Motionworks » Downloads

Trapcode Form: Red Silk

John Dickinson — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:43:05 +0000

A simple red silk-style banner created in Adobe After Effects using Trapcode Form. Also includes a logo displaced by the Form layer using the Displacement Map effect.

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Trapcode Form projects

John Dickinson — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:35:25 +0000

Here are a couple of Form experiments. Both use the String settings; one for an amorphous background element and the other for an interesting text reveal. Click the thumbnail for large images. Download Project

Cinema 4D: Spline Wrap Ribbons

John Dickinson — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 08:21:58 +0000

Recently I was asked to come up with an idea for a show and as seems to be the case lately, had very little time to develop it. Click on the thumbnail and the first picture you’ll see are my initial ideas created in Illustrator. The second one is better than the first but simply making the T and A capitals in a script font (Scriptina) wasn’t working, it needed more style. So I turned to Cinema 4D and Mograph Spline Wrap feature. This was the first time to try Spline Wrap and I found it very easy to transform the T and A into flowing ribbons, using the Scriptina letters as a guide for the shape of the ribbons. Download the project file and take a look. Download C4D Project

Here are some helpful links to learn more about Spline Wrap, let me know if you have more:

Cineversity (Ko Maruyama): Text on a path
C4D Cafe: Spline Wrap Review

After Effects: Grungy Text 1

John Dickinson — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:09:58 +0000

In this short tutorial learn how to use After Effects’ Fast Blur, Turbulent Displace, Roughen Edges, Texturize, Displacement Map and Gradient Wipe effects to give text a grungy look.

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After Effects, Illustrator: Grid Background

John Dickinson — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:17:07 +0000

This After Effects CS4 background is based on a 3×3 Grid created in Adobe Illustrator. Click the thumbnail to view full size images.Take a look at this on-demand e-seminar for tips on how it was set up and how to work with the Illustrator file to change the shapes. Download project

Particular: Snowflakes

John Dickinson — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:34:09 +0000

Summer is almost upon us here in Australia but I know that many of you on the other side of the world are heading into a long cold winter. So I thought I’d make a pretty snowflake background for you to use. It’s based on a very handy confetti background created by Peder Norby from Trapcode.
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K1 Promo

John Dickinson — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 09:20:45 +0000

This project is another good example of taking poor quality 4:3 vision, making it 16:9 and giving it some polish. The tools included Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator, Trapcode Horizon and Shine, and Maltaannon’s Screenify effect (featured in MILG 5). The vision was treated with the Screenify effect— which adds a realistic jumbotron style and disguises the poor quality of the footage. This was then applied as a layer map to the ProAnimator wall (created from a simple Illustrator rectangle). Notice how the movie is split up into separate monitors which make up one big wall of video, this was done using the Grid effect and Bevel Alpha. The Bevel Alpha effect adds a subtle highlight to the edge of each grid block, giving a more realistic look.

The K1 logo and the video wall are reflected in the floor but this is a fake, since ProAnimator 4 doesn’t support reflections. To create this look in ProAnimator requires duplicating and flipping the object you want to “reflect”. First I set up the look using one ProAnimator, then duplicated the ProAnimator layer leaving the wall and logo in one and the reflections in the other. Having the reflections as a separate layer allowed me to drop the Opacity of just the reflections.

The logo uses the footage comp as a reflection map. Notice how the bevels are also reflecting the map, which looks cool but a problem is that the right hand side of the logo is also displaying the reflection, that’s because the reflection map is applied to the object and there is no way to control where the reflection will appear. This wouldn’t happen in a real scene as because the bevels on the right side of the letters are facing away from the screen. This won’t be an issue when ProAnimator eventually supports true reflections.

None of this would have been an issue had I used Cinema 4D and the only reason I didn’t use C4D for this project was time. This was a 2 day job and had a feeling I would spend too long experimenting in C4D to make the deadline.

Three After Effects lights illuminate the scene and the After Effects camera (controlled with a null object) does a simple dolly in to the wall. The sky (a large stock image) moves believably with the camera thanks to Trapcode Horizon.

The music is only a rough placeholder and obviously doesn’t start early enough.

Check out the intro to the promo below and grab the modified project file to see how it was put together. Nothing earth shattering but video walls are still a great way to make bad footage good again.

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After Effects: Weathered Metal

John Dickinson — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:13:59 +0000

Often when creating grungy styles I resort to stock imagery, as is the case with this weathered metal look. The base for the look is a metal texture, heavily treated in Photoshop, with an After Effects comp combining Roughen Edges and Fractal Noise for blotches and scratches. You’ll also notice I’ve color corrected the Text comp inside the Main comp to help it sit better with the background. The background was created by combining a couple of stock footage layers, which have been replaced in the download with a rendered still. Download Project

After Effects: Unstoppable

John Dickinson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:27:06 +0000

Here is the After Effects project for Unbreakable. The look is based on graphics from the original movie trailer; read the Gallery post for more details.

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Photoshop: Gold Bevelled Type

John Dickinson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:19:13 +0000

Here’s an Adobe Photoshop file containing a nice beveled-gold layer layer style.

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Particular: Starry Sky

John Dickinson — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:47:33 +0000

This starry background was created using a combination of Fractal Noise and Trapcode Particular and is based on a preset included with Particular.

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After Effects: ECG

John Dickinson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:08:21 +0000

The ECG (Electrocardiogram) is one of those graphics that is handy to have on file. There are a number of different ways to create them in After Effects, here’s one created using masks and the Vegas effect.

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After Effects: Light Rays

John Dickinson — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:53:39 +0000

This light rays background, used in a boxing promo, was created using Fractal Noise, Directional blur and Trapcode Shine.

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Particular: Explosion Challenge Pack

John Dickinson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:05:29 +0000

In 2007 Motionwork ran a challenge to see who could create the best explosion using Adobe After Effects and Trapcode Particular. All 11 finalist projects have been compiled for you to use in your own projects.

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Particular: Binary Grid

John Dickinson — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:08:27 +0000

This is the grid I created for the Diehard project. It’s uniform grid of random ones and zeros created using Trapcode Particular and After Effects’ own Grid effect. It works best with bitmap fonts and the font I used can be found here

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