In this episode of Red Giant TV, I’ll shows you how to re-create the Music-to-Light effect (seen last season on Heroes), using Trapcode Particular 2. This is a deep exploration of the extremely powerful Aux System in Particular.

Watch the tutorial on RGTV

I was immediately struck by the incredible textures found all over the island. Not to turn the day into a texture exploration, I snapped a just few decent photos in an attempt to post a collection of textures from the walls of this near century-old San Francisco prison.

I shot more stuff, but you’ll see that turning up elsewhere.

Download the textures here

Dear visitors and loyal fans,

As many of you well know, my current professional career is split between two distinct sides of the same coin. One one side, I mostly spend my days working as a freelance motion designer. This has garnered many memorable experiences of working with tremendously talented people — from my roots, working with the unrelenting post-production and design professionals of Detroit, to Digital Kitchen in Chicago’s cold winter, and on to great studios like Blur Studio here in sunny LA. From National Geographic, to NBC, to TV Land, I’ve seen all the nooks and crannies of the life that a motion designer can see. But I’ve reached a point where adding one more big name isn’t going to improve anything for me, especially my happiness.

On that other side of the coin, I’ve been involved with communities that focus on learning, sharing, connecting and growing as a motion designer and visual effects artist. Graymachine and The Motion Exchange have been very personal endeavors of mine, and I have thoroughly enjoyed learning and growing, side-by-side with you.

When I study the two sides of my career coin, it is now obvious what has always brought me more joy. I’ve learned that happiness is not found along the path of making reality show graphics, sizzle reels, or commercials for sugar water. It is not found in the daily stress of courting new clients, while trying to get existing clients to pay their overdue invoices, while juggling three jobs that are all over budget. It is not found in a job where last minute changes and late nights that keep me from reading my son a bedtime story.

I’ve only been bestowed a small number of gifts in life, among them my wonderful wife and awesome little boy. But, another is my ability to understand the ambiguous, imagine the creative, and bridge the two together. I’m somehow also able to put this process into words for others to understand. But I fear, if I continue to use my talents to create cultural pollution for television, I’ll have little to show as a legacy for myself, nor will I feel like I’ve done much good with my time on this planet. Nearing my 37th year on Earth, it’s time to make a change.
In short, I am largely leaving the world of freelance motion design. I am proud to announce that I will be joining Red Giant Software on a full-time basis. Since this career epiphany hit me last Fall, I had been determined to find a partner that sees eye-to-eye with what I want to accomplish in my career, and support what I value in life. I am so grateful to have been working with this great company for years, and I am humbled to be extended an invitation to join them.
In partnering with RGS, my efforts will be focused on helping you find the right tool or idea for your next job, film or project. And no other company represents this set of artistic set of tools more completely, especially with what we have collectively planned for 2010.  I’m excited to share this new opportunity with you. So, follow me, and I will continue to do what I do here — help others — without the hurried pressure to “get back to work.”

So what does this mean for graymachine?

It means more time to devote to what made graymachine a useful resource for the community in the first place. You’ll see more tutorials, free content, templates and news. But, instead of just seeing it here,  you’ll see it in other places too. You might see some products become exclusive to RGS, and new products mostly be for RGS. But, honestly… how often has something I’ve done NOT centered around Red Giant products?

So, stick around and you’ll see great things. Until then, talk to you soon!

Harry

Introducing Trapcode Particular Presets: Holiday

Red Giant and I got together for a bit of holiday cheer this season. They had an idea to create some festive and useful compositions for the holiday seasons. With time of the essence as the holiday lights are already burning full throttle, I quickly turned around a set of 55 AE CS3 compositions featuring a mix of motion backgrounds, reveals, type compositions, using a number of AE and 3D pre-rendered elements.

Visit Red Giant Software to check out the package

I realize that expressions can be daunting, and some would rather copy and past useful code rather than learn the language. That’s cool with me. Therefore, I’d like to share with you my 5 favorite expressions. These are expressions I use in just about every project, and I consider them to be incredible workflow enhancements.

Download them as FFX presets for AE CS3 here.

Are you looking to learn more about After Effects Expressions? Check out my complete training series on the topic in the graymachine store.

