Blog

Inside the Nebulae

2012-01-04T17:00:22Z

An imagination of flying in the gas clouds of space.

Actual images of nebulas taken with the Hubble space telescope were combined in After Effects with CG gas clouds and stars made using Trapcode Form and Starglow.

Music: We Own The Sky by M83

The image in the first and second part is from the Eagle Nebula. Image by NASA / Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen. The third is the Horsehead Nebula. Image by NASA. The fourth is the Omega Nebula. Image by NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU).

Tutorial Available! And AE project file for download.

DreamWorks Animation - Kung Fu Panda 2

2011-12-13T19:10:44Z

Po Finds the Truth – Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

This post was written by Sarah Wise for Red Giant's Blog. See original post.

When Kung Fu Panda first hit cinemas in 2008 we fell in love with martial arts misfit Po the Panda and the Furious Five as they fought and defeated the evil Tai Lung. But this year the challenge for the teams at DreamWorks was how to create the second installment and build on the successes of the first film.

In Kung Fu Panda 2, not only have the characters developed, but the film itself has upped its game with more explosions, more chases and more visual excitement – all thanks to the dedicated VFX teams at DreamWorks.

Lead After Effects animator at DreamWorks, Daniel Hashimoto and his close-knit team of AE artists have brought amazing impact to some of the film’s most memorable sequences, using Trapcode Particular and Form.

Po Finds the Truth (2) – Image courtesy of DreamWorks AnimationDaniel told us: “One of the film’s most dramatic sequences – “Po Finds the Truth” – pulled out all the stops. In this sequence, which involves a village on fire near the snowy woods, Form and Particular were used to create snow, embers, smoke clouds, and a highly-stylized flame effect. The customization and versatility of Particular made it a very powerful tool to have at our disposal. Our Visual Development Artists painted the stylized effects which we wanted to bring to life in the 2D sequences, but not just in 2D, but also in stereoscopic 3D**. And since Particular, Form and Horizon all work within a 3D environment, they were ideal for the look we wanted to achieve.

** Check out Episode 59 of Red Giant TV to learn about using Trapcode Software to create Stereoscopic 3D effects.

Learn more about DreamWorks Animation HERE.

Check out this amazing downloadable preset that tries to mimic this effect.

Maintenance release: Form 2.0.2 and Lux 1.2.2

2011-10-31T18:18:39Z

A number of fixes including better OBJ import. More info and downloads

Also, here is a new tutorial on C4D OBJ to Trapcode Form.

Maintenance release: Form 2.0.1 and Lux 1.2.1

2011-09-21T18:11:00Z

We've fixed some bugs and added an "Invert Z" option for the OBJ's in Form 2.0. Read more and download the update here.

Cassidy Bisher

2011-09-15T11:12:45Z

Impressive work by Cassidy Bisher. He set out to explore the new .OBJ support in Trapcode Form 2.0 and created this lovely piece.

Cassidy notes:

"Some of the models that were imported into form were designed by Teddy Bodien (my partner). They were then exported to the right format, .obj, by Breyon Bradford (my other partner)

Harry Frank gave us insight on how to prepare the .obj file. The simple solution is to subdivide the 3D object more. Form renders a particle at each vertex. So, if you can add more and more subdivisions (more vertices), the object will have more visible particles in Form.

People are always asking me how I do my camera moves. For me it depends on what I want to do... do I use nulls and parent the camera to them or use the simple orbit camera tool. Sometimes it's a combination of both. When I first started using AE my mistake was using to many keyframes for the camera position, the animation would feel clunky & awkward. It wasn't until I started using the graph editor in AE to tweak the keyframes in combination with using less keyframes that the animation started looking more smooth, flowing and graceful.

Effects used were: Trapcode Form, Trapcode Lux, Knoll Light Factory (I put a box blur on the knoll light factory layer to make it less harsh and more organic), a 4 color gradient with only around 10 to 20 percent opacity was used on top of all the other layers.

Music Artist: Aphex Twin (Petiatil Cx Htdui)"

DUBSTEP GUNS by Corridor Digital

2011-09-15T11:00:00Z

Amazing production values in this fun, creative action clip by the awesome guys at Corridor Digital. Uses Trapcode Form for the lasers. Music by Klaypex. Check out the making of:

And finally a tutorial by Vinhson Nguyen on creating the laser in After Effects using Trapcode Form:

Audio-Kinetic Structure: Sound Thing

2011-09-01T17:52:00Z

iTunes Visualizer plug-in for Mac OS X. Made this a while back. It's really hard to screencapture this visualizer, but there is a lame attempt:

Better to get the real plugin and run (if you have a Mac!)

Download: SoundThing.bundle.zip

Another iTunes visualizer is Klangfarbe, it has a better screencap video and more install instructions.

Trapcode Form 2.0 released!

2011-08-23T23:02:01Z

Getting started tutorial by Harry Frank

Download/Buy from Red Giant Software

Downloadable example AEPs

LANDESCAPE teaser by John H. King

2011-06-25T20:50:00Z

Peder Norrby comments: "Exceptional work from John H. King. He seems to use matchmoving to integrate wonderful abstract Trapcode Particular elements into city scenes. One impressive thing is how he works with light so that the sun seems to illuminate and shine through the elements and shadows seem to be cast."

John H. King writes:

"At the very end of all things, like in the first beginning, No one knows
Everything is about to be written.

So, slowly, the vail of illusion fades out.

Thoughts and memories mix up, an immutable dance of time, space, shadow and light, and in the core of vacuity, the invisible world rebirth.

The world that never was."

Teaser for a short movie I'm working on for months now on my personal free time. Still a lot of work to do... Hope to release a Final cut on the fall 2011. After so many hours working on it, just sharing some of the shots! Hope you will like the mood of the "invisible".

Adobe After Effects CS5
Particular 2.1
5D Mark II
The priceless support from Somepling
Ten thousand cups of Coffee

J.H.K 2011

Afloat by Barbecue

2011-06-25T20:46:57Z

An amazing piece by German shop Barbecue.

Barbecue notes:

"The Setup are 3 Layers with a 7000*7000 particles wide Form. Every Form instance has also two additional layers in Z. At the end we would tweak the setup a little and let it render for 5000 frames. That took 12-24 hours on a 8 core (16 instance) MacPro. After 4 weeks we had enough footage to pick the best parts and edit the material."

Peder Norrby notes: "This is mind-blowing work by Barbecue. Warning Kids! Don't expect to create stuff like this if you are a newbie at Trapcode, these guys are super pro's. They blow my mind, and I created the software!"