Vectorizing Bitmaps

Sometimes you'll find that you need to vectorize a bitmap image (the differences between vector and bitmap imagery are described HERE). The reasons for this are many: perhaps you want to be able to scale it waaay up and don't want the image pixellated. Perhaps it's a "look" that you're going for, or maybe you need imagery to edit and place in a Flash scene.

You can use the 'live trace' functionality in Adobe Illustrator (overview and tut's HERE, technical white paper HERE) but what to do if you don't have Illustrator?

I stumbled across VectorMagic, a research project that came out of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It's a very effective, easy-to-use web application that does a really nice job converting imagery to vector. Compare the results of VM to Illustrator and Corel HERE. I've played around with it with a few images and have been very impressed with the results (click on the header image on this post), and you certainly can't beat the price: Free!

Max2AE Global Scale

If you use Boomerlabs' "Max2AE" plugin a lot, you've probably come across an issue where you have to scale your After Effects layers very small to get them to fit the 'world space' that was exported from your 3ds Max project. Depending on your project settings, you might find that you need to scale a 3d After Effects layer as small as 1% to get it to 'fit'.

Now the interchange will still "work" visually (things line up where they're supposed to and such), but you'll find yourself saddled with a few gotchas. For instance, dealing with layers that are so 'small' can make layer tranforms (like moving) very difficult to execute when scrubbing in After Effects. Panning around the worldspace can be painful. And most importantly, you'll find that your shadows look AWFUL.

Fortunately, there is a simple way to fix this problem, so long as you know what to look for and plan ahead a bit. Take a look at THIS tutorial (Quicktime, h.264, 9:35, 33 megs) that walks you through the process.

Shortcut-o-rama

Alright, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, one more post on keyboard shortcuts. Paddling around the 'net the other day, I came upon KeyXL... it's the self proclaimed "largest online database of keyboard shortcuts in the world". Be still my beating heart! A quick gander seems to suggest that it is, indeed, a fairly substantial repository of cutz. Granted, many applications aren't followed too closely (kind of weak in the video editing category for instance) but they're right on top of the latest Adobe CS3 suite. Indeed, they seem to be cribbed directly from the Adobe help files.

Ok, so why wouldn't I just hit the "f1" key and check out the kb shortcuts in After Effects? Well, for one thing they're multi-paged in the app 'help', and are thus hard to 'browse' if you're just kicking around on a render looking for something geeky to do. Plus all cutz are close at hand for all apps, making it a fast reference. And you can search the page with your browser keyword 'search' function (ctrl+"F", usually) to locate a particulary pesky shortcut. Worth a look.

Key'd Up

Those who know me know that I'm mad for keyboard shortcuts when using After Effects. And not just because it impresses clients when you use a 'ninja' KB shortcut like "ctrl+alt+shift+'C'" to create a camera, but also because it's the key (so to speak) to a fast, effective After Effects workflow.

The trouble is, you're pretty much stuck with the default shortcuts that ship with After Effects, unless you have the wherewithal to track down and modify the AE KB shortcut text file. This can be a substantial problem for non-US keyboards where certain critical keys (like the '~' key for maximizing windows) may be missing.

Enter Jeff Almasol, scripter par excellence. He's written a script called "Key'd Up" that brings a GUI to modify your KB shortcuts directly from within After Effects. You can find the script (in a package with a few other awesome bits 'n pieces) HERE.

Key'd Up works very well, and at the risk of sounding ungrateful (I'm so very not!) there are a couple of things missing from the script that would make it (to my mind) perfect. First, I'd like to be able to execute a KB shortcut within the script and have the result shown. For instance, if I were to hold down "ctrl+'C'", it would tell me that that shortcut is used to "Copy" a parameter. You CAN do this by selecting a command and changing to the KB shortcut that you'd like to identify, then hit the "Show Usage" button. But this method won't work if I want to rapidly find out what certain key combinations use.

Second, I'd also like to be able to search the 'Categories' and 'Commands'. For instance, AE CS3 replaced my much-loved 'ctrl+"G"' kb shortcut ('go to time') with something else. I'd like to change this behaviour back using Key'd Up, but I couldn't find the "Go To Time" command on the left pane. You'd think it would be in the "Timeline Navigation" category, but alas it's not (it's in the 'General' category, BTW). Again, you can use the 'show usage' button to eventually figure it out, but a quick search would definitely be handy.

All that said, it's a great script that I use often to enhance my workflow. Highly recommended.

And 15 years later...

