About three months ago, some post production guys from The Mill decided to troll the Internet with videos of fake UFO sightings over London. I decided to join in on the fun and released a short YouTube video under a fake persona, “documenting” another sighting in Istanbul. Within several weeks, the video climbed up to 10,000 views – by far surpassing any view count I had on any other clips and tutorials uploaded to YouTube. It has also been “verified” by several “UFO authorities” and featured in magazines and UFO sighting websites around the world.

In this tutorial I will teach you how to create your own UFO troll video using After Effects and Mocha – a process that should take you no longer than 30 minutes from the moment you grab a camera, to the time you are ready for upload.

Running time: 31min
Difficulty: Extremely Easy
Required tools: After Effects, Mocha

Original troll video:

Tutorial:

I would like to encourage everyone watching this tutorial to make their own UFO sighting clip and publish it on YouTube. Let’s see if you can beat my 10,5K record, and how long will it take :) Post the links to your UFOs in the comments below – let’s freak out some of “the believers” with a global UFO invasion!

You may download the tutorial video as MPEG-4 from its Vimeo page. The tutorial can also be watched at YouTube.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

I remember the first time John from Motionworks shown me a beta version of MovieType. Pretty cool – I remember saying – I’m sure it will be useful to the people who do lots of 3D text, but not really something I would use in my projects.

While I was certainly impressed with both the idea and the implementation of MovieType, I really did not think I’d ever have any need for it. My motion pieces rarely, if ever, use 3D typography. I may throw an After Effects 3D text layer here and there, but that’s pretty much it.

And then came the Morhipo.com gig.

The deadline was tight, the advertisement’s content was not fully finalized. Changes to the timing, featured products and celebrity photos were delivered several times a day, as the agency struggled to get the finalized content locked down and approved by the client. To make things even more interesting, I had two more projects in the final stages of development at the very same time.

I could have said: Screw it, I’ll drop in the text in AE, throw some gradients on it and call it a day. Unfortunately, that’s not how I roll.

Now let me be very clear about something: I am no expert in 3D. I know what the software is capable of and how to get there, but I am terribly slow with execution. Typically, I prefer to work with a 3D artist or operator, guiding the development of the project, rather than a full hands-on experience. This time however, I did not have a choice. It was early evening, my 3D guy went AWOL, there was no time to find a new one, and I had to have all typography ready by the morning.

Getting the base geometry was as easy as loading up a path from Illustrator, dropping it inside MovieType Extrude object and tweaking the values till I got the desired thickness and bevel size. Camera was even easier – a simple preset, tweaked a tiny bit to look and time just right.

Next came the shaders. Gold and silver are always a pain to set up and render properly – too many reflections and they start looking like plastic. Too much saturation – and gold turns into orange. Too little gloss and everything becomes dull and rubbery. With the help of MovieType though, I was able to load up library shaders and within just a few minutes tweak them to look exactly how I wanted.

After that all I had to do is drop some light presets, adjust them and add a few extra ones for a good measure. I also used the MovieType Reflective Sky object with some noise shaders to make sure the reflections on the surface of the text are exciting enough.

Not only was I able to finish the project on time – I even got a few solid hours of sleep that night!

Don’t get me wrong here. The final ad is no piece of art – it will not win any awards or be featured in motion design festivals. It is however, a solid piece of advertising, created on an impossible deadline while matching and even exceeding client’s expectations. I call that a success.

On an extra note: MovieType was also used to create the little black plexiglass boxes I placed the products on. It’s truly a very versatile product and after having it save me from delays I felt I owe it to the Motionworks team to do this little write-up and recommend it to all motion designers. You truly never know when it may come in handy – take it from a non-believer :)

For more info about MovieType, check http://www.motionworks.com.au/2011/08/movietype/.

In this tutorial I will demonstrate the use of a new free preset from QubaHQ.com – Floaties. Floaties is a text animator based fake particle simulator allowing you to create floating specs of dust, glitters, bokeh-style out of focus abstract backgrounds and other visual elements. It attempts to emulate some of the basic behavior found in Trapcode Particular, providing limited, but free alternative to that popular plugin (as long as you are going for a certain visual style).

Running time: 51min
Difficulty: Easy
Required tools: After Effects

Music used in the preview video is a fragment of Borrel by Jukka Koops a.k.a. Sumo Lounge. Check his other works at: jukkakoops.com

Preview video:

Tutorial:

I would like to thank three of the beta testers for their input on the development of this preset: Riccardo Albertini (Rocket Panda), Derya Öztürk (Yader) and John Dickinson.

I would also want to express my thanks to the generosity of the recent donators to the QubaHQ tutorials. You make this show possible!

If you would like to contribute to the development of new presets or localizations for the Floaties preset, please contact me via e-mail. It can be found on the About page of my site.

Download the files associated with this tutorial below:

• QubaHQ Floaties (main preset and 6 examples)
  Compatible with After Effects CS3 and above, localized for English language
  http://downloads.qubahq.com/tutorials/QubaHQ_Floaties.zip

You may download the tutorial video as MPEG-4 from its Vimeo page. The tutorial can also be watched at YouTube.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Hello everyone! Just another update on the state of things regarding new QubaHQ tutorials. As you can guess I have good news and bad news for you (and double good news for myself). Let’s start with the good ones.

