In this After Effects tutorial I’ll show you how to make a fluttering 3D leaf effect using Zaxwerks 3D Warps plug-in. I’ll show you several tips to speed up your workflow and quicken rendering and previews with the 3D Warps plug-in. I use particles and other built-in AE effects to create a realistic scene from a still image. And I also take a look at refining motion paths with After Effects graph editor to create smooth organic motion. All this, and more in this action packed tutorial!

Isn’t it annoying these days that there seems to be a new “how to” or “tutorial” blog about the video industry popping up every other day? Places like SuiteTake.com, those guys think they know everything and are the Steve Jobs’ gift to mankind…oh wait….

But seriously, these days there are a ton of free and very useful sites out there that offer a wealth of education about all things audio and video. And ok, I’ll admit that here at SuiteTake there are a few things we don’t know. (One writer, who shall remain unidentified for now, was railed by readers for not knowing what the “extend edit” button does, sheesh.) Whenever we have some down time here at SuiteTake worldwide headquarters I always cruise the tutorial sites looking for new ideas and techniques. But, it’s one thing to watch a tutorial and just think to yourself “wow, that was cool. I should try that sometime.” and another to actually advance you skill-set and knowledge through the tutorial. Here are a few things I do when watching or reading tutorials to get the most out of them.

Read between the frames

To begin, a few of my favorite tutorial sites are: VideoCoPilot.net, CreativeCOW.net, and AE Tuts+. They all have a wealth of video and written tutorials on how to make all kinds of way cool stuff written by a wide variety of contributors.

After watching a whole mess of AE tutorials I realized that I was still creating the same old stuff project after project despite having seen so many new techniques. I wasn’t effectively putting into action the concepts I was seeing in the tutorials. So I began to watch them with a more critical eye determined to expand my skill-set. One of the first things I noticed is that the author would routinely apply effects or filters over and over again to enhance the look and motion of the animations he was creating but only mention them as an aside. For instance, Andrew Kramer at VideoCoPilot almost always adds a contrast curve (using the curves effect) on an adjustment layer at the end of every tutorial to just give the image a little more punch. However, he barely mentions it and usually just slaps it on there without saying much about it. If, the whole time I was focusing my concentration on the main lesson of the tutorial, like how to setup his Sure Target preset, it was easy to not pay any attention to those more subtle details. Furthermore, it seems as though the author is usually so accustomed to adding these effects and finishing touches that they breeze by it too, taking it for granted.

I learned to read between the frames and pay the most attention to the small details that they were blowing off. It’s these many small details and enhancements that distinguish the real pro’s from the wanna-bees and by catching these little tricks that usually sneak by you’ll lean a lot more from each tutorial.

Always follow along, but experiment too

Many tutorials provide the project file and sample media so you can follow along at home and it’s obvious that that is usually a good idea. In the past I have been lazy and a just sat back and watched them like a re-run of Three’s Company, but recently have made it a habit to fire up AE and follow along with the tutorial as it goes. I quickly found that just watching the tutorial and actually hitting the keys myself is a whole different experience. And, just as quickly, I found that it’s even better to not only follow along but to experiment with my own ideas as well.

When I’m watching something throughout the whole video I am constantly thinking “how can I apply this to the kind of projects I work on every day?” Sure, blowing up a 3D model of Mars and morphing that into a glowing image of Miley Cirus that evaporates into a cloud of particles is cool but probably not appropriate for my video of the keynote speech at XYZ corporation’s annual conference. So during the tutorial I’ll often pause it and first re-create what the author has done but then go on and experiment with the parameters to get a look that would be practical for the type of work that I usually do. But it is always fun to just crank up the parameters to see how far you can take something too.

Use it in a sentence

Your 3rd grade teacher may have told you this way back in the day. Whenever you learn a new word simply making an effort to use it in a sentence the next day helps a great deal with making that word a permanent part of your vocabulary. The same is true with tutorial techniques. You’ve watched the tutorial through and experimented along the way, the next step is to actually use the new technique in a real world project as soon as possible. By taking what you have learned and actually applying it to a real project where you’re on the clock and achieving real results will lock those new tricks into your video vocabulary permanently. On several occasions I have watched a tutorial one day and used it in a project the next, making real money with it.

Also by using new techniques in real world situations you’ll be forced to become more flexible and creative with them. Chances are that your client will have some thoughts about what you have created and you’ll be obligated to address them. This will likely force you to delve into the technique deeper and with more control to achieve the exact look that was requested. You’ll probably have to employ a lot of creative problem solving to get what you want because you’ve never done it before and are unsure of what parameters to change to get there. This will lead you to a much deeper understanding of the technique and allow you to apply it in the future to a much wider variety of projects.

It’s about the techniques, not re-creating the project

The ultimate benefit of tutorials are the concepts you take away from them. Just re-creating what the author made does little good but for practicing keyboard shortcuts. Remember that “R and D” stands for Research and Development, not Rip-off and Duplicate. If you see something you like it’s best to take it with you and make it your own, not just remake the project and change the text to fit your client. It’s ok to be inspired by others work, but it’s always best and most rewarding to add as much of your own unique creativity to your projects. Besides, there’s always that chance that you’ll be called out by a fellow editor. And that’s just embarrassing.