1. Intertial Bounce

Essentially, Inertial Bounce creates a bouncing motion of any parameter from one keyframe to the next, based on its velocity. Being that true “velocity” includes the vector (or traveling direction in 3D space), the bounce happens in whatever direction the object is traveling. This also accounts for scalar or array values, so you’ll find that this expression works just as well on 2D rotation as it does on 3D position. It’s very cool!

This expression is a bit of a community effort. The seeds were certainly planted by the great Dan Ebberts, and then a modified version was posted on mograph.net. Although I’ve made a slight modification to it to make it a little more user friendly, it’s nothing that I will lay claim to as my own code. Nonetheless, it’s a great helper and I use it all the time.

Modify “amp” for the amplitude or how much bounce is present. The variable “freq” is the frequency, or how frequently the bounce occurs. The “decay” is like a friction or mass setting, a higher value means a shorter decay over time.

amp = .1;
freq = 2.0;
decay = 2.0;

n = 0;
if (numKeys > 0){
n = nearestKey(time).index;
if (key(n).time > time){
n--;
}}

if (n == 0){ t = 0;
}else{
t = time - key(n).time;
}

if (n > 0){
v = velocityAtTime(key(n).time - thisComp.frameDuration/10);
value + v*amp*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);
}else{value}

2. Autofade

This is nothing brilliant, but it is something I wrote and use all the time. You’ll also find something similar in the After Effects preset “Behaviors” called Fade In + Out, which uses the Solid Composite effect and a custom interface. But, I like a simpler version that I use on Opacity.

This is a slightly enhanced version that I’d revamped since I posted it in the “Auto Slideshow” presets and added the option to use markers. If there are no markers, the transition variable is used (where is says “transition=20″, this is in frames.) If there are *2* markers, the first marker is used for end point of the fade in, and the second marker is used to define the start of the fade out.

//Autofade: Add to opacity

transition = 20;       // transition time in frames
if (marker.numKeys<2){
tSecs = transition / ( 1 / thisComp.frameDuration); // convert to seconds
linear(time, inPoint, inPoint + tSecs, 0, 100) - linear(time, outPoint - tSecs, outPoint, 0, 100)
}else{
linear(time, inPoint, marker.key(1).time, 0, 100) - linear(time, marker.key(2).time, outPoint, 0, 100)
}

3. Snap Zoom In/Out

This is a cool expression to use on text. It creates a “snap” zoom on the in and out of the layer by modifying scale.

//Snap zoom in and out: apply to scale
snapScale = 300; //percent of scale to zoom

trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;
inTrans  = easeOut(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [snapScale,snapScale], [0,0]);
outTrans = easeIn(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans, [0,0], [snapScale, snapScale]);
value+ inTrans + outTrans

If you prefer to use Z space position instead of scale, try this one:

zoom = 5000; //distance to zoom
trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;

inTrans  = easeIn(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [0,0,zoom], [0,0,0]);
outTrans = easeOut(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans*2, [0,0,0], [0,0,zoom]);
value+ inTrans - outTrans

4. Y Axis Jitter

This is from Lesson 5 of my expressions series. This creates a random jittery motion in the Y axis. You can modify probability to make or less jitter, and the pos variable to define how large the jitter is.

// Y Axis Jitter
probability = 8 ;  //higher is less likely
pos = 50;

val  = random(-probability-2, 1);
m = clamp(val, 0, 1);
y = wiggle(10, pos*m)-position;
value + [0, y[1]]

5 . toComp

This one you’ll have to watch a short tutorial for here, and you can read a lot more about it at motionscript.com. The idea is that you can apply the equivalent 3D location to any 2D location. This might not sound exciting. But, think of all the 2D parameters out there, like lens flare location, Shine source, beams, etc. It is probably my most commonly used expression.

But, the basic idea is this:

layer = thisComp.layer("Null 1")
layer.toComp([0,0,0])

Note: I intentionally left off the semicolon, as you techinically don’t need it in this case. Therefore, all you need to do is pickwhip your layer where the “layer =” variable is.

The issue of how After Effects uses RAM is one of those topics that seems to get asked just about every forum, at least once a week. I’d like to clarify some of the confusion on this.