New tutorials are on the way. This weekend I am planning to release a new text animator based preset, once again using After Effects’ built-in tools in an unexpected way. Originally I planned to release this preset as a part of larger, paid content, but after careful deliberation decided to throw you all another cool freebie. Follow my twitter for the updates on recording and release. Hopefully this time Camtasia will behave better than on the last recording session.

Now for the bad good other news: I have decided to stop including project files with my tutorials. There are multiple reasons for this decision, so let me just list a few.

Primum non nocere
This Latin phrase, meaning First do no harm is typically associated with medical practice, but I believe, should apply to the teachers, instructors, tutorial makers and all other manner of people sharing their knowledge. Recently I have been doing some research, trying to figure out how many people actually use the techniques I show in my tutorials and I was shocked to discover how many of my viewers don’t bother to take the projects even a step further. Most of them simply load up the supplied project file, change the text (some even don’t), render it out and proudly publish it to the world without a mention of where the content comes from.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came from a certain individual applying for a job in my studio with a portfolio containing rendered versions of project files from my tutorials (no credit given, of course).

My main goal with the QubaHQ tutorials is to encourage the learning process – to show new, cool and sometimes unexpected ways of using classic tools and drive the viewers towards their own experimentation. Providing them with ready-and-done project file encourages laziness, plagiarism and relying on one-button solutions. Even if it is just the minority of the viewers following such path – I don’t want to be a part of it. Want cool results – I provide the recipe – do the work yourself.

Money
Recently I have seen other people capitalizing on my work without as much as asking me for permission or crediting me. I have seen scripts based on my free expressions and tutorials sold around the net. I have seen templates built from my free source files (with minor modifications) offered and marketed for money. I guess it is all legal, since I release my stuff under Creative Commons license, but it does not mean it is right.

I fund this site from my own pocket as a purely non-profit venture. The money for hosting and bandwidth comes directly from my day job. Over a course of 1 year, that PayPal “Donate” button on the right has been clicked precisely one time. Thank you to the person who decided to make a donation – I am not sure if you would be comfortable mentioning you by name. The total amount of money that came to me costs the same as one copy of the script based on my stuff and would not be enough for a set of aforementioned templates.

For a while I was toying around with an idea of creating a premium, subscription-based system, where some special tutorials and project files would be only available to the paying customers, but I decided to drop it. As long as I can, I don’t want to treat anyone preferentially on this site. (I am kicking around some ideas for a product though).

Time
Recording a tutorial typically means sacrificing a weekend. Considering the fact that as a director and animator I already have many of my weekends busy with work, it is always a big question – should I take a well-deserved break or should I spend this time producing stuff I give away for free?

For some reason I do have this drive to share cool ideas with the community, so quite often I do opt to stay in and work on a tutorial. Dropping the time required to prepare project files will allow me to spend less time on the process, and perhaps do new content more often. I will also be able to stop using CS3. It has served me well over the years, but I think it is time to let it rest. Working with CS5 and CS5.5 is much faster – so again I will be able to cut few more hours off the process. Don’t worry though – any presets I release will be still compatible with CS3 and up.

Meanwhile… I point to weekend and I point to a new tutorial. That is all.

If you are a frequent QubaHQ visitor, you are probably already familiar with the Vimeo channel containing all the tutorials from this site. I have been using Vimeo as my primary video host for two reasons: first being their great video encoding quality, and the second – the fact that I was not allowed to upload content longer than 15 minutes to YouTube.

Today I realized that my account has actually been approved for longer uploads for quite some time, and I am currently in the process of uploading all of the tutorials to my channel. Vimeo will still remain my primary host, but with the content available on both of these major video sites, you now have an option of where and how you want to watch my tutorials… and I have a chance of reaching a wider audience.

You can access the QubaHQ tutorials playlist at: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL38A6A9E1711979BB or subscribe to my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/q3c

As for the new tutorials – I have some stuff planned, but still no time to actually record anything. Follow, subscribe, check often and you will know when the new content arrives.

This preset and tutorial have been inspired by true events …or to be precise – they are based on a project I did a short while ago.

In this tutorial I will show you how to quickly simulate stop motion aesthetic using my After Effects Stop Motion Kit. This collection of presets will allow you to easily add subtle imperfections to the movement of objects in your scene, emulating animator errors that are a staple of stop motion animation. Using 6 different expression sets, you will be able to apply and control glitches in movement, rotation and timing of your objects as well as simulate changes in camera position and exposure.

Running time: 37min
Difficulty: Easy
Required tools: After Effects

Preview video:

Tutorial:

Note: For some reason, Camtasia was quite uncooperative today and refused to capture the preview animations at a proper framerate. They should be played back at ~10fps, but show the video shows only 1-2 frames a second. The actual live result is much better!

