All posts by laurence
AE Project File – Satellite Tracking
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After Effects Tutorial – Christmas Greetings 2011
So this year’s free festive-themed After Effects tutorial is a little different from last year’s, but still needs no plug-ins (so you can save your money and spend it on beer and chocolates instead!)
Had a lot of fun putting this one together. Hope you enjoy watching it.
And here’s part 2
Project file can be downloaded from here. If you use it, be nice and give me a shout-out.
Cheers!
:l
AE Project File – Christmas Greetings 2011
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After Effects Tip – How to loop a precomp
One of the questions I’m asked the most is ‘why don’t I have insert CC effect name here in my copy of After Effects?’ To which the short answers are ‘because you’re using the demo version’ or ‘because you ripped the software off a torrent site, you thieving shit’.
But something else I get asked from time to time is ‘how do I loop a pre-comp in After Effects?’ And this one I’m happy to answer. When you consider how many advanced tools there are in AE, it’s surprising that there still isn’t an obvious way to do this. Maybe in CS6 perhaps?
But you’ll be pleased to hear that it is possible, and it’s not that complicated – though there is a small catch you need to be aware of if you’re going to do it successfully. I’d also point out that there’s an older video on how to do this over at John Dickinson’s website – motionworks.com.au – but it doesn’t have an audio track, so it’s easy to miss the important bit at the end. Even so, I’d recommend a trip to his site as there’s loads of useful stuff there. And it’s a lot prettier than mine.
Hope this helps!
:l
After Effects Tip – Lens Blur cheat
If you’ve ever used the Lens Blur effect in AE, you’ll know that it’s an unwieldy beast at the best of times, and tends to be one of those things you add right at the end (or leave switched off until it’s render time).
It doesn’t help that it’s one of the few effects that’s not multi-processor enabled, which can be deeply frustrating when you know that your system isn’t being used to its full capacity.
So here’s a quick tip on how to replace the lens blur effect with a cheap trick that employs a feathered mask and the fast blur effect (which is MP-enabled). It’s not massively sophisticated, but if you’re just looking for a quick selective focus effect, it’s a LOT faster to produce.
Cheers!
:l