The SuiteTake:

The things I find most beneficial from tutorials is that they often show me things that effects are capable of that I never knew existed. Once I know an effect is capable of something in general I can then use that to make all sorts of new and creative projects. Also, as you watch more and more the knowledge accumulates. You can take ideas from one and apply them to the next and on and on. By reading between the frames to pick up all the little tid-bits, experimenting on your own, applying new techniques to real-world projects and adding as much of your own unique creativity – you’ll be getting the most out of every tutorial you watch.

And hey, it’s also a great way to pass the time on a slow afternoon.

Ahhh the age old struggle between Final Cut Pro and After Effects. For what seems like centuries now us Final Cut Pro editors have been struggling with finding an efficient and, moreover, convenient workflow between FCP and After Effects. Sure, products like Livetype and Motion have come along and made life easier for some tasks but when it comes down to real motion graphics work and serious compositing nothing beats After Effects. Have you ever put Motion’s Primatte RT side by side with a key pulled from After Effects Keylight? To me there’s no comparison.

Coming from an editor’s chair, not a designer’s, it took me a while to really get up to speed with After Effects. In the past I was using AE infrequently for several reasons: 1. I didn’t know the interface and key commands well, 2. I didn’t know the software’s capabilities well, 3. I was intimidated by the rigid workflow between FCP and AE. All these factors equaled inefficent workflow and so I just usually opted not to use AE in favor of a faster and more flexible option like Livetype or Motion.

However, in the past year the work we have been doing has called more and more for serious graphics design and compositing, Livetype and Motion were simply not going to cut it. So I buckled down and really learned the After Effects interface, key commands and it’s capabilities. Through that hard work I quickly became much more efficent with AE and started creating some really cool stuff. But all this new-found efficency with AE itself still did nothing to help with a round-trip workflow to and from FCP. And if we can assume anything about Apple and Adobe there will probably never be an intergrated roundtrip solution between the two.

Now of course there are 3rd party solutions out there that help with this problem (at least half of the problem anyway). Automatic Duck is a great 3rd party solution that exports Final Cut Pro projects and timelines in a format that After Effects understands and converts to compositions. Bam, you’ve got half of the roundtrip issue solved right there, prepare a timline in FCP and export with Automatic Duck into AE and take care of your graphics and compositing. The problems? Output is still the same, you must render your comps out of AE and import them into FCP just like always. Then later if changes are needed you must go back to AE, make your changes, and re-render the revised comp and import back into FCP. The other problem, Automatic Duck is expensive. If you’re a home business or just struggling like everyone else in this economy buying the plug-in may not be an option.

I call this solution The Manual Duck. It doesn’t involve any special plug-ins or any other software, it’s just a few simple steps to add to the workflow that can make the trip to and from AE much easier, and more importantly, leave less room for errors requiring revisions in After Effects later.

I had a job recently where I knew that I was probably going to need to do almost entirely in After Effects. It was an image piece that involved nothing but text builds and a few stock images. The producers instructions were simply to take the “boring” corporate message and make it just “look cool.” Ahhh, is there anything better then the old “Just make it look cool…” line? And what’s more, from listening to the music that was selected, it was going to be a music driven edit.

In my opinion After Effects is not a good audio editor from a workflow perspective and have to cut to music in After Effects can be a big hassle being that there’s no “real” real-time playback or scrubbing of audio. All this added up to a perfect candidate for The Manual Duck workflow.

It’s simple really, start in Final Cut Pro. I laid down the music track in an empty timeline and made the audio edit (the track did need to be cut down and mixed a bit). Once I was happy with the audio I started to block out what I wanted the shots to be using the built-in text tool. I had the script and knew what order the text build had to go in. With the text tool I was able to very quickly block out where the individual sentences would go. I went along through the song and timed out all the text builds adding no style or animation of any sort. The key to this step is the speed at which you can work, just copy-paste the text clips from one edit to the next and copy-paste the next sentence from the script into the text tool. Format just a bit so the lines can be read and that’s all you need to do. Of course, if your project is more complex you can get as complex as you’d like during this step, adding images, transitions, etc. The point is that you lay everything down and time everything out in Final Cut Pro where you have quick real-time editing available with no significant render or RAM preview time.

The project blocked out in a FCP timeline

From there export the timeline to a codec that After Effects will play well with. Import that QT into AE and drop it into your Comp. From here you can proceed in the manner you prefer best. You can scrub through the Comp and add markers at the edit points or do split-track edits. Either way you can quickly scrub the Comp and see where you made edits in FCP with no need for audio playback or scrubbing. Also you now have a base layer that acts as a virtual storyboard. As you build your effects and composite you can easily solo the base QT layer to see what you blocked out next.

The FCP QT imported into an AE Comp

As a side note I after I have made my markers or split tracks I turn off the visibility and lock this layer to ease RAM preview time and avoid offsetting the layer with a stray drag.

The final composite

Now there’s nothing automated about the process and it doesn’t add any sort of round-tripping between the two but I’ve found that it helps a great deal with being efficient once in After Effects and leaves far less room for errors and mis-timimg. If you can build your graphics and composite and get it right the first time that is far more valuable than the extra time it took to block the project in Final Cut Pro.