someone posted on the AFX CS3 forum about wishlists so i thought about it for a couple of minutets and began... as far as the UI goes see my thoughts an ae8 at http://blogs.creativecow.net/node/145 and a bit of rethinking on the UI an expressions panel/editor/viewer - being able to create/edit expressions with code completion much like in many programming environments. a viewer that shows expressions and the connections/relationships to other objects (much like the flowchart) improved graph editor/animation controls - having the ability to manipulate x/y/z postions in the graph editor just as you can x,y,z rotation(as the are separate...
BCM has completed a new historical animation for Good Eats with Alton Brown on the Food Network. Artists Walter Biscardi, Jr., Aaron Stewart and Brian Mead worked closely with Alton Brown and producer Dana Popoff to create the latest in a series of historical animation that have been created for the Good Eats. This time it's a look at crackers, which have a surprisingly interesting story to tell! Animated by Biscardi in 720p HD, the one minute animation will appear in an upcoming episode in Winter 2008. Tools used: Photoshop, After Effects, Canon 30D camera, Crackers....
Biscardi Creative Media recently completed a series of animated elements for EyeOn Creative. The animations are used in short video presentations for children that all feature a Christian theme. Artists Walter Biscardi, Jr. and Aaron Stewart worked with EyeOn editor Roger Mahr to develop and complete the animations for four videos. Tools used: Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro....
There, I said it. I hate Adobe's Activation procedure. Yes, I understand you have to protect your software from all the complete morons and low-lifes who can't pony up the money to purchase software legitimately, but geez, do you have to make this procedure so asinine that it affects legitimate purchases? Three weeks ago I installed Apple OS 10.5 on a fresh hard drive on my editing workstation. A day later I installed my copy of the Production Premium Package CS3 to do some After Effects work. The Activation screen obviously pops up, I tell it to go ahead, but...
So I have set my sites on jobs when I graduate. It's pretty clear I'm not going to be inducted to the orphanage as their newest lead compositor straight out of college, not that it hurts to dream mind you, but it certainly hurts to expect such things. So I've been focusing on a much more realistic vacancy: Roto Artist. For those of you who don't know (and I'm assuming thats very very very few of you) roto, or rotoscoping is the art of separating elements from shot footage with the use of mattes drawn and animated by a...
This portion of my three-part catch-up blogs focuses on the audio portion of my music video project. I have read many tutorials and seen just about every podcast on how to lip-sync animation to audio in After Effects. Alas, after much trial and error, none of those methods worked. It wasn t until I got a response on Adobe s Audition forums , that I was given a somewhat workable solution. What I wanted to do is have the main beat to the song be the rhythm to the video. And to be over-literal, have a clock ticking to the...
This is my first Blog ever! And creative cow rocks. Many thanks to creativecow and the great team behind it. After effects and Cinema 4D - I have learnt from the many podcasts, posts and tutorials on this site. So, I start with a recent model that I did. I guess its better late than never to start a blog. I hope to use this platform to share my work and tricks that I have learnt over the last few years, All thanks to creativecow! I am sure, 2008 is going to be a rocking year and we will have...
Hi everyone - I ve been pretty silent for the last few months because I ve been hard at work on a new Creative Cow Master Series DVD - Internet Killed the Video Star: A guide to Creating Video for the Web. The 4.5 hour DVD will be available very shortly. Feel free to spread the word. Here s the basic description of the DVD: Whether you’re posting video for a client, putting your demo reel on-line, creating a video podcast, or building video training for the web, the Internet is conspiring to keep your work from looking its best....
A few weeks ago we drove up to Burbank and shot Outdoor Channel show host Michael Waddell on a green screen for Outdoor Channel Broadband ( outdoorchannel.tv ) and OutdoorChannel.com site tutorials. I shot on Sony HDCAM and composited the pieces together in After Effects. Big ups to Rich Sinatra for virtually creating a copy of our entire site from within After Effects - he did all the dirty work and I just had to tweak some of the changes that have been made to our site in the last few months. Also, John Beattie recorded sound and produced the...
Posted by Martin: After Effects Links: A new white page on Color Management in After Effects. Lightroom Links: Jack Nack at Adobe has some updated Podcasts. Photography Links: Shoot better NOT more says Fololia founder. (Easier said than done I must say...) Photography contest sponsored by Canon. Thanks to Photography Contest for the Heads up! You can win some serious Canon gear with this one! A GREAT post over at photopreneaur about how to get your photography business in the news. Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Links: Bill Hunt again explains his support of Blu-Ray. His thinking has a lot of influence on my...
