Brent Pierce
Here’s a neat little animated lower third that I made for our Easter production. You can download the After Effects project and insert any name you wish.
The project works in After Effects CS4 and above. I’ve also included static images of the lower third in case you don’t want to use the animated version. The font that I used is a free font from dafont.com called “One Direction.” I’ve included it in the download.
DVD menus are notorious for being bland. They take time to make and usually turn out to be the least impressive element in a production. After the many hard-worked hours that it takes to complete a project, you don’t want the DVD menu to ruin the delivery of an awesome production. Remember: the DVD menu is the first thing that the client will see when they pop that little disc in. You need it to be impressive.
A while back, I reviewed a “Pro Motion Menu Template” from Precomposed.com. Below is a video of the menu in action.
“Pro Motion Menus” are built heavily in After Effects so, naturally, they take time to customize and render. Jon Geddes, the man behind Precomposed, also has menu templates called “Zip Kits,” that are simpler templates built solely in Adobe Encore, which saves a ton of time. Below, is an overview of one of his Zip Kits.
Checkout his site for more details. These DVD menu templates will save you TONS of time and make your DVD’s look awesome.
Everyone loves the Instagram app for their phones. It’s a cool way to create vintage/retro photos with a tap of the finger. Seriously, people go nuts over these type of filters. A while back, Daniel Box, created Photoshop actions of these filters. They’re awesome. Just a click of the mouse, and you’ve “Instagrammed” your photo in Photoshop.
I wanted a way to use these in applications like After Effects or Final Cut Pro. An easy way to achieve a simple color change is by using Look-Up-Tables (LUTs). I’m not gonna dive too deep into what exactly a LUT is, but basically, it communicates color changes from different applications. Aharon Rabinowitz posted a tutorial video about using Red Giant Software’s LUT Buddy, a free application by RGS to create and apply LUTs. It’s pretty helpful in introducing someone to what a LUT is, and how they work.
I took Daniel Box’s Instagram Photoshop actions, and made them into LUTs and presets to use with video. They work wonderfully. Keep in mind. LUTs are a bit limited in their functionality; they cannot apply things that use masks or generators, such as vignettes, diffusion, blurs, etc. But they are still awesome. If you are looking for more vintage presets for After Effects with more features and control, check out my Vintage FX presets.
How to use these presets.
For FCP7, Motion, and Premiere CS5
1. Download and install LUT Buddy from Red Giant Software. It’s free.
2. Apply the effect “LUT Buddy” to your footage, click Options, then Import LUT, then choose which effect you would like.
For After Effects
Download and install LUT Buddy from Red Giant Software. (If you have CS5 or CS6, skip this step. You don’t need LUT Buddy)
Copy the corresponding “Instagram” presets folder into your application presets folder. (Applications/Adobe After Effects/Presets)
There are 2 different AE presets folders. One is for CS3-CS4, and the other is for CS5-CS6.
For Dacinci Resolve
Place the LUT files in library/application support/blackmagic design/davinci resolve/LUT/CineSpace
Another simple preset is now on Red Giant People for your Trapcode Particular needs. Use with the text, or without it. The download .zip gives you the AE project, the preset, and images files. If using the preset in another project, just place the “leaf.jpg” in a 50×50 comp, and use that as your particle texture in Particular. The colors of the leaves are customizable, as well as size, gravity, rotation speed, etc.
Leaves Falling – by Brent Pierce
PS. I figured out which font RGP uses for their logo. “Century Gothic,” I think.
Check out my new preset that I uploaded to Red Giant People. It’s a quick text reveal using Trapcode Particular. The particles look like confetti. Check out the sample video below.
You can change the text to whatever you want, obviously. Or, if you get creative enough, you can replace it with your logo to make it really interesting. And the best thing…it’s absolutely FREE. So have at it all you fellow mographers. Here’s the link that takes you to the download page.
So, the word on the street is, I am pretty miserable at making DVD menus. I can do them, they won’t be very entertaining, and it’ll take me a week to complete one menu, but I can do them. Recently, while going through some of my daily forums and sites, I ran across a post that caught my eye on DVinfo.net. It was by Jon Geddes, from Precomposed.com, and he was advertising his website that sells motion DVD menu templates that are fully customizable. I was immediately attracted. As soon as I saw the first preview, I was blown away. These menus are pretty slick. Each motion menu has its own theme, and has very clean and fluid transitions in between each menu: main menu, scene selection menu, & bonus content menu. I consider myself pretty good at After Effects, and I could probably make these menus myself with ALOT of time and creativity, MAYBE. But, with my very limited knowledge in DVD authoring and motion menus with transitions and such, there is no way this entire process would be possible. The whole package, with compositions matching various settings, (NTSC, PAL, HD, SD) and each comp singled out into a precomposed timeline, which is dynamically linked to an entirely different project, which takes the video & audio assets from a specified folder, is just crazy. Read More →