The fundamental issue revolves around the following issues:

• Despite the amount of RAM one has in their computer, when launching After Effects the splash window (or the About window) will show a much lower amount being used, such as 3GB.
• Furthermore, there is a preferences panel that gives the impression that one has more control over this RAM allocation, and that there is some magic setting to fix the issue.
• That because After Effects only seems to use 3GB of RAM at best, that having between 2-4GB of of RAM is “plenty.”

Cutting to the chase, and to make you a more informed user, I’d like to present the facts, and then explain them in a little detail:

• You SHOULD have more than 4GB of RAM in your computer
• Your computer most likely can and will use more than 4GB of RAM for After Effects

Currently, After Effects on Mac OS X can use up to 3.5 GB of RAM.  After Effects on 32-bit Windows operating systems (XP, Vista 32) can use up to 3 GB of RAM; however, to use more than 2 GB in After Effects, you must configure Windows XP or Windows Vista appropriately.  For details on this, see Jonas Hummelstrand’s website: (www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_jonaswindows3gb.) After Effects on 64-bit Windows operating systems can use up to 4 GB of RAM with no special configuration.

So, where does the other RAM come in? If you bought 12GB of RAM, was that a waste of money? No!!

When you work with After Effects, knowing full well that it is limited to that RAM that we just spelled out, there’s more going on behind the scenes that you might realize. If you proceed to Preferences>Multiprocessing, you’ll find an option to enable multiprocessor rendering. In fact, you’ll see a very description paragraph as to what multiprocessing actually is doing.

After Effects will “use multiple processes to speed rendering for RAM preview and final output”, ie. rendering.

What are these “multiple processes?”

Behind the scenes, when you render or perform a RAM preview, additional applications launch in the background that you do not see. In fact, the only way to see them is to launch a process viewer. In Mac OS, you can use the Activity Monitor. What you will see are processes called “aeselflink” (AE Self Link.)

These are helper applications that can use up to 2GB of RAM for each CPU. Being that even one “duo core” has 2 CPUs, you can see how this might add up very quickly. A dual quad core computer has 8 CPUs, which can easily eat up as much as 16GB of RAM when rendering. And this doesn’t count any additional programs you might try to run in the background.

If you have a small amount of RAM (less than 4GB), there is a distinct possibility that using multiprocessing will slow down the rendering process. If you lack the RAM for the helper application(s), your computer will use virtual RAM (hard disk space.) This, most likely, will slow the rendering process. This obviously depends on how many CPUs you have, and how much RAM.

So, get that RAM. You SHOULD have a lot of RAM as an After Effects user. For as much as you spent on that computer, having a low amount of RAM will greatly reduce the potential speed of your machine.  This goes for AE CS3 and CS4.

Back when I was working as a freelancer, I got a detailed look into a “day in the life” of many different companies. I’ve noticed a lot of commonalities between them all. More importantly, I’ve seen a lot of common factors that provide a haven for negative energy. Although there are many of these, I wanted to point out the ones I see most frequently, and offer some insight as to why I think they should be avoided.

You Should Be Happy To Have a Job

I cannot stand it when I hear people telling me that employers hold employment over the heads of their employees, with lines like, “You should be happy to have a job.” Let’s get this straight: companies make money with employees. Design is a service-based industry, where employees perform a service, and where the employer charges many times more what is paid to the individual employee. In addition, there is equity in valuable employees that keep clients coming back.

Just like “you are what you eat,” a company is who it hires. Companies should make careful decisions about which people they hire, only selecting the right candidate for the job. The candidate should be able to do the job well in return for compensation. If the job is not done well, then it is time to take action: communicate that the job isn’t up to par, offer more training to the employee, move them to a more suitable position, or let them go. That’s the system that drives the workforce.

The skills of the employee make money for the company, and the company returns the favor with salary and benefits. It’s a two-way street. If an employer thinks that they are doing employees a “favor” by employing anyone, then they are employing people for the wrong reason. If you are are an employer and you’ve found yourself saying this: STOP. This is one of the most toxic things you can say to an employee. It not only shows the lack of appreciation for the skill of the employee, but it shows an ignorance for the reason of hiring someone to do a job. If you don’t value what an employee does for you, then why did you hire them?

