Gametamer

Adobe After Effects, version 7 just came out, is an expensive but very valuable addition to your favorite modeler/renderer. It?s similar to Photoshop with respect to effects, but knowing Photoshop won?t immediately catapult you to proficiency with AE, mostly because you?re editing with the additional dimension of time. Happily, AE does most of the tedious stuff almost automatically after you learn where to locate the features.

After Effects isn?t just a special effects factory?it?s a video editor I?d compare to Avid?s pro application. Regarding editing, there?s a number of things you can do in your modeling app to make life easier. First, for compositing work, use a bright color for your scene background, a color not found in the foreground scene. Unfortunately, there is no video standard that features alpha channels (Cinema 4D has some sort of workaround, tho?), so you use the background color (called a key) to pull a matte in AE. In the frame below, I needed to put the characters in the foreground, then matte in the background footage, and then use AE to slightly blur it. Effects such as blurring are non-destructive; you still have your unblurred footage.

Actually, After Effects can rotate 2D objects in 3D space, eliminating the need to model certain things such as text altogether. There are scores of 3rd party plug-ins for AE, from creating damaged film to putting still frames on rotating cubes and cylinders.

But most importantly, After Effects adds a polished look to your rendered animation. If you?re thinking of Hollywood, your sample reel couldn?t look better after a pass through After Effects.

My Best,

Gare

smahmood

Wonderful topic Gary...You first turned me on to dabbling with 3d long ago with your truespace tut's here and have since graduated to using Cinema 4d and have recently been learning After Effects.

Would just like to point out afaik C4D has the Best integration with AE as far as Modelers/Animators go as Maxon has a plug-in for AE that lets you save out of C4D an AE file and import it into C4D with an alpha channel.

AE also has uses with still images as its effects are? non-destructive and has some nice effects not found in Photoshop.

Still struggling to learn AE... but really find it a wonderful addition to my tool box.

Gametamer

Hi, areno--
Yep, After Effects is at the top of the heap; I need to mention (again) that AE Standard is $700 ($200 to upgrade from previous versions) and the Pro version, which has additional plug-ins, an audio editor and advanced matting tools is $1,000--attainable, but a tad pricey if your main creative focus is modeling. If we really want to drift OT, audio editors--for adding sounds to Poser or other animations-- might make a good discussion thread. I use Sony Sound Forge.

Not all that familiar with C4D; I use Maya but haven't experimented with its workflow compatibility with AE--I know AE can import Maya camera data, dunno about alphas.

I thought it was interesting that many AE plug-ins provide still frame effects and I'm a tad disapponted that 3rd parties don't all write Photoshop plug-ins, where applicable. Recently, I needed to antique a bitmap design. I used CineLook's Film Damage filter in AE, toggled the timeline to get a good frame, then exported from AE as a still psd frame. The original image was 8MB and AE wrote it in about 3 seconds.

If anyone would like to talk about other video editors, perhaps less expensive ones, right here's the place, too.

My Best,

Gare

smahmood

Hey Gary,
Well currently am using AE 6.5 Standard and considering the upgrade to AE 7 pro...don't really know if I can justify cost rite now tho...only been using it a little bit with 3d. Mostly been importing files from Photoshop and CorelDraw and animating with AE.The new interface in AE 7 seems cool as previous versions are definitely cluttered.Mmm...still talking myself into the upgrade \:/

As far as Audio editors go personally use Audition and any general tips dealing with animation and audio might be cool as a discussion thread and while we're at it other video editors might be a good topic also.

Have Fun,

Areno

Gametamer

Hi areno and welcome!

Off the top of my head, I'd say that perhaps the most valuable feature in an audio editor is the time=stretching capability (instead of re-timing animation, which is a poor option all ways around).

By experimenting, I've found that you can stretch or squeeze a music clip by as much as 15% without phasing or noticable trickery. For those of you who are new to audio editing, time-stretching does not affect pitch (creating a chipmonking effect). BTW, Goldwave is a powerful, extremely affordable audio editor; $50 for eternal shareware registration http://www.goldwave.com. I've used it for years--it converts about 20 audio file formats and can extract audio from a video.

My Best,

Gare