So, I got a new computer and needed to buy a Keyboard. The cheapest one they had at the store with a full sized backspace key (yeah - I make enough typing mistakes that it warrants a BIG key) was the Microsoft Digital Media Pro Keyboard. Anyway, I tested the keyboard on an old PC, installing the drivers and hardware, and it worked pretty well, so I moved it to the new one. But then when I opened AE, the interface was behaving badly. At first I though I had a bad install (new computer, new install of AE),...
In response to a post on the Creative Cow Final Cut Pro Forum, my choice for a control surface to run all Pro Apps on a Mac is a Wacom tablet. I run a 9x12 Intuos 3 in my suite and I just can t see working without one. For one thing, carpel tunnel syndrome just doesn t happen with a tablet, so you can work your 14 - 20 hour days and have no wrist pain. Second you get your entire workspace right on your tablet so there s no pick up the mouse and drag a second time...
As Chi-Ho Lee noted on the Final Cut Pro forum today, Quicktime 7.1.6 has been released in anticipation of Final Cut Studio 2 and you can now read timecode in the Quicktime Player. Wow! Finally! Not sure why it took so long, but here s the proof. If you click on the running time you now get a drop down box which gives you three choices of the Standard Running Time, Timecode and Frame Number. Here s the clip now showing the original timecode off the camera tape. VERY cool and now anyone with Quicktime Player can accurately see timecodes...
Every once in a while you read about something that makes you want to be a better person. I just read that Peder Norby (of Trapcode) is giving an Award of Excellence, which includes $10,000, to Ken Perlin, inventor of the algorithm called Perlin Noise. Many of the effects we use utilize this algorithm - for example, in Maya there s a texture called Perlin Noise, which is used to generate noise textures and displacement maps, and can be used for highly realistic effects through the appearance “randomness.” It s my understanding that the Perlin Algorithm is also...
I returned back home from Las Vegas and NAB on Tuesday night after spending 2 1/2 days in the City of Sin, my last few hours being spent at the wonderful Hofbräuhaus next to the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino where I, along with coworkers and friends, downed their great tasting German lager out of ridiculously massive 1 liter glass steins while enjoying what I have to imagine is "classic" Bavarian folk music. After having a few days back home to digest what I saw and learned (not to mention playing catch up on the current show I'm editing for...
[Verified for enough clarity] When does awesome become a nightmare? So, there I was. Just over a year left to graduate with a Bachelor s in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Most of my friends knew that I was really into the film classes and artist video classes I was/had taken. A friend and his bandmates asked me if I d be willing make a music video for them. Quick background info: at the time, I just turned 29; the youngest guy in the band was in his mid-30s; and, none of them had ever seen my...
... at least for this project. While tweaking the markers I had set up in Audition of the demo version of the song, Audition crashed. Like a first-time user, I just glanced at the screen and thought that my changes before the crash were still there and saved the file instead of Save As... . I was using the Spectral Display in Audition to see where the kick drum hit in the audio since I want to make my animation sync with the music. When I looked at the Spectral Display of the audio, nothing was there. So, I reinstalled...
I m working the show floor here at NAB (with wondertouch software), and I had a chance to talk with Zax Dow about his new AE plug-in 3D Warps. http://zaxwerks.com/3dwarps/index.shtml I haven t had a chance to try it out myself, but this could potentially bring about the end to the age-old question - How do I make 3D ribbons in AE? It looks like Zaxwerks 3D warps may be the answer. Hopefully they ll have some examples of this on the site soon. Keep your eyes open for this monumental plugin. Another cool thing coming out shortly is Digital Anarchy...
(this is not a negative post about ae cs3, just some thoughts that may bring about discussion for future improvements) so v7 gave us a much improved, clean interface and really tried to bring the usability of the application to a new level (which i believe it did) there was much kicking and screaming, but i think once the dust settled, the majority was happy. however, to me one major usability issue has been the text animators. they dont fit in to the old AFX animation paradigm, which is fine. And while they are a great addition, the usability aspect...
Well here are some images for those of you who aren t able to be here. I ll give my full verbal breakdown a little bit later... I m too tired to get into it right now......
