Category Archives: After Effects

Nov 08 2013
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After Effects

After Effects 12.1 adds a user scripts folder. No more admin passwords needed!

Freelancers rejoice!

Theres nothing worse than having to get the IT guy to add a script for you or perhaps unlock the Scripts folder thats located deep on your system drive.

But now with the AE 12.1 update, there is now a scripts folder located next to your prefs file.

you can reveal that directory by going to the preferences->general and clicking “Reveal Preferences in Finder.”

located in your user folder on mac…
~/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/12.1/Scripts

or on windows …
~\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\12.1\Scripts

place your scripts and ScriptUI folder and scripts in here and After Effects 12.1 will load them on the next launch

Now go to aescripts.com to get some great scripts!

May 08 2012
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After Effects, CS6

Faster raytracing in CS6 while rendering in the background… YMMV

Got CUDA?
If you have an approved Graphics Card it will greatly increase the speed and pleasure level when working with the new Raytrace Renderer in CS6.

One other excellent new feature of CS6 is the ability to cache your current work are in the background. Rendering with Multiprocessing also continues to be improved in CS6.

However, any background rendering, such as the new BG caching, multiprocess rendering, terminal rendering, etc, are not currently compatible with CUDA Raytracing. If you are using the raytracer you must be filling your cache or rendering from within the app.

There is a workaround for those that have a render farm with compatible graphics cards, or wish to be daring and want to enable GPU rendering in the background. This is a workaround because it is not yet officially supported

1. Open Debug Database.txt in application pref folder.

2. Search for RayTracerGpuDisabledForHeadless in the file. Default value of this flag is true. Set it to false to use GPU Picasso renderer in headless AE.

Apr 26 2012
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After Effects, FXPHD

Empire State Building Helicopter plate for AFX218

 

This is one of my favorite shots from our helicopter shoot for the AFX218 course at fxphd.com

We shot on RED Epic at 5K, HDRx, with an Angenieux 15-40mm lens

 

Apr 26 2012
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After Effects

“Bending” an extruded shape layer in CS6

Last night on #Postchat the amazing @AdobeAE answered a plethora of questions about the newest release of After Effects CS6.

One question that came up was if you can bend a 3d extruded layer. The answer is No.
You can now bend a 2d layer till it becomes a half cylinder, but the 3D extrusions do not have that option.

Depending how far you need to go there are some workarounds

This was a quick test of an element for the course over at FXPHD.com

If you create a small span. Then a null and made it 3D. adjust the rotation and scaling of the null a bit and then parent the extrusion to the null it will inherit those transforms as a skew. Duplicate the span, offset, parent to the original. Then dupe, option parent. This will create a 3rd span with the same offset as the 2nd. Keep duplicating and parenting…

After you have enough spans (you can always add more later) play with the transforms of all the spans simultaneous to create a bend, or some other crazy shapes and animations

Here is a quick screencap showing how the slide can bend

 

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