This week we're going to use XPresso inside of Cinema 4D to make animated clocks. This concept can be applied to other things, but this particular setup is for a clock.
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If you're like me, you get annoyed sometimes when built-in After Effects effects are missing a feature that you want. For example, back in the day, the Ramp effect didn't let you swap the colors. It was a pain that was eventually alleviated.
That's how I feel about Linear Wipe sometimes. So this week, I decided to improve it. Linear Wipe only works in comp space, which is great if your layers are comp-sized. But if you need to put a Linear Wipe on text and then you have a change that forces you to move the text, you'll need to re-animate your wipe. That sucks.
Here's the code to fix it. It gets applied to a Mask Path property. I built a pseudo effect with Pseudo Effect Maker so all of the things that are linked with thisLayer will need to be modified for your controls. You'll need Point Controls called Size and Position Offset, Slider Controls called Completion and Feather, and an Angle Control called Angle.
If you're a $20 Patron, this will be one of the included complex elements for this month. The Feather value in the mask properties can just be pickwhipped to the controller for feather.
size = mul(thisLayer("Effects")("Linear Wipe Improved")("Size"), .5); //cut the size in half
feather = thisLayer("Effects")("Linear Wipe Improved")("Feather");
size = size + [feather, feather];
pos = thisLayer("Effects")("Linear Wipe Improved")("Position Offset");
completion = Math.abs(thisLayer("Effects")("Linear Wipe Improved")("Completion")-100)/100; //1-0 range
completion = completion*2-1; //Convert 1-0 range into 1,-1
pts = [];
pts[0] = [size[0], -size[1]];
pts[1] = [size[0], size[1]];
pts[2] = [-size[0] * completion, size[1]];
pts[3] = [-size[0] * completion, -size[1]];
for(i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
pts[i] = rotatePoint(pts[i]);
pts[i] = translatePoint(pts[i]);
}
createPath(pts);
function rotatePoint(p) {
angle = degreesToRadians(thisLayer("Effects")("Linear Wipe Improved")("Angle")-90); //zero out the default angle and convert it to radians for the math below
x = (p[0] * Math.cos(angle)) - (p[1] * Math.sin(angle));
y = (p[0] * Math.sin(angle)) + (p[1] * Math.cos(angle));
return [x,y];
}
function translatePoint(p) {
return p + pos;
}
The code for the rotation function was derived from this lesson on Khan Academy. I can't recommend them enough.
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The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
This week, we're making roads in Cinema 4D. Have you always wanted to live out your Sim City childhood as an adult? No. Well that's unfortunate because that's what we're doing.
These roads are built to follow a spline, so you can build them in any shape you'd like. You can also use that path to animate cars along your road. Our project files also have an Xpresso setup so that you can swap out different types of roads if you need to.
Grab the Project Files
The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
This week, we're taking a look at ways you can get around or improve After Effect's default Glow effect. Glow has some issues with it—one of the major ones is how linear it is. It doesn't have a ton of body by default. So in this tutorial we're going to explore other ways that you can build your own glows.
A few methods work well by stacking the Glow effect with various different radii and intensities. But the final versions I show in this tutorial eschew the Glow effect entirely and instead rely on various blurs stacked together with CC Composite. You can also stack other effects like Fill and Fractal Noise in between to get different looking glows—so experiment!
For more information on linking paths for a continuous trim between multiple paths, check out Tutorial 124: Linked Paths.
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The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
A couple of weeks ago, someone—I can't find the original message unfortunately—asked us to recreate this beautiful animation by Toros Köse for Pause Fest 2018. They're really well done. They use 8K textures run through After Effects. AE crawls at even 4K so working with 8K couldn't have been fun. But the end result is beautiful titles for Pause Fest.
We set to work making displacement maps in a bunch of different ways. It's easier to generate terrain maps out of Cinema 4D since it has many more options and defaults for noise than After Effects. Conversely, if you want to do elaborate and specific write-on strokes, you can export your camera and displace 3D layers in AE with the Displacement Map effect—which is how the lines in the GIF below were created.
Also, this tutorial uses Redshift so if you want to use a different render engine, you'll have to adapt these ideas to your own project.
And thanks again to our sponsor, School of Motion. Make sure to check them out!
Grab the Project Files
The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
This week we take use various techniques to pull mattes that we feed into the Minimax effect to make tracking marks that follow our footage. It's procedurally built so once you've made the setup, you just have to alter things to fit your source footage, but the rest of the effect will build itself.
We also learn how to use the transform effect to make effects that only have a horizontal or vertical effect conform to any angle we wish. That's a particular favorite of mine.
I love how well this works. It's perfect for FUI designs. And as a bonus, you can just use the mattes alone to add visual interest for backgrounds or whatever other uses you can find. So, as always I encourage you to go out and experiment!
If you want to experiment with the IR look, check out this and this.
And thanks again to our sponsor, School of Motion. Make sure to check them out!
Grab the Project Files
The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
This week's C4D tutorial uses effectors in an interesting way. Instead of modifying Mograph clones, we're using them to deform geometry. By mixing a few things together we can get an interesting undulating liquid effect that kind of resembles a non-Netwonian fluid.
And thanks again to our sponsor, School of Motion. Make sure to check them out!
Grab the Project Files
The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
This week, by request, we take a look at a cool effect from Pylik. We use a bunch of different glitch techniques like the ones we've show in our Glitchy playlist. Combined with the Card Dance effect, we build an effect that tracks itself to a face—or anything for that matter—using the luminance of some map layers.
And thanks again to our sponsor, School of Motion. Make sure to check them out!
Grab the Project Files
The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
This week we take a look at creating a reveal using effectors in Cinema 4D. We're applying it to text, but it can be applied to 3D objects as well. It's a useful effect that you can build upon and put into your bag of tricks.
Grab the Project Files
The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
This week's tutorial explores the Shader Effector inside of Cinema 4D. We'll be using it to animate randomized colors of clones. This will help you build things like blinking lights on a computer tower.
Grab the Project Files
The best way to get our project files is to become a patron on Patreon. For $5 a month, you get access to all of the tutorial project files we've made available as well as other monthly projects, rigs, R&D, elements, early product previews, and BTS content not available anywhere else! You can also purchase just this project file on our Gumroad Store if you would rather do that.
