip), you should set the first keyframe of the skew transform to a negative value, then the second to a positive. That way, you aren’t getting so much negative space and you don’t have to scale up the cloud image so much, risking degrading the image.

-Robert

By: Robert Morris

Robert Morris — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:31:56 +0000

I was thinking the same thing while watching this tutorial, as a lot of these commenters have called out. But that all being said, a tutorial is a tutorial. It’s never going to be at everyone’s skill level. And will probably never please everyone. And I think the author’s bio at the top lets you know what you can expect. I think one commenter even said, “C’mon man, this obviously wasn’t meant to be photo-realistic. Sheesh.” When (as you can read at the top) it is described as being a “realistic sunset”. But to the author’s credit, he mentions in the tutorial that he likes to make things a bit “unreal”. Stylized is what I would call it.

As some further suggestions for people wishing to incorporate this technique, I would still say that the sun should be behind the clouds, the color of the sky should be tinted to better match a sunset look, and when the sun goes behind the tree it should interact with the brances and blow them out (as the author mentions, but doesn’t show, in the tutorial). I mean, if you’re going to do something, don’t stop there. Although having a tutorial author mention these things without showing them is a little counter productive. People should want to take the concept and creatively run with it, rather than immediately find better ways to do it.

As a VFX Supervisor, I was cringing when he roughly masked the photoshop file, precomp’d it, then scaled the tree without regards to resolution. I know it was blurred afterward a bit… but there are an awful lot of tutorials out there giving bad form like this. And in a real-life production environment, you will learn very quickly that certain things are a big “no-no”.

I fear I may now join Billy’s ranks of being labeled as a negative Nancy, but I fully agree with what he was saying about constructive criticism and only wanting to make this site better. I am not sure about the screening process on this site for tutorials, but there’s something to be said about sites that filter out content for the best user experience. I’ve been toying with the idea of creating some tutorials, but they would mostly be aimed at personal projects and issues I’ve had that I couldn’t find info for anywhere else on the internet.

One final note to James, the author… if you want to get rid of the edge artifact you pointed out in your tutorial, you may want to try scaling up the solid slightly that you have the light effect applied to, or even use the Motion Tile or Grown Bounds effect to extend the border of your solid so the edge is out of frame. The other thing I would suggest is to turn on “repeat edge pixels” when you use the Fast Blur effect.

Best,
-Robert