... I discovered a super-duper, handy-dandy right-click functionality that has probably been in the After Effects application for years but that had for some reason eluded me.

When applying an effect, I often search for what I want in the "Effects and Presets" window (especially after they re-ordered all of the effects with AE v7, like moving 'Beam' from Effects-> Render to Effects-> Generate). But when I know the effect I want (say, Fast Blur) then it's quicker for me to go to the 'Effect-> Blurs...' menu along the top of the application window and choose it from there.

And here is what I discovered... This morning, I pushed the wrong button on my Wacom pen (equivalent to a right-click) while I was hovering over the Effect Control Window, and Lo! what should appear, but all of the effects, ready for me to select! No more do I need to mouse up to the top of the application window! They're all right there! Waiting! Whoo hoooo!

Alright, I know, I know... THAT is a head-slappingly obvious, you've-got-to-be-kidding-me, you-seriously-didn't-know-that? noob discovery. Of COURSE you'll get the freakin' effects when you right-click in the ECW. What else are you going to see? But let s/he who is without blindingly-obvious discoveries in spite of years of experience throw the first raspberry... I bet there are tons of little gems waiting for YOU too. After Effects is a pretty mature app, and it sometimes pays to do something just to see what happens, especially with the right-click button, and those little triangle flyout thingies up in the corner of most palette windows. Explore!

So that's my humbling little discovery 'o th' day that reminds me I'm human after all. What super-obvious gems have YOU discovered in the last little while?

Creating Trees in After Effects

A client came to me recently with a very interesting and challenging project. They wanted to create an instructional DVD and use as source the imagery that had already been created for the print campaign.

The predominant image was a leafy fall branch superimposed over a soft, billowy background. After some consultation, it was decided that I'd make the branch into a 3d tree, and use this 'world space' as the basis for the introduction.

I contemplated tackling the project in 3dsMax, and indeed spent a good deal of time modelling trees and playing around with shaders and textures and such. But in the end, I decided that it would tie into the print campaign best if I were to use the 'actual' imagery. I decided to tackle the project using ONLY After Effects.

Now as most of you know, AE is a "2.5d" application. The worldspace is 3d, but any imagery you have (discounting 3rd party applications such as Invigorator and such) is "flat". Much head scratching ensued, until I finally hit upon a technique that really sold "the look" that I was trying to achieve.

Take a look HERE to see what the fully rendered intro ended up looking like (MPEG4, h.264, 1:04, 7 megs) and then take a gander at THIS tutorial (QT, h264, 25:27 dur, 43.7 mb) that explains the technique in detail, plus walks you through the finished project.

NOTE: at 5:16 in the tut, there is a little editing jump. Cut out accidentally was the step where I changed all of the masks to 'subtract' mode.

In the tutorial I talk about how one can interactively control camera focus distance, and here are the instructions and the necessary expressions code so you can do it too (thanks Harry and Dan for whipping this one up!)

1) Make sure you've got a camera in your composition.
2) Create either a solid or a null and name it "focusControl" (note: you can name your solid when you create it, but to change a null you have to select it in your comp window and hit the 'enter' key. You can then type a new name for it.)
3) Make the solid/null a 3d object.
4) Apply this expression to the "Focus Distance" parameter of your camera:

length(thisComp.layer("focusControl").transform.position, toWorld([0,0,0]))

The camera will now focus wherever your null or solid happens to sit. This expression is golden when you're doing a lot of Depth of Field work.

Whipping Masks

Yes, I've wanted to discipline my masks in the past, especially when I had one mask that I wanted to use on multiple layers. Copy, paste. Copy, paste. Copy, paste. And then the art director tells me that they want to change the shape.

Gah!

And then AE CS3 came along. Plenty of great new features, but dig a little deeper and you'll see mention of a new capability a LONG time coming... the ability to pickwhip masks.

Whoo hoo! No more copying and pasting! Now when I need to use masks, I can create just ONE, and link it to any number of layers across any number of comps via expressions, specifically the pickwhip.

Click HERE for a very short overview of what it is and how it works (QT, h.264, 3:38, 3.8 mb).

AE shadows on Rendered 3d Clips

Take a close look at the header image. Nothing too special about it, is there? There is some AE text, and it's in a composition above a "wood textured" AE bitmap layer with some rendered 3d imagery composited over it all. Right? Wrong. There are only TWO elements in the scene: The text, and a 'flat' 3d image sequence rendered out of 3dsMax.

