Mac OSX Wallpaper Creation – With Invigorator Pro, Day 2

on Aug 19th 2009 with 26 comments

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

In this second part of his tutorial, Saqib recreates the Mac OSX Wallpaper. He will show us some of the basics of Zaxwerks Invigorator.

Requirements

  • Zaxwerks Invigorator Pro You can download it here.
  • Trapcode Particular You can download a trial version here.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 321MB

 
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Saqib Naqvi is freelance News Producer in Associated Press TV News in Islamabad Bureau Pakistan. He enjoys experimenting with motion graphics because it is his one of the best tools in post production, documentaries, and features. He is addicted to playing around with After Effects.  

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  • arsh

    Thats great to hear thats ur pakistani and this is great one am also pakistani .
    great tets saqib God Bless u

    Arsh

  • Micheal

    Hahahaha
    Requiem For A Dream
    good work

  • Billy

    Very cool indeed. Does Zaxwerks have a trial version of Invigorator? It doesn’t look like they do…but I might be wrong. I’m all for having AE tuts with 3rd party plugins and/or software but I don’t think there should be tuts here on products that don’t have trial versions. There should be a way to do the tutorial without having to buy the product.

    • http://www.gutsblow.com/ Satya Meka

      AFAIK, There is trial version for Invigorator. But, you need to fill out a form with your info so that they will email the plugin to you.

    • Edward

      You can download the software by going to the link below:

      http://zaxwerks.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi

      Extract the contents to the After Effects Plug-ins folder, and then run the plug-in inside of After Effects. When you see the Authorization window, click on the “Demo” button.

  • http://www.behance.net/Modisana Modisana

    Thanks once again brother… Im downloading it now to watch later

  • http://ssda.edu.pk xsid

    hi saqib..
    great to see fellow citizens here.
    keep up the great work..
    just learning from the tuts. a beginner i am.
    ssda.edu.pk

  • http://www.abcanimation.org arlington cruz

    Awesome Tutorial once againthanks so much Guys. I have an AE Question, sorry If this is not related to this specific project.

    IS there any way to keep the speed of a camera in between frames constant in AE? If we move a camera with 2 keyframes from point A to Point B it’s fine and we have no problems, but once we add 1 or more keyframes, we tend to get the unwanted speed ups and slow downs. I have tried Easy ease,Ease in, ease out, but no result. Aftereffects tends to do weird motion tweens sometimes, and it’s just a bit tricky to figure out a way to “Average” the speed for all our keyframes. I realize this is a question that should be asked at a forum, But I would appreciate any hints if anyone knows what I am referring to. Thanks again.

    • http://travispaulding.com Travis

      Use “rove across time” in the keyframe assistant. Evenly distributes the keyframes between the first and last.

  • http://www.abcanimation.org arlington cruz

    Awesome Tutorial once againthanks so much Guys. I have an AE Question, sorry If this is not related to this specific project.

    IS there any way to keep the speed of a camera in between frames constant in AE? If we move a camera with 2 keyframes from point A to Point B it’s fine and we have no problems, but once we add 1 or more keyframes, we tend to get the unwanted speed ups and slow downs. I have tried Easy ease,Ease in, ease out, but no result. Aftereffects tends to do weird motion tweens sometimes, and it’s just a bit tricky to figure out a way to “Average” the speed for all our keyframes. I realize this is a question that should be asked at a forum, But I would appreciate any hints if anyone knows what I am referring to.

  • Billy

    arlington cruz….if I understand your question correctly….there IS a way to keep them constant.

    What you want to do is highlight the keyframes,right click and in the pulldown menu that pops up go down to Keyframe interpolation. Then you want to select Linear. Your key frames are probably continuously bezier. This will fix your problem.

    If you are having trouble understanding what I’m talking about, Nick Campbell over at greyscalegorilla.com has a great tutorial on it here:

    http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2009/03/27/most-common-animation-mistake-in-after-effects-and-how-to-fix-it-wobbly-keyframes/

    And Todd Kopriva from adobe has pointed out that you can find information on it here:

    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d98a.html

    Good luck!

  • Hooper

    Probably a use an expression to move camera cruz, but I ain’t the guy to ask.

  • Hooper

    *probably a way to ask*

  • Hooper

    jeez!!! rendering a big file and keyboard skipping……

    correct edit:

    *Probably a way to use*

  • http://www.abcanimation.org arlington cruz

    Thank you very much Billy and Hooper,Those links were very helpful. I was reading about the boomerang effect on creative cow . I am trying to keep the camera path smooth while keeping speed constant, Will try adjusting just the temporal interpolation to linear. Will see how that works.

  • Bob Sherman

    When I tried my hand at this tutorial, every once in a while the AE Tuts + logo will flash away, and the “punchy” reflection map shows though, and then the logo comes back (only 1 frame in various locations). Anyone have any idea why this is doing that?

    • Saqib Naqvi
      Author

      Though it is bit difficult to understand, what does you really mean. If you can upload your video of the effect, we might be able to give you a better solution.
      But what I understand, you have to play with the reflectivity amount in the slider of the punchy reflection map or highlights etc. Perhaps it give you solution to this problem.

      • Bob Sherman

        What I’m trying to say is that it most of the time it works fine, i.e. the logo shows, and the reflection map works. But every once in awhile (a random frame) the logo will disappear, showing only the black and white reflection map (see link).

        http://img12.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=stage000110800338.jpg

      • http://www.gutsblow.com/ Satya Meka

        I think its just an image cache error. Just Purge everything from Edit>Purge whenever you see that error. Also, remember that it, in final render you won’t get such problems, unless you are using Disk Cache.

      • Bob Sherman

        I did a test render of just the project just where the logo is revealed, and most of the frames rendered fine except for two (where they were black). I checked my settings and I’m not using Disk Cache. I kinda found “work-around,” but it’s not exactly the best way. Since it only happens when I render a movie of it (preview or otherwise), but not when I preview the frame, I very slowly go though each frame and render them individually. For some reason if my final render works fine whether or not the preview and the final render are the same resolution (i.e. Preview=Half, Final=Full).

  • Jorrit Schulte

    Thanks you Apu.
    Come again.

    • http://www.gutsblow.com/ Satya Meka

      Thats a bit too much.

  • Billy

    Saqib…..just got done working through the wholel tutorial. Definitely one of the better ones I have seen on aetuts in a long….long time! And I have to tell you….I LOVE your accent! There is something about your voice that I just think is awesome! Please!!! Please!!!! Do more tutorials…and definitely more Zaxwerks tutorials! Thanks for the great tut!

    • Saqib Naqvi
      Author

      Thanks man for your appreciating words. This encouraged me a lot. Definitely I will find more new ideas for you guys. And already planning for more of zaxwerks, and will come very soon with new tutorials.

  • http://www.mechanicalwhispers.com Robert Morris

    What was the benefit of using “Unmult” on the lens flare solid instead of just setting its transfer mode to “Add”? Also, why so many keyframes on the camera when it’s just moving forward? Wouldn’t 2 or 3 keyframes give you a much smoother movement?

    • Saqib Naqvi
      Author

      It is the matter of choice, whether you use add mode or use unmult to remove the black background. The real advantage in case of unmult is that it free us from having any background on the layer.
      for camera move; I have already described in the end that you can play with the key frames and us different interpolation to express your move.
      But I did because I want to move faster and slower at different phase of my animation and also want to introduce the elements while in pace of this move. So I just put keys according to my moves.