After Effects News

Tutorials

Creating mattes and compositing large scale explosions in After Effects

ActionVFX has recently released two tutorials demonstrating how to create a composite using their explosion stock footage in After Effects. Creating Mattes in After Effects demonstrates how to create masks in After Effects so that layers can be placed behind items on a backplate. This is followed by Compositing Large Scale Explosions that uses the mattes to add stock explosion footage and blend it against a bright sky. Both tutorial provide the backplates required (but not the explosion asset) should you like to follow along.

Add Comment | Posted Wed Jan 24, 2018

After Effects

Adobe updates Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, and Media Encoder

Adobe has announced updates to Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, and Media Encoder, bringing several new features, enhancements and bug fixes. Photoshop gets the new Select Subject feature, an AI powered selection tool that enable users to isolate prominent objects in one click and then refine the selection using standard tools. To go alongside this there are some improvements to Select and Mask tools including a new slider that allows users to adjust the amount of colour decontamination that's applied to an image. Finally hardware support is improved with improvements to the scaling of the UI on high resolution monitors and improved integration with Microsoft Dial.

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| Posted Wed Jan 24, 2018

Site News

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The very best of wishes to all our readers and fellow artists from the CGPress team.

Comments (12) | Posted Fri Dec 22, 2017

Plugin News

RenderGarden released for AE promising up to 3x increases in render speeds

ToolFarm has released RenderGarden a new tool for Adobe After Effects that divides a composition into a specified number of segments and then renders them to multiple background command line windows. This enables the user to take full advantage of their available CPU cores. Other features include: (more...)

| Posted Thu Nov 30, 2017

Reels

Igor Tsyba’s Magic Wand games reel

Igor Tsyba has released a reel of his special effects work for the mobile game Magic Wand. Nearly all of the VFX were created in 3DS Max using Particle Flow and assembled in After Effects. Igor proudly proclaims that 98% of the work was made without the aid of scripts and plugins. Watch it on Vimeo.

| Posted Mon Nov 13, 2017

After Effects

OLM release new toon style Blur, Radial Blur and Directional Blur plugins for After Effects

OLM has released 3 new plugins for After Effects that create blur, radial blur and direction blur effects specifically designed for use with 2D animations, although they also may be useful for other types of production. The effect differs from a standard blur as it's anisotropic and retains the color intensity and detail from the source image. Optionally noise can be added to create cartoon motion lines. The 3 plugins are a part of the OLM Open tools project, a collection of free tools for Maya and After Effects used in production at OLM digital. Find out more and download the plugins from OLM's website.

| Posted Fri Nov 10, 2017

Plugin News

Universe 2.2 released

Red Giant has released an update to Universe, its suite of GPU accelerated plugins for editors and motion graphics artists. Version 2.2 updates the VHS and Retrograde effects and adds 11 new transitions, including: (more...)

| Posted Thu Nov 9, 2017

3DS Max Scripts

AE Transfer 1.5 released

Denis Lesnykh has released version 1.5 of his script for exporting objects and their parameters from 3DS Max to Adobe After Effects. AE Transfer allows you to export one or more objects using either a JSX file or via the clipboard. Supported objects and parameters include:

Target Camera: Position, target position, roll, FOV, and target distance. Becomes a two node camera layer in After Effects.
Free Camera: Position, rotation, FOV, target distance. Becomes a single node camera layer in After Effects.
Lights: Position, target position, intensity. Becomes a light layer in After Effects
Plane: Position, pivot, scale, rotation. Becomes a solid, shape or null layer in After Effects.
Other objects: Position, scale, rotation. Becomes a null layer in After Effects.

The script costs $5 and can be licensed on two machines. Fine out more on the AE Transfer website.

| Posted Mon Oct 30, 2017