[FSD] Dinoman's Weekly After Effects Tips & Tricks

[Kobe24Life]

^^agreed .

[Dinoman]

Dinoman's AE Tips & Tricks #2: The 3D Text

It's time for my second tutorial, something a bit more advanced this time. There are probably many plugins that can make your text look 3D, but I'll show you a way to do it with AE's built-in Shatter. I saw this trick on Youtube but I thought it would be easier to make it with a preset.

Download The 3D Text Preset: http://www.sendspace.com/file/oy23h3

Save the file into your User Presets folder. (Usually something like My Documents/Adobe/After Effects/User Presets)

Step 1: Add text to your composition, preferrably a bold font like Impact or Arial Black.

Step 2: Add a new camera to your composition.

Step 3: Add the 3D text preset to your text layer. (Type "3D Text" to the search box in the Effects & Presets window)

Change the Custom Shatter Map to your text layer and adjust the depth and side color how you like it as the following picture shows:




Step 4: Now you're ready and you should have a nice text with some depth to it instead of the usual flat text. You can now keyframe the camera movements to add some life to the scene.

This way is not without it's flaws though: if you keyframe the text's position it screws up and you better not change the text into a 3D layer either. But there's still tons of things you can do by moving the camera around. You can also change the Camera System from "Comp Camera to "Camera position" in the Shatter effect but it might not be the easiest workaround.

Hope this can help you when making text to your intros. And if there's something wrong with the preset or anything please let me know.

P.S. To Rice and kobe24life: I think I'll let the mods sticky this if they want when they see it.

[nitelite]

Hope no one forgets about this....this section is kinda tucked away unfortunately. This is really good stuff...maybe it can be sticked in the mix section as well...just for as long as you are doing it.

[reverence]

Are there going to be anymore ?

[Dinoman]

Originally Posted by Reverence

Are there going to be anymore ?

Well this thread was obviously a fail because I got too busy with other stuff. I'm thinking of bringing it back though, maybe in a couple of days I'll make something. I don't think it's going to be "weekly" anymore though.

Dinoman's AE Tips & Tricks #3: The Lens Flare Text Effect

I apologize for not being able to make the tutorials as I promised but I will try to continue them now. I doubt I'll be able to make them every week but check the thread every two weeks or so for new ones.

This time I'll show you how to make the text effect I used in this recent mix:



It's a simple effect but it's still too time-consuming for me to write detailed step-by-step instructions. So I'll list the main steps to making the effect and upload the project file so you can have a closer look on how it's made.

Click here to download the project file

NOTE: Trapcode Shine is required for certain parts of the effect but it's just for stylizing.

Step 1: Create a new black solid, make a horizontal line on it with the mask tool and apply effect Stroke. Add horizontal blur and Trapcode Shine.

Step 2: Create a new black solid and apply effect Lens Flare. Then add effect Exposure and lower the gamma correction to fade out the white "glow" around the Lens Flare.

Step 3: Create a new composition and add the previous composition to it. Add a ellipse mask to the lens flare comp, feather the mask and animate the expansion to make the flare disappear in the end.

Step 4: Add your text and animate it to zoom out.

Step 5: Apply Trapcode's Shine effect to the text layer and keyframe the ray length so that the shine looks kinda like motion blur. If you don't have Shine, you could try CC Light Burst for a similar effect.

Step 6: Create an orange solid and mask it so it covers the text. Lower the opacity and set the blending mode to give a nice orange glow to the lens flare.

Step 7: Add scanlines on top of all the layers.

If you got any questions about this tutorial or anything else feel free to PM me.

[VenomIndustries]

Excellent work man, glad to see you update this. Give us something like this once a month, it'd be cool. What's nice is you can adapt this to fit other things, and use elements of this to create new effects completely different.

~Venom

[Vigilante]

Thx alot for the man this helps alot of people.

[stanley]

thanks alot for all the tutorials,it really helps us alot,especially those who just started on after effects

[Dinoman]

Dinoman's AE Tips and Tricks #4: The Light Beam Effect

Ok, so it's been a while again but here's a new tutorial. It demonstrates how to make the effect I used in my Heroes mix, a light beam following the ball. In this one you'll hopefully learn something about paths and 3D Stroke. Again I have uploaded the project file and just list the basic steps in this post.

Trapcode Shine and 3D Stroke are needed to complete the tutorial. If you don't have them you can PM me and I'll see what I can do.

Download project file: http://www.sendspace.com/file/zyr6cf

Step 1: Make a new comp and add the clip you want to put the effect
on.

Step 2: Make a new solid and make a path that follows the ball or
whatever you want it to follow. Make the path start from the
position when the player begin the dunk or shot. You might want to
put the end of the path out of the picture so the light just wipes
across the screen.

To make a path click the path tool or hit G and click on the screen
at the desired start and end points of the path. To make a curve to
the path, click and drag the start or end point.

Step 3: Add Trapcode 3D Stroke effect to the solid. Adjust the
thickness to your liking and enable the taper. Check the project file for the rest of the settings.

Step 4: Keyframe the Offset parameter in 3D stroke so the stroke
follows the ball.

Step 5: Add Trapcode Shine to the solid and colorize it how you
want. Experiment with the Source Point position to get the best
look.

Step 6: Color correct the scene. I used and adjustment layer with
Curves but you can do it how you want. Just remember that an effect
like this usually looks bad on an un-color corrected clip.

Thanks to revgen for the clip used in the tutorial. If you got questions, feel free to ask.

[stanley]

thanks for the tutorials man,really helpful