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Terminate Your Footage With Expressions – Day 3

on Sep 25th 2009 with 28 comments

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Terminate Your Footage with Expressions

Terminate Your Footage with Expressions

If you’re wanting to help to save Sarah Connor then maybe this tutorial will give you an insider’s perspective on what to do. Here is the Final Day of this 3 Part Series by Ben McEwan. You can view Day 1 here and

Day 2 here.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 193MB

Series Navigation«Terminate Your Footage With Expressions – Day 2
 
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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Ben McEwan grew up in Canberra, Australia. He started learning visual effects from a young age and persistantly followed his dreams. Today, Ben does freelance work for feature films, short films and television programs, and one day hopes to win an Academy Award.  

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  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninjtso/ BAD GHOST

    nice work i really like it :D

  • Dawg

    Very Cool thanks!!

  • Creative Media Films

    Nice thankz

  • http://www.youtube.com.br/ianhpiratao IANH – BR

    Thanks so much, keep doing!

  • http://www.vimeo.com/chaske Chaske

    great tutorial, thanks for all the thorough explanations…good looking final product too!

  • http://riddickmedia.moy.su/ RiddickMedia

    Nice

  • http://riddickmedia.moy.su/ RiddickMedia

    Nice……………

  • Billy

    Ben….this is the most ridiculous tutorial I have ever seen…

    JUST KIDDING!

    Just got around to watching the first part. When i saw your preview, my first impression was “huh….so-so.” I wasn’t going to “waste” my time with watching 3 whole parts. However, after reading all the wonderful comment you got, I thought I’d give the first part a try.

    I’m very glad I did. The way you went about creating the UI was creative and useful and the addition of expressions I have never seen made it all the better! I loved the way you actually explained parts of the expression and then showed how changing parts of the expression would change what was produced.

    The creation of a UI is nothing I will probably ever do in any of my personal projects….BUT the parts of your tutorial, especially the expressions, will come in very handy!

    So….since I saw in the comments to part two that there were people just dying for my opinion….there ya go! :D

    • http://www.benmcewan.com Ben McEwan
      Author

      Thanks buddy! That’s exactly the response I was looking for… The whole point of this exercise was to teach people some expressions they may have never seen before, and show them what each one does so that they can apply that knowledge somewhere else.

  • Ricky

    I was looking forward to the third part… very exhaustive tutorial covering even small details, and this should be very useful for a beginner in the art of AE.

    • http://www.benmcewan.com Ben McEwan
      Author

      I lost my voice and had a huge headache after finishing recording. THAT’S exhaustive :P

      Thanks!

  • http://www.thejoltjoker.info thejoltjoker

    Very good tutorial! I liked that you explained the expressions.

  • Rolo

    Great tutorial.

  • maor700

    Great tutorial of any aspect- professional design, process work, useful expressions, and very cool technique.
    I’m recognize professionals and you one of them
    if you keep relase tutorials like this one you will be in the top list of the AE leadere.

  • http://www.ofp2brasil.com.br Norman

    Very Cool thanks!!

  • Peter

    So glad you made this, i’ve been able to use aspects of your tutorial with other tutorials on aetuts+ to make short film, many thanks for sharing the knowledge!

  • Gio

    This tutorial is very very very wonderful !
    can u send me the After Effects Project?

    • http://www.benmcewan.com Ben McEwan
      Author

      You’ll ahve to sign up to the Plus program for that. See the little banner between the tutorial and the comments section. It’s pretty cheap and you’ll get access to other project files as well!

  • Yonatan

    THIS IS GREAT!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH BEN!!!! This is what I need for my films, was looking for a tut like this, THANK YOU!!!

  • beesh

    Thank you Ben – I learned a lot from this tut!
    1 question if you have time – is there a way to slow down the random speed of the numbers in the expression so they don’t generate so fast?
    Thanks!

    • http://www.benmcewan.com Ben McEwan
      Author

      Sorry for taking so long on the reply – been really busy lately!

      I thought I covered this in the tutorial, but I might be wrong. It was a really, REALLY long recording session. I’d watch it back, but my own voice still haunts me :P

      The following expression should make a lot of sense to you since it was done throughout the tutorial. The very first line is the one that’ll delay the counting. Experiment with changing the number in the brackets (3, in this case) and see what it does!

      posterizeTime(3);
      S=thisLayer.transform.position.speed
      S
      Math.round(S*10000)/10000

  • Price

    Great exhaustive explanation and tutorial… will be very helpful for any aspirant like me.

  • Logic

    Very Good tutorial, i really liked it, because:
    -All details covered
    -Good explanation
    -Shows useful expressions

    Thank you so much Ben.

    P.S.
    You should make a tutorial on how to do the electrokinesis video you made.

  • Creg

    Excellent tutorial that must have taken you hours of hard work… Gives a very exhaustive approach to recreating the magic!

  • http://www.jeremycox.com Jeremy

    I was the designer and lead animator on the Terminator Salvation “machine vision” sequences, and am honored that our work has inspired these tutorials!

    After Effects was our primary software, and most of our techniques were very similar to the ones you have outlined here. In some cases we animated things by hand that you have scripted, and in other cases we ended up with much more complex setups.

    The most involved use of expressions was in creating a curved altimeter style widget for the T800. It was built from the start with the ability to art direct every element using sliders and other expression controls (about 30 by the end) in the base comp. Here is and example of some variations I threw together by adjusting a couple sliders: http://www.jeremycox.com/stuff/HUD_demo-web.mov

    My one critique would be your use of typeface. This is mostly just a warning to others, but using OCR-A will always make your work look dated and there are all sorts of interesting alternatives out there.

    Good job!

    - Jeremy

    • http://www.benmcewan.com Ben McEwan
      Author

      Thanks for your input Jeremy – this effect definitely has an infinite potential!

  • Wes

    This is the most intense tutorial I have ever done. Even more intense than Andrew Kramer and that’s saying a lot. Thank you for such a wonderful effect. I’m going to use this effect in an After Effects showcase vid I am creating. Good luck in your future endeavors and I look forward to learning more from your great tutorials.

    • http://www.benmcewan.com Ben McEwan
      Author

      Thanks for the kind words mate!