Here’s a quick tutorial on how I made the AELooks presets only affect a portion of the video in the little promo video on AEProjects.com

I have just release three new items over at AEProjects.com so hurry over to take a look and let me know what you think.

Halfpipe Theater - HD

A cool new template with colorful backgrounds and a unique presentation for your photos and still images (sorry no video clips for this one)

AELooks2 - Presets

40 new effect presets that create many popular “looks” including Infared, Fashion Magazines’ Style, Lomography, Cross Processing, High Contrast Black and White, Glows and many more

Medical Text - Freebie

A free After Effect project that features a unique look to display medical information and text. (requires Trapcode’s 3D Stroke and Starglow)

aeMENTALS: Time Remapping is the first in a series of tutorials focusing of the fundamentals of Adobe After Effects. Download this tutorial video and learn how to Time Remap layers and control time with keyframes. You will also learn a special technique for working with video layers while using your favorite AEProjects.com template.

• Learn the basics of Time Remapping in After Effects
• Create slow/fast motion, freeze frames, and variable motion with keyframes
• Control video layers in AEProjects.com templates with amazing ease
• Follow along on your computer in this 15 minute downloadable tutorial video

Visit AEProjects.com to purchase this training video.

AEProjects.com is proud to announce our newest template, Ring Around - HD.

The Ring Around - HD After Effects template will knock your productions through the roof and blow your clients away in stunning high definition. If you are looking to save money and time yet still produce amazing After Effects projects, this is the template for you.  Add your own images/videos to quickly create an amazing video that will impress your clients, speed up your workflow, and increase your profits.  Supports up to 32 photos/videos within the template and outputs both HD and SD in NTSC and PAL flavors. Click here to see more at AEProjects.com

NOTE: Fonts and Audio are not included in the template.

If you have ever received this type of error while working with your templates, here is the problem and solution.

By default Adobe After Effects imports a sequentially numbered set of images as a “sequence” or movie where each frame is a separate file. If there is one or more frames missing you will get this error.

The simple solution is to deselect the “Import as Sequence” checkbox in the lower left corner of the replace/import dialog box as seen below. This will allow you to import one single image file.

Over 30 After Effects Presets to quickly and efficiently enhance your images and videos. Get creative with your images by applying many styles including Bleach Bypass, Movie looks, high contrast images and much more. All presets are completely customizable and can be deconstructed to learn how to create your own effects. View the different AELooks presets at AEProjects.com

AELooks Presets on sale for $19.99

The Ink Splatter Pack contains 60 After Effects Presets that instantly create high impact ink-shaped masks on any layer in Adobe After Effects. Use these presets to create grungy backgrounds, ink splatters, blood drippings or animate them for stylized compositions. These vector mask shapes can be scaled to any size without loss of resolution.

In addition to the After Effects Presets, you also receive 60 High Resolution Ink Splatter brushes for Adobe Photoshop, which allow you to create amazing designs or grunge border effects. The possibilities are endless with these creative tools.

On sale for $14.99 at AEProjects.com

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

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 …

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.

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.

3D layers and motion blur in After Effects require a good amount of rendering time, but here is a quick tip that can help reduce your wait, and have your AEProjects.com templates rendered in less time. (more…)

Adobe After Effects comes bundled with tons of useful presets and templates, but there are no presets for a simple Audio Fade. I do this manually all the time, it doesn’t take long but it finally dawned on me that I should just make a small little preset that creates the audio fade keyframes for me. So here are my Audio Fade Presets for you to enjoy too.

You can download them for free at:
http://www.aeprojects.com

(more…)

Every once in a while you will create an animation that you would like to repeat or loop for the course of your composition. Using this simple expression in After Effects will save you time and give you some flexible options to loop your keyframes that you may not have known existed. (more…)

Here’s one of my After Effects tutorials that is included in my training DVD “Creative Photo Montage Techniques using Adobe After Effects“, it was also published in WEVA’s magazine last year. It is a zooming technique that allows you to zoom deeper and deeper into some text. This is a great technique for high impact creative opening credits for your wedding videos. (more…)