In the US, if an employer thinks that providing benefits is a saintly act, consider the following. I provided myself with my own benefits including a PPO health plan, prescriptions, emergency coverage, hospitalization, and $20 copay doctor visits for $140 a month. For a family of three, it is about $500. So, as much as I hate the fact that Americans are literally stuck with their bill of health, the options are out there for individuals. In short, employers aren’t performing miracles by giving you benefits.

I Hate Working Here

If you hate your job, then it’s time to leave.  If you can’t leave, then you should appreciate why you are there, why you are so dependent on it, and get yourself an attitude adjustment.  But, being the “I hate this place” person is poison for the morale of a company.  Just like enthusiasm is contagious, the same goes for negative energy. One person starts saying this, then more and more start saying it. Then content employees hear the whispers of discontent and in turn also become dissatisfied. Who wouldn’t hate working at a place with a bunch of miserable employees? In fact, I’ve been there myself. So, in short don’t be “that person.” If you are saying this, it’s time for an attitude adjustment or a new job.

Is it time for you to go freelance?

The Spoiled Employee & The Free Lunch

“Sushi again for lunch?” Come on people. I am firmly against free lunch in facilities as it breeds nothing but negative energy. First, eating a high calorie lunch every day will do nothing for your health other than ruin it.  I tend to bring my lunch. If I do order, I try to keep the calorie count down by ordering something sensible.

My second problem with the free lunch is that it establishes an uncomfortable class structure between those that fetch, serve and tidy up after lunch, and those that receive it. I’ve seen several instances where an employee will treat the poor souls serving lunch like wait staff: complaining about their order, requesting condiments, etc. I know there is a structure to how things work: management, senior staff, assistants, etc.  But, treat please treat your co-workers like your friends, not your servants.

Third, somehow this privilege of a free lunch gets overlooked and treated, somehow, like a burden. I’ve heard this way too many times: “Oh no, that place again.” If you need a reminder, about 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. If you want to complain about getting pita sandwiches too often, you need an attitude check.

I don’t care if you are the most in-demand editor or motion designer on the planet — if you do get a free lunch — be humble about it. Order something small. Thank the person that brings it to you. Clean up after yourself. Realize that you are very lucky to have this privilege. My suggestion: facilities should skip the lunch ordering all together. Take a lunch break and get some air.

The Rumor Mill

Every company has rumors that go around. The more widespread they are, the worse the communication is within the company. As the saying goes, “Communication is worst in the communications industry.” We are always so busy communicating the ideas of others, that we forget to talk to each other, or don’t think that it is necessary.

When I was staff, I remember the circulating rumors about potential bad news. Sometimes companies fall on hard times, that’s inevitable. A company I was with had an open house one week, launching a new web site, logo, facility signage, etc. The next week, it was announced that the company would be closing its doors.  Talk about mixed messages! Companies should NOT let communication happen organically, or assume that people know what is going on.

How a company is going to react to bad news should be public knowledge to the staff. No matter what, there WILL be speculation. Management can either let it spread like a dark cloud throughout a company, or communicate what they can, even if it is bad news. A simple meeting or email with honest answers might be tough to hear, but it’s better than letting employees guess. This guessing game leads to paranoia about employees losing benefits, wages or their entire job. This often stimulates overcompensation: working late, skipping vacations, as well as attempts to “outperform” other employees in an attempt to not be on the chopping block. All of this creates a terrible work environment.

If you an employer, be upfront about bad news and how it will potentially be handled. If you are an employee, skip the rumor mill. If you didn’t hear it from your boss, then don’t spread it. If you DID hear it from your boss, then encourage him or her to tell the rest of the company.

Overtime as the Norm

I understand that, on occasion, jobs will arise that require long hours. However, some places see to make a part of the culture of the company.

If you are content with this, don’t let me stop you. But, being overworked will eventually burn you out. If you are a salaried employee, it lessens what you earn each hour. Even if you are paid hourly, working 10-12 hour days pretty much make you tethered to your job. If your life is work, eat, sleep.. is the job REALLY that enjoyable? How can you do a job well if there is little else to your life than work? Just like a good design needs negative space and contrast, our lives need the same.

