Shake It Up With An Expression Earth Quake
Tutorial Details
- Requirements: Just After Effects.... enjoy!
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Run Time: 24 min
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
In this tutorial I take a basic look at the various random number methods in After Effects expressions. I go on to use some of these techniques to build an earthquake effect that you can easily adjust with a series of sliders. The tutorial is aimed at intermediate After Effects users who have some experience with the program and are looking to learn more about the power of expressions.
Tutorial
Download Tutorial .flv
File size 150 MB
Additional Resources
- Quick Tip – Use A Jello-Jiggly Expression
- Quick Tip – Loop Your Textures For A More Dynamic Background
- Generate Your Own Splendid Spirographical Designs
- Introduction To Writing Scripts For AE
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By felt tips
I am a director, motion graphic and visual effects artist with over 15 years industry experience.
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WHAT ? Difficulty: Intermediate ??? I think it should be Basics. I haven’t watched it yet, but from preview I see only wiggle + text + position keyframes + motion blur on… thats it
let me know what you think after you watch it.
Cool use of expressions and controls, looks a lot like the tutorial by steve holmes on the total training dvd though
oh wait i appear to be first,, now thats a cause for celebration…. *yawn*
hi hi…nice but ….kinda old
Today i wanna tell you that trapcodepeople.com, registration procedure still broken :-)
wow, thats amazing! move to AE Premium
that to simple. not good tutorial.
Great Tutorial. Quick, to-the-point, informative and witty. Loved it.
Great explanation, goes right to the fundamentals of AE
Definitely hope to see some more ;)
Keep it up!
That was helpful Ben, lots of thanks!
Why so negative, some people here can do something with. It is not difficult, but the beginners can learn from, that’s the purpose of this site.
Or did I miss?
Im not impressed.
Well, that seems to have divided opinion.
This is not a tutorial about making some eye-candy effect. I’m well aware that you can build the same effect with a couple of keyframes and the wiggler. This is about setting up a simple effect with expressions to make a much more controllable animation, that is faster and easier to experiment and work with than the manual equivalent.
As with all series’ it starts simple, with some grounding principles. This is to make sure that it’s not just about copying and pasting someone else’s code, but gaining a thorough understanding of the process for yourself, so that in the future you can design your own complex expression systems. The next one will be building on that knowledge rather quickly. Very soon, you will be writing expressions to automate processes which would take you hours by hand – and shortly afterwards, doing things that can *only* be done with expressions.
The web has absolutely no shortage of Blow-Your-Shot-On-DV-Friend’s-Head-Off-with-Trapcode-Particular-and-Rotobrush type of tutorials. There are very few good screencasts on the topic of expressions. This is the first in a series that attempts to fill that gap.
A snippet from Part II….
seedRandom(effect(“seed”)(“Slider”), timeless = true);
//controller
DMin = parent.effect(“distance min/max”)(1)[0];
DMax = parent.effect(“distance min/max”)(1)[1] – DMin;
//______
seedRandom(parent.effect(“random seed”)(1), timeless = true);
tDirection = [random(200)-100,random(200)-100,random(200)-100];
tDirection = normalize(tDirection); tMagnitude = DMin + gaussRandom(DMax);
tPos = value + tDirection*tMagnitude;
seedRandom(thisLayer.index, timeless = true);
tWiggle = wiggle(parent.effect(“wiggle freq amp”)(1)[0], parent.effect(“wiggle freq amp”)(1)[1], 1, 0.5, time) – value;
tPos + tWiggle + value;
-Felt Tips.
Great tutorial Ben, very useful! Keep up the good work.
Thank you Ben. Its really useful for me and I’m going to use it in my future projects.
I disagree with those people who said that it was too simple/basic/not interesting. for those who know expressions – yes it is like that, but I don’t know about them very match and that’s why I find this particular tutorial very useful in a row of completely “unuseful-simple-basic” tutorials for ME even if they super cool and advance. just because I know those topics and can do it better some time, i’m not posting comments thats it is “not good tutorial”.
My point is that it is all relative.
Thanks again, Ben. I’ll be waiting more tuts from on expressions.
this really shouldn’t be a tutorilal this is beginners stuff
No offense, but you shouldn’t be watching it then, “expert”.
Hi Kingsley,
Feel free to elaborate. I’d really love to know how using expressions to separate a wiggle from its generating value, then applying an envelope via a second slider, before reapplying the enveloped wiggle to its generating value is beginner’s stuff.
Then I can improve my next tutorilal.
-f.
Ben,
This is an awesome tut. Thanks for your outgoing effort to bring the Pro part of After Effects to this community something beyond shiny flares and explosions.
I hope those bad comments about this great tut wont diminish you in anyway to bring your own video series along with your own site. I’m a big fan of your work. People here don’t know you are a mastermind when it comes not only to AE.
I’m eager to learn scripting an how to use expressions to make my life easier when it comes to my job. Keep it up kid.
thanks for the post
Get tired of some of the people slamming tutorials as ‘boring’ or ‘not needed’. At some point, all of you started out as beginners in After Effects. You didn’t come out of the womb knowing how to do it. As someone who has taught myself how to use all of the design software that I work in, I appreciate a variety of tutorials at all user levels, from beginner to ‘expert’ It helps you grow and develop and learn new skills along the way. Alot of people don’t work with expressions in AE so it helps them to learn how it works thru a practical example
Different people learn at different paces, and if you are such an ‘expert’ then what are you doing looking at tutorials in the first place? Or why don’t you take the time to produce some of your own if you think that everyone else’s are ‘boring’. Maybe the community as a whole will benefit more from your expertise than your whining.
That being said, thanks to those who put out tutorials at ALL skill levels, and keep it up….
Thank you, this is a very good tutorial, I look forward to seeing the next one.
This is an excellent video.
Thank you.
Thanks, Todd.
Flash Forward to 2012 and it’s STILL an awesome tutorial :D
Man these idiots needs to bug off so we can get more material from this guy.