Quba HQ

Are After Effects cameras difficult to use?

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?

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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 :)

iDoF Camera Rig: Community Update 1.1

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.

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Preset+Tutorial: C4D DoF Camera Rig

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 R11.5 or R12 (does not work with R13, sorry)
Optional software: After Effects, Frischluft Lenscare plug-in

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Adobe Creative Suite 5 Reveal

So it is done. Adobe officially introduced the world to their Creative Suite 5 today. You can watch the unveiling show at http://cs5launch.adobe.com/.

There are quite a few interesting features in this release, from the impressive content-aware tools in Photoshop to all the new stuff in After Effects. While all these new functionalities are welcome, CS5′s greatest improvement over the previous versions will definitely be the performance boost in many key applications.

Personally, as a motion designer, I feel web and content management (again) received too much attention as opposed to the video tools, but hell, just the fact that AE will now use all of my system memory makes it a worthy release. There is no point in me outlining all the new features and improvements in Creative Suite 5 when all the information is available on Adobe’s site. Head over to http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/ to learn all about it.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 in English is expected to ship mid-May 2010. Other localizations to follow.

After Effects CS5: What’s New

The official unveiling of Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 is still several hours away, but it seems some websites already jumped the gun and released a whole bunch of details regarding this highly anticipated release. Here’s what we know so far.

It’s been a public knowledge that AE CS5 is going to be a 64 bit application only, so no news here. 64bit architecture is going to allow After Effects to use all of the system’s memory resulting in longer cached preview sizes as well as improved handling of high resolution animations (no more crashes when blurring huge layers). In addition, the AE engine had to be rewritten for the new architecture and the new one supposedly gained up to 200% performance increase.

But you already knew all that. Juicy fresh stuff after the break.

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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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