Quba HQ

Tutorial+Preset: Light Wall

Hello everyone! Yes, it is here – a long-delayed new tutorial from the June series. It’s been around 6 weeks since the previous tutorial, but I have been incredibly busy building a new kick-ass hi-tech intro for the tutorials… No. Not really. The truth is I have been working on multiple commercial projects and could not find any time off for neither leisure nor tutorials. As for the intro – I knocked it together in a few minutes at 4:00AM last night.

This tutorial is a hybrid between the Automated Light Rig and Scrolling LED Text. We will be building an animated image map driven light array that can be used for for either cool light effects or easily controlled particle emission.

While the entire project can be completed within After Effects, I will also jump into Cinema 4D every now and then and show you a very easy way for creating quite complex light arrays and importing them back into AE.

Music used in the trailer comes from Beck’s Cellphone’s Dead from the album The Information.
Music in the intro comes from… here.

Running time: 73min
Difficulty: Easy-Advanced (depending how much you want to learn :)
Required tools: After Effects
Optional software and plug-ins: Cinema 4D, Trapcode Particular, VC Optical Flares (or similar)

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Still Swamped

I know many of you are still waiting for me to complete the two remaining tutorials promised for June. It seems however that it is going to take a while longer. Summertime is usually a very slow commercial season with not many TVCs being produced, so I naturally assumed I will have tons of free time to work on the tuts.

Things tend to work out not according to plan, though. I am still completely swamped with the projects for various clients and new ones just keep on coming. My current estimate is that I will be able to catch a break and record the next tutorial probably within 1-2 weeks, but only time will show if that’s realistic at all.

QubaHQ tutorials are quite important to me – just so you know, I have decided that I will not play a minute of Starcraft 2 until we get the next one online. And that’s a big commitment for me :)

Header photo by Ajfraser

Tutorial+Preset: Automated Light Rig

Most of the time it is the best practice to manually control the lights in your After Effects scenes. There are situations however, when you may want to automate the dynamic changes in light color and intensity while maintaining high level of control over the look of your composition. That’s what the Automated Light Rig is all about.

In this tutorial I will show you how to link your lights with automated samplers on an image map, creating an ever-changing, yet unified, light rig. While the tutorial explains the expressions in depth, I am also providing you with presets simplifying the entire process into just few clicks.

As a little extra, I will also show you how to create a 3D light-aware smoke using Trapcode Particular (my method is a bit more involved than the standard Particular setup, but produces results that are much more true to life).

Music used in the trailer comes from Mr. Oizo’s Fiat 55 from the album Analog Worms Attack.

Running time: 45min
Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Required tools: After Effects
Optional plug-ins: Trapcode Particular

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Tutorial: 100% Accurate Reflections

In this After Effects tutorial I will demonstrate to you how to build a two-camera rig in order to create perfect 3D reflections. using this technique, you will be able to reflect not only 3D layers, but also lights, particles, as well as any plug-in that obeys the movement of AE’s 3D camera.

The setup is trivially easy when using hand-animated cameras, but in the second half of the video I also show you how to create a more complex rig for use with Video Copilot’s Sure Target 2 camera controls.

The music used in the preview is a fragment of an Instrumental Mix of Perfect Exceeder by MASON vs Princess Superstar.

Running time: 51 min
Difficulty: Easy (you will be surprised how easy)
Required tools: After Effects (CS3 and above)
Optional plug-ins: VC Optical Flares, Knoll Light Factory, Trapcode Lux, Trapcode 3D Stroke, Trapcode Particular

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QubaHQ Tutorials: June Trailer

I have big plans for QubaHQ Tutorials in June. Over the course of the last few days I thought up and implemented four new techniques that I will share with you over the course of the coming month. Well, at least I hope to be able to push all the content out in a span of 30 days.

Check the rest of this post for the teaser trailer, as well as a short explanation of things to come.

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Tutorial: Scrolling LED Text

In this After Effects tutorial I will show you how to create your own highly customizable LED screen effect, ready to convert any text or image into pixelated goodness. The video covers the setup, expressions and usage of this versatile preset.

The preview video below shows but one possible way of using the Scrolling LED Text and the tutorial concentrates on the effect itself, rather than the setup of this particular scene.

Preview video uses a photograph by LonelyBob licensed under Creative Commons. It also features 5 notes from the Solitary Wasteland track on the Flower Soundtrack by Vincent Diamante and a sample from Pac-Man by Namco. This tutorial was made possible by the espresso coffee maker gifted to me as a wedding present.

Running time: 47min
Difficulty: Medium (quite a few expressions)
Required tools: After Effects (CS3 and above)

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Tutorial+Preset: SplatterType

If you are sick of the April Fool’s day silliness all over the net, I have some seriously cool stuff for you today. SplatterType is a custom preset I have developed recently that will allow you to create amazing ink and paint splatter animations with just a few clicks.

Updated! Please read the update info underneath the videos and use the preset instead of the project files!

Much like my previous tutorial, SplatterType relies only on After Effects text animators and does not require any additional plugins (3rd or even 1st party). Robust set of controls make it highly customizable, while the expressions work in the background to do all the hard work for you.

Whether you’re after a dark, grungy look or happy-go-lucky colorful design, whether you’re compositing 2D, 3D, mattes, transitions, you name it – this little free preset will let you spend time on creative choices rather than tedious keyframing. Enjoy!

Running time: 35min
Difficulty: Easy
Required tools: After Effects

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Tutorial: Alphabet Soup (Fake Text Particles)

In this After Effects tutorial I will show you how to create a cool underwater opening title sequence. Rather than using Trapcode Particular (which many of you may not have installed) or CC Particle World (which really could use an update to its coordinate system) the project fakes particle simulation through use of text animators.

This quite lengthy tutorial is derived from another Video Bits project I created a while ago. The original Alphabet Soup used Particular and wasn’t much more than an eye-candy. The new-and-improved one I present to you today can actually be used for something else than ambient displays :)

Let me also give the credit where it is due: The preview video uses an audio clip from Lech Janerka’s song entitled Absolulu. I have been listening to it all day long and I can still take more.

Running time: 66min
Difficulty: Medium (as long as you’re patient)
Required tools: After Effects

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Tutorial: HolOS Password Hacking

Password hacking is usually presented as a quite dull process in Hollywood visuals. It is even more dull in real life. In this tutorial I will show you my take on a HolOS password hacking interface – spicing it up with After Effects 2.5D crossword puzzle look.

The idea for this tutorial comes from one of the Video Bits projects published back in 2008: Crossword Hax. I think enough time has passed since I created that effect, so I decided to share it with the community.

Running time: 41min
Difficulty: Advanced
Required tools: After Effects
Optional tools: Trapcode Horizon

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Tutorial: Text Reveal (Efficient Method)

Revealing handwritten text is one of these unpleasant tasks every motion designer has to deal with at least once. In this tutorial I present possibly the quickest and most efficient way of producing this effect.

Since the reveal effect itself is quite simple to produce and would result in a very short tutorial, I added some bulk to the video by presenting a smart way of guiding a null along the reveal, using it to drive different effects, such as a lens flare or particles.

Running time: 35min
Difficulty: Medium
Required tools: After Effects, Illustrator, Trapcode 3D Stroke and Particular.
Optional tools: Video Copilot Optical Flares

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