Download the files associated with this tutorial below:

• QubaHQ Stop Motion Kit (presets and sample project)
  http://downloads.qubahq.com/tutorials/QubaHQ_StopMotionKit.zip

You may download the tutorial video as MPEG-4 from its Vimeo page. The preview video can also be watched at YouTube.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Every now and then there is an outburst of tutorials, plugins, presets and rigs for After Effects camera controls. We have sure targets, orbit cameras, simple rigs, complex rigs and tons upon tons of tutorials on this subject. In fact, Rich from After Effects portal recently released a lengthy post over at aetuts+ compiling a list of resources, tools and videos talking about AE cameras.

Personally, I find cameras in After Effects extremely intuitive, easy to use and simple, so I have problems understanding why does this topic tend to reemerge so often. What is your opinion on the subject? What’s your experience with AE cams? Do you think it is a topic worth covering in one of the future tutorials?

Vote in the poll above, and if you have something specific you’d like to see covered/explained – drop a comment underneath this post. You may also want to mention, whether you have experience using real, live cameras or 3D cameras in other programs and what is your experience with them, as compared to AE. How about your orientation in virtual 3D space? It’s a wide topic, so feel free to talk about it :)

You simply got to love the Internet, and the motion graphics community. Less than a day has passed since the release of our Cinema 4D Camera Rig and we already have an update!

Mdhamiri a Nkemi, one of the site’s visitors decided to clean up the rig a little bit and add some new functionality. I liked it so much, I decided to share it with all of you as an official community update 1.1.

What’s New in 1.1

• Camera object is now renamed to iDoF
  Seems that the name stuck :)
• Helper objects and XPRESSO nodes are now hidden using layers
  Much more elegant way of hiding the “guts” of the rig – all you will see in your objects browser is a single iDoF node. You may still access the helpers by toggling them on through the layer browser
• New control: Blur Strenght
  You can now directly control the blur strength from the iDoF camera. No need to jump to Render Options panel. This control only works when the project is started from the iDoF document. It will not work if the camera has been merged into an existing scene
• New control: System Colors
  You can now modify the display colors of your camera and helper objects in the HUD from the iDoF panel on the camera
• Modified control: C4D/AE modes
  C4D/AE modes are now selected using a drop-down menu, rather than the radio buttons. Helps keep things tidy.

The zip file now contains both the latest version of the rig, as well as the original 1.0 release, as used in the tutorial. You will also find release notes and a PDF graph explaining the difference in depth map rendering between C4D and AE.

Download it below:

• QubaHQ Cinema4D iDoF Camera Rig 1.1
  http://downloads.qubahq.com/tutorials/QubaHQ_iDoF_CameraRig_1.1.zip

Many thanks to Mdhamiri a Nkemi for this update!

A program of choice to many motion artists, Cinema 4D has a rather counter-intuitive method of producing depth of field. Both the camera controls and the way in which C4D handles depth maps can be a cause of major headache, especially for the newcomers to this program.

With the coding support from German motion artist and art director, Derya Ozturk, we have been able to construct an improved camera rig for Cinema 4D that should help you eliminate needless frustration, and get the results you need with just a few clicks.

Please note that while the tutorial will teach you how to use the preset, it will not show you how to construct the demo scene seen in the preview video.

As much as I would like to credit the awesome flute player who provided the audio for this preview, I was unable to locate the “patient zero” among dozens of videos around the net using this jingle. Whoever you are, kudos and don’t ever stop trying!

Code by Derya Ozturk
Concept and math logic by Quba Michalski

Running time: 46min
Difficulty: Easy
Required tools: Cinema 4D
Optional software: After Effects, Frischluft Lenscare plug-in

Please, make sure to enable HD option when viewing the videos.

Preview video:

Tutorial:

UPDATED!
A new version of the Camera Rig has been released (already!). Please visit this link to find the release notes and download the latest version.

Download the files associated with this tutorial below:

• QubaHQ Cinema4D DoF Camera Rig
  (old version, go here instead)
  http://downloads.qubahq.com/tutorials/QubaHQ_DoF_Camera.zip
• Tutorial Video (340MB MP4)
  http://video.qubahq.com/tutorials/QubaHQ_C4D_DoF_Camera_Tutorial.mp4

You may also download the tutorial from its Vimeo page. The preview video can also be watched at YouTube.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

In this long-delayed tutorial I will show you an efficient method for disintegrating/dispersing a 3D layer into particles. The method shown here has been optimized to produce maximum amount of particles at lowest computing cost (more stuff flying around, faster renders).

Originally planned to be released in June 2010, this tutorial concludes the four-part series including: 100% Accurate Reflections, Automated Light Rig and Light Wall.

Running time: 70min
Difficulty: Medium
Required tools: After Effects, Trapcode Particular
Optional plug-ins: VC Optical Flares (or similar)

Please, make sure to enable HD option when viewing the videos.

Preview video:

Tutorial:

Download the files associated with this tutorial below:

• Project File
  http://downloads.qubahq.com/tutorials/QubaHQ_ParticleDisintegration.zip
• Tutorial Video (376MB MP4)
  http://video.qubahq.com/tutorials/QubaHQ_ParticleDisintegration.mp4

You may also download the tutorial from its Vimeo page. The preview video can also be watched at YouTube.

What you think of the close-up zooms edited in the video – are they useful, annoying, distracting? Let me know in the comments below.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.