Recently I worked on a promo for the film Green Zone here at Foxtel Box Office. The film is full of great helicopter shots over Baghdad, so I suggested we work some 3D supers into shots to give the promo more impact. Having just finished beta testing Camera Tracker, The Foundry’s new 3D tracker for Adobe After Effects, I knew it would be perfect for this project.

Camera Tracker—originally developed for The Foundry’s high-end compositing tool Nuke X—gives After Effects users powerful 3D tracking tool directly inside After Effects.

Having used a number of other trackers on the market, I found this to be similar to PFHoe from Pixel Farm. It’s very simple to use and incredibly powerful. Full integration with After Effects means there is no longer any need to open up a stand alone application and have to transfer the data around.

Camera Tracker has the key features you’d expect in a 3D tracker, including free camera and rotating camera options, focal distance and lens distortion settings. Once a scene is tracked, removing weaker points from the point cloud is quick and easy before solving the camera and creating the scene.

You still have control over the point cloud to choose the desired orientation of the scene, and the option to create Solids or Null Objects from the points is handy.

I generally found that the first solve was solid and the camera behaved as expected. Having said that, the camera moves were shot professionally and had plenty of detail to track. I’m yet to test it on long unstable shots with multiple zooms and pans for example.

With CameraTracker, The Foundry has made 3D Tracking more approachable, and given users a new world of creative options inside of After Effects. I certainly recommend it to any After Effects user who wants to add match-moving to their toolkit.

You can check out more of my work at brettmorris.com

The Foundry has released 3D Camera Tracker and Kronos, two exciting new plug-ins for Adobe After Effects.

After 8 years with Foxtel Design, I recently accepted the position of Senior Designer at Foxtel Box Office – On Demand Movies, here at Foxtel in Sydney. Together with Gareth Chang and Brett Morris, both talented young designers, we get to flex our After Effects and Cinema 4D skills working on a wide range of movie graphic styles across various genres.

Over the coming months I’ll be showcasing graphics created using After Effects, Cinema 4D and a variety of plug-ins, by the team, some original and others influenced by existing spots. [Read more]

In this excerpt from a recent Adobe E-seminar, we look at the new Align and Distribute to Composition and Orient Characters Independently features in Adobe After Effects CS5.

Watch tips

Red Giant Software has released Colorista 2, with some exciting new features and improvements. Use motionworks10 for a 1o% discount.

Just completed, Foxtel Box Office’s (FBO) winter campaign in Cinema 4D.

With a Stars theme, the campaign includes a competition to win a trip for 2 to Cannes Film Festival. Given the theme, I suggested we use the tagline “follow the stars”. This has the dual meaning of following the logo stars throughout the promo (which represent FBO), and mingling with movie stars on the red carpet in Cannes. [Read more]

Sapphire, MonstersGT, ParticleIllusion
and a new direction for Tinder for After Effects

For over a decade GenArts had a single product – Sapphire – plug-ins for high end systems such as Flame, and in more recent times, After Effects. Recently GenArts has begun to diversify, acquiring Monsters GT from Speed Six, Tinder from The Foundry and Particle Illusion from Wondertouch. In this candid episode I discuss each of these products with GenArt’s Steve Bannerman. [Read more]

Wacom has posted a handy tutorial showing how to maximize productivity with your Wacom tablet.

Genarts has just released the latest version of their top-shelf, 220+ After Effect plug-in set – Sapphire, with CS5 compatibility.

If you’ve found a bug in After Effects or other CS5 applications, do us all a favour and file it. It only takes a moment and will help us all.

Okay, you’ve got After Effects CS5, you’ve watched the Roto Brush tutorial, and you know I love it. But what are your impressions of Roto Brush now you’ve had a chance to play? Is it what you expected? Have you used it in production? Is Roto Brush really that cool?  I’d love to hear about your experiences.

In a recent interview with Adobe I discussed my opinion of After Effects CS5. Check it and other customer showcases out here.

In this Adobe After Effects: Effects A-Z tip, learn how a little Bezier Warp
can save you a bunch of time. Watch tip

In this tutorial for video2brain, Get up to speed fast with a range of important tips and techniques for getting the most out of the powerful new Roto Brush tool introduced in Adobe After Effects CS5. Watch Tutorial

[Read more]

What are the key new features in After Effects CS5?

After Effects product manager Michael Coleman discusses the amazing new Roto Brush tool and other standout features in After Effects CS5. [Read more]

A handy new Adobe After Effects preset (and tutorial) by Quba HQ for creating paint splat effects.

Are you ready for 64-bit?

Michael Coleman is the product manager for Adobe After Effects. In this interview, Michael discusses his background and how he juggled a university major in economics and a career in graphic and motion design. [Read more]

In this two-part tutorial for Adobe, learn how to take basic Adobe After Effects presets and customise them to create your own unique looks. This section focusses on further enhancing the text animation, customising a background preset and adding finishing touches including a bloom and displacement.

Watch Example | Watch Tutorial [Read more]

MILG 6 and 7 host Tim Clapham recently completed a beautiful animation for 3D World magazine, created using Cinema4D and Adobe After Effects. The even cooler news is Tim recorded a tutorial.