So how is the text throwing a shadow on a 'flat' image rendered out of a 3d application, matching the scene, AE objects and camera moves perfectly? Can't After Effects only throw shadows onto it's own layers? Maybe, or maybe not!

Thanks to the opportunities afforded artists by Boomerlabs' "Max2AE" plugin and some tricky compositing, you CAN cast shadows from your After Effects layers 'onto' imagery rendered out of3dsMax. You can also use the same technique if you use Cinema4d, Maya and other popular 3d applications that have integration with After Effects.

Click HERE to view a Quicktime tutorial walking you through the technique (QT, h.264, 16:27, 19.7 mb).

Retro 70's and 80's Logo Treatments

Kinda brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

Be A Good Parent To A Camera

This post is in reply to a number of people who sent me notes asking how I did the camera animation in THIS project. At issue is "how do you do a smooth camera move down, around and in towards an object".

There are a number of ways you can animate a camera (and, indeed, any object) in After Effects. We all know about keyframes, and you can be clever and use expressions to shimmy things about. But unless you've come to motion graphics via a 3d application, you may or may not know about the benefits offered by something called 'parenting'. Nope, not as in "change that smelly nappy" parenting. Parenting as in "hook that camera up to a 'null'".

It takes a pretty big leap of logic to figure it all out. It's easy enough to say "When parented, the camera will do whatever it's attached to does". But there's more to it than that, because while the camera is parented, IT TOO can be keyframed.

Take a look at THIS tutorial (QT h.264, 14:44 duration, 19.7 mb) which explains the basics of camera parenting.

Figuring Fields

If you live in NTSC Land, you've probably got a bit of a love-hate thing going on with video fields in your footage. Yes, it can make your renders look 'smoother' (some might argue 'unnaturally smooth'), but one must admit that dealing with interlaced video footage in After Effects can be a bit of a hit 'n miss affair.

The problem lies in dealing with fields in video footage that you've digitized and imported into After Effects for further manipulation. In a general sense, you'll have to de-interlace this footage so that when you tranform it (ie. scale, move etc.) you don't end up with a - pardon the technical term- wacky strobing pile of goo.

Now it's easy enough to de-interlace in AE: just go to the 'Interpret Footage Dialog box' (Ctrl+F with a footage item selected in the Project Window). There you can change the interpretation, or verify how AE has chosen to 'auto interpret'. Yes, usually AE is right, but if you're dealing with footage of unknown provenance, you HAVE to know how to confirm the field order interpretation, or risk the messy consequences.

Fortunately, it's an easy (if somewhat obscure) thing to do in After Effects. Take a look at THIS little clip (QT h.264, 8.8 mb, 6:25 duration) to see how it all works.

You Kern Do It!

Kerning. It may sound like the name of a German industrial town, but in fact it's an oft-overlooked aspect of graphic design that can give your work that extra bit of shine that clients are craving. And with the explosion of freeware fonts to be found underfoot everywhere, knowing how to fix a poorly-kerned typeface is a critical skill to have.

Most folks have heard tell of both Kerning and it's relative Tracking. I don't know how often I've heard people talking about letter spacing mention both- or either - interchangeably, but it must be pointed out that there is a significant difference between the two. Tracking refers to the space across a range of letters, while Kerning is the process of expanding or contracting space between specific letter pairs.

Mastering kerning in After Effects (and Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign etc.) doesn't just make your work look better. It also gives your visuality a workout at the same time by making you look at your typography in a much more critical manner.

Watch THIS video to see how kerning works in Adobe After Effects (14.5 MB, 14 minutes, Quicktime H.264) The information in this tutorial holds true for users of Photoshop and Illustrator as well.

Hot tip: you've all heard about how, when you're sitting with a client, you can raise your creative IQ a few notches by throwing in the term "Z-space" during a discussion. Watch the kerning tutorial, then ramp your cred up another notch by talking about "Pair-Kerning".

Font Resources

Joe S. on the After Effects List pointed out a Macworld article that neatly summarizes all the free and commercial font sites, plus links to font resources. Confirms my theory that DaFont is the first (and often only) place to go for typographic styles and inspiration.

Imagining AE v10

You've all probably seen the Microsoft 'Surface' demos floating around for the last little while, but a friend sent me this link that shows the system and it's workings with a bit more depth.

Now granted, this technology is- for the near future- aimed at the kiosk and POP crowd, but imagine (if you will) an environment where we can do 'our thing'... truly gestural "live" compositing, animation and presentation. I was particularly taken with the fellow working with the map at 1:35.

