IVA Midwest Expo: “Easy, Creative Templates”
The Illinois Videographers Association (based in the Chicagoland area) will be hosting the first IVA Midwest Expo on Tuesday, May 15, 2007. I will be presenting a seminar titled “After Effects: Easy, Creative Templates” where we will delve into the creation and usage of re-usable templates in Adobe After Effects.
You can also catch the great presentations of the Pixelpops dudes (Lance Gray and Brian Gunn), Kris Malandruccolo, Keith Kelly, and Chris Chibucos. They are all amazing videographers and have wonderful techniques and ideas for you to learn from. Check out the IVA’s website for more details. http://www.ivavideo.com
Now Playing… Your Videos on TiVo!
Now I don’t have a TiVo, but I just stumbled across a new program called One True Media that allows you to create videos and share them with your family and friends straight to their TiVo. The program is still in beta and they allow you to upload 5 videos during this trial. I don’t know how much it will cost when final, but this just goes along with what I was talking about in yesterday’s post about digital delivery.
So if anyone has a TiVo give this a try and let all of us know how it works. This could be a good reason to get a TiVo, imagine having basically your own channel to put all of your video samples or even deliver the final product to client who have TiVO…. Interesting times!
Feature Highlight: Adobe Encore CS3
One of new features that has really caught my attention in the upcoming Adobe Encore CS3 is the ability to output your DVD projects to a webpage with embedded Flash video, complete with all the interactivity of a standard DVD. So basically you create your DVD in Encore and then, in addition to a Blu-ray or DVD, you can output it to a webpage where the user can interact with the video just as if they were watching it in a DVD player. Pretty cool stuff right there! I totally support all these new digital delivery options and think that this is the way of the future. Microsoft is even developing a new software that will allow the playback of HD video in a webpage! (Microsoft Silverlight) Pretty soon all of the format wars of Blu-ray and HD DVD will be a thing of the past because you can distribute your videos on the web in SD or HD.
Speaking of HD and digital delivery, I’ve been playing around with my Xbox 360 and I have discovered that it can stream HD content from your PC to the Xbox 360 and display it on your HDTV!! I have even been backing up my DVDs to my PC and now I can watch them anytime right from the Xbox. I’m telling you this is difinately the way to do it.
Quick poll
I have lots of ideas and products planned from AEProjects.com and would like to get an idea of what you want the most. If there is something not on the poll, just leave a comment with your suggestion.
Loading …Early Impressions of After Effects CS3
I downloaded the preview version of After Effects CS3 yesterday and spent a couple hours playing around with the new tools and features. I think Adobe has added some great tools to After Effects and I can’t wait for all the new CS3 releases. I wanted to share a couple quick impressions of my favorite new features in Adobe AE CS3.
My favorite new feature, surprisingly, is the new shapes layer. I know when I first read about it, I was like, “Meh, who cares about shape layers, I can just make a shape with a mask”, but after playing with it I can honestly say, that this is the feature I will use the most often. Basically you can now create a shape layer with embedded effects for stroke, fill, gradients, pucker/bloat, repeater, rounded corners, twist, wiggle, etc and they can all be stacked for endless variety. You can animate any of the properties and change blending modes of individual effects. It has an amazing amount of depth and reminds me of the new text animation engine that was introduced back in AE6. To the right you can see a simple star with several shape effects applied that I created in about 2 minutes.
The next feature that really caught my eye was the ability to create layer styles directly in After Effects, just like Photoshop. Everything from drop shadows, bevels, gradients, glows, strokes, etc. The only layer style missing from Photoshop is Pattern Overlay, although there may be a way to accomplish the same thing. And, of course, you can import PSD files with all the Layer Styles intact and then edit them further in AE.
The third feature that will really help get your creative juices flowing is the new Brainstorm function which allows you to easily preview variations on your animation. Simply select all the properties you would like variations on and After Effecs will randomly generate different versions of those properties. This will work wonders when you get stuck or just need some variations on a certain element. To the left you can see the Brainstorm window with variations on the star animation I created with the shape layer.
The most fun feature is the new Puppet Tool, which easily allows you to give a layer control points to move and distort an image like a puppet. It works brilliantly and has more depth and complexity than I initially thought it would. Even my six-year old son had a blast making an image of Buzz Lightyear dance around the composition.
There is another feature that I was really looking forward to that involves importing Photoshop’s Vanishing Point data as a 3D model into After Effects, but I don’t have Photoshop CS3 yet, so I’ll have to wait to give that a try. That should be really cool and I look forward to trying all of the new CS3 software and experience how Adobe continues to raise the bar with their applications.
Adobe After Effect CS3 Preview Available
If you’re interested in getting a sneak peak at the new Adobe After Effects CS3 then head on over to Adobe Labs and download the free preview version of AE CS3. I am pretty excited about this release, as it has lots of really cool things that I can’t wait to try out. Take a look at the feature tour video and begin to drool.
In addition to AE you can also download Photoshop CS3 and Premiere Pro CS3. They are all universal binaries, which means both Mac and PC can get in on the fun. The final versions will be release sometime this summer, so be sure to give it a try and submit feedback to Adobe.