Plus, once you have kids, you’ll realize that all that free time that you could have had is LONG gone, and you should have enjoyed it while you can!

This short tutorial covers 3 awesome applications of the toComp expression. This is a very simple and very powerful topic! For even more information, check out Dan Ebberts page on Layer Space Transformations.

Working with a LOT of layers? Often with heavy comps, it would be great to put your current layer at the top of the composition, rather than buried down the list. Shy layers is one solution. A quicker one: select the layer and hit “x”. This will bring that layer to the top of the timeline window.

When you select a layer in the After Effects timelime, there are a lot of shortcuts to display certain properties, like ‘p’ for position, ‘ee’ for expressions, ‘u’ for keyframed properties.  However, what if you’d like to show only one specific property that does not have a dedicated key?

Select the property and use the shortcut combo “ss”, to show only properties that you have selected.

In the tutorial Expressions and External Documents, I showed some ideas on how to use external documents to drive content inside After Effects. The feedback that I’ve gotten from the community is that this technique can be a real timesaver in projects that require a lot of repetitive content, such as bumpers, lower thirds, interstitials, etc.

In the tutorial, with my own attempt at the idea, I fell short on a couple of challenges.  First, because After Effects uses different address structures for Windows and Mac OS X, it’s a little tricky to make one expression that works on both platforms.  Second, as I’ve later found out, the #include function was disabled in AE CS4.

Fortunately, scripting and expressions guru Lloyd Alvarez stepped in to fill in the gaps and provide a solution that works in both CS3 and CS4, as well as both platforms. Let’s take a look at the full Source Text expression:

if ($.os.indexOf("Mac") != -1)
myPath = "/Expressions/";
else
myPath = "file://c:\\\\Expressions\\";
myPath += "data.txt";
$.evalFile (myPath);
eval(thisComp.name);

Let’s take a look at what is going on here.

if ($.os.indexOf(“Mac”) != -1)

In this first line,  $.os is equal to the name of our current operating system. For example, on my computer this displays “Macintosh OS 10.5.6″.  indexOf() simply looks for the content in parentheses. If it finds this, like the letters “Mac”, it is equal to a value of 0. If it is not found, the value is -1. If you’ve not used it before, the term != means “does not equal”.

Therefore, this is an if/else condition that says “if the current OS contains the word ‘Mac’,then do the following. So, we have things set up for both Mac and Windows, and we can handle things accordingly.

The next line is what runs if the OS is Mac based, and it establishes the initial path of where to look for the external document.

myPath = “/Expressions/”;

If the OS is not a Mac, and is therefore Windows based, the path will be formatted for Windows.  Note that in Windows, two slashes: \\  need to be supplied to denote a directory, not just one.

else
myPath = “file://c:\\\\Expressions\\”;

Now that we have the path set up, let’s assume that the text document that has our data is called “data.txt”.  What can be done at this point is to add the path and filename together like this:

myPath += “data.txt”;

This is the equivalent of myPath = mypath + “data.txt”;

Then, an alternative to #include is $.evalFile, which fortunately works in CS3 and CS4 as a way to look at the contents of an external file. Then, just like in the tutorial, we can use eval() to have the comp name pass as the the value for the source text, as the last value in the expression. Assuming there is a variable in the data file that matches the comp name, it will be displayed as the source text.

$.evalFile (myPath);
eval(thisComp.name);

To have the expression wrapped inside try/catch to eliminate error messages (such as in the case of the text document not having the correct scene number), here is a version like that:

try{
if ($.os.indexOf(“Mac”) != -1)
myPath = “/Expressions/”;
else
myPath = “file://c:\\\\Expressions\\”;
myPath += “data.txt”;
$.evalFile (myPath);
eval(thisComp.name);
}catch(err){“Not Found”}

For some complete training on After Effects Expressions, and to support the site, take a look at my After Effects Expressions training series.expressions

Download a preformatted text document and spreadsheet

You probably know that the “Pan Behind Tool” can be used for moving a layer independently of its mask.  However, if you keep this tool activated, you can also use it on composition layers.  Grab a trimmed clip with the Pan Behind Tool, and you can slip and slide the clip, while keeping the in and out points the same.  Very useful!