Video Rock is Dead: Long Live Video Rock
I’ve been floored by the response and feedback I’ve received from the community with regard to the Video Rock library. I poured myself into the library and tried to make something creative and useful. Despite my best efforts, each section of the library felt incomplete, with all of my ideas crammed, into one volume of elements (or “shoe-horned” might be a better word.)
Today, I am proud to announce that the Video Rock library, a library of over 200 animated retro style elements, will be distributed through Red Giant Software and Red Giant People. The library as it has been sold by graymachine will be discontinued. It will be broken into more volumes, with more assets, and it will be directly connected to Trapcode Particular, which it really should have been from the beginning. The volume set mostly contains primitive shapes, and a few more of the streaks and shapes to round out the templates.
Now that the library will be carried, distributed and managed by someone else, I’ll have more time to devote to developing new content, as well as new bonus materials, free templates, etc.
To those that have purchased it in the past, consider your copy to be the collectors edition. There is nothing that the current copy of Video Rock Volume 1 has that you do not have.
If you do not own it, keep your eyes on Red Giant People, as I’ll be one of the folks in the Guru Zone providing free presets, training and new premium content.
Bubble Formation Test
Revised! Version 2!
This is a test.. perhaps and upcoming tutorial? Free download? Not sure.
But, it revolves around an interesting technique of using Time Displacement to “build” an object on with particles, plus some other interesting ideas I’ve been meaning to show.
No 3rd party plug-ins used.
Harry Frank Joins Red Giant
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
Trapcode Particular Presets: Holiday
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
Introduction to Trapcode Form
Learn the basics on Trapcode Form, including basic shapes, color control and audio reactors. This tutorial was created for Studio Daily’s site.
Creating a Crowd with Trapcode Particular
Learn how to use Trapcode Particular to create a massive crowd shot. Including some vey useful light wrap techniques. Believe it or not, this entire crowd was created using ONLY 5 Crowd Control clips. From a tutorial I produced for Red Giant.
Reverse Shatter Expression
If you’d like to copy and past the expression from the Reverse Shatter Tutorial, here is the text:
seedRandom(index,true) start = random([-100,200,-2000] , [1000, 400, 1000]); end = value; ease(time, 0, 3 + (index*thisComp.frameDuration), start, end)
Trapcode Particular Flower
Using Trapcode Particular and a Beveled stroke created with Write-On, I created this pretty, pretty flower.
Adjust the Aux System Velocity to give it more “fuzz”. Color is also defined in Aux System “Color Over Life”.
Expressions and External Documents – Revised for CS4
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
AutoSlideShow Presets
These two After Effects expressions are pretty simple, but they make slide show projects a breeze!! The first, “AutoZoom”, makes a layer zoom (scale) based on the in and out points of the layer.The “zoom” value, is how much it zooms. Positive or negative values will both work.
Next, AutoFade creates fades on head and tail of any clip. The transition is specified in the “transition” variable, which is defined in frames. Note: Presentation is audio only.
Download File | Watch a short demonstration
Truxton Pictures for NBC
Also on the Trapcode gallery. This project involved a branding package of IDs, PSAs, snipes and news graphics not only for NBC, but for all NBC-Universal networks, such as Bravo, USA, etc. My role was design and animation with John Hudson serving as EP and Art Director.
See a short compilation (including some motion tests) over at Truxton.tv
GSG Five Second Projects
Exercising the creative muscle is vital to being a designer. Projects like Nick Campbell’s Five Second Project series. I came up with a diddy for this week’s “Peanut Butter and Jelly” challenge.
PB&J Express from graymachine on Vimeo.
Reviving AE Lens Flares
Use Trapcode Shine and shape layers to revive tired old Lens Flares in After Effects.