After Effects CC 2015 Character Animator

After Effects CC 2015 Character Animator

After Effects CC 2015 Character Animator is a great new application for easily animating 2D characters. Make them talk, move, dance, walk by simply moving in front of your webcam. Your character will follow your movements. See how it works in this short tutorial.

Cinema 4D Lite Tutorials

Cinema 4D Lite Tutorials

Cinema 4D Lite Tutorials from

Up and Running with CINEMA 4D Lite for After Effects

with Angie Taylor

Intimidated by 3D modeling packages? Dip a toe in the water with CINEMA 4D (C4D) Lite, a slimmed down version of CINEMA 4D included with After Effects CC. Motion graphics designer Angie Taylor shows you how to build a complete sequence in C4D Lite, progressing from initial object modeling, to animation, lighting, camera rigging, texturing, and final render. Plus, learn to animate text, create random movement with wiggle expressions, track cameras in live-action footage to add new 3D elements, and light your scene. Angie also round-trips the project files to After Effects for visual effects and color correction. With over 100 videos, this course allows you to explore almost every aspect of 3D motion graphics creation, within this accessible introductory tool.

Topics include:

  • What is CINEMA 4D Lite?
  • Understanding the CINEMA 4D Lite and After Effects CC workflow
  • Editing primitive objects
  • Spline modeling with NURBS
  • Animating with keyframes
  • Using Xpresso to link properties
  • Importing music and soundtracks
  • Creating and animating cameras
  • Working with text
  • Scripting
  • Creating and applying materials and textures
  • 3D camera tracking
  • Compositing layers
  • Lighting with visible lights and ambient occlusion
  • Adding visual effects in After Effects
  • Rendering in After Effects and the Adobe Media Encoder

What is CINEMA 4D Lite?

Using the Picture Viewer in CINEMA 4D

Linking body parts using object hierarchy

Adding surface detail with a Relief object

Understanding coordinates

Understanding rotation

Keyframe interpolation

Creating multiple cameras in CINEMA 4D Lite

Creating a wiggle expression

Casting shadows on layers in CINEWARE

Multipass compositing explained

Layer styles

Up and Running with CINEMA 4D Lite for After Effects

Up and Running with CINEMA 4D Lite for After Effects

Up and Running with Cinema 4D Lite for After Effects

Intimidated by 3D modeling packages? Dip a toe in the water with CINEMA 4D (C4D) Lite, a slimmed down version of CINEMA 4D included with After Effects CC. Motion graphics designer Angie Taylor shows you how to build a complete sequence in C4D Lite, progressing from initial object modeling, to animation, lighting, camera rigging, texturing, and final render.

Plus, learn to animate text, create random movement with wiggle expressions, track cameras in live-action footage to add new 3D elements, and light your scene. Angie also round-trips the project files to After Effects for visual effects and color correction. With over 100 videos, this course allows you to explore almost every aspect of 3D motion graphics creation, within this accessible introductory tool.

Topics include:

  • What is CINEMA 4D Lite?
  • Understanding the CINEMA 4D Lite and After Effects CC workflow
  • Editing primitive objects
  • Spline modeling with NURBS
  • Animating with keyframes
  • Using Xpresso to link properties
  • Importing music and soundtracks
  • Creating and animating cameras
  • Working with text
  • Scripting
  • Creating and applying materials and textures
  • 3D camera tracking
  • Compositing layers
  • Lighting with visible lights and ambient occlusion
  • Adding visual effects in After Effects
  • Rendering in After Effects and the Adobe Media Encoder
Getting Started with After Effects Expressions

Getting Started with After Effects Expressions

Getting Started with After Effects Expressions

Even if you’re not comfortable with scripting or coding, you may still want to take a look at expressions. They are like little scripts that trigger changes to layer properties, and they can save you time, make your work more flexible, and open up new creative possibilities.

In this course, motion graphic designer Angie Taylor shows you how to make Adobe After Effects expressions work for you, starting with building expressions with the pick whip. Then she introduces JavaScript-based math expressions, which allow you to adjust timing and movement, and her favorite “no brainer” expressions, such as property linking and connecting camera focus to layers. Plus, discover how to react to sound, play with color, format text, and link 2D and 3D properties.

Topics include:

  • What are expressions?
  • Creating and applying expressions
  • Linking expressions to layers with the pick whip
  • Simplifying expressions with variables
  • Working with JavaScript math functions
  • Creating looping animations
  • Randomizing values
  • Converting expressions to keyframes
  • Creating keyframes from audio with expressions
  • Controlling 2D effects in 3D space
  • Converting color from RGB to HLS
  • Formatting strings and text
Paper Folding Animation

Paper Folding Animation

After Effects tutorial:

Create a 3D paper folding animation

Build a trick paper-folding animation from still images in After Effects.

Paper Folding Animation After Effects

Approaches like this are really useful as they allow you to create footage and a quirky paper folding animation from very few source files. All I’ve used here are five images of these models – and one audio track. Here’s a three-part tutorials series that I’ve created at the Digital Arts website. Click on the links below to go to the Digital Arts website. Following these links is the movie showing the effect that you will create.

Part 1 – After Effects tutorial: Create a 3D paper folding animation

BFolding Paper Animation in After Effectsuild a trick paper-folding animation from still images in After Effects.

Part 2 – After Effects tutorial: Automate cuts to sequence comps in After Effects

Discover a simple way to automate the process of cutting a sequence of comps together on the Timeline in After Effects, and apply 3D lights, cameras and effects to all of them.

Adding 3D object to After Effects with CinewarePart 3 –After Effects tutorial: Add a 3D object to a comp in After Effects using Cineware and Cinema 4D Lite

Use Cineware to add a real 3D object to your After Effects scene and apply 3D lights, cameras and effects to it.

 

Up and Running with Illustrator CS6

Up and Running with Illustrator CS6

Up and Running with Illustrator CS6

In CS6 Adobe Illustrator is more powerful than ever before, and in this course Angie Taylor shows just how easy it can be to use. Get a tour of the interface, gain an understanding of the workflow, and be introduced to core techniques like working with artboards, understanding layers and objects, and making and moving selections. Angie also shows how to create images from shapes, apply color, reshape paths, and save and export artwork for the web, print, or animation.

Topics include:

  • Setting up a new document
  • Navigating within the workspace
  • Understanding layers and objects
  • Creating images from shapes
  • Applying color
  • Using the Appearance panel
  • Creating shapes with the Blob Brush and Eraser tools
  • Working with the Pen and Pencil tools
  • Tweaking, exporting, and saving artwork