Among all of the craziness happening in film and digital video, organization is still king. Being organized (and knowing how to) is a must for any one working in post-production. Yet so many times I see friends with terribly allocated scratch disks, disastrous file names, and scattered media. I used to be bad too, but I have seen the light and I come here today to share it with you. The Folders The key to any decent folder organization is to keep things separated. Each file type needs its own folder. FCP project files go into the "FCP files" folder,...
My my, the public beta of After Effects CS3 gets released AND Apple anounces Motion 3 . Go feast your eyes ! I've never played with Motion (I bought FCP & DVDSP, and never felt the need to upgrade to the studio), although I've sometimes wondered if Motion wasn't a better tool for some simple jobs. But looking at the pressreleases begs the question: is Motion still AE's little brother ? It used to look and feel like an iApp that found it's way in a pro-studio, but here are some observations on it's latest incarnation: The biggest surprise for...
Well folks, NAB 2007 is upon us and I hope to be able to meet some of you. So if you re going to Las Vegas, here is where you ll definitely find me! Sunday April 15 - Apple Event AM, Panasonic Event PM Monday April 16 - AJA Booth all day, Booth SL6113 directly across from Apple. Tuesday April 17 - AJA Booth AM, Booth SL6113. Creative Cow booth PM, Booth SL2626. Between Adobe and Grass Valley (on your right as you walk to the Apple booth.) Wednesday, April 18 - Presenting HD Finishing in Final Cut Pro as...
One of my nags with After Effects has always been the drop-shadow effect. It just seems so limited, and even worse: so slow to render... Looks like it still uses the old Gaussian blur algorithm instead of the Fast Blur. So I've gotten in the habit of creating my own Drop shadow formulas, using a combination of Tint, and any combinations of Blur I like, Fast, Directional, Radial, or sometimes even Trapcode's Starglow set to dark colors. But then I wind up with 2 copies of every layer, right ? That's where CC Composite steps in: you can use it to composite your original...
So as many of you know, in addition to being an editor and owner of Biscardi Creative Media, I m also the animator for the Food Network s Good Eats. As such, most of our animations are based on food or food history. Now generally I rely on clip art / artwork books, websites like clipart.com and istockphoto.com along with my own photographs of headshots and hands to pull together the necessary elements for the script. But there are times when you just have to take matters into your own hands. Take our latest animation for example, it referenced a...
I went to another blog that explained the value of rubber keyboard covers for different programs. I thought that is a very novel idea, protection plus all the shortcut key labels. WRONG!!!! As I did a search I find they are only made for Apple products. Why hasn t someone done this for PC s. It seems more and more editing programs are being built for PC s many of which don t even have an Apple counterpart. No one has thought about creating keyboard covers for PC s? That seems really strange. Charlie...
I have a blog now, so I thought I would take you guys and gals into the Edit Suite and let y'all know what we're working on at Biscardi Creative Media. 2/28/2007 , Cutting Episode 4 of the environment series, "Assignment Earth" and this episode focuses on the Mekong River in Thailand. Footage is stunning HD shot by Roger Herr of Atlanta who traveled to Thailand with Producer / Host Gary Strieker. Roger and Gary took a Sony Z1 HDV camera with them because a lot of travel was via very small boat on the Mekong and if they were...
Interesting find today while doing some test renders in After Effects. I'm working on a DVCPro HD 1080i/60 project in Final Cut Pro which means I'm working with a real frame size of 1280x1080. It's an anamorphic format which FCP scales back out to 1920x1080 during playback. Well in After Effects I'm doing a series of animated maps and found that my graphics were more easy to position in 1920x1080 comps. My idea was to get everything positioned, and then switch the Comp Size to 1280x1080 DVCPro HD to do the final render. Problem was, my entire animation is in...
OK, so this isn't exactly After Effects, but I use their stuff with AE... Wondertouch just released some new Pro emitters for particleIllusion 3. I gotta say - man, these are cool. The 3 new libraries are mostly motion graphic elements, and I already have plans for them. BIG PLANS!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Ok. Well seriously. They’re pretty cool. You can find them at: http://wondertouch.com/ Don't be lazy. Go look....
Well, gosh darn it. I was all excited because I'm ready to buy my new Mac Pro for running both windows and Mac OSX with 8 GB or RAM. That would make After Effects scream and Nucleo Pro a pure dream to work with. But I can't find a full version of XP Pro 64-bit anywhere. After a fruitless on-line search and calls to local stores with no luck, I spent the last hour on hold with different departments at Microsoft, and it appears that they do not sell it anymore. Unfortunately, Vista is not yet ready to run on...