How might this affect our industry in the future? One might argue that in this day and age compositors and motion graphics folks create 'passive' media, owing primarily to the bandwidth and rendering requirements of our visuals. We create and publish, someone sits down and watches it.

It can, of course, be taken further: DVD authoring allows for a certain degree of interactivity, Flash offers a lot, and (ignoring immersive gaming worlds) you can find rudimentary interaction with pixel-based imagery using software such as Cult 3d. But unless you have some fancy widget like a wacom tablet, the 'gestural' interactivity (even in games) is pretty limited.

My work is very 'linear' right now. I create a show opening, it plays, the show starts and there ya go. But why should WE be the arbiters of what, when and how the viewer sees our work? I can envision a future when immersive environments (like that offered up by 'Surface') allow me to move beyond the temporal limitations of what I do and open my work up to direct interaction and exploration. The lines separating 'true' worlds like 3d games and 'my' business of motion graphics will blur, and the art of a "show opening" will certainly evolve. But it can really only be done with a hand (or two, or more) and 'Surface' is a "first" tentative step in that direction.

Max2AE

I've posted before about Boomerlabs' Max2AE plugin that integrates 3dsMax cameras, lights and layers with After Effects, but they've since released the 2.0 version and it certainly warrants another close look.

This particular post takes you through the creation of an entire project, from modelling in 3dsMax to ray traced materials, rendering issues to After Effects, and how to make it all work together. Click here to view the tutorial.

One thing: I do not have the final rendered movie to refer to (I mention it in the tutorial), but you can instead see elements of this look in my demo reel.

New to this release of Max2AE is the ability to go from After Effects to Max. This capability is something new and quite exciting: to the best of my knowledge, this is the ONLY way that you can take your AE worldspace and export it TO a 3d application if you decide that you want to add some extruded elements to an existing AE project. I'm still playing around with this capability and I don't touch upon it in this particular post, but keep your eyes pointed this way for a tut covering AE2Max one day soon.

UPDATE:
Matthew from Boomerlabs sent me a note pointing out a few changes to my tut:

1) Timestamp 22:13. You no longer need to create a layer to export a camera or use MAX2AE. MAX2AE is also available in the Utility Panel.

2) Timestamp 28:08. Maintain heirarchy will keep the existing object hierarchy when you export. If you turn this off, all objects _will_ properly move relative to each other and the world. However, their hierarchy is not maintained. For most users, keeping it on or off is no big deal. However, if you are only exporting _individual_ layers that aren't already arranged in the proper hierarchy in AE, it is best to turn this option OFF otherwise you will be importing motion that is relative to a parent that doesn't exist.

On Saving

Ok, we all know how to 'save' a project. File-> Save. Some people even know a tricky little keyboard shortcut that impresses clients and girl/boyfriends: Ctrl+'S' on the PC, or Apple+'S' on the Mac. But every now and again someone posts an urgent request on a mailing list or a forum- usually using a lot of capital leters- asking for "HELP! CAN'T OPEN MY AFTER EFFECTS PROJECT!! DEADLINE!!! URGENT!!!!"

Now I love After Effects. It's my number one tool, I use it every day, all day, it puts food in my family's stomach and it's paying the bank that owns my house. But it's also not perfect. Every now and again, weird things happen and if you've drawn the short karma stick that particular day, you might end up with a corrupted project. And a corrupted AE project often means that it can't be opened. At all. Ugh time.

There are a few little tricks you can try. First off, quit AE and re-start. If that doesn't work, shut down your entire computer and re-start. If that doesn't work, shut down your computer and your network/router and re-start. At this point, if it's not opening, re-start After Effects again, and instead of opening the project, 'Import' it into a blank AE project, which oddly often works wonders. If that doesn't work, shut down AE and try removing the Open GL plugin from your 'plugins' folder: this is (sadly) often the purveyor of much woe. Then try removing ALL of the (non-standard) plugins from your plugin folder. Moving on, if you were using an older version of After Effects (say, v.7), then try opening it in v.CS3 if you have access. Don't have the most recent version? Download the trial from Adobe.com: it works for 30 days. But note that you can't open AE projects in EARLIER versions of the software at all. At this point, if things are still not opening, try gnashing your teeth, waving wands over your monitors and burning incense. Then come back to this point, re-read the following words and follow this advice on your NEXT project...

Increment And Save.

Say it again. Then do it.

Look closely under your 'File' menu and you'll see a little item called, oddly, 'Increment and Save'. Never selected it? Try it and see what happens. If you have a project named, say, "Opening.aep", it'll save it without opening a 'save-as dialog box', and automatically append a number to it, in this case, "Opening 1.aep". Select it again and it'll become 'Opening 2.aep'. And on and on. You'll never save over a previous version of a project. Now, the question is, why? Let me tell you a little story...

I was called in to work in a shop to modify a project that one of their freelancers had originally produced. I sat down, asked where the project was and they showed me the directory. And there it was: something called "Network Package.aep". One project. I opened it up and discovered that it had comps for many show openings, backgrounds, lower 3rds, intersticials, segment spots, promos transitions... and on and on and on. There was ONE After Effects project, containing EVERYTHING for the look for an entire network. And no backup. Well, I admit that I shuddered. If this project were to get corrupted, or accidentally deleted, or saved over after it got 'reduced', or... or... well, you get the idea.

First thing I did was type Ctrl+Alt+Shift+"S". And there was "Network Package 2.aep". I breathed a little easier then. Now I certainly would NOT recommend putting so many elements together in a single AE project, and certainly not having a single version of the project file. That's a disaster waiting- nay, Begging!- to happen.

So, that's the AE keyboard shortcut. You'll find it in the "File" menu too. I use it on every project I'm working on. When? Well, that depends. Usually 'when I remember', and always when I realize that if a project were to get lost/deleted/corrupted then I'd cry like a baby. I often do the keyboard shortcut when I know a client is watching me so they can see how cool it is: so many fingers, pushing so many things at once... it's like that teensy blue power light on really expensive speakers: very impressive and professional looking, but in a confident and understated way.

Yes, you'll end up with a lot of versions, but think of it as "a lot of insurance" instead. Almost free insurance. Yes, it'll take up space on your drive, but you can always buy a new drive. Getting back hours/ days/ weeks of your life is a little more expensive.

Now if you're using AE7 or later, you'll see that there is an option in Preferences to "Auto-Save" (turned off by default). I personally never use it, mostly because "you never know". Like if you do 'reduce' a project, then you may lose the rest of the project next time you open it. I like to control when, where and what I save.

That should control any damage if you should ever find your project corrupted, plus it's just smart production practice. After all, you just never know. If need be, you can go back to the earlier version, and lose minutes or hours of your life at most.

Zaxwerks Layer Tools In Production

Working in 3d space in After Effects can be a tricky business at best, and downright confounding at worst. I recently completed a project for a client and dealt with a couple of these issues in a quick, streamlined way using a new 'plugin' from Zaxwerks called "Layer Tools".

At issue was how one can quickly distribute layers in 3d z-space such that there wasn't any 'ringing' when two intersecting layers fight for the same worldspace. Kind of a 'Layer Smackdown', one might say. I also talk about how "Layer Tools" gives you creative options that were previously achievable only through persistence and much time away from family and friends.

Take a look at the finished animation here (11 megs, h.264, 1:20). Then take a look at this tutorial which describes how I used "Layer Tools" to overcome a couple of technical and creative hurdles.

Ira Glass on Getting Started

A client sent me a link to this inspirational post. If you want to view all four episodes, check them out here.

Animating 3d Pie Charts

If you spend any time working the corporate graphics side of the biz, it's only a matter of time before someone wants you to show data in an interesting manner. Bring on the pie charts!

It's a bit of a mind-bender how to even create a pie chart in After Effects, though, unless you're lucky enough to own a copy of Digital Anarchy's 'Data Animator' plugin package. So for those of us struggling without, here is one (well, three, actually) ways to make that data look great.

Each stage steps up the 'quality' quotient. The first part describes how to create a simple, flat, animating pie chart using no third party effects. If you're happy with it, then you're done! But if you want to up the production value a bit, the next section covers how you can use Zaxwerks Invigorator to extrude the chart, giving it depth. Finally, the third part shows you how you can use Zaxwerks' new Layer Warp plugin to bring the data on (and off) in an interesting manner.

Here is a link to the 'finished' clip, showing what you will be able to accomplish (QT, Pjpeg, 7 sec., 3.5 megs). Then take a look at this tutorial explaining how to do it (QT, h264, 26:25, 26 megs). Finally, you can download the project file here (AE v7, Zaxwerks Invigorator v4 (optional), Zaxwerks Layer Warp v1 (optional), 25 kb)

Zaxwerks Releases Layer/Grid Warp

Zaxwerks today officially released their Layer Warp and Grid Warp plugin pack. This is a nice little tool that I covered in this post last week, and more info can now be found at the Zaxwerks website here. It's retailing for USD$199, and is available immediately as a download.